This book focuses on a small community of French Jews, the first in Europe to encounter the requirements of an emerging nation-state and to be recognized by that state as full and equal citizens. The Sephardim of Bordeaux were typical of neither the majority of the Jews of France nor those of Western Europe. They had entered France as Catholics; only after more than a century of public adherence to Catholicism was their community officially recognized as Jewish. Nevertheless, their assimilation and conformity to the standards of French society as well as their commitment to a Judaism fashioned as much by contemporary political and economic concerns as by tradition reveal a legacy bequeathed to French Jewry and an important model for the development of the modern Jew. My interest in the Jews of Bordeaux began during my years of graduate study at Brandeis University. There I enjoyed the encouragement of Professors Alexander Altmann, Nahum Glatzer, Benjamin Halpern, and Nahum Sarna. To these learned scholars I am deeply indebted. A grant from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture and the help of Mr. Zosa Szajkowski and the Jewish Theological Seminary of New York enabled me to begin my work. The main research was done in Paris and Bordeaux during the academic year 1968-69 and the summer of 1972. I am grateful to the Fulbright Commission and the University of Massachusetts whose fellowships made my travel and research possible. It would have been difficult to benefit from the material available in this field without the help of MM. Bernhard Blumenkranz, Gérard Nahon, and Georges Weill as well as from M. Jean Cavignac, who arranged for me to have complete access to the Departmental Archives of Bordeaux and the city archives. My research also took me to Israel where with the help of M. Simon Swartzfuchs I was introduced to M. Pascal Thémanlys, whose kindness and generosity in permitting me to examine his family archives will never be forgotten.