ABSTRACT
It used to be said, with a twinge of irony, that every country has the Jews it deserves. What was meant was that the characteristic faults and virtues one finds among the descendants of Jacob should be attributed to the influence of various cultural practices of the lands in which they happen to live, rather than to a Jewish quintessence. In this perspective, when we consider the Frenchmen Raymond Aron, one of the leading political scientists of our time, Emmanuel Berl, an underestimated and neglected essayist and historian, and Claude Lévi-Strauss, preeminent social anthropologist and paragon of structuralism, and if we attempt to characterize how they viewed their Jewish identities, it is likely that what will be established may not be Jewish at all. To paraphrase Jacques Lacan, the “Jew” does not exist, but Jews do. The “Frenchman” is a myth, but Frenchmen are alive and well.
