THE BOOK OF EDMOND:

MANIFESTATIONS OF EDMOND FLEG’S

WORLDVIEW IN HIS L’ANTHOLOGIE JUIVE

YANIV HAGBI

Introduction

To many, objective criticism is a contradiction in terms. For those, any

claim to an impartial perspective is futile since any description is made by

a given person with given preconditioned norms, values and worldview.

However, one of the possibilities for objectivity within critical history of

any art form, is offered by Paul Ricœur, claiming that it is based on the

“twofold conviction” that: 1. Facts appearing in different histories can be

brought into relation 2. The results of these historical studies supplement

each other.1

Following Ricœur’s advice and comparing Edmond Fleg’s L’Anthologie

Juive to other major Jewish anthologies, would show that Fleg shares with

his fellow compilers all the highlights from the Jewish corpus. Excerpts

from the Bible, the Mishna, the Talmud, and almost all the other usual

suspects from the Jewish library have found their place in his anthology as

well. Supplement in the case of anthologies is based on the difference

between two compilations or more. These compilations are anthologies

connected to each other by the fact they wish to describe the same given

corpus of texts and at the same moment they are differentiated from one

another. Here, in this differentiation lies the compiler’s worldview, the

philosophy by which she constructed her corpus and which she wishes to

promote. The following article shall examine how Fleg’s religious

worldview is manifested in his anthology, through its structure and the

choices he made in the compiling of the texts. The main claim is, that even

the fact that Fleg usually chose all the usual major Jewish texts, he was

able to find within these vast volumes passages by which he managed to

bring to the fore a coherent personal religious perspective.

1 Ricœur, Time and Narrative, 176.

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Fleg’s anthology is not a critical anthology, i.e. apart from some words

at the preface of the book and at the beginning of each section, the texts

are brought directly from the sources, usually already existing French

translations. Fleg does not offer any analysis or commentary of any kind

on the texts as such. The only tool one has for the study of the rationale of

a given non-critical anthology is the inclusion of certain texts, and at least

as important, the exclusion of others. In order to establish the vague aspect

of absence in the study of anthologies, the missing texts relevant for a

given study should be defined. Theses texts have to be relevant to the

matter in question and the student of given anthology must show how their

absence is connected and explained in relation to the texts which are

present. Another important feature is that the absence of a given text can

be explained in the broader context of an intellectual framework a given

anthology wishes to describe.

At this stage one has to address the question of the legitimacy of

proving the existence of a systematic presence of a given worldview in a

given anthology. The claim that the anthologist chooses the texts for the

sake of the worldview he or she wishes to advance, is equally valid for

researchers of anthologies. They may manipulatively choose from the

anthology or anthologies in question the inclusion or exclusion of texts

which may serve their pre-determined hypothesis. It is, however, that very

freedom of anthologies’ compilers, rendering valid almost any choice and

any set of values, which allows us to study their intellectual, political and

aesthetic motives. Perkins’ statement on the study of literary history

should also be applied here: “we cannot write literary history with

intellectual conviction, but we must read it.”2 The other side of the coin

only strengthens the position of students of anthologies. Well aware of the

problem, committed to a certain intellectual integrity and, most

importantly, submitted to the scrutiny of their peers, they should be

regarded with much less suspicion than the anthologist. To summarize this

point in a careful manner, researchers of anthologies may have a

worldview which influences their studies but it is much more subtle than

these of the compilers. In this positivistic vein, our goal is the exploration

of the “explicit sub-conscious” of a given text. The following article

wishes to formulate the more perspicuous worldview of Edmond Fleg in

his anthology and to show the rhetorical and editorial means he chose to

achieve it.

2 Perkins, Is Literary History possible?, 17.

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Fleg and his Anthologie Juive

Edmond Fleg’s work played a major role in the revival of Judaism in

France between the wars and in the aftermath of The Second World War.

His œuvre covers many areas, “poetical and literary [production] on the

one hand and historical and philosophical [study] on the other.”3 Like

Herzl, Edmond Fleg’s (1874-1963) perspectives on Judaism and the

Jewish people, to a large extent, were changed by the Dreyfus Affair.4 He

came for his studies to Paris from Switzerland, and very soon, influenced

by Anatole France and Ernest Renan,5 he led a group of students which

called themselves the “Asthetes.”6 As their name attests, they spurned the

daily world, they wished to detach themselves from society for it “was not

worth the trouble of mingling with it,” and from politics and its petty

problems of “the Rights of the Man and the citizen” and “the battle of

parties.”7 To put it simply, Fleg and his friends have preferred aesthetics to

ethics.8

3 Rota, “La pensée d’Edmond Fleg,” 499. 4 In his intellectual autobiography Fleg dedicates a whole section for the Dreyfus

affair and the influence it had upon him. See Fleg, Why I am a Jew, 22-37. See as

well Roussel, Un itinéraire spiritual, 39-52. 5 Renan’s influence on Fleg was also made through his various studies on Jewish

and Hebrew texts. I am most grateful to the anonymous reviewer of this article

who reminded me of a possible connection between Renan’s 5 volumes Histoire

du Peuple d’Israël (1887-1893) and Fleg’s anthology. In this article I have used

Renan’s study only to compare the manner he and Fleg have treated the same texts

or facts. Indeed, the preliminary study of this connection, suggests that a whole

