What if Jerusalem had assented to the 1538 Sanhedrin.
- Thread starter jacob ningen
- Start date
Mine too.
Nor will it be the only such story; only a few of the prisoners will marry Jews, but there are Maronite families with unmarried daughters too, and other soldiers will simply find that the Galilee has become home. When peace in the Levant is finally concluded, about ten percent of the soldiers will refuse repatriation.This will have two consequences. In 1802, there will be at least one bakery in Tzfat that makes excellent baguettes, which will lead to future developments in Galilean cuisine that have the same inspiration as po'boys or banh mi. And, possibly more important in the short run, that offer of high pay to drill the city militia will still stand.
There were similar attempts IOTL - at a couple of points, the Jewish community (or members of it) offered to buy out the entire Mughrabi quarter, which is much more radical than the deal being made here. But you're right - there are any number of ways that sales like this can backfire, especially where the holy sites in question are more contested than the Wall. Rabbi Molcho thinks that the chance for the Sanhedrin to become a waqf for the Jewish holy places is worth it, and these purchases will gain the Yerushalmi rabbis a prestige that they've sorely missed, but there will be conflicts down the line.
There will be benefits too, though - the Mughrabi community of Jerusalem was quite poor, and they'll be able to do a lot with the money. Especially since there's currently no sanjak-bey demanding his share, and by the time the Porte returns in whatever guise it may return, they'll have had time to hide the profits.
This is the 18th century, there's always trouble in Damascus. More specifically, the Sultan's ministers aren't happy with the way the wali hung back from the war - they aren't stupid and they know the Banu Zaydan and Nabulsi were fighting mostly for themselves, but they still prefer that to not opposing the invasion at all. And the wali's enemies within the Damascene political factions - of whom the Farhis are far from the only one - see a chance to strike.
I may have done Haim Farhi a disservice, BTW, in portraying him as so scheming - that wasn't generally how he acted as vizier of Acre IOTL. But he isn't a vizier ITTL (not yet, and maybe never) and still needs to climb to the top, and 18th-century Damascene politics were cutthroat - it's hard to imagine the Farhi family rising to the position they did without knowing how to scheme. And after Farhi was assassinated IOTL, his brothers' attempt to avenge his death certainly showed that they could play the game of Ottoman politics in suitably Machiavellian fashion, and in the above scene, one of those brothers is in the room.
They're loyal to their own city and their own ruler - they're acting at the behest of the emir, and it's not as if they're opening the gates of a French town. Napoleon is enough of an 18th-century man that he'd probably see that as to their credit, although he won't be happy with the part that the diplomats played.
You're right, though, that the Levant campaign ITTL will give Napoleon a sense of Jews as political actors that he didn't have IOTL (based on his OTL writings on the subject, he saw Jews more in economic terms than anything else), and he will see them as both a potential asset and a potential danger. Consider that he's seen the Yerushalmi Jews not only acquiesce in his rule but become enthusiastic supporters after he got the religious authorities on his side, and he's also seen the Galilee Jews - despite being under the nominal jurisdiction of the same religious body - remain loyal to the Zaydani emir and fight under his banner. That's definitely going to get him thinking about the interplay between Jewish religious and national loyalties and whether it's possible to increase their patriotism by religious means. He's going to have all the same reasons to call a European Sanhedrin as IOTL, and several more.
Anyway, the next update will cover 1801 and tie up the aftermath of the Egypt-Levant campaign. After that, the story will jump to Europe in 1804, and there will be a series of stories set in 1804-07 in which we'll see firsthand how European Jews have been reacting to the developments in the Galilee and which will culminate in the drama of dueling Sanhedrins. Then the final stories of this arc will take place in 1810-15 in both Europe and the Holy Land, and will tie the threads together.
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Love Sam Aronow.
For more in depth stuff, I'd highly recommend professor Henry Abramson's vast lectures and shorter stuff.
Thanks for your appreciation! Any particular favorite things, anything that isn't working, anything you'd like to see? No guarantees as to the last, but I always listen.
I've heard good things about Aronow. I'm not usually a podcast or Youtube person - I prefer things I can read - but is he worth the time?
Yes. His videos on the Hasmoneans really constituted the base of my knowledge for it. His videos are good and how I learned of the Bund and the Menshevik Bolshevik vote. I mean he's good as a first resource like a youtube version of Telushkin. He's basically Jewish Literay: the Youtube Channel. Whats your opinion on Telushkin?
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I think the characterization has been very compelling and my favourite part of it, all the people feel so real and believable. No criticisms to make so far, I'm just glad to be taken on this journey.
MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE 1800-1801
MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE
1800-1801
1800-1801
Tiberias, August 1800:
Jaime Abulafia was not a rabbi. In most families, that would be nothing to remark upon, but for an Abulafia – and an Abulafia in Tiberias, at that – it certainly was. Abulafias had been rabbis in Spain before the expulsion, they had been among the first to settle in Tzfat after that dark day, and in Joseph Nasi’s time, an Abulafia had opened the first synagogue in Tiberias in hundreds of years. And since then, as the Jews of Tiberias resumed their centuries of quiet scholarship, the Abulafias had been at its center.
Jaime was pious and loved the Name, and from childhood, his father was sure that he would be a great scholar of the Law and a leading light of the Sanhedrin. But his piety ran in a different direction. His fascination was not with the arcana of the Law or the mysteries of Adam Kadmon, but with the natural world that the Name had created, and he grew up with an insatiable desire to see more of it. So at the age of sixteen, he’d left rabbinical study behind. He’d gone out with the fishing fleets for a year, soldiered for two, sailed on a Dutch merchantman for three – that was when he’d become known as Jaime, not Chaim – and clerked at a Livornese counting-house for three more. And when he came home at last, he’d opened a taverna by the waterside and talked to his customers about everything.
The taverna’s fame was twofold. It served citron brandy, which Jaime had learned to make during his years in Livorno. And every winter, Jaime took a boat across the Sea of Galilee, rented a donkey-cart, made the three-day journey to the slopes of Mount Hermon, and came back with ice. He kept it in a cellar, and in the summer, when Tiberias burned hotter than the fires of Gehinnom, he cut a bit of it at a time and served chilled wine.
Today was one of those days, when the air over the sea rippled and even the lizards sought shelter. Everyone who had the money and the leisure had decamped to the mountains, and it seemed like everyone else was in Jaime’s taverna – shopkeepers, fishermen, laborers, craftsmen, students, clerks. All of them had cups of iced wine, and all of them were talking about the same thing.
“She has to marry, of course,” said Yossi the silversmith.
“She doesn’t have to do anything,” answered David, a notary sitting at the next table. “She’ll marry, no doubt, in her own time. But what’s the hurry?”
Yossi said something in response, but it was lost among many others. Everyone, it seemed, had an opinion on Dalia Zemach’s marriage. It had been five months since she’d become the heir to the Zemach family after having lost one brother in battle and the other to the fever, and four since she’d made it clear that she intended to claim all her legacy. Some of it had fallen into place easily – the emir had been quick to confirm her civil title as Begum, and the council of seven had followed the lead of the militia in accepting her as regent – but it remained for the Sanhedrin to rule on her right of inheritance. And that, in the rabbis’ usual deliberative fashion, had taken until today.
The outcome had never really been in doubt; there was no need to invoke Deborah or Salome Alexandra when Reina Nasi had ruled from her husband’s palazzo just two hundred years ago. The people had begun calling Dalia the nagidah long before the rabbis ratified it, and the word came to their lips now as easily as nagid had done under her father and brothers. But precedents must be examined and conditions set, and one of the concerns that anyone would have about a nineteen-year-old ruler was that she would marry.
“She should marry Abd al-Rahman!” called Ephraim; he was a habitue of what Jaime called the scholars’ table, a novelist who published his stories in Acre where the Sanhedrin couldn’t ban them. “Christian women have married sultans and shahs, haven’t they, and kept their own religion?”
The strong-willed nagidah and the dashing emir – that would be one for the romantics, certainly, and it made a certain political sense. “Faisal Tuqan,” someone else said – that would be the same. But…
“The ulama would never allow it, not when the children would be Jewish by birth,” David answered. “And the Sanhedrin surely wouldn’t allow it.”
Heads nodded around the taverna. The Sanhedrin couldn’t prevent such a marriage, but they could rule it a forbidden union, and then the children would be mamzerim, forbidden to the tenth generation from marrying back into the Yishuv.
“What a story it would make,” said Ephraim, but even he realized it was not to be.
“Farhi?” asked Nissim, who’d come home from the militia, and where the mention of the emir had been wistful, that of Farhi provoked laughter. Everyone knew the part the Farhis had played in bringing down the wali of Damascus, and everyone also knew how little it had profited them; not all the wali’s enemies had been their friends, and rather than becoming vizier as he’d dreamed, Haim Farhi had fled to the Tuqans a step ahead of the headsman. No doubt he would welcome an opportunity to marry into the Zemach family, climber that he was, but whoever became his wife would earn the new wali’s enmity.
More names were thrown out after Farhi’s, each more fanciful than the previous; by now the chilled wine had been flowing for some time. “We’ll know soon enough,” said Motti after a while – he was a clerk in the office of the mutassalim and liked to think he knew things. “She’s said she’ll choose when the war ends.”
