French Enlightenment and The Jews

The author's daring thesis, that "modern, secular anti-Semitism was fashioned not as a reaction to the Enlightenment and the Revolution, but within the Enlightenment and Revolution themselves", is developed after a solid analysis of the three groupings of Jews in ancien régime France: the urbane, politically assimilated Sephardic colony of Bordeaux; the less welcome protégés of the Avignon Popes; and the poor, barely tolerated "foreign" Jews of Metz and Alsace, who followed their own laws, wore their own garments, and worshipped the God of the Bible and the Talmud despite Voltaire's disapproval. The author finds that modern anti-Semitism owes less to Christian theological mentality than to doctrinaire libertarianism of such as Voltaire, d'Holbach, Diderot and Marat.

Arthur Hertzberg, professor of Jewish studies at New York University, is the author of numerous books, including The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader and The Jews in America: Four Centuries of an Uneasy Encounter: A History (Columbia).