Dr. Savy recently published Les princes et les Juifs dans l’Italie de la Renaissance (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2023). This French Studies lecture is co-sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program and the Medieval Studies Program.

This talk explores the historical development of an argument advocating for the presence of Jews in Western societies: the notion that Jews should be accepted because they were, or could be made, useful to the societies in which they participated. This utilitarian perspective diverges significantly from arguments rooted in values such as tolerance or benevolence, as well as from more contemporary justifications emphasizing human rights and the rejection of discrimination. Moreover, it does not primarily focus on theological reasons for the Jewish presence or on the cultural utility of Jews as holders of a specific knowledge.

The corpus of sources promoting the argument of Jewish utility forms a continuous tradition beginning in the Middle Ages, particularly in juridical and political literature, and reached its zenith in the eighteenth century, culminating in the famous competition organized by the Metz Academy in 1785, just six years prior to Jewish emancipation in France (“Are there ways of making the Jews more useful and happier?”).

While this utilitarian argument for integration might appear pragmatic and effective, it raises significant political and ethical concerns, by essentializing the attributes of an ethnic group – even when framed positively. Furthermore, historical analysis reveals that the regions where such arguments were most fully developed were not necessarily those that granted emancipation at the earliest stages.