#历史开讲 #
When a person tries to conquer a country, in the true sense of the word, he must complete two kinds of conquests, geographical conquest, that is, material conquest, and demographic conquest, that is, moral conquest. Since the French conquest of Algiers, France has continuously transmitted its cultural values to the colonies, whether it is the establishment of secular schools or the integration of Algerian Jews into the French legal system, which is a manifestation of France's attempts to assimilate Algerians.
The assimilation tendencies of colonial Jews and the dilemmas they faced
In the early years of the establishment of the Local Synod, the policy of assimilation pursued in France did not show much success, despite the use of civilized and moral methods by the Jewish elite of the Algerian Jewish community. French policy did not have an immediate impact on Algerian Jewry, and its moral, ideological, and educational effects were gradually getting better. Jews do not present the image of victimized colonized.
The local Jewish community was in fact in a state of contradiction, showing both resistance and adaptability to the French invasion. In their efforts to maintain business privileges or preserve local religious practices, Jews in Algeria often refused French reformers and rabbis tasked with overseeing their communities, rejected the option of being run by French law officials, and tried to maintain newly banned schools and synagogues.
For Algeria's Jewish community, France's policies put them in the awkward position of political dependency, economic powerlessness, and cultural passivity. They express their grievances and emphasize piety in their own traditions, but they also express patriotism and the quest for civilization, which is actually a colonial ideology.
In 1844 and 1845, two decrees were issued placing the Synod in Algeria under the supervision of the Minister of War, essentially making Jews part of colonial rule. On the other hand, the French government tried to integrate Jews with the French, also distinguishing Jews from the natives.
In the case of Oran, which until 1847 was run economically and religiously by the Jewish community, Jews in Åland were hostile when the colonial government intervened. But at the 1847 Synod in Oran, Åland's secular officials and French Jewish rabbis took a public oath of allegiance to the King of France. Emmanuel Menachem Najon was the first French official to be appointed to the Synod of Orran, but in reality, he was a Moroccan Jew who had acquired French nationality.
He wrote a letter to the World Israelite League in Paris in 1865 expressing the growing tensions between Jews and Muslims in Algeria, at this time as vice-consul of France. But he was originally a translator for the French army. In Algeria at the time, a small number of Jews shared the same fate as Emmanuel Menachem Najon. French officials demanded that independent synagogues in Åland be registered and included in the synod system, and that only with permission could they continue to function.
Education of young children in the Jewish community
This was only the first step in assimilating Jews at the Synod. The Synod soon shifted its focus to the Jewish community and worked on the moral and educational education of children and adolescents. But this did not last long. But in the process, the stratification of Jews has become apparent: some wealthy Jews quickly adapted to the new public environment and community life, but others are very disgusted and angry at this control, and they are unwilling to accept this sudden change in life.
In colonial incarnations of the Synod, they represented the strengthening of French civic institutions that shaped Jewish life in Algerian cities. In the early Synods, the Civilized Mission was a noble but depressing policing exercise. In 1847-1848, the local Jews of Åland launched a campaign against the local synod because they saw too many non-native elements in the synod and Moroccan Jews as their leaders.
The struggle against local religious councils in Åland also exemplifies the complex relationship between Algerian Jewish assimilation, French citizenship, and colonial authorities. Education for Jews in France was not smooth, and separate girls' schools and other schools established by municipalities did not have high student enrolment. When France established schools in Algeria, Algerian Jews seemed less enthusiastic about French education and rarely sent their children to French Jewish schools.
Schooling was part of colonial rule, through which the colonial government believed that the moral conquest of Algerian Jews could be achieved. Local Jews had a longstanding distrust of French Jewish schools. Unlike the Muslim schools, Jewish schooling was not controlled by the French military, and their education was unique, but at the same time carried a deep imprint of colonialism.
It was also gratifying that the consistent efforts to monitor, control and change the education of indigenous Algerian Jews, which had led to major compromises with local institutions and cultural forms, represented a battlefield like synagogues and that civilized efforts tended to conform to the wishes of local Algerian Jews, including those responsible for carrying out education. French education advanced further as some rabbis in Algeria allied themselves with reformists.
Schools in Algeria are considered French-language schools because of the mandatory time of study in French, which guarantees both the spread of French culture and the observance of local beliefs and customs. Although French education was a small part of Algeria's colonial system, it was intertwined with the establishment and development of other controlling institutions in the process, and they maintained their own traditions until the mass naturalization of Algerian Jews in 1870.
