‘To judge and to be judged’: Jewish Communal Autonomy in Metz and the Struggle for Sovereignty in Eighteenth-Century France Undergraduate Thesis Presented to the Department of History Columbia University in the City of New York April 4, 2011 Jordan Katz Seminar Instructor: Emma Winter Faculty Advisor: Elisheva Carlebach Word Count: 17,542 Acknowledgments If there is any one thing I have learned through the process of writing a senior thesis, it is that producing a work of such depth is a collaborative effort. My thesis has benefited from the contributions of numerous individuals whom I cannot in good conscience fail to mention. Firstly, I must extend the utmost gratitude to the Institute for Religion, Culture & Public Life at Columbia University. Without the generous financial support of the Institute, my research would never have been possible. The opportunity to travel to France and Israel to conduct archival research shaped the course of my project. Had I only used resources located in the United States, I would not have uncovered the nuanced and complicated questions which foreign documents brought to light. Thanks also to the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies for contributing to my research. In the archives, I was assisted by numerous individuals who kindly guided me through territory in which I was a true novice. I thank the staff of the Archives Nationales, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Archives Départementales de la Moselle, and the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP) for their equanimity as I learned the tricks of the trade. Particular thanks are due to the staff members of the CAHJP in Jerusalem, who were all incredibly patient as I requested more and yet more documents from Metz. Céline Chulsky aided me greatly by helping me find lodging while in France. The Kannai family, as they have in the past, opened their home in Jerusalem to me while I conducted research there for a month. For their kindness and unwavering support I am thankful. Conversations with David Horowitz and Professors Jay Berkovitz, Simon Schwarzfuchs, and Pierre Force proved immensely helpful in guiding the direction of my project. Alex Barkoff’s adjustments of my mediocre quality and sometimes shaky-handed photos allowed me to explore documents which I would have otherwise had to cast aside. I am fortunate to have found a thesis buddy in Louis Fisher. Our Monday night discussions of our thesis progress motivated me to keep on trucking. Thanks to my seminar advisor, Professor Emma Winter, who never lost faith in my project and talked me through the times when I did. Her insightful suggestion to analyze this subject within the context of French state centralization added a new dimension to my work. Her understanding and caring nature significantly enhanced my experience. I thank Professor Elisheva Carlebach for offering to be my second reader for this project. More generally, she has served as an exemplar of scholarship and mentorship for me throughout her three years at Columbia. I am privileged to have benefited from her teaching and her work, but most of all her kindness. My parents have equipped me with the tools necessary to engage in intellectual inquiry. They have always encouraged me to follow my passions and see my interests through to their fullest. I am lucky to have great friends who have come along for the ride. Table of Contents Note on Translation and Transliteration ii Introduction 1 Chapter 1: State Politics and Jewish Communal Autonomy in Metz 5 Chapter 2: Upheaval from Within 24 Chapter 3: Jewish Practice in Translation 40 Conclusion 50 Bibliography 52 Figure 1: 17 Figure 2: 34 Figure 3: 50 Katz | i Note on Translation and Transliteration: The documents used in this paper have been translated from French, Hebrew, and Yiddish. Translations from French and Hebrew are my own unless otherwise indicated. I was assisted in the translation of Yiddish documents by Professor Elisheva Carlebach. In all cases, I have tried to adhere to the original meaning of the excerpt, at times diverging from the literal meaning in order to more effectively express the content. Quotations and terms from old French have, when necessary, been adapted to modern spellings for the sake of simplicity. When transliterating Hebrew terms, I have tried to adhere to the academic conventions set forth by the AJS Review. The Hebrew letter by ‘tz’. As Hebrew (צ) by ‘h’; and tzadi (ח) by ‘kh’; het (כ) is represented by a ‘q’; khaf (ק) quf does not differentiate between capital and lowercase letters, transliterations have only been capitalized where they represent titles of Hebrew works. Katz | ii Introduction: My subject emerged from a few passing remarks in an article by Professor Simon Schwarzfuchs on Jewish practice and leadership in the community of Metz: In the days of Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschutz, the parlement of Metz imposed upon the local community the obligation to prepare a French translation of the