Reply: French, Jewish and secular

Mr. President, dear Albert Memmi, Madame, dear friends.

I should like first of all to thank you, Madame. I did not know you; I have spoken with you on the telephone several times, and I wanted to thank you for what you have just said, to thank you also for having granted such flexibility to your agenda, to allow me to be here today — since it had initially been planned that I would speak on Friday. But I was in Boston, and I could not cancel that engagement, made a very long time ago, since it was to speak of health and human rights; and I believe that, in this domain, there is still so much to be done, that it was important, interesting, to be able to do it at that Harvard school of public health, and it would have been disagreeable to me to have to cancel — so I thank you very much for having made a place for me in this solemn session, which gives me, moreover, the pleasure of being honored at the same time as Elisabeth and Robert Badinter.

But I should like above all to thank you, to thank you all, for this diploma — a diploma of which I am happy and proud, because it comes from you, from what your movement represents. Indeed, more than any other movement, among the numerous movements, associations, groups that lay claim to Judaism, here I feel at home. You are my family, and I say it very clearly. You are so much so — I feel it so strongly — that although since 1989 I had hesitated, and although, at the creation of your movement, I had been asked to join it, I had not done so, because I then held official functions and I considered that, having an official position, there was no call, within this diversity of Jewish associations, to make a choice. I want to be able to go to the one and to the other, without having the feeling of favoring this one or that one. Today that I am totally free — I was telling you so, Mme Attal — I fully intend to enroll with you, and I will send you a membership form first thing tomorrow.

But I believe that, even if I had never said it officially — that it was to your movement that I felt closest — I believe that what I have always expressed in the very many speeches I have had to deliver, the numerous interventions, position-takings, I believe that there was, as concerns my ideas, my feelings, my position, no ambiguity. I am French, Jewish, and secular. Without any ambiguity about any one of these identities, and without difficulty, for that matter, in reconciling them. In my own mind, in any case. Perhaps for some this identification of these three concepts is difficult; for me, it poses no problem.

Not only do I feel at ease among you, but I wish to express to you my gratitude for being what you are, for existing, and for having organized this congress. So many essential questions that confront us today have been raised and have given rise to debates. I regret not having been able to attend them, but I would be very interested to learn of your proceedings. Indeed, on all these questions taken up over the past two days, there is no moment, no day, when one or another of these themes does not assume, does not pose concretely in our life, a problem, does not lead us to reflection and even sometimes to taking a stand. A common reflection like the one you have conducted over these two days can only enlighten me, help me, make easier for us all the attitude to be taken.

I am French, Jewish, and secular. Without any ambiguity about any one of these identities.

I would say that all these subjects passionately engage me, not from an intellectual point of view but because they arouse in me impassioned reactions. I cannot be indifferent when these questions are spoken of. Nor can I, I admit, be objective. But your debates are closed. I do not want to reopen them; I would, moreover, add nothing very new to them; I might risk, with the passion I have, provoking certain polemics, I know it. Rest assured, I shall limit myself to a few personal reflections, in reply to this question: Can one be Jewish and secular?

This question, your movement has often been led to answer, even if, to my mind, it may appear useless, ill-timed, even absurd. Absurd because for centuries Jews themselves have brilliantly answered it through what they were and through what they did. The creation of the State of Israel — and even before its creation, the way that State was able to come into being, the way Jews came to it from certain countries, who were far from being religious. But this creation is the most remarkable example of the fact that one can be Jewish and secular. Alas, one can also give the most odious example of it: the fraternity and the solidarity of the Jews in the Shoah. If for the Nazis the criteria were not religious, neither were they so for the Jews. They did not disavow, they did not say that they were religious, they did not make it ostentatiously known, and they were not heard, wherever they were, to say “but why am I here, I am not religious, so I am not Jewish.” They did not try to prove it — and besides, it would have served no purpose.

Religious practice does not suffice to define a belonging made of tradition, of culture.

