Aron Beckerman's City of Light: Writing French History and Defining Immigrant Jewish Space in Interwar Paris (original) (raw)

This paper examines the writing of a little-known, but prolific interwar immigrant Eastern European Parisian Yiddish writer, Aron Beckerman, to demonstrate how Yiddish journalism played a pivotal role in defining Paris as a simultaneously French and Jewish space to immigrant Jews living in the city. Engaging urban historical theory on the communal-building effect that public space can have, this article argues that within Beckerman’s writings on Paris-its history and specific places within the city-we see a Paris emerge that details a universalist Republican identity, which, when read through a Jewish lens, leads simultaneously to a particular immigrant, Yiddish-speaking, leftist Jewish understanding of what it means to be "French."