Treasure Trove: Alfred Dreyfus, Toronto and Elaine from Seinfeld

In 2025, France declared that July 12 will be the national day of commemoration for Alfred Dreyfus.  The first such day is in 2026, which is the 120th anniversary of the day that France’s highest appeals court recognized Dreyfus’ innocence.  In announcing this day French President Emmanuel Macron said it is “for the victory of justice and truth over hatred and antisemitism.”

Dreyfus was a Jewish officer in the French army who in October 1894 was wrongfully charged, then convicted, of spying for Germany.  The trial was, as they would say in France, a cause célèbre (a legal case that attracts widespread interest), and brought the issue of antisemitism that had been percolating below the surface of French society, to the top.  

French society split between Dreyfusards (those who thought he was innocent) including the novelist Emile Zola whose pamphlet entitled “J’accuse” was  written in support, and anti-Dreyfusards (those who thought he was guilty).  Ultimately, Dreyfus was convicted and was subject to a degradation ceremony which is portrayed in this drawing that appeared in a French magazine in January 1895.  Dreyfus was sent off to prison in Devil’s Island, a penal colony in French Guiana.

Even after he was sent away to prison, there remained those who believed Dreyfus was innocent and they advocated for a retrial.  Dreyfus was returned to France in June 1899, had a retrial, was convicted again, then pardoned and finally, 120 years ago, was exonerated.

One can draw parallels between the experience of Jews in France at the time of the Dreyfus affair, and those of us in Canada today.   In France, the land of liberté, égalité, fraternité (liberty, equality, fraternity), Jews in 1894 could reasonably have concluded that antisemitism had been confined to the dustbins of history.  Then an event happened (the charges against Dreyfus) and then antisemitism, which was clearly always there, re-emerged.  We might say the same happened to us in Toronto after October 7.

Theodor Herzl was a journalist at the Dreyfus trial, and was so alarmed by the antisemitism that he witnessed that he decided to do something to fix it.  His solution was a Jewish state, and from then on he devoted himself to making that dream a reality.  Herzl is an example of channeling his fear and concern to work to solve a problem, not run from it.

Dreyfus himself remained loyal to France notwithstanding his experience.  He rejoined the French army and fought for France in World War One.  Is loyalty to your country in the face of antisemitism the right response? Dreyfus clearly decided that it was.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus is Alfred’s fifth cousin, four times removed.  Julia of course was Elaine in Seinfeld.  One of Elaine’s catchphrases was “get out”, accompanied by a hard shove.  I like to think that if Elaine met her distant relative’s persecutors 130 years ago, she would give them a big shove and say “get out”.  We are struggling with how best to respond to the antisemitism we are experiencing.  Perhaps that is as good an idea as any.

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Treasure Trove is a program of The Herzl Project. Another program is The #Herzl100. 100 Herzl artifacts will be posted over 100 days on Instagram, FaceBook and TikTok. Search #Herzl100 on any of these platforms to see the first 38 artifacts, with 62 still to go! A new one drops every day.

For more treasures from the Herzl and Zionism Collection of David Matlow, which has appeared weekly in the Treasure Trove column in the Canadian Jewish News (www.thecjn.ca) since February 2021, see https://herzlcollection.com/treasure-trove