French Israélite women in Jewish internationalism: the case of Clarisse Eugène Simon (1855-1950)

• In Event: Jewish Identity, Internationalism and Perceptions of Jews in France and Britain

Abstract

Building on the work of historians such as Abigail Green (2017) and Jaclyn Granick (2022), this paper aims at contributing to the study of female engagement in internationalism, a topic which has been largely overlooked by historians. Clarisse Eugene Simon (1855-1950) was a bourgeois philanthropist and feminist. In the context of the debate over the legitimacy of the regulation of prostitution and the emergence of white slavery narratives in the press and popular culture in France and Europe, Simon was involved in two non-sectarian organisations which aimed at supporting prostitutes in Paris. With growing concern over the alleged involvement of Jews in prostitution and sex trafficking, the British Jewish community convened a Jewish International conference on the suppression of the traffic in girls and women in London in April 1910. This paper focuses on Simon’s participation at this conference as part of the French delegation and her subsequent founding of the Association israélite pour la protection de la jeune fille in Paris. On the basis of the report of the 1910 conference in London, the archives of the Association israélite pour la protection de la jeune fille, and the press, I compare her rhetoric and strategies at the 1910 international conference with those she used in France in her work of rescue and rehabilitation of prostitutes so as to highlight the dynamics at play in the two parallel spheres of the national and the international. I also examine Simon’s Israélite identity based on a specifically French Republican reinterpretation of Judaism after the French revolution and the emancipation of Jews in France, and interrogate the impact this may have had on Simon’s involvement and commitment to the international Jewish fight against prostitution and white slavery.

Author

• Florence Abecassis, University College Dublin, Ireland