1807.] 
That religious ordinances are, from 
- their nature, absolute, and independent 
of circumstances and times. 
That political ordmances are not; that 
their government was designed for the 
Israelites in Palestine, when they had 
their kings, their pontiff, and their ma- 
gistrates. These laws cease when the 
people cease to bea nation. An assem- 
bly of the doctors of the law can alone 
determine what may be rejected; and if 
former Sanhedrims have not assumed 
this power, it was because political cir- 
cumstances were not favourable to them! 
“In virtue of the right with which a 
Sanhedrim invests a convocation of the 
doctors of the age, they have the power 
to decree according to the present urgen- 
cies, what observance is to be paid to 
laws, either written or traditional : and, 
in consequence, the present Sanhedrin 
lay down, as their first principle, that an 
entire obedience be paid to the laws of 
the state in all civiland political matters.” 
The three first doctrinal decisions 
were on Polygamy, Divorce, and Mur- 
TALE. 
The erand Sanhedrim tleclares that 
polygamy, admitted by the law of Moses, 
is only a simple or conditional faculty ; 
that the doctors made it subordinate to 
he hasband’s fortune, in case it was suf& 
ficient to supply the necessities of more 
than one wife; that from the first time 
of the dispersion of the Israelites inthe 
East, they acknowledged the necessity of 
harmonizing their customs with the civil 
laws of the states in which they estab- 
lished themselves; and thatthis usage be- 
ing abolished in almost every European 
nation, it 1s prohibited to marry a second 
wile during the life-time of the first. 
The disorce, permitted by the law of 
Moses, is only valid inasm uch as it ope- 
rates the entire dissolution of every tie 
even of a civil nature; but as, according 
to the civil code which they decree must 
govern every Israehte as a Frenchman 
or an Italian, no divorce is completed 
till the court of law has awarded its sen- 
tence ; consequently the Mosaic divorce 
has ceased to have a full effect on both 
parties, till the civil authority has dis- 
solved the conjugal bond. If, therefore, 
any rabbin shall assist making a di- 
vorce, independent of the civil code, he 
violates the present religious statute, and 
shall cease to exercise his rabbinical 
functions. 
That marriages shail be contracted ac- 
cording to the civil codes of France and 
Ttaly, and ne rabbin shall assist at a mar- 
_ Sanhedrim of the Jews in Paris. 
37 
riage which the civil officer does not figat 
ailow. Further, in respect to the inter- 
marriages of Jews with Christians, which 
shall be contracted According to the civil 
code, they are declared valid and obli- 
gatory, and although these can never be 
solemnized with religious ceremonies, 
they shall not be anathematised, as hi- 
therto they have been. 
On those three decisions the presi- 
dent, M, Furtado, addressed the Sanhe- 
drim with copious eloquence. The de- 
cisions were read in Hebrew, according 
to the Portuguese pronunciation, by M. 
Cracovia, and afterwards by M. Berr 
Tsaac-Berr, with the German accent. 
From the president’s speech I shall 
glean some few passages: the matter and 
the manner offer some novelty. 
“ If our existence among all the na~ 
tions of the earth, if the antiquity of our 
origin, if our long adversities, exhibit one 
of those political phenomena which p press~ 
€s O0 our attention, and excites our sur- 
prize, our Gonvocation in the capital of 
France, and under the protection of the 
greatest Christian prince, the unexpect- 
ed existence of a Sanhedrim, of that an- 
cient body whose origin is "lost in the 
night of time, is a phenomenon not less 
remarkable. We owe our admiration, 
our love, our gratitude, to the hero who 
vovernsus; he has givenus thissolemn op- 
portunity to render a splendid homage to 
the purity of that religion which neither 
time, nor dispersions, nor the revolutions 
ef empires, could destroy. Eternal as 
nature, durable as society, its principles 
necessarily have surviv ed all human vic 
cissitudes 
““ Doctors of the law, and Notables of 
Israel! no monarch had hitherto con- 
ceived the means by which he might 
shield us from the unfavourable prepos- 
sessions which long habit, more than an 
Other motive, has attached even to the 
name of Jew; none had ys essayed if, 
by a clear interpretation of our dogmas, 
we could be morally prepared for the 
enjoyments of political and civil rights ; 
none had yet seized on the simple notion, 
but fertile in its results, since it inde 
ences our own charac ter, and the opinion 
of the people ainong whom we live, to 
couvoke an assembly of Israelitish depu- 
ties; to interrogate them concerning 
their doe their customs, and their 
ecclesiastical hierarchy, 1 in a Grand San- 
hedrim. The sovereigns of Eu: rope, : 
guided by timid and uncertain politics, 
imbued with a false notion that it was 
unpossible to work our regeneration, 
attribute 
