meetings of Jewish leaders through the ages that had led to takkanot or tax agreements. The assembly of a Sanhedrin was astonishing.
What led to this strange phenomenon? The Orthodox rabbis who constituted a part of thc Great Assembly and Sanhedrin along with their colleagues throughout western Europe understood the longing for civil rights. They supported this effort. The rabbinic participation in the deliberations of the Great Assembly is understandable as it presented an opportunity to provide responses that were halakhically valid. When this proved to be impossible, they could have quietly withdrawn or publicly resigned. Napoleon might have ignored such a move and permitted the effort to continue or he could have dissolved the Assembly and acted by decree as with the major religious groups.
These paths were open, but not taken and presumably not discussed. Significantly no rabbi resigned from the Assembly. Nor were these Orthodox rabbinic authorities denounced by the rest of the Orthodox establishment. Upon Rabbi Sintzheim’s death, he was eulogized by Hatam Sofer , the leading Orthodox authority.'**
Throughout the nineteenth century some Orthodox and Reform rabbis saw the Sanhedrin as the proper model for creating unified answers to contemporary problems.'” The Sanhedrin was roundly celebrated universally on its hundredth anniversary and to a lesser extent
As the historians Jost, Graetz'?’ along with contemporary sources make clear, the decisions reached by the Sanhedrin were received with joy by the general Jewish population which began to move into a.wider range of occupations and out of the ghettoes wherever Napoleon ’s armies made it possible. As the disabilities imposed by the“Infamous Decree” were slowly withdrawn, they were overlooked. Napoleon ’s