The False Promise of Emancipation
Isaac
Cohen
The emancipation of Jews in
To French Jews, Napoleon's
enforcement of the 1791 law of emancipation meant liberation from legal restrictions as
well as political and social disabilities.
For the first time in European history, Jews were recognized as equal
under the Law and were given the rights and duties of citizenship. This
emancipation was a significant turning point in Jewish history, although it
would later result in grave repercussions for both Jews and non-Jews alike.
With this newfound
emancipation, Jews faced many challenges while non-Jews struggled
with the concept of Jews as equals.
The path to emancipation
began years before Napoleon with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and
Citizen (Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen), which was approved
by the National Assembly of France in August 26, 1789, and paved the way for
emancipation with its central theme being that "Men are born and remain
free and equal in rights." The
Declaration was founded on the belief that power resided neither in tradition
nor in any social-political order or the Church, but in individual freedom –
freedom which extended to all persons, including Jews. However, it would not be for another two years
that the National Assembly's “Law Relating to Jews,” was passed on
In a profound sense, Jewish
emancipation was a natural consequence of the well known motto of the French
revolution -- Liberté, Egalité,
Fraternité. Liberté, meant that Jews, like all human beings, possessed
inalienable, natural
rights, such as the right of free expression or religious
beliefs. It became the duty of the government to safeguard and promote these
natural rights. Egalité, meant
equality of economic, educational, and political opportunity. Above all,
equality called for equality of all under the law. All
people, including Jews, should have access to justice. Fraternité, implied nationalism, a love
of la patrie, the nation. It
required that all citizens give their loyalty not to a class or a church, not
to a monarch or to a guild, but rather to the nation. The ideals of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité proved
their authenticity powerfully in its inclusion of Jews who had been the pariah
people of
Yet, in relation to Jews,
the dark side of this idealism would become evident. In order to achieve
fraternity, the idea of corporatism had to end.
The existence of special privileged bodies within the nation could no
longer be tolerated. This included the existence of a separate Jewish
community. In the case of Jews, this new "civic virtue" assumed the
renunciation of Jewish "nationhood" as if, after two thousand years
of forced separation, Jewish identity could be reduced to a "mere"
religion with Jewish culture being nothing more than lighting candles on
Shabbat evening and circumcising male newborns. As one deputy of the National
Assembly declared: "To the Jew as an individual - everything, to the Jews
as a nation - nothing." In other
words, while Jews were equal to all other citizens, their Judaism had to be
diluted. Another member of the Assembly
declared: "Let us begin by destroying all the humiliating signs which
designate them as Jews, so that their garb, their outward appearance, shows us
that they are full citizens."
The structure of the Jewish
kinship system, rooted in the biblical idea of people hood and reinforced by two thousand years
of exclusion, was a mystery to the outside World. Jewish religion, in fact, was attached to
Jewish "nationhood" like flesh to bone, like soul to body. The
attachment to the Land and the return to Jerusalem/Zion is
cited hundreds of times in the liturgy and the Hebrew Bible, referred to by
Christians as the Old Testament.
However, the fathers of the French Revolution had a different framework,
Christianity, which had evolved differently.
Judaism would become solely a religion which would be far too thin to
contain the multifaceted complexity of Jewish life. Therefore, there was a fuse attached to the
concept of emancipation as it applied to Jews.
Nonetheless, the new system offered high hopes to Jews, real
opportunities appeared, and Jews moved to fill them. There is little doubt that Jews were the
greatest beneficiaries of the Revolution, while at the same time, the Roman
Catholic Church, may have been its greatest casualty.
On
Beginning in the summer of
1789, deputies within the National Assembly debated about whether Jews should
be entitled to the same rights as Christians.
At this time, French Jewry numbered less than 40,000 in a nation of 20
million, the vast majority of whom had never seen a Jew and knew little about
Judaism other than the general concept of suspicion imbibed from traditional
Christian teachings.
