the battle of waterloo never happened

its a conspiracy

DA JEWS DID IT

Napoleon Bonaparte had not met any Jews in his youth, and perhaps not even during his school years in France. His first contact with the organized Jewish community probably took place on the 9th of February 1797 in Italy during the Italian campaign.

When Napoleon and his army entered Ancona, the Jewish community was living in a small ghetto. Napoleon, at that time, remarked that certain people were walking around with yellow bonnets and a yellow arm band with the "Star of David" on it. He asked one of his officers, what was the purpose of the yellow bonnet and the arm band. The officer replied that these were Jews who had to be identified in order that they return to the ghetto every evening. Napoleon immediately ordered that the arm bands and the yellow bonnets be removed and replaced them with the tricolor rosette. He closed the ghettos and gave instructions that the Jews could live wherever they wanted and they could practice their religion openly. The Jews of Ancona were overjoyed when they discovered that the first French soldiers who entered the ghetto were Jewish!

Later, Napoleon also closed the "Jewish Ghetto" in Rome. He liberated also the Jews of Venice, Verona and Padua.

The "liberator of Italy" abolished the Laws of the Inquisition, and the Jews felt free at last.

And yet, here is another incident of interest. On the 12th of June 1798 when the French occupied Malta, Napoleon learnt that the Templar Knights did not allow the Jews to practice their religion in a synagogue. The Knights enslaved their Jewish prisoners and mercilessly used them or sold them. He immediately gave permission to the Jews to build a synagogue.

When the French troops were in Palestine, and besieging the city of Acre, Napoleon had already prepared a Proclamation making Palestine an independent Jewish state.

He felt confident that he could occupy Acre and the following days he would enter Jerusalem and from Jerusalem he would issue his proclamation. He was unable to realize this project because of the intervention of the British.

This proclamation was printed and dated the 20th of April 1799, but his unsuccessful attempt to capture Acre prevented it from being issued. The Jews had to wait more than 150 years before their state was proclaimed.

The proclamation, however did bear fruit. It was a precursor to Zionism, heightening awareness of the cause of Jewish statehood. The ideas Napoleon expressed found the admiration of many who saw Napoleon's gestures as a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, which foretells of the restoration of the Jews to their land. The idea drew many adherents, especially in England.

One hundred and eighteen years later, the British would issue the "Balfour" declaration which called for a Jewish homeland and ultimately - 31 years later in 1948 - Israel would be recognized as a sovereign state by popular vote in the United Nations General Assembly. Perhaps it can be said that Napoleon's premature announcement on that first day of Passover in 1799 played an important role in the creation of the state of Israel.

In the Paris Moniteur Universel, on 3 Prairial of the year VII (22 may 1799). It was announced: "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."

On the 16th of August, 1800, Napoleon declared: "If I governed a nation of Jews, I should reestablish the Temple of Solomon."

On the 10th of November 1816, Dr. O'Meara (who was Napoleon's personal physician at the time) asked the Emperor point blank as to why he was encouraging and supporting the Jews.

The Emperor Napoleon replied, and I quote:

    "My primary desire was to liberate the Jews and make them full citizens. I wanted to confer upon them all the legal rights of equality, liberty and fraternity as was enjoyed by the Catholics and Protestants. It is my wish that the Jews be treated like brothers as if we were all part of Judaism. As an added benefit, I thought that this would bring to France many riches because the Jews are numerous and they would come in large numbers to our country where they would enjoy more privileges than in any other nation. Without the events of 1814, most of the Jews of Europe would have come to France where equality, fraternity and liberty awaited them and where they can serve the country like everyone else."

During the different periods of Napoleon's career, his sympathy for the Jews were clearly noted. He did everything he could to assure that the Jews were treated on an equal basis as Catholics and Protestants.

The French Revolution in 1789 was to change all the various restrictions that Jews had to face in France. It was on the 27th of September 1791 that France adopted a decree which accorded the Jews of France full citizenship.

However, the Legislative Assembly did not take any specific measures to apply this new freedom that was granted to the Jews. The National Convention closed the synagogues, forbid the use of the Hebrew language and in general made their lives difficult.

Under the Directory, the synagogues were opened again and Jews got involved in business and in political life. But, in general, the Jews were barely tolerated.

Before Napoleon took over the leadership of the French government, the political situation of the Jews was precarious, unstable, and had to submit to negative laws, and according to specific regions of France, they were some times treated in a liberal manner and some times in a tyrannical manner.

Napoleon's religious opinions were the height of modern philosophy; he was completely given to tolerance. Everywhere that Napoleon went, he led tolerance by the hand; everywhere that he found several religions, he ended the domination by which one took precedence over the others. "Faith," Napoleon would say, "is beyond the reach of the law. It is the most personal possession of man, and no one has the right to demand and account for it."

He wanted the Jews to have their Jerusalem in France.

Metternich-Winneburg, who was the Austrian consul in Paris in a letter to Count Standion, Austria's foreign minister, on September 1806 stated: "All Jews look upon Napoleon as their Messiah."