article should be dedicated to the influence of the Renan’s work on Fleg’s. 6 “…And I have the notion that this was not a misnomer” (Why I am a Jew, 19). It

should be noted that it was not a clear cut between Fleg the aesthetician and Fleg

the Jewish humanist. Summarizing one of his entries from his German journal,

written when he was eighteen, Roussel writes: “Fleg the aesthetician is to be find

here, but also, all his life he will need warmth and human tenderness” (Roussel, Un

itinéraire spiritual, 25). When available I have used existing English translations

otherwise, in case needed, all translations are mine. 7 Fleg, Why I am a Jew, 19. 8 Fleg is conscious of this aesthetic impulse even after he “renounced” his

aestheticism. In L’Enfant Prophète, in the midst of the protagonist’s spiritual

struggles, between Judaism and Christianity, and to a lesser extent between

Zionism and Scouting, he mentions the inscription on Carlo Goldoni’s bust near

the Notre Dame. It seems that Goldoni (and beauty) offered him, literarily and

figuratively a place of rest: “Goldoni! Qui était-ce? Un poète, je crois…Oui, un

poète […] Et, pendant que je regardais ces bancs, ce marbre, cette fontaine, je ne

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The Dreyfus Affair, as mentioned above, burst Fleg’s aestheticist and

cosmopolitan bubble. He was drawn from his safe domain of “transcendent

egotism” into the course of events which put France in turmoil.9 The “poor

declamatory style” of Dreyfus’ letters did not prevent Fleg from believing

in the innocence of the man, and more, that he shared the same destiny by

the mere fact that they are both part of the Jewish people. His common,

decent human solidarity à la Zola was all of a sudden mingled with Jewish

solidarity as well.10

When Dreyfus was condemned for the second time, Fleg came to ask

himself: “Jew, what is thy place in the world?”11

It was then that Fleg

heard for the first time about Zionism,12

an idea which would shake his

world and would become one of the most fundamental ingredients of his

worldview. 13Fleg did not remain passive. He became a Zionist and even

attended the third Zionist Congress at Basel.

After the birth of his son, the son to whom Why I am a Jew, this

personal book, is addressed, Fleg testifies that he stopped taking to his

morbid habit of reading a daily anti-Semitic paper. As his son turned one

year old, Fleg reached another phase in his spiritual-intellectual

development. In spite of a certain degree of literary success he had, mainly

with his plays, he resigned from all his artistic plans, and devoted three

years to the study of Judaism and its literary sources.14

Fleg was not an

idle reader, he had goals and aims, and he wanted to get answers to

questions that for him were very acute: “What is Judaism? What ought the

Jew to do? How to be a Jew? Why be a Jew? The reply was slow in

coming. I could not invent it. It must be searched for, searched for

throughout the history of Israel, from the mystical days of the Bible up to

the latest hours of the present time.”15

pensais plus aux juifs, à Marriette, à Jesus! Je ne pensais plus, j’étais content!...”

(166). 9 Fleg, Why I am a Jew, 36. 10 “Was there then mingled with this human solidarity a Jewish solidarity which

made the drama I was living thru more tragic? I could no longer doubt it” (ibid.). 11 Ibid., 37. 12 Ibid., 41-42. In L’Enfant Prophète the Zionist option is embodied by the

character of Monsieur Styrinovsky (especially 97-99, 182-183). 13 Fleg, Why I am a Jew, 37. See as well: “I admired these Jews, and wished I

could have admired in myself, this fidelity to the ancestral soil which had endured

two thousands years’ and I was thrilled by the vision of exodus which would take

many of them back from their various places of exile to their regained unity” (ibid.,

43). 14 Ibid., 47. 15 Ibid., 45-46.

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The reply to these questions is formulated in a book, L’Anthologie

Juive. The title calls to mind La France Juive. The publication of La

France Juive (1886), a two volume anti-Semitic essay, written by Edouard

Drumont, is regarded by many to be the beginning of the modern anti-

Semitic movement in France.16

It is quite safe to say that the anti-Semitic

daily newspaper, by which Fleg was so fascinated, was Drumont’s La

Libre Parole. Drumont was the founder and chief editor of this daily, one

of the major, if not the most famous, anti-Semitic newspapers.17

Fleg’s

anthology, by its title and by its contents, as shall be seen below is in many

respects a response to Drumont as a phenomenon.

