The History of the Jews in France
The history of the Jews in France deals with the Jews and Jewish communities in France.
There has been a Jewish presence in France since at least the early Middle Ages. France was once a center of Jewish learning, but persecution increased as the Middle Ages progressed.
France was the first European country to emancipate its Jewish population during the French Revolution. Still, despite legal equality, antisemitism remained an issue, as illustrated in the Dreyfus affair of the late 19th century.
France currently has the largest Jewish population in Europe and the third-largest Jewish population in the world, after Israel and the United States.
The Jewish community in France is estimated as of 2010, ranging from a core population of 483,500 according to the Jewish Virtual Library to 500,000 according to the Appel Unifie Juif de France to an enlarged population of 600,000.
The French Jewish community is found mainly in the metropolitan areas of Paris, Marseille, Strasbourg, Lyon, and Toulouse.
Today, French Jews are mostly Sephardi and Mizrahi from North Africa and the Mediterranean region. They span a range of religious affiliations, from the ultra-Orthodox Haredi communities to the large segment of Jews who are entirely secular.
Roman-Gallic epoch
According to the Jewish Encyclopaedia (1906), “The first settlements of Jews in Europe are obscure. From 163 B.C.E., there is evidence of Jews in Rome. In the year 6 C.E., there were Jews at Vienne and Gallia Celtica; in the year 39, at Lugdunum (i.e. Lyon).
“Further documents indicating the presence of Jews in France before the fourth century are as yet unknown. Hilary of Poitiers (died 366) is praised for having fled from Jewish society.
A decree of the emperors Theodosius || and Valentinian |||, addressed to Amatius, prefect of Gaul (9 July 425), prohibited Jews and pagans from practicing law and from holding public offices (“militandi”) so that Christians would not be subjugated to them and thus incited to change their faith.
At the funeral of Hilary, Bishop of Arles, in 449, Jews and Christians misled in crowds and wept while the form we sang psalms in Hebrew. From the year 465, the Church took official cognizance of the Jews.
Jews were found in Marseille in the sixth century and at Arles, Uzes, Narbonne, Clermont-Ferrand, Orleans, Paris, and Bordeaux.
These places were generally centers of Roman administration, located on the great commercial routes, and the Jews possessed synagogues there.
In harmony with the Theodosian code, and according to an edict addressed in 331 to the decurions of Cologne by the emperor Constantine, the internal organization of the Jews seems to have been the same as in the Roman empire.
They appear to have had priests (rabbis or hazzanum), archisynagogues, patersynagogues, and other synagogue officials.
The Jews were principally merchants and slave dealers; they were also tax collectors, sailors, and physicians.
They probably remained under Roman law until the triumph of Christianity, with the status established by Caracalla, on a footing of equality with their fellow citizens.
The emperor Constantius (321) compelled them to share in the curia, a heavy burden imposed on citizens of townships. There is nothing to show that their association with their fellow citizens was not amicable, even after the establishment of Christianity in Gaul.
It is known that the Christian clergy participated in their feasts; intermarriage between Jews and Christians sometimes occurred; the Jews made proselytes, and their religious customs were so freely adopted that at the third Council of Orleans (539), it was found necessary to warn the faithful against Jewish “superstitions” and to order them to abstain from traveling on Sunday and from adorning their persons or dwellings on that day.
In the 6th century, a Jewish community thrived in Paris. A synagogue was built on the lle de la Cite but was later torn down, and a church was erected instead.
In 629 King Dagobert proposed to drive from his domains all Jews who would not accept Christianity, from his reign to that of Pepin the Short no further mention of the Jews is found.
However, in the south of France, which was then known as “Septimania” and was a dependency of the Visigothic kings of Spain, the Jews continued to dwell and prosper.
From this epoch (689) dates the earliest known Jewish inscription relating to France, that of Narbonne.
The Jews of Narbonne, chiefly merchants, were popular among the people, and they often rebelled against the Visigothic kings.
Carolingian Period
The Jews were certainly numerous in France under Charlemagne, their position being regulated by law.
Exchanges with the Orient strongly declined with the advent of the Saracens in the Mediterranean Sea. At the same time, oriental products such as gold, silk, black pepper, or papyrus almost disappeared under the Carolingians.
The Radhanite’s Jewish traders ensured the only real link between the Orient and the Occident.
Charlemagne fixed a formula for the Jewish oath. They were allowed to enter into lawsuits with Christians and, in their relations with the latter, were restrained only from making them work on Sunday.
They were not allowed to trade in currency, wine, or grain. It is more important that they were tried by the emperor, to whom they belonged.
It is a curious fact that among the numerous provincial councils that met during Charlemagne’s reign, not one concerned itself with the Jews, although these had increased in number.
Louis le Debonnaire (814-833), faithful to his father’s principles, gave strict protection to the Jews, whom he gave special attention to in their position as merchants.
The Jews engaged in export trade, an instance of this being found in the Jews whom Charlemagne employed to go to Palestine and bring back precious merchandise.
Furthermore, when the Normans disembarked on the coast of Narbonne, Gaul, they were taken for Jewish merchants.
They boast, says one authority, of buying whatever they please from bishops and abbots.
Isaac the Jew, who Charlemagne sent in 797 with two ambassadors to Harun al-Rashid, the fifth Abbasid Caliph, was probably one of these merchants.
In the same spirit as in the above-mentioned legends, he is represented as asking the Baghdad calif for a rabbi to instruct the Jews he had allowed to settle at Narbonne (see History of the Jews in Babylonia).
Middle Ages
Persecution under the Capets (987-1137)
There was widespread persecution of Jews in France beginning in 1007 or 1009.
