Introduction

To address the subject of the emancipation of the Jews in France in thirty minutes is a daunting task. The subject is so rich, and its philosophical and political implications so significant in contemporary society in general and in French society in particular, that it can only be approached in a partial manner.

Problems and consequences of emancipation.

Attempting to retrace the history of the emancipation of the Jews in 2002, in the modern sense of the term, first requires evoking an essential stage in the history of the Jewish people of the Diaspora. Yet emancipation is above all a struggle for political and religious liberation, implicitly questioning the limits of tolerance within a society, equality of political rights, multi confessionalism, the concept of citizenship, assimilation and integration, tradition and customary law, secularism, and the notion of the chosen people.

Finally, for the person faithful to a principled intellectual requirement, as I am, it is also one of those formidable shocks in the history of humankind, one of those rare encounters in which the thought and action of different cultures interpenetrate and nourish one another for the collective good of a society.

Definition of emancipation.

Before entering the subject proper, it seems important to define precisely the very term emancipation, in the particular sense it assumes for this period of Jewish history.

The term to emancipate comes from the Latin emancipare, derived from manucapere, “to take by the hand”, and covers two meanings:

The acquisition of a slave took place by taking him by the hand, the prefix “e” marking the cessation of the action. This refers to the manumission of slaves in Antiquity.

Secondly, to emancipate means to release a minor from legal guardianship.

In pronouncing these words in a synagogue, it seems unnecessary to develop these two definitions further, so heavily laden with meaning are they in the particular case of the Jewish people.

I was corresponding by email with an Irish Jewish friend on the subject of Jewish emancipation in Europe. My surprise was considerable when he replied:

Daniel O’Connell, known as “the Liberator of Ireland”, achieved emancipation by an Act of the British Parliament in 1839 and, nineteen years later, approached by a delegation of British Jews, he achieved the emancipation of the Jews. I believe that before this Act, in the eyes of British legislation, neither Catholics nor Jews existed, hence today the fact that the British chant “Israel has the right to exist”. I am very proud that Ireland is the only country in Europe in which no Jew has lost his life simply for having been born Jewish. This country is, I believe, unique in this respect.” Joe Briscoe.

Beyond its purely anecdotal aspect, this remark is of great significance. It constitutes, in itself, the most accurate definition I have encountered of the emancipation of the Jews and its implications.

Indeed, emancipation was originally, in 1828, the rallying cry of Irish Catholics, by reference to the liberation of slaves in Antiquity. Once they acquired the full extent of their political rights, English Jews adopted this rallying cry in their legitimate quest for equality of rights. The term thus came to be applied to political events that had in reality taken place in France in the previous century.

This preliminary remark, overwhelming in its significance, coming from an Irish Jew, a direct descendant of one of the most famous liberators of the present day Republic of Ireland, also provided me indirectly with a perfect introduction to the philosophical and political context of the eighteenth century, which preceded by a century the emancipation of the Jews in France.

The philosophical premises of emancipation

The philosophy of the Enlightenment

In eighteenth century Europe, all religious forms claimed universalism, with the notable exception of Judaism, which did not practise the conversion of Gentiles. This unequivocal theological position of Christianity, combined with the model of a state religion (Catholic or Protestant), brought the religious question to the forefront and confined Jews to the margins of society. Counter examples were almost non existent. There was no equality of rights between confessions, official functions remaining reserved exclusively for practitioners of the state religion.

Intellectuals reacted to the arbitrary nature and intolerance of these societies. Enlightenment philosophers waged an intellectual struggle for freedom, the triumph of reason, the fight against arbitrariness and discrimination, freedom of enterprise, and the abolition of slavery.

Although the endeavour was noble, the various philosophers did not share a common political project and were themselves profoundly universalist. Their admirable struggle tended not so much towards the acceptance of particularisms as towards the negation of differences, beyond which they perceived the shared nature of the human condition. Universalism was no longer the interpretation of a revealed will but the expression of reason, experience, and an objective deciphering of reality.

The positions of Enlightenment philosophy regarding Jews were therefore infinitely contrasted, ranging from the overt antisemitism of Voltaire to the extraordinary tolerance of the Irish philosopher John Toland in his work “Reasons for Naturalising the Jews in Great Britain and Ireland, on the same foot with all other Nations containing also, a defence of the Jews against all vulgar prejudices in all Countries” (1714). Toland not only dismantled all the fallacious arguments of the antisemitism of his time, but also produced a treatise on tolerance and citizenship that remains a model of its kind, still scarcely surpassed to this day.

Note 1 “The Jews massacred, it is said, more than two hundred and twenty thousand persons in Cyrenaica and in Cyprus. Dion and Eusebius say that, not content with killing them, they ate their flesh, made a belt of their intestines, and rubbed their faces with their blood. If this is so, it was, of all conspiracies against the human race in our continent, the most inhuman and the most dreadful; and it must have been so, since superstition was its principle. They were punished, but less than they deserved, since they still exist (Voltaire, Des conspirations contre les peuples ou des proscriptions, 1766).”

