Being Jewish in France

"From the Jewish perspective, France is two countries—the splendid republic of liberté, egalité, and fraternité, and a vicious province of smug chauvinism."-Village Voice

Greeted by sold-out crowds at last year’s New York Jewish Film Festival, Being Jewish in France is a provocative take on one of that country’s paradoxes: even though France was the first European country to grant Jews full citizenship (after the revolution), its parallel history of anti-Semitism continues into this century.

This epic television documentary begins in the late 19th century with the Dreyfus Affair (in which a Jewish military officer was convicted but later cleared of espionage), which brought long-simmering anti-Semitism into the open and divided French society for decades. From there, the Nazi-backed Vichy regime legalized Jewish persecution, and the film brings us face to face with many of its now elderly but eloquent victims. The influx of North African Jews to France in the 1950s revitalized the ethnic mix of the country’s Jewish population, often pitting it against France’s Muslim immigrants, with anti-Semitism now folded into the mix of the country’s underclass dissensions. (185 mins., video)

Cosponsored by the Ohio State’s Melton Center for Jewish Studies.