July 14 is Bastille Day

Napoleon (1769-1821) tried to control the Jews and make them assimilate.

However, all his efforts had the opposite effect.

By breaking up the feudal trammels of mid-Europe

and introducing equality, he actually set them loose. 

(See "1882: EUROPE'S CHRISTIAN LEADERS THROW IN THE TOWEL")

Napoleon now learned what many rulers before and after had learned: that kindness towards the Jews does not make them more tractable.

Nechvolodov writes: "Since the first years of the Empire, Napoleon I had become very worried about the Jewish monopoly in France and the isolation in which they lived in the midst of the other citizens, although they had received citizenship. The reports of the departments showed the activity of the Jews in a very bad light:

'Everywhere there are false declarations to the civil authorities; fathers declare the sons who are born to them to be daughters... Again, there are Jews who have given an example of disobedience to the laws of conscription; out of sixty-nine Jews who, in the course of six years, should have formed part of the Moselle contingent, none has entered the army.'

GYPSIES WITH MONEY

"By contrast, behind the army, they give themselves up to frenzied speculation.

(left, Jewish peddlers)

"'Unfortunately,' says Thiers, describing the entry of the French into Rome in his History of the Revolution, 'the excesses, not against persons but against property, marred the entry of the French into the ancient capital of the world... They began to pillage the palaces, convents and rich collections. Some Jews in the rear of the army bought for a paltry price the magnificent objects which the looters were offering them.'

"It was in 1805, during Napoleon's passage through Strasbourg, after the victory of Austerlitz, that the complaints against the Jews assumed great proportions. The principal accusations... concerned ...usury. As soon as he returned to Paris, Napoleon[declared]:

"'The French government cannot look on with indifference as a vile, degraded nation capable of every iniquity takes exclusive possession of two beautiful departments of Alsace; one must consider the Jews as a nation and not as a sect. It is a nation within a nation; I would deprive them, at least for a certain time, of the right to take out mortgages, for it is too humiliating for the French nation to find itself at the mercy of the vilest nation. Some entire villages have been expropriated by the Jews; they have replaced feudalism... It would be dangerous to let the keys of France, Strasbourg and Alsace, fall into the hands of a population of spies who are not at all attached to the country.'"[58, see link to original.]

Napoleon eventually ...convened a 111-strong Assembly of Jewish Notables in order to receive clear and unambiguous answers to the following questions: did the Jewish law permit mixed marriages; did the Jews regard Frenchmen as foreigners or as brothers; did they regard France as their native country, the laws of which they were bound to obey; did the Judaic law draw any distinction between Jewish and Christian debtors?

At the same time, writes Johnson, Napoleon "supplemented this secular body by convening a parallel meeting of rabbis and learned laymen, to advise the Assembly on technical points of Torah and Halakhah. The response of the more traditional elements of Judaism was poor. They did not recognize Napoleon's right to invent such a tribunal, let alone summon it..."[59]

However, if some traditionalists did not welcome it, other Jews received the news with unbounded joy.

"According to Abbé Lemann," writes Nechvolodov, "they grovelled in front of him and were ready to recognize him as the Messiah. The sessions of the Sanhedrin...took place in February and March, 1807, and the Decision of the Great Sanhedrin began with the words: 'Blessed forever is the Lord, the God of Israel, Who has placed on the throne of France and of the kingdom of Italy a prince according to His heart.... These ordinances will teach the nations that our dogmas are consistent with the civil laws under which we live, and do not separate us at all from the society of men...'"[60]

On the face of it, the convening of the Sanhedrin was a great triumph for Napoleon, who could now treat Jewry as just another religious denomination, and not a separate nation, "appropriating for the state what had traditionally been a subversive institution".[62]

REPRESSIVE MEASURES

However, the Jews did not restrain their money-lending and speculative activities, as Napoleon had pleaded with them to do. On the contrary, ...when it became evident that their financial excesses were continuing, Napoleon was forced to adopt repressive measures against them.

As Tikhomirov points out, "no laws could avert the international links of the Jews. Sometimes they even appeared openly, as in Kol Ispoel Khaberim (Alliance Israélite Universelle), although many legislatures forbade societies and unions of their own citizens to have links with foreigners. The Jews gained a position of exceptional privilege. For the first time... they acquired greater rights than the local citizens of the countries of the dispersion.... the countries of the new culture and statehood became from that time a lever of support for Jewry."[64]

Indeed, the main result of the Great Sanhedrin, writes Nechvolodov, "was to unite Judaism still more. "

'Let us not forget from where we draw our origin,' said Rabbi Salomon Lippmann Cerfbeer on July 26, 1808, in his speech for ...the Sanhedrin:- 'Let it no longer be a question of "German" or "Portuguese" Jews; although disseminated over the surface of the globe, we everywhere form only one unique people.'"[65]

As we have seen, the emancipation of the Jews in France led to their emancipation in other countries. Even after the fall of Napoleon, on June 8, 1815, the Congress of Vienna decreed that "it was incumbent on the members of the German Confederation to consider an 'amelioration' of the civil status of all those who 'confessed the Jewish faith in Germany.'"[66] Gradually, though not without opposition, Jewish emancipation and Jewish power spread throughout Europe...

