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The Jews of Russia
and Poland

A Bird's-eye View of their
History and Culture

By
Israel Friedlaender, Ph.D.

Professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America

IVah a Map

G. P. Putnam's Sons

New York and London
Zbc fmicfietbocfiet press

COFTRIGHT, I9XS
BY

ISRAEL FRIEDLAENDBR
Second Impression

tTbe imfcltevMcliev ptc9§, flew fiork

(TO
MY WIFE AND HELPMATE

September 26, igis

PREFACE

I

THE present publication is based on a course of
lectures which, at the invitation of Dr. Cyrus
Adier, President of the Dropsie College for Hebrew
and Cognate Learning in Philadelphia, I delivered
before that Institution in the month of March.
The choice of the subject had been prompted by
the timely interest which an historic sketch of the
Polish and Russian Jews must possess at the pre-
sent moment when nearly half of the great world-
struggle is being fought out on a territory which is
officially designated as their Pale of Settlement.
I had felt considerable reluctance in venturing
beyond the domain of my regular scientific studies
which lie in a different direction. But the recogni-
tion of the importance of the task at this unique
juncture and the astonishing fact that no one had
come forward to imdertake it helped me in over-
coming my original hesitation. The same con-
sideration is now actuating me in bringing my
Kterary attempt before a wider public. In doing
so, I do not claim to offer new and independent
results of investigation, but rather to summarize
tie results obtained by others. My own creden-
tials are limited to a profound interest in the

Preface

subject, free access to the authorities dealing
with it, and to early personal observations of
country and people.

The information gathered in the following
pages, though not based on original research,
is yet drawn from trustworthy sources. The
specialist will have no difficulty in identifying
the authorities I have followed, while the general
reader will be scarcely interested in knowing
them. There is only one source which deserves
special mention, because I owe to it a larger debt
than to any other, I refer to the very elaborate
history of the Jews in Poland and Russia, written
in Russian by S. M. Dubnow, which originally
formed a part of his general history of the Jewish
people and has now been thoroughly revised and
recast by the author for the Enghsh edition which
is to be issued under the auspices of the Jewish
Publication Society of America. Having been
entrusted with the English translation of this
Polish-Jewish history, I had full opportunity to
famiharize myself with this standard work, which,
like all the writings of this celebrated Russian-
Jewish author, combines painstaking research
with literary charm. Indeed, I shotild not have
thought to come forward with my own popular
sketch, were it not for the unavoidable delay
which attaches to the publication of so large a
volume and for the radically different character
of my own literary effort.

Preface

However, though I have reKed upon my authori-
ties as to the facts, I have yet ventured to follow
my own judgment as far as their presentation
and interpretation are concerned. The responsi-
bility in this regard is entirely my own,

I have entitled this sketch of Polish-Jewish
history and culture "a bird's-eye view," not only
to disclaim any special scientific merits for it, but
to emphasize at the same time its essentially
popular tendency. I have not written for scholars
but for the people at large who may desire to in-
form themselves, in a concise and none too labori-
ous a manner, about tliis important and timely
subject. I have endeavoured to bring out the
larger bearings of the problem, without entangling
myself in the less important details. I have kept
this character of the publication steadily in view,
also where minor matters were concerned. I refer
in particular to the puzzhng difficulties attending
the transcription of Hebrew and Slavonian terms
which I have simplified as far as was in my power, '

■ I have spelled all such words without any regard to their
etymological correctness and in such a way as to indicate their
pronunciation to the EngUah reader. As far as I am aware, I have
departed from this rule only in two cases in which I have followed
the conventional transcription; in Csar {pronounce Tsar, with
a soft semi-vowel at the end which cannot be marked in English)
and in ukase (pronounce oofeoa, with the accent on the last
syllable). Zk has been used to indicate the Slavonian soiind
which corresponds to the French /. U in all such words is to be
pronounced like the English oo. The plural of Hebrew words
has beea indicated, as in English, by s, strange though it may

Preface

The map appended to this volume is designed, in a

similar way, to meet the purely practical require-
ments of the general reader.

To those who may recoil before the gloomy
picture of human misery and human cruelty drawn
on these pages I would retort in the same way as
did little Tom at school who, on being quizzed
Eis to who wrote the Magiia Ckarta, apologetically
replied: "/ haven't done it." I have not tried
to exaggerate. Exaggeration was, indeed, un-
necessary and would scarcely have been possible.
I am sorry that I have found myself unable to
follow the conventional view which regards the
admission of the Jews into Poland and the treat-
ment accorded to them in that country as an act
of generosity on the part of the Polish people.
Pleasing as It would have been to be able to point
at least to one bright spot in the impenetrable
darkness of medieval Jew-hatred, an unbiassed
study of the facts forces one, in my opinion, to
the conclusion that this attitude towards the
Jews was prompted by none other than utilitarian
considerations for which the Poles perhaps need
not be blamed but for which they certainly deserve
no credit.

I have written this book frankly as a Jew, with-
out attempting to disguise my sympathy with the

appear to the student of Hebrew. Only in one or two cases I
have found myself compelled to resort to the Hebrew ending of
the plural, which is int.

Preface

Jews in the lands of the Slavs who, at the begin-
ning of the twentieth century, continue to endure
aU the agonies of the Middle Ages. Indeed, I
know of no moral principle which would command
us to feel less keenly the sufferings of our fellow-
men, merely because, in addition to our common
humanity, we happen to be linked to them by
the community of race, religion, and association.
I can honestly say, however, that, while this sym-
pathy may have coloured the style of my narra-
tive, I have not, to the best of my knowledge,
allowed it to colour its contents. Without pre-
tending to be indifferent, I have endeavoured to
remain unbiassed. If my judgment of Polish
misrule, or rather the misrule of the Polish nobility,
should appear too harsh, I would remind the
reader that similar opinions have been voiced by
many a patriotic Pole, And if I have interpreted
the attitude of Russian autocracy towards the
Jews as a consistent attempt to destroy Jews and
Judaism in that country, this view has been an-
ticipated by many an unbiassed Russian. Nay,
it has occasionally been uttered in public by
official representatives of Czardom.