If John Toland’s philo Semitic viewpoint, expressed in 1714, fell on conveniently deaf ears within the philosophy of the time, there is little reason to be surprised. Enlightenment philosophy, in calling upon reason, had among its battles the realm of prejudices and superstitions, in its path towards the deist and secular concept of natural religion.

Some philosophers nevertheless recognised in Judaism the original form of institutionalised religions and thus kept the question of Jewish equality aside from their reflections on the struggle against prejudice. Montesquieu and Rousseau stand out, however, in addressing the Jewish question without reference to religion, but rather as a social and political issue.

If Enlightenment philosophy never constituted an antisemitic movement of thought, it is nevertheless highly indicative of the state of reflection within the Christian world of the time concerning the political and religious status of Jews. Philosophy itself cannot be spared the paradoxes and influences of contemporary opinion since, for example, Aristotle fully accepted the slave society of his own time.

The Haskalah

Nonetheless, the work of the Enlightenment would constitute one of the pillars of the premises of Jewish emancipation, which would take place a century later. The first significant influence would be the Haskalah, the Jewish counterpart of the Enlightenment. Initiated by Moses Mendelssohn (1729 to 1786) in Berlin in 1750, the Haskalah argued for a more open attitude among Jews towards secular values, the Christian way of life, a rehabilitation of Hebrew teaching, and the development of the sciences of Judaism. This Jewish counterpart to the Enlightenment would gradually lead to an abandonment of strict religious observance and to assimilation.

The centralisation of the state and the French Revolution.

The third and final pillar of the premises of emancipation would be strictly political. It would in reality result from two phenomena:

• the centralisation of the state
• and the French Revolution.

It is not the purpose of a lecture on emancipation to develop anew the status of Jews under the French Revolution. Yet, as with the history of ideas, it is rigorously impossible to speak of emancipation without recalling, even briefly, the unique contribution of the Revolution to this event in Jewish history.

The role of state centralisation in the process of Jewish emancipation is crucial. On the eve of the Revolution, France was not a centralised state in the sense we might conceive today, but rather a federation of provinces. The Kingdom of France was a mosaic of regional particularisms. In this regard, I can only refer you to Ernest Renan’s work “What is a nation?”

This future centralisation of the state would pursue a normative rather than a federal objective: one language, one system of measures, and so forth. The most vigorous defenders of this thesis sought the flattening of regional particularisms, among which the Jewish nation of the time was not exempt. This concern for state centralisation would play a decisive role both in emancipation and in the assimilation of the Jews of France.

Note 2: Toland proposes a definition of natural religion in his work “Nazarenus or Jewish, Gentile, and Mahometan Christianity” – “Yes, I say it: sound reason and the light of common sense form an eternal and universal rule without which humankind cannot subsist in peace and happiness for a single hour. It is the solemn treaty of every society on earth, whether religion revealed is present or absent, and it is the only thing admitted by all revelations, however opposed they may be to one another in every other respect. (p.122)”

Portuguese and Germans

Indeed, if France was not yet a nation state, the status of the Jews could not be homogeneous across the kingdom.

The Sephardic Jews of Bordeaux, called “the Portuguese” because of their Marrano origin, were relatively integrated and enjoyed a certain number of privileges.

The situation was quite different for the Ashkenazim of the East, called “the Germans”, who continued to consider themselves as part of the Jewish nation.

The future emancipation of the Jews of France therefore did not possess a single, uniform character.

Jewish participation in the Estates General

Jewish participation in the Estates General raised the question of their status as natives.

Were the Jews French?

Eligibility to vote in the Estates General applied to inhabitants born French, aged 25, and registered for taxation, except those in domestic service or deprived of their civic rights.

The ambiguity of this text regarding Jews is evident. In appointing their deputies, the electors would draft their cahiers de doléances. Since these dealt with the determination of a tax also paid by Jews, it was decided that a single cahier of the “Jewish nation” would be presented, and it was even presented by Gentile deputies.

Out of more than 40,000 cahiers de doléances, 307 concerned the Jewish question, of which 304 came from the eastern regions. While the cahiers generally expressed little religious hostility, the same was not true concerning accusations of usury. Only nine cahiers demanded equality of rights between Jews and Christians. It became very clear that the Jewish question was not at the centre of the concerns of the Estates General.

The Constituent Assembly and the first emancipation

Upon the adoption by the National Assembly of the Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789, liberal deputies demanded the immediate abolition of all limitations suffered by Jewish citizens.

Positions on the Jewish question

Rather quickly, however, positions hardened among the revolutionaries. The Jewish question divided opinion, for and against emancipation. While the camp opposed was composed almost exclusively of deputies from the East and ecclesiastics, the camp in favour of Jews was more nuanced. Some clergy, among whom one must cite the formidable Abbé Maury, a brilliant orator, seeing Jews through the lens of what they considered a total misunderstanding of Christian doctrine, regarded them not only as a sect but also as a nation.

