Archives juives n°36/2

A l’instar de leurs camarades de la Grande Guerre, les anciens combattants juifs fondent des associations dans lesquels ils défendent leurs intérêts et affirment leur patriotisme. Deux organisations, de sensibilité politique bien différente, sont créées au cours des années trente et diffusent leurs objectifs à travers un organe de presse : l’Association des engagés volontaires juifs (AEVJ) publie Le Volontaire juif (1931-1935), l’Union patriotique des Français israélites (UPFI) un Bulletin (1935-1938). Les deux journaux témoignent des contradictions de la société française et des tourments qui assaillent la communauté juive dès avant la seconde guerre mondiale.

/ « … and we’ll remain on watch « . « History as the reason » for the existence of Jewish thinking men

Why should it be worth looking again into the file about the intellectual Jews ? First because those involved in this procedure had the feeling that they were « making history », and also because our contemporaries feel a longing for that period. This historical dimension is particularly noticeable among the Jewish thinking men from 1890 to 1940 who were able both to find their standing amidst the political history of their time and to take part in the constitution of the memory of the group. Up to now this is what qualifies their identity. The intervening of history leads on to the building of knowledge through which thinking and action are linked, and which points out to a corpus of various learnings together with the social sciences as a way to transmit them. This observation gives us the opportunity to show how the writings of learned men or writers, be they theoretical writings or personal ones, are more than a reflection of the events commented on, a party to the political history, and thus it suggests to design a real intellectual interpretation of the history of these intellectuals

La création de la Revue de métaphysique et de morale en 1893 a représenté un tournant de la philosophie en France. La capacité critique de ce courant philosophique a pu se vérifier dans l’affaire Dreyfus puisque les principaux animateurs de la revue se sont engagés comme philosophes dans la cité républicaine. En démontrant que l’usage des savoirs scientifiques pouvait susciter une critique des pouvoirs politiques, Léon Brunschvicg, Élie Halévy ou Xavier Léon contribuèrent à faire de l’engagement dreyfusard un moment essentiel du progrès de la démocratie. Dans l’événement, la question de leurs origines juives fut rapidement dépassée. Le choix de la philosophie que devait incarner la RMM permettait d’aller de la liberté intellectuelle à la liberté civique. Cette rencontre de la pensée la plus pure et de l’engagement le plus politique est éclairée par la figure spinoziste, aussi importante dans la formation de ces jeunes philosophes que dans leur mobilisation pour Dreyfus. L’histoire et la philosophie de Spinoza constituent ainsi l’un des savoirs explicatifs de la naissance de l’intellectuel démocratique.

/ The thought of Spinoza and the birth of the democratic thinking man in France at the turn of the century

The creation of La Revue de métaphysique et de morale (The Review of Metaphysics and Ethics) in 1893 indicated a turning-point of philosophy in France. The critical abilities of this philosophical trend got confirmation during the  » affaire Dreyfus « , since the main leaders of the publication committed themselves as philosophers in the republican city. By demonstrating that scientific knowledge could give rise to a criticism of the political power, Léon Brunschvicg, Élie Halévy ou Xavier Léon contributed to make the commitment for Dreyfus the main part of the progress of democracy. On this occasion, the question of their Jewish identity was quickly overtaken. The philosophical option of the RMM allowed to teach civic freedom following intellectual freedom. This encounter of the purest thinking and the most political commitment is enlightened by the figure of Spinoza as important for the training of young philosophers as for the commitment for Dreyfus. The life and the philosophy of Spinoza help explaining the birth of the democratic thinking man.

Si Jean-Richard Bloch se rattache, comme Edmond Fleg ou André Spire, au courant des « écrivains juifs français », c’est selon un itinéraire singulier qu’on ne peut séparer de l’ensemble de ses engagements idéologiques et esthétiques. Figure somme toute classique d’un enfant de la bourgeoisie juive assimilée, mais marquée, au moins indirectement, par l’affaire Dreyfus, ses premières oeuvres littéraires portent certes sur des sujets juifs. Mais ce n’est ni leur contenu, pour un écrivain qui refuse obstinément d’être catalogué comme romancier juif, ni même l’attraction, fugace mais intense, de Jean-Richard Bloch envers le sionisme au lendemain d’un séjour marquant en Palestine en 1925, qui éclairent totalement les relations que celui-ci tente de définir entre identité, littérature et engagement. Il y a chez Bloch, même si c’est en définitive un échec, un projet fondamentalement littéraire de réappropriation et de subversion de la « patrie de la langue », qu’il tenta de mettre en oeuvre dans les années 1930, avant d’être happé par l’urgence des événements. Ce projet, celui d’être Juif et Français par l’écriture, mériterait d’être rapproché de celui d’Albert Cohen ou, à des années-lumières, de Patrick Modiano.