Most of the viewpoints
concerning Jews in French society at large were influenced by the negative
stereotypes of Jews which started early in the common era for religious reasons
and which were later transformed into secular anti-Semitism. Certain deputies within the National
Assembly, the Comte de Mirabeau, the Comte de Clermont-Tonnere, and l'abbé
Gregoire, acknowledged that the faults ascribed to Jews had been occasioned by
discrimination and persecution. L’abbé
Gregoire believed that once the harmful influences were removed, the Jews would
show themselves to be good citizens, stating that "If the Jews have
faults, it is the Christian society which is responsible. In their place would
we not be worse?" The Count de
Clermont Tonnere was the most positive on behalf of the Jews, arguing: "Leave man's conscience free, that
sentiments or thoughts guided in one manner or another towards the heavens will
not be crimes that society punishes with the loss of social rights. Or else,
create a national religion, arm yourself with a sword, and tear up your
Declaration of Rights. But there is justice, there is reason."
Negative views concerning
the Jews could be found in clerical and traditionalist circles unfavorable to
the Enlightenment. Defenders of orthodox catholic thinking on the Jews viewed
them as hopelessly fanatic, blind, stubborn and deceitful. The views of Luther
in his anti-Semitic pamphlet "On the Jews and their Lies" were still
shared by the people in the street over 200 years later. The following views
prevailed: The Jews had
murdered the Savior of mankind and 18 centuries later were still
in league with the Devil. Therefore, the Jews should be allowed to exist but in
a degraded and second class position and should justifiably remain in their
ghettos as decreed by the Popes. Their debasement would show true believers how
unbelievers and deicides should suffer.
The Jewish religion, moreover, would make it impossible for them to be
artisans or farmers. Their religion would always separate them from society at
large so that their emancipation would not be in the best interests of the
nation. Declared Monsieur de la Fare, bishop of Nancy: "Must one admit
into the family a tribe that is a stranger to oneself, that constantly turns
its eyes toward another homeland… a tribe that, be faithful to its law, must
forbid to the individuals who constitute it entrance into armies, the
mechanical and liberal arts, and into the employ of the civil courts and
municipalities; a tribe that, in obeying both its own law and the national law,
has 108 valueless holy days in the year?"
Ironically, some proponents
of the Enlightenment
ideals, like the famous Voltaire, were blatant anti-Semites. Voltaire
drew his inspiration from the secular culture of
The main opposition to
Jewish emancipation, however, came from the Alsatian delegation. The
overwhelming majority of French Jewry, some 40,000, resided in
Rewbell further asserted
that he was not religiously intolerant, but that the Jewish religion was
particularly obnoxious because it taught separatism and contempt for the
others. It created in its adherents an odious character which was both
repellent and dangerous. The Jews were aliens, foreigners and could never be
true Europeans. Rewbell's thoughts
reflected those of Voltaire.
The only organized group in
Eastern France to argue for enlarging the rights of the Jews was the Société des Amis de la Constitution in
Strasbourg, the capital of Alsace. This moderate revolutionary group maintained
that the peasants of the region were being artificially enflamed and that eventually
their enmity toward the Jews would cool. With equality of opportunity, the Jews
would enter into a variety of occupations and would contribute to the wealth of
the entire region. Economic opportunity would make them less clan-minded and
more French. They would ultimately become productive and loyal citizens.
It was this moderate
mainstream of deputies who finally carried the day in favor of Jewish
emancipation. The Jews, though, were granted equal rights in two stages. First,
on
These arguments proved most
telling and finally prevailed over the opposition. By granting emancipation to
the Sefardic Jews, the Assembly gave full rights of citizenship to some 3 to
4,000 individuals. Their principal communities were located in the cities of
Even though the National
Assembly had recognized only a specific category of Jews for full citizenship,
the act set an important precedent.
On the very day that the
decree emancipating the Jews of Southern France was being passed, the major
political body of Paris, La Commune, heard an eloquent plea on behalf of
emancipation for all French Jews. Jacques Goddard, a spokesman for a deputation
of Parisian Jews, argued that full Jewish emancipation had to come in France,
because, "Equality for all men was a principle which conformed to the laws
of reason and humanity, and that such a decision would help remake the Jews so
they, as individuals would reflect virtues which reason and love of mankind
taught." Members of the Paris Commune were in agreement with these
contentions and strove to bring about Jewish emancipation even though there
were only some 800 Jews in
On
These provisions of the new
constitution along with the persistent and compelling arguments of the
proponents of the emancipation finally set the stage for the full extension of
the rights of citizens to all the Jews of France.
