A limitation was, however, introduced at that time which nullified all privileges in favor of the Jews. Those who dwelt in the country were ordered to depart within a short space of time and crowd together in the cities. Cruel subtlety dictated this order. The Polish landowners, who from indolence had given over the care of their breweries and the sale of produce to industrious and trustworthy Jewish managers and farmers, were ruined by the removal of the Jews from the villages, and thus rendered incapable of revolt. This law could not be carried out for the time being, but remained in existence as a dead letter, until later days. The worst result was that the Jews were treated as strangers, although they had been more than half a century in the Polish provinces. Naturally they did not advance in culture, being hindered and persecuted by Rabbinism, and even more so by Neo-Chassidism.
[CHAPTER XII.]
THE JEWISH-FRENCH SYNHEDRION AND THE JEWISH CONSISTORIES.
Jew-Hatred in Strasburg—Bonald's Accusations—Plots against French Jews—Furtado—David Sinzheim—Assembly of Notables—Italian Deputies—The Twelve Questions—Debate on Mixed Marriages—The Paris Synhedrion—Its Constitution—Napoleon's Enactments—Israel Jacobson—Consistory of Westphalia—Emancipation in Germany—In the Hanse-Towns—Restrictions in Saxony.
1806–1813 C. E.
Since the days of the Romans, the world had not witnessed such sudden changes and catastrophes as in the beginning of this century, when a new Empire was founded with the intention of establishing a universal monarchy. All the powers bent even lower before Napoleon, Emperor of the French, than before the First Consul Bonaparte. The pope, who in his heart cursed him and the whole new order, did not hesitate to anoint him successor to Charlemagne. The German princes were the first to recognize cringingly this innovation, the elevation of an upstart over themselves. As if Napoleon by contact with the Germans during his wars against Austria and Prussia had become infected with their Jew-hatred, his feelings with reference to them from that time underwent a change. Although he had before shown admiration for the venerable antiquity and gigantic struggles of the Jewish race, he now displayed a positive dislike to them. His unfavorable attitude towards the Jews was used by the Germans in Alsace to induce him to deprive the French Jews of their privileges and reduce them to their former state of abasement.
The storms of the Revolution had put an end to the old accusations against the Jews of Alsace. Jewish creditors, usurers, Christian debtors were alike impoverished by the Reign of Terror; the olden times were swept away. When quiet was restored, many Jews, who through their energy had acquired some property again, went back to their former trades. What else could they do? To commence to learn handicrafts and agriculture could not be expected of men advanced in years. Even young men found it difficult, as bigoted Christian employers in the German-speaking provinces did not care to take Jewish apprentices. A numerous class of the populace of Alsace offered well-to-do Jews a source of income. The peasants and day-laborers, before the Revolution serfs, had been liberated through it, but possessed no means wherewith to purchase land and commence work. Their cattle and even their implements of agriculture were lost during the stormy years; and many of them had fled to escape military service. These peasants, on the return of peace, had addressed themselves to Jews for advances of money, to obtain small parcels of the national land for cultivation.
The Jewish men of substance had responded, and probably demanded high rates of interest. The peasants, however, were not the losers, for, although originally destitute of means, they had greatly improved their condition. In a few years their possessions in landed property amounted to 60 million francs, the sixth part of which they owed to Jews. It was, indeed, hard for the peasants of Alsace to obtain ready money to discharge debts to their Jewish creditors, especially as the wars of Bonaparte called them away from the plough to bear arms, and many lawsuits ensued against the debtors. The Strasburg Trade Court of Justice alone, during the years 1802–4, had to decide upon summonses for debt between Jewish creditors and Christian debtors amounting to 800,000 francs. The defaulting peasants were sentenced to hand over their fields and vineyards to the Jewish creditors, some of whom may have acted harshly in these matters.
These circumstances were made use of by the Jew-haters. They generalized the misdeeds of the Jews, exaggerated the sufferings of the Christian debtors forced to pay, and stamped the Jews as usurers and bloodsuckers, so as to deprive the French Jews living in their provinces of their recently-acquired equalization, or if possible to prepare some worse fate for them. As at all times, the citizens of the German town of Strasburg took the most prominent part in this movement against the Jews. They had made a vain attempt to keep the Jews out of their city and to persecute them during the Reign of Terror. With fierce rage they beheld the number of Jewish immigrants increase. There were no Jewish usurers in their midst; on the contrary, there were wealthy, highly respected, and educated Jews, such as the families of Cerf Berr, Ratisbonne, and Picard, most of whom lived from their estates. Nevertheless the people of Strasburg raised the loudest clamors against the Jews, as if the latter were the cause of their impoverishment. The prefect of Strasburg, a German, aided and abetted the merchants. When Napoleon stayed in Strasburg (January, 1806), after the campaign of a hundred days against Austria, he was besieged by the prefect and a deputation of the people of Alsace with complaints showing how harmful to the state were the Jews; how like a crowd of ravens they ruined the Christian populace, so that whole villages passed into the possession of Jewish usurers, how half the estates of Alsace were mortgaged to Jewish creditors, and other malicious charges. Napoleon thereupon called to mind that during his campaign some Jews near Ulm had bought stolen articles from the soldiers, which had greatly displeased him. The Jew-haters suggested that these may have been Strasburg Jews, who followed in the track of the army in order to enrich themselves by means of the booty; and that all Jews were usurers, hawkers, and ragmen. To incite the emperor still more to acts of hostility, the following grave statement was added—that, in the whole of Alsace, indeed, in all the (German) Departments of the Upper and Lower Rhine, the people were so embittered against the Jews that a general massacre, scenes such as were witnessed in the Middle Ages, might ensue. In taprooms the question of slaughtering the Jews was often discussed. His mind filled with such evil impressions, Napoleon left Strasburg, promising redress of these grievances. That this impression might not fade away, the enemies of the Jews besieged the minister of justice with loud complaints about the baseness and hurtfulness of the Jews. Judges, prefects, all German-speaking officials vied with each other in attempts to deprive the Jews of their civil rights. The minister of justice, carried away by the complaints, was actually on the point of putting an exceptional law into force against the Jews of France, forbidding them for a time to do any business in mortgages.