The Mutilated Brotherhood: Frustrating Jewish Emancipation through Post-Revolutionary Anti-Semitic Policies

Abstract Ostensibly resulting in diminishing antisemitism, French Jews’ emancipation (1790– 1791) had a price. As individuals, Jews would acquire rights while they were denied nationhood. Among Jews, the proposed status likely provoked cognitive dissonance; from the middle ages they had lived outside French society. As royal chattels, they typically were penned up in overcrowded and squalid ghettos. Now Napoleon’s lawmakers assumed control of Jewish communities, prescribed their activities, and strictly controlled erection and repair of synagogues. Organized into consistories, rabbis, as state officials, were assigned specific duties, including praying for the emperor’s welfare and collecting intelligence. To disguise his centralizing strategy, Napoleon convened a Sanhedrin to gauge Jewish preparation for assimilation. Eliding differences between Judaism and Christianity, their answers evoked a utopian brotherhood of man, perhaps unwittingly providing a roadmap for Napoleonic centralization and regulation of Jewish activities. Upon emancipation, Jews imagined social integration and liberation from ghettos, but antisemitism endured. A bargain with drawbacks, emancipation could not be equated with social equality.