Lettres-Patentes du Roi, Sur un décret de l’Assemblée Nationale, pour la Constitution des Assemblées primaires & des Assemblées administratives

(FRENCH JUDAICA)

J.B. Capel

Dijon

1790

On title, royal emblem of France, fleur-de-lis. Wide-margined copy

Page 29, par. 3 of this document states, “Que l’Assemblée Nationale n’a entendu rien préjuger, relativement aux Juifs, sur l’état desquels elle se reserve de prononcer.” In other words, the National Assembly reserves judgment regarding the status of the Jews. Despite much agitation on the part of prominent Jews and pro-Jewish sympathizers, throughout the year 1790, the revolutionary government continued to drag its feet on the issue of granting citizenship to its Jewish subjects. On April 30 we again find this line, “sans…rien préjuger sur la question des Juifs, qui a été et demeure ajournée,” which is to say, the Jewish question remains in abeyance. As late as September 11, we hear the same refrain, “L’Assemblée nationale n’entend encore rien préjuger par rapport aux Juifs.” Finally, on September 27, 1791, the Aschkenazic Jews of the realm were granted full citizenship. (The Sephardic Jews of Bordeaux were granted full citizenship earlier on January 28, 1790.) See Z. Szajkowski, Jews and the French Revolutions of 1789, 1830 and 1848 (1970), p. 865, no. 81; Ibid., p. 866, no. 87; Ibid., pp. 611, 613