“The Jews not only constitute a particular sect, but also a particular nation: they therefore cannot be regarded as citizens. They therefore can be neither ploughmen nor soldiers.

A general will not be able to make them obey on a Sabbath day. All their industry turns towards commerce. In the Palatinate, for example, where they have land, they do not cultivate it; they have it cultivated by Christians whom they reduce to the labour of slaves, while these Israelites, in their study, calculate the profit they can make on a ducat, without being pursued by the law.” CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY, Session of Wednesday 23 December 1789

By contrast, Abbé Grégoire, in the name of Christian charity, would be the most remarkable defender of Jews, although one should not be naïve about his acceptance of Israelite worship. It remains true that Abbé Grégoire’s work is a remarkable and unique monument in favour of the Jews of France. This is worth noting, for he was not the only ecclesiastic in this case. Others also pleaded brilliantly the cause of the Jewish question, setting aside its religious aspects and wishing to legislate in the name of the supremacy of the principle of equality.

This example would become the guiding thread of the Jewish question in France and remains present in many contemporary societies, even if concepts were still embryonic and not yet rigorously formulated at that time. We can see two models taking shape, both still prevailing today.

One is a strictly political model, that of secularism, placing constitutional principles above religions. The other is a communitarian model, of the coexistence of minorities alongside a state religion.

This difference is fundamental both in terms of principles and in terms of consequences for the practice of religious minorities as well as the state religion. It is, on the one hand, the current French model, and, on the other, the model of Great Britain, for example.

The decree of 21 November 1789 and the battle of the Portuguese

The Jewish question would ultimately be postponed time and again. Yet the issue of access to public employment for Jews gave it renewed vigour. On 21 November 1789, the deputy Clermont Tonnerre attempted a legal tour de force by seeking to have the matter adopted without a formal motion. To admit non Catholics to public employment was de facto to admit Jews, but the proposal was rejected by 408 votes to 403. Reading the acts of the Constituent Assembly, one can only be struck by the extraordinary modernity of the debates and by Clermont Tonnerre’s skilful humanism.

On that 21 November, the Jews of France nearly experienced a first emancipation. This manoeuvre, as skilful as it was humane, would lay the foundations for new problems, particularly for the integrated Sephardic Jewish community of Bordeaux. By trying to globalise the question to all non Catholics and ultimately obtaining a refusal, it produced the perverse effect of weakening the status of Bordeaux Jews.

The Jewish community of Bordeaux reacted without delay and no longer asked to be admitted to an equivalence of rights, but to preserve its local privileges. The consequences followed quickly: this community distanced itself from the Jews of the East, provoking their indignation. On 28 January 1789, the Bordeaux Jews were introduced to the deputation.

This event pushed the Jews of the East to federate behind a representative, Cerf Berr. The perverse effect of Clermont Tonnerre’s manoeuvre shifted the Jewish question into the strictly political domain, while also attaching it entirely to revolutionary logic.

To grant privileges to Bordeaux Jews alone would have been a return to the regional particularisms of the Ancien Régime. At the end of a political struggle in which the Jews of the East and those of Paris participated jointly, a draft declaration of the citizenship of all Jews was presented in the name of indivisibility. It was adopted unanimously.

The decree of September 1791

Thus, fifty thousand Jews would later be granted equality of civil rights. One recalls Abbé Grégoire, one of the most fervent defenders of equality, exclaiming before the Constituent Assembly:

“Fifty thousand Frenchmen go to sleep tonight as serfs; see to it that they awaken tomorrow as free citizens.”

It was in September 1791 that all the Jews of France would enjoy equality of civil rights, thus constituting the first modern deliverance of the Jewish people in the world.

I have deliberately quoted this intervention by Abbé Grégoire because it is highly significant of the political vision of the first emancipation.

Yet this access to equality of civil rights could in no way constitute a liberation of the Jewish people, but rather the preamble to a political project aimed at the assimilation of Jewish populations. Its instigators believed that Jews would assimilate into the French population.

The conditions of emancipation

The Jewish question was thus settled in a political context, but it laid the foundations of the future emancipation of the Jews around a guiding thread from which it would never again deviate in France.

It also concretely established the early outlines of our contemporary society, the place of religion, from a state religion to militant secularism. It is at the centre of this conflict that the Jews of France would have to make their way towards the completion of their emancipation. The emancipation of humanists imbued with religious tolerance became strictly political. In this sense, the participation of Jews in the future secular and indivisible Republic is both remarkable and unprecedented. The Jews of France were now citizens of the Kingdom of France without rank or restriction.

The entry into force of emancipation

The symbolic act of taking an oath constituted the entry into force of Jews within the French nation. This oath was taken collectively by entire communities. It should be noted that for a great many Jews, this entry as a full citizen signified a genuine adherence to revolutionary values and an opportunity to enter economic activity and business.

