Full Description
The Alliance Israélite Universelle, a French-Jewish organization founded in 1860, occupies a crucial place in the history of Sephardi communities in the modern period. In the fifty years after its creation, the Alliance established a vast network of schools in the lands of Islam for the purpose of "civilizing" the local Jewish communities and remaking them in the idealized self-image of French Jewry.
This study, drawing on the author's extensive research in the archives of the Alliance in Paris, focuses on the work of the Alliance among Turkish Jewry, one of the communities most strongly affected by the organizations' activities. Although the Alliance played a conclusive role in the Westernization of Turkish Jews, it was also the unwitting catalyst for the emrgence of new political movements such as Zionism, which turned away from the Alliance's ideology and ultimately threatened the survival of its schools. This book illuminates an important episode in the history of Sephardi and French Jewries as they interacted through the Alliance Israélite Universelle and draws important conclusions about the transformation of European as well as Middle Eastern Jewries in the modern era.
Contents
Acknowledgments Introduction I. The Emergence of the OJewish Eastern QuestionO The Damascus Affair and the Ideology of Emancipation, 1 The Image of the Eastern Jew in the 1840s and 1850s, 8 The Foundation of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, 17 II. Turkish Jewry in the Age of the Tanzimat The Ottoman State and the Jewish Community, 28 Traditional Mass Education among Turkish Jewry, 35 Educational Reform, Communal Crisis, and the Foundation of New Schools, 38 III. The Politics of Schooling: The Alliance Israelite and the Jewish Communities of Turkey The Establishment of the Schools, 47 Teachers, Committees, Communities, 57 IV. Educating Turkish Jewry The Teachers and the Moralizing Impulse, 71 Jewish Education, 80 The Alliance School as the Emporium of Languages, 85 The Alliance Network in the First Decade of the Twentieth Century, 90 V. The Alliance Schools and Jewish Society in Turkey Vocational Training, 100 The Social Impact of the Schools, 111 VI. The Alliance and the Emergence of Zionism in Turkey The Alliance at the Summit: 1908, 121 The Emergency of Zionism in Istanbul, 126 The Coming of Age of Turkish Jewry, 131 The Response of the Alliance to Zionism, 137 VII. Between French Imperialism and Turkish Nationalism: The End of the Alliance in Turkey The Alliance and French Interest in the Levant, 145 From Empire to Republic: The Alliance Schools in the Age of Turkish Nationalism, 157 Conclusion Abbreviations Notes Bibliography Index