In my account of the inner development of the
Jews of Russia and Poland I have endeavoured to
follow the same policy of frankness. Filled as I
am with admiration for the intellectualism and
idealism which mark, to a truly astounding degree,
Polish- Jewish life in its genuine environment, — an

Preface

admiration whicli would be general were it not for
the fact that the forms in which that life manifests
itself are strange and, therefore, unattractive to
us, — I have not hesitated to point to the many
negative features which are the result of the one-
sided development of PoHsh and Russian Jewry.
To the self-respecting Jew nothing is more revolt-
ing than the apologetic attitude which some of his
modem coreligionists are prone to assume in the
presence of non-Jews. If we Jews have our faults
we are just as much entitled to them as any other
section of mortals. A race which, in the face of
uninterrupted and unparalleled persecution, —
and this applies to the Polish Jews as well as to
the Jews as a whole, — has neither surrendered its
identity nor sunk to the level of gypsies, but has
managed to preserve its mental and moral vigour
and has remained a powerful factor in the life of
civilized humanity, can well afford to own to its
share of hirnian frailty. The Jewish historian
need not apologize for it. All he may do is to
accoimt for it, by pointing to the historic factors
which have produced it.

While the present sketch, being an account
of the past, stops deliberately at the threshold
of contemporary events, this is perhaps the place
to say a word as to the way in which the modem
Jews react on the treatment which is meted out
to their race in the lands of the Slavs. It would
be hypocrisy to maintain that the present-day

Preface

Jew is insensible of the terrible sufferings and
indignities which continue to be heaped upon
his fellow- Jews both in Russia and in Poland and
which have been so grievously accentuated in the
course of this war. But it would be an equal
mistake to think that the only too natural resent-
ment of the Jew extends indiscriminately to the
inhabitants of those countries. True, the Jews
were not told to love their enemies. Yet they
were enjoined to judge their neighbours in right-
eousness (Leviticus xix., 15), and they have
themselves suffered too long from the human
habit of generalization to indulge in a wholesale
condemnation of entire peoples. The thinking
Jew is neither blind to the fine and charming
qualities which distinguish the Polish nation and
their culture. Nor is he forgetful of the sterling
virtues which are inherent in the character of the
great Russian people. Indeed, he is looking
forward to the time when, under a happier con-
stellation, the Jewry of Russia and Poland may,
side by side with these two nations with which it
has lived together from the very dawn of their
history, march on the road of human progress and
happiness. The Jews, to repeat a famous saying
of their Rabbis, hate wrong but not wrongdoers.
And writing, as I do this, on the eve of the Jewish
New Year, I can find no better way of expressing
the sentiments with which the Jews of today are
looking forward to the termination of the terrible

xii Preface

world-conflict than by quoting the words of the
solemn liturgy which for nearly two thousand
years has ushered in the religious season of
Judaism:

Then shall the just be glad, and the upright shall
exult, and the pious triumphantly rejoice, while
iniquity shall close her mouth, and all wickedness shall
be wholly consumed like smoke, when thou makest
the dominion of violence to pass away from
the earth.

I. F.

New York,

September 8, 191 5.

Introduction

CHAPTER I

The Jews under the Polish Regime .

Rise of the Polish Empire— Decline and Pall of the
Polish Empire— The Polish Nobility, or Shlakhta
— Triumph of the Shlakhta over Royalty and
Burghera— ESecta of Shlakhta Rule— The Polish
Churcli — Origin of Polish. Jewry — The Royal
Privileges — Opposition of Polish Estates^Hostility
of the Church — Economic Prosperity of Polish
Jewry — Rivalry of the Burghers — Enmity of the
Shlakhta— The Jews of Lithuania— Decline of
Polish Jewry after 1572— The Jews under the
Dominion of the Great Nobles — Demoralizing
Effect of Shlakhta Rule— The Cossack Pereecu-
tions — Effects of the Cossack Persecutbna — Histoiy
of Polish Jews after 1772.

CHAPTER ir
The Jews under the Russian Regime'.

Earlier Phases of Russian- Jewish History^Contrast
between Polish and Russian Regime — Anti- Jewish
Policy of Czardom — Reign of Catherine the Great-
Reign of Paul — Reign of Alexander I. — The
Statute of 1804 — Changes of Policy— Loyalty of
Jews during the War of 1812 — Conversionist En-
deavours — Effects of Reaction — Reign ot Nicholas
—Ritual-Murder Trials — Economic Repiession—

J

xiv Contents

PAGS

Militarism as Agency of Conversion — EnKghten-
ment as Agency of Conversion — Culmination of
Anti- Jewish Policy — ^Reign of Alexander II. — Policy
of Amalgamation — ^Anti- Jewish Reaction — ^Recent
Times.

CHAPTER III

The Inner Development of Russo-Polish

Jewry 157

Characteristics of Polish Judaism — Polish- Jewish
Autonomy — Council of the Four Lands — The Non-
Jewish Environment — Conditions of Inner Life —
Contact with Non-Jews — ^Jewish Ceremonialism —
Jewish Intellectualism — Literary Productivity —
Standards of Judgment — Decline of Polish Judaism
— Intellectual Revival in Lithuania — Mystic and
Messianic Tendencies — ^Rise of Hassidism — Effects
of Hassidism — Danger of Isolation — ^Rise of Haska-
lah Movement — ^Haskalah Movement in Russia —
Rise of Nationalism and Zionism — ^Russian Jews
in America.

