Language:
French
Year of publication:
2001
Titel der Quelle:
Les Cahiers du Judaïsme
Angaben zur Quelle:
11 (2001-2002) 42-54
Keywords:
Bloy, Léon,
;
Lazare, Bernard,
;
Leroy-Beaulieu, Anatole,
;
Antisemitism History 1800-2000
Abstract:
Examines the problem of these thinkers in regard to the association of antisemitism with anti-modernism, an idea embraced by those who fought the rising antisemitism in France in the wake of Drumont's book "La France juive" (1886). Inspired by James Darmesteter, the liberal Catholic historian Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu and the socialist Jew Bernard Lazare believed that Judaism coincided with the modern spirit of secularism and rationalism, antisemitism being another form of anti-modernism. However, they were conflicted in their views - for fear of feeding antisemitic fantasies of a Jewish conspiracy they denied the role of the Jews in modernity. Leroy-Beaulieu wanted to erase antisemitism by fighting irrationalism. Lazare was confused in his views in the 1890s; anti-Jewish when it came to Eastern Jews, but pro-Jewish with regard to French Jews, he advocated conversion of French "Israelites" as a cure for antisemitism. Attributes his admiration of Léon Bloy, who reproduced Christian anti-Jewish stereotypes, to the fact that Bloy, though despising the poor Jew, provided him with a messianic mission. All of these thinkers, in associating antisemitism with anti-modernism, risked crossing over into antisemitism in their attempt to obliterate all modernity from the Jews.
Note:
An expanded version appeared in "L'antisémitisme éclairé" (2003).
URL:
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