thecakesokay:

frenchhistory:

Medallion struck in honor of the “Grand Sanhedrin” convened by Emperor Napoleon I of France.

@credits

The Grand Sanhedrin was a Jewish high court convened in Europe by Napoleon I to give legal sanction to the principles expressed by the Assembly of Notables in answer to the twelve questions submitted to it by the government.The name was chosen to imply that the Grand Sanhedrin had the authority of the original Sanhedrin that had been the main legislative and judicial body of the Jewish people in classical and late antiquity.

The Grand Sanhedrin was pretty much balls, though, by way of allowing Jews religious autonomy under Napoleon. Most of their answers to the twelve questions (whether divorce was allowed in Judaism, what is the state of Jewish marriage laws, can Jews do “real work”, is a Jew loyal to his homeland etc) were blatantly written to appease the Napoleonic government, never mind that the twelve questions themselves played into the antisemitic stereotypes of the day (Jews are disloyal, Jews are loan sharks, Jews are lazy, etc).

Yes, Jews can get divorced… if the civil authorities said it was okay. Yes, Jews still get married… only if there is a civil contract first. Yes, Jews do “real work”. And OF COURSE Jews are totally loyal to the land they were born in!

In fact, the entire Grand Sanhedrin was a gross Napoleonic attempt to help the poor denigrated Jewish nation regain its former glory! Who better to do this than the Great Napoleon: Ruler of Europe, Unifying Force of France? When those poor Jews let themselves slip so low into usury, who would they turn to? Napoleon!

Though the Napoleonic government found the Sanhedrin’s report satisfactory, Napoleon himself issued a decree limiting the rights of the Jews anyways. It actually took away Jewish autonomy almost completely, taking Jewish ritual decisions from the Jewish communities and handing them off to the state.

Napoleon used the Sanhedrin’s own findings, themselves a futile attempt to just show the goyim that the Jews could be capable members of a larger society instead of the seditious state-within-a-state as the Jewish community had long been depicted, as justification for this. The members of the Sandhedrin, realizing they’d been duped into creating their own bondage, later tried to protest the decree with no success.

OP would know this if they had read the rest of the Wikipedia article they copypasta’d from. Or if they knew French-Jewish history.

OP is just glad for your input.