The Aftermath of Separation: Restructuring French Jewry,1905-1909

• In Event: Where is Jewish France? Jewish Communities and Identities in Twentieth-Century France and North Africa

Abstract

The Law on the Separation of the Churches and State disrupted the centralization of Judaism in France. Unlike the United States, which never had an established church, and the United Kingdom, which still has an established church, modern France broke with its established churches only in 1905. Though French Jewish leaders were for practical political purposes more aligned with the anticlericalists, they did not enthusiastically welcome the law on separation. In the years before separation and in the immediate aftermath, they were not at all certain about the prospects for preserving a vibrant and unified Jewish community without government recognition and financial support.

My paper will examine Jewish positions on the relationship between Church and State in France in the wake of the 1905 separation law. It will address how French Jews persevered after the withdrawal of Judaism’s official status and how they understood the constitutional right of religious freedom after passage of the separation law. I will exam which particular aspects of the separation law lent themselves to contention among Jews, which strategies they pursued, and what political alliances they formed to promote their agendas.

As I argue, although this 1905 law, the centerpiece of anticlerical legislation, would rock France in the years to come, French Judaism and the consistorial system emerged largely unscathed. Although the law of separation dismantled the official body representing Judaism in France and deprived the organized Jewish community of government funding, the consistorial system did not disappear. The regional consistories reorganized themselves as local religious associations and recognized the authority of the national Union des associations cultuelles israélites de France et d’Algérie, and French Jews continued to refer to the local bodies as consistories and the national body as the Central Consistory. Indeed, the new organizations merely saw themselves as the continuation of the legal institutions established by Napoleon in 1808. Despite the establishment of a few independent denominational religious associations, both liberal and Orthodox, the revamped consistories continued to exercise religious hegemony among French Jews, and even the French government continued to treat them as the official representatives of Judaism in France.

Author

• Zvi Jonathan Kaplan, Touro College