Page:Jewish Encyclopedia Volume 1.pdf/510

462 —

On Nov, 22 the Directory Council of the district of Strasburg decreed in an arbitrary manner the abolition of the rite of circumcision and of permission to wear a beard; and it ordered the public burning of all books written in the Hebrew language. On Dec. 1 a commissioner of the court, named Martin, ordered the arrest of all rabbis, cantors, and synagogue officials of the district of Bari. When the reign of Terror spread to Alsace there was scarcely a Jew of any means who was not mulcted in heavy fines and imprisoned (May. 1794) with other suspects, under the pretext of being guilty of stock-jobbing, selfishness, or fanaticism (R. Reuss, "Seligmann Alexander, ou les Tribulations d'un Israelite Strasbourgeois pendant la Terreur"). In June 1794, the Jacobin municipality of Saverne ordered, under very heavy penalty, the destruction of all the Jewish gravestones in the city, declaring them to be "manifestations of fanaticism." Meanwhile, although the Jews were denounced by the national agents as parasites, only one Jew suffered death as a victim of the Reign of Terror in the department of the Lower Rhine in 1794. So far as can be ascertained, none suffered execution in the province of the Upper Rhine. But persecution continued till the fall of Robespierre, and on July 22, 1794, a decree of the people's representatives, Hentz and Goujon, ordered the arrest of all the priests, rabbis, and cantors in the districts of Schlettstadt and Altkirch and their imprisonment in the citadel of Besancon, where they were detained till August.

The lot of the Jews was not altered immediately after the downfall of Robespierre. Public opinion was still hostile to them in Alsace, and in November, 1794. the Constitutional Committee of the Convention had to order the authorities of Strasburg to protect their Jewish citizens, against whom the keen business competition that existed in the city had been charged, and who had greatly increased in number during the war. It is stated that there were at one time as many as 8,000 Jews in Strasburg, the total population being 45,000.

When the rural districts had quieted down, the Jews gradually dispersed, but did not largely apply themselves to agriculture. Those who remained in the cities, when not occupied in money lending, were engaged in some sort of brokerage. According to the report of Laumond, prefect of the Lower Rhine for the year X., there were at that time, in this department alone, 587 pedlers. In the meantime the government strove to get the Jews to take up the more regular and the more productive occupations, but without marked success. The secretary general of the administration of the Lower Rhine, named Bottin, in his annual report for 1799, refers in detail to Hirtzel Bloch, a Jew of Diebolsheim, as an example worthy of imitation, of one who had applied himself with energy and success to agricultural work. In the first years of the Empire, the general situation was not materially changed. Considerable fortunes had been accumulated by Jews who had speculated in assignats; others applied themselves to banking and to wholesale trading. The intellectual development of a minority among them attained to the same level as that of the general population. Adepts in the liberal arts appeared with the new generation that had been emancipated by the Revolution: and public offices were no longer denied to worthy Jews. Napoleon determined to hasten the development of this new element. To this end he sought to condemn in an official manner, and by an authority that he deemed more powerful than the civil law, all regrettable practices of the Jewish race. The first step toward this was his decree of May 30, 1806, summoning a convention of the Jewish notables, among whom were many Alsatians, such as Rabbi David Sintzheim, who took an important part in the discussions. At the instance of Napoleon this convention, presided over by M. Mole, councilor of state, discussed and approved a series of propositions in practical morals, which were to combine the law of Moses with the Code Napoleon. Action on these propositions was taken later by a second assembly of a more ecclesiastical character, designated as the Great Sanhedrin of France, which was convened in February 1807, by order of the emperor. The Jewish religion was then officially established in Alsace. It was to be governed by two consistories, one at Strasburg and the other at Colmar: and a synagogue, built at Strasburg in 1809, took the place of the private houses of worship that had existed up to that time. From this period the history of the Jews of Alsace is merged in that of the Jews of France. The antagonism of a large part of the rural population still manifested itself from time to time, and almost in an official manner, either in orders of the Councils General of the departments of the Upper and Lower Rhine or in certain decrees of the royal tribunal of Colmar; but in the Chamber of Deputies, members spoke no more against them: and for the first time, thanks to the restricted suffrage under Louis Philippe, a Jew, Colonel Cerf-Beer, was elected to represent one of the electoral districts of the Lower Rhine. The progress of public instruction, the diffusion of liberal ideas, and the efforts of the Jews themselves who established an industrial school at Mulhausen and a school of arts and trades at Strasburg - gradually improved the conditions of the various Jewish communities of the country, especially in the higher spheres of provincial society. A speech livered by Cremieux at Saverne in 1844 led to the oath, more Judaico, required until then by the courts of Alsace. Alsatian Jews in larger numbers took part in the municipal and departmental councils of the localities in which they dwelt; they became members of the faculties of the colleges and lyceums: and were appointed to chairs in the Academy of Strasburg. They distinguished themselves at the bar, in the world of art and letters, and in medicine. At certain epochs of great political commotion, more or less violent awakenings of the former antipathies toward the Jews took place. To this may be attributed the disturbances which occurred in February 1848, at Allkirch, and in some other localities of the department of the Upper Rhine as well as at Brumath and at Marmontier in the Lower Rhine - disturbances that had to be suppressed by troops. It was from the same cause that in January 1852, after the coup d'etat, trouble arose at Roestlach, in the canton of Ferrette. Again, at the time of the war in Italy in 1859, anti-Jewish manifestations occurred at Rixheim and at Ottrott. Other instances of a similar nature, and of comparatively modern date, could be named with little difficulty. Nevertheless one can not deny the great progress that has been made by the Jews throughout Alsace in the course of the nineteenth century, nor the gradual disappearance of the religious and social antipathy in which the Jews at one time were held. The prevalence of juster notions is probably due to the fact that the fear, entertained during the Revolution, that in a brief period of time the Jewish population, by reason of its rapid natural increase, would gain the upper hand over the Christian population, has long since been dis-