Jewish Scholarship and Identity in Nineteenth-Century France

From the Persecuting to the Protective State? Jewish Expulsions and Weather Shocks from 1100 to 1800

“…The Habsburg emperor Joseph II began the process of granting Jews civic rights in 1782. But it was the French Revolution and the subsequent invasion of Germany by French armies that led to the imposition of Jewish emancipation in central Europe (Berkovitz, 1989;Vital, 1999). After the defeat of France, these reforms were partially reversed but the movement towards Jewish emancipation resumed and culminated with the removal of all disabilities on Jews in Austria-Hungary in 1868 and Germany in 1870 (see Katz, 1974;Mahler, 1985;Sorkin, 1987 …”

Secularism, Assimilation and the Crisis of Multiculturalism

“…Assimilation as a social concept came to be used only gradually over the course of the 19th century, while concepts like 'fusion' and 'amalgamation' were used more frequently at the beginning (see Birnbaum 1998;Berkovitz 1989). Schechter locates the first use of the word in its sociological meaning with regard to the Jews -referring to the artfl database of French literature -in the Journal of the brothers de Goncourt.…”

Fixity and flux: A critique of competing approaches to researching contemporary Jewish identities

“…Many Jews in pre-modern Europe lived in relatively insular, internally governed communities in which they were expected to sustain a religious identity (Berkovitz, 1989). Following the French Revolution, European Jews were progressively afforded opportunities to become citizens of their host societies, and as a result were exposed to diverse 'new' ethnic and religious options with which to affiliate, while continuing to be subjected to anti-Semitism that served to re-inscribe a sense of difference (Brenner, 2008).…”