ABSTRACT
For the European Jew, France has always played a special role. Throughout the nineteenth century and up until 1940, France was the country of emancipation, the first country of Europe whose great revolution granted legal equality and civil rights to Jews. This chapter deals with the consciousness that French Jews have of French antisemitism. The year 1940 marked the death of a certain type of "Israelite," of "assimilated Jew." The two fundamental facts—the attitude of the French government in 1940 and Hitler's genocide—have given a new meaning to every kind, every trace, of antisemitism. The French Jews have increased in number and have become more active in politics and religion, and more ambitious in general, since the arrival of the Sephardim from North Africa. Jews are also taking an active part in French intellectual and political life. Happy are the French and American Jews who are free to exaggerate antisemitism.