Napoleon was the only government leader that gave Jews equality when most other nations kept them in bondage. He also abolished the special taxes on Jews in Germany and gave them, for the very first time, civic and political equality. When strong opposition in France manifested itself, Napoleon stood firm in his support of Jewish equality.

When Napoleon came to power, he did not liberate the Jews for political reasons because there were not much more than 40,000 in all of France, and they were living in various provinces.

The province where Jews were most persecuted was Alsace, where half of the Jewish population of France was living. In Paris, there were approximately 1,000 Jews. They were excluded from doing business, excluded from government positions and from the purchase of property.

The principle leader of the new law dated the 8th of April 1802, which dealt with the organization of various religions was Jean-Etienne Portalis, the Minister of Religion. He said: "Jews should participate as equals, like all other religions, as permitted by our laws."

Although there was tremendous opposition by the anti-Semites, one of the leading Jewish citizens, Isaac Cerf-Berr, presented to Minister Portalis, a specific plan that would ensure Jewish integration into the population. The plan was brought to Napoleon at his camp in Boulogne in 1805. He approved it and instructed Portalis to implement it as quickly as possible.

As far as the Jews are concerned, it can hardly be doubted that Napoleon's laws regulating the life of the French-Jewish communities were a turning point in their development in modern free-society.

Cerf Berr has been instrumental in securing the abolition of the poll tax which was required of any Jew wishing to spend the day in Strasbourg.

It was in 1806, after the Austerlitz campaign, that Napoleon aggressively supported total liberty for the Jews. Notwithstanding this, the French newspaper, the Mercure de France, published a violently anti-Semitic article stating that the Jews could have freedom in France, provided they all converted and became Catholics.

Great opposition to Napoleon's plan to make equal citizens out of the Jews living in France was led by Molé, Beugnot, Segur, and Regnier.

Notwithstanding this heavy opposition, including anti-Semitism generated by numerous newspapers, Napoleon was quoted as saying, I quote, "This is not the way to solve the Jewish question. I will never accept any proposals that will obligate the Jewish people to leave France, because to me the Jews are the same as any other citizen in our country. It takes weakness to chase them out of the country, but it takes strength to assimilate them."

The decree issued on the 30th of May 1806 requested that a Special Assembly of Jewish leaders and Rabbis, from all of the French departments, would meet in Paris to discuss all outstanding matters, including answering questions dealing with accusations against the Jews made by the anti-Semites.

It was on the 23rd of July 1806, when all of these representatives met in Paris, at which time Napoleon stated:

    "My desire is to make Jews equal citizens in France, have a conciliation between their religion and their responsibilities in becoming French, and to answer all the accusations made against them. I want all people living in France to be equal citizens and benefit from our laws."

One hundred and eleven representatives of the Jewish community, representing all the departments of France and Northern Italy met at City Hall. Napoleon had requested answers to accusations made against the Jews so he could understand their position clearly. The reunion of so many Jews from the different parts of France represented the renewal of the famous "Sanhedrin" which ruled Israel from 170 to 106 before Jesus Christ.

    The Grand Sanhedrin, was the Supreme Assembly of the Jewish nation, and had not been reunited for 18 centuries. Napoleon had the idea of assembling the principal Jewish notables of all of Europe, in order to permit them to solve the problems that concerned him. Convened by decree on the 23rd of August 1806, the Grand Sanhedrin met from the 9th of February to the 9th of March 1807. At the time of their last reunion, Napoleon was proclaimed the modern "Cyrus." Napoleon was warmly and unanimously praised.

The Sanhedrin continued to be an important force in Israel until 72 AD when the Roman General Titus destroyed Jerusalem. The Sanhedrin replaced the monarchy in Israel in those days and it was their authority that administered the country.

They interpreted the law, and sat as judges in major cases. This was the first time since the Sanhedrin was disbanded in Israel that it was reconvened, by the great liberator "Napoleon."

The reconvening of the Sanhedrin drew a historical comparison between Napoleon and the ancient heros, one of whom was "Cyrus the Great." Cyrus, the King of Persia, was the initiator of Israel's first restoration.

Tsar Alexander of Russia, protested violently against the liberation of the Jews and encouraged the Orthodox Church in Moscow to protest aggressively. He called Napoleon the "Anti Christ and the enemy of God" because he liberated the Jews. Austria also protested. In Prussia, the Lutheran Church was extremely hostile towards Napoleon's decision and reaction in Italy was also not favourable but not as aggressive.

A most venomous attack on the Sanhedrin came from the "Holy Synod" of Moscow, which issued an open manifesto against the Sanhedrin. This proclamation dated December 1806 states: "In order to bring about a debasement of the Church, he (Napoleon) has convened to Paris the Jewish Synagogue, restored the dignity of the Rabbis and founded a new Sanhedrin."

Napoleon was concerned about these protests, which also included some leading personalities in France.

Therefore, in 1806, after the campaign of Prussia, and shortly after the victory at Jena, he made a speech in the city of Posen on the 29th of November 1806, where he gave the results of the deliberations of the Sanhedrin, which pleased him very much.

The Sanhedrin was convened again on 31st of January 1807 for two months, in order to fine-tune the law that would make the Jewish religion equal. The special decree of 1806 liberated the Jews from their isolation.

