Journey to France: Paris - Napoleon and His Mock Sanhedrin

this torah class is brought to you by torahanytime.com okay good morning everyone thank you everyone for joining this to [Music] places of historical importance and significance in starfast and france i hope everybody had an enjoyable trip so far you know it's always better to arrive without any luggage it makes things much more convenient not to have anything to carry around including luggage is that things are very overrated who needs things so uh as long as you're here that's all that counts as hilo would say when he came to the simcoe space station if you're here that's all we need so first we want to give a big extra kayak to avi roya who put in many many sleepless nights and countless hours of preparing for this trip we've been discussing this for many months and thank you very much i'm sure we'll all have a terrific time i want to welcome a very special participant it's a big cover that we have my father with us thank you very much and my father has been prepping me for this trip for all the different rushes and material so whatever i give over i'm sure my father could give you uh in even greater detail okay so let's begin by getting a little bit of a historical context for the individual that we're going to now we're going to the camera of david sinsheim and i'm going to try to uh give you most of the information now because we're a little bit short on time and at the camera we'll just talk about the zipcos and the time but now uh let's just try to get some of the historical background of this individual from your safe david sintein 1745-1813 now when you speak about european life at the beginning of the 19th century the central character of importance is napoleon napoleon bonaparte not only did he inflict war upon all the neighboring european countries but napoleon had a major impact on european jewish life his remarkable rise and fall [Music] what closer his remarkable rise and fall contributed mightily to the dismantling of traditional jewish values the beginning of the 19th century so napoleon was a feared and famed general since 1795 and in 1799 at the age of 30 napoleon became the console of france and he immediately began embarking on building his empire yeah i have to put it all the way okay so wherever his sword advanced the ghetto walls were turned down jews were given positions of importance new liberties for the first time in many hundreds of years and most jews held napoleon in great esteem and they considered him a benevolent ruler and napoleon's rise to power coincided with the rise of re reform judaism so in the early 19th century much of french jewry was drunk with newfound civil rights liberty they cast away religious traditions you have to understand that france and the middle ages was the center of torah scholarship because there were hundreds and hundreds of ballet isis and as opposed to in spain where you had mass conversions hundreds of thousands of conversions it was somewhat of a rarity in france because of the incredible scholarship that existed here so in the beginning of the 19th century many jews rejoined reform and eventually they tried to assimilate completely into french society and napoleon's liberal attitudes proved to be a major factor in the process of assimilation now uh it's interesting that while the jews embraced napoleon and their new civil rights much of the gentile world still had a violent and hateful attitude toward the jewish people because what napoleon did was not able to cancel centuries and centuries of religious anti-semitism and oppression however civil rights were granted to the jews of prussia in 1812 so napoleon had a tremendous influence not only on french treaty but on jews across european continents considerable freedom was granted to the jews of england and napoleon's brilliant military victories in europe from 1799 to 1810 seemed to have your future poised at the age of a new horizon of economic advancements and social acceptance however the jews soon realized that they needed to view napoleon with a healthy dose of skepticism napoleon was proving to be quite an enigma to the jewish people on the one hand in may in 1806 napoleon convened an assembly of notables to determine the best way to open up the economy to the jewish people so that they could earn respectable livelihoods but on the other hand in april 30th of that very same year napoleon stated that the jews were dangerous and they could not be allowed to live on the border region uh the province of el sasas alsace and the jewish people were sort of scratching their heads to try to understand what was napoleon's attitude toward them however the mystery of napoleon his outward tolerance for the jews was actually based upon his grand plan of what he considered a benign solution to the jewish problem napoleon's plan was to have the jewish people disappear on their own so incredibly in 1806 in may napoleon convened an assembly of jewish notables and in february 1807 napoleon established you ready for this a jewish sanhedrin for the first time in 2 000 years the assembly of jewish notables included leading jews from france germany and italy the purpose of the assembly was to provide satisfactory answers to 12 pressing jewish questions i'll give you a few examples of some of these questions so number one can a jew have more than one wife that was napoleon shyla question number three are jews prohibited from intermarrying with christians question number five what line of conduct does jewish law prescribe toward non-jewish frenchmen and finally my all-time