A Sephardi Life in Southeastern Europe. Aron Rodrigue
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effective as a mouthpiece for the Jewish world in international events such as the Congress of Berlin in 1878, where it contributed toward the granting of equal rights to the Jews of Romania. It continually struggled for the rights of Jews and often succeeded in obtaining reparation for injustices.8
Its principal work, however, was in the field of education. Civil and legal emancipation was not enough. The society incarnated all the impulses that had contributed toward the formation of a modern form of French Judaism after the French Revolution; it was the very crystallization of this new republican Franco-Judaism, which had emerged with such force by the second half of the nineteenth century. The Alliance and its leaders were deeply permeated by the message of the French Revolution and its implications for Jews. Jews were to be emancipated and become full citizens. The entire progress of history was perceived teleologically as leading to the act of emancipation. At the same time, having internalized the Enlightenment discourse on the Jews, which found one of its best expressions in the Abbé Grégoire, who defined the emancipatory model for the French Revolution, the Alliance also believed that Jews had to reform and civilize themselves, or “regenerate” themselves, to show they were worthy of becoming citizens. In practice, that meant abandoning as much as possible all forms of particularism—Jewish languages, for example—and “fusing” into modern civilization, of which French culture was considered the fulfillment. World Jewry as a whole was to reform itself, and all its members were to become modern emancipated citizens. In regions where the cultural level of Jews was considered to have fallen too low, the administration of a healthy dose of French culture was deemed to be an important factor in “regeneration.” The agent of that transformation, of course, would be the modern school.9
The Alliance embarked upon its self-imposed mission of reforming and “regenerating” the Jewish world. For various reasons, but in particular because the Russian government did not allow foreign organizations to influence any part of its population, the Alliance made no headway in the Ashkenazi world. That was not the case in Sephardi regions. By the second half of the nineteenth century, the time of triumphant imperialism, the Ottoman Empire and other Muslim states were greatly weakened, and none of them provided any resistance to the Alliance. Thus, the activities of the organization would be particularly important around the Mediterranean basin.
The first Alliance school was opened in Tetuan, Morocco, in 1862 and was soon followed by others elsewhere in North Africa and in the Middle East. By 1914, the Alliance had established a network of schools extending from Morocco in the west to Iran in the east and including 183 institutions, nearly 1,200 teachers, and 43,700 students. It had succeeded in eclipsing the traditional Jewish educational system and had even supplanted it in numerous places.10
In general, the Alliance intervened at the invitation of Jewish notables from the area, who felt that a diffusion of European education among local Jews would contribute to improving the economic situation of the community as a whole. In a context where the West had become a major partner in public life and in the economy, it was very clear that a knowledge of European methods and languages was a necessity. And it was the French language above all that served as lingua franca.
The institutions opened by the society were primary schools, where French was the language of instruction. Although greatly inspired by the curriculum in use in the French system of elementary education, in time these institutions developed their own programs, making a place for the study of local languages and Hebrew and for instruction in Jewish religion and history.11 In a context where secular and European disciplines began to take on ever greater importance, the Jewish disciplines were quickly relegated to the background, losing the central place they had occupied in the traditional system of education. Although it was never the intention of the Alliance to minimize the importance of Jewish education, it is obvious that for many of its students, what counted above all was learning French.
The love affair that many Sephardim had with French is perfectly illustrated in Arié’s writings. He indicates that, for him, learning French in the Alliance school was a marvelous “game,” a real pleasure. Arié soon demonstrated his intellectual abilities and become the favorite of his teachers, a situation that was repeated when he pursued his studies in Paris. He had free access to the school library and became a voracious reader during his adolescence, consuming most of the French and foreign classics. His imagination was shaped by his readings, and he himself draws our attention to the fact that it was Fénelon’s Télémaque that marked him most profoundly, particularly its style. Through the French language, he entered the fabulous world of the West and began to live there vicariously, even though he was still in the Levant. The Gallomania that was increasingly to characterize Westernized Sephardim often had its roots in Alliance schools and in the initiation into the French language and its literature they had undergone there.
Arié arranged to pursue his studies at the Alliance school in Balat (a Jewish quarter of Istanbul) after the upheavals in Samakov at the time of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 and the Bulgarian declaration of independence. Along with thousands of Jews who fled the battles and became refugees, he reached the Ottoman capital, along with several members of his family, and entered the Alliance school at the first opportunity, In Istanbul, as in Samakov, Arié was the student of Nissim Béhar, one of the most important of the teachers of the organization and destined to have a remarkable career in the Alliance schools in Jerusalem, where he was particularly active in the rebirth of Hebrew.12 Arié does not often mention Nissim Béhar and seems to have been more impressed by his wife, who was also an Alliance teacher and died very young in Balat. But there is no doubt that the Alliance schools in Samakov and Balat shaped the early years of the precocious child.
It was, therefore, very natural for Arié to choose the career that seemed the most promising to him, by becoming an Alliance teacher in his turn. His father was barely able to provide for his needs and was not in a position to offer his son an appealing way of earning a living. In addition, it is very clear that the attraction of the Alliance was irresistible to a young man such as Gabriel, who decided to join the organization that had liberated and emancipated him intellectually and that had opened entirely new worlds to his curious mind. The Ecole Normale Israélite Orientale (ENIO) was the logical next stop in his itinerary.
Although, in the beginning, the Alliance sent French Jews to teach in its schools, it soon became quite clear that the society could not recruit an adequate number of instructors in France. The Central Committee decided to sign up the best of the schools’ alumni from the Middle East and North Africa, bring them to Paris to undergo intensive training for four years, and then send them back to teach in the schools. The ENIO opened its doors in 1867. The institution was first located in a Jewish trade school on rue des Rosiers in Paris and, after several moves, finally established its own campus in Auteuil in 1889. For many decades, the ENIO trained hundreds of young Sephardim destined to become the backbone of the society’s educational infrastructure.13
Like Arié, many had come from relatively humble backgrounds. The career of instructor was an excellent means for social ascension. At the ENIO, these Sephardim did not merely acquire pedagogical tools, however. They were also permeated with the ideological message of the Alliance, which they internalized; with the zeal of neophytes, they became in turn the missionaries of the ideology of emancipation and regeneration, the mark of the Alliance and of Franco-Judaism in the second half of the nineteenth century. They spread that ideology and that message throughout the Middle East and North Africa, establishing ties between the Jews of Europe and their Sephardi coreligionists and transforming themselves into effective agents of Westernization.
Arié not only was deeply influenced by the education he received at the ENIO but also established a broad network of contacts there who would prove very useful during his career in Alliance schools. His fellow students Loria, Loupo, Niégo, Fresco, Nabon, Benveniste, and Navon belonged to the first generation of Alliance teachers and went on to form the elite of its faculty. Owing to the work of such young and enthusiastic followers, the organization was able to establish its network of schools and realize a number of the objectives it had set for itself. The esprit de corps that marked that generation was very strong, and Arié was to remain in contact with his colleagues throughout his life, exchanging letters with them and following developments in their lives and in the activities of the Alliance in the various