Jean-Christophe Attias

Last updated
Jean-Christophe Attias Jean-Christophe Attias-Nancy-2015.jpg
Jean-Christophe Attias

Jean-Christophe Attias (born 1958) is a French Jewish historian and scholar.

Contents

He is a professor of medieval Jewish thought at the École pratique des hautes études (PSL University, Paris).

Education and Academic Career

Jean-Christophe Attias studied philosophy (at the University of Paris-I) and Hebrew (at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations). He was a doctoral fellow of the Lady Davis Fellowship Trust at the Department of Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem during 1988-1989. He holds the CAPES (1980) and the agrégation (1987) in Modern Hebrew.

He defended a doctoral thesis in Hebrew studies titled "Knowledge and Power in Constantinople: Mordekhai Komtino, Exegete-Teacher (15th Century)" at the University of Paris-VIII (1990). He obtained a habilitation to supervise research by presenting a thesis titled "Judaism and Liminality: Contributions to the Intellectual and Literary History of Medieval Judaism" before a jury composed of Maurice Kriegel (EHESS, guarantor), Michel Tardieu (Collège de France, president), Michael Löwy (CNRS), Aron Rodrigue (Stanford University), and Colette Sirat (EPHE) (1997, EHESS).

He taught Modern Hebrew for about ten years in secondary education before becoming a researcher at CNRS, member of the Center for the Study of the Religions of the Book (CNRS-EPHE) from 1991 to 1998. In 1998, he was elected professor at the Section of Religious Sciences of the École Pratique des Hautes Études, holding the chair of "Medieval Jewish Thought (6th–17th centuries)," succeeding Charles Touati.

A specialist in the history of medieval Jewish exegesis of Scripture, Jean-Christophe Attias has published his initial works on authors from the late Middle Ages (15th–16th centuries) belonging to the Mediterranean area (Byzantium and the Iberian Peninsula). Since then, he has broadened the chronological, geographical, and thematic scope of his research. As a historian of culture and representations, he has, among other interests, focused on the figure of the proselyte in rabbinic Judaism, the "margins" of Judaism (late Karaism), the place of the "Land of Israel" in Jewish memory, and the role of the Bible in Jewish culture and imagination. He published a portrait titled "Moïse fragile" (Alma, 2015, winner of the Goncourt Prize for Biography 2015, reissued in paperback by CNRS Éditions, 2016).

Institutional Responsibilities

Jean-Christophe Attias is first the deputy director, and then the director (since 2018) of the Alberto Benveniste Center for Sephardic Studies and the Sociocultural History of Jews at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE), a component of the Research Unit 8596 (CNRS-Sorbonne University-EPHE). From 2011 to 2015, he served as president of the Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, and Religious Sciences Commission of the National Book Center.

Associative Engagement

Involved in the fight against racism and discrimination, he is a co-founder of Pari(s) du vivre-ensemble. In 2006, with Esther Benbassa, he was awarded the Seligmann Prize against Racism for the collective work "Jews and Muslims: A Shared History, A Dialogue to Build."

Personal Life

He was born to a Jewish father from Algeria (who arrived in mainland France in 1946) and a Catholic mother from Charente. He is married to Esther Benbassa, Emerita Professor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études and formerly senator for Europe Écologie Les Verts (until December 2021, when she left this party), with whom he has co-authored several works.

Research interests

Works

In English

In French

With Esther Benbassa

  • Dictionnaire de civilisation juive, Paris, Larousse-Bordas, 1997 ; 2nd ed.,1998
  • Israël imaginaire, Paris, Flammarion, 1998 ; 2nd ed., 2001 (sous le titre Israël, la terre et le sacré)
  • Les Juifs ont-ils un avenir ?, Paris, Lattès, 2001 ; 2nd ed., Paris, Hachette, coll. « Pluriel », 2002
  • Le Juif et l’Autre, Gordes, Le Relié, 2002
  • Petite histoire du judaïsme, Paris, Librio, 2007
  • Dictionnaire des mondes juifs, Paris, Larousse, 2008
  • Israël-Gaza. La Conscience juive a l'épreuve des massacres, Paris, Textuel, 2024

Editor

  • De la Conversion, Paris, Cerf, 1998
  • Enseigner le judaïsme à l'Université, Genève, Labor et Fides, 1998 (withPierre Gisel)
  • La haine de soi. Difficiles identités, Bruxelles, Complexe, 2000 (withEsther Benbassa)
  • Messianismes. Variations autour d’une figure juive, Genève, Labor et Fides, 2000 (with Pierre Gisel and Lucie Kaennel)
  • De la Bible à la littérature, Genève, Labor et Fides, 2003 (with Pierre Gisel)
  • Juifs et musulmans. Une histoire partagée, un dialogue à construire, Paris, La Découverte, 2006 (with Esther Benbassa)
  • Les Sépharades et l’Europe. De Maïmonide à Spinoza, Paris, Presses de l’université Paris-Sorbonne, 2012
  • Encyclopédie des religions, Paris, Fayard/Pluriel, 2012 (with Esther Benbassa)
  • Dans les quartiers, l’égalité c’est maintenant ! Livre blanc, Paris, Le Pari(s) du Vivre-Ensemble, 2014 (with Esther Benbassa)
  • Juifs et musulmans. Retissons les liens!, Paris, CNRS Éditions, 2015 (with Esther Benbassa)
  • Nouvelles relégations territoriales, Paris, CNRS Éditions, 2017 (with Esther Benbassa)

Awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Armand Lunel</span> French writer

Armand Lunel was a French writer of Provençal Jewish background.