L’Anthologie Juive came out in 1923 in two volumes. A year later, in

1924, its “édition classique” was published in one volume.18

This article

shall analyze the condensed, later version, since it is what Fleg considered

to be the best of the best, for it is, the concentrated essence of the 1923

anthology. It might be important to mention already at this early stage that

the main ideas in Fleg’s thought are, as Olivier Rota has already

summarized, messianism, Zionism, and unified humanity and solidarity

between all nations.19

It seems that as if by his L’Anthologie Juive Fleg is trying to

accomplish at least four goals. First, he wishes to encourage his fellow

Jews in time of raving anti-Semitism in France by showing them the

hidden gems of both their ancient and their modern literature. Secondly, he

wishes to show non-Jews not contaminated by prejudices what Judaism is

truly all about. Thirdly, in this vein, it is a positive attack against the usual

accusations made against the Jews. Fleg’s counterattack is the dismantling

of common anti-Semitic beliefs by showing the French speaking world the

ancient, “secret” texts, written in a language which is commonly believed

to be decipherable only to Jews. The fourth and last reason, as hinted

before, is a personal spiritual voyage in the texts, a voyage to which Fleg

16 For example Byrnes, “Edouard Drumont and La France Juive.” 17 More on Drumont and his La Libre Parole see Kauffmann, Edouard Drumont;

Winock, Edouard Drumont et Cie. 18 Though not as successful as La France Juive, Fleg’s anthology was very

popular. The last edition appeared as late as 1967. The first edition of the English

translation appeared already in 1925, only a year after the publication of the 1923

French edition. The fact that it was translated into English testifies to the fact it

was regarded not just as a mere anthology, but that its publishers thought it has a

synergic and even commercial value which justified its translation. 19 These notions are well represented in Rota’s “La pensée d’Edmond Fleg”; there

is therefore no reason to repeat and cite again Fleg’s worldview in this respect. I

would like to use this opportunity and thank Dr. Rota for sending me his articles

and responding to my questions.

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came well equipped with his personal persuasions before he embarked

upon it, but also in which he had found new notions which helped him

shape his worldview as it is articulated in his later works. These four goals

are interwoven and though they cannot be explored separately their

coexistence should be bore in mind.

At first glance these ideas cannot sustain one another, but Fleg’s

attitude is much more complex. A Jewish settlement in The Land of Israel

and Zionism in general was for him part of a religious-messianic program

and not merely a secular sociological solution for the problems of the

Jewish people in the Diaspora.20

As a result he saw a necessity in the

existence of the Jewish communities outside the Holy Land.21

The

spiritual interest of the world necessitates the return of at least part of the

People of Israel to their homeland. Since his messianism entails salvation

for the whole world, his Zionism, in what seems at first as a paradox, is

not nationalistic—i.e. concerning one nation only, the Jewish people—but

rather a universal movement aiming to bring redemption for all the

nations.22

Fleg’s relationship towards Christianity is also complicated. In 1948 he

was one of the founders of the French foundation for Jewish-Christian

Friendship, L'Amitié judéo-chrétienne de France.23

But Fleg was not just

another member of the Jewish founders aiming to create bridges of

understanding between two distinct groups. Fleg, at least as a child,

identified deeply with the stories of the New Testament, even more than

with those of the Old Testament.

In his boyhood, seeing the religious hypocrisy of his immediate

surroundings, his parents, the family rabbi, he tells us, he started to revolt

against Judaism and everything it represented.24

Reading the Gospels, an

experience he retells in different works, he came upon the story of the

Crucifixion of Jesus. He was not as forgiving as Jesus, he tells us, who

cried “Forgive them, they know not what they do”; all Fleg could say was

“Dirty Jews, dirty Jews!”25

In the opening scene of L’Enfant Prophète,

Fleg’s alter ago, little Claude Lévy, accompanied by his nanny, meets a

priest. The priest, who saw him for the first time, identifies immediately

the resemblance, kisses Claude and says “a real little Jesus!”26

When he

20 Rota, “La pensée d’Edmond Fleg,” 515. 21 Ibid., 516-517. 22 Ibid., 509. 23 See Roussel, Un itinéraire spirituel, 229-236; Rota, “Controverse et dialogue.” 24 More elaborate description see Roussel, Un itinéraire spirituel, 9-18. 25 Why I am a Jew, 13; see also below f.n. 28. 26 Ibid., 12.

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asks the boy for his name and hears “Claude Lévy,” he freezes, the boy

still in his arms. The nanny says in a strange voice: “It is a little Jew,” and

the priest responds: “Pity,” as he leaves. Though L’Enfant Prophète

recounts the spiritual coming of age of a Parisian Jewish boy, and thus

seems to be pure fiction, Fleg and others refer to this book as kind of an

autobiography.27

The identification Fleg had with Jesus turns into bodily

identification. Edmond-Claude becomes little Jesus, they are both the

“child prophet.” When Claude reads the story of the crucifixion his

reaction is similar to the scene from Why I am a Jew, though in a more

aesthetically developed fashion. Little Claude, after reading how his

ancestors chose to save Barrabas instead of Jesus, accuses them: “and you

shout: ‘Let his blood be upon us! Upon us and upon our children!’ I am

too, I am your child! Well! I curse you, Jews! He curses you, your

child!...”28

It is the same Fleg, who, a few years later, at the age of

seventeen shall write in his diary”: “between the Jewish God and the

Christian God, I see no difference.”29

At least some of this childhood

affinity with Jesus is preserved in Fleg’s thought.30

Fleg, who was not a religious Jew in the common sense, was definitely

a religious intellectual. Fleg is here defined as a religious intellectual in the

sense that he consciously constructed a corpus, based upon his beliefs and

convictions, which may serve as his own private catechism taken from

existing Jewish scriptures and sources. In what follows we shall

concentrate on the way he formulated his universal perspective of

Judaism.