Judaism became the official third religion of France and the method Napoleon implemented to have Rabbis serve the nation is still in effect today and is the basis of the government's relation to the Jewish population.

Napoleon's uncle, Cardinal Fesh, also got involved. He told Napoleon, "Sire, so you wish the end of the world to come with your Laws to give the Jews equality like the Catholics. Do you not know that the Holy Scriptures predict that the end of the world will happen when the Jews will be recognized as a corporate nation."

Even Marshal Kellermann supported by Mole mobilized opposition to Napoleon's laws about the Jews and recommended strongly that the Jews be prohibited from dealing in commerce. The Emperor replied formally and strongly, "We must prevail in encouraging the Jews who are only a very small minority amongst us. In the east departments, we find a great number of Jews that are very honest and industrious."

Because of the tremendous amount of criticism that Napoleon was receiving from such famous personalities as Chateaubriand, Cardinal Fesh, Marshal Kellermann, Tsar Alexander and numerous others, Napoleon felt obligated to introduce a "Restrictive Decree."

On the 17th of March 1808, this Decree limited the freedom given to the Jews. His plan was to reduce criticism to a manageable level and then gradually, over time, remove the restrictions one-by-one.

On the 11th of April 1808, Napoleon received into a special audience, Mr. Furtado and Maurice Levy of Nancy, who wanted to express the emotions of their co-religionists about the Restrictive Decree. After hearing them out, he immediately ordered 13 departments, including those of Le Midi, The Southwest and Les Vosges to eliminate the Decree. In June of that same month, Livourne and the lower Pyrenees were also ordered to remove the "Restrictive Decree."

Therefore, within three months of this Restrictive Decree, more than half of the departments involved were able to reinstate the liberty extended to their Jewish citizens. The last hold-out was Alsace. This province eventually removed the restrictions.

Therefore, in 1811, all restrictions were removed and nothing from a political or civil activity distinguished the Jews from non-Jews in France.

Here is a true anecdote that proves how Napoleon was sympathetic to his Grognards. A young member of the Army served with exceptional bravery. He was from Alsace. The Emperor decided to decorate him with a medal in front of his troops. The Emperor said, "David Bloom, you are a brave soldier. Your place with the Old Guard is inevitable." Then he took off his own silver medal, which he wore proudly, and pinned it on David Bloom's uniform.

David Bloom responded by saying, "Sire, I am from Alsace and I find it difficult to accept this decoration as long as my family is being dishonored by French laws that limit their equality and freedom." Napoleon was visibly upset and was reported to have said, "They have lied to me again, and I will correct these unfair restrictions immediately."

Due to the close collaboration between the administration officials and the local Rabbis and leaders, the Jews were able to leave the ghettos where they were confined and to participate freely in the life of France.

Jews were able to enroll in the universities, participate in whatever professions they wanted and were able to work for various government agencies. Nothing was prohibited any more.

The Imperial Almanac of 1811 reported that the Jewish religion was now one of three religions accepted by the French government. The efforts of Napoleon to liberate the Jews was effective, not only in France, but in all the other countries where France ruled. The new Civil Code, which Napoleon created, assured liberty, fraternity, and equality of all peoples regardless of their religion or station in life.

In 1811, thanks to Napoleon's efforts, Portugal allowed Jews complete freedom and permitted them to open their synagogues that were closed for over 200 years.

The Napoleonic period brought to the Jews of France, the Netherlands, Western Germany and Italy the first intimations of modernity. It brought equality before the law, an end to oppressive taxation and enforced residential restrictions, and the opportunity to participate as free men in public and political life.

In those parts of Spain to which French authority did not reach, the Inquisition continued to function. The sovereigns of the post-Napoleonic era had a weakness in learning nothing and forgetting nothing.

After Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, the Holy Alliance was convened at the Congress of Vienna. At that time the laws permitting equality, liberty and fraternity were retracted and were not applied again until 1830, when the principles fixed by the French Revolution and the First Empire, were re-instated.

Prussia retracted the liberal laws in 1815 after the Battle of Waterloo. The worst setback was inflicted upon the Jews of the Papal states. It would almost seem as if Pius VII had taken revenge on the Jewish population of his territory for the humiliation he had suffered at the hand of Napoleon. He was not content with their confinement behind the walls of the re-erected ghetto but he obliged the Jews to wear the "Yellow badge" again. In Sardina, the Jews were thrown back into ghettos and not allowed to build synagogues.

Much later some European nations assimilated the Jews between 1824 and 1867. Notably, Holland in 1830, Sweden in 1834 and Switzerland in 1838.

It is remarkable that in England, it was only in 1858, after Lord Lionel Rothchild was elected five times, that he was permitted to take his seat in parliament. It is also interesting to know that the laws that were passed in France, in 1808, are still in existence even to this day.

Bitter irony covers the historical fact that Napoleon's defeat stopped Emancipation and plunged the Jewish youth into utter disillusionment and despair.

The encounter of the Jewish people with Napoleon was a turning point of Jewish history. For the first time, a modern statesman had envisaged the Jewish problem as a fundamental issue of international politics.

