History of the Jews in France
The history of the Jews in France deals with Jews and Jewish communities in France since at least the Early Middle Ages. France was a centre of Jewish learning in the Middle Ages, but persecution increased over time, including multiple expulsions and returns. During the French Revolution in the late 18th century, on the other hand, France was the first European country to emancipate its Jewish population. Antisemitism still occurred in cycles and reached a high in the 1890s, as shown during the Dreyfus affair, and in the 1940s, under Nazi occupation and the Vichy regime.
Before 1919, most French Jews lived in Paris, with many being very proud to be fully assimilated into French culture, and they comprised an upscale subgroup. A more traditional Judaism was based in Alsace-Lorraine, which was recovered by The German Empire in 1871 and taken by France in 1918 following World War I. In addition, numerous Jewish refugees and immigrants came from Russia and eastern and central Europe in the early 20th century, changing the character of French Judaism in the 1920s and 1930s. These new arrivals were much less interested in assimilation into French culture. Some supported such new causes as Zionism, the Popular Front and communism, the latter two being popular among the French political left.
During World War II, the Vichy government collaborated with Nazi occupiers to deport a large number of both French Jews and foreign Jewish refugees to concentration camps. By the war's end, 25% of the Jewish population of France had been murdered in the Holocaust, though this was a lower proportion than in most other countries under Nazi occupation.
In the 21st century, France has the largest Jewish population in Europe and the third-largest Jewish population in the world. The Jewish community in France is estimated to number 480,000–550,000, depending in part on the definition being used. French Jewish communities are concentrated in the metropolitan areas of Paris, which has the largest Jewish population among all European cities, Marseille, with a population of 70,000, Lyon, Nice, Strasbourg and Toulouse.
The majority of French Jews in the 21st century are Sephardi and Mizrahi North African Jews, many of whom emigrated from former French colonies of North Africa after those countries gained independence in the 1950s and 1960s. They span a range of religious affiliations, from the ultra-Orthodox Haredi communities to the large segment of Jews who are entirely secular and who often marry outside the Jewish community.
Approximately 200,000 French Jews live in Israel. Since 2010 or so, more have been making aliyah in response to rising antisemitism in France.
Roman and Merovingian periods
According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, "The first settlements of Jews in Europe are obscure. From 163 BCE there is evidence of Jews in Rome . In the year 6 C.E. there were Jews at Vienne and Gallia Celtica; in the year 39 at Lugdunum ".An early account praised Hilary of Poitiers for having fled from the Jewish society. The emperors Theodosius II and Valentinian III sent a decree to Amatius, prefect of Gaul, that prohibited Jews and pagans from practising law or holding public offices. This was to prevent Christians from being subject to them and possibly incited to change their faith. At the funeral of Hilary, Bishop of Arles, in 449, Jews and Christians mingled in crowds and wept; the former were said to have sung psalms in Hebrew.
In the sixth century, Jews were documented in Marseille, Arles, Uzès, Narbonne, Clermont-Ferrand, Orléans, Paris, and Bordeaux. These cities had generally been centers of ancient Roman administration and were located on the great commercial routes. The Jews built synagogues in these cities. In harmony with the Theodosian code, and according to an edict of 331 by the emperor Constantine, the Jews were organized for religious purposes as they were in the Roman empire. They appear to have had priests, archisynagogues, patersynagogues, and other synagogue officials. The Jews worked principally as merchants, as they were prohibited from owning land; they also served as tax collectors, sailors, and physicians.
File:Inscription de Narbonne.jpg|thumb|Funerary stele from Narbonne at the 7th-century beginning of the reign of Egica. The text begins with the Latin phrase Rest in peace and includes the Hebrew phrase. In various sources it is described as a Jewish inscription dated with the local calendar—the regnal year of Egica—rather than the Hebrew calendar, an "inscription relating to the Jews of France", or as a "Christian inscription".
They probably remained under Roman law until the triumph of Christianity, with the status established by Caracalla, on a footing of equality with their fellow citizens. Their association with fellow citizens was generally amicable, even after the establishment of Christianity in Gaul. The Christian clergy participated in some Jewish feasts; intermarriage between Jews and Christians sometimes occurred; and the Jews made proselytes. Worried about Christians adopting Jewish religious customs, the third Council of Orléans warned the faithful against Jewish "superstitions", and ordered them to abstain from traveling on Sunday and from adorning their persons or dwellings on that day. In the 6th century, a Jewish community thrived in Paris. They built a synagogue on the Île de la Cité, but it was later torn down by Christians, who erected a church on the site.
In 629, King Dagobert proposed the expulsion of all Jews who would not accept Christianity. No mention of the Jews was found from his reign to that of Pepin the Short. The Jews on the other hand continued to dwell and to prosper in what is now Southern France, then known as Septimania and a dependency of the Visigothic kings of Spain. From this epoch dates the earliest known inscription relating to the Jews of France, the "Funerary Stele of Justus, Matrona and Dulciorella" of Narbonne, written in Latin and Hebrew. The Jews of Narbonne, chiefly merchants, were popular among the people who often rebelled against the Visigothic kings.
