Five Jews into Frenchmen: Nationality and Representation in Revolutionary France
Funds for researching and writing the essay on which this chapter is based were generously provided by the Faculty Development Committee of Trinity University. I would like to thank John Martin, Judi Lipsett, and Char Miller for their valuable suggestions.
1. David Feuerwerker, L'Emancipation des juifs en France de l'Ancien Régime à la fin du Second Empire (Paris, 1976), pp. 429-441. The account from Bischheim-au-Saum also comes from this source.
2. Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment and the Jews: The Origins of Modern Anti-Semitism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968).
3. Ibid., p. 7.
2. Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment and the Jews: The Origins of Modern Anti-Semitism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968).
3. Ibid., p. 7.
4. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 1973 [1951]), p. 7. Hertzberg comments on Arendt in The French Enlightenment , pp. 6-7.
5. See Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York, 1963).
6. J. L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (New York, 1970 [1952]), p. 250.
7. For Arendt see Elizabeth Young-Bruehl, For the Love of the World: A Biography of Hannah Arendt (New Haven, 1982). Given Talmon's commitment to Zionism and his interest in Jewish history, it is curious that he was silent about Jewish Emancipation. This omission has caused some confusion among his colleagues. On the one hand, Yehoshua Arieli insists that Talmon "perceived the 'Jewish problem' of modern Europe and the modern world as the touchstone, the main indicator and precipitate, of the major trends and problems of modern times, indicating the degree of virulence of the collective neuroses as well as accelerating them." But British political theorist John Dunn is probably closer to the truth when he claims that Talmon's most basic problem was not the Jewish question but rather: "Why exactly is the political character of Communist regimes such an unremitting disaster?" See the articles by Arieli and Dunn in Totalitarian Democrary and After: International Colloquium in Memory o f Jacob L. Talmon (Jerusalem, 1984), pp. 25, 42. For Talmon's interest in Jewish history and politics see his The Unique and the Universal (New York, 1965), and Israel Among the Nations (New York, 1970).
8. Selected Essays of Ahad Ha'Am , trans. Leon Simon (New York, 1970 [1912]), pp. 177, 184. For Hertzberg on Ahad Ha'am see The Zionist Idea , ed. Arthur Hertz-
berg (New York, 1981 [1959]), pp. 248-277; and Arthur Hertzberg, Being Jewish in America: The Modern Experience (New York, 1979), p. xiii.
9. Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment , p. 363.
10. On the tendency to reduce the French Revolution to the Terror alone, see Ferenc Fehér, The Frozen Revolution: An Essay on Jacobinism (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 1-30.
11. Eugen Weber, ''Reflections on the Jews in France," in Frances Malino and Bernard Wasserstein eds., The Jews in Modern France (Hanover and London, 1985), p. 17.
12. Archives parlementaires de 1787 à 1860. Recueil complet des débats législatifs et politiques des chambres françaises. Première série (1787 à 1799) , 88 vols. to date (Paris, 1867-) (hereafter cited as AP), 11: 710.
13. On Paris see S. Lacroix, "Ce qu'on pensait des juifs à Paris en 1790," Revolution française 30 (1898): 91-112.
14. Salo W. Baron, "Ghetto and Emancipation: Shall We Revise the Traditional View?" The Menorah Journal 14 (June 1928): 517; Salo W. Baron, "Newer Approaches to Jewish Emancipation," Diogenes 29 (Spring 1960): 56-81. For a more general survey see also Feuerwerker, L'émancipation des juifs , pp. 3-48.
15. AP , 9: 201.
16. Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment , p. 339.
17. AP , 10: 782.
18. AP , 10: 757.
19. AP , 11: 364.
20. Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, What Is the Third Estate? , trans. M. Blondel (London, 1963), pp. 121-122.
21. AP , 10: 754.
22. Patriote français , 24 December 1789, p. 2.
23. Quoted in Keith Michael Baker, "Representation," in Baker, ed., The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture . 1: The Political Culture of the Old Regime (Oxford, 1987), p. 488.
24. AP , 31: 372.