Bernard Lazare

Bernard Lazare (June 15th 1865 with Nimes, France - September 1st 1903) was simultaneously critical arts person, Journaliste political (it covers the events of the mine of Carmaux, it denounces the crimes against the Arménie NS), anarchistic and polemist.

He was the first of the supporters of Dreyfus.

Youth

Bernard Lazare (and not Bernard-Lazare as Charles Péguy wrote it) were born with Nimes the June 15th 1865. Lazare, Marcus Manassé Bernard, will reverse first name and patronym to enter in literature and journalism. He is elder of four wire of Jonas Bernard, trader of ready-made clothes, and the Soft one Noémie Rouget, very old tradition of Provence. The very middle-class Rouget family introduced the Jacquard loom with Toulouse and created one of the first and very flourishing manufactures of draperies and passementerie. The Bernard family was Jewish, believing, but attached little to the traditional festivals.

Lazare Bernard obtains a Baccalauréat in sciences, but his passion, it is the Littérature, shared with his Toulouse friend, the poet Éphraïm Mikhaël. They are made pass for cousins. It is Éphraïm Mikhaël, one year its junior, who, from Paris where he studies with the École of the Charters, encourages Lazare to come there to conquer with him the world of the letters. Lazare arrives at Paris in 1886, the year of the publication of Jewish France of Edouard Drumont.

Lazare is registered with the practical École of the high studies. He chooses the courses of the abbot Louis Duchesne, for whom the catholic Institut of Paris had created a pulpit of history of the Église. The rigor of Lazare, its taste of the exact fact, its aptitude to call into question the established facts or allegedly such, were undoubtedly consolidated by Duchesne, whose the History of the old church was put at the index by the Church, which reproached the author for having written in “historian” and not in “theologist”.

During the academic year 1887-1888, Lazare gives a report devoted to “the conciliar legislation relating to the Jews”.

In 1888 it writes, with Ephraïm Mikhaël, Been engaged of Corinth , dramatic legend in three acts, where its pen name appears: Bernard Lazare. Two years later, Ephraïm Mikhaël dies of Tuberculose. This mourning tragically marks the end of the youth of Lazare. It is as about this period as it engages in Anarchie, an active engagement, although it never guaranteed “the Direct action”. But it will always support the ideas and the “companions”, whom it will help to finance their publications and whom it will support at the time of their lawsuits. It is as an anarchist that it writes a series of news for the newspapers, news which will be the subject of several collections. It is as an anarchist that it is critical arts person and, that at the summer 1895, it covers for the Echo of Paris painful the revolt of the workmen of Carmaux. Journalist in the heart, it attends in 1896 the Socialist congress of London and denounces “the authoritative one and jealous Karl Marx, infidel with his personal program that the Internationale deviated of its goal”

Business Dreyfus

He is not worried about it less this Jewish question, whose Edouard Drumont makes from now on his goodwills. Since 1892, it is in contact with Ahad HaAm, one of the fathers of the movement of the Amants of Sion.

In spring 1894, it publishes the Anti-semitism, its history and its causes , a study érudite and critical of the origins of the Antisémitisme. This publication takes place in a few months of the arrest and the detention of a Jewish captain, Alfred Dreyfus, shown treason. Known for his combativeness and his courage, Bernard Lazare is contacted by Mathieu Dreyfus to contribute to make burst the innocence of his Alfred brother.

It is an electric shock. Bernard Lazare will devote itself almost exclusively to this task; he publishes his first report the Dreyfus Business - a miscarriage of justice in Belgium at the beginning of November 1896; in fact, it is the total recasting of the text that he had written at the request of Mathieu as of the summer 1895. Being based on an article of the Flash of the September 15th 1896 revealing the illegality of the lawsuit of 1894, Lazare dismounted the charge point by point and required the revision. This tactic is undoubtedly in conformity with the desires of the Dreyfus family. Because in its first version, it attacked the culprits, showing them the ones after the others, and finished while coupling on a litany of “I show! ” that it will give, a little more than two years later, with Emile Zola which will make it pass to the posterity”.

Through this voyage at the end of the anti-semitism, Lazare, of French nationalist Jew that it was, becomes nationalist Jew, without anything to disavow his anarchistic engagements. He will walk some of the way a bit of a walk with Theodor Herzl, the two men testing one for the other a great regard. But it will separate from Herzl, in dissension with a project of which it disapproves “the tendencies, the processes and the acts”.

You are - he writes in April 1899 with Herzl, and through him with the Comité of action Zionist - middle-class of thought, of the middle-class men of feeling, the middle-class men of ideas, the middle-class men of social design

From now on, Lazare will continue his combat for the Jews with his manner. He will have been at the sides of the Rumanian Jews of which, after being gone in Romania, he denounces the terrible fate in the Dawn in July and August 1900. He also leaves for the Russia, where he there too makes a new report on the Jews in danger. But it will not have time to publish it, corroded already by the disease.

In the same way, it engaged in favor of the Arménie NS already persecuted by the Turks and, in 1902 in Pro Armenia , it did not hesitate to denounce, in these terms, the congress Zionist of Basle which had paid a homage public to the sultan Abdülhamid II: The representatives of oldest of the persecuted people, those which one can write the history only with blood, send the their safety at worst assassins. and in this assembly, it is nobody to say: You do not have the right to dishonor your people.

Bernard Lazare did not seek to like. He aspired to justice, the truth and freedom without compromise. Very quickly, the Dreyfusiste S will choke its voice, and it will not be able even any more, at the time of the lawsuit of Rennes, to write for the Dawn . It will not cover less the lawsuit, and will send with them its chronicles to vitriol with two American reviews, The Chicago Record and The North American Review .

In 1902, consulted by Charles Péguy on the effects of the relative law to the contract of association, it gives to the Cahiers of the fortnight a profession of faith which, on the basis of what was the morals of the dreyfusism, goes in defense of the democracy, of freedom to think and to believe.

When he died, September 1903, at 38 years, after being operated of a Cancer of the digestive tracts at the last stage, he left a new manuscript, the Manure of Job , and authorized the republication of the Anti-semitism, its history and its causes provided that it were put at the head “that on many points my opinion had changed”.

For Jean-Marie Delmaire, the glory of the I Show returned in only Zola and one quickly forgot Bernard Lazare. Undoubtedly because if it were “effective, (it was) marginal everywhere where it was agitated”.

With Paris, in the 3 {{E}} district with the angle of the streets Turbigo and Volta, a place Bernard Lazare was inaugurated by the mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoë the June 15th 2005

Always in Paris, the Bernard-Lazare Circle is an organization Sioniste - Socialiste, related on the Hachomer Hatzaïr and the party Meretz in Israel.

Works

Anti-semitism its history and its causes, 1894, Leon Chailley ED.
the Dreyfus Business - a miscarriage of justice - Edition established by pH. Oriol, - ED. Combined (1993) to
the Manure of Job - Text established by pH. Oriol - ED. Honore Champion (1998)
Jewish and anti-semites - Edition established by pH. Oriol - ED. Combined (1992)
various Textes of Bernard Lazare on line:

Anti-semitism and Révolution
Against the Anti-semitism - (History of a polemic)
History of the revolutionary doctrines
Jewish Nationalism

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