Shulhan Arukh in order to enable the [non-Jewish] judges to judge the Jews in civil disputes according to their [Jewish] religious law. That way they, and not the rabbis, would be able to execute the law as translated.1 I was struck by the idea Jewish law translated into the vernacular, and I resolved to study this undertaking to understand how a Jewish community made its complex code of laws comprehensable to secular authorities. What I discovered, however, was a much larger story of the evolution of Jewish autonomy in Metz, of which the translation was only one component. Historians have cast the story of Jewish communal autonomy in various lights. Once regarded as the defining feature of early modern Jewish life in Europe, communal autonomy has been viewed through the prism of a state within a state, or a nation within a nation. Within this conception, Jews retained the right to be judged by their own laws, and the states which they inhabited demarcated clear boundaries between secular and religious jurisdiction. French Jewish emancipation following the French Revolution was, in this view, entirely transformative as the pivotal moment when French Jewish society received equal status under the law. To quote Jacob Katz, “the transformation of Jewish society from prerevolutionary state represents perhaps the greatest upheaval of any sector of European society at that time.”2 Yet even before Jewish emancipation, the boundaries between secular and Jewish jurisdictions were not impermeable. Jews were well aware of the power wielded by secular 1 Simon Schwarzfuchs, “Minhag u-manhig be-kehilat Metz,” in Mehkarim be-toldot yehude ashkenaz: sefer yovel likhevod Yitzhak (Eric) Zimmer [=Studies on the History of the Jews of Ashkenaz: Presented to Eric Zimmer], ed. Gershon Bacon et al. (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2008), 256. The Shulhan Arukh was the most influential and well-known code of Jewish law at the time. 2 Jacob Katz, Out of the Ghetto: the Social Background of Jewish Emancipation, 1770-1870 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 4. Katz | 1 authorities and of the potential benefits of stepping outside the Jewish community to present their cases in front of non-Jewish courts. As European states began to centralize, they too breached the barriers of Jewish communities in an effort to assert their authority over corporate establishments. This combination of external, state-driven factors and the internally motivated desire of Jews to reach beyond the confines of their courts contributed to the progressive decline of Jewish communal autonomy throughout the eighteenth century. This process did not occur with one event, but rather was complex and textured. Only recently have Jewish historians begun to unearth documentation which elucidates the mechanics of this transformation. The present study follows this uneven path, examining the internal strife of the Jewish community of Metz, as well as the triangular relationship that developed between the community, the local parlement, and the French monarch, Louis XV, during the mid-eighteenth century. Through an analysis of the production of the translation and the events that preceded and followed it, this study examines the central questions of French Jewish communal autonomy: its characteristics, its extent, its influence, and of course its limitations. Motions from within the community played an important role in altering the practice of Jewish juridical authority in Metz. In addition to taking its cues from politics within the Jewish community itself, the transformation of Jewish autonomy in Metz was propelled forward by the tensions engendered by the process of state centralization in France. From the perspective of the royal government, Jews were simply another corporate group whose autonomy threatened the interests of consolidated absolutist rule. To the local parlement of Metz, authority over the Jews represented a reassertion of provincial control over corporate activity. In their prolonged contest for sovereignty, these local and royal powers each used the Jewish community of Metz as an entity through which to manipulate and amplify their own influence. The history of Jewish communal Katz | 2 autonomy in Metz thus finds its place both in the historiography of the Jewish community as well as in the body of scholarship concerned with the development of enlightened absolutism in France. This study uses the experience of the French translation of Jewish law as a lens through which to understand the evolution of Jewish communal autonomy in Metz and the increasingly tense relationship between local and royal authority as the eighteenth century progressed. The first chapter establishes the situation of the Jews in Metz at the opening of the eighteenth century, with a critical eye on what was occurring in the larger French polity and the effect of these developments on the tripartite relationship between the Jewish community of Metz, the local parlement, and the French monarch.