Many talmidei chachamim around the world today enhance their learning of Gemara with the Yad David commentary composed by Rabbi Yosef David Sinzheim (recently published by Machon Yerushalayim), first Chief Rabbi of France (1745-1812).* However, those benefiting from the many volumes of the Yad David and from the Rav’s other sefarim are probably not aware that part of the credit for his accomplishments should be attributed to the prominent French Jewish philanthropist and Alsatian communal leader Cerf Berr of Medelsheim (1726-1793), a brother of Rabbi Yosef David’s wife, Esther.
Cerf Berr’s Hebrew name was Naftali Hertz ben Dov Ber. Cerf means deer or stag in French, as does Hertz in Yiddish, and the deer is a symbol associated with the name Naftali. Yaakov blessed Naftali (Bereishis 49:21)
by referring to him as “ayalah sheluchah,” a swift deer. Cerf Berr was a prominent French merchant who supported Rabbi Sinzheim’s family. He was almost 20 years older than his brother-in-law Rabbi Yosef David, and 17 years older than his sister Esther.
PROMINENT BUSINESSMAN
Jews first settled in Bischeim in 1512 when they were expelled from neighboring Colmar. Cerf (Naftali Hertz) Berr lived in his native city Medelsheim (located in the then-French-controlled Saarland) until 1748, when he married Judith,the daughter of Abraham Weil of Bischeim, andestablished himself in that city. It is not clear where received his Torah education but it is probable that he studied at the yeshivah in Metz, France. A former Rav of Bischheim, Rav Moshe Warschavski, noted that Naftali Hertz had the title of Rav.
Cerf Berr managed two successful businesses, an iron foundry in Saarland and a forage business that supplied food for the horses of the French military. During the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), which spanned several continents and split Europe into two coalitions, British and French, he made a fortune supplying the French cavalry units that were garrisoned in Alsaceand Lorraine.
Through his business dealings, Cerf Berr made the acquaintance of the French foreign minister, Etienne François, Duke of Choiseul, to whom he advanced a considerable sum toward the purchase of supplies for the French armies.
ALSATIAN ASKAN
In 1778, 13 years after the marriage of Rabbi Sinzheim to Esther Berr, Cerf Berr established a yeshivah in Bischeim, a suburb of Strasbourg, where he installed his brother-in-law as Rosh Yeshivah. This was many years before Napoleon appointed the latter president of the French Sanhedrin and later Chief Rabbi of France.
Rabbi Yosef David Sinzheim, a talmid chacham who had completed Shas three times by the age of 33, was one of the most prominent Rabbanim in Western Europe at the time and was very close to his brother-in-law and benefactor, Cerf Berr. The yeshivah that Cerf founded was the fourth one to be established in Alsace — two were in Lower Alsace in the cities of Ettendorf and Bouxwiller, and one in Sierentz in Upper Alsace.
Wealthy Jews of Alsace sent their sons to the Metz Yeshiva or to yeshivos in Germany,
but Cerf wanted to make sure that Torah was available not only to the wealthy but to local poor Jews as well. He established a foundation with 175,000 French livres (pounds of silver) and told his brother-in-law the Rav, that he wanted him to
administer the foundation by leaving the principal intact and using the interest to fund the yeshivah, to marry off poor brides (hachnasas kallah) and to support the poor. Cerf established many rules for the distribution of funds for hachnasas kallah, one of which was that the indigent kallah would have to present a certificate testifying to her good conduct from the local Rav or her warden. His instructions about providing for the poor from the keren also covered the support of several members of Cerf Berr’s extended family and those of his two wives. (After his first wife, Judith Weil, passed away, he married Hanna Bruell, the widow of Jacob Hirsch Regensburger.) In addition to the support of entire families, money was allocated to provide clothing and shoes for the needy.
In addition, Cerf Berr allocated 7,500 livres a year to support three talmidei chachamim, whom he settled close to his own residence. Two of them moved into already existing houses, and he built a third house next to his own home in Bischeim. He had a true appreciation of Torah and sponsored the publication of two sefarim: Shitah Mekubetzes by Rabbi Betzalel Ashkenazi on Kesubos, and the sefer Lechem Sesarim on maseches Avodah Zarah by Rabbi Shlomo Algazi.
THE MOVE TO STRASBOURG
When Strasbourg was struck by famine in the winter of 1770-1771, Cerf Berr was invited by François, Baron of Antigny, who had been designated by the French crown as a royal lender, to purchase 1,000 bags of wheat for the people of Strasbourg from Germany. Cerf received permission to stay for that winter in Strasbourg, where he moved with his family into the Hotel Ribeaupierre. He ordered the wheat from a German supplier in Mainz.Because the first bags of wheat to arrive were said to be infested and needed to be sifted and sanitized, and Cerf Berr had to make another
order for a better quality of wheat, he lost 4,000 livres on the deal. He was required to move back to Bischeim once his business was completed. At the time, Jews were
forbidden to live in cities such as Strasbourg, the capital of Alsace, and lived in small hamlets and villages. A Jew who wanted to visit Strasbourg for the day to engage in business had to pay a degrading body tax; in other words, Jews were eff ectively treated as animals.
After his loss on the wheat deal, Berr sent a letter to Baron François of Antigny, dated June 5, 1771, describing his monetary loss as well as his desire to stay in Strasbourg all year, despite the fact that his permit was only for the winter.
