Thesis (Ph. D.)--Yale University, 2000. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

IMPLICATIONS OF JEWISH DIVORCES THAT BECAME CAUSES CÉLÈBRES: THE REFORM OF JEWISH STATUS AND JURIDICAL CENTRALIZATION Suzette Blom Advisor: University of Guelph, 2012 Professor William Cormack This dissertation examines the reform of Jewish status in France in the eighteenth century in connection with the monarchy's impetus to centralize juridical authority. In particular it focuses on how litigating divorces in sovereign courts affected Jewish civil status. This study suggests a new perspective on events leading up to the decrees of 1790 and 1791 that granted the Jews active citizenship and the legalization of divorce in 1792. It examines the extent of the role that making Jewish divorce subject to secular national courts played in the acceptance of Jews as citizens. It concludes that Jewish divorces which attracted public attention as causes célèbres enhanced the role of the Jews in the larger process of juridical centralization and added a new dimension to the construction of a French identity. It further concludes that the reform of Jewish status was part of the erosion of traditional religious values and the growth of ideals of individualism. The principal manifestation of this process was the attempt to develop a uniform legal code for both the public and private spheres. This change included calls for the dissolution of marriage which was prohibited in France for all groups other than Jews as a result of the influence of the Church. This analysis relies on published mémoires judicaires for Jewish divorces that became causes célèbres. These mémoires reflected the changing attitudes towards the patriarchal concept of authority symbolized by indissoluble marriage, the erosion of corporate autonomy for the Jews and the reform of Jewish status. This analysis also relies on the correspondence and memoires of sovereign administrators, reformers and Jewish leaders which reflected the divisiveness of political and social opinion regarding the restructuring of authority. Little study has been done on the litigation of Jewish divorce in sovereign courts as an aspect of juridical centralization. Yet the mémoires judicaire of the Peixotto and Levy cases provide excellent case studies of the evolution in attitudes toward divorce and the acceptance of Jews as French subjects. Although there has been considerable scholarship to support the idea that the events of the French Revolution were grounded on the developments and reforms of previous decades, this analysis demonstrates that juridical centralization played a more critical role than has previously been considered.

De 1944 à la fin des années soixante, les groupements juifs parisiens organisèrent de multiples rassemblements pour commémorer la Shoah et la participation des Juifs à la défense et à la libération de la France pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Ces cérémonies constituaient un rituel sociopolitique profondément ancré au sein d’un monde juif fortement clivé et politisé (première partie). Les commémorations s’apparentaient également à un vecteur de mémoire en articulant le deuil collectif et les expériences individuelles de la perte, en mettant en récit le passé commémoré et en œuvrant à sa transmission auprès des plus jeunes (deuxième partie). Enfin, les rassemblements étudiés jouaient le rôle de ressource identitaire, permettant aux Juifs de Paris de définir ce qu’ils étaient en se positionnant notamment par rapport à trois pôles d’identification : la France, l’État d’Israël et la tradition religieuse juive (troisième partie). Au vu de cette dense activité commémorative et des fonctions politiques, sociales et culturelles majeures qui lui étaient assignées, il apparaît que la Shoah ne fut en aucun cas passée sous le boisseau au sein de la vie publique juive dont il convient aussi de réévaluer la vitalité dans la France de l’après-guerre. Ces commémorations participèrent à la fabrique et à la reconstruction de la collectivité juive de Paris tant par le souci de leurs organisateurs de renforcer sa cohésion interne que par l’expression et la production des conflits qui la traversaient et la fragmentaient. C’est, pour partie du moins, autour de ses morts que le monde juif parisien revint à la vie au lendemain de la guerre et du génocide. / Between 1944 and the end of the sixties, Parisian Jewish groups organized many gatherings to commemorate the Holocaust and the Jewish contribution to France’s defense and liberation during World War Two. These ceremonies constituted an important sociopolitical ritual within the very divided and politicized Parisian Jewry (part I). Commemorations also served as a carrier of memory by articulating public mourning and individual experiences of loss, narrating the commemorated past, and transmitting it to the youngest members of the community (part II). Lastly, these gatherings played a key role as a source of identity, allowing Parisian Jews to define who they were, especially in relation to three pillars of identification : France, the State of Israel, and the Jewish religious tradition (part III). Given this dense commemorative activity and its major political, social and cultural functions, it is clear that the Holocaust was never kept quiet within French Jewish public life, whose postwar vitality is worth reevaluating. Commemorations contributed to the making of Parisian Jewry not only through their instigators’ efforts to reinforce the community's internal cohesion, but also by virtue of enabling the expression and emergence of conflicts. It is at least in part by gathering around its dead in the aftermath of war and genocide that the Parisian Jewish world returned to life.