Napoleon Bonaparte was ahead of the times. He held what were unusually liberal ideas about Jews. He emancipated French Jews by refusing to restrict them to ghettos, expanding their rights to property, religion, and professional pursuits. Napoleon hoped his policies would attract Jews to his country who were fleeing discrimination elsewhere. Reaction was mixed within France and abroad.
Still, he stood by his beliefs, saying, “I will never accept any proposals that will obligate the Jewish people to leave France, because to me the Jews are the same as any other citizen in our country. It takes weakness to chase them out of the country, but it takes strength to assimilate them.”
Others disagreed. The Russian Orthodox Church, for example, was convinced that Napoleon’s pro-Jewish ideas were of the devil. You may expect people at the fringes to believe that, but coming from such an established institution seems out of place.