Napoleon did more than any other leader prior to his time, to give security and religious freedom to the Jews in nations under his control. He had little in the way of political motivation for his policy, as there were no more than 40,000 Jews living in France at that time.

The Jews of France and the Empire recognized that this was a reflection of his humanity towards mankind and his respect for other nationalities and religions. They were so thankful to him for having granted them equality and religious freedom, that they offered a special prayer in his honor. This prayer was inserted into the prayer books in every synagogue in countries under Napoleon's control. As a result, all Jews who attended prayers in these synagogues would recite this prayer.

Prayer of the Children of Israel


Citizens of France and Italy
for the success and prosperity of our Mater's Army
The Emperor, the King Napoleon the Great
(may his glory shine)

Composed in the month of Cheshvan, year 5567 (1807)
Psalms chapter 20,21,27, 147

 

I implore Thee, Creator of Heaven and the Universe and all who inhabit it. Thou hast established all boundaries and limitations of the world and each nation with its respective language. Thou didst give the Sceptre of power into the hands of their kings to lead the people under their reign with righteousness, justice, an uprightness; that each person in his own place should live in peace.

How fortunate we are, how good is our lot, that from Thy hand glory and beauty were poured out upon the head of a powerful man, full of vibrancy, NAPOLEON the Great, to sit on the Throne of France and Italy. Could another be found as worthy as NAPOLEON deserving of such honours and kingship, who shepherds his people with sincerity and with the understanding of his heart? Thou, GOD, hast wondrously bestowed Thy kindness upon him. As other Kings of the world approached to fight him, Thou didst protect him on the day of war, Thou didst save him from those who stood up against him, until he subdued them and they sought peace from him. With his kind spirit, he spoke words of peace to them.

Kings have now untied to break their treaty and replace peace with the blood of war. They have gathered armies to fight against him and against all those who admire him. They have come to our borders, and our master, the Emperor, the King, is standing with the might of his army to confront them.

O GOD, master of greatness, strength, power and beauty, we implore Thee to stand next to his righteousness; help him, support him with Thy mighty arm: guard him as the apple of Thine eye with an abundance of strength and health. Save him from all evil and tell him "I am your salvation."

Send Thy light and truth, that they may lead him. Render foolish all those who rise against him for evil. Let Thy light shine upon his plans. Strengthen his armies and those of his allies.

May he succeed in all his endeavors and reign over his enemies. May they seek peace from him, for he is a man who loves peace, and peace he will exercise among his nation.

Father of compassion, Master of Peace, implant in the heads of all Kings and their advisors thoughts of peace and tranquility for the benefit of all mankind. Let the Sword not pass through our land and spill the blood of our brethren. Let all nations unite in total peace and tranquility forever. Amen.

Following in the wake of the Napoleon Wars (1804-1815) in which Napoleon conquered much of Europe, came the emancipation of the Jews of Western Europe. For hundreds of years the Jews had been economically and politically marginalized and physically confined to the ghettoes of Europe. After Napoleon, the Ghetto walls came down and the Jews of Western Europe were free to enter European society for the first time. For better and for worse, this represented one of the greatest periods of transformation for these Jewish communities. These new freedoms allowed the Jews of Europe to prosper and have tremendous impact on European society, but also led to a wave of secularization, assimilation and even conversion to Christianity.

August 15th is the birthday of Napoleon. The following article, written by Mr. Ben Weider, the president of
the International Napoleonic Society ,gives us much food for thought about anti-Semitism, assimilation and Jewish identity in the world today.

One of the many contributions that Napoleon has made, and perhaps his most important and lasting one, was his Civil Code. This was written at a time in history when discrimination was rampant. It was then that Napoleon decided to liberate and offer Liberty, Equality and Fraternity to Jews, Protestants and Freemasons. He also opened the churches that were closed for years.

The Civil Code of 1804 was to grant religious freedom to all of them. At the time, there were about 480,000 Calvinists and 200,000 Lutherans living in France.

In 1804, Napoleon arranged for the public regulation of the Protestant communities and then decided that the State would assume the responsibility for the salaries of their pastors.

Now, how did Napoleon's involvement with the Jews come about? It started on the 9th of February 1797. When Napoleon occupied Ancona, a strange thing happened. He was amazed when he saw some people wearing yellow bonnets and arm bands on which was the "Star of David." He asked some of his officers why these people were wearing the bonnet and arm bands and what was its purpose.

In the century following the emperor's death, it did not occur to most historians to ask this question. The major nineteenth-century accounts of Napoleon and the Empire do not mention Jews at all, except to relate how Polish Jews provided supplies to the French army during the retreat from Moscow. (1) As the focus of Napoleonic historiography shifted from the battlefield to domestic issues, and from hagiography to a more critical form of understanding, however, Napoleon's treatment of his roughly 40,000 French-Jewish subjects has come to seem a vital part of his legacy. This legacy has aroused controversy not only because of the complex and often contradictory nature of Napoleon's Jewish policies, but also because of ideological clashes among scholars of modern Jewish history. To ask whether Napoleon was good or bad for the Jews is to ask about the nature of Jewish modernity, the problem of assimilation, and the politics of Jewish identity.

