14 Walter Jacob
None wrote about their part in these proceedings at the time. Some documentation has come from later sources with a few recent additions. They include material written years after the event.”
NAPOLEON’S QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
In order to set the stage properly, the first act of the Assembly of Notables was a preamble that declared that Jews did not constitute a nation and so turned their back on a corporate Jewish community, which had been one of the main concerns of Napoleon. We should note that civil rights were given to Jews as individuals not as a“nation” by the French National Assembly in 1791. The delegates then turned to the twelve questions posed to them and here is the response abstracted from Tama’s translation.
(1) Is it lawful for Jews to marry several woman?
ANSWER: Moses did not forbid it and it continues in the East, but in the West it has been prohibited by R. Gershon since the eleventh century.
(2) Is divorce permitted by the Jewish religion? Is divorce valid, even when not pronounced by courts of justice and by virtue of laws that contradict the French code?
ANSWER: Jewish law permits divorce, but as Jews have now become citizens, they are subject to the French code as Jewish law recognizes the supremacy of the law of the state. Furthermore as a Jewish divorce is only valid when no obstacle exists, the obstacle of the civil decree must be removed before it is a valid Jewish divorce. The same is true for Jewish marriages.