Just over two hundred years ago, an assembly of one hundred eleven Jewish notables convened at City Hall in Paris at the invitation of the French emperor Napoleon. These men, representing Jewish populations throughout Western Europe, were instructed to answer twelve fundamental questions about their faith and its view of the gentile nations, particularly the French.
Their responses shed much light on the nature of Jewish-gentile relations in 19th century France and the Jewish view of emancipation, the repercussions of which continue to be felt until our time.
The legal status of Jews was one of the burning issues in the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution. Despite a pervasive spirit of liberty and equality, the “Jewish question” remained a hotly debated topic among the newly established political leadership.
In this self-proclaimed Age of Reason, a conflicted yet somehow unified anti-Jewish perspective surfaced. Enlightened members of the French elite deemed the Jewish population, possessors of their own governing bodies, courts, and powers of collection and taxation, a “nation within a nation,” unsuitable for integration within greater society.
For proper assimilation to occur, it was argued that Jews must be “denied everything as a nation but granted everything as individuals” (Stanislas Comte de Clermont-Tonnerre, one of many presidents of the French National Assembly).
Conservative Royalists resented the new Jewish freedoms made manifest with the fall of the old order. They labeled the Jews “allies of anarchy,” permanent aliens, impossible to assimilate, undermining the spirit of fraternal nationalism. They claimed that as usurious moneylenders the Jews had impoverished the French peasantry, were a threat to everything French, and should receive no special rights.
The newly empowered radical left, presiding over the Legislative Assembly, also resisted offering new rights to the Jews. It would take two years, in the face of tremendous resistance, for complete emancipation to be extended to the Jewish community.
Not surprisingly, when the emancipation resolution was finally declared on September 27, 1791, an outpouring of Jewish patriotism followed. At the urging of Berr Isaac Cerfberr, a shtadlan to the French authorities, Jews volunteered in large numbers for the National Guard and the army, and made generous contributions to the revolutionary cause. They shed outward religious trappings in an attempt at complete assimilation. Through such measures they hoped all accusations of separatism, infidelity and lawlessness would be dismissed.
Despite these efforts, anti-Jewish feeling remained strong; centuries of bigotry and persecution could not be quickly erased. The subsequent right-wing political reaction beginning in 1795 only intensified matters. Riots followed, particularly in the heavily populated Alsace-Lorraine, where thousands of farmers were indebted to Jewish lenders. By the turn of the century, the Revolution and its aftermath had changed precious little for the Jews, leaving only a deep sense of missed opportunity.
The rise of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799 as first counsel and later, in 1804, as emperor, heralded new opportunities for French Jewry. Napoleon’s initial encounter with Jews occurred in 1797, in the ghetto of Ancona, Italy. Upon entering the city, the then-French lieutenant noticed the Jews wearing special bonnets together with yellow armbands marked with the Star of David. He immediately ordered the distinctive articles removed and the ghetto closed. Similar liberations occurred later in Venice, Rome, and other Italian cities. Jews now possessed the freedom to live where they wished and could practice their religion openly.
Two years later, during a march on Constantinople, Napoleon made his way through the land of Israel. As his forces besieged Acre, he prepared a proclamation freeing the local Jewish population and returning to them their ancestral land:
Rightful heirs of Palestine! The great nation [France] which does not trade in men and countries as did those which sold your ancestors unto all people calls on you…to take over that which has been conquered and, with that nation’s support, to remain master of it against all comers…. Hasten! Now is the moment, which may not return for thousands of years, to claim the restoration of civic rights among the population of the universe which had been shamefully withheld from you for thousands of years, your political existence as a nation among the nations, and the unlimited natural right to worship in accordance with your faith, publicly and most probably forever!
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