He stated that it was inconvenient for him to move back and forth, especially in regard to conducting his army supply business.
The baron forwarded his letter to the secretary of war in Versailles. On November 5, 1771, French Secretary of War Louis François, Marquis of Monteynard, penned his own letter to the royal magistrate of Strasbourg requesting that Cerf Berr be given permission to reside permanently in Strasbourg. His request was granted,
but with one caveat: He was forbidden to have a synagogue there. “S’il veut prier, il n’a qu’a aller a Bischeim — If he wants to pray,” the permission read, “he’ll have to go to Bischeim.”
His new address in Strasbourg was the Hotel Ribeaupierre, which he purchased. He brought with him a family of nine children, a shochet and extended family members.
DISTINGUISHED CITIZEN AND ACTIVIST
Cerf Berr of Medelsheim was granted French citizenship in 1775 during the first month of King Louis XVI’s reign, thanks to his being “a merchant and supply contractor for the King’s troops.” Having obtained citizenship, Berr opened factories and hired many Jews.
In 1776 King Louis XVI elevated Cerf Berr, whose business acumen and services he required, to the office of Director Générale of Military Forage. Although he was very pleased with this royal appointment, Berr was frustrated by the ill treatment of Jews in Strasbourg. He decided that for the rest of his life he would work to abolish the anti-Semitic laws that had prevailed in Alsace for 400 years. He hired 29-year-old Christian Wilhelm Dohm to pen a treatise in German addressed to King Louis XVI, entitled “Concerning the Amelioration of the Civil Status of the Jews.” Berr had this translated into French and presented to the king and his Council of State.
Dohm advocated that Jews receive equal rights and be given the opportunity to earn their livelihood by means other than usury or petty trading. In 1781 Cerf Berr produced a “Memorandum for the Jewish Nation in Alsace” in which
he denounced the body tax as humiliating and a breach of human rights. Besides this degrading poll tax, policemen would sound horns when daylight began to fade, warning all Jews to leave the city by nightfall.
In 1782 Berr sent a French translation of Hapsburg Emperor Joseph II’s Edict of Tolerance to French King Louis XVI’s advisors, pointing out that Article 19 of that edict abolished the head tax for Jews entering “our residence,” i.e., Vienna.
The body tax that Jews had to pay to enter the city of Strasbourg by day was called the leibzoll. For 20 years, from 1763-1783, Cerf Ber Medelsheim owned the franchise for the leibzoll. He was responsible for the payment to the Strasbourg municipality for any Jews entering the city. (In other words, he had to collect the tax and pay the municipality. The fact that he fought so hard to abolish it proves that not only did he not make money on this franchise, but he probably subsidized it by not charging very much, if anything.) In 1784 the leibzoll was finally abolished, thanks to Cerf Berr’s efforts, after much lobbying in Paris, Versailles and even Fontainebleau, the court of King Louis XVI.
On Erev Shabbos, 22 Teves/January 16, 1784, the Bischeim
Jewish community celebrated the abolition of the body tax and davened for the well-being of King Louis XVI in a special ceremony. Rabbi Avraham Auerbach, both son-in-law and nephew of Rabbi Yosef David Sinzheim (Avraham’s mother was Rabbi Yosef David’s sister), composed an acrostic poem entitled Divrei Hameches Ubitulo praising Naftali Hertz (Cerf) Berr for ensuring the abolition of the poll tax.**
The following Thursday was decreed a fast day and day of prayer in gratitude to Hashem.
Now, even though the leibzoll was abolished in Strasbourg, the Jews were still required to pay a one-time fee of 48,000 livres to the municipality because of the anticipated loss of income. Cerf Berr Medelsheim paid the entire amount.
In 1788 King Louis XVI asked his minister and counselor Chrétien-Guillaume de Lamoignon de Malesherbes to begin studying the Jewish question. In the spring of that year Malesherbes met with Cerf Berr and other Jewish representatives.
When in January 1789 the king permitted the French people to voice their grievances, the 25,000 Alsatian Jews were not allowed to do so. Permission was eventually granted to them after Cerf Berr protested to the government
in Paris. Berr hired a Christian lawyer, Jacques Godard, in 1790 to collect petitions from the non-Jewish residents of Paris, requesting that the Jews be granted equal civil rights in the matter of taxes, housing, marriage, trade, property ownership, religious practice and protection from persecution.
Jews were subsequently granted some rights, but they continued to be victims of persecution, especially during the Reign of Terror when Robespierre, leader of the
Jacobins, a revolutionary political group, had King Louis XVI guillotined (January 21, 1793).
During this period both Cerf Berr and his nephew Rabbi Avraham Auerbach were imprisoned for about a year. Berr had appointed Rabbi Auerbach administrator of the kehillah of Strasbourg, and the Jacobins associated both Cerf Berr
and Rabbi Auerbach with the monarchy. Cerf Berr of Medelsheim was finally released from prison 16 days before
his death. He passed away on December 7, 1793, in his home in Strasbourg. He is buried 25 km. southwest of that city, in the Jewish cemetery of Rosenwiller.
Yehi zichro baruch.
* See article by this writer on Rabbi Yosef David Sinzheim in Inyan magazine, July
15, 2015.
** The poem was published in the Hebrew journal HaMaayan, vol. 45:3