scholarly journals We Spring from that History: Bernard Lazare, between Universalism and Particularism

Religions ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 322
Author(s):  
Joel Swanson
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Textual Tradition ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Political Response ◽  
Dreyfus Affair ◽  
French Republicanism ◽  
Modern Jewish Thought

This paper examines the evolution of Jewish identity in the works of writer and critic Bernard Lazare. It suggests that Lazare’s oeuvre elucidates one of the central tensions in modern Jewish thought: the division between those thinkers who use the reputedly universalist Greek philosophical tradition as a lens to analyze and critique Judaism, and those who use the Jewish textual tradition to challenge and reconceive non-Jewish philosophy. Lazare situated himself on both sides of this divide during his life. In his early work, he used the universalist, laical ideology of French republicanism to attack what he perceived as the inflexible, regressive, anti-modernist character of Talmudic Judaism. Lazare’s thought later shifted in the wake of his involvement in the Dreyfus Affair, and he sought to reclaim an ethnic, nationalist conception of Jewish identity as the source for a communal Jewish political response to rising anti-Semitism. Yet through a close reading of Lazare’s writings, the paper suggests that Lazare’s intellectual evolution was never as complete or totalizing as he perhaps wished. His earlier work occasionally used Jewish sources to critique philosophical universalism, while hints of philosophical critiques of the particularism of Jewish texts such as the Talmud remained in his later revalorization of Jewish identity. Lazare thereby reveals how universalism and particularism remain mutually implicated within modern Jewish thought. The paper thus suggests avenues for Lazare to be productively read within the broader canon of modern Jewish thinkers.

From Dreyfus in the Colony to Céline’s Anti-Semitic Style

2020 ◽  
pp. 68-94
Author(s):  
David Fieni
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Majority Population ◽  
Dreyfus Affair ◽  
History Of ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
The Way

Orientalist philology brought people deemed Semitic together under the rubric of Semitism, and it subsequently broke up this forced grouping into the distinct categories of Jew, Arab, and Muslim. Chapter 3 demonstrates how the Dreyfus Affair exacerbated tensions between Jews, Muslims, and European residents of French colonial Algeria at the end of the nineteenth century. It explores the history of philological Semitism, discusses the legal status of Jews and Muslims in Algeria, and summarizes how the Dreyfus Affair affected Algerian politics and business. In order to think through the stylistics of French colonial anti-Semitism, the chapter examines pro-Jewish and anti-Jewish texts from the Algerian press of the 1890s. It ends with a close reading of Céline’s Bagatelles pour un massacre, demonstrating the way that popular literary philology reveals a lasting fracture between Jews, Arabs, and Muslims, while also exposing a process of psychological minoritization of the French majority population.

Judaism and Heterogeneity in the Modernist Long Novel

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-379
Author(s):  
Jeremy Tambling
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
George Eliot ◽  
Marcel Proust ◽  
Carlos Fuentes ◽  
American Novel ◽  
Dorothy Richardson ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Dreyfus Affair ◽  
Meaningful Category ◽  
Roberto Bolano

This paper explores how Judaism is represented in non-Jewish writers of the nineteenth-century (outstandingly, Walter Scott and George Eliot) and in modernist long novels, such as those by Dorothy Richardson, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Alfred Döblin, Robert Musil, and Thomas Mann, and, in the Latin American novel, Carlos Fuentes and Roberto Bolaño. It finds a relationship between the length of the ‘long’ novel, as a meaningful category in itself (not to be absorbed into other modernist narratives), and the interest that these novels have in Judaism, and in anti-semitism (e.g. in the Dreyfus affair) as something which cannot be easily assimilated into the narratives which the writers mentioned are interested in. The paper investigates the implications of this claim for reading these texts.