Yet, through another paradox of French history, a first access to equality between Jews and Gentiles occurred. From 1793, the Terror exercised repression without distinction against religious institutions, repression from which Jews would naturally not be spared.

The observance of Sabbath and Sunday was prohibited. Synagogues and schools were closed, sacked, transformed into warehouses, shops, or stables.

In eastern France, Jews were targeted as such and swept up in a campaign against speculators and jobbers. It was not a pogrom but a persecution which would only cease with the end of the Terror in August 1794. The civil marriage procedure made possible the first mixed marriages, but worship continued in clandestinity.

The Directory and the first cracks in equality

Under the Directory, the central issue of the Jewish question was no longer equality of rights but the question of usury debts, that is, debts of Jews to Christians and also of Christians to Jews. Jewish creditors were ordered to submit within a month a detailed statement of their claims against Gentiles. Most communities also had heavy debts to Christian creditors (Metz, Avignon, Carpentras, and L’Isle sur la Sorgue).

On 7 February 1792, the Directory of the Moselle forbade Jews to leave Metz unless they paid one eighth of their fortune into the common fund for extinguishing the debt. In 1794, the Jews of Avignon requested the nationalisation of the debt, since the law of 1790 had proclaimed the nationalisation of the debts of corporations and religious communities. But on 6 December 1797, it was argued that Jews living in the East and in the former Papal States constituted only foreigners tolerated within the state.

This reversal was grave: it contravened the equality law of 1791 and recalled measures of the Ancien Régime.

The aspiration for state intervention

During the Terror, communities had been disorganised and aspired to state intervention. This intervention would be carried out by Bonaparte.

Let us immediately dispel a widely spread misconception: the relationship between the future Emperor and the Jews was not a love story, even if some messianic Jews even saw in him the Messiah.

Bonaparte favoured granting Jews a right of citizenship, particularly to Jews living in the Papal States. The Minister of Religious Affairs, Portalis, was approached by the grievances of Jewish communities, seeking to ensure the functioning of religious and charitable institutions and to put an end to the prevailing anarchy.

In February 1805, Portalis sought the opinion of a commission composed of thirteen Jewish notables. This first commission drew up a plan for organising Jewish worship. These were the premises of the organisation of Israelite worship in France, the repercussions of which are visible to this day. The general idea was to provide worship with a centralised organisation. This commission would be composed of six councils of notables elected by the most heavily taxed families.

This commission of notables was intended to define the powers of rabbis and their strict limitations.

However, complaints concerning the usury of Jews in the East did not cease. In 1806, the press entered the debate, presenting an excessively negative assessment of emancipation and giving the question a polemical and political dimension.

Jewish emancipation thus became a counter revolutionary weapon, joined to economic grievances and religious hostility.

Denouncing the incompatibility between Judaism and citizenship, the press defended the exclusion of Jews from any function granting them the slightest authority over Christians. The state seriously considered reversing the gains of the Revolution.

This situation led to renewed oppression and, in 1808, to the loss of the civic rights of Alsatian Jews for ten years, until the difference between them and other citizens should disappear.

The Assembly of Notables

Convinced that Jews practised an absence of morality in their relations with Christians, the Emperor decided to act by providing an institutional framework for the emancipation decided by the Revolution, giving it precise channels of application.

On 30 May 1806, he decreed the suspension of the payment of debts and convened in Paris a “great synagogue”.

A consultation procedure was engaged with the Assembly of Jewish Notables.

A questionnaire of twelve points centred on marriage, divorce, and the primacy of religious law was presented.

The objective pursued was clear: to bring deputies to choose between the law of the state and religious law.

On matrimonial questions, the Assembly accepted the principle of civil divorce, considering that the prerogatives of rabbis did not fall under law but under custom.

Regarding relations with Gentiles, the application of Noahide law was invoked.

For the defence of the homeland, Jews would have to take up arms, even against other Jews.

It was first proposed that mixed marriages could only be celebrated civilly.

On the question of usury, it was stated that the law merely tolerated a moderate interest proportionate to risk in the case of commercial loans, and that the behaviour of a small number could not be extended to all Jews.

It is very interesting to note the particular character of this negotiation, constantly manoeuvring between Jewish law and civil law. This led the Assembly of Notables into a debate between the party of Jews from the South West and the rabbinic party, that is, between what was then called a “philosophical” vision and a “traditionalist” one. The party of the South West Jews was almost suspected of apostasy.

The rabbinic party seems to prevail, invoking “Dina de malhuta dina”: the law of the state is the law.

Indeed, outside the Talmud, the Torah is no less explicit on this point. It is written in Ecclesiastes:

I tell you: Observe the king’s command, and that because of the oath made to God. Ecclesiastes 8:2, Louis Segond translation.

