Vision
This is a “History of France” , more exactly of that which has taken a millennium at least to become a nation. A history which begins with its slow emergence from the ruins of the Roman Empire onward to the end of the dreadful twentieth century. This one-of-a-kind history of France aims to encompass Jewish existence in all its aspects: geographical and historical facts and realities, cultural, social, intellectual, and political evolutions as well as cultural exchanges, and migrations.
Activity
This boldly innovative volume, as a collective work brings together the best world-class scholars. It takes into account the most recent historiography, and addresses the forefront of current research. Presented in a clear, enjoyable style, the book is designed to be accessible to all readers, without sacrificing any of the scientific quality of its content. Its aims are fundamentally pedagogical and civic: sidestepping the alleged “great national narrative”, it makes clear how France has never been a homogenous “nation” in regard to which Jews would have been “outsiders” or “newcomers” that passively undergone discriminatory policies. On the contrary, the “otherness” of the Jewish population which slowly became France is a social and political construct that the Jews actively fought, all the while elaborating their own variation of French culture and Frenchness. Conversely, it is likely that Judaism as it is today, in all its religious and secular forms, from New York to Jerusalem, would not be the same without the long, history – sometimes painful, to be sure, but ultimately fertile – built with the French people and the French culture, which by the end are joining the almost universal sense of what is or should be “modernity”.