“In ten years, then?” said Nissim. There was more laughter. Since Jaffa fell, the war had become a farce; the French, British and Ottoman armies had camped next to each other outside Cairo for months while Reynier negotiated for an honorable exit, and neither the Zaydani nor the Nabulsi armies had attacked Jerusalem until they worked out between themselves and the Porte what was in it for them. It didn’t seem as if either of these issues would be resolved anytime soon; the war wasn’t being fought beyond skirmishes, but it wasn’t close to an end either.
She could marry me, thought Jaime. It wasn’t the first time he’d had the thought. The nagidah was reputed to have an interest in the natural world, as he did; she was already known as a painter; she was a poet and scholar as Zahir al-Umar’s wife had been, and the Tzfatis said she was a beauty. And it would almost be a dynastic marriage – what could be more so, in the Galilee, than a union between two aristocratic Sephardi families…
Which is why it would be a terrible idea, even if she knew I existed. Which she doesn’t, and won’t.
Still, it was a pleasant thing to think about in the summer with iced wine.
_______
Jerusalem, November 1800:
Abdullah, the mukhtar of the Mughrabi Quarter, stood at the Bab al-Khalil and watched the Frenchmen leave. Murat’s cavalry rode out first, followed by Lannes and his three thousand infantry – needed in Upper Egypt, people said, lest a Mamluk uprising overrun Cairo while the French were still seeking terms to evacuate. With them gone, the only French troops left in the Palatinate of Jerusalem were Bon’s division and what was left of Kléber’s – twenty-two hundred men in Jerusalem itself, six hundred in Bethlehem, and a few hundred more in Gaza.
Half a mile to the north, the army of Faisal Tuqan fired a flare in salute, and a moment later, ibn Marwan’s Zaydani army did the same. Murat raised his saber to the foe and rode on. Neither army made a move to stop him.
Neither army made a move to storm the city either, although the French garrison was small enough now that they might well have succeeded. They weren’t even besieging the city in the ordinary sense of the word; food went in, travelers came and went, and the commanders had even invited the city’s merchants to set up a market halfway between the wall and their camps. True to what was already being called the War of Patience, they were waiting – for orders from their rulers, for the diplomats to finish their work, for something to happen.
Abdullah hoped that the city could give them a good fight if they did choose to attack. Few people in Jerusalem wanted the Porte back; the beys who’d ruled the city before Napoleon came had been especially harsh to the Christians and Jews, but they’d slighted the leading Muslim families too, and now that those families had regained their place, they were ill disposed to relinquishing it. In the past year, since it had become clear that the second Frankish conquest of Jerusalem would be no more permanent than the first, a city militia had coalesced; the Jerusalemites weren’t martial people, but they had joined up in hundreds and allowed the hard-bitten French sergeants to drill them. Abdullah, as mukhtar, commanded fifty men and had stood watch on the walls. Even the Jews had furnished a double company of musketeers – maybe that was common in mountainous lands where Jews were used to bearing arms like the Druze and Maronites, but it still seemed unnatural to Abdullah, friendly as he’d been with Jews all his life.
Militia or no, though, a siege of Jerusalem would have only one conclusion. Abdullah, like the other notables of the city, had visited the Zaydani and Nabulsi camps and got a good look at the soldiers. They were not so well-drilled as the French, but they were the victors of two hard battles, and by all appearances, they were disciplined and tough. Abdullah knew he was seeing what the armies’ commanders wanted him to see, but that was still enough. And by now, nearly everyone had drawn the same conclusion, so their visits had become a form of diplomacy in their own right – a place where they could plead their cases and seek terms. Even Molcho, the city’s chief rabbi, had been to see the chorbaji of ibn Marwan’s Jewish soldiers, bearing messages for the Sanhedrin’s officers in Safad.
And there were other messages, such as the one Abdullah was carrying now.
He watched the departing French troops until the dust of the infantrymen receded in the distance, and then made his way across the open land to the market. By now, it wasn’t just the city people who had stalls; some of the more enterprising soldiers, most of them from craft or market families at home, had set up their own. A Nabulsi cavalryman was selling olive-oil soap; Abdullah bought some for his wife, and after some deliberation, paid two piasters for a floral silk hijab that a Jewish gunner from a Peki’in weaving family had put on offer.
But goods and sellers were only a distraction from the person he’d come to see, and he found that person sitting on a stool at the market’s edge listening to a merchant and his customer argue. The muhtasib, the market-judge – a white-bearded man of seventy in a dark blue caftan and turban, whose Arabic carried echoes of the same homeland as Abdullah’s.
