The Alliance celebrations come to New York

Last Sunday, it was the turn of New York to pay homage to the Alliance Israelite Universelle on its 150th anniversary, with a showing of In the beginning was a school, a two-part documentary by Josy Eisenberg. The film, reviewed in The Forward by Allen Ellenzweig, paints a vivid picture of the AIU's current activities, but glosses over its greatest struggles. Ellenzweig wonders what the AIU's response to the Dreyfus affair would have been; I would add that the film barely mentions the ethnic cleansing of the Sephardi communities the AIU was set up to serve. Via Jewish Ideas Daily:

From the start, AIU was Jewish in character and humanitarian in its aims: to educate the Jewish children of France’s North African colonies* in their religion’s history and culture, but also to bring modern public health and hygiene, along with agricultural and secular education to the often cramped, poor, and observant Sephardic communities of in countries like Morocco, Syria, and Algeria. The AIU was taking on the traditional “civilizing” mission so prized by the French in their colonial ventures.

Indeed, the AIU worked hand-in-hand with various French ministries around the Mediterranean basin to bring Jewish practice to French-speaking Sephardic communities, while also assuring an enlightened education of “little Frenchmen” throughout France’s colonies. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of many schools was their integration of a minority of non-Jewish students — some from well-to-do Muslim backgrounds — whose parents saw the value of the francophone curriculum. We are assured that Muslim-Jewish relations from the period 1860-1940 were relatively good in the region. But the break produced by the Nazis and Vichy, tensions over the founding of Israel, and French decolonization, shrank Jewish communities in Arab lands and closed many Alliance schools.

The first part of the documentary impresses us with the scope of the AIU’s mission as successive generations of far-sighted French Jews aided their co-religionists in the Middle East and North Africa. In its 150 years, the AIU educated a million students in 210 schools in 16 countries, even including a school for the deaf in Jerusalem.

The second part of Eisenberg’s documentary reviews the Alliance’s current activities, taking pride in its succession of robust intellectual leaders after the war, like Nobel laureate René Cassin who was president from 1943-1976. The documentary maintains a tone of advocacy — some might say cheerleading — as its narration, interviews, and visuals show the AIU’s Paris-based mission in primary and adult education, cultural programming, teacher training, and a major update of its library as digitized archive of rare historic Jewish manuscripts, photography, periodicals and newspapers. In interviews that make us glad to hear beautifully spoken French, representatives across the board confirm that the AIU is moving with the temper of the times. Scenes of typical French teenagers in AIU classrooms, some at voluntary morning prayer services, paint a vivid picture of current Jewish life in France as dynamic, tolerant, and diverse.

The only element missing from the picture is a sense of the Alliance’s greatest struggles. How did it react to the Dreyfus Affair? What role could it have been allowed under Vichy? How is it combating resurgent anti-Semitism today? Perhaps these are issues for a darker accounting of an agency which has every right to celebrate a laudable history in the fullness of sunshine.

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*The AIU had schools throughout the Ottoman empire: Iran, Iraq, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Yemen, etc