Aron Beckerman's City of Light: writing French history and defining immigrant Jewish space in interwar Paris
Nick Underwood
ABSTRACT: This article examines the writing of a little-known, but prolific interwar immigrant eastern European Parisian Yiddish writer, Aron Beckerman, to demonstrate how journalism played pivotal role in defining Paris as simultaneously French and Jewish space Jews living city. Engaging urban historical theory on communal-building effect that public can have, this argues within Beckerman's writings – its history specific places city we see emerge details universalist republican identity, which, when read through lens, leads particular immigrant, Yiddish-speaking, leftist understanding what it meant be ‘French’.
Urban History