SOCIÉTÉ DES ÉTUDES JUIVES

SOCIÉTÉ DES ÉTUDES JUIVES, society founded in 1880 by isidore loeb , zadoc kahn , and Israël Levi to revive interest in the history of French Jewry and spread knowledge   of Judaism. From its inception, the Société des Études Juives published the quarterly Revue des Etudes Juives, which became one of the leading learned periodicals of modern Jewish scholarship, in which reports on the society's meetings and activities appeared; they were also published in its Annuaire (1881–85). In addition, the society sponsored the publication of works such as H. Gross's Gallia Judaica (1897), Th. Reinach's (ed.) Josephus (7 vols., 1900–32), and Loeb's Les Tables du Calendrier Juif (1886). Its activities were suspended during the two world wars; after World War II the society, on the initiative of its president G. Vajda , renewed its cycle of lectures and the publication of its journal. Among its presidents were J. Derenbourg, A. Darmstetter, and members of the rothschild family . Th. Reinach was its secretary for many years and E. Renan was a member and lecturer. In the early 21st century, the SEJ maintained its tradition of monthly conferences, despite the challenge of a much larger range of Jewish cultural offerings in which the scholarly, historico-philological approach is but one option. Apart from the REJ, the SEJ publishes the "Collection de la Revue des études juives," a very prolific series of monographs (17 titles published between 1980 and 1997; 20 between 1998 and 2004). (Colette Sirat / Jean-Pierre Rothschild (2nd ed.)