AN EMPEROR WITHOUT AN EMPIRE

Last week, California State Senator Scott Wiener introduced a proposal that is pure San Francisco. He wants the tunnel through Yerba Buena Island, which connects the two halves of the Bay Bridge, to be renamed the Emperor Norton Tunnel.

You may be wondering: who is Emperor Norton? It’s a good question.

Truthfully, history has offered several ways to become an emperor. You could inherit the job. You could conquer a few countries and establish an empire. You could stage a coup, eliminate your rivals, and place a crown on your own head—Napoleon style.

But Joshua Abraham Norton took a rather more unorthodox route. He wrote a letter to the newspaper. On September 17, 1859, Norton informed the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin that, at the request of what he described as a large majority of American citizens, he would henceforth be known as “Emperor of these United States.”

The newspaper printed his proclamation, probably because the editors found it amusing. But the joke was on them, and Emperor Norton I formally began his reign.

Joshua Norton began his life in 1818, in Deptford, then a town in Kent, England, and now part of southeast London. His parents, John and Sarah, were middle-class English Jews. When Joshua was two, the family moved to South Africa. Eventually, in late 1849, Norton made his way to San Francisco, just as the Gold Rush was transforming the city, and rapidly became a prosperous businessman.

But things began to unravel in 1852. A famine in China had sent the price of rice soaring, and Norton heard that a shipload of rice had arrived in San Francisco harbor. He saw an opportunity to corner the market and agreed to buy the entire cargo for $25,000—roughly $1.1 million in today’s money.

Unfortunately, several more ships arrived carrying rice, the price collapsed, and Norton’s fortune collapsed with it. He spent years trying to escape the contract, but was ultimately unsuccessful, and in 1856 he was declared bankrupt.

Having failed to revive his business or gain traction with a proposed run for Congress, he eventually hit upon a much better idea: he became the emperor.

His new imperial status certainly increased his notoriety, but it did not revive his fortunes. By the mid-1860s, Norton was living in abject poverty in a tiny room at the Eureka Lodgings on Commercial Street.

But he did not allow the regrettable inadequacy of his real estate portfolio to interfere with the dignity of his office. He walked around San Francisco in impressive, if somewhat shabby, military uniforms, complete with oversized gold epaulettes, a sword, and, on formal occasions, a beaver hat embellished with an ostrich plume.

San Francisco played along. Restaurants fed him. Theaters reserved seats for him. Local directories listed his occupation as “Emperor.” Norton even issued his own money, which local establishments sometimes accepted.

Curiously, surviving Norton notes today can sell for tens of thousands of dollars—not that this does Norton much good now.

But it wasn’t all about free meals and theater tickets. Norton issued proclamations against corruption and racial discrimination, defended Chinese immigrants during a period of vicious anti-Chinese agitation, and worried about such decidedly unimperial matters as bad roads, excessive taxes, and unreliable public transportation.

In 1867, when an overzealous police officer arrested him for vagrancy and insanity, San Francisco’s newspapers erupted in outrage. The police chief ordered Norton released and offered an official apology. Norton, ever gracious, responded by issuing the offending officer an imperial pardon.

As for the bridge, in 1872 Norton called for a span linking San Francisco and Oakland by way of Yerba Buena Island, then known as Goat Island. More than sixty years later, long after his passing, the Bay Bridge opened along that very route.

It is tempting to treat Norton as nothing more than a lovable curiosity. But his story exposes something rather profound about leadership: there is more to a title than authority. Norton had no legal power. His crown was imaginary, his money homemade, and his proclamations unenforceable.

And yet San Francisco granted him something that cannot be obtained by decree: affection, recognition, and a peculiar kind of moral authority. The city tolerated the ridiculous title because it liked the man wearing it.

And it is precisely this gap—between the authority a title confers and the affection it cannot command—that lies at the heart of Parshat Shoftim’s discussion of Jewish monarchy. The Torah allows the Jewish people to appoint a king, but almost immediately begins limiting him.

He must not accumulate too many horses, too many wives, or excessive silver and gold. And once he is on the throne, he must write a Sefer Torah and study it throughout his life (Deut. 17:20): לְבִלְתִּי רוּם לְבָבוֹ מֵאֶחָיו – “So that his heart should not become haughty over his brothers.”

The key point is that the Jewish people are not “his subjects” but “his brothers.” The Torah refuses to allow political hierarchy to become human hierarchy. He may be the king, but those beneath him remain his brothers.

The Talmud reveals that Jewish kings had two Torah scrolls: one remained in the royal treasury, while the other accompanied the king wherever he went (Sanhedrin 21b). Precisely because everyone else had to defer to him, the king carried a constant reminder that he, too, answered to a higher authority.

Maimonides makes the point even more sharply. After describing the extraordinary honor owed to a king, he instructs that same king to behave with humility and compassion. The king must care for “the small and the great,” speak gently, protect the dignity of the lowly, and bear the burdens and complaints of his people “as a nurse carries an infant” (Hilchot Melachim 2:6).

This is the great paradox of Jewish leadership. The office may be elevated, but the person holding it must never imagine he has somehow become elevated above everyone else. A title can easily persuade someone that deference is proof of superiority.

People stand when you enter, laugh at your jokes, and hang on your every word. Eventually, the attention starts to feel like evidence that you really are more important than everyone else. The Torah’s answer is the Sefer Torah beside the throne, reminding the king: you did not write the rules, and you are not exempt from them.

Emperor Norton’s title may have been fake, but he was never resented for pretending to be superior to everyone else—because he never really pretended that at all. Instead, he earned genuine affection. The reason was simple. Norton’s airs and graces were an act, and beneath the act he remained accessible, interested in ordinary people, and a champion of causes that benefited common folk.

The Torah’s king faces the opposite situation: his power is real, and precisely for that reason he is commanded never to forget the very same truth. The people around you are not props in the drama of your greatness. They are your brothers, and you must care for them like family.

When Norton collapsed and died on a rainy San Francisco street in January 1880, there were only a few dollars in his pocket. His friends had to raise money for his funeral, which was attended by thousands of San Franciscans who came to pay their last respects. A

lmost 150 years later, his name may yet be placed on the tunnel he once imagined. Not because he was really an emperor—he wasn’t. But while the title was fake, the affection for him was very real. The Torah’s king faces the opposite danger: his title is real, and that reality could tempt him to forget everyone else.

Which is precisely why he needed a reminder, at all times, that everyone around him was still his brother.