Finally, on
There is little doubt that
the winds of enlightenment blew back and forth on both sides of the
The decree granting full
citizenship to all the Jews of France was one of the first decrees of the newly
elected Legislative Assembly. However, this legislative body did little to
implement this new freedom for the Jews. A year later, deputies of a new body
called the Convention were elected. This body was derided by Victor Hugo during
a period characterized by mayhem and political turbulence. During this time,
synagogues were closed and the Convention forbid the
use of the Hebrew language which was considered linked to Jewish sovereignty.
Could it be that they wanted to force the Jews to pray their G-d in Latin? The
promise of Emancipation really started to sound hollow to Jews.
Granting
freedom to Jews in the name of enlightenment while at the same time restricting
their Jewish culture happened in other parts of
Back to
It was during this period
that we see the emergence of this brilliant young Corsican officer, Buonaparte
(as he was called then) who rose through the ranks to become one of the
youngest brilliant French generals and a champion of the persecuted Jewish and
Protestant causes. In March 1796, two days after marrying Josephine de
Beauharnais, the brilliant military strategist Buonaparte, the Man on the
Horseback, took
the command of the army that invaded
The liberation of the Roman
ghetto, within sight of the
A declaration was issued in
Padova on
Napoleon scorned the
Directory and intended to continue building his reputation as a military genius
in foreign lands and at the same time avoid being tainted at home by the Directory.
He probably was already scheming the Coup d'Etat that
would eventually crown him Emperor of the French people (not Emperor of France)
in 1804. In 1798 he directed his ambition towards
Unfortunately for the Jews,
the British thwarted Napoleon's intentions, and his attempt to capture
Interestingly, in 1806,
Emperor Napoleon I, convened a Grand Sanhedrin in
One has to mention,
however, that Napoleon, under pressure from different quarters, enforced some
restrictions following the spirit of the Enlightenment project in regard to
Jews. Clermont-Tonnerre, a deputy of the French Assembly had indeed declared:
"One must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation, but one must give
them everything as individuals. If they do not want this, they must inform us,
and we shall be compelled to expel them. The existence of a nation within a
nation is unacceptable to our country."
Jews could be "Frenchmen of the Mosaic persuasion". They had
to give up communal autonomy and merge with the great French nation. They had
to abandon all notions of Jewish peoplehood because in the eyes of even many of
their supporters, this identity carried along with it egregious, harmful traits
and ideas. Of course, they had to give up all notions for the eventual
restoration of
Most Jews were willing to
pay this price. In fact, Napoleon, the demolisher of the ghetto's walls, and
his armies were greeted by Jews as liberators throughout
For the Jews, it was a dream come true. The potential for Jewish emancipation in
the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen had been realized. The
Jews would no longer be excluded from full participation in the political,
economic, and social life of the country. For the first time in modern history,
all Jews would be united with their fellow citizens as equals before the Law.
However, dream is one thing
and reality is another. The objective of the Emancipation was to create
"new men" out of the Jews. The framers of the Declaration wanted in
fact to create a new Jew tailored to their ideal who would not be too
Jewish. Arthur Hertzberg, the author of
"The French Enlightenment and the Jews" wrote: "Whatever the Jew
did, there was someone to say that the Revolution had intended him to do
something else, that was more regenerative of his nature and more useful to the
society… The emancipation allowed the
Jews in
These "new Jews"
entered a society in which the seeds of a new secular anti- Semitism, grown
from centuries of religious brain-washing, had been planted by such thinkers as
Voltaire. According to these thinkers, the Jew was hopelessly "the
other". No matter what the Jews did, it was not enough and they could not
escape the odious stain of their Jewishness. The words of Voltaire to the Jews contained
a self-fulfilling prophecy: "You seem to me the maddest of the lot. The
Kaffirs, the Hottentots and the Negroes of Guinea are much more reasonable and
more honest people than your ancestors, the Jews. You have surpassed all
nations in impertinent fables, in bad conduct, and in barbarism. You deserve to
be punished for this is your destiny." Interestingly, when I was a High
School student at the Lyçée Français, not a word about this negative aspect of
Voltaire was pronounced. It was probably unimportant.