It took only a moment for the muhtasib to deliver his judgment, and from the look of it, merchant and patron walked away equally unsatisfied. He turned his gaze to Abdullah, invited him to give his complaint, and stopped short, recognizing another Marrakesh man.
“Sit,” he said, and poured bitter coffee from a pot. “You are Abdullah the weaver?”
“I am. But I’m here as Abdullah the mukhtar.”
“Was someone from your quarter cheated here, as buyer or as seller?”
“Neither. But my quarter will soon need someone who won’t cheat them – someone who will speak for them.”
The muhtasib was silent for a moment and then realized what Abdullah must be saying. “And that someone should be me?”
“If not you, Avram ustaz, then who? There are few Mughrabis in Jerusalem, and when the great men decide, our quarter is often forgotten. But in your land, there are thousands of us, and a man like you can be made quartermaster of the army or judge of the markets. We need someone to appeal to if we’re forgotten again, and if you spoke for us, you would be heard even in Jerusalem.”
Avram was silent again, and Abdullah knew what he must be thinking: that in Marrakesh, no Muslim would have said “us” as if they were both part of the same nation. But in a distant land like this one, a shared homeland might count as much or more than a shared faith. And an elder merchant, such as the muhtasib was, would know the value of patronage and of having clients in a newly opened city.
“We are judges together,” he said, “and for what it may be worth, my word is yours.” He picked up Abdullah’s coffee cup, which had become empty, and poured again.
_______
Cairo, March 1801:
There were grand rooms in the Bayt al-Razzaz where generals and diplomats met in solemn session and where the destiny of Egypt and the Levant was debated. There were smaller rooms on back streets where the side deals were made. And if one were General Reynier and wanted to finish extricating one’s troops from Egypt before the last trump blew, it was wise to frequent both, especially when the person who’d asked for a back-room meeting was named Haim Farhi.
Farhi was already seated when Reynier entered, with something sweet-smelling on the table. After a moment, Reynier realized what it was – Farhi had found someone in Cairo who could make knaafeh. It was always thus: Farhi always met him in a different place, and always brought a gift from Nablus. And why not? He was Yusuf Tuqan’s man.
In the months Reynier had known Farhi, he’d learned something of the story – Farhi had risen to grace in Nablus almost as fast as he’d fallen from it in Damascus. He’d saved the life of the zaim’s son, after all, and enabled him to return with honor as amir al-hajj, and for that, the zaim was genuinely grateful. And while his loyalty might be as mutable as Talleyrand’s, he was very nearly as useful. So…
“The terms are final?” Farhi asked, pushing the plate across the table as Reynier sat. “Jerusalem will return to the Porte?”
“Yes.” The French negotiators had tried to put off that resolution as long as they could – in fact, Jerusalem was a good part of the reason why the denouement to the war had lasted so long. The conquest of Jerusalem was a proud moment for Napoleon in what had otherwise been a disappointing campaign, and he’d come to view himself as its protector; even after his return to France, he’d sent back an endless stream of proposals. But Britain and the Porte had been adamant, and the French had little room to bargain now that Murat’s expedition to put down the rebellious Mamluk emirs in Upper Egypt had turned into a fighting retreat down the Nile. That would be a problem for the Porte in due time, but for now it was a problem for France.
“Surrender to the Porte? With no more particulars than that?”
“A date. But yes, other than that, no more particulars.”
“Then there is nothing,” said Farhi slowly, “to prevent you from surrendering the Palatinate to the Nabulsi army on the Porte’s behalf?”
“No,” Reynier answered with equal deliberation. “I would say there is not.”
“Very good. The terms will be as agreed. The zaim will not interfere with French trade or French visitors, and the legal arrangements that have been made during the interregnum will not be disturbed.”
There it was. Farhi had not, Reynier noted, said that the government of the city would be undisturbed. No doubt the Tuqans would install a new city governor – the valorous Faisal, most likely – and a new divan, but the laws and contracts that had been made during French rule would remain. This was the resolution the two men had been working toward for months, and the Porte’s very insistence that the surrender be without terms had made it possible. After all, if the peace treaty’s only command was to surrender the Palatinate of Jerusalem to the Porte, then surrendering it to the nearest army that professed loyalty to the Sultan was within its letter, was it not?
“And the Banu Zaydan?” Reynier knew of the negotiations that had been in progress between the Tuqans and the Zaydani for months – that was half the reason their armies were camped within shouting distance of each other – but he still had to ask. “They have agreed to this? There will be no fighting?”
“They have agreed. The zaim has agreed that they will have a free hand in the north of the sanjak, and the coastal plain to a point halfway between Majdal and Gaza. The emir is planning to rebuild the port at Minat al-Qal’a – the one near Isdud.”
