An Uncertain Future: Voices of a French Jewish Community, 1940-2012

Robert Weiner and Richard Sharpless's illuminating collection of interviews conducted between the 1990s and the early 2000s adds to a growing, yet still slim, collection of literature that focuses on the post-war French Jewish experience. H-France Review

In An Uncertain Future, Robert I. Weiner and Richard E. Sharpless have acrobatically balanced the sympathy of the caring friend and the detachment of the professional historian to create the best study of provincial Jewish life in contemporary France. The interviews show the devastating personal impact of international events and offer unparalleled insights into the complex relationship of Muslims and Jews. An Uncertain Future is essential reading for any course on contemporary Jewish history or contemporary France, and a welcome addition to all classes on today's Europe. James Collins, Georgetown University

A unique and original account of a typical French provincial Jewish community and its challenges from the postwar period to the present. Through the use of interviews and other direct sources from Dijon Jewry, the authors have managed to construct an invaluable portrait of a community facing local problems of a particular kind but also exemplifying virtually all the problems facing French Jewry today. Irwin Wall, University of California, Riverside

An Uncertain Future is a fascinating collection of testimonies from the Jews in Dijon about the joys and sorrows of their lives and those of their families in twentieth-century France. Readers will be engaged and moved by the autobiographical accounts of these decent people struggling with the Holocaust and its legacies and their continuing efforts to carve out lives in a France again witness to the specter of anti-Semitism. Bertram M. Gordon, Mills College

An unusual insider portrait of a Jewish community in continual transition. The interviews as well as articles taken from the local Jewish newspaper offer rich materials for understanding Jewish identity in contemporary France. Susan A. Ashley, Colorado College