The first laws to emancipate Jews in France were enacted during the French Revolution, establishing French Jews as citizens equal to other Frenchmen. In countries that Napoleon Bonaparte's ensuing Consulate and French Empire conquered during the Napoleonic Wars, Napoleon emancipated the Jews and introduced other ideas of liberty. Napoleon overrode old laws restricting Jews to ghettos and forcing them to wear badges identifying them as Jewish. In Malta, Napoleon ended the enslavement of Jews and permitted the construction of synagogues. He also lifted laws across Europe that limited Jews' rights to property, worship, and certain occupations.Roberts, Andrew. Napoleon: A Life. New York: Penguin Books 2015, 403 In 1940, a "Letter to the Jewish Nation" was published that allegedly had been written by Napoleon Bonaparte during the siege of Acre on 20 April 1799, in anticipation of a victory in the Holy Land that failed to come about. The authenticity of this source is highly dubious, however, especially as during the 141 years since the Egyptian campaign, no French original of this alleged letter had ever been published or referenced before, neither in part nor in full.
In an effort to promote Jewish integration into French society, however, Napoleon also implemented several policies that eroded Jewish separateness. There were about 170,000 Jews in the empire, about a third of whom lived within the borders of the former France and most of whom were concentrated in the eastern departments. He restricted the practice of Jews lending money in the 1806 Decree on Jews and Usury, restricted the regions to which Jews were allowed to migrate, and required Jews to adopt formal names. He also implemented a series of consistories, which served as an effective channel utilised by the French government to regulate Jewish religious life.
Historians have disagreed about Napoleon's intentions in these actions, as well as his personal and political feelings about the Jewish community. Some have said he had political reasons but did not have sympathy for the Jews. His actions were generally opposed by the leaders of monarchies in other countries. After his defeat by the Coalition against France, a counter-revolution swept many of these countries and restored discriminatory measures against the Jews.
Napoleon's laws and the Jews The French Revolution abolished religious persecution that had existed under the monarchy. The 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen guaranteed freedom of religion and free exercise of worship, provided that it did not contradict public order. At that time, most other European countries implemented measures of religious persecution towards religious minorities. Many Catholic countries were intolerant and had established religious Inquisitions, sanctioning Jews and Protestants. In the tolerant Protestant-ruled Dutch Republic, Jews and Catholics did not have equal rights until it came under French dominance.
In the early 19th century, through his military occupations in Europe, Napoleon attempted to spread his rule by force. Napoleon's attitudes towards the Jews have been interpreted in various ways by historians. He made statements both in support of and in opposition to Jews as a group and had that changed. In 1990, Orthodox Rabbi Berel Wein claimed that Napoleon was interested primarily in seeing the Jews assimilate for more manpower for his army, rather than prosper as a distinct community: "Napoleon's outward tolerance and fairness toward Jews was actually based upon his grand plan to have them disappear entirely by means of total assimilation, intermarriage, and conversion."
Napoleon's attention to Jewish affairs in the French Empire arose largely from economic tensions in Alsace, where rural indebtedness to a minority of Jewish moneylenders had produced persistent local complaints. On 30 April 1806, the Imperial Council examined petitions from Alsatian communities concerning these debt disputes, which helped prompt Napoleon to convene the Assemblée des Notables later that year to clarify how Jewish practices related to French civil law.Arthur Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment and the Jews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), pp. 351–360.Elon, Amos. The Pity of It All (London: Penguin, 2003), pp. 125–132. Napoleon did not seek to abolish Jewish moneylending as such; rather, he aimed to stabilize the region and encourage Jews to shift into trades, agriculture, and military service. This policy culminated in the Décret du 17 mars 1808—known as the "Décret Infâme"—which temporarily restricted Jewish lending in several eastern departments while maintaining full civil equality.Jay R. Berkovitz, Rites and Passages: The Beginnings of Modern Jewish Culture in France, 1650–1860 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), pp. 161–170. At the same time, Napoleon abolished ghetto restrictions and extended Jewish emancipation in territories he conquered, including in Ancona and other former Papal States, in keeping with his broader dismantling of feudal and ecclesiastical regulations rather than any distinction between different “types” of Jews.Ronald Schechter, “The French Revolution and the Jews,” in Jonathan Karp & Adam Sutcliffe (eds.), The Cambridge History of Judaism, Vol. 7 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 173–176.