Fleg’s Worldview in the Architecture

of L’Anthologie Juive

The anthology is divided into five historical divisions: 1. The Biblical

Epoch; 2. The Hellenistic Epoch; 3. The Talmudic Epoch; 4. The

Rabbinical Epoch; 5. The Modern Epoch.31

Here appears a fundamental

axis any author of literary history should take into account, the axis

27 Why I am a Jew, 13. In Un itinéraire spirituel, Fleg’s biographer, Odile Roussel,

treats L’Enfant Prophète in the same manner. More on the circumstances of the

writing of this book see Rota, “La pensée d’Edmond Fleg,” 503. 28 L’Enfant Prophète, 57. 29 Cited in Roussel, Un itinéraire spirituel, 26. 30 It is not that Fleg did not had his issues with Christian scholars, see for example

a description of his 1946 dispute with Father Jean Danièlou in Rota, “Controverse

et dialogue”; Rota, “La pensée d’Edmond Fleg,” 504-506. 31 The English edition of Fleg’s anthology omits the Biblical Epoch.

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between chronological and thematic analysis. In this spectrum it seems

that Fleg’s inclination is towards pure chronological division. At the

beginning of each chapter Fleg gives a very short introduction in which he

relates between historical events connected by time to the Jewish texts of

the period. It is easy to see how the chronological constraint can turn into a

thematic problem.

In the second division, The Hellenistic Epoch, for example, as might

be expected, Fleg cites Josephus Flavius’ The Jewish War. Fleg chose to

open the sub-chapter “Les Sectes et les Écoles” (“The Sects and the

Schools”) with a citation from The Jewish War, describing the sect of the

Essenes.32

Josephus states clearly that the Essenes were one of three

schools of thought (the others would be the Sadducees and the

Pharisees).33

One may presume that the main reason Fleg neglected to

mention Josephus’ description of the other schools is Josephus’ favorable

description of the Essenes. The fifth volume of Renan’s Histoire du

Peuple d’Israël describes in one sub-chapter de Pharisees and the

Sadducees and dedicates another to the Essenes.34

Flavius describes a just,

socialist (communist even), utopian community in which all are equal, all

is shared. It is a community whose social ideals are not so far removed

from these of the kibbutz, the new form of living so dominant in the

beginning of the Zionist settlement of the old roman province of Judea.

Moreover, Renan’s description of the Essenes as a sort of Christian

monasticism,35

and the many other parallels they have shared with early

Christianity in general, are combined with the idea of a utopian, past and

present, Jewish society.

Immediately after the excerpt from Josephus on the Essenes, Fleg cites

a few passages describing the two famous Talmudic schools, the house of

Hillel and the house of Shammai. Hillel and Shammai lived and worked

during the first century B.C.E., the beginning of Roman reign in Judea. All

of the various passages describing the two schools are taken from the

Talmud. Both schools played maybe the most important role in the

shaping of the Talmud, of its intellectual methods and philosophy. It is

therefore by definition that any passages concerning Hillel and Shammai,

surely excerpts describing the difference between the two and their

importance, should find their natural place not in the Hellenistic division

of Fleg’s anthology but rather in the Talmudic Epoch, the third division of

his anthology. Since the Talmud is by no means devoid of references to

32 Fleg, L’Anthologie Juive, 80-81. 33 Josephus Flavius, The Jewish War, vol. 2, 118-19. 34 Renan, Histoire du Peuple d’Israël, vol. 5, 55-66. 35 Ibid., 57.

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the Hellenistic period, the use Fleg makes of it as a main source for his

Hellenistic division is quite understandable. Fleg’s anachronism might be

thematically explained as an attempt to continue the subject of sects and

schools; he chose therefore to make use of Hillel and Shammai already

here, instead of in the following division, the Talmudic epoch. It is

however, an excellent example for the constant tension between the

thematic and the chronological axes. One of Fleg’s main goals was to

show that Judaism, in contrast to the way it might be perceived, was not

the religion of “the Scribes, the Pharisees [whose] wickedness understands

only one thing an eye for an eye! A tooth for a tooth!”36

In each of the

other divisions Fleg was able to find sources which could easily testify to

the universality of Judaism and its tolerance towards the other. Here he

needed more prominent sources since the Hellenistic period is an era

which is historically marked by the nationalistic and religious revolt of the

Maccabees against the Hellenization of Judea. Needless to say that all the

sources Fleg cites show the House of Hillel’s tolerance towards the other,

the non-Jew. The only two notes of the House of Shammai, both from the

Shabbat Tractate (30 and 13b), are mentioned only to accentuate Hillel’s

leniency in contrast to Shammai’s strictness. Fleg here is not following

only the Jewish tradition in which Hillel was indeed famous for his

tolerance and humility. He follows also Renan’s description, which in his

turn had followed Franz Delitsch’s comparison between Hillel and Jesus.37

Fleg will not mention, for example, the fourth chapter of Testimonies

(Eduyot), the seventh tractate in Damages (Nezikin), the fourth order of the

Mishna. The traditional title of this chapter is “These are the Words” and it

brings a list of rules in which the House of Shammai is the lenient school

of the two while the House of Hillel is the one to hold the stringent

approach.