Index 211

The Jews of Russia and Poland

f

I

The Jews of Russia and
Poland

H inquu

INTRODUCTION

IN a sublime vision, quivering with human sym-
pathy and brotherly emotion, the Prophet
Isaiah pictures to us the agony of a band of
Judeans who had been driven into the land of the
Edomites. Exasperated by the grinding oppres-
sion of this mortal enemy of their people, his
exiled brethren call to him from afar, anxiously
inquiring when their sufferings are hkely to take
an end. "Watchman, what of the night? Watch-
man, what of the night?" But the Prophet,
though tortured by compassion and suspense,
is honest enough to tell them that he knows
of no answer. The light of delivery and the
gloom of misery are flitting successively across
his prophetic vision and he sadly repUes: "The
morning cometh, but also the night; if ye will
inquire, inquire again ; come ye, return, "

i

2 Jews of Russia and Poland

The American Jews of today find themselves in
a similarly tragic situation. Our brethren among
the modem Edomites, ground by relentless per-
secutions, and now maddened by the horrors of
warfare, cry to us in their despair: "Watchmen,
what of the night? Watchmen, what of the night?"
But if we be honest we must broken-heartedly con-
fess that we know of no answer. Gleams of light
and blotches of darkness dance in blinding con-
fusion before our mind's eye, and all we can do is
to repeat with the Prophet Isaiah: "The morning
cometh, but also the night; if ye ^ ill inquire,
inquire again; come ye, return."

But while we are waiting in agonies of suspense,
let us not become a prey to inactive stupor. Let
us take care that when the horizon has cleared and
our tmfortunate brethren from afar apply again
for advice, we are able to give them a dear un-
equivocal answer, an ansWer that is not prompted
by the passing whims of the moment, but one that
is based on the foundations of our past and is
fuUy in accord with our historic development.

The title of this volume as well as the arrange-
ment of the material call for a few words of ex-
planation. It will become obvious in the course of
this book that the Jews of Russia, in the specific
sense of this geographical term, do not constitute
the problem which we generally associate with that
name. The Jews in Russia proper, that is, outside

Introduction

the so-called Pale of Settlement, are a negligible
quantity. They form but a fraction of one per
cent, of the genera! population, and, though har-
assed and vexed by an unfriendly government, are
so few in number and are scattered over such a
tremendously vast area, that neither numerically
nor economically nor culturally can they lay claim
to our particular attention. The bulk of what
generally goes by the name of Russian Jewry,
constituting no less than half of the Jewish people
throughout the world, lives — if that mode of
existence may be honoured by the term " living" —
in the Pale of Settlement, that is, on the tract of
land which is practically identical with the ancient
Empire of Poland. They are neither a part nor
a product of the Russian Empire, which almost
from its very inception down to this day has
systematically shut its gates to the Jews. They
are merely an inheritance, which, with the dying
Kingdom of Poland, fell into the lap of Russia,
Hence, when we speak of the Jews of Russia
and Poland, we do not refer to two different geo-
graphical groups, but rather to two different
periods in the life of the same group. We shall,
therefore, deal in the first chapter with the Jews
under the Polish regime — that is, during the time
that the Polish Empire was in existence, — and treat
in the second chapter of the same Polish Jews when
they came under the regime of Russia, after the
dissolution of Poland.

4 Jews of Russia and Poland

As for the inner life of this Russo-Polish Jewry,
it was little affected by the political transition,
owing to the strict isolation of the Jews from
their environment. The spiritual development of
the Jews under the Russian r6gime forms, down
to the latter end of the nineteenth century, an
uninterrupted continuation of the preceding period
of Polish rule, whjle the radical changes which we
witness in Russian Jewish life in our own days
are not the result of political causes but are due
in the main to spiritual influences. Hence the
third chapter of our book will present an imbroken
accoimt of this inner development of Russo-
Polish Jewry.

THE JEWS UNDER THE POLISH Ri:GIME

WHILE during the period of Russian dominion,
which will engage us in the second chapter,
the fate of Jewry, owing to the autocratic character
of the Russian Empire, has depended almost en-
tirely on the attitude of the individual rulers and
has been but loosely connected with the destinies
of the Russian people, — during the period of Polish
independence, with its numerous centrifugal forces,
which at first limited and finally annihilated the
authority of the monarchs, the history of the Jews
was the resultant of an extremely complicated
interaction of social factors. The history of the
Polish Jews is indissoiubly bound up with the his-
tory of Poland, just as the history of Poland is in-
separably interwoven with the history of the Jews.
It is, therefore, necessary to premise our account of
the Jews in Poland by a survey of the political
and social development of Poland in general.
Rise of the Polish Empire
The history of Poland, both in its political and
social aspect, hinges on the year 1572, when the

6 Jews of Russia and Poland

last king of the Yaguello dynasty died without
issue, and Poland was converted into a republic
with an elective king at its head. The period
prior to 1572 is marked by the centripetal restraint
of royal authority; the period after 1572 is charac-
terized by the centrifugal influence of the Polish
nobihty, or the Shlakhta. The royal period marks
the rise, the Shlakhta period marks the decline of
Poland, and we shall afterwards leam that the rise
and decHne of PoUsh Jewry follow exactly the same
line of development.

The beginnings of Polish history go back to the
middle of the ninth century, when the Polish
tribes were organized by Piast, — a semi-mythical
personage who became the founder of the Polish
monarchy and the progenitor of the Piast dynasty
which occupied the throne of Poland until 1386. i
One of his descendants, Boleslav III, divided in.|
1 138 his dominions among his children, with the '
result that Poland fell asunder into a number of
independent principalities, the most important
among them being Great Poland, with the leading j
cities of Posen and Kalish, Little Poland, with I
Lublin and Cracow, the province of Mazovia, with
the city of Warsaw, the province of Red Russia,
roughly corresponding to what is today called
Eastern GaHcia, with Lemberg (or Lvov), while
Silesia gradually drifted into the German sphere
of influence and was forever lost to Poland.

