Yerushalmi in a French Key: (French) History and (French) Memory

Abstract

This article explores the reception of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi in France in light of the many and diverse reactions his books and lectures engendered at major conferences and meetings. It describes how the American scholar became one of the leading figures among French intellectuals after the first translation of his book Zakhor in 1984 and his first lecture at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in 1987, which resulted in a series of annual lectures over the next ten years. Following the readings of Jacques Derrida, Paul Ricœur, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, and François Furet, among other intellectuals, the eminent standing achieved by Yerushalmi coincided with a special “moment.” At a time when doubt was cast on the testimonies of living witnesses and when the words of Holocaust deniers and of members of the French Resistance were treated on equal terms, the politics of memory challenged the status of history and historians. This paper aims to recover the atmosphere of these past decades and to elucidate how Yerushalmi’s name has become inseparable from the issues linked with the debates about history and memory.