favorite question the question that really has no answer who elects rabbis that's something that great scholars are still trying to figure out who elects rabbis the answers to these questions were submitted to napoleon who convened a mock sanhedrin to ratify the answers and give these answers ratified legal standing now napoleon figured if the sanhedrin themselves would say assimilation is permitted or that jews cannot have more than one wife this would be acceptable to judaism at large so reform jewry welcomed the program and traditional jews saw the sanhedrin as a bad joke at best now i'm gonna digress a little bit because this is a really remarkable um episode in history in 1799 napoleon set out to conquer palestine anybody you know who ruled palestine in the ottoman empire the turks and the svardon were living in arts israel the spartan always had a sense of loyalty to the rulers of the country they lived in and this fire them were never enamored with what western culture and the leader in jerusalem at the time was revyamptiv al-ghazi and rabbyanti palgazi offered official prayers on behalf of the turks and for the downfall of napoleon when napoleon approached jerusalem and he saw the forbidding walls of the great city he turned around he went to the seacoast he captured the city of jaffa he massacred four thousand defenders and then he turned north moving up the seacoast okay now this is one of the most interesting little stories in jewish history it's shabbos parsha zakhar 1799. napoleon began the siege of akkar the legendary rav nachman of breslov happened to be in the city at the time why rav nachman was there how he got there from the ukraine he went on one of our tour buses or something like that how of nachman got from the from to palestine in 1799 is the big question and with mahmoud of breslin was in the city that napoleon was going to set siege to it cursed napoleon and that was the beginning of the end of napoleon's empire he could not prevail on akkar he withdrew from the middle east and uh what's very interesting is that there was a big macholicus among the rebbus about how to view napoleon the choice of lublin was not sure was skeptical about napoleon ramanakamendo merimanov he held napoleon to be a great savior he held if napoleon attacks the tsar of russia it will be muhammad and napoleon will usher in the mashiach so you're asking me can i send you a picture of napoleon yeah all right no problem we're gonna send down pictures of napoleon everything that i need is in my suitcase except for a picture of napoleon so here we go i might as well give that to you here we have a picture of napoleon bonaparte we have the coin of napoleon and the great sanhedrin and on the other side of the coin is napoleon coming down from harsinai with the schneider sabres giving the torah to my sharabanu maybe you missed that when you were in yeshiva you missed that part that parashat but napoleon yes they he napoleon considered himself a messianic figure a religious figure and napoleon said if he was a jew like solomon he would have built the temple however it is well known that the balatanya was very afraid of napoleon even though the lived in a rural azarist regime and the jewish people were oppressed in russia but uh the uh zaman of the ari said if napoleon comes and conquers russia and the jews have civil rights and they have liberties then it will remove their hearts from aveeno shabbat shamayim and uh of liari also prayed for the downfall of napoleon so we're going to come back now to napoleon sanhedrin the sanhedrin had 71 members they were all appointed at least indirectly by napoleon 25 members were laymen the remaining 46 were rabbis many of the rabbis were reformed rabbis rabbis from amsterdam hamburg italy they were all members of the sanhedrin and in an illustration of great hashtag pratis the head of the sanhedrin was a great rabbi renowned talmudic scholar rabbi yosef david sintein the rav of strasbourg the author of the yadavid the author of the minhasani and rav david since i found himself as the royce of this ill-advised and strangely constituted sanhedrin and with great skill with great skill and diplomacy patience wisdom he was successful in diluting any of the halachic effects that this sanhedrin would have he was able to limit the participation of reform representatives and eventually this sanhedrin approved nine articles of jewish dogma and submitted them in the final report to napoleon so let me give you an example of not of a few of these sakim of the sanhedrin of napoleon number one polygamy is prohibited because of the fair of the rabbenu garcia any jew who marries al-bash much of israel first has to give a civil contract jews were bound to view their non-jewish brethren as equals and aiden protect them just like they were jews finally jews were not allowed to extract usury from jew or nandru april 6 1807 the charade ended napoleon dissolved the sanhedrin he dissolved the assembly of jewish notables and this ended one of the most intriguing episodes in jewish history one would think that this rabbit since time perhaps perhaps was viewed as some kind of modern rabbi quite contraire of david sinsheim was held in the greatest esteem by none other than the hassam seifer who gave a eulogy from david sin time is published in the taurus maisha and the noise himself quotes from sin time we'll hear a little bit more about him when we get to the cover enjoy the rest of your ride and uh looking forward to the rest of the trip thank you very much you've just experienced another torah class brought to you by torahanytime.com