We touch here a decisive point in doctrinal terms. Jewish religion prescribes submission to the law of the prince in civil and political matters. Even when justified on strictly religious grounds, it remains an extraordinary convergence of interest between two doctrines apparently opposed, one political and the other religious.

By relying on their tradition, rabbis very clearly ratified the separation of two spheres, the religious and the political. I believe this situation is unique among religious doctrines.

Yet surprise would come from the question of mixed marriages, addressed beforehand. The rabbis ultimately succeeded in imposing their exclusive authority on this question.

It then arose in the Emperor’s mind that only an assembly composed of doctors, in the image of the ancient Jerusalem assembly, could have authority.

Against all expectations, on 6 December 1806, Napoleon announced the convening of a Grand Sanhedrin.

The Grand Sanhedrin, effective measures, and the establishment of religious organisation.

With hindsight, one can only be struck by the fact that a monarch “resurrected” a Jewish institution dormant for seventeen centuries, which moreover has no legitimacy in the eyes of Jewish tradition.

Yet the manoeuvre was more than skilful. To formalise his decisions, Napoleon in fact required the competence and joint action of three bodies:

The Assembly of Notables for the drafting of practical arrangements

The Sanhedrin for its religious endorsement.

The Council of State for the legal formalisation of decisions.

On 17 March 1808, a series of three decrees was published. The first two established the organisation planned by the Assembly of Notables and the third, known as the “infamous decree”, regulated economic activities, the right of residence, and military obligations for a probationary period of ten years.

In July 1808, another decree imposed upon Jews the obligation to register with the civil authorities and to adopt a first name and a patronymic surname.

Napoleon decided to create the Consistory with the aim of aligning Jewish worship with the model applied to Protestantism.

On 6 July 1810, instructions providing for a prayer for the homeland and for the Emperor during services were addressed to rabbis.

This organisation, introducing a new hierarchy, would in the nineteenth century provoke a mutation within French Judaism.

Emancipation in Western Europe

Victorious Napoleonic armies in Europe simultaneously brought Jewish emancipation. This was the case in Holland, Rome, Venice, the Rhineland, and Westphalia. While the debates that emerged in these countries took more or less developed forms, the result was nonetheless dictated by French hegemony.

Napoleonic armies, heirs to revolutionary armies, regained the revolutionary vocation of emancipation: political rights first, then regeneration.

But the movement, though irreversible, was broken in previously conquered countries with the Emperor’s defeats. It nonetheless survived in the rest of Europe, though according to more hesitant and slower modalities.

The limits of the Napoleonic framework

The Napoleonic framework of emancipation imposed rigid boundaries. The French Revolution considered religion a private matter. Napoleon, for his part, promulgated a series of decrees aimed at instituting the primacy of civil law over religious law.

Despite appearances, the objective pursued was rigorously contrary to the revolutionary spirit. Jews did not become French because they were born in France, but through a religious obligation.

This approach, combined with the infamous decree, produced the perverse effect of designating Jews as a particular category of citizens.

Moreover, the “more judaico” oath was instituted for Jews brought before the courts. They had to swear in the presence of a rabbi and declare:

“Should I in this commit any fault, may I be eternally cursed, devoured and annihilated by the fire in which Sodom and Gomorrah perished, and overwhelmed by all the curses described in the Torah.”

The Restoration, the July Monarchy, the Second Republic

With the advent of the Restoration, Catholicism again became the state religion, but the Charter guaranteed equality of all citizens before the law and freedom of worship.

The King, during a reception at court, even granted public recognition of Jewish worship.

The Consistory proclaimed the loyalty of the Jews of France to the King. In 1829, the Metz school became the first centre for training rabbis in France.

The July Monarchy revised the Charter, marking the return of a state religion, but on 8 February 1831 it allotted new budgets to Israelite worship, giving it real parity with other forms of worship.

A young lawyer, whose career would be brilliant, attacked the “more judaico” oath. Adolphe Isaac Crémieux obtained the abandonment of this practice by the courts of Nîmes and Aix. He became a member of the Central Consistory and offered his services to any rabbi who refused to lend his assistance to the taking of this oath.

In 1846, Crémieux’s action succeeded in the repeal of the oath. Yet the limits of equality were still far off: on the one hand, debts that had not been nationalised remained the responsibility of the Consistory, and, on the other, senior administrative posts under the severe authority of the Church remained inaccessible.

From emancipation to equality

The transformations from emancipation to equality were first geographical. Jewish populations migrated massively to large cities, where they mixed. Thus a French Jewish community emerged which, until then, had been fragmented.

If the Restoration saw the financial success of a few, such as the Rothschilds, the economic growth of the Second Empire opened the doors to new professions for Jews.

More than individual success, these achievements took on an ideological dimension foreshadowing regeneration. The generation of which Crémieux was a living example showed relentless determination to improve its condition and rise on the social ladder.