This secular anti-Semitism
combined with the powerful negative stereotypes and teachings of traditional
Christian anti-Semitism posed an ongoing threat to Jewish emancipation. The
Revolution itself provided anti-Semites with a powerful new stereotype. Since
the Jews benefited from the Revolution they must have instigated it. They had
used the Revolution to further their own ends and to attack the sacred
traditions, values, and institutions of Christian society. This was exactly the
same argument which was made after the Bolchevik revolution in 1917, though
Stalin' s treatment of Jews was nothing to envy, to say the least. The Jews had
instigated the Revolution and would instigate other upheavals and disorders in an attempt to gain
control of
Nonetheless, the Jews of
France were overwhelmed with gratitude for the precious gift of emancipation.
One prominent Alsatian Jew, Berr Isaac Berr wrote in a letter to his fellow
Jews: "G-d has chosen the generous French nation to reinstate us in our
rights… How glorious it is for that nation, who has in so short a time made so
many people happy… And what bounds can there be to our gratitude for the happy
event. From being vile slaves, mere serfs, a species of men merely tolerated
and suffered in the empire, liable to heavy and arbitrary taxes, we are, of a
sudden, become the children of the country, to bear its common charges, and
share in its common rights".
Through countless patriotic
actions, French Jewry dramatically demonstrated that they had indeed become,
"children of the country". They joined the National Guard and served
with distinction in the French army. They made generous contributions to the
nation. French Jews began to occupy public offices and sent their children to
public schools. By 1810, the town council of the city of Metz could proclaim:
"Many followers of the Law of Moses each day make laudable efforts to draw
closer to our customs, usages, our civilization, our special practice to escape
at last from the state of abjection to which our old laws and perhaps our
prejudices have condemned them."
Although not all French
Jews assimilated so rapidly, enough did to make a positive impression on their
fellow citizens.
The Jews had been
emancipated during the French Revolution by the power and logic of the ideas of
Liberté, Egalité and Fraternité. But emancipation did not
necessarily mean a basic shift in attitudes towards the Jews. The consensus
even among the revolutionaries was that Jews would have to prove themselves
worthy of citizenship. But for many Frenchmen, no proof would ever be
sufficient.
In conclusion, the promise
of emancipation for the Jews remained a promise for a long time. Some scholars,
like Hannah Arendt, even attribute the origin of modern secular anti-Semitism
to the enlightenment. The balance, however, undoubtedly tilts in favor of the
emancipation laws promulgated by the French Revolution which gave Jews a legal
arm to fight for their rights.
While Napoleon the First is
often remembered as being a dictatorial negative leader, his treatment of Jews
is rarely if ever discussed. In retrospect, he only wanted to impose what was
right.
I was raised in the Lyçée
Français and not a word about Napoleon freeing the Jews from their ghettos was
pronounced in the history classes. I discovered this aspect of Napoleon, as
well as Voltaire’s anti-Semitism, through my research for this paper.
Undoubtedly, Napoleon is the champion of Jewish emancipation not only in
1.
H. Arendt. Origins of
Totalitarianism. Anti-Semitism.
2. A. Hertzberg, The
French Enlightenment and the Jews.
3.
M. Hay, The
Roots of Christian anti-Semitism.
4.
Elliott Lefkowitz.
Emancipation of Jews. Alliance Francaise, 1989 (lecture for the 200th
anniversary of the French Revolution - in collaboration with Isaac Cohen).
5.
McKay, John, P., Hill,
B.D., Buckler, J.A. History of Western
Society.
6.
B. Weider. Napoleon and the
Jews. www.napoleon1er.com, 1998
7.
James Carroll.
8.
S. Kadri.
9.
M. Zarzecny. Religion in
Napoleonic