Antisemitism in France is the expression through words or actions of an ideology of hatred of Jews on French soil.
Jews were present in Roman Gaul, but information is limited before the fourth century. As the Roman Empire became Christianized, restrictions on Jews began and some emigrated to Gaul. In the Middle Ages, France was a center of Jewish learning, but over time, persecution increased, including multiple expulsions and returns.
During the French Revolution in the late 18th century, on the other hand, France was the first country in Europe to emancipate its Jewish population. Antisemitism still occurred in cycles, reaching a high level in the 1890s, as demonstrated during the most infamous instance, the Dreyfus Affair.
During World War II, the Vichy government collaborated with Nazi occupiers to deport a large number of both French Jews and foreign Jewish refugees to concentration camps. By the war's end, 25% of the Jewish population of France had perished in the Holocaust, though this was a lower proportion than in most other countries under Nazi occupation.
The French Jewish population increased dramatically during the 1950s/60s, as Jews from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia emigrated to France in large numbers following the independence of those countries. France today has the third largest Jewish population in the world, behind those of Israel and the United States. However, since 2000, there has been a significant increase in assaults on Jewish people and property, giving rise to a debate about "new antisemitism", and more French Jews have been moving to Israel in response to rising antisemitism in France. In accordance with this, a survey conducted in 2024 found that one in five young French people thinks it would be a good thing that Jews leave the country.
Early period
Roman Gaul
The beginning of Jewish presence in Roman Gaul is uncertain. The southern part of France was under the Roman Empire from 122 BCE. Jews spread out after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, and more after the Bar Kokhba revolt and the destruction of Jerusalem. Most went towards Rome, where they were offered protection by Julius Caesar, and later by Augustus; and then towards the edges of the Empire. Gaul was an exile destination for banished Roman politicians, and as some Judeans were forced out of their land, likely some of them ended up there as well.
However, it is not until the fourth century that there is reliable documentation of the presence of Jews in Gaul. Not all were from Palestine, some were converted by Jews in the diaspora. As the Roman Empire became Christianized with the recognition of Christianity in 313 and the conversion of Constantine, restrictions on Jews began and increased the pressure on emigration, especially to Gaul which was less Christianized. Numbers were small, and were mostly along the coast, such as Narbonne and Marseille, but also in the river valleys and nearby communities, and extended as far as Clermont-Ferrand and Poitiers.
Jews in Gaul had certain rights, deriving from the Constitutio Antoniniana, decreed in 212 by the Roman Emperor Caracalla to all inhabitants of the Empire, and included freedom of worship, the ability to hold public office, and serve in the army. Jews practiced every trade, and were no different than other Roman citizens, and dressed and spoke the same language as their fellow Romans. Even in the synagogue, where Hebrew was not the only language used. Relations were relatively good.
Information is sketchy, but there is evidence, some dating to the first century, of geographically widespread habitation in Metz, Poitiers, or Avignon. By the fifth century, there is evidence of settlements in Brittany, Orleans, Narbonne, and elsewhere.
Merovingian dynasty
After the Fall of Rome, the Merovingians ruled France from the fifth to the eighth century, The emperors Theodosius II and Valentinian III sent a decree to Amatius, prefect of Gaul (9 July 425), that prohibited Jews and pagans from practicing law or holding public offices. This was to prevent Christians from being subject to them and possibly incited to change their faith.
Clovis I converted to Catholicism in 496, along with the majority of the population which brought pressure on Jews to convert as well. The bishops in some localities offered Jews in their purview a choice between baptism and expulsion. In the sixth century, Jews were documented in Marseille, Arles, Uzès, Narbonne, Clermont-Ferrand, Orléans, Paris, and Bordeaux.
The conversion to Christianity of the Visigoths and Franks made the condition of the Jews difficult: a succession of ecumenical councils diminished their rights until Dagobert I forced them to convert or leave France in 633. During the councils of Elvira (305), Council of Vannes (465), the three Councils of Orleans (533, 538, 541), and the Council of Clermont (535), the Church forbade Jews to have meals together with Christians, to have mixed marriages and proscribed the celebration of the shabbat, the aim being to limit the influence of Judaism on the population.
