The development of Jewish historical consciousness stems at once from the secularization of European societies and from the will to emancipation of the Jews, a will that expressed itself through varied political orientations ranging from the republican cult within French Judaism to revolutionary strategies in Eastern Europe. It corresponds to a desire to apprehend Jewish existence in its plural dimensions, and to a valorization of the historical vector insofar as the latter appears essential in its relation to the construction of national identities and as a producer of identity.
The book that has appeared from Les Belles Lettres under the direction of Delphine Bechtel, Evelyne Patlagean, Jean Charles Szurek and Paul Zadawski examines, in an informed and subtle way, the significant moments of this questioning, of this construction and of these collective representations of the past — in Hungary, in Poland, under the Russian Empire, in Germany during the First World War or in the nineteenth century — in a series of articles that take up, through autobiographies, narrative anthologies, or historians’ debates, this articulation between historical work and reflection on identity.
As its title indicates, the book’s analysis extends from the Germany of the nineteenth century, where the questioning of the Jewish past proceeds through a vision of Hellenism posited as a reference point, all the way to the management of memory in the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe; nor is Yiddish literature forgotten. As one of the authors writes: “The writing of history by itself [by Ashkenazi Judaism], from the historians’ constructions to the memory communicated by the witness, has appeared today as an initial and crucial question, by reason of the very intimate articulation that is always knotted between historical work and reflection on identity.” In sum: a fascinating assessment of the past and present of European Ashkenazi Judaism, one that opens onto the questions of the future of our culture.
A fascinating assessment of the past, one that opens onto the question of the future of our culture.