The Thorny Area of Marriage: Rabbinic Efforts to Harmonize Jewish and French Law in Nineteenth-Century France

Through an examination of the innovative halakhic efforts of the French rabbinate during the nineteenth century to resolve tensions and contradictions between civil and Jewish law in the thorny area of marriage, this article sheds light on the extent to which French rabbis were prepared to harmonize Judaism with French civic norms. I first analyze rabbinic responses to clandestine religious marriages, which were illegal according to French law but technically valid according to Jewish law. I then discuss the efforts of the French rabbinate to harmonize conflicts between Jewish and civil law that arose from the collective naturalization of Algerian Jewry in 1870. Finally, I address two controversial rabbinic proposals for the harmonization of Jewish and civil divorce following the reinstitution of civil divorce during the Third Republic. As I show, in addressing the problems of clandestine marriages, recalcitrant brothers-in-law, and recalcitrant spouses, the religious leaders of French Jewry exercised moderation as they did in other religious matters.