The Declaration of Rights of the State of Virginia (United States) is a document that was drafted in 1776 and proclaimed the inherent rights of man. Its content influenced not only the Declaration of Independence of the United States and its Bill of Rights (1789) but also the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, promulgated by the National Assembly of France in 1789. Its importance lies in the fact that it was the first time that individual rights were protected within a constitutional framework, which made them a universal precept with the force of law.

The French Assembly declared in Article X of the Declaration of the Rights of Man: “No one shall be molested on account of his beliefs or his religion, nor harassed in the exercise of his form of worship, provided that forms of worship do not disturb public order as established by law.” Furthermore, on September 28, 1791, the Assembly decreed that all Jews in France had the same rights as all active citizens. French Jews had been emancipated.

Emancipation is the recognition by a society that Jews have the same rights as all other citizens of a country. The French Revolution had granted them these rights, but it was Napoleon who made them a reality. In its military campaigns, the French army carried out the principles of the French Revolution, while opening the gates of the ghetto.

Michael Goldfarb, in his book “Emancipation,” tells us: “In Ancona, there was a good-sized Jewish community. The men were forced to wear a yellow badge on their hats, to further distinguish them from their neighbors. By the end of February 1797, Napoleon’s troops had taken the city. A platoon composed mostly of Jewish soldiers was sent to the Via Astagna and set to work demolishing the gates of the ghetto. When the gates were no longer open, they marched through the empty streets. Slowly people began to come out and look at the soldiers. One soldier shouted in Hebrew to one of the curious onlookers, “Come here.” A gasp of surprise spread through the growing crowd. “Are you Jewish?” “Yes.”

Jewish soldiers wearing the uniform of France, a Christian country? Yes, one of the obligations of an “active citizen” of a country is military service. There was more conversation in Hebrew, when suddenly, a soldier removed the yellow badge from the hat of one of the ghetto dwellers, took off his red, white and blue revolutionary ribbon and put it where the badge had been. Another soldier repeated the same gesture and then another. The Jews of Ancona had been emancipated. “

Napoleon not only opened the gates of the Ancona ghetto. He also did it in Turin, Milan, Rome and Venice. Virginia’s ideas had reached Ancona.

By Marcos Gojman.

Bibliography: Emancipation by Michael Goldfarb, the Jewish Religion by Louis Jacobs and other sources.