Abraham Furtado

He was elected president of the Assembly of Notables and later served as secretary of Napoleon Bonaparte’s Grand Sanhedrin; a Jewish high court convened in Paris.

In his journal, he recalls using a knife to cut an eyehole in his wall and watched the revolution unfold in the streets.

After the terror when he came out of hiding, he wrote about his distrust of common people and also the mistakes of the Bordeaux Popular Commission.

He states that essentially all of the country’s ills were blamed on Louis XIV and that it was a much wider issue between the possessors of titles and those who had money.

Later in life, Furtado served as a secretary on Napoleon’s Grand Sanhedrin with the intention of considering questions regarding French Jews.