These persecutions, instigated by Robert || (972-1031), King of France (987-1031), called “the Pious,” are described in a Hebrew pamphlet, which also states that the King of France conspired with his vassals to destroy all the Jews on their lands who would not accept baptism. Many were put to death to kill themselves.
Robert is credited with advocating forced conversions of local Jewry, as well as mob violence against Jews who refused.
Among the martyrs was the learned Rabbi Senior. Robert the Pious is well known for his lack of religious tolerance and for the hatred that he bore toward heretics; it was Robert who reinstated the Roman imperial custom of burning heretics at the stake.
In Normandy under Richard ||, Duke of Normandy, Rouen Jewry suffered from persecutions that were so terrible that many women, to escape the fury of the mob, jumped into the river and drowned.
A notable of the town, Jacob B. Jekuthiel, a Talmudic scholar, sought to intercede with Pope John XV||| to stop the persecutions in Lorraine (1007).
Jacob undertook the journey to Rome but was imprisoned with his wife and four sons, Judah, as a hostage with Richard while he went to Rome with his wife and three remaining sons.
He presented seven gold marks and two hunted pounds to the pope, who sent a special envoy to King Robert and ordered him to stop the persecution.
If Adhemar of Chabanes, who wrote in 1030, is to be believed (he had a reputation as a fabricator), the anti-Jewish feelings arose in 1010 after Western Jews addressed a letter to their Eastern coreligionists warning them of a military movement against the Saracens.
According to Ademar, Christians urged by Pope Sergius |V were shocked by the destruction by the Muslims in 1009 of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
After the destruction, European reaction to the rumor of the letter was of shock and dismay. Cluniac monk Rodulfus Glaber blamed the Jews for the destruction.
That year, Alduin, Bishop of Limoges (990-1012), offered the Jews of his diocese the choice between baptism and exile.
For a month, theologians held disputations with the Jews, but without much success, for only three or four of the Jews abjured their faith; others killed themselves, and the rest either fled or were expelled from Limoges. Similar expulsions took place in other French towns.
By 1030, Rodufus Glaber knew more about this story. According to his explanation, in 1030, the Jews of Orleans had sent a letter to the East through a beggar, which provoked the order to destroy the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
Glaber adds that, on the discovery of the crime, the expulsion of the Jews was everywhere decreed. Some were driven out of the cities, others were put to death, while some killed themselves; only a few remained in the “Roman world.”
Count Paul Riant (1836-1888) says that this whole story of the relations between the Jews and the Mohammedans is only one of those popular legends with which the chronicles of the time abound.
Another violent commotion arose about 1065. At this date, Pope Alexander || wrote to Beranger, Viscount of Narbonne, and Guifred, bishop of the city, praising them for having prevented the massacre of the Jews in their district and reminding them that God does not approve of the shedding of blood.
In 1065, Alexander also admonished Landulf V| of Benevento “that the conversion of Jews is not to be obtained by force.”
Also, in the same year, Alexander called for a crusade against the Moors in Spain. These Crusaders killed without mercy all the Jews whom they met on their route.
Franco-Jewish literature
This period, which continued until the First Crusade, also saw the awakening of Jewish culture in the south and north of France.
The initial interest included poetry, which was sometimes purely liturgical but more often was a simple scholastic exercise without aspiration, destined to amuse and instruct rather than move.
Following this came Biblical exegesis, the simple interpretation based on preference for the Midrashim despite their fantastic character. Finally, and above all, their attention was occupied with the Talmud and its commentaries.
The text of this work, together with that of the writings of the Geonim, particularly their responsa, was first revised and copied; then, these writings were treated as a corpus juris, commented upon, and studied as a pious exercise in dialectics and from the practical point of view.
There was no philosophy, no natural science, no belles-lettres among the French Jews of this period.
Rashi
The great Jewish figure who dominated the second half of the 11th century and French rabbinical history was the Ashkenazi Rabbi Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki) of Troyes (1040-1106).
He personified the genius of northern French Judaism: its devoted attachment to tradition, untroubled faith, and piety, ardent but free from mysticism. His works are distinguished by their clarity and directness and are written in a simple, concise, unaffected style suited to his subject.
His commentary on the Talmud, the product of colossal labor and which eclipsed the similar works of all his predecessors by its clarity and soundness, made the study of that vast compilation and soon became its indispensable complement.
This commentary is printed on the same page as the Talmud in every edition that has been published.
His commentary on the Bible (particularly on the Pentateuch), a sort of repertory of the Midrash, served for edification but also advanced that taste for seeking the plain and true meaning of the bible.
After following the teachings of Worms and Mainz, he founded the school he founded at Troyes, his birthplace, and it immediately became famous.
Around his chair were gathered Simhah b. Samuel, R. Samuel b. Meir (Rashbam), Shemaya, his grandsons; likewise Shemaria, Judah b. Nathan, and Isaac Levi b. Asher, all of whom continued his work.
The commentaries and interpretations in this school’s Talmud are the basis and starting point for the Ashkenazic tradition of interpreting and understanding the Talmud’s explanation of Biblical laws.
In many cases, these interpretations differ substantially from those of the Sephardim, which results in differences between how Ashkenazim and Sephardim hold what the practical application of the law is.
In his Biblical commentaries, he availed himself of the works of his contemporaries.
Moses ha-Darshan, chief of the Narbonne school, perhaps the founder of exegetical studies in France, and Menachem b. Helbo must also be cited.
Thus, the 11th century was a period of fruitful literary activity. French Judaism became one of the poles within Judaism.
The Crusades
The Jews of France suffered during the First Crusade (1096), when the Crusaders are stated, for example, to have shut up the Jews of Rouen in a church and to have murdered them without distinction of age or sex, sparing only those who accepted baptism.
According to a Hebrew document, the Jews throughout France were at that time in great fear and wrote to their brothers in the Rhine countries, making known to them their terror and asking them to fast and pray.