Robert Anschel's Napoleon et les Juifs [Napoleon and the Jews] of 1928 provides the first sustained treatment of the question. According to Anschel, while Napoleon viewed the Jews negatively, his policies regarding them were mixed. (2) On the one hand, the emperor's retrograde edicts designed to "regenerate" the Jews of Alsace and Lorraine violated Revolutionary principles of equality by subjecting Jews to a series of injurious and exceptional laws. (3) On the other hand, Napoleon's creation of a state supervised bureaucracy governing Jewish affairs (the Consistory system), while serving the Imperial imperative for centralization and oversight, responded to Jewish demands for state recognition and elevated Judaism to the status of a state religion. (4) Moreover, the convocation of Jewish notables in 1807 (grandiosly dubbed by Napoleon the Grand Sanhedrin, in reference to the supreme national-religious court in ancient Israel), set down, under Napoleon's direction, the limits of Jewish religious law and encouraged Jewish assimilation by demanding the affirmation of Jewish loyalty to the modern nation state. (5)

To a subsequent generation of Jewish historians, writing in the wake of Vichy and the foundation of the state of Israel, the Napoleonic policies praised by Anschel seemed like a series of empty promises. For Zionists, the Grand Sanhedrin figured not as the founding moment of a French-Jewish fusion, but rather as a kind of ruse, in which Napoleon duped Jews into abandoning their religious autonomy by promising union with a society that would ultimately betray them. (6) Simon Schwarzfuchs has argued, however, that even while rejecting the assimilatory impulse behind the Grand Sanhedrin, Zionism has nevertheless relied on its primary achievement--the separation of Jewish religious law from civil law. Napoleon's policies, according to Schwarzfuchs, paved the way for all forms of Jewish modernity, Diasporic and Zionist.

But while many historians have debated the social, economic, cultural, and political effects of Napoleon's policies on the Jews, few have studied the ways in which French Jews in the nineteenth century experienced these changes. While many have debated Napoleon's attitude toward the Jews, few have studied the Jews' attitudes toward Napoleon. One exception is Ronald Schechter, who has recently described the synagogue services and Hebrew prayers written in praise of Napoleon during the Empire. (7) In what follows, I present a different side of the Jewish response to Napoleon--a response made a quarter century after Waterloo, when the Jews no longer had to curry favor with the emperor, but faced a new set of social and religious dilemmas. My source is a short story published in the leading French-Jewish monthly newspaper by Godchaux Weil under the pseudonym Ben-Levi. The story dates from February 1841, two months following the return of Napoleon's remains to France, when the cult of the great man's memory was at a height and when the full effect of his policies could be viewed in retrospect. This story, I want to argue, provides new insight into the social, psychological, and ideological conflict over Napoleon's legacy for Jews in nineteenth-century France.

The publication in which the story appeared, Les Archives Israelites de France, was founded in 1840 by Samuel Cahen, a teacher and translator of the Hebrew Bible into French. Like similar Jewish newspapers founded at the same time in England, Italy, and Germany, the monthly Archives Israelites, which lasted until World War II, was dedicated to Jewish modernization. Written entirely in French (with only occasional traces of Hebrew or Yiddish), it promoted religious reforms, railed against outdated customs and superstitions, and offered a forum for modern scholarship on Jewish subjects. It also featured regular contributions by Godchaux Weil, aka Ben-Levi, which took the form of satires of Jewish manners, as well as witty but often haunting short stories about modern Jewish life in France, a dozen of which were published between 1840 and 1850. To my knowledge, Ben-Levi's short stories have received no scholarly attention whatsoever, despite the fact that they are among the first examples of fiction written by a Jew in French, and despite the fact that Weil was the great-uncle of no less a French fiction writer than Marcel Proust. (8)

Born in Paris in 1806 into a prominent manufacturing family, originally from Alsace, Weil received both a secular and religious education. (9) His tutor was the celebrated David Drach, who later shocked the French Jewish community with his very public conversion to Catholicism. A prodigy who began publishing on Jewish subjects at the age of 15, Weil is slightly better known to historians as the author of a pious and nationalist manual for Jewish school children, Les matinees du samedi [Saturday Mornings] (1842), and for his charitable activities on behalf of the Jewish community. (10) The half-brother of Proust's maternal grandfather, Godchaux Weil largely retired from literary life in 1850 and died in 1878, seven years after the birth of his famous great nephew. (11)

The story in question, entitled "Le Decret du 17 mars" ["The March 17th Decree"], describes the effects of Napoleon's decree of 1808--dubbed by Jews the "infamous decree"--on the family of an honest Jewish money-lender in Alsace. Responding to complaints from the Alsatian peasantry over the enormous debts contracted to Jewish money-lenders in the region, Napoleon's decree nullified (retroactively) loans made by Jews to non-Jews if the lender could not prove that he had given full value for the contracted sum. Since almost no lenders could produce the witnesses and documentation required, many were driven to bankruptcy. The decree, which violated Revolutionary principles of equality by applying only to Jews, also required Jews to obtain a special permit before they could engage in trade and forbid Jews from procuring a replacement for military service. It effectively revoked the legal equality, and hence citizenship, that France had been the first European country to grant the Jews during the Revolution. (12) In response to Jewish protests, Napoleon exempted the Jews of Paris and Bordeaux--mostly acculturated Sephardim--from the 1808 law, which stayed in effect for a ten year period, until the Restoration government declined to renew it in 1818.

