Grand Sanhedrin (France)
In April 1806, Napoleon Bonaparte convened the Assembly of Jewish Notables in order to consider twelve questions seen as crucial to the legal future of French Jewry. Presided over by David Sinzheim, chief rabbi of Strasbourg, the assembly examined questions ranging from whether halakhah allows polygamy to whether it forbids Jews to take usury from other Jews. Based on the answers to these questions, Napoleon sanctioned the creation of the Grand Sanhedrin, with the intention of emulating the ancient Sanhedrin and of converting these answers to binding decisions. With seventy-one members, religious and lay, the Grand Sanhedrin met several times in 1807.
Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator
Primary Source
On Jewish Law and Loyalty under Napoleon
Related Guide
European Rabbinic Scholarship
Despite the challenges of the early modern period, rabbinic scholarship flourished in Central and Eastern Europe in the latter half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century.