Orientalism and the Construction of Jewish Identity in France, 1900–1932

Abstract

This paper explores the image of the Jew as Oriental in French Jewish literature and political discourse in the fin-de-siècle and inter-war years. During the nineteenth century, French Jews sought to distance themselves from their alleged ‘Oriental’ origins in order to facilitate their integration into the larger society. Beginning in the early twentieth century, by contrast, certain French Jews began to describe their imagined connection to the Orient as an aspect of the Jewish personality of which to be proud. This reinvention of the Jew as Oriental, however, was often linked to feelings of loss and alienation, a theme which many Jewish authors emphasised in their novels, plays and poetry. For many of these same figures, embracing Zionism provided a way to overcome this sense of alienation. By linking Zionism to the kind of ‘humanist orientalism’ prominent in French progressive circles during this period, they were able to give validity to their sense of ‘feeling different’ while at the same time expressing their complete devotion to France and to a universalist world perspective.

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