Carolingian period
The presence of Jews in France under Charlemagne is documented, with their position being regulated by law. Exchanges with the Orient strongly declined with the presence of Arabs in the Mediterranean sea. Trading and importing of oriental products such as gold, silk, black pepper or papyrus almost disappeared under the Carolingians. The Radhanite Jewish traders were nearly the only group to maintain trade between the Occident and the Orient.Charlemagne fixed a formula for the Jewish oath to the state. He allowed Jews to enter into lawsuits with Christians. They were not allowed to require Christians to work on Sundays. Jews were not allowed to trade in currency, wine, or grain. Legally, Jews belonged to the emperor and could be tried only by him. But the numerous provincial councils which met during Charlemagne's reign were not concerned with the Jewish communities.
Louis the Pious, faithful to the principles of his father Charlemagne, granted strict protection to Jews, whom he respected as merchants. Like his father, Louis believed that 'the Jewish question' could be solved with the gradual conversion of Jews; according to medievalist scholar J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, some people believed this tolerance threatened the Christian unity of the Empire, which led to the strengthening of the Bishops at the expense of the Emperor. Saint Agobard of Lyon had many run-ins with the Jews of France. He wrote about how rich and powerful they were becoming. Scholars such as Jeremy Cohen suggest that Saint Agobard's belief in Jewish power contributed to his involvement in violent revolutions attempting to dethrone Louis the Pious in the early 830s. Lothar and Agobard's entreaties to Pope Gregory IV gained them papal support for the overthrow of Emperor Louis. Upon Louis the Pious' return to power in 834, he deposed Saint Agobard from his see, to the consternation of Rome. There were unsubstantiated rumors in this period that Louis' second wife Judith was a converted Jew, as she would not accept the ordinatio for their first child.
Jews were engaged in export trade, particularly traveling to Palestine under Charlemagne. When the Normans disembarked on the coast of Narbonnese Gaul, they were taken for Jewish merchants. One authority said the Jewish traders boasted about buying whatever they pleased from bishops and abbots. Isaac the Jew, who was sent by Charlemagne in 797 with two ambassadors to Harun al-Rashid, the fifth Abbasid Caliph, was probably one of these merchants. He was said to have asked the Baghdad caliph for a rabbi to instruct the Jews whom he had allowed to settle at Narbonne.
Capetians
Persecutions (987–1137)
There were widespread persecutions of Jews in France beginning in 1007 or 1009. These persecutions, instigated by Robert II, King of France, called "the Pious", are described in a Hebrew pamphlet, which also states that the King of France conspired with his vassals to destroy all the Jews on their lands who would not accept baptism, and many were put to death or killed themselves. Robert is credited with advocating forced conversions of local Jewry, as well as mob violence against Jews who refused. Among the dead was the learned Rabbi Senior. Robert the Pious is well known for his lack of religious tolerance and for the hatred which he bore toward heretics; it was Robert who reinstated the Roman imperial custom of burning heretics at the stake. In Normandy under Richard II, Duke of Normandy, Rouen Jewry suffered from persecutions that were so terrible that many women, in order to escape the fury of the mob, jumped into the river and drowned. A notable of the town, Jacob b. Jekuthiel, a Talmudic scholar, sought to intercede with Pope John XVIII to stop the persecution in Lorraine. Jacob undertook the journey to Rome, but was imprisoned with his wife and four sons by Duke Richard, and escaped death only by allegedly miraculous means. He left his eldest son, Judah, as a hostage with Richard while he and his wife and three remaining sons went to Rome. He bribed the pope with seven gold marks and two hundred pounds, who thereupon sent a special envoy to King Robert ordering him to stop the persecutions.If Adhémar of Chabannes, who wrote in 1030, is to be believed, the anti-Jewish feelings arose in 1010 after Western Jews addressed a letter to their Eastern coreligionists warning them of a military movement against the Saracens. According to Adémar, Christians urged by Pope Sergius IV were shocked by the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem by the Muslims in 1009. After the destruction, European reaction to the rumor of the letter was of shock and dismay, Cluniac monk Rodulfus Glaber blamed the Jews for the destruction. In that year Alduin, Bishop of Limoges, offered the Jews of his diocese the choice between baptism and exile. For a month theologians held disputations with the Jews, but without much success, for only three or four of Jews abjured their faith; others killed themselves; and the rest either fled or were expelled from Limoges. Similar expulsions took place in other French towns. By 1030, Rodulfus Glaber knew more concerning this story. According to his 1030 explanation, Jews of Orléans had sent to the East through a beggar a letter that provoked the order for the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Glaber adds that, on the discovery of the crime, the expulsion of the Jews was everywhere decreed. Some were driven out of the cities, others were put to death, while some killed themselves; only a few remained in the "Roman world". Count Paul Riant says that this whole story of the relations between the Jews and the Mohammedans is only one of those popular legends with which the chronicles of the time abound.
Another violent commotion arose at about 1065. At this date Pope Alexander II wrote to Béranger, Viscount of Narbonne and to Guifred, bishop of the city, praising them for having prevented the massacre of the Jews in their district, and reminding them that God does not approve of the shedding of blood. In 1065 also, Alexander admonished Landulf VI of Benevento "that the conversion of Jews is not to be obtained by force." Also in the same year, Alexander called for a crusade against the Moors in Spain.