Challenges of Equality: Judaism, State, and Education in Nineteenth-Century France

Introduction

1 Introduction On January 4, 1812, Félix-Julien-Jean Bigot de Préameneu wrote a letter. In his capacity as Napoleon Bonaparte’s Minister of Religions, he wrote many letters, but this one must have seemed a particular chore. For more than three years, the leaders of the Jewish Consistory—the officially recognized administrative structure charged with integrating French Jews and operating French Jewish institutions—had petitioned his office for permission to establish a national system of Jewish schools. Despite Préameneu’s efforts to ignore or dissuade them, their pleas had grown louder and more frequent. In September of 1811, the consistorial leadership had written in an impatient tone, asking once again for authorization to open both a central rabbinical school and Jewish primary schools. The leaders argued that stonewalling the issue of Jewish schooling directly contradicted Napoleon’s own instructions for the regeneration of French Jewry. They also reminded Préameneu that the school issue held “the highest importance for the Jews of the Empire” and that he long ago had promised to settle the matter. Meanwhile, the continuing absence of Jewish schools exercised a deleterious moral effect on young French Jews.1 Jewish education offered the best defense against the growing religious indifference within French Jewry that threatened the survival of French Judaism. French Jews, the leaders warned, could not remain “in this state of abandon contrary to the principles of their religion.”2 Still skeptical of these arguments, Préameneu had decided to answer them once and for all. Préameneu’s reply outlined many of the issues that framed the educational debates between French Judaism and the French state in the nineteenth century: providing for fair and equal treatment under the law; ensuring the “proper” moral development of French Jewish schoolchildren; struggling to define utility and efficiency in Jewish schooling; and above all, 2 I N T RO D U C T I O N determining the responsibilities of Judaism and state in the general process of national integration. Subsequent negotiations over Jewish education also highlighted broader tensions regarding the relationship between French Judaism and the French state, and the conceptual connection between French Judaism and French citizenship. One area that Préameneu did not address proved equally important: the influence of government funding—and consistorial attempts to obtain it—on Jewish education. His omission of financial issues, however, did not remove them from the conversation. Rather, like many other French administrators , he subsumed such matters in ideological and administrative questions. Consequently, debate over French Jewish schooling became intricately interwoven with attitudes toward Jewish status in France and the ways in which French Jews navigated the process of integration. Historians of post-Revolutionary French Jewry have followed this orientation . Their work tends to view the relationship between Judaism and state as ideologically oriented, fully bent on integrating Jews into French society. According to this traditional line of interpretation, both assimilating Jews and government officials viewed Jewish particularism as an impediment on the path toward full integration. The melding of “Jewish” and “French” subsequently played out as an ideological process, with intellectual and political leaders developing integration formulas that then trickled down to the masses.3 This research yielded a vast and important body of literature that has framed the study of French Jewry for decades. Still, its largely intellectual focus provided a limited view of Jewish integration. Paula Hyman added an important dimension to this interpretation by emphasizing the influence of economic and social factors on Jewish integration, and how those factors engendered Jewish responses to political developments.4 Both approaches, however , convey a sense of French Jewish integration as somehow separate from the general experience of nineteenth-century France. Hyman sees forces in- fluencing Jewish integration as emanating either from within French Jewry or from outside it. Certainly, French Jews faced different challenges and problems along the road to becoming integrated French citizens; but they were neither physically nor intellectually walled off from the rest of the country. Although, as Hyman notes, the Jews of Alsace tended to be more culturally and socially insulated than their counterparts in the south,5 their cultural and religious traditions met French traditions at some point. This intermingling produced Franco-Judaism, however one wishes to characterize that phenomenon. Historians of French Jewry have thus concentrated on either the general social and legislative forces stimulating these changes, or on developments [3.135.217.228] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 08:21...