Absurd too, and ill-timed, because this religious criterion in no way covers the reality. And besides, how is one to grasp it, since religious practice does not suffice, in a general way, to define a belonging made of tradition, of culture. This is, moreover, the case for a majority of Catholics in France: they call themselves Catholic, but they have not always been baptized, their children are not always baptized, but their family was Catholic — and when one gives the percentage of Catholics in France, it is quite evident that a certain number, a very great number, are laïcs (secular). Likewise, and perhaps even more so, in percentage, as concerns Protestants. And for the Jews, the situation, I would say, is even more complex in this respect, and obliges us even more to consider that there is no concomitance, that there is no total coincidence between religious and Jewish. For our history — made of discrimination, made of oppression, made too of a marginalization — means that our community is necessarily more homogeneous, whatever our practice, whatever our belonging today to the religion; but we have a belonging so strong, and a fidelity so strong to the traditions, that impose themselves all the more by reason of our past. Can one renounce all that? Can one renounce these fidelities? Renounce this culture and these traditions simply because one is not a believer?

What is more, this approach, this distinction between believer and non-believer, seems to me singularly simplifying. For are there many women and men, even young people, children, adolescents, who at some moment or other of their life have not asked themselves the question, have not wondered “where do I stand?” It is, after all, one of the essential questions of life, that of belief.

There are changes, in the course of a life, and very numerous are those who, on the occasion of one or another event, often dramatic, and who believed themselves true secular people, suddenly come to feel a need for belief. Another, on the contrary, faced with events that may be of the same kind, or under influences, on the contrary, loses all contact with religion.

For my part, it is true, I must say it, I have hardly been tempted; I believe that almost always — except perhaps in adolescence, when one has friends, influences, when one talks — I believe that, apart from that, I admit that I have hardly had any temptation to religiosity. My family is no doubt much to do with it, and I have done nothing but follow in this a very long tradition, relatively very long where the Jews of the community are concerned, including the French community. My parents — and I should like to speak a little of my family, to explain how I reconcile these dimensions so easily; but I say it, all of us here, we all reconcile them, and I was very happy to hear Mr. Albert Memmi, who expresses so well what I myself feel, and what you all feel.

My parents, my grandparents, my great-grandparents became French citizens when the French Revolution was willing to give them citizenship. They came either from the Moselle or from Alsace, and for generations they have felt entirely French. Yet one did not use the word israélite; I never heard that word at home; one said “we are Jewish, we are French.” French, then, completely. Patriots, even. And at the same time, very few mixed marriages. One remained faithful to the tradition, but I must say that before the war I had not set foot in a synagogue, I did not know what it was; I believe I heard speak of Kippur for the first time when I was deported. I was truly what one might call the most hopeless of Jews where religious education is concerned. And yet, there had never been any doubt, in my family. We were Jewish, most of our friends were; and when one day I put the question to my father — “is it possible that, when I marry someone, he may not be Jewish?” — and the very fact that I put the question showed that, at bottom, it could be put, that there could be unpleasantness from my not marrying someone Jewish — he said to me: “oh, you will marry whoever you like, it is a question of freedom, and there, truly, parents have no business intervening; I, for cultural reasons, would never have married anyone other than a Jewish woman, or an aristocrat, because we have education and we have known how to read and write for centuries.” That is the answer my father gave me.

But, no doubt about this belonging — except that humanist values, important ones, were transmitted to us, and it was for all of us something we would not have wanted to renounce. Hardly Jewish [in practice], I nonetheless go to the synagogue for Kippur — not always, for that matter — but I am happy to be there, happy that my children accompany me; I must say that my parents had never done so for me; my parents had not, moreover, married religiously — married in 1920, which was rare — and my brother, who was deported, who died in deportation, had not been circumcised. As I said, one made no sorting.

Finally, I would say, a supreme, last fidelity for me: my family knows that I wish — but, out of fidelity, to annoy certain people too, I must say it, and to show that in my life it comes quite naturally — that there will be a prayer, a rabbi, some religious presence, because that is how, today, one shows that one is Jewish.

When I am no longer here, I hope that my children will be there to accompany me at my final moment.

I observe, moreover, that many of those who had rejected, in the postwar years, the idea of being Jewish are today a little — if they are still living — are perhaps a little disappointed, because their children, whom they had wanted to be Jewish no longer, very often come back to it. I am very struck to see how many children who were either baptized, whose names were changed, or in any case whose parents had moved away, have taken back their names and their cultural belongings. •