Aron Beckerman's City of Light: writing French history and defining immigrant Jewish space in interwar Paris. (9th October 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: UNDERWOOD, NICK
• Is Part Of: Urban history. Volume 43:Part 4(2016)
• Page Start: 618
• Page End: 634
• Publication Date: 2015-10-09
• Subjects: Cities and towns -- History -- Periodicals; Cities and towns -- History -- Bibliography -- Periodicals; 909.09732
• DOI: 10.1017/S096392681500084X
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0963-9268

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article 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 meant to be 'French'.