The cultural identity and the assimilation of the Jewish Community in the Global Cities

Résumé du document

My name is Charles Terdjman, I am a 3rd year student in Sciences Po Paris, and I would like to present my comparative research about the Jewish Community in the Global Cities. Sincerely interested in the social and political studies, I wanted to analyze a social or religious minority for this research experience, and I quickly decided to focus on this specific community for a couple of reasons. Even though the existing literature on this theme was quite abundant, I felt I had a great opportunity in bringing my work to the understanding of the topic as introducing a comparative element with three Global Cities: Chicago, Mexico City and Paris. This specific community seemed interested as I had to deal with three Jewish communities that are each really distinct from another, and that permitted an enriching analysis on some specific issues as their integration, their acculturation and their assimilation in their societies, as well as the possibility of defining a "Jewish cultural identity". I was led to study on the historical backgrounds of these communities, to understand more precisely their current situation in their States, in terms of economic and social status, but also as actors of their cities, in politics, in arts, or in sciences.

Extraits

[...] For instance, from a methodological point of view, I couldn't get a map of the distribution of the Jewish people in Paris. Hopefully enough, my main tool I'll detail later, the big study of Erik Cohen, mandated by the Fond Social Juif Unifié de France in 2002, gives a precise and broad picture of the community. But as we said, we know that the acceptation of French values by the Jewish community was done a long time ago, with a submission to its model of integration. [...]

[...] De igual manera, el trabajo laborioso de empresarios, industriales, de constructores, de comerciantes, en fin, de una comunidad verdaderamente laboriosa como ésta, desempeña un papel de primera importancia en nuestra economía al generar empleo que da sustento a miles y miles de familias. A través de sus inversiones, de su cariño y de su confianza en México dejan una sólida fortaleza para construir sobre ella el futuro del país. Gracias por este esfuerzo y felicidades también por el mismo, porque beneficia a todos. [...]

[...] This is clearly the city where I find the highest rate, because the situation is not far in Paris but still inferior. For Paris, the percentage of intermarriage is about but it is interesting to point out that this number goes up to 35% when the population taken into account is below 30 years old. If we consider the previous study on the Jewish population from the 70's, we notice an evolution of that marks a strong trend towards intermarriage in Paris. [...]

[...] In Chicago and in Paris partly, the process of conversion is quite simple because of the large amount of liberal congregations, whereas there, I also found by discussing with some Rabbis from different branches that it was generally difficult to convert to Judaism, and that such people were generally not seen fully as Jewish people. The only exception concerns the Liberal community and especially Beth-El where it is simpler than anywhere else in the Mexico City Jewish community. I also found out that the conflict between one's Judaism and its citizenship is much more complex and present than in Chicago or Paris. [...]

[...] Thus, I would like to thank personally the responsible of this program for Paris, M. Marco Oberti, who had been actively present in this program even before the term in Paris, and then especially in Paris, for being always available, introducing us to many of the most important social issues of the great Paris metropolitan area. I also could learn a lot for my research from his great experience as a scholar, and I surely benefited from his numerous pieces of advices. [...]