of a civil divorce created such a bond, a get was not valid until a civil divorce had been given.>! Civil marriage and civil divorce were added to the Jewish requirements in the Western lands. Various rabbinic authorities added their voice to this decision.”
Dina demalkhuta dina was also cited in connection with military service(Napolean’s question 6). The questions and answers to 7,8, and 9 dealt with the authority of the rabbinate, and clearly signalled that the Jewish corporate entity had vanished. Dina demalkhuta dina had been used to reconcile Jewish law and the demands of the state; it had now been used to incorporate the state’s legal system into Jewish law? and to allow it to dominate Jewish law.
The decisions of the Assembly were to be carried out through a Sanhedrin established by Napoleon ; it began to meet on 4 February, 1807. The group worded its decisions with care, so that they would avoid violations of Jewish law whenever possible; however, the very fact that this body and its predecessor was called into being through Napoleon indicated clearly where power lay. Judaism was now a religious confession rather than a corporate identity. After Napoleon 's defeat, the discussions diminished everywhere except in Germany where the new nationalism came into conflict with traditional corporate Judaism .
The Reform Movement
The new Jewish scholarship, which included many reformers, sought a historic understanding of every facet of Judaism , including dina demalkhuta dina. Abraham Geiger (1810-1874), Zacharias Frankel (1801-1875), Samuel Holdheim (1806-1860) and others participated in this effort. Geiger and Frankel understood it to be used principally with criminal and civil law, and not family and ritual law. Holdheim went a step further and suggested that the ketubah was primarily an economic document, s0 it applied there too.* This became controversial and most rabbis rejected his view. Another area of potential conflict was military service. Jews wished to participate in the defense of the lands in which they lived; many were very patriotic. Not as clear were the obligations in an offensive war or peace time military service but Tiktin, Rabbi of Breslau , and Weil of Berlin, among others, insisted that those obligations stood also.” These scholarly
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