Napoleon Bonaparte
Emperor of France: where his army passed, the ghettos opened
In 1806 he assembled in Paris an assembly of Jewish notables and put twelve questions to it: do the Jews regard the French as brothers, do they recognize French law on marriage and divorce, who appoints rabbis, does Jewish law permit taking interest from Frenchmen. In 1807 he convened the Grand Sanhedrin—seventy-one men, two-thirds of them rabbis—so that the answers should have the force of a halakhic ruling. The assembly declared France "our land" and French marriage law binding prior to the religious rite.
And in the same years came the décret infâme of 1808, which for ten years restricted the rights of the Jews of the eastern departments. Napoleon granted equality and exacted a price for it; to call him a liberator without the second half is incomplete.
Sources
Documents of the period
- The twelve questions to the Assembly of Notables (1806); the decisions of the Grand Sanhedrin (1807); the décret infâme (1808) — the price of equality is named in the documents themselves
Basis: documents and evidence.