A new perspective on the Dreyfus Affair

Imagine a visit to Paris, France in 1894, the most exciting city in Europe, with dozens of new galleries to see, new music halls to visit, and a great new steel tower to climb. Paris: a wealthy city in a glorious republic that gave liberty, equality and fraternity to all citizens, including shopkeepers, laborers, ordinary soldiers and Jews. But if you visited Paris in November of 1894, you would have witnessed a roiling national crisis, prompted by the latest news: Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer and a Jew who had been accused of passing military secrets to Germany, was found guilty and banished to Devil’s Island, forever.

Today, we know that the charges against Dreyfus were trumped-up and believed because he was Jewish. Securing the guilty conviction – twice – involved corruption at every level of French government, among its politicians, its army officers and its news media. Today, we think we know all about the Dreyfus Affair, but author Robert Harris’ gripping account, which will be the subject of a discussion that is open to the community on March 8  at Temple Emanu-El Providence, sheds a unique, less familiar perspective on this terrible affair.

Robert Harris’ “An Officer and a Spy” retells the story of the infamous Dreyfus Affair through the eyes and conscience of Colonel Georges Picquart, the French Army officer who, at first, accepted Dreyfus’ guilt and yet who risked his career and his life to search for the truth among the messy evidentiary details and contradictions of the case. Harris’s account of Picquart’s crucial role in the Affair has been hailed as a “page-turner” and a spy thriller, but it is written with historical accuracy and shrewd insight into the pressures, prejudices and exigencies that enabled such injustices to occur. Furthermore, those who join in the book discussion will have the chance to match Harris’ suspenseful account with Michael Burns’ “France and the Dreyfus Affair: A Brief Documentary History,” to access the real-life letters, eyewitness accounts, articles, cartoons and official documents that kept the case before the public for decades. 

The book discussion, from 10 a.m. to noon is the second of four spring 2015 events focusing on the history, achievements and contemporary lives of French Jewry, as told through film, literature, history and music. The series, titled “The Tangled Legacy: Being a Jew in France,” is sponsored by Arts Emanu-El at Temple Emanu-El, and was prompted by recent alarming acts of violence against Jews and Jewish institutions in France, with concern about what some have called “the new anti-Semitism,” in Europe, with France at its center.  “The Tangled Legacy” series endeavors to explore and understand these events by taking a comprehensive, long-term and cultural view of the French Jewish experience. The book discussion is open to the public without charge through the joint sponsorship of Arts Emanu-El and the Rosen Library Committee at Temple Emanu-El.

The final two events in the series will occur in May, with a French breakfast and lecture, and a major musical concert. At the breakfast on May 3 at 10 a.m., Prof. Maud S. Mandel, dean of the College, Brown University, associate professor of History, and former director of the program in Judaic Studies, will explain “Muslims & Jews in France Today: History of a Conflict.” On May 17 at 7 p.m. the series closes with “The Jewish French Musical Connection,” the story of French Jewry told through music and narration. This concert will include special guest artists, including the world-renowned pianist Judith Lynn Stillman, members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and mezzo-soprano Cantor Lynn Torgove. Tickets for these events go on sale three weeks prior to the event date.

For more information about the March 8 discussion of “An Officer and A Spy” at Temple Emanu-El Providence: Go to TEProv.org.

LINDA K. SHAMOON is co-chair, Arts Emanu-El at Temple Emanu-El in Providence.