Jewish Intercession in Revolutionary Times: France, Poland, and Russia in Comparison, 1788-1817

This paper contends that mandated and self-declared spokespeople of Jewish communities declared a range of responses to the collapse of the ancien régime. It proposes a typology of Jewish reactions reflected in these intercessory efforts (shtadlanut), ranging from a conservative-defensive to integrationist strategies. The paper focuses on a comparison of the French revolutionary period and the Polish attempts to salvage the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth in the period of the Four Year Sejm (1788-1792). Frequently, Jewish intercession maintained certain traditional features in the period of accelerated and revolutionary political transformation: `Pour nous, il ne s`agit pas de gagner, il s`agit de ne pas perdre,` the leaders of the Bordeaux community famously stated in reaction to the developments in Paris. However, changes in political culture in the period also inspired Jews to demonstrate their (non-) allegiance to non-Jewish society through political practices and strategies which were highly innovative, including the intervention of Jews with the Parisian parliament dressed up in the uniform of the revolutionary militia, interventions of Heszel Jozefowicz, a rabbinical authority, in the Polish reform debate, or the Jews of Swarzedz in Greater Poland to greet Napoleon dressed up as Turkish cavalry in 1806. The paper concludes with a reflection on the impact of this transformative period on Russian-Jewish political strategies after the defeat of Napoleon.