In the Rhineland, thousands of Jews were killed by the Crusaders.
Expulsions and returns
Expulsion from France, 1182
The First Crusade led to nearly a century of accusations (blood libel) against the Jews, many of whom were burned or attacked in France.
Immediately after the coronation of Philip Augustus on 14 March 1181, the King ordered the Jews arrested on a Saturday in all their synagogues and despoiled of their money and their investments.
In April 1182, he published an edict of expulsion, but according to the Jews, the sale of their personal property was delayed by three months.
However, he confiscated Immovable property, such as houses, fields, vines, barns, and wine presses. The Jews attempted to win over the nobles to their side but in vain.
In July they were compelled to leave the royal domains of France (and not the whole kingdom); their synagogues were converted into churches.
These successive measures were simply expedients to fill the royal coffers. The goods confiscated by the king were at once converted into cash.
During the century that terminated so disastrously for the Jews, their condition was not altogether bad, especially if compared with that of their brethren in Germany.
Thus, the remarkable intellectual activity among them, the attraction it exercised over the Jews of other countries, and the numerous works produced in those days may be explained.
Rashi’s impulse to study did not cease with his death; his successors, including his family, brilliantly continued his work.
Research remained within the same limits as in the preceding century and concentrated mainly on the Talmud, rabbinical jurisprudence, and Biblical exegesis.
Recalled by Phillip Augustus, 1198
This century, which opened with the return of the Jews to France proper (then reduced almost to the Isle of France), closed with their complete exile from the country in a larger sense.
In July 1198, Phillip Augustus, “contrary to the general expectation and despite his edict, recalled the Jews to Paris and made the churches of God suffer great persecutions” (Rigord).
The king adopted this measure from no goodwill toward the Jews, for he had shown his true sentiments a short time before in the Bray affair.
But since then, he had learned that the Jews could be an excellent source of income from a fiscal point of view, especially as money lenders.
Not only did he recall them to his estates, but he gave state sanction by his ordinances to their operations in banking and pawnbroking.
He controlled their business, determined the legal rate of interest, and obliged them to have seals affixed to all their deeds.
Naturally, this trade was taxed, and the Jews paid for the affixing of the royal seal. Henceforward, a special account called “Produit des Juifs” was in the treasury, and receipts from this source increased continually.
At the same time, it was in the interest of the treasury to secure possession of the Jews, considered as a fiscal resource.
The Jews were, therefore, made serfs of the king in the royal domain, just at a time when the characters, becoming wider and wider, tended to bring about the disappearance of serfdom.
In certain cases, they appealed to custom and were often protected by the Church, but there was no custom to which the Jews might appeal, and the Church laid them under its ban.
The kings and the lords said “my Jews” just as they said “my lands,” and they disposed in like manner of the one and the other.
The lords imitated the king: “They endeavored to have the Jews considered an inalienable dependence of their fiefs and to establish the usage that if a Jew domiciled in one barony passed into another, the lord of his former domicile should have the right to seize his possessions.”
This agreement was made in 1198 between the king and the Count of Champagne in a treaty, the terms of which provided that neither should retina in his domains the Jews of the other without the latter’s consent and furthermore that the Jews should not make loans or receive pledges without the express permission of the king and the count.
Other lords had conventions similar to those of the king. Thenceforth, they, too, had a revenue known as the “Produit des Juifs,” comprising the taille, or annual quit-rent, the legal fees for the writs necessitated by the Jews’ law trials, and the seal duty.
A thoroughly characteristic feature of this fiscal policy is that the bishops (according to the agreement of 1204 regulating the spheres of ecclesiastical jurisdiction) continued to prohibit the clergy from excommunicating those who sold goods to the Jews or who bought from them.
Under Louis V|||
Louis V||| of France (1223-26), in his Etablissement sur les Juifs of 1223, while more inspired by the doctrines of the Church than his father, Phillip Augustus, also knew how to look after the interests of his treasury.
Although he declared that from 8 November 1223, the interest on Jews’ debts should no longer hold goods, he ordered that the capital be repaid to the Jews in three years and that the debts due to the Jews be inscribed and placed under the control of their lords.
The lords then collected the debts for the Jews, doubtless receiving a commission. Louis furthermore ordered that the special seal for Jewish deeds be abolished and replaced by the ordinary one.
Twenty-six barons accepted Louis V|||’s new measures. Still, Theobald |V (1201-53), the powerful Count of Champagne, did not, since he had an agreement with the Jews that guaranteed their safety in return for extra income through taxation.
Champagne’s capital, Troyes, was where Rashi had lived a century before, and Champagne continued to have a prosperous Jewish population.
Theobald |V would become a major opposition force to Capetian dominance, and his hostility was manifest during the reign of Louis V|||.
For example, during the siege of Avignon, he performed only a minimum of 40 days of service and left home amid charges of treachery.
Under Louis |X
Despite all these restrictions designed to restrain, if not suppress, money lending, Loius |X of France (1226-70) unreservedly condemned loans at interest with his ardent piety and his submission to the Church.
He was less amenable than Philip Augustus to fiscal considerations. Despite former conventions, in an assembly held at Melun in December 1230, he compelled several lords to sign an agreement not to authorize Jews to make any loan.
No one in the whole kingdom was allowed to detain a Jew belonging to another. Each lord might recover a Jew who belonged to him, just as he might himself (tanquam proprium servum), wherever he might find him and however long it had elapsed since the Jew had settled elsewhere.
At the same time, the ordinance of 1223 was enacted afresh, proving that it had not been carried into effect. Both kings and lords were forbidden to borrow from Jews.
In 1234, Louis freed his subjects from a third of their registered debts to Jews (including those who had already paid their debts), but debtors had to pay the remaining two-thirds within a specified time.
