ABSTRACT
Many Jewish immigrants perceived the French Republic as the embodiment of the ideals of freedom and equality. The numbers of Jewish immigrants settling in Paris were fairly low in the period until 1914, and East European Jews were only a small proportion of the mass of immigrants that settled in France. The anti-clerical nature of the Republic, as manifested through legislation, turned many French Catholics against the Republican administration and led them to seek an outlet for their frustrations. Disoriented and dissatisfied, many French citizens supported political movements that propagated anti-Semitism. The first Jewish immigrants covered in the press arrived in Paris in 1882. The arrival of the first substantial groups of Jewish immigrants in Paris coincided with ambivalence in France with respect to immigration. On the one hand, economists and many Member of Parliament agreed that France needed immigrants to keep the economy afloat. On the other hand, the public started to demand that immigration be kept at bay.