Brilliant successes in banking and railways contributed to the modernisation of France. The great mass of the Jewish population found its integration within the lower and middle bourgeoisie.

The consistorial system continued to develop, and Paris became the centre of French Judaism.

Jewish political leaders placed at the centre of their concerns the objective of making all Jews of France truly French.

The “Jewish authorities”, faithful to the Napoleonic conception, added patriotic rootedness to religion and adopted the motto “religion and homeland”.

On the basis of an integration unilaterally imposed by the state, religious authorities never questioned the evocation of the homeland in rituals. With the return of the Republic in 1848, they even added a prayer for the homeland, accompanied by acts of thanksgiving for emancipation in France.

The debate within Judaism

The action of the Consistory is unique in this respect. It produced a completely unexpected effect, which ended by influencing the conception Jews themselves had of their own religion. This association went so far as to identify the values of the Revolution with the teaching of Jewish tradition.

I have long reflected on this point, this rereading of Jewish tradition by Jews themselves in the light of the French Revolution.

If some may find this vision touching or even risible, I take it very seriously.

In the introduction to this lecture, I stated that Jewish emancipation addressed the person faithful to a principled intellectual requirement, as I am, through its cultural interpenetration.

The French Revolution relied, among other things, on natural religion and placed itself under the auspices of the Supreme Being, for whom it organised a festival on 8 June 1794.

But what is the Supreme Being? It was written about this festival in 1794:

Did Robespierre wish this celebration both to defy atheists who spoke only of the goddess Reason and to draw closer to Catholics who would at least be forced to see that the Revolution celebrated the true God in a very dignified manner?

Beyond this deist philosophical conception evoking a creative and not an organising principle, which had the merit of attempting a reconciliation of all, one may also find in it the very conception of an absolute monotheism that makes no reference to a prophet.

Without pushing hermeneutics beyond its limits, it is possible to relate this concept to that of the eternal being revealed to Moses in Genesis.

Moses said to God: I shall go to the children of Israel and say to them: The God of your fathers has sent me to you. But if they ask me what his name is, what shall I answer them? Exodus 3:13

God said to Moses: I am that I am. And he added: Thus shall you answer the children of Israel: He who is called “I am” has sent me to you.

Does not this formulation, “I am”, implicitly refer to the very notion of the Supreme Being?

And what is natural religion if not the strict application of the Noahide laws, to which all humans are in principle called to practise.

Natural religion, though it cannot in any way constitute a confession, has never been anything other than the just praxis of virtues and ethical principles formulated by the laws of Noah and constituting a universal morality.

On a strictly philosophical level, the Revolution brought many advances in the fight against prejudice and inequality, advances which in many respects converged with Jewish tradition.

One need not go far to recognise in these three principles, equality, natural religion, and the Supreme Being, the very foundations of Judaism and the doctrine according to which the salvation of the house of Israel, taken as a whole, can save the world.

As for the debate between temporal and spiritual power, which was the path of French emancipation, it seems unnecessary to develop in a synagogue its relationship with biblical books dealing with struggles between royal power and priestly power. Moreover, whatever one’s sensitivity, no serious exegete can deny that Jewish religion has always advocated the primacy of the prince’s power over spiritual power in the affairs of the state.

This nineteenth century reading offered two major advantages.

Judaism was no longer, as some claimed, a vestige of an obsolete past, but proposed a shift of Jewish messianism towards the universal.

Moreover, this analysis had the advantage of reconciling a religious doctrine with those holding a strictly political vision of Judaism.

As my remarks lie strictly within the philosophical register, one should not find in them any form of adherence, and in particular not the idea that Judaism might have inspired revolutionary ideas.

This rapprochement between Jewish messianism and revolutionary messianism would in fact have very significant consequences. If thought in principle precedes action, the observation of events also nourishes thought. The most significant of these consequences would be the elaboration of the Zionist thesis, which would draw part of its philosophical substance in reaction to this analysis of the rapprochement of messianisms. To admit the French Revolution as the starting point of messianism was also to open the way to assimilation while at the same time denying the Jewish nation.

The evolution of French Judaism

From 1840 onwards, years of debate saw the emergence within the rabbinate of two sharply opposed positions, one “traditionalist” and the other tending towards an evolution of worship practices. These two tendencies were represented in France respectively by Chief Rabbi Lambert of Metz and Chief Rabbi Zadoc Kahn.

But to understand their implications for practice, we must leave the French framework and observe the situation of Jews in other European nations.

In many regions of Europe in the nineteenth century, Jews were divided between tradition and progress, represented by scientific and secular thought.

The withdrawal of rights granted to Jews in other European countries tore communities apart and new forms of Judaism appeared, such as Reform Judaism in Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, and the United States, where the Haskalah and emancipation favoured the abandonment of Mosaic law.

More than 250,000 Jews converted in Europe, among whom one must count Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of Great Britain, Karl Marx, and the children of the lawyer Adolphe Isaac Crémieux.