In Ben-Levi's story, the infamous decree forces David Blum, "a tall and handsome young man of twenty," to abandon both his fiancee and his studies (which include both the Talmud and, in a nod to modernization, more secular subjects) to enter the army. (13) Upon joining his regiment in Spain, David learns that the decree has driven his money-lending father to bankruptcy and his mother to madness. Both parents subsequently die from grief and shame. Consumed with hatred for Napoleon, David fulfills his military duties with such a lack of ardor that his superior officers and fellow soldiers disdain him. When the tide turns against the French army during the retreat from Moscow, however, David's leaden indifference to life enables him to defend his comrades with remarkable bravery. After the disastrous Crossing of the Beresina, Napoleon himself offers the Jewish soldier the Cross of the Legion of Honor. David refuses the cross in the name of the Alsatian Jews, ruined and dishonored by the odious March 17th decree. Disconcerted by the rebuke of the Jewish soldier, Napoleon declares that his advisors misled him and promises to review his Jewish policies, leaving David clutching the cross taken from the emperor's own uniform. Captured subsequently by the Cossacks, David spends the next 28 years in a Siberian mining camp.

David returns to France in 1840, stopping first in his native village. Disoriented by the incipient industrialization that has altered the face of his former home, he recognizes nobody and nobody recognizes him. Cold, hungry, and alone, he then makes his way to Paris like a Jewish Colonel Chabert, the Napoleonic veteran in Balzac's 1832 novella of that name, who returns to Paris after Waterloo to discover that everyone believes he is dead. (14) Like Chabert, who cannot prove (legally) that he is still alive, David experiences not only material but also both bureaucratic and existential privation: "He arrived in the capital on December 14, worn down with fatigue, suffering from cold and hunger, without papers, without money and not knowing what would become of him." Ben-Levi's fictional veteran, like Balzac's, has no place in the modern metropolis: "He wandered for a long while in the streets of the big city, often rubbing elbows with people who were talking about the glories of the Empire but who didn't care that one of the old instruments of that national glory was suffering beside them." Unlike Chabert, however, who returns to Paris during the Restoration, when Napoleonic worship was still suspect, David Blum returns in December, 1840--just in time to witness the public celebration of the return of Napoleon's remains from Saint-Helena, organized with great fanfare by the citizen-king Louis-Philippe, intent on appropriating the emperor's prestige to bolster his more banal bourgeois monarchy. (15)

Surrounded by the crowd come to pay their respects to the fallen hero, David experiences an epiphany. Remembering Napoleon's apology on the battlefield and identifying with the great man's later suffering, David forgives the emperor for the infamous decree. In the story's final tableau, the broken Jewish veteran, surrounded by the crowd, sinks to his knees to pray as Napoleon's funeral convoy passes. His spirit calmed, the great weight of resentment lifted from his mind, his body then gives way to fatigue. When the crowd parts, David is discovered leaning, lifeless, against the Arc-de-Triomphe. "It is not known whether he collapsed due to starvation or cold, or whether he was crushed by the crowd," reports a newspaper article that concludes the story. This impersonal fait divers (news item) recounts how the unidentified man, later exposed at the morgue, was found clutching two items--the cross of the Legion of Honor and an old scrap of paper bearing the words: "Imperial Decree Concerning the Jews.--March 17, 1808 ..."

Though relatively simple in structure--the narrative unfolds in the past tense and is told, with the exception of the final newspaper excerpt, completely from the perspective of a single, omniscient, third-person narrator--Ben-Levi's story reveals an ideological complexity that solicits closer inspection. In the remainder of this article, I want to analyze the contradictions in this story to reveal what was at stake for Jews in contemplating Napoleonic history during the July Monarchy (1830-1848). I will suggest that the story's ambivalence toward Napoleon reflects a deeper ambivalence toward the processes of modernity and assimilation, and ultimately that a new kind of fiction is born in France of the struggle to resolve these contradictions.

On one level, the story functions didactically to condemn Napoleon's infamous decree by documenting its tragic effect on a representative Alsatian Jewish family. Blameless victims of Napoleon's retrograde policies, David Blum and his family illustrate the suffering that resulted from the emperor's ill-considered effort at social engineering. If Napoleon intended his decree to encourage the Jews' assimilation by normalizing their economic practices, the story shows how it in fact contributed to their increased alienation and marginalization in French society: the decree results in the isolation of David's parents (his father in a debtor's prison and his mother in an insane asylum) and finally in their death. If Napoleon intended the decree to encourage integration by forcing Jews into the army, the decree instead turns David into a pariah, whose grief and grudge against the emperor keep him apart from his fellow soldiers. Napoleon's decree, in other words, backfired by exascerbating the very social ills it was meant to counter.

