Cimetières et rites funéraires juifs dans l’Est de la France du Moyen Âge à nos jours

Abstract

Of Ashkenazi tradition, Alsace and Lorraine present today more than 140 Jewish cemeteries with very specific features, especially as three departments annexed by Germany between 1871 and 1918 were not affected by the laic laws of the Third Republic. Representing the three-quarters of the Jews living in France at the beginning of the Revolution, they were considered until then as a “foreign” Nation. After the emancipation, their cemeteries testify of an attempt to conciliate religious identity with integration in the national model. Over the course of the XXth century, this “franco-judaism” was questioned by the arrival of foreign Jews, and then by the Shoah.

Keywords

• foreigners
• Jewish cemeteries
• burial rituals
• death
• Franco-Judaïsm