David Feuerwerker was a French Jewish rabbi and professor of Jewish history who was effective in the resistance to German occupation the Second World War. He was completely unsuspected until six months before the war ended, when he fled to Switzerland and his wife and baby went underground in France. The French government cited him for his bravery with several awards. After the war, he and his wife re-established the Jewish community of Lyon. He settled in Paris, teaching at the Sorbonne. In 1966, he and his family, grown to six children, moved to Montreal, where he developed a department of Jewish studies at the University of Montreal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shmuel Trigano</span> French sociologist

Shmuel Trigano is a sociologist, philosopher, professor emeritus of sociology at Paris Nanterre University. He was Tikvah Fund Visiting Professor in Jewish Law and Thought at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, New York (2009), and Templeton Fellow at the Herzl Institute (Jerusalem) program "Philosophy of the Tanakh, Midrash and Talmud" (2012-2013), (2015-2017). Elia Benamozegh European Chair of Sephardic Studies, Livorno, Italy (2002).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme</span> Jewish museum, Art museum, History museum, Historic site in rue du Temple Paris

The Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme or mahJ is the largest French museum of Jewish art and history. It is located in the Hôtel de Saint-Aignan in the Marais district in Paris.

Marguerite Harl was a French scholar, who worked on the Septuagint, Philo of Alexandria and early patristic writers such as Clement of Alexandria and Origen. She was born in Paris in April 1919 and became a pupil of Henri-Irénée Marrou. She was a professor of Ancient Greek at the Sorbonne University from 1958 to 1983.

Haim Zafrani, 10 June 1922 in Essaouira – 31 March 2004), was a Moroccan-born French scholar and writer.

The Union des progressistes juifs de Belgique is a Belgian Jewish organization set up in 1939 as Solidarité juive by antifascist Jews in Belgium, becoming in 1946 Solidarité juive, aide aux victimes de l'oppresseur nazi. It took on its present name in 1969.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean de Menasce</span> Dominican priest and scholar

Jean de Menasce (1902–1973) was a French Catholic priest, of the Dominican Order, as well as an author and academic. He came from Jewish Egyptian and French parentage. Over his lifetime he mastered fifteen languages, including Hebrew, Syriac, and Pahlavi. He was in the Catholic contingent among Jewish and Protestant leaders at an important post-war interfaith conference. Menasce wrote as a theologian, and as a scholar of Middle Eastern studies, especially regarding Judaism, and the Zoroastrian religion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">André Paul</span> French scholar, educator and writer

André Paul is a noted French scholar, educator and writer in the fields of theology, biblical studies and ancient Judaism. Paul's early research explored the relationship between the Dead Sea Scrolls and Karaite Judaism.

Annie Ousset-Krief, Ph.D. and associate professor at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, is a French historian and American Civilization specialist.

Joseph Mélèze-Modrzejewski was a Polish-French historian and professor of ancient history at the Pantheon-Sorbonne University.

Gilbert Dahan is a French historian of religions, director of research at the CNRS and at the École pratique des hautes études. He is notably a recognized medievalist. His work has renewed studies on the exegesis of the Bible in the Christian West during the Middle Ages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rémi Gounelle</span> French protestant theologian

Rémi Gounelle is a French protestant theologian, a professor of history of early Christianity at the Faculté de théologie protestante de Strasbourg and dean of that same faculty since 2010.

Renée Poznanski is a French-born Israeli historian, specialist in the Holocaust, and the Jewish Resistance in France during the Second World War, who teaches at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Beersheba, in Israel.

Georges Vajda was a French Arabist and Hebraist, scholar of Islam, and historian of medieval Jewish thought.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Esther Benbassa</span> French historian and politician

Esther Benbassa is a French-Turkish-Israeli historian and politician. She specializes in the history of Jews and other minorities. Since 2011, Benbassa has served as a French senator, representing Paris from 2017 onwards and Val-de-Marne from 2011 to 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Perrine Simon-Nahum</span> French historian

Perrine Simon-Nahum is a contemporary French historian.

Doris Bensimon was an Austrian-born French sociologist and academic whose research focused on the study of contemporary Judaism. She taught at the University of Caen and Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dan Jaffé</span>

Dan Jaffé is a Franco-Israeli specialist in the history of religions and teaches at Bar-Ilan University (Tel-Aviv) and Ashkelon Academic College. He is a researcher attached to the CNRS. His work focuses on the Jewish world in the first centuries of the Common Era, the Talmud and the origins of Christianity. He has published extensively on relations between Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity. He directs the collection Judaïsme ancien et christianisme primitif published by Éditions du Cerf.

This list of antisemitic publications in France chronologically gathers writings considered or claimed to be antisemitic, produced by French-speaking authors, whether writers or journalists, and published in French territory from the early 19th century to the present day.

References

    This page is based on this Wikipedia article
    Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
    Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.