It was also forbidden to imprison Christians or to sell their real estate to recover debts owed to Jews. The king wished in this way to strike a delayed blow at usury.
in 1243, Louis ordered, at the urging of Pope Gregory |X, the burning in Paris of some 12,000 manuscript copies of the Talmud and other Jewish books.
To finance his first crusade, Louis ordered the expulsion of all Jews engaged in usury and the confiscation of their property for use in his crusade, but the order for the expulsion was only partly enforced, if at all.
Louis left for the Seventh Crusade in 1248.
However, he did not cancel the debts owed by Christians. Later, Louis became conscience-stricken, and, overcome by scruples, he feared lest the treasury, by retaining some part of the interest paid by the borrowers, might be enriched with the product of usury.
As a result, one-third of the debts were forgiven, but the other two-thirds were to be remitted to the royal treasury.
In 1251, while Louis was in captivity on the Crusade, a popular movement rose to travel to the east to rescue him;. However, they never made it out of northern France, Jews were subject to their attacks as they wandered throughout the country. (See Shepherds Crusade).
In 1257 (“Ordonnances,” i. 85), wishing, as he says, to provide for his safety of soul and peace of conscience, Louis issued a mandate for the restitution in his name of the amount of usurious interest which had been collected on the confiscated property, the restitution to be made either to those who had paid it or to their heirs.
Later, after having discussed the subject with his son-in-law, Thibaut, King of Navarre and Count of Champagne, Louis decided on 13 September 1268 to arrest Jews and seize their property.
But an order that followed close upon this last (1269) shows that Louis also reconsidered the matter on this occasion.
Nevertheless, at Paul Christian’s (Pablo Christiani) request, he compelled the Jews to wear the rouelle or badge decreed by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 at all times under penalty of a fine.
This consisted of a piece of red felt to cloth cut in the form of a wheel, four fingers in circumference, which had to be attached to the outer garment at the chest and back.
The Medieval Inquisition
The Inquisition, which had been instituted to suppress the heresy of the Albigenses, finally occupied itself with the Jews of southern France who converted to Christianity.
The popes complained that not only were baptized Jews returning to their former faith but that Christians also were being converted to Judaism. In March 1273, Gregory X formulated the following rules: relapsed Jews, as well as Christians who abjured their faith in favor of “the Jewish superstition,” were to be treated by the Inquisitors as heretics.
The instigators of such apostasies, such as those who received or defended the guilty ones, were to be punished like the delinquents.
Under these rules, the Jews of Toulouse, who had buried a Christian convert in their cemetery, were brought before the Inquisition in 1278 for trial, with their rabbi, Isaac Males, being condemned to the stake.
Philip the Fair, as mentioned above, at first ordered his seneschals not to imprison any Jews at the instance of the Inquisitors, but in 1299 hr rescinded this order.
The Great Exile of 1306
The treasury was nearly empty toward the middle of 1306, and the king, as he was about to do the following year in the case of the Templars, decided to kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
He condemned the Jews to banishment and took forcible possessions of their property, real and personal. Their houses, lands, and movable goods were sold at auction, and for the king were reserved any treasures found buried in the dwellings that had belonged to the Jews.
That Phillip the Fair intended merely to fill the gap in his treasury and was not at all concerned about the well-being of his subjects is shown by the fact that he put himself in the place of the Jewish moneylenders and exacted from their Christian debtors the payment of their debts, which they themselves had to declare.
Furthermore, three months before the sale of the Jews’ property, the king took measures to ensure that this event coincided with the prohibition of clipped money so that those who purchased the goods would have to pay in underused coins.
Finally, fearing that the Jews might have hidden some of their treasures, he declared that one-fifth of any amount found should be paid to the discoverer. It was on 22 July, the day after Tisha B’Av, a Jewish fast day, that the Jews were arrested.
In prison, they received notice that they had been sentenced to exile. They were to quit the kingdom within one month, abandoning their goods and debts and taking only the clothes on their backs and the sum of 12 sous tourneys each.
Speaking of this exile, an American Rabbi has said,
In striking at the Jews, Philip the Fair also dried up one of the most fruitful sources of his kingdom’s financial, commercial, and industrial prosperity.
Although the history of the Jews in France, in a way, began its course again a short time afterward, it may be said that, in reality, it ceased at this date.
It was especially sad for them that the Domaine of the King of France had increased considerably in extent during the preceding century. Outside the IIe de France, it now comprised Champagne, the Vermandois Normandy, Perche, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, Poitou, the Marche, Lyonnais, Auvergne, and Languedoc, reaching from the Rhone to the Pyrenees.
The exiles could not take refuge anywhere except in Lorraine, the country of Burgundy, Savoy, Dauphine, Roussilon, and a part of the Provence religions located in the Empire. It is impossible to estimate the number of fugitives; Gratz’s estimate of 100,000 has no foundation.
Return of the Jews to France, 1315
Nine years and hardly passed since the expulsion of 1306 when Louis X of France (1314-16) recalled the Jews.
In an edict dated 28 July 1315, he permitted them to return for a period of twelve years, authorizing them to establish themselves in the cities in which they had lived before their banishment.
He issued this edict in answer to the people’s demands. Geoffrey of Paris, the popular poet of the time, says that the Jews were gentle in comparison with the Christians who had taken their place and who had flayed their debtors alive; if the Jews had remained, the country would have been happier, for there were no longer any moneylenders at all (Bouquet, xxii. 118).
The king probably also had the interests of his treasury in view.
The profits of the former confiscations had gone into the treasury, and by recalling the Jews for only twelve years, he would have an opportunity to ransom them at the end of this period. It appears that they gave the sum of 122,500 livers for the privilege of returning.
