Beyond the Pletzl: Jewish urban histories in interwar France. (8th October 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: CORBER, ERIN; SCOTT-WEAVER, MEREDITH L.; UNDERWOOD, NICK; MALINOVICH, NADIA
• Is Part Of: Urban history. Volume 43:Part 4(2016)
• Page Start: 577
• Page End: 580
• Publication Date: 2015-10-08
• Subjects: Cities and towns -- History -- Periodicals; Cities and towns -- History -- Bibliography -- Periodicals; 909.09732
• DOI: 10.1017/S0963926815000814
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0963-9268

Abstract

Abstract : In the 1930s, Walter Benjamin described Paris as 'the capital of the nineteenth century', the hub of cultural transformations precipitated by the rise of industrial capitalism. For good reasons, Jewish historians have followed suit in identifying Paris as the focal point for studies of political, social, cultural, demographic and economic change in France during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Moreover, native French Jewish religious and cultural administrative structures, implemented during Napoleon I's reign and further entrenched by reforms in the Third Republic, are centred in Paris. These conditions have rendered an abundance of source material documenting the rest of the country from the centre, a phenomenon that places even more weight on the capital as a locus for national processes that occur in its image.