In this class we discuss how Napoleon’s reign impacted the Jewish world at the time and shaped the future of Jewry.
Napoleon’s meteoric rise from Corsican officer to Emperor reshaped Europe’s map and its laws, and nowhere more so than for the Jews: he tore down ghetto walls from Italy to the Rhineland, convened the Assembly of Notables and the Grand Sanhedrin, and left a legacy that ran from genuine emancipation to the discriminatory “Infamous Decree.” That legacy split the rabbinic world three ways: the Alter Rebbe saw spiritual danger and backed the Tsar, the Seer of Lublin’s circle read the war as a herald of Mashiach, and halachic authorities like the Chatam Sofer and Rabbi Yishmael HaKohen wrestled with where civic life ends and Jewish law begins. Along the way, Napoleon became the subject of enduring Jewish legend, from a proclamation restoring the Jews to Zion, to rabbis who claimed to have foreseen his fall, to a tune he never knew would become a Chabad niggun sung on Yom Kippur.