Prom this state of political dismemberment,

Polish Regime ^

which brought the PoHsh lands to the verge of
political and economic ruin, Poland was rescued
by another descendant of Piast, Vladislav I, who
in 1306 united the two provinces of Great Poland
and Little Poland and restored the royal title.
His famous son, Casirair III, or the Great, who
reigned from 1333 to 1370, consolidated the re-
stored empire, increasing it by the addition of the
important province of Red Russia. However, the
crucial event in the expansion of Poland took place
in the year 1386, when Yadviga, a grandniece of
Casimir and heir to the Polish crown, offered hand
and throne to YagueUo, the Grand Duke of Lithu-
ania, who thereupon became the King of Poland
and the founder of the royal dynasty of the
Yaguellos which ruled over the united lands of
Poland and Lithuania from 1386 to 1572.

The alliance between the Kingdom of Poland,
or the Crown, as it was generally called, and the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which was at first of a
purely dynastic character, but led in successive
stages to the amalgamation of the two coimtries
in 1569, was fraught with tremendous issues for
the further development of the Polish people. The
Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which was origin-
ally hmited to the region around Vilna and Kovno,
had, during the fourteenth century, enormously
grown at the expense of the neighbouring Russians,
who, to use the phrase of a contemporaneous
chronicler, fled before the Lithuanians "like hares

J

8 Jews of Russia and Poland

before the hunter. " The popiilation of the Grand
Duchy was accordingly of a composite character.
The ruling class was made up of Lithuanians, a
race akin to the modem Prussians, who had re-
mained pagans until the end of the fourteenth
century, when the political allurements of Poland
drew them into the fold of Roman Catholicism,
while the bulk of the population was made up of
the inhabitants of the conquered Russian provinces
who were Russians, or Ruthenians, by race and
Greek Orthodox by faith.

Through the alliance with Lithuania, Poland
grew into a vast empire, which extended from the
banks of the Niemen to the shores of the Black
Sea, and from the Oder into the very heart of
modem European Russia, including Kiev, "the
mother of Russian cities. " The incorporation of a
huge population professing a different creed saved
Poland from the orgies of Roman fanaticism, which
were for centuries the curse of Western Europe.
On the other hand, the existence within her midst
of a vast heterogeneous population which gravi-
tated toward the rising power of Muscovy was a
source of national weakness, and subsequently
proved an important factor in the process of
Polish disintegration.

The further steps in the expansion of Poland
are marked by the extension of her sovereignty over
the territory of the modem province of West
Prussia in the north and of the territory now

Polish Regime 9

covered by Roumania in the south. In 1525,
the duchy of Mazovia was added, and the principal
city of that province, Warsaw, which up to the end
of the sixteenth century had remained outside
the range of general Polish history, became the
capital of the united empire, thus succeeding the
former two capitals, Cracow and Vilna. The
final increase in PoUsh territory took place in
1562, ten years before the death of the last Yagu-
ello, by the annexation of Courland and Livonia,
controlling the trade on the Baltic.

It win thus be seen that at the height of her
expansion the Polish monarchy covered an area,
which down to this day harbours the bulk of the
Jewish population of Europe, It will also be
observed that, as far as modem Russia is concerned,
her Jewish Pale of Settlement coincides with the
boundaries of ancient Poland, forming a magic
line beyond which the Jew has not been permitted
to penetrate down to this day.

Decline and Fall of the Polish Empire

The year 1572 marks the end of Poland's ex-
pansion and the beginning of her disintegration.
The first manifestation of the latter process took
place in 1648, — -a year just as fatal in the history
of the Jews, — when the Russian population of the
border provinces, or the XJkraina (a word meaning
"border") revolted against the Polish dominion

10 Jews of Russia and Poland

and finally invoked the aid of the neighbouring
Russians. From that time onward the Russian
bear plunged his claws deeper and deeper into the
flesh of Poland. The province of Little Russia,
a part of the Ukraina, comprising the present
governments of Poltava and Chernigov, was ceded
to Russia in 1654. After that time the dismember-
ment of Poland proceeded in rapid stages, cul-
minating in the first partition of Poland in 1772,
when a fourth of Polish territory was divided
among Russia, Austria, and Prussia.

The first partition of Poland was followed, after
an imsuccessful attempt at national regeneration,
by a second partition in 1793, and, in spite of the
heroic resistance led by Kosciuszko, by a third
partition in 1795, which sealed the fate of the
Polish Empire. As a result of this last partition,
Russia acquired all the territories of the former
Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Austria received Gali-
cia, and Prussia the province of Great Poland with
Posen, and the province of Mazovia with Warsaw.

A short lease of life was granted to Poland
through the grace of the Empire-builder Napoleon,
when, after having shattered the Prussian power,
he formed her Polish possessions into the semi-
independent Duchy of Warsaw, under the rule of
the King of Saxony. The fall of Napoleon marked
the fall of the new Polish Commonwealth. The
Congress of Vienna, which met in 1815, sanctioned
the distribution of Polish territory such as stiU

Polish Regime ii

prevails today, except that the city of Cracow
was segregated into a diminutive Polish republic,
which, after a somewhat tumultous career, was
abolished by Austria in 1846,

The territory of what is today called Russian
Poland comprising the former Duchy of Warsaw,
was adjudged at the Vienna Congress to Russia,
but it was allowed to retain its political and cul-
tural autonomy under the title of the "Kingdom
of Poland," including a Polish king in the person
of the Russian Emperor, a native civil administra-
tion, its own language, and even its own army and
flag. The insurrection of 1830 gave Russia the
opportunity to withdraw her pledges. The King-
dom of Poland was incorporated into the Russian
Empire under the title "Vistulaland, " the very
name of Poland thus being blotted out of existence.
Since that time Russia has endeavoured, with a
persistence and cruelty, which assiuned unheard-
of proportions after the last PoUsh insurrection o£
1863, to annihilate the PoUsh race and to suppress
the faintest manifestation of Polish national life
down to the very threshold of the present war,
when the northern bear, cornered by his hunters, re-
laxed his murderous squeeze into a clumsy caress.

