Ceremonial clothes of the great Rabbi Yossef David Sintzheim at the Grand Sanhedrin of Napoleon in 1807.
The Grand Sanhedrin was a Jewish high court convened in Europe by Napoleon to give legal sanction to the principles expressed by an assembly of Jewish notables in answer to the twelve questions submitted to it by the government. The name was chosen to imply that the Grand Sanhedrin had the authority of the original Sanhedrin that had been the main legislative and judicial body of the Jewish people in classical antiquity and late antiquity.
Yossef David Sintzheim was the chief rabbi of Strasbourg, president of Napoleon’s Sanhedrin, and one of the most famous French rabbis under Napoleon I.
He was the first chief rabbi of France and his burial in the Père Lachaise cemetery attests to his importance in the eyes of his generation. Himself from a line of rabbis, he devoted his life to study, married Cerf Berr’s sister around 1765 and in 1785 became rector of the Yeshivah of Bischheim. Forced to flee during the Terror, he subsequently became rabbi of Strasbourg and after being designated to participate in the assembly of notables convened by Napoleon in 1806, he was named president of Napoleon’s Sanhedrin. The inventory of Sintzheim’s effects at his death lists four rabbi’s robes, one in silk and the others velvet, as well as 2 horned hats. Its owner, Rabbi Nathan Rephael Auerbach, a direct descendant of Yossef David Sintzheim, attested that these clothes were passed down from generation to generation until they reached him.
(Ader-Paris)