First Comment from David Livingstone:  Was Napoleon Jewish?

Here a few snippets from my book Black Terror White Soldiers:
 
Hegel, the great oracle of the Illuminati, whose philosophy was derived from the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria, regarded Napoleon as embodying the "world-soul," meaning, that in him was fulfilled the process of history. Speaking of Napoleon he said, "It is indeed a wonderful feeling to see such an individual who, here concentrated into a single point, reaches out over the world and dominates it."

According to Adam Mickiewicz, regarded as the greatest poet in all Polish literature, who was also a secret Frankist as well as a Martinist, there existed in France at the beginning of the nineteenth century, "a numerous Israelite sect, half Christian, half Jewish, which also looked forward to Messianism and saw in Napoleon the Messiah, at least his predecessor."[i] These beliefs, notes Mickiewicz, were related to those of Jozef Maria Hoene-Wronski, a Polish philosopher and crackpot scientist. Sarane Alexandrian writes, in Histoire de la philosophie occulte, that "Wronski holds in occult philosophy the place that Kant holds in classical philosophy."[ii] Wronski exercised a profound influence on the famous occultist Eliphas Lévi (1810-1875), whose real name was Alphonse Louis Constant, and who is often held to have incepted the French occult revival in 1855, with his Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic...

A recent genetic study of Napoleon's DNA has proven him to have been of Sephardic Jewish ancestry. Napoleon was a rare example of Haplogroup E1b1b1c1. This group originated approximately in the area of Lebanon and can most frequently be found in Israel, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon. Similar profiles can be found among Sephardic Jews in Greece and Italy. It is not sure when Napoleon's ancestors moved to Italy from the Near East. One hint to Napoleon's ancestry is already given by the genealogy of his family. One of his ancestors, Francesco Bonaparte has been called "il Mauro," the Moor. His ancestors can be traced back to the city of Sarzana in northern Italy. During the Middle ages, Sarzana had frequently been under attack by the Muslims who controlled the Mediterranean Sea at this time. Therefore, Napoleon's Arab and/or Jewish ancestors probably came to Italy during the Islamic expansion as conquerors or merchants.[v]

The Sabbateans' veneration of Napoleon, which survived beyond his death, was related to Jacob Frank's messianic prophecies. Frank had been prophesying a "great war" to be followed by the overthrow of governments and foretold that the "true Jacob will gather the children of his nation in the land promised to Abraham."[vi] Gershom Scholem revealed that George Alexander Matuszewics, a Dutch artillery commander under Napoleon was the son of a leading Frankist.[vii] Wenzel Zacek cited an anonymous complaint against Jacob Frank's cousin, Moses Dobrushka, and his followers, which stated:
 
The overthrow of the papal throne has given their [the Frankists] day-dreams plenty of nourishment. They say openly, this is the sign of the coming of the Messiah, since their chief belief consists of this. [Sabbatai Zevi] was savior, will always remain the saviour, but always under a different shape. General Bonaparte's conquests gave nourishment to their superstitious teachings. His conquests in the Orient, especially the conquest of Palestine, of Jerusalem, his appeal to the Israelites is oil on their fire, and here, it is believed, lies the connection between them and between the French society.[viii]
 

[i] Duker, "Polish Frankism's Duration," p. 292.
[ii] Sarane Alexandrian, Histoire de la philosophie occulte (Paris: Seghers, 1983) p. 133.
[iii] Mark Booth, The Secret History of the World (Woodstock & New York: The Overlook Press, 2008) p. 373.
[iv] Christopher McIntosh, Eliphas Lévi and the French Occult Revival (London: Rider, 1972), p. 97-8.
[v] Gerard Lucotte, Thierry Thomasset, Peter Hrechdakian. "Haplogroup of the Y Chromosome of Napoléon the First." Journal of Molecular Biology Research Vol 1, No 1 (2011).
[vi] Duker. "Polish Frankism's Duration," p. 308
[vii] Ibid., p. 310
[viii] Ibid., p. 308