AllMovie

Jews have long played a major role in French culture, but they've also found themselves welcomed or rejected by Gallic society and government at different points in history, and filmmaker Yves Jeuland offers a provocative look at the history of French Jews in this documentary. Being Jewish in France begins with a study of the Dreyfus Affair and how it reflected anti-Semitism at the dawn of the 20th century, moving on to the role of French Jews in World War I. While the patriotism of Jews was more openly acknowledged after the war, their status as outsiders in the eyes of many French citizens was affirmed during World War II, when the nation fell to Nazi occupation and turned a blind eye to religious persecution and genocide. After the war, French Jews struggled to mend fences and reestablish their place in the national dialogue, but in the 1960s, as Arab immigrants began streaming into France and many leftists began openly supporting Palestine, it became clear that France's Jewish population still had reason to question how welcome they were in the land of their birth. Originally produced for French television, Being Jewish in France received its American premiere at the 2008 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.