A beautiful story, perhaps apocryphal, is told of Napoleon Bonaparte passing a European synagogue on Tisha B’Av and hearing inconsolable weeping coming from inside. When he asked what great misfortune had happened there, he was advised that Jews gather once a year to fast, pray, and mourn on the anniversary of the destruction of their holy Temples in Jerusalem.
When informed further that the destruction had occurred some two millennia earlier, Napoleon is reputed to have proclaimed: “A nation that cries and fasts for over 2,000 years for their land and Temple will surely be rewarded with their Temple.”
The first contact Napoleon (1769 – 1821) had with the organized Jewish community probably took place on February 9, 1797 during the Italian campaign, when his army entered Ancona. When he inquired why certain people wore yellow bonnets and a yellow armband bearing the Magen David, he was advised that these were Jews who had to be identified and who returned to the ghetto every evening.
Napoleon immediately ordered that the Jewish garb be replaced with the tricolor rosette; that the ghettos be closed; and that Jews be allowed to openly practice their faith. He later closed the Jewish ghetto in Rome and liberated the Jews there and, when the French occupied Malta on June 12, 1798, he rescinded the law forbidding the practice of Judaism in synagogues.
In the summer of 1798, Napoleon conquered Egypt and, leading an army through the Sinai Peninsula into Eretz Yisrael, took control of Jaffa and commenced a siege of Acre (1799), hoping to provoke a Syrian insurgence against the Ottomans and threaten British rule in India.
Confident that he would conquer Acre and go on to vanquish Jerusalem, he reportedly prepared a proclamation on April 20, 1799 (the first day of Passover) making Eretz Yisrael an independent Jewish state. Characterizing the Jews as the “rightful heirs of Palestine” and as “a unique nation, whom, in thousands of years, lust of conquest and tyranny have been able to deprive only of their ancestral lands, but not of name and national existence,” he would invite “all the Jews of Asia and Africa to gather under my flag to re-establish the ancient Jerusalem.”
Perhaps reflecting his Tisha B’Av experience, he later declared, “If I governed a nation of Jews, I should reestablish the Temple of Solomon.”
A few months later, in desperate need of funds to finance his military operations in Eretz Yisrael, Napoleon wrote the historic July 8, 1799 correspondence shown here to Poussielque, the chief administrator of the French Army, asking that payments be collected from the people of Damascus, the Kadi of Baher, Hassan Ney…and, particularly, from the Jews.
Though Napoleon’s forces ultimately lost to Great Britain and the proclamation was never formally issued, it heightened awareness of Jewish statehood and heralded the birth of modern Zionism. Herzl himself later wrote in a March 1899 letter to Kaiser Wilhelm II “What couldn’t be fulfilled under the rule of Napoleon I, can be fulfilled by Wilhelm II.”
After it became obvious that he could not establish a national Jewish home in Eretz Yisrael, Napoleon declared France the homeland of the Jews and, at a time of rampant anti-Semitism, offered the Jews “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.”
Shown here is the first page of Declaration de l’Assemblée des Députés des Israelites de France et du Royaume d’Italie, a leurs co-religionnaires” (Paris, Oct. 6-7, 1806), a Napoleonic proclamation regarding the protection of French Jews and containing lengthy praise for “the chosen people” who “deserve the benevolence of nations, preserving this blessed religion in all its purity . . .”
Shortly thereafter, Napoleon designated Judaism as one of three official religions of France.
Napoleon’s approach to the Jews constituted a turning point in Jewish history because, for the first time, a modern national leader characterized the “Jewish problem” as a fundamental issue of international politics. Though there were then only about 40,000 Jews in all of France, he aggressively promoted programs to give security and religious freedom to the Jews in nations under his control.
However, many commentators agree that rather than viewing the Jews with favor – in fact, there is much evidence to the contrary – Napoleon was motivated by a desire to assimilate Jews into Frenchmen. Thus, for example, in Triumph of Survival: The Story of the Jews in the Modern Era 1650-1990 (1990), Rabbi Berel Wein writes that “Napoleon’s outward tolerance and fairness toward Jews was based upon his grand plan to have them disappear entirely by means of total assimilation, intermarriage, and conversion.”
