Arabs of the Jewish faith

About this book

Exploring how Algerian Jews responded to and appropriated France's newly conceived "civilizing mission" in the mid-nineteenth century, Arabs of the Jewish Faith shows that this mission, while rooted in French Revolutionary ideals of regeneration, enlightenment, and emancipation, actually developed as a strategic response to the challenges of controlling the unruly populations of Algeria's coastal cities. Hoping to weaken the influence of local networks and institutions, French observers insisted upon "civilizing" the supposedly oppressed and corrupt Jews of Algeria in order to attach them to France. Central to this gendered, moralizing campaign was an effort to submit Algerian Jews to French marriage and family law. Taken together, civilizing's various policies were intended to help establish a colonial hierarchy by dividing Jews from their Muslim neighbors. Local Algerian Jews, however, were not passive recipients of this campaign. While energetically adopting the language of civilization, they used it to maintain their own rabbis, synagogues, and schools, and to resist policies intended to reshape their marriage customs, institutional life, and religious faith. --Book Jacket.