Exploring how Algerian Jews responded to and appropriated France's newly conceived "civilizing mission" in the mid-nineteenth century, Arabs of the Jewish Faith shows that the ideology, while rooted in French Revolutionary ideals of regeneration, enlightenment, and emancipation, actually developed as a strategic response to the challenges of controlling the unruly and highly diverse populations of Algeria's coastal cities.

Introduction
1. Jews, Commerce, and Community in Early Colonial Algeria
2. Revolution, Republicanism, and Religion: Responses to Civilizing in Oran, 1848
3. Synagogues, Surveillance, and Civilization
4. Teaching Civilization: French Schools and Algerian Midrashim,1852-1870
5. From Napolean's Sanhedrin to the Cremiéux Decree: Sex, Marriage, and the Boundaries of Civilization
Conclusion

JOSHUA SCHREIER is an assistant professor of history at Vassar College.