Reynier nodded. Were he Abd al-Rahman, he too would have accepted that trade – the coast would always be richer than the hills, and even with the Nabulsi in control of Gaza, most of Jerusalem’s trade would still go through Zaydani ports …
“And Abd al-Rahman will marry the zaim’s daughter, and the emir’s sister will marry Faisal.”
“Very neatly arranged,” Reynier said. The Porte wouldn’t agree, but they’d be ten years bringing Egypt back under control before they could get around to Jerusalem, and they had to guard the border with Russia as well… and in the meantime, both the zaim and the emir would no doubt be showering the Sultan’s ministers with gold.
It might not work in the long run, but that wasn’t Reynier’s problem, was it? He had preserved Napoleon’s honor, and maybe Jerusalem’s with it, and for now, that would be enough.
_______
Tzfat, May 1801:
In Tiberias, thought Jaime, it would already be getting hot. But where Tiberas was six hundred feet below the sea, Tzfat was nearly three thousand feet above it, and the weather there was what one dreamed of when one dreamed of spring.
It was the ninth of Sivan, and it was a good day for a wedding.
Dalia Zemach would marry today. Jaime, and his friend Nissim from the scholars’ table, had joined the throng of citizens climbing to Joseph Nasi’s old palazzo, where the ceremony would be held. That was the only place large enough to hold the entire city, and the entire city would indeed be there, if only from curiosity. When news came of the war’s ending, the nagidah had announced that she would marry as she’d said she would – but she hadn’t said who.
“She always was a defiant one,” said Nissim, but Jaime wasn’t sure. She was a willful one, yes, and she would want to make clear that the choice had been her own and that it hadn’t been made at the tutelage of the Sanhedrin or the merkaz ha-shevah. She was twenty, she was a woman, and if the powers that be thought someone else had made the decision for her, they would go to that someone and not to her. But defiant wasn’t the right word. She had been nagidah for more than a year now, and she had been firm in her dealings with the notables of the country, but had never dismissed or defied them.
“We’ll find out,” he temporized. The archway into the ruined palazzo was in front of them now, and a gift table just behind it; he laid a bottle of his citron brandy among the offerings made by the other guests.
“We will, at that,” Nissim answered. “And maybe after, she’ll bless my journey.” He’d come up from Tiberias with Jaime but wouldn’t be returning; instead, he would go to Minat al-Qal’a with the company of Muhammad Odeh. Militiamen would be needed there, and so would stonemasons – Nissim’s other trade. In all, five hundred of the Yishuv would take part in the work of rebuilding the port.
“Maybe. Right now, our journey has been made.” They were among the ruins now, and it did seem that the whole city was there and others beside: the emir and his retinue, delegations from Nablus and Damascus, the notables of the countryside, a party of Druze pilgrims on their way home from the maqam of Nabi Shu’aib. Everyone in their finery, wine flowing freely, the excitement of peace and of springtime – it was a good day for a wedding.
And across the courtyard, the nagidah entered.
She was dressed as a Yemenite bride in a colorful gown, layers of necklaces, and a tall, beaded headdress of white and red. And Jaime recognized the man next to her. Netanel bin Saleh. A scholar at the Or Tamid, the Sanhedrin’s religious academy; a follower of the religious movement that was becoming known as Dor Daim – and a grandson of the Maharitz.
A dynastic marriage after all, thought Jaime. The heir to the Galilee and the heir of an eminent rabbinic family. The old Yishuv was marrying the new; the civil authority was marrying the Sanhedrin; the traditional was marrying the modern.
It wasn’t the kind of royal marriage that stories were written about, but somehow, Jaime was certain that the Galilee will be the stronger for it. “Come, my beloved,” he called – to Nissim, to the bridegroom, to all the people – “and greet the bride!”
The ceremony was about to begin.
The Sultan might have a difference of opinion when he finds out. But the emirs are counting on the Porte either being unable to retain control of Egypt or else having its hands full there for the foreseeable future. They're also planning to profess their loyalty loudly, spread bribes liberally among the Sultan's ministers, and pay enough tribute to make war the more expensive option - in other words, to do what's worked for them in the past, except when it hasn't.
In the meantime, there's work for the Yishuv (and for others) in the new Zaydani territories, alliances are being made across borders and faiths, and the Sanhedrin is starting to heal the breach between Tzfat and Jerusalem. When the 1799-1815 arc returns to the Levant at the end, we'll see how some of these things shook out, but the next few stories will be set among the Jews of Europe.
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Does the greater integration of the Yishuv butterfly the lubavitcher treason imprisonment?
