Morning Workshop:
As mentioned in my previous post, I spent Monday morning at The Musée d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaïsme with some colleagues and students. As there were two classes, the students were divided into two groups, I stayed with my own class: a group of 22 11th graders.
We started with a guided tour of some parts of the museum. First the guide reminded the students of a few important elements/terms that she thought they needed to know to make the most of the visit such as : monotheism, Torah, diaspora, Jerusalem, Hebrew etc.
She then told us about the first Jewish settlements in France during the Middle-Ages – before 1306, in Paris, Normandy, Brittany and Champagne (that’s where Rashi was from). The tomb stones found in the middle of Paris testify to the relative good integration of the Jews at the time: most men had a Jewish name (Jacob, Salomon, Isaac, Samuel) while the women had French names (Florie, Anne) that were fashionable at the time. Things changed in 1306 when the Jews were expelled by Philippe Le Bel then allowed to come back (after they had paid a large sum of money) and then expelled again by Charles VI in 1394.
At the beginning of the 17th century Jews began to come back to France. This resulted in a new edict of April 23, 1615 which forbade Christians to shelter Jews or to converse with them. Alsace and Lorraine were the home of a significant number of Jews. In annexing the provinces in 1648, Louis XIV was at first tempted to banish the Jews living in those provinces, but thought better of it in view of the benefit he could derive from them.
Things really changed with the French revolution when in 1791 a decree was passed that granted the Jews in France the right to enjoy the privileges of full citizens. Little by little, Jews were found in all areas of French society while a considerable number of Jewish immigrants arrived in France attracted by the opportunities the country provided.
From 1880 France witnessed a wave of Jewish immigration with families arriving from Eastern Europe, mostly fleeing pogroms and discrimination there. These people were often crafstmen and workers who spoke Yiddish. Most of them settled in the Marais. In the museum we were shown photos and artefacts which recalled this period. Most of France’s synagogues were built at that time.
We then moved to a kind of classroom where the students were given photos, felt tip pens and papers to express through collages what they had just learnt.
4 Comments
December 5, 2008 at 11:37 am
Thank you for this introduction to French Jewish history. I found the names in early French settlements interesting, that the men got the Jewish names and the women got the French names. Reminded me a bit of my grandmother’s experience in pre-Soviet Russia: the boys got sent to Yeshiva and the girls to lycee (or gymnasium, as my grandmother called it), so their experiences were very different. And they didn’t want to marry each other, not enough in common!
December 7, 2008 at 12:55 am
What a wonderful post on French-Jewish history, as seen, and learned, through your eyes.
December 7, 2008 at 9:58 pm
French Jewish history is quite rich and varied but I guess there isn’t much in English about it.
April 12, 2009 at 7:02 am
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