Beyond demographic loss, these conversions also affected the history of ideas. Karl Marx’s positions are often cited. Converted in childhood but coming from a family of rabbis, he declared on the Jewish question:

Let us not seek the secret of the Jew in his religion, but seek the secret of religion in the real Jew.

What is the worldly foundation of Judaism? Practical need, personal utility. What is the worldly cult of the Jew? Trafficking. What is his worldly god? Money. Well then, in emancipating itself from trafficking and from money, and therefore from real and practical Judaism, the present age would emancipate itself. Karl Marx, The Jewish Question.

If these remarks may today appear shocking, they must be placed in the context of the time. While the nineteenth century was both the theatre of Jewish emancipation and, at times, conversion, the political climate was marked by two conceptions:

Liberalism, expressing the aspiration to the reign of reason and the realisation of individual freedom.

Socialism, opposing the social order and seeking a new organisation of society and property guaranteeing equality of rights for disadvantaged social classes.

The Jewish question was therefore philosophically, religiously, and politically interpreted in diverse ways. Moreover, as philosophy often precedes action, it had itself reached a turning point between the modern and contemporary eras.

Marx certainly did not escape this turning point. He gave a perfect definition of the spirit of the age by declaring:

The philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point is to change it. (Karl Marx)

It is in the context of this inflection in philosophical, political, and religious ideas in the second half of the nineteenth century that Jewish emancipation must be situated. We must therefore avoid judging behaviours and ideas by the standards of tolerance that have become familiar, even natural, by 2002.

The situation in France

In France, reform of worship was cautious, but nevertheless saw the appearance of changes both in practice and in synagogue architecture.

In 1899, the Rabbinate Bible was published, and the use of Hebrew was reduced largely to prayer. Choirs singing prayers and psalms were introduced, often accompanied by an organ, as at the synagogue on Rue de la Victoire, inaugurated in 1874. This practice was condemned by some communities as an imitation of Christian ritual.

As worship no longer needed to hide, synagogue architecture also evolved. The dominance of the “Romano Byzantine” style reflected a desire for integration, evoking both eastern origins and major styles of French artistic heritage.

But the deepest change, and also the most paradoxical, concerned the status of rabbis, to the point that one must sometimes remind many Gentiles in 2002 that Judaism has no clergy and that the Chief Rabbi of France is not a prelate.

The combined desire of French authorities for integration, the desire of the Jewish community of France to rise on the social ladder, and the Consistory’s desire to be the sole interlocutor with state authorities, placed the emphasis on a conception of Judaism as a confession rather than as a nation.

The rabbi’s role thus changed accordingly and he became the spokesman for a religion, which is in the most perfect contradiction with rabbinic Judaism.

Moreover, another perverse effect of this purely French situation was the elaboration, particularly among Gentiles, of the idea that there existed within Judaism an official religious tendency represented exclusively by the Consistory, the other expressions of Judaism being only schisms. This conception is just as false doctrinally as it is in terms of the present representation of the Jews of France.

Yet this conception of Judaism also opened wide the path towards assimilation.

The influence of French style emancipation.

The French pathways of emancipation exerted fascination across Jewish communities in the nineteenth century. The Diaspora largely saw in it a universal model.

The Jewish community of France, whose social level had risen, took an interest in the fate of other communities around the world.

The most significant example was the Crémieux Decree of 1870. On 24 October 1870, Crémieux, then a minister, granted French nationality by decree to the Jews of the colony of Algeria.

It is interesting to pause briefly on the interpretation given to this decree by Algerian Christians and by the Jewish community of France. For some, it was an act of solidarity within the Jewish community; for others, this access to citizenship had no other aim than to create an intermediate stratum of population speaking Arabic and able to facilitate relations between indigenous Muslim populations and settlers from metropolitan France. This interpretation is highly indicative of the mutual interpenetration that emancipation of the Jews and their participation in the construction of the Republic constituted in France.

But the influence of French emancipation did not stop with citizenship for Algerian Jews. Crémieux intervened in Syria for Jews accused of ritual murder, and also in Romania. This particular solidarity of French Jews found expression in the creation of the Alliance Universelle.

Alliance Israélite Universelle: history of the Alliance

On 17 May 1860, seventeen young French Jews, including doctors, teachers, journalists, jurists, and business people, representing the liberal Jewish bourgeoisie of the end of the nineteenth century, drafted the Appeal of the Alliance, the founding text of the new institution.

The founders advocated in their manifesto of 1860 a synthesis of the ideas of 1789, equality, justice, and the rights of man, with the principles of Judaism, its conception of a unique God and its faith in a universal Redemption at the time of the Messiah.

Three years later, in 1863, Crémieux would be elected President of the institution.

The aims of the Alliance Israélite Universelle were:

The protection of minorities.

The struggle for equality of rights, not only for Jews but for all religious minorities.

Access to French culture and modernity.

