Cahier 9, dictated by Proust in 1909, includes an important addition on Judaism and the Jewish question. Swann's worldly and social successes are attributed to his mother, who no longer exists in the novel. The writer develops a detailed analysis of Jews in French society(RTP, I, 1099-1100). Presenting Judaism as a prerequisite forMme Swann's upward social mobility, he argues that Jews are capable of breaking out of their professional milieu, which for them represents no more than a stage in their social progression. This was a widespread thesis at the end of the 19th century, among philosemites and anti-Semites alike. In the same draft, Proust contrasts Jewish mobility with the "mental blindness" of the French bourgeoisie, incapable of transgressing the limits of its milieu.
This is a true Jewish social novel, with a conception of social advancement, of world conquest through an alliance of the new liberal Jewish bourgeoisie and the old aristocracy, ignoring the traditional, closed Catholic petty bourgeoisie. This theory of assimilation and social ascension is based on the idea of Jewish superiority in the modern world, because they are more mobile and classless. This is a late 19th-century idea that Jews have adapted better to the modern world since the French Revolution. It is in line with James Darmesteter's Coup d'oeil sur l'histoire du peuple juif, published in 1880. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, author of L'Israël chez les nations (1883), also warned against the thesis of the Jews' best adaptation to the modern world, seeing it as a ferment of anti-Semitism. The same idea can also be found in Bernard Lazare.
Describing Swann's mother's social mobility, Proust draws on all the available sciences, such as biology, physics and mechanics. As for the expression "freshly landed from the Orient", in Proust's work, the word Orient often refers precisely to the Middle East or Near East, and not to the East like Germany, Russia or Alsace, where his family comes from. This would mean thatMme Swann mère was of Sephardic rather than Ashkenazi origin. But it could be said a contrario that there's a whole usage that identifies "Oriental" and "Hebraic", including in Proust's description of Nissim Bernard in Sodom and Gomorrah (RTP, III, 239).