Middle Ages
Persecutions under the Capets
There were widespread persecutions of Jews in France beginning in 1007. These persecutions, instigated by Robert II (972–1031), King of France (987–1031), called "the Pious", are described in a Hebrew pamphlet,Published in Berliner's Magazin iii. 46–48, Hebrew part, reproducing Parma De Rossi MS. No. 563, 23; see also Jew. Encyc. v. 447, s.v. France. which also states that the King of France conspired with his vassals to destroy all the Jews on their lands who would not accept baptism, and many were put to death or killed themselves. Robert is credited with advocating forced conversions of local Jewry, as well as mob violence against Jews who refused. Among the dead was the learned Rabbi Senior. Robert the Pious is well known for his lack of religious toleration and for the hatred that he bore toward heretics; it was Robert who reinstated the Roman imperial custom of burning heretics at the stake. In Normandy under Richard II, Duke of Normandy, Rouen Jewry suffered from persecutions that were so terrible that many women, in order to escape the fury of the mob, jumped into the river and drowned. A notable of the town, Jacob ben Jekuthiel, a Talmudic scholar, sought to intercede with Pope John XVIII to stop the persecution in Lorraine (1007).Berliner's "Magazin," iii.; "Oẓar Ṭob," pp. 46–48. Jacob undertook the journey to Rome, but was imprisoned with his wife and four sons by Duke Richard, and escaped death only by allegedly miraculous means. He left his eldest son, Judah, as a hostage with Richard while he with his wife and three remaining sons went to Rome. He bribed the pope with seven gold marks and two hundred pounds, who thereupon sent a special envoy to King Robert ordering him to stop the persecutions.
If Adhémar of Chabannes, who wrote in 1030, is to be believed (he had a reputation as a fabricator), the anti-Jewish feelings arose in 1010 after Western Jews addressed a letter to their Eastern coreligionists warning them of a military movement against the Saracens. According to Adémar, Christians urged by Pope Sergius IVMonumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, iv. 137. were shocked by the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem by the Muslims in 1009. After the destruction, European reaction to the rumor of the letter was of shock and dismay, Cluniac monk Rodulfus Glaber blamed the Jews for the destruction. In that year Alduin, Bishop of Limoges (bishop 990–1012), offered the Jews of his diocese the choice between baptism and exile. For a month theologians held disputations with the Jews, but without much success, for only three or four of Jews abjured their faith; others killed themselves; and the rest either fled or were expelled from Limoges.Chronicles of Adhémar of Chabannes ed. Bouquet, x. 152; Chronicles of William Godellus ib. 262, according to whom the event occurred in 1007 or 1008. Similar expulsions took place in other French towns. By 1030, Rodulfus Glaber knew more concerning this story.Chronicles of Adhémar of Chabannes ed. Bouquet, x. 34 According to his 1030 explanation, Jews of Orléans had sent to the East through a beggar a letter that provoked the order for the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Glaber adds that, on the discovery of the crime, the expulsion of the Jews was everywhere decreed. Some were driven out of the cities, others were put to death, while some killed themselves; only a few remained in the "Roman world". Count Paul Riant (1836–1888) says that this whole story of the relations between the Jews and the Mohammedans is only one of those popular legends with which the chronicles of the time abound.
Another violent commotion arose at about 1065. At this date Pope Alexander II wrote to Béranger, Viscount of Narbonne and to Guifred, bishop of the city, praising them for having prevented the massacre of the Jews in their district, and reminding them that God does not approve of the shedding of blood. In 1065 also, Alexander admonished Landulf VI of Benevento "that the conversion of Jews is not to be obtained by force."Simonsohn, pp. 35–37. Also in the same year, Alexander called for a crusade against the Moors in Spain. These Crusaders killed without mercy all the Jews whom they met on their route.
Crusades
The Jews of France suffered during the First Crusade (1096), when the crusaders are stated, for example, to have shut up the Jews of Rouen in a church and to have murdered them without distinction of age or sex, sparing only those who accepted baptism. According to a Hebrew document, the Jews throughout France were at that time in great fear and wrote to their brothers in the Rhine countries making known to them their terror and asking them to fast and pray. In the Rhineland, thousands of Jews were killed by the crusaders (see German Crusade, 1096).
The Rhineland massacres, also known as the German Crusade of 1096, were a series of mass murders of Jews perpetrated by mobs of German Christians of the People's Crusade in the year 1096, or 4856 according to the Jewish calendar. These massacres are seen as the first in a sequence of antisemitic events in Europe which culminated in the Holocaust.
Prominent leaders of crusaders involved in the massacres included Peter the Hermit and Count Emicho. As part of this persecution, the destruction of Jewish communities in Speyer, Worms and Mainz was noted as the "Hurban Shum" (Destruction of Shum).Shum Hebrew: שו"ם were the letters of the three towns as pronounced at the time in old French: Shaperra, Wermieza, and Magenzza.