It is also probable, as Vuitry states, that a large number of the debts owing to the Jews had not been recovered and that the holders of the notes had preserved them; the decree of return specified that two-thirds of the old debts recovered by the Jews should go into the treasury.
Several articles outline the conditions under which they were allowed to settle in the land. Some of the guarantees were to live by the work of their hands or to sell good quality merchandise; they were to wear the circular badge and not discuss religion with laymen.
They were not to be molested, either about the chattels they had carried away at the time of their cemeteries were to have resorted to them on condition that they would refund their value; or, if these could not have restored, the king would give them the necessary sites at a reasonable price.
The books of the Law that had not yet been returned to them were also to be rested, except the Talmud.
After twelve years granted to them, the king might not expel the Jews again without giving them a year’s time in which to dispose of their property and carry away their goods.
They were not to lend on usury, and no one was to be forced by the king to his officers to repay them a year’s loans.
If they engaged in pawnbroking, they were not to take more than two deniers in the pound a week but to lend only on pledges.
Two men with the title “auditors of the Jews” were entrusted with executing this ordinance and were to take cognizance of all claims that might arise in connection with goods belonging to the Jews that had been sold before the expulsion for less than half of what was regarded as a fair price.
The king finally declared that he took the Jews under his special protection and that he desired to have their persons and property protected from all violence, injury, and oppression.
Expulsion of 1394
On 17 September 1394, Charles VI suddenly published an ordinance in which he declared, in substance, that for a long time, he had been taking note of the many complaints provoked by the excess and misdemeanors that the Jews committed against Christians and that the prosecutors, having made several investigations, had discovered many violations by the Jews of the agreement they had made with him.
Therefore, he decreed that no Jew should dwell in his domains as an irrevocable law and statute (“Ordonnances”, vii.675).
According to the “Religieux de St. Denis,” the king signed this decree at the queen’s instance (“Chron. de Charles VI. ” ii. 119).
The decree was not immediately enforced, a respite being granted to the Jews so that they might sell their property and pay their debts.
Those indebted to them were enjoined to redeem their obligations within a set time; otherwise, their pledges held in pawns were to be sold by the Jews.
The provost was to escort the Jews to the frontier of the kingdom. Subsequently, the king released the Christians from their debts.
Early Modern Period 17th Century
At the beginning of the 17th century, Jews began again to re-enter France.
This resulted in a new edict of 23 April 1615, which forbade Christians, under the penalty of death and confiscation, to shelter Jews or to converse with them. Violent antisemitic riots broke out in Provence, resulting in Jews migrating to northern France.
Alsace and Lorraine were the home of a significant number of Jews. In annexing the provinces in 1648, Louis XIV was at first inclined toward the banishment of the Jews living in those provinces but thought better of it given the benefit he could derive from them.
On 25 September 1675, he granted these Jews letters patent, taking them under his special protection.
This, however, did not prevent them from being subjected to every kind of extortion, and their position remained the same as it had been under the Austrian government.
The Regency was no less severe. In 1683, Louis XIV expelled Jews from the newly acquired colony of Martinique.
Beginnings of emancipation
In the 18th century, the authorities’ attitude toward the Jews changed for the better. A spirit of tolerance began to prevail, correcting previous legislation’s iniquities. The authorities often overlooked infractions of the edict of banishment; a colony of Portuguese and German Jews was tolerated in Paris.
The voices of enlightened Christians who demanded justice for the proscribed people began to be heard. An Alsatian Jew named Cerf Berr, who had rendered great service to the French government as a purveyor to the army, was the interpreter of the Jews before Louis XVI.
The humane minister, Malesherbes, summoned a commission of Jewish notables to make suggestions for ameliorating the condition of their coreligionists.
These men’s efforts directly resulted in abolishing the degrading poll tax in 1785 and the permission to settle in all parts of France.
Shortly afterward, the Jewish question was raised by two genius men who became prominent in the French Revolution: Count Mirabeau and the abbe Gregoire while on a diplomatic mission in Prussia, the former had made the acquaintance of Moses Mendelssohn and his school (see Haskalah), who were then working toward the intellectual emancipation of the Jews.
In a pamphlet, “Sur Moses Mendelssohn, sur la Reforme Politique des Juifs” (London, 1787), Mirabeau refuted the arguments of German anti-Semites like Michaelis and claimed full citizenship rights for Jews.
This pamphlet naturally provoked many writings for and against the Jews, and the French public became interested in the question.
On the proposition of Roederer, the Royal Society of Science and Arts of Metz offered a prize for the best essay in answer to the question: “What are the best means to make the Jews happier and more useful in France?”
Nine essays, of which only two were unfavorable to the Jews, were submitted to the judgment of the learned assembly. The challenge had three winners: Abbe Gregoire, Claude-Antoine Thiery, and Zalkind Horowitz.
The Revolution and Napoleon
Jews in Bordeaux and Bayonne participated in 1789 in the election of the Estates-General, but those in Alsace, Lorraine, and Paris were denied this right.
Cerf Beer then asked Jacques Necker to obtain the right for the Jews from eastern France to elect their delegates. Among them were the sons of Cerf Beer, Theodore, and Joseph David Sinzheim.
The Cahier, written by the Jewish community from eastern France, asked for the end of the discriminatory status and taxes targeting Jews.
The fall of the Bastille was the signal for disorders everywhere in France. In certain districts of Alsace, the peasants attacked the dwellings of the Jews, who took refuge in Basel.
The abbe Henri Gregoire sketched a gloomy picture of the outrages upon them before the National Assembly (3 August), which demanded their complete emancipation.
The National Assembly shared the prelate’s indignation but left the question of emancipation undecided; it was intimidated by the deputies of Alsace, especially by Jean-Francois Rebell.