In 1860, the Paris-based World League of Israelites began a "civilized mission" to uplift and modernize the Jews by spreading French culture and education to them. The alliance was originally formed by Jews, and in the process of development it was also affirmed and cooperated by some Christians. The founders of the League were a group of French Jews who, in France, had gained a large degree of civil rights, and even to some extent, were politically equal to Christianity, and that they had a duty to help unfortunate fellow religious people elsewhere.
The League wanted to free Jews from oppressive and discriminatory laws and improve their social status. The World Union of Israelis provides relief to the oppressed Jews through a number of social and political activities. After the formation of the Union, a proposal to the French government to extend official French protection to all Jews in Muslim countries, especially those in North Africa, was not accepted.
But the League's activities in the Middle East and North Africa to create elementary and vocational schools for Jewish communities, teaching French, were soon recognized as part of what they saw as official France's civilized mission. The League's efforts were concentrated in Morocco and Tunisia, where the first school was established in Tetouan, Morocco, in 1862, but it was not until 1900 that Algeria had its first school established in Algiers by the World Union of Israelis.
Although in the ensuing period the League began to operate in Algeria and schools and learning centres were established, there were very few schools in Algeria compared to the League's activities in Morocco. Also a country in North Africa, why is the difference between Algeria and Morocco so stark? In fact, when the League was founded to improve the lives of Jews by establishing schools and education, with the promulgation of the Decree of Crimieux in 1870, Algerian Jews became French citizens, and the League did not focus on Algeria.
But when anti-Jewish riots broke out in Algeria at the end of the 19th century, the League sent investigators to Algeria, where they found that there was no unity within Algerian Jews, and that there was a serious separation between the upper elite and the lower classes. In the League's view, Algeria's wealthy Jews, having undergone upward mobility, had gradually integrated into colonial society, which led to a decline in their ties with Judaism, thereby weakening unity among Jews.
In the face of anti-Semitism in Algeria, most Jews, with the exception of a small number of young Jews who fought back, did not know how to defend themselves. Accordingly, the League decided to establish religious and vocational education schools in Algeria. Before the establishment of schools by the Union, a part of Algerian Jews also attended French schools, in which secular subjects occupied an important place according to the French school program at the time.
The World Union of Israelis is in some way seen as significant evidence of the assimilation of Jews in France. The League's schools adopted a French-speaking approach, and he first established a teacher training school in Paris, from which students graduated were sent to teach in different schools in the North African region.
The World Union of Israelis was deeply assimilationist because he recognized the liberation of Jews in France, and in advancing the spread of the French language, it was also well aware that French might become the most practical language for Jews in North Africa and the Middle East. France does not have strong control over schools in the Middle East, but there will be special personnel to check to make sure people teach French.
In the public sphere, these Jews remained assimilators and, therefore, were able to integrate particularism into a universal concept about the French. Privately, however, they strive to maintain their traditions and remain faithful to their religion, although in many cases they do so little and in an increasingly rationalist way. Around 1870, the legal status of Algerian Jews changed greatly, and more and more Jews studied French and attended French schools, but their road to assimilation was not smooth, except for a small number of Jewish elites and wealthy Jews who yearned for the life of the metropolis.
The collective naturalization of Algerian Jews in 1870, like the implementation of civil marriage, provided an interesting test case in the field of marriage. The Decree of Crimieux made Algerian Jews French citizens, which meant that they had to obey French law. Under French law, only civil marriages are legal, but many Algerian Jews still reject civil marriages, mainly religious marriages.
This phenomenon was denounced by the Central Religious Tribunal in France. The Central Inquisition of France held that assimilation was the best option, and that civil marriage did not mean that they had seized power from the rabbi. In the accusations, if local Jews refused to hold a civil marriage in France, they would effectively be excommunicated, and they would have no right to burial, bar mitzvah, divorce or any other religious office.
Any Jew who ignores religious authority risks having his descendants considered illegitimate and, worse, denied its legitimacy. Whether it was the voluntary submission of Algerian Jews or the intervention of French Jews, the decline in organized religious education in the late 19th and early 20th centuries reflected the strengthening of the secularization of Algerian Jews. Citizenship gave them the right to vote and increased career choices.