The anthology opens with two verses, very dominant it may be added

in Fleg’s thought: 1. “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine

heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might” (Deuteronomy 6:5);38

2. “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Leviticus 19:18). Fleg

adopts wholeheartedly the idea that these two verses are the epitomes of

the two manners of Jewish religiosity, the way man should go about with

his creator and with his fellowman.39

In L’Enfant Prophète, Fleg’s alter-

36 Fleg, L’Enfant Prophète, 50-51. 37 Renan, Histoire du Peuple d’Israël, vol. 5, 320-322. 38 All translations from the bible are from the King James Version. 39 On the following mishna many commentators established the notion of these two

paths: “For sins that are between man and God, Yom Kippur provides atonement,

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ego meets for the first time in his life maybe, a rabbi, a real rabbi.

Knowing nothing of Judaism he wants to know what does one need to do

in order to be a Jew? On which the rabbi answers using these two verses:

“I can answer you by citing Moses: ‘You shall love the Lord your God

with all your heart,40

with all your soul, and with all your strength’ and

‘thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,’ this is our Law. The rest is only

commentaries.” 41

In the New Testament, (Mark 12:28-33) appears the following story:

And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together,

and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the

first commandment of all? And Jesus answered him, The first of all the

commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And

thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul,

and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first

commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy

neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than

these. And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth:

for there is one God; and there is none other but he: And to love him with

all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with

all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all

whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.42

It seems that Fleg attributes the verses to Moses while ignoring the central

place they have in the New Testament, but actually it is more of an attempt

to point out the similarities between the two faiths. In Fleg’s worldview,

these two imperatives, standing at the very heart of Judaism and

Christianity alike, are the core of any spiritual life. The rabbi from

L’Enfant Prophète might be compared to the Jewish scribe, the rabbi from

but for sins that are between man and fellow man Yom Kippur does not provide

atonement until he pacifies his fellow man” (Yoma 8:9). 40 Fleg wrongfully puts “soul” before “heart” in his anthology (Fleg, L’Anthologie

Juive, 5). Since in his other writings he gets it right, it may safely presume that

here it is just a typo and that it bears no meaningful consequences. 41 Fleg, L’Enfant Prophète, 126. The protagonist repeats it somewhere else: “Elle

est belle aussi, leur Loi sainte, qui m’ordonne d’aimer l’Éternel notre Dieu, de tout

mon cœur, de toute mon âme et de tout mon pouvoir, et d’aimer mon prochain

comme moi-même” (ibid., 157) [“It is also beautiful, their holy Law, which orders

me to love the Eternal, our God, with all my heart, with all my soul and with all

my might, and to love my neighbor as I love myself”]; and then again in another

version: ibid., 193. 42 This idea is repeated in Luke 10:25-37 (the famous parable of the Good

Samaritan).

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the New Testament, but he also assumes Jesus’ role and words in the

answer he gives the child.

For Fleg these two imperatives were meant not only for the Jewish

people but for humanity as a whole. In four of the five anthology’s

divisions, in one way or the other, he mentions the notions of “vie

religieuse” (religion) and “vie morale” (morality). The first brings to the

fore texts concerning the relationship between man and God while the

other deals with the way one should go about his fellow-man, again, it

should be stressed, between the love for God and the love for the other.

The problem he faced, as any other thematic compiler of anthologies, is

that a given text has more than one theme, to say the least. The compiler is

often forced to arbitrarily decide why text X belongs in chapter Y and not

in chapter Z. Fleg, at least at the beginning, had tried, artificially, it might

be added, to formulate parts of his anthology along these two lines. In the

first division, in subchapter IV, “La vie en Israël,” two of the three

sections are “Vie religieuse” and “Vie sentimentale et morale.”43

In the

Hellenic Epoch they turn into one whole subdivision “Vie religieuse et

morale” covering more than two thirds of the Hellenic division.44

In the

Talmudic Epoch, the third division, they appear as two small subsections

in “Sentences et maximes.”45

In the Rabbinic Epoch “La Vie religieuse”

and “La Vie morale,” at least as titles, are nowhere to be found, and they

return in the fifth and last division, the Modern Epoch, again as small

subsections.46

This inconsistency testifies to two important things, already

mentioned above. The first is methodological; it is the inherent problem of

any thematically compiled anthology and the need to sometimes arbitrarily

decide which passage belongs under a given heading. Secondly, in respect

to Fleg and his worldview, these two imperatives—to love God and your

fellowman—are incorporated in the titles he gave his subdivisions and

subsections.

Fleg’s Textual Strategies in L’Anthologie Juive

The first division in L’Anthologie Juive, describing the Biblical epoch,

opens with the sub-chapter “Israël dans l’humanité.”47

It is as if Fleg chose

to immediately open with a preparatory bombardment of texts which will

aid him right from the start to prove that the idea of universality is inherent

43 Fleg, L’Anthologie Juive, 40, 50 correspondingly. 44 Ibid., 61-84. 45 Ibid., 113-116, 121-125. 46 Ibid., 215-224, 228-235. 47 Ibid., 11.

