Jewish Emancipation Reconsidered: The French and German Models - Schriftenreihe wissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen des Leo Baeck Instituts

A group of distinguished historians makes the first systematic attempt to compare the experiences of French and German Jews in the modern era. The cases of France and Germany have often been depicted as the dominant paradigms for understanding the processes of Jewish emancipation and acculturation in Western and Central Europe. In the French case, emancipation was achieved during the French Revolution, and it remained in place until 1940, when the Vichy regime came to power. In Germany, emancipation was a far more gradual and piecemeal process, and even after it was achieved in 1871, popular and government Anti-Semitism persisted.

The essays in this volume, while buttressing many traditional assumptions regarding these two paths of emancipation, simultaneously challenge many others, and thus force us to reconsider the larger processes of Jewish integration and acculturation. Partial Contents include: Jewish Enlightenment in Berlin and Paris, Celebrating Integration in the Public Sphere in Germany and France, Modern Anti-Semitism and Jewish Responses in Germany and France, 1880-1914, Towards the Phenomenology of the Jewish Intellectual: The German and French Cases Compared.