The thousandth-best Francophilic Zionism

Every time I think, yes, this is what I want to research, I begin doing the readings and journal searches, only to find that it has been done, and done well. In the process I am learning a whole lot more about my subject (broadly speaking, French Jews) but given much of the world's fascination with France and with Jews--and given that both the French and the Jews are known for writing books and articles--it's not so surprising that French Jews are already a much-examined bunch. From what I can tell, to do new work is either to find a not-so-examined person or event to research; to have a totally new angle on pre-existing research and then bring in your own; or to read today's paper and write about it, because there's no way someone wrote about that in 1990.