That had more to do with rivalries among the Litvaks than with the Yishuv itself - the mitnagdim in Vilna would still oppose Rav Shneur Zalman and would still want to bring him down, and if they can't use the Yishuv as a pretext, they'll find something else. The greater integration of the Yishuv might actually make things worse - if there's a large self-governing Jewish population in the Galilee, the Tsar's police (who wouldn't be up on the nuances of the Zaydani-Porte relationship) might be even more willing to view the Jews as willing servants of the Turk. Maybe Shneur Zalman would be imprisoned for longer or even exiled from Russia ITTL rather than being released and allowed to return to Lithuania after a couple of months. OTOH, once Napoleon invades Palestine and the Yishuv and Russia find themselves on the same side of the Second Coalition, his fortunes might change very much for the better.
Shneur Zalman as an exile would be potentially interesting - the most likely place for him to go would be Tzfat (where, ITTL, Hasidim have been trickling in the whole time). He'd be an outlier in the Sanhedrin - the Yerushalmi rabbis were mitnagdim to the core, most of the Galilee rabbis would be too modern for his taste (although he would approve of their opposition to Napoleon), and he wouldn't care for the ways that some of the Hasidic precursors, like Judah the Pious's followers, adapted in Acre and the Wadi Ara. He might start his own village and lead the Hasidim in general to smaller villages where they could practice their own way.
Let me think about this. Right now I'm more inclined to have him stay in Lithuania - the duel between the Sanhedrin of the Holy Land and the Sanhedrin of Napoleon will be particularly relevant there - but we'll soon see.
especially as he was very pro tzar. I was wondering how it would affect him due to that charge. And yes it was an excuse. It might also make Volozhin less opposed to the Yishuv since they arent competing for funding.
He was pro-Tsar even after being arrested twice IOTL, because he hated Napoleon's modernism more. ITTL, it's likely that Napoleon's push for an assimilationist "national" Judaism will be even more forceful, so you do the math. The battle over Napoleon's Sanhedrin will have two theaters ITTL - the cleavages in eastern and western Europe will be similar, but the fracture lines and the bedfellows on each side will be very different - and if Shneur Zalman is still in the Russian Empire at that point, his role is probably overdetermined.
Probably, yeah - less need for diaspora donations in the Yishuv means more to go around for yeshivot in the Pale. OTOH, the Pale is going to have its own difficulties after Napoleon, as it did IOTL. The period 1815-1830 wasn't a happy one for Jews in much of Europe, and the events of the Napoleonic wars ITTL might mitigate that in some places but might also make conditions worse in others. (OTTH, more possibilities could open up after the post-Napoleonic reaction ends, and I have a couple of successor states, which may or may not have existed IOTL, in mind.)
Teaser for the next phase:
This (in French) is the text of a letter from Napoleon to his interior minister written in November 1806, after the meetings of the Assembly of Notables but before the convocation of his Grand Sanhedrin. It lays out his thinking about the Jews and about what he hoped to get out of the Sanhedrin, which are also the things I'm thinking about now that we've reached the point where he's about to do this thing.
What comes out in the letter is that Napoleon didn't like Jews (this is evident in other writings of his as well) but that he considered them useful, and that he was willing to concede them civic equality and a degree of communal autonomy in exchange for assimilating to French society and abandoning the practices to which he objected. (And when Jews did assimilate, he didn't stand in the way of their advancement, especially those who served in the military - he promoted the first Jewish general in the French army, who will have a part in this story before all is said and done).
ITTL, Napoleon still dislikes Jews as such, which seems to have been a visceral and deep-seated feeling of his, but after his experience in the Syrian campaign, he'll think of them somewhat differently and won't have quite the same sense of priorities. He'll still be concerned with usury - it was something citizens complained about, and he seems to have genuinely hated moneylenders of all religions - but with Kléber having had his ass handed to him by an army that was a quarter to a third Jewish, he also has more of a sense of Jews as political and even military actors. And he also knows that a Sanhedrin can potentially decide issues of war and peace - after all, one just did.
I suspect that TTL's Napoleon is going to lean even harder into his belief that Jewish law should be different in Europe than in (what he views as) more backward and uncivilized parts of the world. That will have to be how he deals with the fact that a Sanhedrin already exists - he might, and probably will, invite the Sanhedrin in Palestine to send delegates to the French Sanhedrin's deliberations, but he'll be adamant that European Jews need a separate legal tribunal. He's also likely to ask a few more questions of the delegates than the twelve he proposed IOTL - for instance, "does any rabbinic body in a foreign country have authority over French Jews" - and to put military service higher on his list of priorities.