For the leaders of the Alliance, access to culture was also an essential condition of emancipation and formed part of the process of “regeneration”, aiming to make Jews modern and enlightened citizens throughout the world.

The creation of schools therefore immediately imposed itself as an indispensable corollary to assistance and support for oppressed Jews. In October 1862, the Alliance opened its first school in Tétouan, Morocco. The Alliance articulated, in a modern form, the tradition of Jewish solidarity.

The price of equality and the Dreyfus Affair

This triumphant image of integration nonetheless reached its limits in the Dreyfus Affair and with the emergence of the first theorists of modern antisemitism, whose theses would find a place in the French political landscape, relayed by the far right.

The Dreyfus Affair, which lies outside the strict scope of this lecture, also signals the end of nineteenth century emancipation by revealing to the Jews of France how precarious their situation ultimately was.

The highly contested Hannah Arendt sees, within the process of emancipation, the very sources of modern antisemitism, whose dramatic consequences we know all too well today.

Hannah Arendt asserted that, from Jews, a plurality of individuals and nations, emancipation created the “principle of the Jew”, a principle on which secular and political theses of modern antisemitism would be built.

Emancipation did not cease with the Dreyfus Affair, since Jews overcame this period of antisemitism by continuing their socio political emancipation.

Conclusion

In July 1989, France celebrated its bicentenary. I was in Dublin precisely on 14 July. The Irish sang the Marseillaise, and the national television broadcast the evening news from Antenne 2 in French each night. On that 14 July in Dublin, the Marseillaise replaced the Irish national anthem in the pub where I spent the end of my evening. I recall asking my neighbour the reasons for such jubilation. He explained that the French Revolution had inspired the Irish revolution and the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1839.

There lingered in the air the scent of hope for the unification of the Republic at the end of the 1980s. It became evident to many that the European Parliament would be the perfect forum to advance the ideal of a unified Ireland by peaceful means, through the elimination of borders and divisions in Europe.

Steeped in my convictions as a secular and republican Frenchman, I surprised myself by saying to him:

Frankly, have you not had enough of your religious war between Catholics and Protestants?

He paused before replying.

Abandon your certainties: I am Jewish!

The emancipation of the Jews in France is a model in many respects. Participation in the political and intellectual construction of the nation, and the intelligent integration of the Jewish community of France, inspired other Jewish minorities throughout the world.

If this thesis is certainly true, we must nonetheless remain humble. Other nations, which did not experience and do not experience the separation of Church and state, choosing instead a communitarian model, nevertheless integrated Jews perfectly into their society.

Deeply Catholic Ireland, with its negligible community of 2,000 people, followed a very different path of emancipation from that of France.

Irish Jews gave the country several mayors, Chaim Herzog, President of the State of Israel, members of parliament, ministers, and many prestigious fighters for independence, including Robert Briscoe, a member of Sinn Féin, aide to President Eamonn De Valera, and future Lord Mayor of Dublin.

In that country, Jews are perhaps the only Irish people who speak fluently three languages: English, Gaelic, and Hebrew!

I shall conclude with the words of Julia Neuberger, rabbi and administrator at the University of Ulster:

Ireland has always meant a great deal to me. I am not Irish by blood, but when I am welcomed in Ireland I feel at home. I find among the Irish a desire to remember, often excessive and often too immemorial, very much like the Jews. Note 4

Between these words and those of the formidable Abbé Maury, a little more than 200 years elapsed.

It seems to me that a Yiddish proverb says: “If you do not know where you are going, look at where you are coming from.”

For the person faithful to a principled intellectual requirement, as I am, the emancipation of the Jews is exemplary. It implicitly questions the limits of tolerance within a society, its capacity to integrate minorities, and the quest for equality of rights by a group. We have only skimmed the subject of emancipation.

The emancipation of the Jews is an extraordinary lesson in tolerance, imposed by facts upon all. It is the very definition of tolerance, that is, the acceptance of differences and particularisms in the name of universal principles governing the lives of all human beings.

Emancipation raises essential questions for everyone: secular citizens, religious believers, philosophers, and politicians.

The philosophical emancipation of the Jews, by taking an interest in the very essence of Judaism, brought to the fore the conflict between liturgists, Talmudists, and symbolists.

At what threshold does a religion become alienating for its faithful, and at what threshold does that religion acquire the status of a universal philosophical truth by analysing its mythology as moral teaching rather than as literal truth?

This question arising from Judaism also applies to all confessions without exception.

Emancipation also questions us about its general political essence.

Must emancipation remain selfish, or is there no true emancipation except that which, refusing to enjoy its dominance, contributes in return to the emancipation of other groups?

I fully measure the scope of my remarks in speaking within a synagogue. I do not draw these reflections from a philosophy manual but from my own experience. I learned tolerance through and with the Jewish community, because I received it from that community.

Jean-Marc Cavalier Lachgar

Paris 29 janvier 2002