Due to the rabid criticism he received for his liberation of the Jews, both within France and without, Napoleon issued a March 17, 1808 Restrictive Decree significantly limiting Jewish freedom. However, its declaration annulling all debts owed to Jews caused so much financial loss that the Jewish community nearly collapsed, and he acted to rescind these restrictions. His defeat at Waterloo (1815) brought about a broad reemergence of anti-Semitism and the revocation of Jewish emancipation in countries formerly subject to his rule.
As history has proven time and again, the legal emancipation of the Jews does not inexorably lead to their social emancipation and assimilation and no legislation can by itself transform an anti-Semitic heart. This was no different in France, where French citizens, particularly in Alsace and Lorraine (home to most French Jews), continued to complain about the Jews and Jewish practices.
In response, Napoleon summoned an Assembly of Jewish Notables in April 1806 and ordered them to answer twelve questions, including questions about Jewish marital law (whether polygamy, divorce, and intermarriage are permissible); the rabbinate (rabbinical police/judicial power and who “elects” the rabbis); and, perhaps most important, whether French Jews acknowledge France as their country, are bound to defend it, and are obliged to obey its laws.
Exhibited here is the first page of Officiel . . . Seances de l’Assemblée des Juifs, Convoquée d’aprés les orders de S.M. l’Empereur . . . (Paris, July 29-30, 1806), an original Napoleonic Proclamation that contains a lengthy description of the preliminary proceedings of what would turn out to be the new French Sanhedrin.
In a controversial response to Napoleon’s twelve questions, the Assembly, seeking “compromises” that would retain fidelity to halacha while assuaging Napoleon’s concerns, declared that Jews must integrate into secular society while preserving their religious identities – and that, where a conflict exists, loyalty to the state trumps.
Napoleon, greatly satisfied by the answers of the Jewish Assembly, ordered it: (a) to make them the basis of the future status of Jews; (b) to revive the Jerusalem Sanhedrin of antiquity and elect 71 members, two-thirds rabbis and one-third laymen; and (c) to notify European communities of the establishment of the Sanhedrin, which the Assembly accomplished via a historic October 6, 1806 proclamation.
The opening of the “Great Sanhedrin” took place on Feb. 9, 1807 when, after a solemn religious service in the synagogue, the members assembled before the public in a specially prepared hall where, following Talmudic procedure, they sat in a semicircle according to age. The first meeting was opened with a Hebrew prayer written by David Sinzheim, rabbi of Strasbourg and president of the Sanhedrin.
In subsequent sittings, the Sanhedrin voted on the replies the Assembly of Notables had forwarded to Napoleon and enacted them as law, including rulings that polygamy be forbidden; that a Jewish divorce is valid only after such decision by the civil authorities; that intermarriages are binding though not celebrated religiously; that Jews must treat their gentile countrymen as brothers; and that France, as the Jewish fatherland, must be loved and defended.
In the introduction to these resolutions the Sanhedrin declared that, like the ancient Sanhedrin, it was a legal assembly vested with the power to pass regulations to promote Jewish welfare and instill obedience to the laws of the state. Opposition by many to the reconvening of the Sanhedrin was vitriolic. A particularly hateful attack came from the Holy Synod of Moscow, which issued a December 1806 open manifesto declaring that the reconvening of the Sanhedrin constituted “a debasement of the Church and Christendom.”
So, in the final analysis, was Napoleon good for the Jews? Though by no means were all his actions favorable to Jews, and though his Jewish policies remain the subject of great academic debate, there can be no question that, however imperfect his motivation, Napoleon played an important role in furthering contemporary Jewish equality by breaking up the feudal castes of mid-Europe; applying the egalitarianism of the French Revolution to the Jews and granting rights to the Jewish community; and speaking in general Zionistic terms about Jewish aspirations for Eretz Yisrael.
It is no surprise, therefore, that many Jews referred to him as chelek tov (“good part”), a pun on the name Bonaparte, which is derived from the Italian bona (buona), meaning “good, ” and parte, meaning “portion.”