The story thus functions as a kind of critical or revisionist history of Napoleon's reign. It also figures into a more specifically Jewish historical tradition by placing Napoleon in that long line of oppressive rulers who have conspired against the Jews since Pharaoh, and by fulfilling the Jewish religious commandment to remember (zakhor) the martyrs of Israel. The repetition of the name of the decree in the story's title and in its last words figures as a memorial incantation, calling to mind a painful history for French Jews. Indeed, "The March 17th Decree" resurrects a historical event that the acculturated, elite readership of the Archives Israelites may have prefered to leave buried. Ben-Levi complicates the triumphant narrative of progress leading from Jewish emancipation in 1790 to 1831, when France put the Jewish clergy on the state payroll. (16) By showing Napoleon to have reneged on the Revolutionary tradition's liberal promise of inclusion, the story reveals that what is offered can also be taken away. It shows Jewish equality and citizenship in the modern nation state to be precarious, less a right than a privilege.

Oddly, though, even while denouncing the effects of Napoleon's infamous decree, the story seeks to absolve Napoleon himself from blame. The emperor's battlefield admission that his advisors misled him, and his pledge to revise his prejudicial policy, conveniently serve to liberate David--and by extension the reader--from the burden of resenting the emperor. This apology, of course, is pure fiction. While it is true, according to Anschel, that the anti-Jewish measures of the March 17th Decree had in fact been suggested to Napoleon by Portalis, his Minister of Religion, it is also true that Napoleon chose to disregard the advice of Champagny, his Minister of the Interior, who favored more equitable policies. (17) In other words, not all of Napoleon's ministers "misled" him regarding the Jews. Anschel further specifies that the decree reflected opinions that Napoleon himself had expressed to the Council of State in April, 1806, when he demanded repressive measures against Jewish money lending in Alsace: "I want to take away from them," Napoleon said of the Jews, "at least for a certain time, the right to make loans, because it is too humiliating for the French nation to find itself at the mercy of the most vile nation" (meaning the Jews). (18) Given such antipathy, the apology imagined by Ben-Levi to the Jewish soldier seems not only unlikely, but counter-factual. Fiction serves here as para-history and as wish fulfillment.

By contriving to excuse Napoleon, the story resolves a dilemma for Jews in the July Monarchy who found themselves trapped between the painful memory of Napoleon's anti-Jewish policies and the desire to participate in the cult of affection for the emperor. As Sudhir Hazareesingh has argued, Napoleonic worship served as a means of promoting national identity in nineteenth-century France. (19) The Jews thus found themselves caught between religion and nation, between culte and cult: could one still be a Jew and worship at the altar of the Saint-Napoleon? Was to idolize Napoleon un-Jewish? (20) Was not to do so un-French? (21) For an intensely patriotic writer like Ben-Levi, who the next year would publish a moralistic manual for Jewish schoolchildren exhorting love of both religion and country, such a dilemma demanded careful negotiation. Through the fiction of Napoleon's apology to the Jewish soldier, Ben-Levi's story allows French Jews to have it both ways: the infamous decree lives on in memory along with the plight of its martyrs, while its perpetrator receives absolution.

By absolving Napoleon, the story shifts religious registers from the Jewish commandment to remember, to the Christian one to forgive. This symbolic conversion allows David--and by extension the reader--to join the crowd of worshippers lining the Champs-Elysees as Napoleon's funeral convoy passes. But Ben-Levi's story does not sacrifice Jewish values entirely in its rush to forgive Napoleon. If the Jewish soldier becomes Christian through the act of forgiveness, the Christian emperor becomes Jewish through the act of suffering. David identifies with the emperor because the great man's martyrdom mirrors his own: "Like me, they robbed you of those who were dear to you," ["Comme moi, l'on t'a ravi les etres qui t'etaient chers"] David tells the passing coffin, using the familiar form of address (tu), much as one would speak to a parent or to God; "Like me, they enchained you in a distant land. Like me, your name was covered with the slime of passion. Like me, you return with a frozen heart and a stiffened arm." Napoleon experienced the characteristic Jewish torment of exile, which redeems him in the eyes of the displaced Jewish soldier: "How did you die in exile, you governed kings and conquered nations!" (87) David asks the emperor, less as a question (there is no question mark) than as an affirmation of Napoleon's Jewish bona fides.

If Ben-Levi resolves the dilemma over Napoleon worship by symbolically converting the emperor to Judaism, he also takes pains to specify that Jewish forgiveness can only take place once France has rectified its wrongs against the Jews. By letting the infamous decree lapse and restoring the Jews to full equality, the regimes of the Restoration and July Monarchy have made possible the kind of reconciliation envisioned by Ben-Levi between the Jewish victim and the nation that persecuted him: "And the great Emperor and the humble Jew met for the last time on a soil consecrated once again by liberty, tolerance and justice, for bad laws last but for a day, while liberty, tolerance, and justice are eternal." Here the narrator reassures readers that remembering the infamous decree need not compromise their faith in France as the homeland of liberty. Just as later, some Jews would see the Dreyfus Affair not as evidence of persistent French antisemitism, but as proof that French justice eventually triumphs over prejudice, the story recuperates the infamous decree for a narrative of French-Jewish fusion.

