- Jules Isaac
Jules Isaac (
18 November 1877 - 1963,Aix-en-Provence ) was a Jewish French historian.Life
His father was a Jewish career soldier from the
Alsace , stationed in Rennes at the time of Jules' birth, who had opted for France rather than Prussia on the outbreak of theFranco-Prussian War in 1870. At 13, Jules lost both his parents in the course of a few months, and became an interne at thelycée Lakanal atSceaux . Aged 20, he first metCharles Péguy , the start of a long friendship, marked in particular by their creation of the review "Cahiers de la Quinzaine " and their joint support of Dreyfus in theDreyfus affair .He received the
agrégation in history, in 1902, the year of his marriage to Laure Ettinghausen. He taught inNice , then atSens .Ernest Lavisse introduced him to theHachette publishing house, who published the collection of history textbooks by Albert Malet. From then on Isaac was charged with editingaide-mémoire s for the baccalauréat. Made professor at thelycée Louis-le-Grand , then atlycée Saint-Louis , he extended his collaboration to textbooks for à des manuels primaire supérieur teaching, also added to the Malet collection.Albert Malet died on the Western front in 1915, and Jules Isaac edited alone a new series imposed by new education programmes. However, Malet's name remained the name by which the collection was known. A member of the Ligue des droits de l'homme et du citoyen, then of the
Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes , Jules Isaac got involved in trying to foster better understanding between French and Germans, and struggled especially for the revision of school textbooks to that end. In 1936, he was made inspector-general of public instruction.At the end of 1940, he was removed from office under the Vichy regime due to the statute discriminating against Jews. The académician
Abel Bonnard declared to "Gringoire " on 13 November 1942 that "it was not possible that France's history should be taught to young people by an Isaac". [Cited by Michel Winock, "La France et les Juifs", Seuil, Collection Histoire, p. 221.] Isaac's wife and daughter were arrested at Riom on7 October 1943 , then deported toAuschwitz and killed there. [Cf. A. Kaspi, "Jules Isaac ou la Passion de la Vérité", Plon, 2002.] His son was also arrested, but succeeded in escaping from a camp in Germany. In 1945, Jules Isaac was re-established in his rights as honorary inspector-general.Judaeo-Christian relations
Jules Isaac dedicated a large part of his efforts to research into the causes of
antisemitism . He published "Jésus et Israël", edited during the war, then inspired by the Charte deSeelisberg . Cofounder, withEdmond Fleg among others, and active member of "Amitiés judéo-chrétiennes" in 1947, he was particularly engaged in fighting anti-Semitism's Christian origins, which he saw as decisiveFact|date=April 2008. His essential idea was to make Early Christianity's Jewish origins better valued.In 1949, he and
Pope Pius XII intervened to revise the Good Friday prayer, which previously contained offensive references to the Jews. He thus helped start the road that led toVatican II and the declaration "Nostra Ætate " (1965) byPope John XXIII .Cquote|On 6 January 1956, at the hôtel Lutetia, where some years earlier the survivors of the extermination camps had ended their sinister journey, where families awaited the new grinding of the deportees, the MRAP awarded to Jules Isaac the prize of fraternity (...) The MRAP also recognises the great impact of "Jésus et Israël" and "Genèse de l'antisémitimisme". . [André Kaspi 2002, p. 239-241]
Works
*"
Jésus et Israël ", 1948 ;
*"Genèse de l'antisémitisme", 1956 ;
*"L'Enseignement du mépris ", 1962.Notes
External links
* [http://judaisme.sdv.fr/perso/jisaac/jisaac.htm Biography of Jules Isaac]
*André Kaspi : Jules Isaac ou la passion de la vérité (Plon 2002).
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