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in Judaism. Here one can find excerpts dealing with such themes as “La

création” and “Alliance de Dieu avec l’humanité,” texts which would be

easy to swallow for Jews and Christians alike. The following text is titled

“Consécration d’Abram.” In Hebrew, “consecration” (hitqadshut) is usually

reserved for places and objects while “choosing” (b-ḥ-r) will usually be used

to refer to persons. Fleg, wittingly or not, chose “consecration” which may

be indiscriminately used in Catholic terminology with reference to places,

objects and persons. Saying Abraham was consecrated sets him in a

Christian (Catholic) religious context.

The figure of Moses was very dominant in Fleg’s thought and work.48

Our first encounter with him in Fleg’s anthology bears the title “Mission

de Moïse” (“Moses’ Mission”).49

Fleg cites six verses taken from the third

chapter of Exodus describing the miracle of the burning bush and Gods

revelation to Moses. Two charged verses (21 and 22) from this chapter,

which would make Drumont’s anti-Semitic propaganda much easier, are

not cited: “And I will give this people favour in the sight of the Egyptians:

and it shall come to pass, that, when ye go, ye shall not go empty. But

every woman shall borrow of her neighbour, and of her that sojourneth in

her house, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment: and ye shall

put them upon your sons, and upon your daughters; and ye shall spoil the

Egyptians.”

One may say that Fleg had no special reason for not citing these

verses; they simply were not part of the story. At any rate, one may easily

understand that if Drumont, for the sake of argument, would have ventured

to write his own Anthologie Juive, he would happily add them to his

Biblical epoch.

The following passage, (Kings II, 5:1-3; 9-19)50

describes how the

prophet Elisha cures Naaman, the Syrian general, from his leprosy. Let us

observe what Fleg chose to include and to omit from this story. He brings

the first three verses describing Naaman’s ailment and the Hebrew slave

telling his wife about Elisha the prophet, who lives in the Kingdom of

Israel, and about his healing powers. Fleg skips a few verses and does not

tell us about the perplexity of Joram, the King of Israel. He continues with

the story of the cure of Naaman. Naaman has doubts about the benefits of

baptizing in the Jordan River: “Are not Amana and Pharpar, rivers of

Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? May I not wash in them,

and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage” (12). Then the story

48 Fleg devoted a whole book to Moses, which was published twice in his life

under two different titles: Moïse (1929) and Moïse raconté par les sages (1956). 49 Fleg, L’Anthologie Juive, 14. 50 Ibid., 18-20.

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224

ends with Naaman’s cure and his wish to pay Elisha for restoring his

health, and the latter’s refusal. This story, interesting and even entertaining

as it may be, expresses many of Fleg’s convictions mentioned above.51

First, it is the sanctity of the Land of Israel. Only the water from the

humble Jordan River may cure Naaman’s leprosy and not all the water

from all the magnificent Syrian rivers such as Amana and Pharpar. The

humanism and universalism of Judaism are also emphasized. A Hebrew

slave, with all the reasons not to wish her master well, comes up with the

cure. Yet another Hebrew, Elisha the prophet, is the one who eventually

will cure the Syrian general. Elisha cures Naaman like Jesus, in an act of

turning the other cheek instead of the mode of action so hated by Fleg, of

“an eye for an eye.” Not only is the patient not one of the Hebrews, of the

believers in God, he is the general of an oppressing army, an army so

mighty that the King of Israel himself is terrified of their king, an army

that in the future shall defeat the Israelites. Elisha repairs, figuratively and

literally, the sword which is raised upon his own people.

The text titled “Les devoirs de l’exil” (“Duties of the Diaspora”) could

have been called “The Affirmation of Diaspora”:52

Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, unto all that are carried

away captives, whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem

unto Babylon; Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and

eat the fruit of them; Take ye wives, and beget sons and daughters; and

take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they

may bear sons and daughters; that ye may be increased there, and not

diminished. And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be

carried away captives, and pray unto the Lord for it: for in the peace

thereof shall ye have peace (Jeremiah 29:4-7).

Almost immediately Fleg cites from Ezekiel, the famous story of the

valley of the dry bones, which receives the title “L’espoir du retour” (“The

Hope of Return”).53

Then follow the first four verses from Ezra, under the

heading “La fin de la captivité” (“The End of Captivity”).54

These last two

segments clearly call for the return of the Jews to their homeland. It seems

51 It should be noted that Renan mentions this story only in a footnote, simply as

“Guérison de la lèpre, fait de Naaman” and as an example for Elisha as a miracle

worker, see Renan, Histoire du Peuple d’Israël, vol. 2, 281, note 17. 52 Fleg, L’Anthologie Juive, 18-19. 53 As Rota had already pointed out, this text is the key for understanding Fleg’s

perception of the place of the Jewish people in history; see Rota, “La pensée

d’Edmond Fleg,” 514. 54 Fleg, L’Anthologie Juive, 20-21.

