Berkley Center

Before arriving in France, I expected to bear witness to the myriad of problems related to the integration of France’s burgeoning Muslim populace, so frequently discussed in mainstream American media. Officially, ever since the passage of the Law of Separation in 1905, France has been a laïc state. The term does not translate easily into English, although it is frequently rendered as "secular." Whereas a truly secular state prefers the secular or the non-religious in the public sphere, French laïcité envisions a strict separation between the state and spirituality. In theory, therefore, the state is neither secular nor religious, but rather is completely detached from all questions of faith or a lack thereof.

However, the demographic composition of France has obviously changed substantially since 1905, and two changes in particular have served to create tensions with respect to this official policy of laïcité. Although the number of practicing French Catholics has been in decline ever since the turn of the nineteenth century, this trend became particularly accelerated after the student uprisings of 1968 as feminism and other new ideologies began to sweep away the traditional authority figures of French society. Simultaneously, in the wake of decolonization, France experienced an influx of immigrants from its former colonies in northern and central Africa who were eager to take advantage of France’s university system and prosperous economy. More recently, with the liberalization of borders between member states of the European Union, France has likewise become the home of immigrants from many other countries across western and eastern Europe. Thus, while France’s traditional inhabitants have increasingly favored a laïcité that verges on secularism in the classic sense of the term, some of France's new inhabitants have expressed their desire to see the state release its restrictions on religious expression in the public sphere. Islam, in particular, is frequently depicted as a social force in conflict with the traditional identity of the French Republic.

Consequently, I was rather taken aback to discover that the most heated recent challenge to laïcité implicated France’s Jewish community rather than its Muslim community. In mid-February, mere days after I disembarked in Paris, President Nicholas Sarkozy unveiled his proposal for a new Holocaust Education Plan during the course of a speech delivered to the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions. After controversially praising the merits of faith, Sarkozy went on to present the broad outlines of this plan, which would mandate that all French students, at the age of 11 years old, research the life story of a French Jewish child who had died in the Holocaust. Almost immediately, this plan provoked a maelstrom of controversy, eventually forcing Sarkozy to retract the plan in early May.

One of the primary objections leveled against the plan by many, including several prominent members of France’s Jewish community, concerned the utility of requiring students to tackle such a serious subject at a young age and questioned whether the experience might not be more traumatizing than informative. A second critique called into question the compatibility of such a policy, as well as Sarkozy’s favorable remarks regarding faith, with official state laïcité. For several weeks all of the major French media organs engaged in a vigorous debate about the identity of the French Republic and the role of religion with respect to that identity.

The round table debate aired on a public French television station, TFR1, entitled “Sarko: Directeur de conscience” ("Sarkozy: Director of Conscience"), was one such representative television program that I watched. Throughout the course of the program, scholars, sociologists, concerned citizens, and representatives of France’s religious communities discussed the ramifications of Sarkozy’s Holocaust Education Plan, his remarks with respect to faith, and the role of religion in French society in general. As the title of the program might indicate, the speakers overwhelmingly concluded in favor of staunch support for laïcité and, consequently, of a categorical rejection of religion in the public sphere. Sarkozy’s remarks in favor of faith and his evocation of France’s Catholic past were interpreted as a subtle means of arousing nostalgia for the period of the concordat (1804-1905), when the French state paid the salaries of the key representatives of the three major French religions at the time (Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism) and simultaneously accorded certain special concessions to the Catholic sect as the dominant faith and a critical transformative force throughout French history.

Several guests referenced the will of the people as the ultimate justification for strict laïcité and cited studies suggesting that the majority of France’s electorate is either atheist or agnostic. It must be noted, however, that such studies are necessarily inconclusive, as, ever since the overthrow of the Vichy government at the end of World War II, it has been illegal in France to register the religious preferences of citizens even as part of the public census data. This policy was intended to prevent a second Holocaust, as the Vichy collaborators during World War II had made use of census material to facilitate the round-up and internment of France’s Jewish citizens. Henceforth, all of France’s citizens would be subsumed by the Republic regardless of their religious beliefs. Given this context, the fear enunciated by several of the guests, that Sarkozy’s decision to praise faith in the public sphere contained a latent threat of racism, made more sense. If the Republic were to once again adopt a religious identity or to differentiate between its citizens on the basis of religion (often linked to ethnic origin in France) there is certainly a risk that certain citizens could be marginalized or shown preferential treatment on this basis. (Of course, one can also argue that when open religious discussion is suppressed in the public sphere, marginalization can take more insidious forms, a topic that I will treat in my next letter).

Against the swell of arguments proffered against Sarkozy’s policy, the sole argument offered in its favor was that perhaps the obligations of memory exhorted more rigorous, mandatory Holocaust education, however traumatic the experience may be for France’s students. This argument struck a particular chord for me, because I had already noticed that popular representations of Judaism in France still seem to be very much linked to the Holocaust and its aftermath rather than to contemporary practices. The obligations of memory are taken very seriously in France. While searching for textbooks for my classes, I was struck firstly by the wealth of literature in France concerning the experience of the French Jew during and immediately after the Holocaust and, secondly, by the comparative dearth of literature treating Jewish theology or practice. I made a similar observation when I attended Le Salon de livres, a sort of national book fair. The theme of the event this year was the creation of a new Israeli literature. Nearly all of the documentaries, guest speakers, and round tables evoked the influence of the Holocaust on Israeli literature and seemed in comparison to gloss over the more recent history of Israel and its role in the Middle East. Although I in no way wish to play down the importance of the Holocaust as a pivotal moment for the practice of Judaism in America, it seems that in France the Holocaust casts its shadow over the faith in such a forceful manner that it almost excludes any more contemporary renderings of Jewish practice.