The New Anti-Semitism and Diasporic Liminality: Jewish Identity from France to Montreal

1969 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Aaron Kenedy
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Primary Reason ◽  
Case Study Approach ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Anti Jewish

Through a case study approach, 40 French Jews were interviewed revealing their primary reason for leaving France and resettling in Montreal was the continuous threat associated with the new anti-Semitism. The focus for many who participated in this research was the anti-Jewish sentiment in France and the result of being in a liminal diasporic state of feeling as though they belong elsewhere, possibly in France, to where they want to return, or moving on to other destinations. Multiple centred Jewish and Francophone identities were themes that emerged throughout the interviews.

The Beilis case: Anti-Semitism and Politics in the Reign of Nicholas II

Slavic Review ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 615-629 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Rogger
Keyword(s):  
Ritual Murder ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Dreyfus Affair ◽  
A Charge

The Beilis case—a charge of ritual murder brought against an obscure Jewish clerk in July 1911 and tried before a Kiev jury in September 1913— has more than once been called Russia's Dreyfus Affair. As a shorthand summary, the comparison serves well enough. In both instances an innocent nonentity was plucked out of obscurity to become the object of a contest whose larger implications, while they agitated politics and opinion, escaped the victim or left him indifferent. Beyond this, points of difference loom larger than those of similarity.

scholarly journals Tożsamość żydowska na pograniczu kultur i narodów

2018 ◽  
pp. 165-178
Author(s):  
Irmina Jaśkowiak
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Western World ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Anti Semitism

Identity construction is one of the fundamental human needs. The process takes place in two areas simultaneously: internal, self-reflexive and external, associated with a sense of belonging to a particular group. The Jews, until the beginning of the nineteenth century constituted quite uniform society voluntarily separating themselves from other communities. As a result of emancipation and assimilation processes, various influences affect their identity. As a consequence the Jews faced two difficulties. The first one was the dilemma between own nation and territorial homeland while the other was the progressing deep internal divisions. At present Jewish identity is most of all national and ethnical identity strongly reinforced by historical memory and fight with anti-Semitism. After the period of the twentieth century crisis and in the light of the western world secularization it has become also cultural identity.Identity construction is one of the fundamental human needs. Theprocess takes place in two areas simultaneously: internal, self-reflexiveand external, associated with a sense of belonging to a particulargroup. The Jews, until the beginning of the nineteenth century constitutedquite uniform society voluntarily separating themselves fromother communities. As a result of emancipation and assimilation processes,various influences affect their identity. As a consequence theJews faced two difficulties. The first one was the dilemma betweenown nation and territorial homeland while the other was the progressingdeep internal divisions. At present Jewish identity is most of allnational and ethnical identity strongly reinforced by historical memoryand fight with anti-Semitism. After the period of the twentieth centurycrisis and in the light of the western world secularization it hasbecome also cultural identity.

Diaspora in Modern Jewish Thought

2021 ◽  
pp. 136-150
Author(s):  
Noam Pianko
Keyword(s):  
Franz Rosenzweig ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Moses Mendelssohn ◽  
A Value ◽  
Theodor Herzl ◽  
Theoretical Evolution ◽  
Hermann Cohen ◽  
Horace Kallen ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
Modern Jewish Thought

This chapter explores the broad contours of concepts of diaspora in modern Jewish thought. Philosophers, intellectuals, religious thinkers, and non-Zionist nationalists who disagreed on the ideal political structure for Jewish collective life (including Moses Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Simon Dubnow, Hannah Arendt, Mordecai Kaplan, and Horace Kallen) shared a commitment to diaspora as a value, rather than just a fact, of modern Jewish life. Yet the emergence of the terminology of diaspora in tandem with the rise of nationalism and Zionism shaped the theoretical evolution of diaspora as the binary opposite to homeland and statist visions of Jewish identity. As a result, seminal Zionist theorists deeply critical of diaspora life, such as Theodor Herzl, Achad Ha’am, and David Ben-Gurion, also had a key role in framing the significance of diaspora. Modern theories of diaspora internalized and contested the privileged position of territory and sovereignty demanded by the rise of nationalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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