The emancipation of the Jewish people in Europe – begun in France in 1791 – brought to the fore a question, perhaps the question Jews have been struggling with for over 200 years, namely the relationship between modernity and Judaism. It led to the formation of denominations, Reform followed by the Orthodox followed by the Conservative (or Positive Historical as it was known in Europe) who tried to balance tradition and change. Fascinatingly, what we call today Charedi Orthodoxy and Reform both agreed that Judaism and modernity cannot co-exist. Where they differed was in their solution. The Reformists said we must reform Judaism and the Orthodox argued we must reject modernity.
It was Shimshon Raphael Hirsch in Germany who modelled an Orthodoxy that was completely faithful to halacha yet embraced the best of the modern world, both intellectually and culturally. Amongst his innovations were sermons in German, clerical robes, decorum, serious Jewish education for women and school trips to see the beauty of the Alps. While the primary battles of Reform and Orthodoxy took place in Hungary and Germany, in France the Jewish people faced the question of the balance of tradition and modernity soon after emancipation.
As I noted in our previous post it was France that first granted equal rights to Jews in 1791. For those of us having grown up in liberal democracies it is hard for us to imagine what a moment of joy this was. It is not by chance that over 2,000,000 Jews emigrated from Eastern Europe, where Jews did not have equal rights, to America, where Jews did have equal rights, between the years 1881-1924[1]. One will travel halfway around the world to escape persecution. It is for good reason that most rabbinic leaders supported Napoleon and his liberal policies towards the Jewish people. Notably, Rav Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the first Lubavicher Rebbe opposed Napoleon, fearing his liberal policies would lead to assimilation – not an unreasonable fear. Better, he argued, to be second class citizens (or worse) and observant than be free and assimilated.
There is little doubt that Napoleon’s liberal policies were part and parcel of an attempt to have the Jews assimilate and become Frenchmen. Even granting the “right” to assimilate was a great advance. Many had argued that Jews were inherently inferior – something we know all too well from the Nazis ym”s – and could not be emancipated. Others argued if Jews were granted equal rights they could be assimilated into the dominant milieu and become contributing members of society at large. They could be removed from the ghetto and the ghetto could be removed from them.
Towards this end, in 1806 Napoleon convened the Assembly of Notables, where 111 lay leaders and rabbis were summoned to Paris to answer 12 questions which would determine if Jews could continue to enjoy equality. The 12 questions were (Wikipedia)
- Is polygamy allowed among the Jews?
- Is divorce recognized by the Jewish law?
- "Can Jews intermarry with Christians?"or "Can a Jewess marry a Christian, and Jew a Christian woman? Or does the law allow for Jews to marry only among themselves?"
- Will the French people be esteemed by the Jews as strangers or as brethren?
- In what relation, according to the Jewish law, would the Jews stand towards the French?
- Do Jews born in France consider it their native country? Are they bound to obey the laws and customs of the land?
- Who elects the rabbis?
- What are the legal powers of the rabbis?
- Is the election and authority of the rabbis founded on law or custom?
- Is there any kind of business in which Jews may not be engaged?
- Is usury to their brethren forbidden by the law?
- Is it permitted or forbidden to practice usury with strangers?
While some of the questions are relatively easy to answer – for example, the question of polygamy – for others there are no simple answers. It is clear that Napoleon wanted to ensure the Jews were loyal to France, would not discriminate in any fashion – including marriage – with non-Jews and feared clerical power (something he shared with the architects of the French Revolution).
Can a Jew assert that they can intermarry with Christians? Threading the needle between fidelity to tradition and loyalty to France was not easy then and is not easy now. But the stakes were much higher in 1806.
On the intermarriage question – the most difficult – the assembly answered that Jewish law recognizes the legal right of Jews to marry Christians civilly. And that of course is true. Clearly, a Jew today, or in 1806, who married a non–Jew is legally married. The assembly ruled that no religious marriage would be allowed to take place unless it was preceded by a civil marriage. While this is standard practice today – and it is illegal to perform a religious wedding absent a civil one – this marked a new era of Jewish life, one in which even our religious practices had to account for secular law.
If the liberal attitudes towards Jews were based on the assumption that Jewish distinctiveness (in a most negative way) is based on historical persecution so too it can be argued that negative Jewish attitudes towards non-Jews are due to 2,000 years of persecution.
Many have for understandable reasons ignored or forgotten the universal aspect of Judaism. We must always remember that all people, Jew and non-Jew, Muslim and Christian, Israeli and Arab are created in the image of G-d. The first Jew does not even appear on the biblical scene for 20 generations. And Abram's name was changed to Avraham to reflect the fact that he is the av hamon goyim, the father of many nations. Unlike the animals, G-d created one single human being “so that no one could say my father is greater than your father” (Sanhedrin 37a). "We are obligated to feed the hungry, visit the sick and bury the dead of idolaters" (Gittin 61A). On Yom Kippur afternoon, the holiest day of the year, we read of G-d’s command to Yonah to charge the non-Jewish city of Ninveh to repent. We are meant to be a light unto the nations, and three times a day we end our davening by looking forward to the day when “G-d will be King of the entire land”. And the righteous of the nations have a share in the World to Come.
The assembly had many traditional sources they could point to allowing them to say that they consider their non-Jewish brethren as brothers and treat them as such[2].
Napoleon then went one step further and convened a Sanhedrin of 71 notables to ratify the answers of the Assembly of Notables. It was headed by Joseph David Sinzheim, Chief Rabbi of Strasbourg. The name of the gathering and its number were not coincidental[3] with all understanding that the ruling of the “Sanhedrin” would be no less binding than rulings of the actual Sanhedrin – the Jewish “Supreme Court” of the 71 leading rabbis that had ceased to exist some 1,500 years earlier. The ratification by the Sanhedrin confirmed that a new era for French Jewry had begun.
[1] The only reason immigration came to almost a complete stop in 1924 is because the United States imposed strict quotas. Many who could not get into the United States – it is why my family came to Canada in 1930 – were subsequently murdered in the Holocaust. Clergy were exempt from the quotas, allowing amongst others, Rav Soloveitchik, Rav Moshe Feinstein, Rav Aharon Kotler and the Lubavitcher Rebbe to immigrate to the United States.
[2] One can also find many negative statements about non-Jews in our sources, a natural reaction to persecution.
[3] We have a similar idea regarding the naming of the Israeli parliament. The name chosen was the Knesset linking them to the Anshei Knesset haGedolah, the 120 leaders of the Jewish people after the return from the Babylonian exile. The modern Israeli Knesset has 120 members corresponding to the 120 members of the Anshei Knesset haGedolah.
