Name Jules Isaac | Books Jesus and Israel | |
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Died September 6, 1963, Aix-en-Provence, France | ||
Jules Isaac (18 November 1877, Rennes – 6 September 1963, Aix-en-Provence) was a Jewish French historian.
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Life
His father was a Jewish career soldier from the Alsace, stationed in Rennes at the time of Jules' birth, who had opted for France rather than Prussia on the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. At 13, Jules lost both his parents in the course of a few months, and became an interne at the lycee Lakanal at Sceaux. Aged 20, he first met Charles Peguy, the start of a long friendship, marked in particular by their creation of the review Cahiers de la Quinzaine and their joint support of Dreyfus in the Dreyfus affair.
He received the agregation in history, in 1902, the year of his marriage to Laure Ettinghausen. He taught in Nice, then at Sens. Ernest Lavisse introduced him to the Hachette publishing house, who published the collection of history textbooks by Albert Malet. From then on Isaac was charged with editing aide-memoires for the baccalaureat. Made professor at the lycee Louis-le-Grand, then at lycee Saint-Louis, he extended his collaboration to textbooks for a des manuels primaire superieur teaching, also added to the Malet collection.
Albert Malet died on the Western front in 1915, and Jules Isaac edited alone a new series imposed by new education programmes. However, Malet's name remained the name by which the collection was known. A member of the Ligue des droits de l'homme et du citoyen, then of the Comite de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes, Jules Isaac got involved in trying to foster better understanding between French and Germans, and struggled especially for the revision of school textbooks to that end. In 1936, he was made inspector-general of public instruction.
At the end of 1940, he was removed from office under the Vichy regime due to the statute discriminating against Jews. The academician Abel Bonnard declared to Gringoire on 13 November 1942 that "it was not possible that France's history should be taught to young people by an Isaac". Isaac's wife and daughter were arrested at Riom on 7 October 1943, then deported to Auschwitz and killed there. His son was also arrested, but succeeded in escaping from a camp in Germany. In 1945, Jules Isaac was re-established in his rights as honorary inspector-general.
Judaeo-Christian relations
Jules Isaac dedicated a large part of his efforts to research into the causes of antisemitism. He published Jesus et Israel, edited during the war, then inspired by the Charte de Seelisberg. Cofounder, with Edmond Fleg among others, and active member of "Amities judeo-chretiennes" in 1947, he was particularly engaged in fighting anti-Semitism's Christian origins, which he saw as decisive. His essential idea was to make Early Christianity's Jewish origins better valued.
In 1949, he advised Pope Pius XII to revise the Good Friday prayer, which previously contained offensive references to the Jews, to wit, the words "perfidious Jews." He also noted that Catholics did not kneel when they prayed for the Jews on Good Friday, though they knelt for all the other petitions. Pope Pius modified the language (although only later did Pope John XXIII excise the negative language about the Jews altogether) and implemented a kneeling posture as Isaac had suggested. He thus helped start the road that led to Vatican II's declaration Nostra aetate (1965), whose paragraph #4 represents a monumental shift in perspective towards the Jews in Roman Catholic thought.