Jean Daniel

Jean Daniel Bensaid (21 July 1920 – 19 February 2020) was a French journalist and author. He was the founder and executive editor of Le Nouvel Observateur weekly now known as L'Obs.

Life and career Daniel was born in Blida, Algeria, as the youngest of 11 children. Jean Daniel attended the University of Algiers before the Second World War. In La prison juive: Humeurs et méditations d'un témoin (The Jewish Prison), Daniel argued that prosperous, assimilated Jews in the west live in a self-imposed prison made of up of three invisible walls: the idea of the Chosen People, Holocaust remembrance, and support for Israel. "Having trapped themselves inside these walls...," wrote Adam Shatz in describing the book, "they were less able to see themselves clearly, or to appreciate the suffering of others -- particularly the Palestinians living behind the 'separation fence'."

Daniel was a member of the Saint-Simon Foundation think-tank.

His first life partner was the Corsican writer Marie Susini. He later married Michèle Bancilhon, with whom he had one daughter, the journalist . The 1964 incarnation of the magazine was when Jean Daniel and Claude Perdriel took over renaming the magazine and starting its best known phase under the name Le Nouvel Observateur as a weekly. Since then it has been published by Groupe Nouvel Observateur on a weekly basis and has covered political, business and economic news in France and internationally. On 23 October 2014, the magazine was renamed L'Obs.

Published works

Books The Jewish Prison: a Rebellious Meditation on the State of Judaism translated into English by Charlotte Mandell, 2005, Melville House Publishing, USA

Articles "We Already Miss His Vigilance" Telos 44 (Summer 1980). New York: Telos Press