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KOHN/JEWISH PUBLISHING IN FRANCE
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young historians Richard Ayoun and B e rnard Cohen and a phil
osophical essay by Eliane Amado Levy-Valensy
(La onzieme
epreuve d’Abraham
[The Eleventh O rdeal o f Abraham], 1981).
Unlike Stock and Lattes, scholarly publishers specialize in less
popu la r topics. Presses Orientalistes de France (P.O.F.), has pub
lished studies o f the Hebrew language by Mireille Hadas-Lebel
and Michel Masson and a sociodemographic study on French
Jewry by Doris Bensimon-Donath. All th ree au thors are p rofes
sors at the Semitic Institu te in Paris, which sponsors the press.
Privat’s
Franco-Judaica,
directed by the well known French histo
r ian B e rnhard B lumenkranz, has published a dozen books on
French Jewish history, dealing chiefly with the medieval and
modern periods.
OTHER WORKS
O f some twenty books published in Calmann-Levy’s series
Diaspora,
twelve are translations, mostly from the English.
Dias
pora
has published works by internationally known authors, such
as Sir Isaiah Berlin and Gershom Scholem, making them avail
able to a large audience. Roger E rrera , whose interest in contem
porary French Jewish history has been stressed earlier, has
d irected the series since 1970. He has published American schol
arly works on con temporary French Jewry, such as David
Weinberg’s study on Parisian Jewry p rio r to World War II and
Michael Marrus’ book on the social context o f the Dreyfus Affair.
Recently
Diaspora
commissioned the ground-break ing study by
Marrus and Paxton on Vichy France and the Jews. T he chief
emphasis o f the series is on contemporary Judaism , recent
French Jewish history, or major Jewish intellectual contributions.
T he series
Presence du Judaisme
(Presence o f Judaism), pub
lished by Albin-Michel, has contributed the most to disseminating
knowledge o f Judaism . Almost two-thirds o f the forty or so books
published were originally written in French. Translations are
most numerous in the largest division containing titles on Jewish
religious beliefs. Among the original works are th ree books by the
ph ilosopher A ndre Neher, and the popu la r work by the late
Rabbi Ernest Gugenheim ,
LeJudaisme dans la vie quotidienne
(Juda
ism in Daily Life), which went th rough five printings. A thousand
copies o f this book are sold annually, which is considered an u n u
sual success. More recently, emphasis in the series has been on