Dreyfus, Then & Now, There & Here
Sermon, Shabbat Vayeitzei 5782
Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha, Tucson, AZ
This week, we read of our ancestor Jacob’s consistent struggles with his father-in-law Laban. In rabbinic literature, Laban is turned into a kind of arch-fiend, not just a trickster and manipulator but an evil pagan sorcerer who seeks to destroy Jacob out of jealousy for what the Jewish people will become in the future. In other words, he is a kind of prototype for Anti-Semites in later history. And there have always been Anti-Semites, true?
Well, a new museum opened just last week in Paris that has great importance for Jews—and should have great importance for all people who live in free, Western, democratic societies. It’s the museum of the Dreyfus affair, which had an enormous impact on the development of modern Zionism and modern anti-Semitism. Nearly 130 years after it began l’Affaire Dreyfus still teaches critical lessons about the perilous balance between civilization and barbarism that lurks in every seemingly civilized society.
I suspect most Americans don’t know anything about the Dreyfus Affair, although any Jews with even a rudimentary knowledge of Zionism should know about it. The story is set in the late 19th century, the 1890s in fact, in France. This was an era that is often called la Belle Epoque, the beautiful period, and it saw France, and especially Paris, host a glittering array of great artists—among them Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh, Gaugin, Matisse, & Toulouse Lautrec—and equally fabulous writers and outstanding musicians. The Paris Opera hosted what the greatest artistic expressions of the entire era. It was a time of rapid industrialization, great new inventions, and spreading empire for the nations of the west, like Britain and France, and a period that saw fantastic advances in technology and society to parallel the cultural magnificence. Paris was, for the first time, truly the city of light, since it had received gas streetlights illuminating its new grand boulevards. It was a heady time.
It was also a time of strain and apprehension in France. The Franco-Prussian War of the early 1870s had ended disastrously for France, a radical commune had taken over the city in its aftermath, dictatorship followed its collapse and then a Third Republic was established. But an uneasy peace existed. France and Germany stared at each other across a border that was far from friendly, and often seemed on the knife edge of exploding into another major war. That didn’t happen again until 1914, and then again in 1939, but the underlying stress, suspicion and downright hostility was a constant throughout the period.
It was in this context that a French Army Captain named Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew from Alsace, a province that France had surrendered to the new German mega-state after the lost war, became the most polarizing figure in the entire western world.
Dreyfus was serving in Paris on the Army’s General Staff under an anti-Semitic commander in 1894. A torn-up note was found showing that a spy within that General Staff was selling French Army secrets to the German military attaché. Dreyfus, a Jewish outsider in the military elite, was accused of being the spy. In less than three months, by January 1895, Dreyfus was arrested tried, convicted in a secret military court martial and publicly humiliated before being sent off to exile on Devil’s Island for a life sentence in that penal colony hellhole. Before a large crowd of jeering spectators in Paris, Dreyfus cried out: "I swear that I am innocent. I remain worthy of serving in the Army. Long live France! Long live the Army!"
In 1896 another French officer, a Catholic named Georges Picquart who was head of counterintelligence, uncovered evidence that the true spy was not Dreyfus at all but his supervisor, a Major Esterhazy. Quickly the courageous officer Picquart was reassigned to Tunisia, and Esterhazy was acquitted. But the case leaked to the press, a vigorous debate about Anti-Semitism and civil rights began, and soon pro- and anti-Dreyfus societies sprung up all over France, then all over Britain and even distant America. The Dreyfus case became the most famous court case of the 19th century, and the most notorious abuse of justice in the world. In its day, it received public attention that combined the draw of the OJ Simpson trial with a presidential impeachment, at least back when those weren’t so commonplace. Everyone in the civilized world had an opinion about it, and voiced it publicly and loudly, often in an organized group.
French and European and even American societies lined up on one side or the other; pro-Dreyfus groups were liberal, democratic, and modern in orientation. Anti-Dreyfus groups were conservative, Catholic, and reactionary. Both opposing sides commanded large sectors of popular support. It was at the height of that time of pro- and anti-Dreyfusard fever that the non-Jewish journalist Emile Zola published a famous letter that began “J’Accuse!” I accuse, and accuse he did, the military and the government and establishment of France of profound Anti-Semitism and moral and fiscal corruption.
Finally, Dreyfus was given a second trial—the real turncoat spy, Esterhazy, by that time had fled the country and confessed his espionage to a journalist in England—but poor Alfred was convicted again, on forged documents, and in spite of all the factual evidence of his innocence, and he was sent back to Devil’s Island. This time the pressure on the leadership of France grew so intense that the president finally offered Dreyfus a full pardon in 1899, fully four years after his first conviction. Although innocent of any crime, Dreyfus accepted the pardon, rather than die on Devil’s Island. Dreyfus was eventually restored to the army, promoted, and he served France nobly throughout the First World War.
