Twelve Autograph Letters Signed by, (or relating to), Rabbi Mayer Charleville, Chief Rabbi of Metz

(FRENCH JUDAICA)

Alsace

Early 19th-Century

Hebrew, Judeo-German, and French

Mayer Charleville (1730-1812) was the first Chief Rabbi of Metz appointed by Emperor Napoleon I. In his official capacity as “Grand Rabbin” of the “Consistoire Israelite” (Consistory) of the Department of Moselle, Charleville adjudicated religious matters for the surrounding region of Alsace. He studied under Rabbi Nathanel Weil of Karslruhe, Rabbi of Bohemia, and author of the commentary “Korban Nethanel" on Asheri’s code. At the time of his appointment in 1810, Charleville was already eighty years old, and served but two years until his death in 1812. He was married to the daughter of R. Isaac Coblentz, who in 1751, in his role as “ne’eman" (today a “notary public") of the Jewish community, validated the amulets which served as evidence against Metz’s former rabbi, Jonathan Eybeschütz. The addressee of our collection of letters should not be confused with his grandson Mahir Charleville (1814-1888), also born in Metz. The grandson served with distinction as the rabbi of several communities in France and North Africa. See Richard Ayoun, Typologie d’une carrière rabbinique: L’exemple de Mahir Charleville (Nancy, 1993), pp. 32, 35, 38, 40, 51, 654-5; Arthur Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment and the Jews: The Origins of Modern Antisemitism (New York, 1968), p. 369; EJ, Vol. VIII, p. 523. The correspondence consists of: questions of ritual law (concerning a menstruant woman; the permissibility of an oiled leather shoe for performing the “chalitzah” ritual; problems with a “shochet” or ritual slaughterer); requests for money; family affairs (from R. Mayer’s son Menele Charleville to his brother Zalman; from Menele to his parents; from the rabbi’s sister Malkah in Friedberg; from a friend to Zalman Charleville); a request for a marriage permit by Salomon Löb, rabbi of neighboring Sarreguemines, as well as a congratulatory letter from the latter on Charleville’s appointment as chief rabbi; a rough draft in Charleville’s hand of a rabbinic proclamation to silence malicious gossip that one of the pillars of the community had supped in a non-kosher restaurant in Paris; matters of inheritance (again in the rabbi’s hand); a congratulatory letter and halachic novellae from a student; and finally, a student’s transcription of novellae to Tractate Kethuboth by then rabbi of Metz, Rabbi Aryeh Löb (Lion Asser), author of “Sha’agath Aryeh”