
Jewish Ideas of France
Migration, Diaspora, and Empire
Routledge (Publisher)
1st Edition
Published on 12. June 2025
Book
Hardback
286 pages
978-1-032-50801-6 (ISBN)
Description
This innovative exploration of Jewish experiences in France and the Francophone world through nuanced questions and representations offers an intertwining of perspectives that challenge geographical, chronological, and theoretical boundaries.
Engaging the transnational, it brings together studies highlighting the importance of migration, diaspora, identity, and empire for Jewish communities in metropolitan France and beyond. New and emerging scholars are invited into conversation with established thinkers to capture the present and future of French, Francophone, and Jewish Studies. Because identities are layered and multifaceted, the multidisciplinary studies in this volume are intended to illustrate how frameworks interact, overlap, and shift. The result of these efforts is a collection of essays that reveals the complex interplay between French and Jewish identities and how they have changed over time. Grounded in historical, literary, visual, sociological, and legal analyses, they delve into questions of gender, race, religion, empire, migration, culture, and communal life. Taken together, they problematize the categories often created to make meaning of complex dynamics.
This book is an important secondary source for researchers, undergraduate and graduate students, and general readers interested in world history, Jewish Studies, French Studies, European Studies, and immigration and diaspora studies.
Engaging the transnational, it brings together studies highlighting the importance of migration, diaspora, identity, and empire for Jewish communities in metropolitan France and beyond. New and emerging scholars are invited into conversation with established thinkers to capture the present and future of French, Francophone, and Jewish Studies. Because identities are layered and multifaceted, the multidisciplinary studies in this volume are intended to illustrate how frameworks interact, overlap, and shift. The result of these efforts is a collection of essays that reveals the complex interplay between French and Jewish identities and how they have changed over time. Grounded in historical, literary, visual, sociological, and legal analyses, they delve into questions of gender, race, religion, empire, migration, culture, and communal life. Taken together, they problematize the categories often created to make meaning of complex dynamics.
This book is an important secondary source for researchers, undergraduate and graduate students, and general readers interested in world history, Jewish Studies, French Studies, European Studies, and immigration and diaspora studies.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Postgraduate
Illustrations
9 s/w Abbildungen, 9 s/w Photographien bzw. Rasterbilder
9 Halftones, black and white; 9 Illustrations, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
614 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-032-50801-6 (9781032508016)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
06/2025
1st Edition
Routledge
€60.99
Available for download

E-Book
06/2025
1st Edition
Routledge
€60.99
Available for download
Persons
Meredith Scott is an Associate Professor of History at the US Air Force Academy, where she teaches European history, genocide, the Holocaust, and global history. Her book The Lifeline: Salomon Grumbach and the Quest for Safety (2022) examines interwar Jewish activism in the realms of human rights, refugees, and democracy.
Nick Underwood is an Assistant Professor of History and the Neilsen-Berger Chair of Judaic Studies at The College of Idaho. He has written widely on topics related to Yiddish culture in twentieth-century France, including his first book, Yiddish Paris: Staging Nation and Community in Interwar France (2022; National Jewish Book Award finalist).
Nick Underwood is an Assistant Professor of History and the Neilsen-Berger Chair of Judaic Studies at The College of Idaho. He has written widely on topics related to Yiddish culture in twentieth-century France, including his first book, Yiddish Paris: Staging Nation and Community in Interwar France (2022; National Jewish Book Award finalist).
Content
Introduction: The Varied Jewish Ideas of France Part I: Identities 1. "They Are the Smart Set": Female Society Portraiture and Jewish Class Aspirations in Nineteenth-Century France 2. Les angles morts de l'universalisme: Whiteness and Jewishness in Adolphe Cremieux's Legal Writings 3. Fascism and Antifascism: North African Jews and French Republican Values in the 1930s 4. Beyond a Jewish "Colonial Fracture": Assimilation and Persecution in Roger Ikor and Albert Memmi's 1955 Novels 5. French Jewry Confronts the Separation of Church and State: Challenges and Opportunities 6. Franco-Judaism: Diverse, in Flux, and Transnational Part II: Movements 7. Defying the Soviet Regime, Embracing the French Republic: Jewish-Russian Emigres' Publishing Activities in Interwar France 8. "Undesirables" in France: Ilse Bing, Luise Straus-Ernst, and German-Jewish Women During the Second World War 9. Mediterranean Crossings: Egyptian Jews and France 10. Mediating Migration, Brokering Belonging: The Moroccan Alliance Israelite Universelle Teachers' Union, 1943-1964 11. The Politics of the Arab-Jew: Colonial Histories and Postcolonial Futures in North African Jewish Writing of the 1980s