The PoUsh Nobility, or Shlakkta

The social history of Poland follows the same
lines of division. Its determining factor is the
claim of the Polish nobility, or the Shlakhta,

12 Jews of Russia and Poland

absolute, iinrestricted control within the State.
The abolition of hereditary monarchy in 1572
marks the triumph of the Shlakhta, — ^and the
beginning of Poland's downfall.

The history of the Jews in Poland is with a
thousand different threads bound up with this
social struggle, and it is of the utmost importance
to our subject to gain a clear insight into its causes
and progress.

During the primitive period of her history,
Poland was divided, like most other countries, into
two classes, or rather races, — ^the conquerors and
the conquered. The conquering tribe, or the
tribe par excellence — "Shlakhta" is probably de-
rived from the same root as the German Geschlechl
— became the owners of the soil, while the con-
quered tribe became the workers of the soil.
During the period of political dismemberment,
between 1138 and 1306, the Shlakhta, aided by
the absence of royal authority, managed to subdue
their peasants by turning them into serfs, or khlops^
and to reduce them to the position of veritable
beasts of burden, a position in which they were
kept down to the very end of Polish independence.
Unhindered by royal interference, the Shlakhta
then proceeded to assume absolute control over the
affairs of the State by organizing itself in Sayms,
representative assemblies or diets, thus laying
the groimd for one of the earliest parliamentary
organizations in Europe.

Polish Regime

13

This process is not without its parallels in the
history of other nations. Unlike, however, all
other nations, it did not result in the rise of a feudal
system with its distinctions and discriminations;
on the contrary, it may well be said that five hun-
dred years prior to the French Revolution, the
Polish nation, — for the Shlakhta was at that
time co-extensive with the Polish nation, — en-
deavoured to realize the three great principles
of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Liberty was,
and has ever remained, the idol of the Polish
Shlakhta. "If fatherland," says Heine, a sym-
pathetic observer of Polish life, "be the first word
of the Polish nobleman, liberty is his second."
This burning loveof liberty prevented the Shlakhta
as a group from tolerating the rule of another
power, be it the influence of another estate, or the
authority of a king, and made it impossible for an
individual member of the Shlakhta, or the Shlakh-
chitz, to dominate another member of his caste. In
this way liberty implied the absolute equality of
the Shlakhta, every member of which down to
tiie very end of Poland had an equal share in the
management of the State, as represented by the
national assembly, or the Saym. This pohtical
equality was accompanied by social equality or
fraternity, for the Shlaldita repudiated all social
discriminations — the titles of the Polish nobiUty
are a late importation from abroad — and its
members designated one another as brothers, a

14 Jews of Russia and Poland

form of address which has survived down to
this day.

Thus the Polish aristocracy was turned into an
autocracy; the State became an estate. L'Siat
c'est tnoi, in the hteral sense of the word, became the
inviolable principle of the Shlakhta and its slogan
in the coming struggle against the two rival powers
which arose to dispute its authority ; the dominion
of the king and the power of the middle class.

Triumph of the Shlakhta over Royalty and Burghers

The restoration of Poland in 1306 brought
both of these powers upon the scene. The Pohsh
monarchy was, from its earliest beginning, con-
stitutionally limited by the power of parHament
as controlled by the nobility. But the Shlakhta,
which was anti-monarchic in principle as well as in
temperament, was impatient of the slightest mani-
festation of royal interference. With a persever-
ance and an adroitness which one does not generally
associate with Polish nobihty, the Shlakhta was on
the lookout for every favourable opportunity to
reduce the power of the crown and to wrest from
it greater and greater privileges. This tendency
was held in check as long as the two dynasties of
the Piasts and the Yaguellos were firmly en-
trenched upon the thi'one. When, however, the
last scion of the Yaguellos died in 1572 without
issue, it immediately asserted itself and Poland

Polish Regime 15

was converted into a republic with an elective king
as its cliief magistrate. In other words the Polish
state fell again into the absolute control of the
Shlakhta, with a royal puppet as a plaything in
their hands.

More formidable was the other rival, the rising
middle class, the townspeople or the burghers.

During the preceding partitional period, Poland
had, by poUtical disintegration and the repeated
raids of the Tatars, been turned into a wilderness.
To raise the country from its economic helplessness,
Vladislav I, the restorer of Pohsh royalty, and still
more so his great son Casirair, encouraged the
immigration of German settlers into Poland.
These settlers, consisting mostly of tradesmen and
handicraftsmen, an element entirely lacking in
primitive Poland, were to supply the missing mid-
dle class or the tiers elat. To safeguard the new-
comers against the encroachments of the nobility,
the Polish king granted them the so-called "Mag-
deburg Law," which guaranteed to them complete
I autonomy in the cities to be inhabited by them.
The German immigrants succeeded by their thrift
and industry iu bringing prosperity into the land,
and to lay their impress upon its civilization.
The traces of this German immigration are still
visible today not only in the Polish vocabulary,
in which the very word for commerce is still
handel, but also in the Polish hatred against
everything German, — a hatred even more intense

i6 Jews of Russia and Poland

than the hostility to the Russian oppressor, for
in the former case the hatred is accentuated by
admiration, in the latter case it is mitigated by
contempt.

But the new settlers, who, aided by the sense of
order and discipline, soon covered the country
with a net of well-organized mimicipalities and
flourishing merchant guilds and trade-unions,
also bade fair to become formidable political
rivals. The Shlakhta was quick to perceive the
new danger and rapidly declared war upon their
opponents. The deadliest weapon in the hands of
the Shlakhta, which economically had been easily
outrun by the burghers, was the legislative power
of the Diet which was still at their absolute dis-
posal, and by means of this political steam-roller
they succeeded in crushing completely the political
ambitions of their competitors. The Diet of
1496 decreed that no burgher was allowed to hold
land outside the towns, and since land-holding was
an indispensable prerequisite for the noble rank,
and noble rank, in turn, was an indispensable pre-
requisite for participation in the Diet, this law
once for all checked the political advance of the
burghers.