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as a contradiction: on the one hand Fleg (via Jeremiah) affirms the

Diaspora and Jewish life outside Judea. On the other hand, via Ezekiel and

Ezra, as proto-Zionists, he calls for the organized immigrations of the Jews

back home, to fulfill the Zionist ideal he was so thrilled by.55

The simple

way to solve this ambiguity is to say that Fleg simply followed the

historical narrative of the Bible, the exile in the time of Jeremiah and

Ezekiel and the return to Zion led by Ezra. Notwithstanding our method of

regarding texts of a given anthology as texts appropriated by the compiler,

another solution may be suggested. The following point should be

stressed: though the texts are diachronically edited, along the time axis, in

the worldview of their compiler, by actively choosing them, they exist on a

synchronic, thematic axis as well. In Why I am a Jew, Fleg offers some

practical answers: “It is now certain that the Zionist program in no way

implied the return of all Jews to Palestine—a thing numerically

impossible, for the Jewish country only offers itself to those Jews who feel

that they have no other country.”56

Personally, he goes on, “my soul and

mind were turned towards France.”57

It would be interesting to skip to the Modern epoch. In the sub-division

“Israël chez les nations” (“Israel in the Nations”) appears a segment titled

“La mort du Grand Rabbin A. Bloch” (“The Death of the Chief Rabbi A.

Bloch”). It is a passage from Spire’s book Les Juifs et la guerre, describing,

as the title announces, the death in combat of Rabbi Bloch: “Amongst the

war casualties were also three Rabbi’s: the Rabbi of Lunéville, Boris

Groudzky […] Rabbi Vexler […] and the Chief Rabbi of Lyon, Abraham

Bloch, the chaplain of the XIVth corps.” How did Rabbi Bloch die?

The Germans shelled a farm, in the village of des Vosges, in which 150

wounded soldiers took refuge. During the bombardment thought one of the

mortally-wounded that the rabbi is a Catholic priest. He asked from the

rabbi for a cross to kiss. The rabbi, simply, with no hesitation, with no fear

of danger […] turned to look for the cross asked for by the soldier,

succeeded in finding it he handed over the anxious soldier the symbol of

his faith. Only after completing this act of charity did the rabbi went out to

the village, accompanying another wounded soldier to the nearest car. The

shell which killed him hit a few meters in front of the car on which he was

about to embark with the wounded.58

55 Why I am a Jew?, 43. 56 Ibid., 44. 57 Ibid. 58 This anecdote was not brought in the English translation. Fleg, L’Anthologie

Juive, 240-241.

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Fleg, originally Swiss, volunteered, when he was already forty years old,

for the French Foreign Legion, to fight in The First World War. The

sharing of the burden means, logically, the sharing of rights. Jewish blood

shed for France, moreover, the blood of rabbis, is the proof for them being

equal citizens. The Jewish-Christian collaboration is even more apparent

here when the Chief Rabbi of Lyon, no less, is the one to find a cross for

the dying soldier. The rabbi shares also the Christian soldier’s death and

by extension, the religious solace both religions offer their believers.

The scene, of the rabbi handing over a cross to a mortally wounded

soldier, left quite an impression on Fleg. Only one page after this story, he

cites a scene from his own play, La Maison du bon Dieu (1920). The

whole passage is actually part of a monologue, recited by one of the

characters, the Catholic priest, Goello, in a conversation with two of the

other characters, also religious figures, the protestant pastor Martique and

Rabbi Ségal. Father Goello tells his companions two anecdotes from The

First World War, how “a priest recited the Hebrew prayers for a dying

Jewish soldier—and, on the lips of a Catholic in agony, a rabbi laid the

cross.”59

The title Fleg gave to this excerpt is “L’Union sacrée” (“Sacred

Union”). Fleg plays on the meaning of this charged title. The socialists in

France, during The First World War, headed by Jean Jaurès, made a

pledge not to participate in the “bourgeois war.” The “Sacred Union” was

a patriotic response, made by the left, in which they agreed not to call any

strike while the war is still going on. Here, Protestantism, Catholicism and

Judaism, all three are one and the same, a sacred union not only in the

philosophical, theological, or spiritual sense, but also in the practical,

mundane aspect. They share not only the same notions of the future but

also the destiny allotted them in this world. They become brothers, equal

members of humanity not only because of their shared notions of salvation

and redemption, similar perspectives on the future, but for the present, for

sharing as dignified humans, together, all the misery inflicted upon man.

Conclusion: The Book of Edmond or L’Anthologie Juive

Usually, the main goal of most Hebrew anthologies, including those

published in Europe and America, was pedagogical. They were aimed, in

general, towards Hebrew readers, usually, of course, Jews. In general, one

might claim, anthologies of Jewish texts in languages other than Hebrew,

like in Dutch, Palach’s De Hebreeuwse Literatuur or in German, Winter

and Wünsche’s Geschichte der Jüdischen Literatur, present a tension

59 L’Anthologie Juive, 242.

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227

between apologetics and a rationally founded worldview. The anthology

was a powerful agent, at least in the eyes of their compilers, to spread their

ideas.

