The Sephardic Jewish Quest for Emancipation in Revolutionary France

Unknown

1789

Address to the National Assembly

My Lords,

As Jews long established in Bordeaux, we have peacefully enjoyed in this city, and throughout its jurisdiction, the full rights of citizenship. We lived in perfect security, confident in our status as Frenchmen and in the rights attached to it, when recent public news suddenly caused us some concern. Yet we were quickly reassured when we considered the enlightened patriotism that guides your august assembly, and the many decrees it has passed to secure the happiness of the kingdom.

We believe our status in France would not even be questioned today if not for certain petitions presented by the Jews of Alsace, Lorraine, and the Trois-Évêchés, which seem to have created confusion that now affects us.

We do not know precisely what these petitions contain; but according to public reports, they must appear quite extraordinary, since those Jews seem to aspire to live in France under a separate regime, with laws of their own, and to constitute a distinct class of citizens apart from all the rest. If this is true, we think such a demand comes from misguided religious zeal, and we trust that, once reconsidered, they will recognize more clearly the worth and advantage of the honorable rights attached to the quality of being French citizens. We sincerely desire this for their own sake.

As for us, our status in France has long been settled. Proof of this, my lords, will be supplied by the deputies whom we have the honor of sending to your august assembly, should you deign to hear them, whether in a committee or at the bar.

  1. We are naturalized Frenchmen, and since 1550 we have enjoyed all the rights of subjects born in the kingdom; our letters patent date from that time, have been renewed from reign to reign, and bear legal registration.
  2. We own all types of property in the kingdom.
  3. We have the unrestricted right to buy and sell real estate, make wills, and carry out all normal acts of civil society.
  4. We have neither special laws, nor separate courts, nor particular officers.
  5. In Bordeaux, we participate in the rights of the bourgeoisie; some among us can prove this status going back more than a century.
  6. We bear all royal taxes on the same footing as other Frenchmen.
  7. We have always been called to municipal service; and as for royal loans, patriotic contributions, and other acts of public beneficence, our zeal has always equaled that of our fellow citizens.
  8. On every occasion we have taken part in public assemblies as citizens and as merchants. To mention only the happy revolution now giving France a new face: by virtue of a letter from the municipal officers addressed to our syndic, we took part in all the elections preceding those of the representatives of the nation, by means of six deputies. These deputies received several votes to become electors; and Monsieur David Gradis, one of them, having obtained the necessary number of suffrages, was admitted as one of the ninety electors of the city of Bordeaux. In this capacity he signed several addresses, which they had the honor of presenting to the august National Assembly.
  9. We have also contributed to the formation of the patriotic regiments; several among us hold the rank of captain and lieutenant, and our religion does not prevent us from serving in them—even on the Sabbath. What more recommendable titles could be demanded to recognize us as active citizens? Could any be more respectable than that of having participated in the very formation of the august assembly that is now irrevocably to determine our fate?

Should we lose our rights because of the poorly considered petitions of a few Jews in Alsace and Lorraine, who themselves lack many of the rights we already possess? For us, the issue is not to gain new rights but to avoid losing the ones we have. By what misfortune should we be the only native-born subjects deprived of our civil and political rights—especially now, in this age of enlightenment and regeneration, when the National Assembly, tirelessly occupied in cementing a fraternal union among all Frenchmen, has just made common those rights from which part of the nation was previously excluded?

Shall the happiness of France become for us an era of calamity? Surely not. We have no reason to fear this, since you have reserved judgment on our case. Having just established that we enjoy the quality of citizens, it follows that we must also enjoy all the rights that you have declared to be inherent in that quality.

Perhaps, my lords, it remains for us to beg your indulgence for our anxieties; but they are most natural, since it concerns preventing for us an exclusion so humiliating from the very functions that form the most honorable object of every good Frenchman’s desires: that of fulfilling the duties of a citizen, of being useful to our country, and of devoting to it our lives, our property, and our work.

At Bordeaux, December 31, 1789.

Translated by Geraldine Gudefin.

Credits

Unknown, Petition of the Jews of Bordeaux, from Adresses, mémoires, et pétitions des Juifs, 1789–1794. Vol. 5 of Révolution française et l’émancipation des Juifs. Reprint ed. Paris: Éditions d’histoire sociale, 1968.

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“Men are born and remain free and equal in rights,” the 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen proclaimed. But did this include Jews, Protestants, or enslaved people? French legislators debated these questions for years. Jews made up only about 0.15 percent of France’s population but became a test of the Revolution’s promise. France’s Jews—spread across eastern and southern France—did not stand idly by. In multiple petitions, communities argued for French citizenship. Distancing themselves from Ashkenazic Jews in eastern France, the Sephardic Jews of Bordeaux, with two centuries of royal privileges, argued they were already French. On January 28, 1790, legislators granted them full civil rights in exchange for relinquishing certain communal privileges.

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