A further set of laws granting all kinds of eco-
nomic privileges to the Shlakhta, such as freedom
from customs and income tax, and throwing the
whole burden of the State upon the burghers,
throttled the commercial development of the

Polish Regime

17

middle class. Finally the so-caEed sumptuary
laws, which forbade the burghers to conduct them-
selves outwardly as the Shlakhta, for instance, to
wear the dress of a noble or to shave their beards
after the same pattern, sealed the social degrada-
tion of the middle class. As a result, the burghers
were now thrust back into their original positions,
the towns and cities, where they continued to
exercise their old prerogatives of self-government,
— a fact of vital importance in the history of the
Jews of Poland, — but they were reduced to utter
impotence as far as the affairs of the State were
concerned. The Shlakhta was able to vindicate
its principle: I'Stat c'est mot.

This process was accomplished in the latter
part of the sixteenth century, about the same time
when the death of the last scion of the YagueUos
resulted in the triumph of the Shlakhta over the
royal power. The victory of the Shlakhta was
complete, — but it was a Pyrrhic victory. For the
Shlakhta possessed none of the qualifications which
might have enabled the country to dispense either
with the economic services of the middle class or
with the political restraint of royal authority.

Effects of Shlakhta Rule

Here we find ourselves face to face with certain
characteristics in the make-up of the Shlakhta,
which were just as decisive for the development of

k

i8 Jews of Russia and Poland

Poland as they were for the history of Polish
Jewry. Alongside of many admirable qualities
which lend a peculiar charm to many aspects of
Polish life, the Shlakhta reveals a glaring lack of
just those virtues which make for permanent suc-
cess in economic and political life. To be sure,
generalizations are invidious, and no one has
greater reason to beware of them than has the
Jew, but all students of the Polish past and ob-
servers of present-day Polish life seem to be
imanimously agreed on the subject.

The most striking characteristic of the Shlakhta
is its love of liberty, but this liberty is not the
Kantian freedom, which manifests itself in self-
restraint, but that morbid liberty which degener-
ates into the most appalling lack of self-restraint.
This spirit of misconceived liberty, or rather
license, shows itself in the hostile and even con-
temptuous attitude towards work which has
characterized the Shlakhta throughout the ages.
And coupled with this indolence is a marked ten-
dency towards extravagance and prodigality.
Politically, this lack of self-restraint reveals itself
in inconstancy and instabihty, rendering impos-
sible both the positive capacity of directing and the
passive virtue of obeying. To quote the words of
George Brandes, who up to a few months ago was
as much idolized by the Poles as the Poles were
idolized by him, the Poles are: "Obstinate, com-
bative, and quarrelsome, recognizing no higher law

Polish Regime

19

than their own will." And, above all, the Poles,
who are proud of comparing themselves with the
French, are fond of show and externalities, lacking
the solemn sincerity of the Germans and the crude
directness of the Russians. They are inclined to
place form above content and to prefer shadow
to substance.

These characteristics, fatal in economic life no
less than in the sphere of politics, bear the main
responsibility for the economic and political dis-
integration of Poland. They account for the fact
that the Polish Empire, in spite of its enormous
natural resources, became one of the most destitute
countries of the world, in which the only seeds of
civilization were planted and cultivated by Ger-
mans and Jews. They explain at the same time
the fact that one of the oldest parliamentary
peoples in Europe became a byword among the
nations for lawlessness and misgovemment.

The fruits of these fatal characteristics came to
light immediately after 1572. The conversion of
the Pohsh monarchy into a republic after the ex-
tinction of the Yaguello dynasty was the logical
outcome of the previous political development of
Poland, But the monstrous imposition of an
elective royalty on a republican structure was
merely a reflection of the Pohsh love for externali-
ties. For the king was deprived of all the author-
ity generally associated with royalty. He had no
power either over the military or poHtical or £

20 Jews of Russia and Poland

ministrative or financial affairs of the State, all
of which were concentrated in the Saying as con-
trolled by the Shlakhta. Nor could the Polish
king, the creature of elections — and elections of
a most degrading character, in which not only
political intrigues, but shameless and undisguised
graft played a most important r61e — radiate even
a scintilla of that divinity which doth hedge a
king. " We are the electors of the kings. " These
words were brutally flaunted in the face of Sigis-
mund III, at the Diet of 1604. "You may reign
but you dare not rule. ' ' Nor was the king, in this re-
spect far beneath his subjects among the Shlakhta,
unrestricted in his personal freedom. He was
under the constant supervision of the nobles; he
was frequently bullied and insulted more than his
commonest citizen, and we have at least two cases
on record in which successful candidates for the
Polish throne secretly fled from the royal honour
and had to be pursued by Polish horsemen.

This farce of royalty might perhaps have
proved less pernicious, if the Shlakhta, which more
than ever claimed to be the nation, had adhered,
as it did formerly, to its noble principles of liberty,
equality, and fraternity, and if the Saym, controlled
by them, had remained the source of authority and
government. Unfortimately, however, the fate
of these principles was like that of royalty: the
shell was retained but the kernel was destroyed
and turned into its very opposite. With the

Polish Regime

21

loosening of royal authority a few noble families
managed to concentrate the whole wealth of the
country in their hands, while the rest of the
Shlakhta, the smaller squires, sank to the level of
the degraded peasants, or khlops. Being precluded
by law from following the occupation of the
burgher or the peasant, — for in both cases he lost his
noble rank, — the Polish squire had no other choice
than to enter the service of the big lord, or the
Pan, thus swelling his retinue. As a result, Poland
fell into the hands of a few families, such as the
Pototzkis, Zamoyskis, Chartoryskis, Radziwills,
Sapiehas, e tulli quanti, — all names full of haunt-
ing memories to Polish-Jewish ears,— who ruled
over whole provinces and, surrounded by thou-
sands of squires, were infinitely more prosperous
and infinitely more powerful than the Idng. To be
sure, liberty still remained the watchword of the
Shlakhta, but it was not, to quote Heine again,
'"ITie true divine hberty of a Washington; only a
very small section, men such as Kosciuszko,
grasped the meaning of the latter and sought to
propagate it." [Liberty] "was only the slogan of
the nobility, which endeavoured to squeeze out of
the king as many privileges as possible, and in
this manner to bring about a state of anarchy."