In December 1789, the Jewish question came again before the Assembly in debating the issue of admitting all citizens to public service without distinction of creed.
Mirabeau, the Abbe Gregoire, Robespierre, Duport, Barnave, and the Comte de Clermont-Tonnerre exerted all the power of their eloquence to bring about the desired emancipation;
But the repeated disturbances in Alsace and the strong opposition of the deputies of that province and the clericals, like La Fare, Bishop of Nancy, the Abbe Maury, and others, caused the decision to be postponed again.
Only the Portuguese and the Avignonses Jews, who had hitherto enjoyed all civil rights as naturalized Frenchmen, were declared full citizens by a majority of 150 on 28 January 1790.
This partial victory infused new hope into the Jews for the German districts, who made still greater efforts in the struggle for freedom.
They won over the eloquent advocate Godard, whose influence in revolutionary circles was considerable.
Through his exertions, the National Guards and the diverse sections pronounced themselves in favor of the Jews, and the General Assembly of the Commune sent the abbe Malot to plead their cause before the National Assembly.
Unfortunately, the grave affairs that absorbed the Assembly, the prolonged agitations in Alsace, and the passions of the clerical party kept in check the active propaganda of the Jews and their friends.
A few days before the dissolution of the National Assembly (27 September 1791), a member of the Jacobin Club, formerly a parliamentary councilor, Duport, unexpectedly ascended the tribute and said,
I believe that freedom of worship does not permit any distinction in the poetical rights of citizens on account of their creed.
The question of the political existence of the Jews has been postponed. Still, the Moslems and the men of all sects are admitted to enjoy political rights in France.
I demand that the motion for postponement be withdrawn and a decree passed that the Jews in France enjoy the privileges of full citizens.
This proposition was accepted amid loud applause.
Rewbell endeavored to oppose the motion, but Regnault de Saint-Jean, president of the Assembly, interrupted him, who suggested “that everyone who spoke against this motion should be called to order because he would be opposing the constitution itself.”
During the Reign of Terror
Judaism in France thus became, as the Alsatian deputy Schwendt wrote to his constituents, “nothing more than the name of a distance religion.”
However, in Alsace, especially in the Bas-Rhin, the reactionaries did not cease their agitations, and Jews were victims of discrimination.
During the Reign of Terror at Bordeaux, Jewish bankers who compromised in the cause of the Girondins had to pay important fines or run away to save their lives. In contrast, some Jewish bankers (40, according to the Jewish Encyclopaedia) were imprisoned in Paris as suspects, and nine of them were executed.
The provincial clubs, especially those of the German districts, applied the Jewish religion to the decree of the convention by which the Catholic faith was annulled and replaced by the worship of Reason.
Some synagogues were pillaged, and the mayors of a few eastern towns (Strasbourg, Troyes, etc.) forbade the celebration of the Sabbath (to apply for the week of ten days).
Meanwhile, the French Jews proved their patriotism and gratitude to the land which had emancipated them.
Many of them died in battle as part of the Army of the Republic while fighting the forces of Europe in a coalition.
To contribute to the war fund, candelabra of synagogues were sold, and many Jews deprived themselves of their jewels to make similar contributions.
Attitude of Napoleon
Main article: Napoleon and the Jews
Though the Revolution had begun the process of Jewish emancipation in France, Napoleon also spread the concept in the lands he conquered across Europe, liberating Jews from their ghettos and establishing relative equality for them.
The net effect of his policies significantly changed the position of the Jews in Europe.
Starting in 1806, Napoleon passed several measures supporting the position of the Jews in the French Empire, including assembling a representative group elected by the Jewish community, the Grand Sanhedrin.
In conquered countries, he abolished laws restricting Jews to ghettos. In 1807, he added Judaism as an official religion of France, with previously sanctioned Roman Catholicism and Lutheran and Calvinist Protestantism.
Despite the positive effects, it is unclear, however, whether Napoleon himself was disposed favorably towards the Jews or merely saw them as a political or financial tool.
On 17 March 1808, Napoleon rolled back some reforms by the so-called secret infamy, declaring all debts with Jews reduced, postponed, or annulled; this caused the Jewish community to nearly collapse.
The decree also restricted where Jews could live, especially for those in the eastern French Empire, with all its annexations in the Rhineland and beyond (as of 1810), in hopes of assimilating them into society. Many of these restrictions were eased again in 1811 and finally abolished in 1818.
After the Restoration
The restoration of Louis XVIII did not bring any charge to the political condition of the Jews.
Such of the enemies of the Jews as cherished the hope that the Bourbons would hasten to undo the work of the Revolution about Jewish emancipation were soon disappointed.
The emancipation of the French Jews had made such progress that most clerical monarchs could not find any pretext for curtailing their rights as citizens.
They were no longer poor, downtrodden paddlers or money-lenders with whom every petty official could do as he liked.
Many already held high positions in the army, the magistracy, and the arts and sciences.
State recognition
Of the faiths recognized by the state, only the Jewish had to support its ministers, while the government supported those of the Catholic and Protestant churches.
This legal inferiority was removed that year, thanks to the intervention of the Duke of Orleans, lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and the campaign led in Parliament by the deputies Rambuteau and Viennet.
Encouraged by these prominent men, the minister of education, on 13 November 1830, offered a motion to place Judaism on an equal footing with Catholicism and Protestantism regarding support for the synagogues and the rabbis from the public treasury.
The motion was accompanied by flattering compliments to the French Jews, “who,” said the minister, “have shown themselves worthy of the privileges granted them” since the Revolution removed their disabilities.
After a short discussion, the motion was adopted by a large majority.