L’Anthologie Juive is not just a random collections of texts aimed to

appeal to the broadest possible public. It is a personal anthology with

which Fleg tried to define for himself his complicated, sometimes even

paradoxical perception of Judaism as a Zionist who still believes in the

importance of the Diaspora. In another context, which helps us to

understand his motives as well, Fleg tells us that Hippolyte Taine, in order

to write his magnum opus, Les Origines de la France contemporaine, had

to study the sources of his own people in order reach his own conclusions.60

One cannot dismiss Fleg’s anthology as merely an apologetic compilation

of a European Jew who tries to justify his unique place, within and outside

the society in which he lives.61

Even if one may entertain this idea, Fleg’s

work, forty years after the publication of his first anthology, proves

different. In these years, in which crucial events took place—The Second

World War, the Shoa, the establishment of the Jewish state—one can

easily detect a coherent worldview. The spiritual principles which Fleg

formulated for himself reappear, again and again, in his work. Fleg’s case

is quite unique, especially for his clear philosophy and many published

works. On the one hand one may claim that Fleg’s views, decades after the

publication of his anthology, remained the same. On the other hand, the

claim here is, that Fleg, embarking on his new spiritual path, actively

chose, as an intellectual Jew, the texts which he would reinterpret all his

life.

In his preface for Un itinéraire spirituel Vladimir Jankélévitch writes

that one may regard Fleg as “un prophète de la vie quotidienne.”62

Fleg, to

a certain and modest degree, assumed himself the role of a prophet. His

anthology is the Book of Edmond. As noted before, the intimate

relationship between Fleg and his protagonist, Claude Lévy, almost a total

identification, stems not only from the many autobiographic similarities

they share. For Fleg himself the novel is part of his spiritual

autobiography. Since L’Enfant Prophète, as a novel, supplies him with the

disguise of fiction, he is more candid there. One of the paths the

protagonist in L’Enfant Prophète can choose is to be a normal French boy,

a boy scout, “Eclaireur de France.” Towards the end of novel he takes it

upon himself to be more than that: “Eclaireur de France, oui, c’était beau

60 Why I am a Jew?, 46. 61 For the complex relationship between Jewish and Christian apologetics in Fleg’s

thought see Rota, “Controverse et dialogue.” 62 Jankélévitch, “préface”, 8.

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228

… Mais Eclaireur d’Israël ! Eclaireur du monde !...”63

He will find and

pave the way, for France, for the people of Israel, for the whole world,

indeed a task fit for a prophet. A few pages after Claude (Fleg) challenges

the rabbi with a passionate monologue in which he ties in all the major

Jewish holidays and the secular Zionism with universal messianism by

which all men are brothers.64

When Claude tells the rabbi he is almost

fifteen years old, the rabbi says: “Beware, my friend, beware. In the times

of Moses man could be a prophet at the age of eighty! In our days, in order

to be a prophet, you should be fifteen years old!”65

Fleg gave his protagonist the surname, Lévy, the tribe of priests, the

tribe whose most famous son is Moses, giver of the Law, of the Torah, and

to whom he dedicated a whole book. Fleg’s anthology is, in a way, a

modern Torah for the believer of the modern age, not only containing

traditional Jewish principles but also humanistic, tolerant and universal

ones.66

Works Cited

Byrnes, R. F. “Edouard Drumont and La France Juive.” Jewish Social

Studies, 10-2 (1948): 165-184.

Fleg, Edmond. Anthologie Juive: Des origines a nos jours. Édition

classique. Paris: G. Crès, 1924.

—. La Terre que Dieu habite. Paris: Congrès Juif Mondial “Bibliothèque

juive,” 1953.

—. L’Enfant Prophète. Paris: Gallimard, 1926.

—. Vers le Monde qui vient. Paris: Albin Michel, 1960.

—. Why I am a Jew. Translated by Louise Waterman Wise. New York:

Bloch Publishing Company, 1929.

Jankélévitch, Vladimir. “Préface.” In Roussel, Odile. Un itinéraire

spirituel: Edmond Fleg. Paris: La pensée universelle, 1978: 7-8.

Josephus Flavius. The Jewish War. Translated by G. A. Williamson,

introduction by E. Mary Smallwood. New York: Penguin, 1981.

Kauffmann, Grégoire. Edouard Drumont. Paris: Perrin, 2008.

Perkins, David. Is Literary History Possible? Baltimore: Johns Hopkins

University Press, 1992.

63 L’Enfant Prophète, 189. 64 Ibid., 192-193. 65 Ibid., 194. 66 See also Rota, “La pensée d’Edmond Fleg,” 500.

Yaniv Hagbi

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Renan, Ernest. Histoire du Peuple d’Israël. 5 vols. Paris: Calmann-Lévy,

1887-1893.

Ricœur, Paul. Time and Narrative (vol. 1). Translation Kathleen

McLaughlin & David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1984.

Rota, Olivier. “Controverse et dialogue dans la seconde moitié du XXe

siècle. La trajectoire exemplaire de la relation entre Juifs et chrétiens.”

In Alain Joblin et Olivier Rota, La controverse religieuse des

Evangiles à nos jours. Arras: Artois Presses Université “Etudes des

Faits Religieux,” 2013 (in press).

—. “La pensée d’Edmond Fleg. Coopération judéo-chrétienne, messianisme

et Sionisme.” Sens n° 361 (juillet-août 2011): 499-518.

Roussel, Odile. Un itinéraire spirituel. Edmond Fleg. Paris: La pensée

universelle, 1978.

Spire, André. Les Juifs et la guerre. Paris: Payot, 1917.

Winock, Michel. Edouard Drumont et Cie: antisémitisme et fascisme en

France. Paris: Le Seuil, 1982.