Namier (Bernstein-Namierowski) Sir Lewis

(1888–1960)

   Historian and Zionist. Namier was born to a Jewish land-owning family in Galicia but settled in England in 1908 and became a naturalized British subject in 1913. Namier was a renowned historian and was professor of history at Manchester University. He was an ardent Zionist and a close associate of WEIZMANN, and served for a while as political secretary of the Jewish Agency in London. He married his second wife, Julia, in church, and his conversion to Christianity was partly responsible for an ensuing coolness between himself and Weizmann. □ NAPOLEON (I) Bonaparte 1769– 1821. Emperor of France. The French Revolution swept away the feudal disabilities of the Jews, and granted them full civic rights. This emancipation was carried by the victorious French armies into the European countries they occupied, including Italy during the campaign under Napoleon’s command (1796–7). In 1798 Napoleon landed in Egypt, established his hold on the country, and marched into Palestine. After the capture of Gaza, he issued a proclamation sympathetic to Jewish claims to the Holy Land, calling upon the Jews to help redeem it from the Turks. His failure to take Acre brought an end to the expedition.

   In 1806, two years after he had been proclaimed emperor, Napoleon began to give serious thought to regulating the position of the Jewish communities in the Empire. A Jewish Assembly of Notables was convened in Paris, and its conclusions were confirmed in February 1807 by a Sanhedrin of seventy-one members drawn from the different provinces of the Empire, two-thirds of them rabbis and one-third laymen. It affirmed the loyalty of each Jew to his land of residence and declared a separation between political and legal status and religious faith. In 1808, Napoleon promulgated a decree that organized the Jews of France into local community councils (consistories), with a central one in Paris. This community system holds good to the present day. The decree also contained a number of restrictions on Jewish trading and places of residence for a ten-year period. The object was doubtless to break the traditional patterns, but it was resented and became known among the Jews as the ‘infamous decree’. In most parts of France it was disregarded within a few years. NASI, Joseph c. 1524–79. Statesman in Turkey. Originally called João Miguez, Joseph was the son of the Marrano physician to the king of Portugal. He left Lisbon for Antwerp in 1537 and after a number of years in Holland and Italy arrived in Istanbul in 1554. There he publicly proclaimed his Judaism, taking the name of Nasi (Hebrew for prince). Because of his intimate knowledge of European capitals, he gained an entry into court circles in Istanbul. He soon became close to the crown prince Selim, and a powerful figure in the Turkish empire, the strongest force in Europe at that time. He had a hand in the Netherlands’ revolt against Spain, the election of the king of Poland, and the outbreak of war between Turkey and Venice, in which the latter lost Cyprus. Around 1561 Nasi leased Tiberias and district from the sultan, aiming to develop it as an autonomous Jewish area. His wealthy kinswoman, Beatrice de Luna, whose daughter he had married, was associated with him in this venture. On the accession of Selim as sultan in 1566, Nasi was created duke of Naxos and the Cyclades, which he ruled by proxy, styling himself ‘Duke of the Aegean Sea, Lord of Naxos’. Joseph remained in his palace outside Istanbul, resisting all European efforts to discredit him before the sultan. Attempting to regain the money owed to him by the French court, Joseph received a firman from the sultan granting him the right to seize one-third of every cargo shipped from France to Egypt. He was appointed local ruler of Wallachia in 1571 but shortly after that his influence began to diminish.

   Joseph Nasi was a great patron of scholars. After his death, his widow kept up his library and established a Hebrew printing press.