The liberty of the Pans degenerated into the
most atrocious form of Hcence. They ruled over
their dominions with almost incredible tyranny,
trampling under foot the most elementary rights of

22 Jews of Russia and Poland

human life and honour, except that this tyranny,
not being dictated by any principle or pohcy, but
rather reflecting the fleeting whimsicalities of an
unrestrained temper, was aimless and reckless, and
was occasionally relieved by flashes of just as
aimless and reckless magnanimity. As for the
smalt squire, externally, to be sure, he remained
on terms of equality and fraternity with the Pan;
he had exactly the same voting power at the Saym
as his most serene paymaster, but in reality he was
nothing but a miserable tool in the hands of his
lord, helping to carry out his political ambitions.
He was, just as ever, addressed by the Pan as
"brother, " with that exquisite mixture of courtesy
and brutahty with which even a Pole of today is
prone to exclaim: "Kochany Bracie, idz do diabla,"
" Beloved brother, go to Hell. " He was oppressed
and maltreated like the khlop. The Pan would
occasionally crop his nose and ears and would
frequently flog him, with that, from the Polish |
point of view, essential distinction, that the squire I
was never fiog^d unless a rug was placed beneath
him.

Finally the Saym, the Diet, the fountain-head of
authority and government in Polish lands, did not
escape the same fatal transformation. The pro-
cedure and the forms of parliamentary government
were observed as rigidly as ever, except that par-
liamentary government Itself became a farce as
miserable as Polish royalty. The Saym became a

Polish Regime

23

I
I

^L was F
^H theri;
^B deleg!

seething cauldron of strife and dissension, and the
hot -bed of the terrible jealousy of the great noble
houses, a jealousy so mortal that when the Russian
bayonets were already blocking the road to the
PoUsh chamber, and it was thought that a coalition
between the Chartoiyslds and the Pototzkis was
the only means of averting the impending min, the
former replied that they preferred the tyranny of
Muscovy to the tyranny of their feUow-nobles.
The sessions of the Saym became opportimities for
endless rhetorics, and it is a matter of record that
in 1792 when Poland had already been cut up
among its three neighbours, when the only chance
of salvation lay in the forthcoming struggle against
Russia, the discussion of the reorganization of the
army consumed no less than full six months.

But often enough the Polish delegates proceeded
from words to deeds, and the Saym of 1764
was pointed to with pride, because no more than
a score of people were killed in the course of
the parliamentary proceedings. It is a matter of
history that no less than twelve diets were broken
up before the official opening, because several
delegates insisted each on submitting his proposals
first, and this method in madness; or perhaps,
better, this madness in method, reached its culmi-
nation when the law of the so-called Liberum Veto
was passed, a law which gave every single deputy
the right to veto a bill though adopted by all other
delegates. All that a deputy, that is, of course, a

Jews of Russia and Poland

Shlakhchitz, had to do to prevent the passing of a
law was to arise and exclaim: "Nieposwalam," "I
do not pennit it, " and not only was the particular
law not passed but the whole Diet was dissolved
in consequence, with the result that for fully two
years, until the convocation of the next Diet, the
country was in a complete state of anarchy. In
the course of 112 years no less than forty-eight
diets were dissolved as a result of this Liberum
Veto. To what extent this canker of lawlessness
had eaten into the vitals of Poland may be gathered
from the fact that when in 1791, nineteen years
after the first partition of Poland, the last Polish
king, Stanislav Poniatovski, managed through a
clever stratagem to pass through the Diet the
famous constitution of the 3d of May. in which the
elective monarchy, the Liberum Veto, and other
similar abuses were abolished, another section of
the Shlakhta immediately armed itself against the
king and, by invoking the aid of Russia, brought
about the second partition of 1793 and the final
dissolution of 1795.

Some perhaps may wonder as to the connection
between the degeneration of the Shlakhta and the
disintegration of parliamentary rule in Poland
with the history of the PoUsh Jews, but I make bold
to say that the connection is most vital. We shall
later learn to what extent this social process af-
fected the general development of Polish Jewry,
but one fact may be anticipated at this point.

Polish Rdgime 25

If there is anything that is characteristic of Polish
Jewry in its earlier stages, it is its extraordinary
executive abihty and sense of discipline. The
former enabled the Polish Jews to fight their
economic battles against overwhelming enemies.
The latter made it possible for them to evolve
an internal Jewish organization which throws into
shade any similar attempt made by Jews in modem
times, either in this or any other country.

But the Polish Jew Hved for several hundred
years in close contact with the Shlakhta. He
could not help looking upon the Pan as the only
guardian of authority and the only representative
of government, and if the Polish Jews of today are
credited with quaUties of a very opposite kind, if,
to repeat Brandes's characterization of the Poles,
they are found to be "obstinate, combative, and
quarrelsome, recognizing no higher law than their
own will," if rhetorics seem to take the place of
activities, if even the forms of parliamentary pro-
cedure are turned into a weapon of anarchy, if
the lack of self-restraint, in a word, the spirit of
nie pozwalam, is still stalking abroad in the councils
of PoUsh Jews, we have no right to regard these
failings as being characteristically Jewish, or even
characteristically PoHsh-Jewish, but we have to
consider them one of the many excrescences of our
Diaspora life, which, to be sure, it must be our
duty to cure, but to cure not with clumsiness and
violence, but with patient and loving hands.

