French Jews, Turkish Jews: The Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Politics of Jewish Schooling in Turkey, 1860-1925 (review)

Volume 10, No.1 Fall1991 141 Although I heartily concur with most of Professor Freidenreich's conclusions , there are a few (mostly minor) points to which I must take some exception . I doubt whether the Austrian government during the corporative years between 1934 and 1938 preferred to work with Zionists rather than Liberals because the latter had been associated with the now outlawed Social Democratic party. Such preference for Zionists, which was also to be found in Nazi Germany and democratic Czechoslovakia, probably had more to do with the separatist philosophy and ultimate hopes for emigration held by the Zionists. A more serious disagreement is over the author's assertion that "the second Austrian Republic proved no more hospitable to its Jewish inhabitants than the first .. !' (p. 207). It is true, as Freidenreich goes on to say, that antisemitism is still very much alive in Austria today, but to compare it to the first Republic is, in my opinion, a gross exaggeration. In sharp contrast to the interwar years, no political party today officially subscribes to antisemitism, no politican would openly brag about being an antisemite, and few if any Austrians would claim that solving the "Jewish problem" is the key to solving other problems. Moreover, Austria has remained free of the massive antisemitic demonstrations and violence that were so typical of the first Republic . Bruce F. Pauley , Department of History University of Central Florida French Jews, Turkish Jews: The Alliance Israelite Universelle and the Politics of Jewish Schooling in Turkey, 1860-1925, by Aron Rodrigue. Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1990. 234 pp. $25.00. French Jews established the Alliance Israelite Universelle in 1860. The founders intended the organization to uplift their "downtrodden brethren" in the East, particularly in the Islamic world. The Jewish Alliance, it seems, manifested that same xenophobic imperialism which projected European power, culture, and institutions into Africa and Asia, metamorphosed to reflect Jewish culture and society. Justas the West, in phrases such as "Manifest Destiny" and "White Man's Burden," proclaimed technological and moral superiority over other peoples, so did the Jewry of post-emancipatory France, through its association with European society, haskalah, and the Alliance, insist on the ascendancy of its own form of "Jewishness." Both groups also assumed the "burden" of educating, or regenerating, those deemed less fortunate than themselves. Ultimately, just as the uglinesses of social Darwinism, 142 SHOFAR racism, and total war exposed the lie of western superiority, so did the Alliance and its ideology of cultural assimilation falter over the early-twentiethcentury bankruptcy of European society, surging antisemitism, and the emerging nationalisms of the Middle East. Rodrigue's French Jews, Turkish Jews examines the Alliance as a mechanism in the zealous attempts of the Jews of Republican France to "civilize" the Jews of late Ottoman Turkey. The author's research, firmly anchored in the Alliance archives, is exhaustive, and leads him to several important conclusions . He argues that change could come to the Ottoman Jewish community only "from the outside, independently from the institutional framework of the community" (p. 44), that the Alliance almost singlehandedly transformed the late-nineteenth-century community into a "bicultural" French/Judeo-Spanish entity (p. 120), that the organization's schools became hubs in a "parallel network of power and influence" (p. 70) within the Jewish millet, and that many Ottoman Jews educated in Alliance schools ultimately repudiated the association's francophile ideas, indeed its very tongue (p. 132). Rodrigue presents these sophisticated arguments with persuasion and eloquence in a series of topically chronological chapters. Although the sense of time is occasionally lost in this complicated narrative, it reflects an impressive grasp of French, Sephardic, and Ottoman history. As the author rightly observes, by the nineteenth century, with the partial exception of the Italian Francos, Ottoman Jewry had become severed from the vigorous economies of the West, and was mired in a desperate poverty from which it could not extricate itself. The founders of the Alliance proceeded to reestablish Sephardic ties with the West through a "moralizing " education in the French language and revolutionary ideology. In terms that strikingly resemble Theodor.Herzl's hubristic pronouncements on Jewish nationalism, the founders believed that Jews could "surpass their compatriots...