But if Ben-Levi's story can be read as an exploration of the politics of Napoleon worship during the July Monarchy, it can also be read as a more general allegory for the paradoxes of Jewish assimilation in nineteenth-century France. Indeed, the process of assimilation for the Jews of France's Eastern provinces began during the Imperial period, the result of the increased opportunities opened by the Revolution (freedom of movement, the right to live in cities, etc.), as well as of Napoleon's efforts to enforce integration through military conscription. In the story, Napoleon's decree cuts David off from his Jewish roots and from his links to fellow Jews. Forced into the army, he loses at once religious, familial, and local ties. When he returns to his native village following his Siberian captivity, he finds nothing and nobody there, no trace of his former life. This deracination mirrors that of the generation of Jews who, taking advantage of freedom from restrictions and opportunities occasioned by the rise of modern capitalism, began the exodus away from traditional Judaism during the Empire. (22)

Although at first excluded from the non-Jewish collectivity, David eventually merges with the crowd of spectators watching Napoleon's funeral convoy pass, the "hundred thousand voices" crying "Here he is!" The story thus concludes with the Jew's absorption into the body of the nation through participation in the cult of Napoleonic worship during the July Monarchy. This absorption figures as a liberation for David, as freedom or release from a Jewish identity conceived as suffering: "His soul was calmed by prayer. The hallucination of his mind relaxed," the narrator tells us. But what makes this story so interesting, and so important for understanding the stakes of Jewish modernity in France, is the way it reveals not only the pleasures of assimilation, but its perils as well.

For even while liberating David from his past, his assimilation proves fatal. David dies just as he joins the crowd--depicted here as a threatening and faceless mass that perhaps crushes the protagonist and that remains heedless of his misery. The implication is that Jews pay a price for their modernization. By forgiving Napoleon for the infamous decree, by relinquishing his past and his specificity, the Jew may experience the ecstasy of uniting with his fellow Frenchmen, but he dies as a result--if not physically, like David, then spiritually, as a Jew. And to die in the crowd is to die alone.

David's fate is ultimately that of the fait divers: he ends in the morgue, unidentified, his story told in the impersonal voice of the newspaper, which substitutes for a more specifically Jewish narrative voice once David makes the decision to cut himself off from his past. Having renounced his last link to Judaism, David's body will not be claimed, we assume, for Jewish burial, despite the fact that during his final struggle, his hand violently clutches both the Cross of the Legion of Honor and the text of the March 17th Decree. We might read this last desperate grasping as David's turning back from the delirium of complete assimilation, as his dying wish to hold on not only to a modern national identity (the Cross), but to the Jewish past and Jewish identity as well (the Decree). In other words, we might read it as remorse for having succumbed to the lure of Napoleon.

Ben-Levi's story frames the dilemma of modernity for French Jews, a dilemma that crystallized around Napoleon's image in 1841. Should the Jew renounce his traditional religious identity for a new, modern, national one (symbolized here by the cult of Napoleon worship)? For a Jew, joining this cult offered freedom--from the past and its painful memories. The lure must have been enormous and Ben-Levi does his best to justify making the leap. Ultimately, however, he holds back. For although his protagonist joins the crowd and experiences a thrilling--if lethal--freedom, the story itself remains tied to the past, anchored to memory. Ultimately, David's body is claimed by the story itself, which redeems his assimilation as a warning to its readers, but also as a sign that other fates beside homogenization and assimilation are possible for French Jews.

Though long seen as paragons of assimilation, French Jews in the mid-nineteenth century in fact developed a complex identity that sought to redefine both Judaism and Frenchness by claiming a full part in both. It has long surprised scholars that one of the first international Jewish aid societies, the Alliance Israelite Universelle, was formed by those Jews who had the least to gain from it--the French. (23) But the ideology of the Alliance sprang from the commitment of French Jews like Ben-Levi--and indeed, he would be one of the first to call for the formation of an international Jewish aid society (24)--to establish new forms of Jewish identity in the modern world. Like the Alliance, Ben-Levi's fiction struggles to navigate between modernity and tradition, universality and particularity, nationalism and religion. It attempts to carve out a third path in which the Jew remains apart from the crowd, loyal to France while retaining a link to Judaism, articulated less through religious observance than through memory and solidarity with fellow Jews.

The result is not only a new model for Jewish modernity, which French Jews such as Ben-Levi would be the first to pioneer, but also a new kind of fiction in French--the fiction of ethnic difference--which Ben-Levi would help invent. Ben-Levi's stories are among the first French fictions written from the perspective of an ethnic minority group that describe that group's struggle to negotiate an identity in a modern pluralistic society. Given the painful struggles over these questions in France today--after the fall of a different French empire--Ben's Levi's fiction seems remarkably prescient. For while Napoleon may no longer play the polarizing role he did in the nineteenth century, the ever expanding canon of French fiction, both within and outside the metropole, continues to reflect on precisely the kinds of dilemmas faced by Ben-Levi's characters.