(FRENCH JUDAICA)

The emancipation that the French Revolution brought to Jews particularly impacted on their economic life. The Jews as a group were blamed for the widespread employment of usury- which particularly hurt the peasantry of Alsace. The numerous law-suits that erupted over debts owed and the court-ordered sales and seizures in favor of the Jewish creditors increased the deep rooted suspicion between Jew and Christian in North-Eastern France. In an attempt to solve the plight of the Alsatian peasants, Napoleon I issued a series of decrees concerned with the “Jewish Problem.” Convinced that Jews had abused their newly won freedoms, the decrees ordered a range of measures aimed at rectifying the situation. One of which was the establishment of the Paris Sanhedrin. See: S. Scharzfuchs, Napoleon, the Jews and the Sanhedrin (1979), pp.28-44; and, Agricultural Credit and Napoleon’s Anti-Jewish Decrees, in: Z. Szajkowski, Jews and the French Revolution of 1789, 1830 and 1848, p. 919-924