Presence, evictions and reconstitutions of Jewish communities in France

Although there is clear evidence of a Jewish presence in the Narbonne region from the first century BC, its archaeology is still embryonic. Yet, the remains in cemeteries recreate the tenuous traces of the important existence of medieval communities, then their deportation in the fourteenth century. Later, the Lorraine necropolises testify to the "resettlement" of the Jews in the sixteenth century to supply the citadel of Metz. Those on the Aquitaine coast conserve the traces of the tolerance evidenced by the "new Christians" fleeing from the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal. Burials recently unearthed in an eighteenth-century cellar in the Hôtel-Dieu in Lyon attest to the movement of Jews in the kingdom, despite the 1394 expulsion edict still being in force. Medieval synagogues are recognized in Carpentras, Montpellier and Orleans, but little is known of the location of community buildings (synagogues, schools, baths, bakeries, butchers...) that have been reassigned to other uses in the old centres of hundreds of cities where the place names have nevertheless kept the memory ("Jewry" streets...).

From the nineteenth century, some synagogues bear witness to the arrival of Jews from all over Europe (such as the one on the Rue Pavée in Paris, built by Hector Guimard for a Russian Hasidic community). Finally, the urban space keeps a trace of the arrival of the Jews in the Maghreb, after decolonization in districts whose sociology has changed profoundly in recent decades. Archaeology thus lets us trace the emergence, disappearance, maintenance or reconstitution of very diverse communities, whose knowledge remains a blind spot in the history of France.

Transition