In January 1831, it passed in the Chamber of Peers by 89 votes to 57. On 8 February, it was ratified by King Louis Philippe, who had shown himself favorable to placing Judaism on an equal footing with the other faiths from the beginning. Shortly afterward, the rabbinical college, founded at Metz in 1829, was recognized as a state institution and granted a subsidy.
The government likewise liquidated the debts contracted by various Jewish communities before the Revolution.
Assimilation
While the Jews had been placed at every point the equals of their Christian fellow citizens, the oath More Judaico continued to be administered to them, despite the repeated protestations of the rabbis and the consistory.
It was only in 1846, owing to a brilliant speech of the Jewish advocate Adolphe Cremieux, pronounced before the Court of Nimes in defense of a rabbi who had refused to take this oath, and to a valuable essay on the subject by Martin, a prominent Christian avocet of Strasburg, that the Court of Cassation removed this last remnant of the legislation of the Middle Ages.
With this act of justice, the history of the Jews of France merges into the general history of the French people.
The rapidity with which many of them won affluence and distinction in the nineteenth century is without parallel.
Despite the deep-rooted prejudices that prevailed in certain classes of French society, many occupied high positions in literature, art, science, jurisprudence, the army, and every walk of life.
In 1860, the Alliance Israelite Universelle was formed “to work everywhere for the emancipation and moral progress of the Jews; to offer effective assistance to Jews suffering from antisemitism, and to encourage all publications calculated to promote this aim.”
In 1870, the approximate 40,000 Jews of Algeria, at that time a French department, were automatically granted French citizenship by the Cremieux decrees.
In the last decade of the nineteenth century, the reactionaries, having failed in every attempt to overthrow the republic, had recourse to antisemitism, using which they maintained a persistent agitation for over ten years.
The Jews were charged with the ruin of the country and with all the crimes that the fertile imagination of a Drumot (founder of the Antisemitic League of France) or a Viau could invent. As the accused often disdained answering such slanderous attacks, many people believed the charges to be true.
A campaign was started against Jewish army officers, which culminated in the Dreyfus affair, during which a Jewish officer, Alfred Dreyfus, was accused of treason in favor of the German Empire and jailed in appalling conditions before eventually being exonerated at the turn of the century.
At the turn of the century, the 1905 law on the Separation of the Church and the State put an end to state religion in France, and all religions and philosophies considered by the state were a matter of privacy, tolerance, and freedom of thought.
20th Century Before World War ||
By the early 1900s, the conditions of the Jews had improved tremendously, and a wave of Jewish immigration arrived in France, mostly fleeing the pogroms of Eastern Europe.
Immigration temporarily halted during World War II, and Jews fought in French forces but resumed afterward. Jews were prominent in art and culture during this period, such as at the turn of the century, with artists such as Modigliani, Sountine, and Chagall.
Anti-Semitism declined during the 1920s, in part because the fact that so many Jews died fighting for France during World War | made it more difficult to accuse them of not being patriotic.
The antisemitic newspaper La Libre Parole closed in 1924, and the former anti-Dreyfusard Maurice Barres included Jews among France’s “spiritual families.”
An influx of Jewish refugees from Germany and the Jewishness of the Popular Front’s leader, Leon Blum, contributed to a revival of antisemitism in the 1930s.
Writers such as Paul Morand, Pierre Gaxotte, Marcel Jouhandeau, and the leader of Action Francaise Charles Maurras denounced Jews.
Perhaps the most violent anti-Semitic writer was Louis-Ferdinand Celine, who wrote, “I feel very friendly yo Hitler, and to all Germans, whom I feel to be my brothers…Our real enemies are Jews and Masons”, and “Yids are like bedbugs.”
By 1937 even mainstream conservatives and socialists, not previously associated with anti-semitism, denounced the alleged Jewish influence pushing the country into a “Jewish war” against Nazi Germany.
When the Popular Front received the majority of ores in 1936, France elected a Jewish prime minister, the second country to do so (Italian prime minister Alessandro Fortis was the first Jewish head of state, serving from 1905 to 1906, and his fellow countryman, Luigi Luzzatti was second; Benjamin Disraeli, Britain’s 19th century Prime Minister, was born Jewish but baptized in the Church of England when he was 13).
Blum, however, was attacked by segments of the French far-right for his Jewishness, while the Action Francaise, far-right leagues, and the Cagoule terrorist group engaged in antisemitic propaganda.
French Jews and the Holocaust
In 1940, early in World War ||, France and its allies in the Low Countries were defeated by Nazi Germany, and the Jews there became subject to Nazi anti-Jewish measures and fell victim to the Holocaust.
In the early months of the war, there were probably some 350,000 Jews living in France, some of whom were refugees from Germany.
Antisemitism was particularly virulent in Vichy France during World War ||. The Vichy government openly collaborated with the Nazi occupiers to identify Jews for deporting ion and transportation to the death camps (about 75,000 were killed).
As early as October 1940, without any request from the Germans, the Vichy government passed anti-Jewish measures (the Statues on Jews), prohibiting them from moving and limiting their access to public places and most professional activities. In 1941, the Vichy government established a Commissariat General aux questions juives (1941-1944), which worked with the Gestapo to begin rounding up Jews for the concentration camps in 1942, including the notorious Vel’dHiv Roundtrip on 16 and 17 July of that year.
Between 1942 and July 1944, nearly 76,000 Jews were deported to concentration camps from France, of which only 2,500 survived. Drancy, outside of Paris, was the primary camp for Jews being deported to Nazi German death camps in Poland and Eastern Europe.
It was designed to hold 700 people, but at its peak in 1940, it held more than 7,000. It is interesting to note, however, that the majority of Jews deported from France and killed during the Holocaust were non-French Jews.
Until severe pressure was brought to bear by Nazi Germany, Vichy sought, in many instances, to protect its native French-born Jews, especially those who had assimilated into the culture to convert to Catholicism.
