It may be because he was French that Adolphe Crémieux is relatively unknown in the English-speaking world. But he was, arguably, the most consequential Jewish, secular leader of the 19th century. An up to date, full length, English language biography of him is well overdue.
Adolphe Crémieux was born in 1796. His family lived in Nimes, a town in the south west of France where a Jewish community had been established for over 1000 years. Although the Jews of France had been emancipated in the recent French Revolution he described life in the town as difficult, saying that when he was a child “Jews counted for nothing. How many fist fights I used to have!”
The first public indication of his pugnacious commitment to social justice came in 1817, when he qualified as a lawyer. As a Jew he was required to take the more Judaico, a humiliating, medieval oath complete with self-imposed curses, required of Jews when testifying or taking part in legal proceedings. Crémieux refused to take the oath and spent the next few years fighting against its application in the courts. He argued that by obliging Jews to swear an oath that other French citizens were not obliged to take, impaired the revolutionary principles of equality under the law and freedom of worship. In 1827 he successfully defended two Jews who had refused to take the oath, a victory that led to its ultimate abolition.
The following year he began to involve himself in Jewish causes. He became a member of the local Consistory, the body that managed the affairs of the local community and represented its interests to the state. When he moved to Paris in 1830, he joined the Central Consistory, the umbrella body overseeing all the local consistories. He was appointed vice-president in 1834.
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