Judaism - the French connection - The Jewish Chronicle

It is the season of memory and rededication. No day in the calendar focuses Jews on the fact of their Jewishness like Yom Kippur. Even those who regard the day like any other and neither pray nor fast will, last weekend, have felt the Jewish part of themselves more keenly and meditated on what Jewishness means.

That Jews should think about Jewishness in a way that is disconnected from religious rituals is a very modern phenomenon. "Modern" in this context - the life of a people whose history goes back more than three millennia --- refers to the era that began on September 27, 1791, in Paris, at the National Assembly.

The two-year process of writing a constitution that began weeks after the fall of the Bastille was coming to an end. The question of what to do about France's Ashkenazi Jewish community had occupied legislators early in the process but had been adjourned. Giving Jews the rights of citizens in the new France was too controversial.

For many, a Jew was a Jew, a Frenchman was a Frenchman. Then, on September 27, with most constitutional business settled, Adrien DuPort stood up to say: "I believe freedom of worship does not allow for any distinction in political rights among citizens because of their beliefs. The question of the Jews was adjourned… I demand that adjournment be revoked and it be decided that the Jews of France enjoy the rights of active citizens."

Duport's motion carried; all the Jews of France were granted the rights of active citizenship. They were emancipated. The ghettos of Alsace and Lorraine were opened. By 1805, Napoleon had carried emancipation over the Alps into Italy and then eastwards across continental Europe.

When the ghetto gates opened, the Jews stepped out and the identity question crept into Jewish life. Almost immediately, a reformation of the practice of religion began in the German-speaking lands. "Why not make our worship more like that of our neighbours", the reforming Jews asked. "Let us prove we are not a nation within the nation".

In came liturgy, call-and-response prayer and Lutheran pastor-style vestments for the rabbi. No longer would the place of worship be called a synagogue; it would be a "temple". The temple can only be rebuilt in Jerusalem? "No," they cried, "we are through with wandering. Germany is our home and we will worship in the Temple here.

Not every Jew bought into Reform but the questions it raised occupied daily life. To shave a beard, remove peyot, shed traditional dress voluntarily may not seem like a big deal today, but after half-a-millennium locked inside ghettos it was. Jewishness began to be separate from Judaism. Within and without, the identity question became part of daily life. From within: how far do you shed your faith traditions and practice in order to become integrated into the society in which you live? From without: you are not German, not French, not any other nationality and you never will be.

In time, Jewish thinkers --- a disproportionate number of them, like Marx, Freud and Durkheim, descended from rabbis -- began to formulate epoch-changing theories of how the world worked. In particular, Freud and Durkheim, the founder of sociology, were looking for answers to the question of identity. Freud wrote eloquently about how his outsider status as a Jew gave him a particular ability to think about the world outside the parameters of "the compact majority".

The question of Jewish identity became mutable, an ever-changing theme. When my wife was preparing her parents for the fact that she was marrying a Jew, her mother asked, in all seriousness, "how Jewish is he?" I think Lilian maybe meant what kind of food should she prepare when I visited… but perhaps not.

Once upon a time, you were a Jew, or you were not. Now, it is widely accepted that there are degrees of Jewishness. Nothing is settled about what it means to be Jewish. And the creation of Israel has added a new layer of questioning. To be Israeli is a very specific thing, to be Jewish is something else.

Or is it? Am I a Jew in the same way someone my age in Tel Aviv who served in the IDF and speaks Hebrew is a Jew? I would say yes, but an Israeli might say no. Are we a nation across borders? Or people of a certain faith and citizens of the nations in which we are born? And what if we don't practise the faith? Or have married outside the community?

We may be the chosen of One God but is there one definition of Jewishness? Or Judaism? Questions to contemplate in this season of remembrance.