קראל אשר

Carel Asser (1780-1836), jurist, the son of Moses Salomon Asser, born in Amsterdam and died in The Hague, Holland. Asser studied law and philology at the Athenæum at Amsterdam. After obtaining his doctor's degree in 1799 Asser practiced law in Amsterdam; he was one of the first Jews to become lawyers after the establishment of the Napoleonic Batavian republic. His reputation was established when he conducted a brilliant defence of a certain Mascel of Dordrecht who had been accused of blasphemy when expressing doubts about the divinity of Jesus and the Trinity.

When he was sixteen years old he helped his father to found the Felix Libertate, a society which worked for the emancipation of the Jews of Holland and he joined his father in signing a petition on the matter which was sent to the States General in 1796. This step was vigorously opposed by Daniel Cohen d'Azevedo, rabbi of the Portuguese community of Amsterdam, and also by Jacob Moses Loewenstamm, rabbi of the Ashkenazim, who were afraid that political emancipation would result in the assimilation of the Jews. As a result of the petition the National Assembly passed a law conferring full civil rights on the Jews. Another result of the emancipation was a split between the orthodox and reformed minded Jews of the city. Carel and his father became members of the new Reform congregation, Adath Jeshurun. In 1807 Asser was one of three delegates sent by the new congregation to the Sanhedrin in Paris. On his return home he was commissioned by Napoleon to write a report of the condition and wishes of the Jews in Amsterdam, and to investigate the the possibility of the reunification of the congregations.

Asser recommended the establishment of a central consistory for the Jews in Holland. This was authorized by royal decree in 1808. He drew up the constitution of the consistory at the request of Louis Napoleon. The same year Asser was appointed director of the second division of the Ministry of Public Worship. After Holland regained its independence in 1813 he became a member of the Amsterdam consistory and he was appointed a member of the commission to draft regulations for the Jewish community. In 1828 he was appointed president of the Supreme committee of the Jewish congregations of Holland.

In 1811 Asser was made justice of the peace in the first district of Amsterdam. For twenty-one years from 1815 Asser held senior positions in the Department of Justice at The Hague and from 1831-1836 he was appointed secretary of the Department of Justice. n 1827 he wrote "Précis Historique sur l'Etat des Israélites du Royaume des Pays-Bas", a historical review of the condition of the Jews in Holland. He also wrote several books on aspects of Dutch law including a comparison of the Dutch and French civil codes.

His wife Rose Levin was the sister of well-known German -Jewish writer Rahel Varnhagen von Ense (1771–1833) who hosted one of the most prominent salons in Europe during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. She is the subject of a celebrated biography, "Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess" (1958) by Hannah Arendt. Arendt cherished Varnhagen as her "closest friend, though she had been dead for some hundred years."