Shmuel Trigano, Covenant - Global Jewish Magazine, April 2007
After the Shoah, a new model of Jewish identity was born in France, one that defined itself in relation to the "community", in other words, a Jewish collective destiny, a "Jewish people" that the birth of the State of Israel came to embody. This was a new type of identity, given that France's centralist political culture had never allowed such an identity to emerge before. The French political culture only recognizes anonymous individuals as its citizens. The combined events of the unification of Europe (leading to the weakening of Nation-States and national identities) and the simultaneous massive Arab-Muslim immigration made this model of identity impossible. Society no longer supports it but rather delegitimizes it and dissolves it into itself. The anti-Semitic crisis of the 21st century is only the apparent side of a profound and radical crisis that is putting French Jewishness at a crucial crossroad of its destiny. The article analyzes various possible scenarios for a future posing the terms of the problem.
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