While conversions to Judaism are generally understudied in France, conversions of Black persons go unnoticed. The past three decades witnessed an increasing number of claims to Jewishness in Africa and conversions in the African diaspora and Israel. Their diverse life stories reflect deep spiritual quests. Scripturalizing Jewishness through Blackness: Black Jews in France describes the multiple ways in which they practice and claim their Judaism, relate to their fellow Jews, and reconstruct their identities. Whether former Christians or native Jews, they (re)define their racial and ethnic identities as members of two minority groups in their interactions with Jewish texts and communities, to find their place in the French Jewry and the broader French society, where they have to face both anti-Semitism and racism. After fifteen years of fieldwork, Aur lien Mokoko Gampiot offers an original analysis of their individual and collective itineraries.
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Aurelien Mokoko Gampiot opens a new intellectual space for thinking about what Jews look like and what being Black signifies in France where the post- World War II Jewish community is divided by a European Ashkenazi - North African Sephardi binary unfamiliar to most American readers. Visible markers of Jewishness coupled with visual diversity of physical appearance necessarily reworks meanings of Blackness and African otherness where French racism and antisemitism remain intimately linked. Gampiot argues that scripturalization of Black identities are compatible for interiorizing both Jewish and Black African identities. Within the intersection of two French ethnic minorities, existential African and Caribbean legacies are complimentary to spiritual experiences finding community with and as Jews. Gampiot's engaging ethnography should be prioritized by anyone interested in 21st century Jewish diversity and Blackness outside the prism of American racism. -- Katya Gibel Mevorach, Grinnell College; author of Black, Jewish, and Interracial It's Not the Color of Your Skin, but the Race of Your Kin, and Other Myths of Identity This is a pioneer research on Africans and Caribbeans in France, either born Jewish or who convert to Judaism, and display increasing visibility and claims. The book astutely shows the specificities of the French context and the complexity of their double identity, as Blacks and Jews negotiating between their Jewishness, color and daily ordeals of racism and antisemitism. By giving voice to the experiences and itineraries of these Black Jews, the book explores their conversion paths, their communal organizations, questions of intermarriage, and their strategies to carve themselves a place in French Jewry, despite the discrimination they encounter in Jewish communities and French society. This study is of special interest for scholars of Jewish and Blackness studies, and of French Jewry and minorities in France. -- Lisa Anteby-Yemini, CNRS, IDEAS, Aix-Marseille University