In a letter to Jean-Baptiste Nompère de Champagny, Minister of the Interior on 29 November 1806, Napoleon wrote: [It is necessary to] reduce, if not destroy, the tendency of Jewish people to practice a very great number of activities that are harmful to civilisation and to public order in society in all the countries of the world. It is necessary to stop the harm by preventing it; to prevent it, it is necessary to change the Jews. [...] Once part of their youth will take its place in our armies, they will cease to have Jewish interests and sentiments; their interests and sentiments will be French.Napoleon’s Attempt to Destroy the Jews Retrieved 19 May 2024
While insisting on the primacy of civil law over the military, Napoleon retained a deep respect and affection for the military as a profession. He often hired former soldiers in civilian occupations. Some French Jews served in the military.
Through his policies overall, Napoleon greatly improved the condition of the Jews in France and Europe. Starting in 1806, Napoleon passed a number of measures enhancing the position of the Jews in the French Empire. He accepted a representative group elected by the Jewish community, the Grand Sanhedrin, as their representatives to the French government. The meetings of the Grand Sanhedrin lasted a full month (from February 9 to March 9) 1807 under the presidency of Rabbi David Sintzheim, and issued binding resolutions declaring the loyalty of Jews to the French state.
In conquered countries, he abolished laws restricting Jews to living in ghettos. In 1807, he designated Judaism as one of the official religions of France, along with Roman Catholicism (long the established state religion), Lutheran and Calvinist Protestantism (Huguenots, followers of the latter, had been severely persecuted by the monarchy in the late 17th and 18th centuries).
In 1808 Napoleon rolled back a number of reforms (under the so-called décret infâme, or Infamous Decree, of 17 March 1808), declaring all debts with Jews to be annulled, reduced or postponed. The Infamous Decree imposed a ten-year ban on any kind of Jewish money-lending activity. Similarly, Jews who were in subservient positions—such as a Jewish servant, military officer, or wife—were unable to engage in any kind of money-lending activity without the explicit consent of their superiors. Napoleon's goal in implementing the Infamous Decree of 1808 was to integrate Jewish culture and customs into those of France. By restricting money-lending activity, Jews would be forced to engage in other practices for a living. Likewise, in order to even engage in money-lending activity, the decree required Jews to apply for an annual license, granted only with the recommendation of the Jews' local consistory and with the surety of the Jews' honesty. This caused so much financial loss that the Jewish community nearly collapsed.
On a different note, the Infamous Decree also placed heavy restrictions on the Jews' ability to migrate. The decree prevented the Jews from relocating to the regions of Alsace and required that Jews wishing to move to other regions of France to own or purchase land to farm. It also required them to refrain from engaging in any kind of money-lending activity (the law eventually placed these restrictions only on the Jews of the northeast). Likewise, the decree required Jews to serve in the French military, without any opportunity to provide a replacement.
The last component of the Infamous Decree – established in July 1808 – required Jews to adopt formal names with which they would be addressed (before, Jews were often referred to as, for example, "Joseph son of Benjamin"). They were also prevented from selecting names of cities or names in the Hebrew Bible. Napoleon sought to integrate the Jewish people more fully into French society by establishing the guidelines they were required to follow in adopting names. Napoleon ended these restrictions by 1811.
Historian Ben Weider argued that Napoleon had to be extremely careful in defending oppressed minorities such as Jews, because of keeping balance with other political interests, but says that the leader clearly saw the political benefit to his Empire in the long term in supporting them. Napoleon hoped to use equality as a way of gaining advantage from discriminated groups, like Jews or Protestants.
Both aspects of his thinking can be seen in an 1818 response to physician Barry O'Meara, his physician during his exile on St. Helena, asking why he pressed for the emancipation of the Jews:
I wanted to make them leave off usury, and become like other men... by putting them upon an equality, with Catholics, Protestants, and others, I hoped to make them become good citizens, and conduct themselves like others of the community... as their rabbins explained to them, that they ought not to practise usury to their own tribes, but were allowed to do so with Christians and others, that, therefore, as I had restored them to all their privileges... they were not permitted to practise usury with me or them, but to treat us as if we were of the tribe of Judah. Besides, I should have drawn great wealth to France as the Jews are very numerous, and would have flocked to a country where they enjoyed such superior privities. Moreover, I wanted to establish an universal liberty of conscience.
However, in a private letter to his brother Jérôme, dated 6 March 1808, Napoleon wrote the following:
I have undertaken to reform the Jews, but I have not endeavoured to draw more of them into my realm. Far from that, I have avoided doing anything which could show any esteem for the most despicable of mankind.
Napoleon's proclamation to the Jews of Africa and Asia
During Napoleon's siege of Acre in 1799, Gazette Nationale, the main French newspaper during the French Revolution, published on 3 Prairial, (French Republican Calendar Year 7, equivalent to 22 May 1799) a short statement that: "Bonaparte has published a proclamation in which he invites all the Jews of Asia and Africa to gather under his flag in order to re-establish the ancient Jerusalem. He has already given arms to a great number, and their battalions threaten Aleppo."