He may also call the Sanhedrin earlier than 1806/07. Jews are more on his radar ITTL, and a Sanhedrin held during the runup to the War of the Third Coalition would enable him to make a credible offer of emancipation [1] to the Jews of the German states as long as they did things his way (he implemented this IOTL after the war, but ITTL he'll have a sense that he has to offer more and sooner). So early 1805, probably, and then the intra-communal games begin.
[1] I'm defining "emancipation" here to mean removal of all disabilities that actually matter to the bottom 90-95 percent of Jews. For instance, the date often given for Jewish emancipation in the UK is 1858, but by that time, the only remaining disability was ineligibility to sit in Parliament. By the mid-1700s, Jews born in the UK were recognized as having jus soli citizenship and they could live anywhere, work in any occupation or business, own land, serve in the Royal Navy, build synagogues as they pleased, hold minor public offices, sit on juries, and demand equal treatment in the courts. If I describe any Jewish community ITTL as being emancipated, I'm talking about stuff like that.
This (in French) is the text of a letter from Napoleon to his interior minister written in November 1806, after the meetings of the Assembly of Notables but before the convocation of his Grand Sanhedrin. It lays out his thinking about the Jews and about what he hoped to get out of the Sanhedrin, which are also the things I'm thinking about now that we've reached the point where he's about to do this thing.
* Napoleon had a rudimentary conception of Jewish law as being divided into "religious" and "political" elements - by "political" he appears to have been referring to rabbinic jurisprudence - and believed that only a Sanhedrin could distinguish which elements were immutable and change the ones that were not. He was also aware that there had been no Sanhedrin since ancient times, which ITTL is obviously not true.
* He regarded many Jewish practices and customs as appropriate for ancient times when they were surrounded by heathens who hated them (his words), but backward and insular by the standards of 19th-century Europe, and one of the things he wanted the Sanhedrin to do was to "remove from the Mosaic legislation the laws which are atrocious and belong solely to the situation of the Jews in Palestine."
* He was really, really concerned with usury - among other things, he wrote that several departments of France were in danger of being taken over by the Jews due to debt. This was part of a general concern with Jews having "practices contrary to civilization" which had to be changed by changing the Jews.
* He proposed a number of state institutions (some of which he later created) to manage the Jewish population and integrate them into French society. He mentioned conscription as well, but only as an afterthought. The overall objective was to make French Jews into a purely religious group - Jewish in the synagogues but Frenchmen in public life (between the sheets/in the streets if you prefer).
What comes out in the letter is that Napoleon didn't like Jews (this is evident in other writings of his as well) but that he considered them useful, and that he was willing to concede them civic equality and a degree of communal autonomy in exchange for assimilating to French society and abandoning the practices to which he objected. (And when Jews did assimilate, he didn't stand in the way of their advancement, especially those who served in the military - he promoted the first Jewish general in the French army, who will have a part in this story before all is said and done).
ITTL, Napoleon still dislikes Jews as such, which seems to have been a visceral and deep-seated feeling of his, but after his experience in the Syrian campaign, he'll think of them somewhat differently and won't have quite the same sense of priorities. He'll still be concerned with usury - it was something citizens complained about, and he seems to have genuinely hated moneylenders of all religions - but with Kléber having had his ass handed to him by an army that was a quarter to a third Jewish, he also has more of a sense of Jews as political and even military actors. And he also knows that a Sanhedrin can potentially decide issues of war and peace - after all, one just did.
I suspect that TTL's Napoleon is going to lean even harder into his belief that Jewish law should be different in Europe than in (what he views as) more backward and uncivilized parts of the world. That will have to be how he deals with the fact that a Sanhedrin already exists - he might, and probably will, invite the Sanhedrin in Palestine to send delegates to the French Sanhedrin's deliberations, but he'll be adamant that European Jews need a separate legal tribunal. He's also likely to ask a few more questions of the delegates than the twelve he proposed IOTL - for instance, "does any rabbinic body in a foreign country have authority over French Jews" - and to put military service higher on his list of priorities.
He may also call the Sanhedrin earlier than 1806/07. Jews are more on his radar ITTL, and a Sanhedrin held during the runup to the War of the Third Coalition would enable him to make a credible offer of emancipation [1] to the Jews of the German states as long as they did things his way (he implemented this IOTL after the war, but ITTL he'll have a sense that he has to offer more and sooner). So early 1805, probably, and then the intra-communal games begin.
[1] I'm defining "emancipation" here to mean removal of all disabilities that actually matter to the bottom 90-95 percent of Jews. For instance, the date often given for Jewish emancipation in the UK is 1858, but by that time, the only remaining disability was ineligibility to sit in Parliament. By the mid-1700s, Jews born in the UK were recognized as having jus soli citizenship and they could live anywhere, work in any occupation or business, own land, serve in the Royal Navy, build synagogues as they pleased, hold minor public offices, sit on juries, and demand equal treatment in the courts. If I describe any Jewish community ITTL as being emancipated, I'm talking about stuff like that.