The impact of the Dreyfus Affair was far-reaching, not least on a Viennese Jewish journalist who covered the trials for his newspaper. Theodore Herzl heard the Paris mobs outside the courtroom crying, “Death to the Jews!” and realized that if that could happen in France, the first nation on earth to grant full civil rights to Jews as citizens, the most enlightened nation on the planet at that time, in Paris, the great City of Light in the Belle Epoque, well, it could happen anywhere. Jews would never truly be free, or safe, until we had our own nation with our own protection provided by our own military. Within a couple of years, by 1897, Herzl had organized the First Zionist Congress, which led ultimately to the founding of the State of Israel.
Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron dedicated this new museum in northwest Paris to Alfred Dreyfus and the Dreyfus Affair, including a frank examination of anti-Semitism. Macron said in his remarks dedicating the museum, that nothing could repair the humiliations and injustices Dreyfus had suffered, and "let us not aggravate it by forgetting, deepening or repeating them."
The reference to “not repeating them” is a contemporary comment by Macron. It follows attempts in much more recent times by the French far right to question Dreyfus's innocence. A French army colonel was cashiered in 1994 for publishing an article, on the centennial of the beginning of the affair, suggesting that Dreyfus was guilty. Far-right politician and avowed Anti-Semite Jean-Marie Le Pen's lawyer responded back then that Dreyfus's exoneration was "contrary to all known jurisprudence." And now Éric Zemmour, a far-right political opponent of Macron who has said that France's Second World War Nazi collaborationist leader Marshall Philippe Pétain, who assisted in the deportation of French Jews to Nazi death camps, actually saved their lives. Zemmour has also said repeatedly in 2021, this very year, that the truth about Dreyfus was not clear, his innocence was "not obvious".
I hope this new Dreyfus museum helps more Parisians, more French, and more people of all nationalities understand that if the most sophisticated and liberated population in the world could perpetrate a deeply Anti-Semitic crime of this magnitude, every one of our societies has the capacity to do so.
It is not true that France is more Anti-Semitic than other nations in Europe, of course—or than America, for that matter. Recent surveys of Anti-Semitic attitudes, and Holocaust attitudes, in France, the UK, Canada and the US have shown striking similarities in matters of ignorance and in anti-Jewish attitudes. Unfortunately, Anti-Semitism never quite seems to die, and our responsibility to address it is perhaps larger than ever now.
It should be obvious to us here in America, as the trial of Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville winds down, as Jews on campuses are attacked for supporting Israel, as Anti-Semitism on both the right and left of the political spectrum has become ever more widely acceptable, that we aren’t so far from the Dreyfus levels of Anti-Semitic invective and action right here, in our own contemporary, technologically advanced society. We know that the internet has emboldened Anti-Semitism through its anonymity. We know that violent attacks on American synagogues have been perpetrated by extremist right-wing terrorists in recent years, that neo-Nazi symbols and signs were used during the January 6th Capitol insurrection in Washington, DC. We know that leftist mobs have defaced synagogues, and that some radical progressives have made common cause with known anti-Semites. We know that in a nation, America, in which Anti-Semitic attacks had declined for decades, over the last few years we have seen a steady upward trend in Anti-Semitic invective and violent action.
We don’t have a Dreyfus Museum here in America, of course. We do have Holocaust museums that are well made and well supported. But I wonder if we may not need something like that here, too, a place that will remind us that Americans are not exactly innocent in this regard.
A little over a century, in 1915, a Jewish businessman named Leo Frank was lynched by an Anti-Semitic mob in Georgia for a crime he didn’t commit. That led to the founding of the Anti-Defamation League, the ADL, and a concerted effort of Jews to respond positively and proactively to combat Anti-Semitism in an active way. Lord knows we have enough Jewish organizations at work now, and perhaps we have enough museums, too. But surely there is a need for this Dreyfus Museum in France, and just as surely, we need to find more effective ways to respond to genuine anti-Semitism at work in our society today.
In the Torah—and in Midrashic tales and commentaries—Laban is finally defeated by Jacob, and our people ultimately survives and thrives. But Jacob succeeds not because he ignores Laban’s tricky proclivities, and not because he pretends they are worse than they truly are. He overcomes Laban because he is open and honest—for the first time in his life, I might add—about those challenges, and because he trusts God. And eventually Jacob acts to separate himself from Laban and his brand of evil.
At the least, we in America must now choose to actively separate ourselves from those who harbor and demonstrate truly Anti-Semitic attitudes and beliefs, even if we agree with some of their other positions. And we need also to think about ways in which we can address the systemic Anti-Semitism of our own political allies, and not just those of our enemies.
And maybe we need a Leo Frank Museum dedicated to the history of American Anti-Semitism, too…