Bernard-Lazare (1865-1903) was a French Jewish writer and a prime mover in the Dreyfus Affair. After being involved in the Symbolist and anarchist movements, he took up the cause of Dreyfus in his brochure “Une erreur judiciaire” which anticipated Zola’s “J’accuse” by three years. He was an early analyst of antisemitism and in later years an ardent Zionist whose outspoken views provoked much controversy. The Dreyfus Affair lies at the center of this book as it was the turning-point in Bernard-Lazare’s life. The first part of the book traces Bernard-Lazare’s early career: his devotion to Mallarmé and defense of the Symbolist aesthetic as a philosophy of freedom; his adoption of anarchist principles which satisfied his love of freedom, his sympathy for oppressed individuality and minority groups, and his passion for social justice; above all his analysis of antisemitism where, at first, he argued for social assimilation only to reject this idea later in favor of cultural pluralism. The second part offers a history of the Dreyfus Affair and of how Bernard-Lazare drew attention to the grave irregularities of the case and convinced others of the threat posed to Republican democracy. Finally, Nelly Wilson shows how Bernard-Lazare came to espouse Jewish nationalism in a more radical and solitary way than did Herzl, the founder of Zionism, and how, after his death, his memory was kept alive by Péguy, who saw in Bernard-Lazare the embodiment of the prophetic spirit. “[A] finely-crafted study... Dr. Wilson has more than mastered her subject... Readers will benefit from her work” — Michael R. Marrus, University of Toronto

Bernard-Lazare (1865-1903) was a French Jewish writer who was the prime mover in the Dreyfus Affair. The Dreyfus Affair lies at the centre of this 1978 book as it was the turning point in Bernard-Lazare's life. In the first part of the book Dr Wilson traces his early career: his defence of the Symbolist aesthetic as a philosophy of freedom; his sympathy for oppressed individuality and minority groups, and his passion for social justice; above all his analysis of antisemitism where, initially, he argued for social assimilation only to reject such an idea later in favour of a concept of cultural pluralism. The second part offers a history of the Dreyfus Affair and the way Bernard-Lazare drew attention to its grave irregularities. Finally, the book explores how he came to espouse Jewish nationalism in a much more radical way than did Herzl, the founder of Zionism.

Provides the first sustained analysis of the collision between Marxism and nationalism in France at the time of the Dreyfus affair.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, there appeared in Central Europe a generation of Jewish intellectuals whose work was to transform modern culture. Drawing at once on the traditions of German Romanticism and Jewish messianism, their thought was organized around the cabalistic idea of the "tikkoun": redemption. Redemption and Utopia uses the concept of "elective affinity" to explain the surprising community of spirit that existed between redemptive messianic religious thought and the wide variety of radical secular utopian beliefs held by this important group of intellectuals. The author outlines the circumstances that produced this unusual combination of religious and non-religious thought and illuminates the common assumptions that united such seemingly disparate figures as Martin Buber, Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin and Georg Lukcs.