New Book on Black Jews in France
The Centre for Religion and Public Life is thrilled to announce the publication of Scriptualizing Jewishness Through Blackness: Black Jews in France (Lexington Books, 2024). The book is authored by Aurélien Mokoko Gampiot, who is a visiting research fellow at our Centre for Religion and Public Life, a senior research associate on the Archiving the Inner City Project at the Department of Sociology of the University of York, and an associate researcher at the Groupe Sociétés Religions Laïcité (CNRS, France) hosted by the Sorbonne (École Pratique des Hautes Études).
Here is an interview with Aurélien about his fascinating research. Congratulations, Aurélien!
How did this book come about?
As a sociologist of religions, I have always been interested in exploring the liberation theologies elaborated by African initiated churches (AIC’s) as they go about interpreting the Scriptures. In my previous book, Kimbanguism, An African Understanding of the Bible (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017), I studied the forms of appropriation of the Bible by the Kimbanguists in a comparative approach including other AIC’s.
My interest in Black Jews in France was born in 2009, soon after they first became visible in the country’s media. I became aware of the presence in France of Jews of African descent who were not necessarily Ethiopian; indeed, most of them are converts and were quite willing to share their experiences with me. A dozen scholarly papers and the monography that has just come out with Lexington Books are the result of this long participant observation of 15 years.
What is the key argument that the book develops?
The study explores the struggle for visibility of a religious minority within a minority, which has to grapple both with the French Jewry and broader French society. It first provides readers with a concise overview of the historical presence of the Black and Jewish minorities in France from a comparative angle, which is unusual. Then, after investigating how the converts among my respondents self-identify as Jews, I address the challenges of conversion to Judaism within the French context, offering a typology of their motives. The book’s argument is to show how, in spite of the discrimination they have faced, Black Jews in France have been carving out a place for themselves within the French Jewry, by describing first how they negotiate with Jewish authorities while asserting their dual identity, and also how they have organized into associations to collectively fight both racism and antisemitism. The book also shows how love facilitates Black individuals’ integration into Jewish communities, whether via adoption or via interracial unions.
What insight does the book provide concerning the relationship between religion and public life?
Because religion raises numerous debates in French society, particularly concerning antisemitism and racism, my book discusses the relationship between religion and public life in its focus on the situation of both minorities: Blacks and Jews. The book aims to contribute to public debates on diversity in France and inform readers on the impact religions continue having on French society – despite its secularization and unique understanding of the place of religion in public and even private spaces. It discusses the complex, often controversial, role of religion in French politics and the way it is weaponized in media and politicians’ framing of societal questions.
Give us a quote that you believe will make us go and read it!
“There’s the Holocaust and on the other side there’s slavery, so if you close your eyes, you tell yourself, yikes, that’s a big load of suffering to bear; but I have no stories to tell on the side of slavery, since people didn’t talk about it, you know slavery was actually a taboo. Slavery was abolished in 1848 and my grandfather was born in 1898 so he was born a free man, that’s definitely something, it’s part of History and it’s my history… It’s my history because when people speak of the French Caribbean they necessarily imply slavery… But no, my children aren’t curious about it, it’s a distant thing, probably because I talk less about it, while my father kept talking about the Holocaust and we were soaking it up, it’s a heavy load to bear. On the contrary, my mother was like, the West Indies is where life is good, but that was her personality and her family’s history too, so that she did not bring everything back to slavery. That’s all. The history of the Holocaust was a constant topic of conversation, and we were really soaking it up, to such a point that whenever I hear there’s a documentary on the Holocaust I buy [the DVD] and I read a lot [on it], I also visited quite a few concentration camps. They say it’s a trauma that got transmitted across generations and it’s true, it’s a trauma that I have and I did tell the children a lot about it, and made them go to museums with me… What did I transmit the children? Well it’s not just the religion, it’s the culture and the history. That’s what I’ve passed on to them. Our family history.” (Laure, 55, October 2020)
(For further information, see also here.)