Culture juive | Publication
Histoire juive de la France - Under the direction of Sylvie Anne Goldberg
This monumental work, spanning nearly 1,5000 pages, brings together contributions from 150 specilists from 6 different countries, under the direction of Sylvie Anne Goldberg. Intennded for a wide audience, il allows for a better understanding of the continuous contribution of Jews to the building of France, its values, society, and culture.
Partager
As its title suggests, this collective work is indeed a "history of France", a history that begins with the long emergence, on the ruins of the Roman Empire, of what will take at least a thousand years to become a nation, and which the team of researchers has chosen to conclude at the end of the terrible 20th century.
This history of France is unique in its kind: its ambitious approach integrates the jewish existence into all of its phenomena, its geographical and historical constructions, its movements of thought, its cultural, social and political evolutions. The stereotipes of Jews as "eternal foreigners" is deliberately turned on its head here: the jewish peresence on "French " soil, in perpetual recomposition (From Roman gaul to the colonial empire), has never been merely a demographic fact, that of a minority often mistreated. On the contrary, it has contributed, through active interculturality, to the life of the country in all aspects.
The pedagogical and civic stakes here are fundamental: the history of Jews in France has indeed long been ignored in educational textbooks, or at best presented as a "ghettoized" narrative of Jews present in France without truly participating in its history. This Jewish History of France aims to contribute to breaking free from such a confined vision of history - and consequently, the national memory.
The entire French culture - political, social, intellectual, artistic - is imbued with a unique relationship with the Jewish experience. Conversely, it can be affirmed that contemporary Judaism, which extends far beyond its religious aspect and is understood from New York to Jerusalem, passing through Europe, would not be what it is without its long, very long history - sometimes painful, certainly, but ultimately fruitful - with France, its people, and its culture.
This collective work of 1500 pages, published by Albin Michel Editions, has received support from the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah.
►Publication: Wednesday, October 11, 2023.