Reflecting on Judaism

I recently attended a gathering at which a well known rabbi spoke about Napoleon's march on Moscow. He mentioned that Shneur Zalman of Lyady, the first Lubavitch Rebbe, supported the Czar and prayed that he would defeat Napoleon because he was frightened that should Napoleon win the war the Jews would be emancipated and perhaps marry out. It would appear that he preferred the Jews to be subjugated and vilified rather than have potential freedom under Napoleon.          

Following the meeting I asked two questions: -

The first was whether the Rebbe's decision was correct in helping the Czar and believing that it is better for Jews to be subjugated and vilified rather than be free with, possibly, adverse consequences.

 The second question was whether it is possible for Jews to remain faithful to our religion only if we are persecuted.

I set out below extracts from the Encyclopaedia Judaica, which may help answer the question.
 

°NAPOLEON BONAPARTE (1769-1821), emperor of the French. He proclaimed the emancipation of the Jews in the Italian states which he had established,
and the majority of the Jews in Italy hailed Napoleon as a liberator and political saviour, calling him "Helek Tov" (lit. "Good part of Bonaparte). Even by this time, however, problems had arisen from the contradictions posed by Jewish laws and communal autonomy on the one hand and the political and civic obligations of the Jews on the other. In May 1799, during Napoleon's campaign in Palestine, the government newspaper Moniteur published the information that Napoleon had issued a manifesto in Palestine which promised the Jews their return to their country. Many European newspapers reproduced this information, although today it is questioned whether Napoleon really issued such a declaration. The news concerning the manifesto and Napoleon's Palestine campaign made little impression on the Jews in Europe. On the other hand, the campaign gave rise to millenarian hopes among certain nonconformist circles in England; for the first time, their expectation of the return of Israel to Palestine and hence to the Church was linked with realistic political projects.

The principal influence exercised by Napoleon as emperor on Jewish history was in the years 1806 to 1808 when he convened the Assembly of Jewish Notables and the (French) Sanhedrin, and established the Consistories. The programmatic documents formulated during this period and the institutions which then came into being embody the first practical expression of the demands made by a centralised modern state on the Jews who had become its citizens-"the separation of the political from the religious elements in Judaism." The news of the activities of the Jewish assemblies stirred both Jewish and gentile sectors of society in Central and Western Europe. The Austrian authorities were apprehensive that the Jews would regard Napoleon in the light of a messiah. In England, theological hopes and political projects for the "Return of Israel" intensified. On March 17, 1808, however, Napoleon issued an order restricting the economic activity and the freedom of movement of the Jews in the eastern provinces of the empire for a period of ten years, an order which became known among Jews as the "Infamous Decree."

Napoleon's victorious armies brought civic emancipation to the Jews in all the countries of Central and Western Europe where governments dependent on him were formed. The central Jewish Consistory established in the Kingdom of Westphalia was the first Jewish institution in Europe to introduce reforms into the Jewish religion. The Jews of Eastern Europe were only ephemerally influenced by Napoleon's conquests. Discussions were held among Hasidim as to whether support should be given to Napoleon or the Russian Czar Alexander I in order to hasten the coming of the messiah.                                                                                     [Baruch Mevorah]

Impact on Jewish history

The forces unleashed by Napoleon brought in there wake contradictory effects on the course of modern Jewish history. the break-up of old European feudal patterns of societal organisations was eventually to open up a range of new economic and political options for the Jew. The closed societies that restricted but sheltered him were never again to be the same. On the other hand, the immediate effect of these forces was to provoke an almost total reversal in the process of civic emancipation brought about in the course of Napoleonic conquests. Nonetheless, Jewish emancipation was to come eventually, even if its triumph was to be delayed till later in the century. Well in advance of that time the Napoleonic uprooting of the established order forced the Jewish community to contend with the many challenges posed by that process to their tradition and their lives. Already before Napoleon there were individual Jews seeking an accommodation with the wold outside the ghetto.

     The events that surrounded the Napoleonic adventure extended the concern of the few to the preoccupation of the people as a whole. Moreover, Napoleon's insistence on a price to be paid by the Jew for his entrance into the modern world was to set the tone for much of the debate within the Jewish community during the Emancipation era. How to remain loyal to the traditions of his people and at home in the modern world was a problem with which the Jew wrestled throughout the period of his modern history; it is a problem first posed practically and seriously by the threat of Napoleonic successes.
 [Alexander Shapiro]

ALEXANDER I, czar of Russia 1801-25. Alexander's character and actions were to a large extent shaped by the vicissitudes he experienced in his struggle against Napoleon. His ties with Metternich and the Holy Alliance were a result of his reaction against the spirit of the French Revolution; Alexander activated and joined the Alliance as "the gendarme of Europe" after Napoleon's downfall. When Alexander ascended the throne, Russian policy toward the large Jewish population living in former Polish territory constituting the so-called "Jewish question" had already been under active consideration for some time in government circles. In November 1802 Alexander appointed a committee to consider all aspects of the Jewish question in Russia. Some of its members were his personal friends and, like Alexander at that stage, harboured liberal ideas. The committee's report was approved by Alexander and promulgated in 1804 as the Jewish Statute.

It was the first comprehensive piece of Russian legislation to deal with Jewish affairs. The statute, as well as subsequent legislative and administrative measures concerning the Jews taken during Alexander's reign, was based upon the assumption that the Jews were a parasitic element, an undesired legacy bequeathed by the defunct Polish state. The policy underlying the statute, therefore, was that the Jews must be directed toward employment in productive occupations, such as agriculture and industry. On the other hand the native population, especially the peasants in areas that had formerly belonged to Poland, had to be protected from alleged Jewish exploitation and influence.

At the same time measures should be taken to raise the Jews from what was considered their debased cultural condition by encouraging secular education and assimilation into the Russian Christian social and cultural environment. A program of repression and restrictions was therefore embodied in the statute, which imposed limitations on Jewish residence, occupations, and land tenure. The full brunt of the legislation was partially averted during the Napoleonic Wars, when the Russian government was concerned that the Jewish population might be driven to help the French, but the measures were resumed with even greater force after 
the war.  The efforts of the English missionary Lewis Way to induce Alexander to grant the Jews emancipation had no practical results. Alexander, at this time inclining to pietism and mysticism, initiated a policy intended to promote the conversion of the Jews to Christianity. In 1817 a "Society of Israelitic Christians" was founded and placed under the Czar's personal patronage.

Would anyone like to offer a comment on the Rebbe's involvement as described above?

I received a reply from a Lubavitch Rabbi who said in answer to my first question that the Rebbe had great foresight and could see that with emancipation the community would assimilate, convert and intermarry. As the leader of a large group he had the right to advise as he did.

In reply to my second question he said that of course Jews can live in freedom and prosper for see how the Hassidim are prospering today.

I replied to this rabbi and said that the Rebbe could not have been that foresighted because 125 year later, in 1937, in spite of intermarriage and conversion there remained a large core of religious Jews in France and Western Europe. In Russia the Jews had all but disappeared into assimilation, communism and atheism. In any event, I told him, his two answers were self-contradictory.

September 2004