The Jews Of France And Algeria At The Time Of The Dreyfus Affair
The Jews Of France And Algeria At The Time Of The Dreyfus Affair

Summary/Abstract: This paper seeks to analyze the attitudes of French and Algerian Jews – notably of their main representative institutions and consistories – towards the anti-Jewish outbursts that affected 27 Algerian localities at the end of the 19th century, at the time of the Dreyfus Affair. In the attempt to stop the violence, the Algerian consistories (in particular Simon Kanoui, president of the consistory of Oran) resorted to private interventions by the local authorities. In its turn, the Central Consistory intervened by the government, and ended by launching an appeal to public charity, through the voice of Chief Rabbi Zadoc Kahn, for the victims’ relief. Unlike the Central Consistory, the two Jewish papers published in France, Archives israélites and Univers israélite denounced, from the very beginning, the anti-Jewish outbursts in Algeria, as well as the anti-Jewish unrest in France, among the important events related to the Dreyfus Affair. Several courageous Jewish intellectuals, like Bernard Lazare, at the margin of official Judaism, also stood up in defense of Algerian Jews. Jewish solidarity manifested not only at the practical level (relief, various interventions), but also at the level of principles. Thus, the consistories and the French Jewish press defended the recent emancipation of the indigenous Jews, who had become French citizens under Crémieux’s decree of 1870, which was questioned in the anti-Semitic discourse

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