Questions addressed to the Assembly of Jews by His Majesty the Emperor and King, that they might deal with the matters pertaining thereto:
1. Is it lawful for Jews to marry more than one wife?
2. Is divorce allowed by the Jewish religion? Is divorce valid, even when it is not pronounced by the Courts of Justice, and by virtue of laws contrary to those of the French Code?
3. Can a Jewess marry a Christian, or a Christian woman a Jew? Or does the Law ordain that Jews shall marry only among themselves?
4. In the eyes of Jews, are Frenchmen their brethren or strangers?
5. In either case what relations does the Law prescribe for them towards Frenchmen who are not of their religion?
6. Do Jews born in France, and treated by the law as French citizens, acknowledge France as their country? Are they bound to defend it? Are they bound to obey its laws and to follow all the
provisions of the Civil Code?
7. Who appoints the Rabbis?
8. What police jurisdiction do the Rabbis exercise among the Jews? What judicial power do they exercise among them?
9. Are these forms of election (mentioned in q. 7], this police-jurisdiction [mentioned in q. 8], laid down in their laws, or are they sanctioned only by custom?
10. Are there professions which are forbidden to Jews by their Law?
11. Does the Law of the Jews forbid them to take interest [usure] from their brethren?
12. Does it forbid them or permit them to take interest [usure] from strangers?
Reply of the Jewish Assembly to Question 3
The Law does not say that a Jewess cannot marry a Christian, nor a Christian woman a Jew; nor does it state that Jews can only marry among themselves.
The only marriages expressly forbidden by the Law are those with the seven Canaanite nations, with Amon and Moab, and with the Egyptians. The prohibition is absolute with regard to the seven Canaanite nations. In the case of Amon and Moab, it is confined, in the view of many Talmudists, to the men of these two nations, but does not extend to the women, though one assumes that it would be necessary for the latter to have embraced the Jewish religion. As for the Egyptians, the prohibition is limited to the third generation. The prohibition applies only to idolatrous peoples. The Talmud formally declares that the modern nations are not to be considered as such, since, like ourselves, they worship the God of heaven and earth. Moreover, there have been, at different periods, marriages between Jews and Christians in France, Spain and Germany. These marriages are sometimes tolerated and sometimes forbidden by the
laws of the princes into whose domains the Jews had been received.
A number of these unions are to be found today in France, but we ought not to conceal the fact that the opinion of the Rabbis is against such marriages. According to their teaching, although the religion of Moses has not forbidden the Jews to marry those who are not of their religion, yet, since marriage, in the view of the Talmud, requires for its celebration certain religious ceremonies called Kiduschim [Qiddushin], together with the blessing used on such occasions, a marriage is religiously valid only to the extent that these ceremonies have been performed. They could not be performed in the case of two persons who would not equally recognize these ceremonies as sacred; and in this case the married couple could separate without a religious divorce. They would be regarded as married civilly but not religiously.
Such is the opinion of the Rabbis who are members of the Assembly. In general, they would be no more inclined to bless the marriage of a Christian woman with a Jew, or of a Jewess with a Christian, than Catholic priests would agree to bless unions of this kind. However, the Rabbis acknowledge that the Jew who marries a Christian woman, does not cease on that account to be a Jew in the eyes of his co-religionists, any more than he who marries a Jewess civilly and not religiously.
Reply of the Assembly to Question 6
Men who have adopted a country, who have resided there for many generations; who, even under the rule of certain laws which curtailed their civil rights, were so attached to it that they preferred the misfortune of not enjoying all the advantages of other citizens to that of leaving it, cannot but be regarded in France as Frenchmen; and the obligation of defending it is, in their eyes, a duty at once honorable and precious.
Jeremiah, chap. XXIX, strongly advises the Jews to regard Babylon as their country, even though they were to remain there only for seventy years. He exhorts them to till the fields, to build houses, to sow and to plant. His advice was followed to such an extent that Ezra, chap. II, says that when Cyrus allowed them to return to Jerusalem to build the second Temple, only forty-two thousand three hundred and sixty of them left Babylon, that this number was composed only of the poorer people, and that the rich remained in Babylon.
Love of one's country is, among the Jews, a sentiment so natural, so lively, and so much in harmony with their religious belief, that a French Jew in England regards himself as a stranger, even in the company of fellow Jews, and the same is true of English Jews in France.
This sentiment reaches such a pitch that French Jews could be seen during the last war fighting against Jews of other countries with which France was at war. Many of them are covered with honorable wounds, and others have won on the field of honor resounding testimonies to their bravery.
