Mauri4AP

A post for FRANCE. 🇫🇷 This is my mother and older sister. My mother’s family are Alsatian French Jews that emigrated to the Southern US and settled in⚜️ French Louisiana in the mid-late 1800s. What you may not know is that the Jewish community in France traces its presence back to as early as the year 6 CE and these early people were most likely descendants of Roman Jews. By the 6th Century, Jews were documented as living in Southern France (Marseille, Arles, Narbonne) as well as Paris, Orleans and Bordeaux. These cities had generally been centers of ancient Roman administration and were located along important trade routes. By 1200 CE, Jewish communities also flourished in the Alsace-Lorraine region of Western France. With the culmination of the French Revolution in 1799, France became the first country in modern Europe to grant Jews equal rights under the law. Still, the question of “if and how to integrate” the Jewish community into French society—a problem known at the time as “the Jewish question”—persisted after the Revolution. The hope was that Jews would integrate into the state like everybody else and that their differences would diminish over time. Proposing to put the question to the Jewish people, in 1806 Napoleon convened an assembly of important leaders in the Jewish community to clarify their political and religious loyalties resulting in Jews declaring themselves first and foremost French citizens with political allegiance to France. As a result, Jews became an integral part of French society and lived openly until 1894 when a Jewish military Captain (Capt. Dreyfus) was wrongfully accused and convicted of spying for Germany. Dreyfus was eventually exonerated, but the decade-long scandal was marked by violent anti-Semitic riots against the Jews. To many, this scandal was proof that anti-Semitism was endemic to Europe. One of the people who felt that way was a young journalist reporting from Paris, Theodor Herzl - who later founded the modern Zionist movement. The Second World War had a devastating impact on Jews in France. By 1939, there were about 300,000 Jews residing France. In the wake of the German invasion, the government willingly helped the Nazis round up Jews in France. It is a stain on French history with tragic repercussions: by the end of the war, more than 70,000 Jews were deported from France, of whom only about 2,500 would survive. (67,500 were murdered.) In the decades following the war, as France pulled out of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, large populations of Jews in those countries fled along with it. Many left for the newly established state of Israel, but others went to France. The migration north was most pronounced in Algeria, where the people already had French citizenship because of the special status of Algeria as a French colony; 90% of Jews in that country headed for France. The influx from North Africa doubled the Jewish population in France and introduced new customs to the increasingly diverse Jewish community. The arrival of Jews from North Africa coincided with a massive influx of Muslim migrant laborers, also largely from North Africa. While there were occasional clashes between these two immigrant populations, Jewish and Muslim immigrants often lived & worked side-by-side in the early years. Beginning in the 1980s, however, tensions began to emerge, especially as the state failed to fully integrate the Muslim community into French society. These tensions were also heightened by the ongoing Israel Palestinian conflict. Meanwhile, French Jews—the third largest Jewish population in the world after America and Israel—are more integrated into French society than ever before. Today there are roughly 500,000 Jews living in France. The sad irony is that at this very moment we’re seeing the greatest spike in anti-Semitism in Europe since World War II, and many Jews are asking if now is the time to stay or leave.