The Status of Jews in France

In year 212 Jews entered France and settled in this country in accompany with Roman soldiers.
In 340 with the submission of the Roman Empire to Christianity, the Jewish state was in crisis and confusion. At the beginning of their settlement in the country they worked in agriculture, commerce and crafts, but soon waged to the entrustment of priests and the ruling class. On the other hand, sales of slaves by the tribe put them against the policies of the church that in 614, have banned them from slave trading.
In the reign of Charlemagne (768-814) and Louis I (814-840), the Jews as the main commercial and financial elements involved in export and import, were supported by the emperor by paying 10% of their profits to the treasury of the kingdom. They owned some of the land to agriculture, particularly viticulture and in this way, they dominated the wine trade.
In the eleventh century, northern France turned to Jewish community center more than elsewhere and at the same time because they were forbidden from many jobs, they turned to usury, so that Louis IX (1226-1270) fought with them and exempted people from paying a third of their debts to Jews and the field was narrowed to the Jewish usurers. In 1306 Philip IV, collected them in favor of the Treasury of the government.
However, since after the withdrawal of Jewish usurers, they were replaced by a number of native Christians and inflicted oppression on their people, the Jews were allowed to return. They were allowed to return after the payments in exchange for a loan at 43% interest receivable and its previous demands, which still had not been paid into the coffers of the king, provided that two-thirds of it be deposited to the royal treasury. Finally, Jews were allowed to regain their temple and cemetery and their confiscated books except Talmud. But this situation did not last long and the height of the insurgency in 1317, once again, Jews were expelled from France, but in 1359 they were once again allowed to return until the reign of Charles VI who in 1394 drove them out of France and until the end of the sixteenth century, the country remained empty of Jews.
In 1320 a group of Christians, under the name of "shepherds" in the determination of the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, started moving and in passing through France, gathered members of the battalion and mob and decided to kill the Jews who refuse to accept baptism.
In Toulouse, five hundred Jews fled to a tower for their fear, and angry and unbridled crowd surrounded them and asked them to accept baptism or prepare themselves for death. Attempts by the governor of the city was in vain. Refugees who saw resistance was impossible, ordered the most powerful among them to kill them by his own hands. Thus, all the groups, except one, were killed, and that one person although he was willing to accept baptism, were sliced by the attackers. In the same way, all Jews who living in 120 small village in southern France and northern Spain were massacred.
From the late sixteenth century, groups of Jews whose number was not more than several thousands, settled in two states of "Bordeaux" and "Bayonne" and by means of huge investment by commercial ships, started the trade with other countries. In 1785 the Academy of "Metz" organized a competition. A committee to amend the Jews of Alsace was set up among its members were a number of Jewish leaders who lived in the southern France.
At the time of the French Revolution, the population of Jews did not exceed forty thousand, out of which about 20 to 25 thousand were stationed only in Alsace. When the inflammation of the revolution quenched, the question of was Jews raised and there was a question whether the Jews of France, are a nation within a nation.
On the other hand, anti-Semitists, pointing out that Jews are a selfish, alien and bastard tribe, maneuvered on the notion of "Jewish threat" and stressed the necessity to ward it off.
What made the risk of Jews in the years following the French Revolution more serious was that about four hundred thousand French farmers with loans based on interest from Jewish usurers, the number to three to four thousand persons, had seized confiscated lands of escapee feudal, but were unable to repay their principal money and its high interest. This led to the hatred towards Jews in the years 1802-1805 and exposed them to public anger.
It was here that Napoleon face himself with "Jewish problem". He cancelled repayment of the loans and in 1806, established an assembly made up of a hundred of Jewish trustees who were followers of territory of the French government, and provided them with twelve questions to respond to them and give a clear picture of the position of the Jews in the most important social, economic and religious issues in the country.
The questions were as follows:
1. Do French Jews consider themselves citizens of this country?
2. Are Jews prepared to defend France in the face of difficulties?
3. On the subject of marriage, is there a contradiction between French civil law and Jewish law?
4. Is a Jew allowed to marry a Christian?
Answers given, were all positive or with chicanery. The Assembly decreed that Jews should know the land in which he is borne as his homeland and defend it consider its people as their brethren.
The Council also stressed that the law and Jewish law has no conflict with French civil law. Jewish law banned polygamy and no divorce is correct based on the law of this religion until after the civil divorce; in the same way no marriage is legal, unless it is already made under civil law.
From the nineteenth century Jews' conditions gradually improved to the extent that in 1834 the first Jews found his way to the French parliament and Adolf Krimia became minister and Barry Meyer and Rothschild’s families augmented the capital and some Jews became the highest military authorities.