On the other hand, France has the third-highest number of Righteous Among the Nations (according to the Yad Vashem Museum, 2006).
This award is given to “non-Jews who acted according to the noblest principles of humanity by risking their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.”
Post-World War ||: North African Jewish migration
In the wake of the Holocaust, 180,000 Jews remained in France, some of whom were refugees from Eastern Europe.
Between 16 December 1946 and 22 January 1947, Leon Blum was Head of state and Head of government. In 1951, the population was 250,000. In the 1940s and 1950s, Jewish refugees from Europe resettled in France.
They were later joined by large numbers of Jews from France’s North African colonies who quickly assimilated in France, and their numbers increased after the French decolonization of its territories abroad in 1962 and antisemitism in these newly formed nation-states.
In total, it is estimated that between 1956 and 1967, about 235,000 North African Jews from Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco immigrated to France due to the decline of the French Empire and following the Six-Day War.
Hence, by 1968, Jews of North African origin were a majority of the Jews of France. The North African Jews enjoyed a successful social and economic interrogation in France while reinvigorating its Jewish life.
Kosher restaurants and Jewish schools have multiplied, particularly since the 1980s and the religious renewal of the younger generation.
France was initially a very strong supporter of Israel, voting for its formation and becoming its main ally and primary supplier of military hardware between 1948 and 1967.
After the Suez Crisis in 1956, relations between Israel and France remained strong. However, after the Algerian War in 1962, France progressively shifted towards a more pro-Arab view, which accelerated rapidly after the Six-Day War in 1967.
The United States then became the main supplier of weapons and military technology to Israel.
Even if it has been neither confirmed nor denied by Israel, it is widely believed that, according to the protocol of Sevres agreements, France secretly transmitted parts of its atomic technology to Israel in the late 1950s, leading Israel to possess nuclear weapons.
Today
There are between 483,000 and 600,000 Jews in France, making French Jews the world’s third-largest Jewish community.
In 2009, France’s highest court, the Council of State, issued a ruling recognizing the state’s responsibility for the deportations of tens of thousands of Jews during World War ||.
The report cited “mistakes” in the Vichy regime that had not been forced by the occupiers, stating that the state “allowed or facilitated the deportation from France of victims of anti-Semitism”.
Antisemitism and Immigration
In the early 2000s, rising levels of antisemitism among French Muslims and antisemitic acts were publicized around the world, including the desecration of Jewish graves and tensions between the children of North African Muslim immigrants and North African Jewish children.
One of the worst crimes happened when Ilan Halimi was mutilated and tortured to death by the so-called “Barbarians gang” led by Youssouf Fofana.
This murder was motivated by money and fuelled by antisemitic prejudices (the perpetrators said they believed Jews to be rich).
In March 2012, a gunman, who had earlier killed 3 soldiers, opened fire at a Jewish school in Toulouse in an anti-Semitic attack, killing four people, including three children.
President Nicolas Sarkozy said, “I want to say to all the leaders of the Jewish community how close we feel to them. All of France is by their side.”
However, Jewish philanthropist Baron Eric de Rothschild suggested that the extent of antisemitism in France has been exaggerated and that France was not an anti-Semitic country.”
The newspaper Le Monde Diplomatique had earlier said the same thing.
According to a 2005 poll made by the Pew Research Center, there is no evidence of any specific antisemitism in France, which, according to this poll, appears to be one of the least antisemitic countries in Europe. However, France has the world’s third-largest Jewish population.
France is the country that has the most favorable views of Jews in Europe (82%), next to the Netherlands, and the third country with the least unfavorable views (16%), next to the UK and the Netherlands.
Rises in antisemitism in modern France have been linked to the intensifying Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Between the start of the Israeli offensive in Gaza in late December and its end in January, an estimated hundred antisemitic acts were recorded in France.
This compares with a total of 250 antisemitic acts in the whole of 2007.
In 2009, 832 antisemitic acts were recorded in France (an estimated 631 in the first half of 2009, more than the whole of 2008, 474), 466 in 2010, and 389 in 2011. In 2011, there were 26o threats (100 graffiti, 46 flyers to emails, 114 insults) and 129 crimes (57 assaults, 7 arsons to attempted arsons, 65 deteriorations and acts of vandalism, but no murder, attempted murder, or terrorist attack) recorded.
Between 2000 and 2009, 13,315 French Jews moved to Israel or made Aliyah, an increase compared to the previous decade (1990-1999: 10,443) that was in the continuity of a similar increase since the 1970s.
A peak was reached in 2005 (2005: 2,951 Olim), but a significant proportion (between 20 and 30%) eventually returned to France. Some immigrants cited antisemitism and the growing Arab population as reasons for leaving.
One couple who moved to Israel claimed that rising antisemitism by French Muslims and the anti-Israel bias of the French government was making life for Jews increasingly uncomfortable for them.
At a welcoming ceremony for French Jews in the summer of 2004, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon caused controversy when he advised all French Jews to “move immediately” to Israel and escape what he coined “the wildest anti-Semitism” in France.
In August 2007, 2,800 immigrants from France were due to arrive in Israel, as opposed to the 3,000 initially forecast. [better source needed ] 1,129 French Jews made Aliyah to Israel in 2009 and 1,286 in 2010.
However, in the long term, even if France has the world’s third-largest Jewish community, France is not one of the top countries for Jewish emigration toward Israel.
In November 2012, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a joint press conference with Francois Hollande, advised the French Jewish community by saying, “In my role as Prime Minister of Israel, I always say to the Jews, wherever they may be, I say to them: Come to Israel and make Israel your home.”
Alluding to former Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s similar advisement towards the French Jewish community to move to Israel back in 2004.