From One Shore, the Other … the Image of France in the Works of Contemporary Judeo-Maghrebi Novelists

Abstract

The specific “Idea of France,” as expressed by French authors of Jewish-Maghrebi origin, comes from the conflicted relationship they have with the concept. These people are attached to France's republican values, but criticize what they see as a hegemony of Western people over Middle-Easterners. For them, France represents an emancipatory ideal. They remember the French revolution, the Crémieux decree of 1870, and their education in republican schools in Algeria or at the Alliance Israélite Universelle in Tunisia or in Morocco, which only reinforces the idea. Their narratives express many echoes of this shared history, where France is exalted for having brought these emancipatory values. Nonetheless, their image of France is tarnished by three striking events: the fact that Algerian Jews were stripped of their French nationality in 1940, the exile en masse from North Africa when France left her colonies and protectorates, and the difficult time they had getting established in the metropole. Given the particular history of North African Jews, this literature is surely a rare example of a bittersweet relationship to an adopted homeland.

Keywords:

• Exile
• North Africa
• Jews
• Colonisation
• Decolonisation
• Identity

Notes

Notes

1 In a report (1842) detailing the reasons why Jewish Algerians should be given French citizenship, Jacques-Isaac Altaras and Joseph Cohen considered that “the Jewish element, in various ways, serves as a point of contact between the French and the former masters of the land … they have a remarkable aptitude for assimilating the principles of the civilization that we are bringing them … ” (Schwarzfuchs 67).

2 Generaly for Jews, the Republic was considered the natural prolonging of the Revolution, guardian of liberty and abolitionist of slavery. For certain Jews, who carried exemplary careers in high posts in the public sector, the Revolution was a recurring theme in their electoral campaigns (Birnbaum).

3 At the time of independence, there were 105,000 Jews in Tunisia, of which 71,000 were French citizens. This is not the case in Morocco, where the majority of that country's 225,000 Jews had Moroccan citizenship.

4 The first school for boys opened in Tetouan in 1862, the one for girls in Tangiers only three years later.

5 Adolphe Crémieux, author of the decree which accorded Algerian Jews French citizenship, gave a speech on this topic at the funeral of Father Grégoire involved in the granting of citizenship to the French Jews and in the abolition of slavery, and author of the Essai sur la régénération physique, morale et politique des juifs (1789). In his speech, Crémieux said, “France has given such beautiful examples for civilization and progress since the immortal era of 1789! … It's from the French sun that this divine flame which now lights up the world was lit” (Birnbaum 156).

6 The Crémieux decree was revoked on 7 October 1940 and replaced by anti-Semitic laws under the initiative of Marcel Peyrouton, the Vichy Regime's Minister of the Interior and former General Secretary of the General Government in Algiers.