/ About the position of the Jewish writer in the modern World » : Jean-Richard Bloch between identity, literature and political commitment

Together with Edmond Fleg and André Spire, Jean-Richard Bloch belongs to the trend of  » French Jewish writers  » but his personal path cannot be separated from his ideological and aesthetic commitments. He can be defined as a child of the Jewish middle-class endeavouring to get assimilated, but marked, even if not directly, by the  » affaire Dreyfus « . So that his first literary writings deal, it goes without saying, with Jewish themes. However, neither their contents, considering he is a writer who absolutly denies being a Jewish novelist, nor the appeal, intense though transient, Jean-Richard Bloch felt towards zionism after an impressive visit to Palestine in 1925, can clarify the links he tries to define between identity, litterature and commitment. Even if that was a failure in the end, Bloch planned and tried to carry out, on a strictly literary level, the re-appropriation and subversion of the « homeland of language », before he was caught in the emergency of events. This vision, that is being both a Jew and a French in his writings, could be worth being drawn closer to that of Albert Cohen, or, across many years, that of Patrick Modiano.

La participation massive au combat national a prouvé pour les Juifs que l’élection est définitivement française, dans l’Union sacrée barrésienne, bien représentée par des intellectuels comme Hertz ou Mauss. Mais les Israélites demeurent les otages d’une contradiction majeure des cultures de guerre ; celles-ci à la fois les reconnaissent afin d’attaquer avec une meilleure cohésion l’ennemi et, néanmoins, les perçoivent parfois comme des ennemis de l’intérieur, d’autant plus dangereux que moins visibles. C’est ce qui explique qu’un homme tel que Durkheim ait pu être victime de telles dérives, nées de l’appréhension diffuse de certains devant l’appartenance à une religion minoritaire, et surtout, sans paradoxe aucun, quand  » l’ identification  » est rendue difficile par l’absence de pratique et l’assimilation.

/ About some Jewish historians, sociologists, ethnologists during the first World War. Between social sciences, Republic,  » Union sacrée  » and Barrès ideology

Their massive joining in the national fight was for the Jews the proof that there were permanently elected as French in the « Union Sacrée » of Barrès, and the main actors were Hertz and Mauss. But the « Israélites » are still held as hostages of a major contradiction in war cultures : these, on one hand, acknowledge them in order to reach a better cohesion while entering the battle with the enemy, but nonetheless, consider them as enemies within the country, the more dangerous as they are the less perceptible. This can explain why a man like Durkheim could become the victim to such abuses, issued from the incomprehensible anxiety of some in front of a minority religion, and mostly, and this is not paradoxical, when « identification » is made difficult because of the absence of religious practice and assimilation.

Voir résumé en anglais ci-dessous.

/ Durkheim and Mauss as Readers of Comte de Saint-Simon: A French Path toward Socialism

By the end of the 19th century, a new conception of socialism took shape in France. Confronted with the growing success of Marxism in its various trends, many intellectuals tried to outline new approaches. Among them were Émile Durkheim and his nephew Marcel Mauss as well as many of Durkheim’s students, including the ethnologist Robert Hertz and the economist François Simiand. The social disruptions they thought were affecting French society preyed on the minds of these sociologists, who thought it right to rely upon science as a means of reforming it. Prior to them, Saint-Simon, whom Durkheim brought back to mind through a series of lectures at Bordeaux University, had taken a similar step, looking for a way to give birth to a social science that could bring to its end the crisis ensuing from the French Revolution. Thanks to one of the main founders of the French sociology, of Saint-Simon, a figure who had been overshadowed for over fifty years, this renewal must be seen as offering a political and scientific interpretation, which this paper proposes to analyze.

Voir résumé en anglais ci-dessous.

/ About the meanings of Deux sources de la morale et de la religion for Jewish readers in the thirties

The publication of Two Sources of Ethics and Religion in 1932 arouses a philosophical and religious debate to which the Jews take a significant though modest part. The Jewish readers who take into account the origins of Bergson and wonder about his opinion about Judaism, have very different opinions. Most of them denounce the restricted place he grants to Jewish religion in Two Sources and the use of stereotypes such as national religion, jealous God. They take up again the usual charges of antirationalism against Bergson. But others notice a Jewish inspiration in his writings. Some even consider that his philosophy meets with Judaism about the idea of God, humanity and creation. This controversy provides information about the intellectual situation of Judaism in France.

Militaires démobilisés après la Première Guerre mondiale et travailleurs attirés à Saint-Fons par le patronat, un groupe de Juifs du Maroc fuit la misère des mellah pour s’installer pendant l’entre-deux-guerres dans cette commune industrielle où ils sont relégués au plus bas de l’échelle du prolétariat ouvrier. Petit à petit cependant, leur communauté se structure autour d’une société d’entraide, principalement religieuse, qui parvient à assurer la cacherout, fournir un lieu de prières, assurer les inhumations selon le rite, jusqu’à la construction d’une synagogue et l’ouverture d’un cimetière dans les années trente. La communauté en tant que telle ne survivra pas aux bouleversements de la Seconde Guerre mondiale.

/ A proletarian community : Jews from Marocco at Saint-Fons, 1919-1946

Demobilized soldiers after the first World War, and workers drawn to Saint-Fons by employers needing them, a group of Jews from Marocco, in order to escape the misery of the mellah settles between the two World Wars in this industrial community where they are relegated to the lowest level of the working class. However, gradually, the community develops a structure around a society of mutual aid, mainly religious, which manages to provide casher supplies, to open a place of worship, to ensure ritual burials, until the building of a synagogue and the fixing up a cemetery in the thirties. The community as such will not survive the upheaval of the second World War.