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and thus we come finally to the question that inspired the question that started this thread. Also, with a fully functioning Palestinian Sanhedrin a) existing and b) meing a major point of Napoleons questions it will make their diplomatic but halachic answers harder.
You have hinted at the upcoming development of Ashdod as a gateway to Israel's central Eretz and Jerusalem. Will it come at the expense of Jaffa's own growth?
It seems that OTL Jaffa became a major economic center in the late Ottoman period and during the Mandate simply by taking advantage of its more central location compared to the still undeveloped Haifa... all this despite the Jaffa port did not have the best conditions for maritime trade.
So maybe ITTL Ashdod will also become the main Jaffa orange outlet ... will it become the TTL version of OTL Tel Aviv in the end?
It seems that OTL Jaffa became a major economic center in the late Ottoman period and during the Mandate simply by taking advantage of its more central location compared to the still undeveloped Haifa... all this despite the Jaffa port did not have the best conditions for maritime trade.
So maybe ITTL Ashdod will also become the main Jaffa orange outlet ... will it become the TTL version of OTL Tel Aviv in the end?
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Up to this point, IIRC it appears that some rabbinic schools of thought are emerging within the confines of the Yishuv.
1. The most traditionalists, aligned with the Yerushalmi rabbis. Without major theological innovations, within the Sanhedrin but forming its most reactionary faction
2. Alt-Hasidic-Spinozist group TTL, characterized by rationalism, custom inclusivism and openness to secular knowledge, and at the same time by its approach of joyful and individual mysticism. Active outside the authority of the Sanhedrin, but actually living alongside them.
3. Yemeni Dor Daim School. It could act as a bridge between "2" and Sanhedrin, considering that OTL Dor Daim also focused on rationalism and fought against backward superstition. And it looks like they will enjoy a central position thanks to their ties to the Naggidate.
4....?
1. The most traditionalists, aligned with the Yerushalmi rabbis. Without major theological innovations, within the Sanhedrin but forming its most reactionary faction
2. Alt-Hasidic-Spinozist group TTL, characterized by rationalism, custom inclusivism and openness to secular knowledge, and at the same time by its approach of joyful and individual mysticism. Active outside the authority of the Sanhedrin, but actually living alongside them.
3. Yemeni Dor Daim School. It could act as a bridge between "2" and Sanhedrin, considering that OTL Dor Daim also focused on rationalism and fought against backward superstition. And it looks like they will enjoy a central position thanks to their ties to the Naggidate.
4....?
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It's going to be very hard for the French Sanhedrin to finesse. They might go with "the OG Sanhedrin is an eminent body of rabbis whose scholarship we respect, but its judicial authority only exists in the Land of Israel," but whether Napoleon accepts that answer is another issue. "Is it proper for rabbis to make public pronouncements on political issues" could be another big one, although they might be able to get some watered-down wording past Napoleon on that issue too - after all, he'd have no problem with rabbis making patriotic political speeches. But he'll be looking for something not far short of laïcité, and while the proto-Reform elements might agree with that, others will not.
In the short term, Jaffa has the advantage of being an established port with an existing trade. It will take time to build a functioning port at Ashdod, especially since they'll have to build part of the harbor (this won't be as much of an issue in the early 19th century as with a modern container port, but there will still need to be better facilities than ancient and medieval Ashdod had, so there will be engineering challenges). And even when Ashdod is fully online, Haifa and Jaffa are still closer to the Zaydani state's economic center of gravity - Ashdod will handle the Jerusalem/Bethlehem/Hebron trade and the parts of the OTL Mehoz haDarom that are in Zaydani hands, but if Jaffa is eclipsed, it will probably be by Haifa or another port further north.
Ashdod will eventually be like Tel Aviv/Yafo in at least one respect - there will be the new port with a mixed Muslim/Jewish/Christian population (in that order, but with the Jewish minority a very substantial one) and an "old city" comprising the Muslim village of Isdud. But the port probably won't grow to the point where it incorporates Isdud until the twentieth century.
4 is the Median Sanhedrin Rabbi, who I've described as strict on law but lenient in matters of custom. There's still a considerable range, but given the growing diversity of the Galilee Yishuv and the growing frequency of intermarriage between Jewish families with different minhagim, it's the path of least resistance and the one to which a plurality of Galiee rabbis have gravitated. They and the Dor Daim might be the most likely to form an ad-hoc coalition - they'll disagree about the Zohar, but in terms of day-to-day issues and in terms of their attitude toward applying new knowledge to jurisprudence, they're pretty compatible.