Ancien Regime Jurisprudence Shaped by a Primordial Jewish-Christian Polemic

Abstract

In the eighteenth century, Jewish-Christian polemics fueled a legal dualism among French officials, Jewish communities, and Christian Hebraists. Out of this friction emerged the Recueil des Loix, Coutumes, et Usages Observes par les Juifs de Metz, which illuminated Jewish laws for French judges unschooled in Hebrew and the regional Judeo-Allemande dialect. Metz officials’ request for the Recueil cheered Jewish leaders who hoped to enhance Christian interest in the community’s internal life, even as skeptical Metz Jews likely suspected intensified surveillance of their transactions both among themselves and with Christians. Still, in interpreting Jewish law, ancien regime courts did not uniformly promote antisemitism. On the contrary, as seen in the compilation of the Recueil, judges often explored Jewish law with genuine curiosity and sought to reconcile it with Christian ideals, even if some judges clung to a hope of converting Jews, for which purpose Jewish law needed to be understood.