The word for ‘foreigner’ in French, étranger, is also the word for ‘stranger.’ The two meanings overlap but are not synonymous, for one can be a stranger to a community or group without being a foreigner; and some foreigners are not strangers to a particular individual or group—many people have foreign friends. But both words carry connotations of difference, and possibly exclusion, from the majority group or the nation. The foreigner does not have the right passport (if he has a passport at all), or the right accent or way of dressing or behaving, while the stranger does not quite fit in, even if she looks and speaks like others and tries hard to be one of them; occasionally, the stranger will not try to integrate, preferring instead to cultivate his feeling of difference. In all their varieties, foreigners and strangers are outsiders—perceived as such by others, and in most instances by themselves as well.

Historically, Jews have been the quintessential étrangers in European culture, in both senses of the word. Very often they were foreigners, given their frequent displacements across national borders as they fled pogroms, poverty, and revolutions in the nineteenth century, followed by more of the same between and after the two world wars. For much of that time, they were also seen as strangers, even when they stayed in place and despite their attempts to become integrated into the national culture. This was true even in countries where they were promised, and granted, equal rights as citizens, as happened in France after the Revolution and in England, Germany, and the Habsburg Empire somewhat later. The historian Todd Endelman, who has written a book on the subject, notes that even in countries where progressive change occurred, ‘it failed to uproot well-entrenched views about Jewish otherness, neither erasing the stigma of Jewishness nor ushering in an era of unconditional social acceptance.’ Lawrence D. Kritzman summed it up very well in his discussion of Jewish identity in France: ‘To be Jewish is to be marked negatively.’ Kritzman was referring here specifically to Sartre's analysis of the situation of Jews in his book Réflexions sur la question juive (1946), which was based on Sartre's somewhat scant knowledge about Jews at that time (he would learn more later), counterbalanced by his profound knowledge of French attitudes toward Jews.