26 Jews of Russia and Poland

The Polish Church

To complete the picture of the social organiza-
tion of Poland, a few words must be said about one
more class of Polish society which was of fatal
importance in the history of Polish Jewry, — I refer
to the Church, As in all other countries, the
Polish church, too, while professing that its king-
dom is not of this world, managed to dominate this
world. The conversion of King Miechyslav to
Roman CathoUcism in 966 made Poland a trib-
utary of the Roman Curia. The embodiment
of discipline, the Church was bound to triumph
over a nation whose very soul was the lack of
discipline. In wealth, it rivalled the burghers;
in political influence it vied with the kings and the
Shlakhta, and it gradually succeeded in estab-
lishing its power over the minds of all.

The sixteenth century, as in all other aspects of
Polish history, marks also a crisis in the history of
its Church. The successes of the Reformation,
which appealed far more strongly to the independ-
ent spirit of the Shlakhta, than the severe discipline
of Rome, assumed such alarming proportions that
in 1655 the Jesuits were called in to combat it.
And the disciples of Loyola triumphed. To be
sure, the peculiar condition of the Polish monarchy
did not allow the Church to introduce into Poland 1

the monstrous forms of Western European intoler-
ance, but a black cloud of ignorance and super- ^^J

Polish Regime 27

stition covered the mental horizon of Poland
and kept it in darkness down to the very end of
the eighteenth century. Poland fully realized the
debt she owed to the Jesuits and paid it promptly
one year after the first partition, in 1773, — by
expelling them. But the remedy was applied too
late. Finis PolonuE was stamped on the fore-
head of Poland.

Origin of Polish Jewry

We have now reached the point of vantage from
which we may observe, at our leisure, the whole
panorama of Polish-Jewish history, not as an iso-
lated, and hence unintelligible, phenomenon, but
as part and parcel of the general history of the
Polish people.

For it may, indeed, be said that in no other coun-
try is the history of the Jews so co-extensive, so
inextricably interwoven with the history of the
surrounding nations as it is in Poland, Already
in the early national sagas, centring around the
semi-mythical Piast, the organizer of the Poles,
the Jews appear as an important factor in the Ufa
of the country. For it is a Jew, Abraham Por-
khovnik, by name, who, according to legend, was
accidentally elected king of Poland, and, with true
Jewish sagacity, renounced the thorny Polish
crown in favour of the worthier Piast.

Whence these early Jews originally came is a

28 Jews of Russia and Poland

matter of tincertainty. The conjecture that they
emigrated from the lower Danube has not been
substantiated; at any rate, this original wave of
Jewish immigration was later followed and absorbed
by a larger movement from Western Europe, par-
ticularly from Germany. Having started towards
the end of the twelfth century, as a result of
the Crusades, and proceeding on the crest of the
general wave of German settlers into Polish lands,
it gained constant momenttun diuing the four-
teenth and fifteenth centuries from the persecu-
tions of the Black Death and the massacres of
Armfleisch and Rindleder. The German origin
of the Polish Jews is still manifest not only in
their characteristically German names, but also
in their language, which is essentially the same as
they carried it with them in the twelfth century
from the shores of the Rhine.

Another huge wave of Jewish immigration
poxired into Poland at the end of the fifteenth and
at the beginning of the sixteenth century from
various European countries, whence they were
driven either by direct expulsion or indirect per-
secution, notably from Bohemia, whose immi-
grants soon became a controlling factor in the life
of the Polish Jews. This immigration process may
be said to have been completed by the decree of
Sigismund II, the last of the YagueUos, issued by
him only a few months before his death, in which,
at the request of his Jewish subjects, he allowed the

Polish Regime 29

settlement of Bohemian Jews, yet adding the
proviso that no more Jews be permitted to enter
Poland.

True, a further movement within the Polish-
Jewish population took place in the seventeenth
century, when, on the one hand, a number of
German Jews fled into Poland from the unrest of
the Thirty Years' War, while, on the other hand,
the massacres of 1648 drove thousands of Polish
Jews into Western Europe. But, on the whole, it
may be said that the Pohsh Jewry of the end of the
sixteenth century is the parent of the present
Jewry of Russia and Poland, which, by natural
increase, has grown to its present numbers, con-
stituting one-half of the whole House of Israel.

The Royal Privileges

The Jewish immigration into Poland was, as
we have just seen, due to the negative influence
of Jewish persecutions in the countries adjoining
'oland. But it was, even to a larger extent,
■ompted by the positive encouragement which the
'ews received at the hands of the Polish rulers.
We have now arrived at one of the fundamental
forces in Pohsh- Jewish history.

The Polish kings, infinitely superior, both in
-capacity and sagacity, to the Polish Shlaklita,
endeavoured to graft upon their nation the quali-
ties making for progress, which it so sadly lacked,

30 Jews of Russia and Poland

and they were, at the same time, anxious to
counterbalance the omnipotence of the Shlakhta
by promoting the rise of other estates. The same
motives which actuated the Polish rulers in encour-
aging the immigration of Christian tradesmen and
handicraftsmen from Germany animated them in
favouring the settlement of German Jews, who,
in addition, not only brought capital into the land,
but also the ability to handle capital.

Apart from these motives, the Polish kings, at
least many of them, were actuated by utilitarian
reasons of a more personal character. The kings
were frequently poor. They had to depend on a
treasury, equally poor, and the Jews were ready to
pay, and, as we learn from contemporary evidence,
did pay, generously and handsomely for every
privilege accorded to them. If it be true, as a
Pohsh proverb asserts, that Poland was a gold mine
to the newcomers, it is just as true, at least as far
as the kings and the Jews are concerned, that the
newcomers were a gold mine to Poland. Legend
reports that Casimir the Great was prompted in
granting his charter of liberties to the Jews by his
love for the beautiful Jewess Estherka. The latter
fact need not be questioned, for the hatred against
Jews has never extended to Jewesses, and Casimir
the Great, being a typical Pole, was a particularly
fine judge of female beauty. Yet it is certainly
far more true, as Casimir himself repeatedly asserts
in that same charter, that the Jews were reserved

Polish Regime

31

sue!

OUT own interest and the Interest of our treas-
' It is not accidental that a later king, Casl-
mir IV, in confirming and extending the privileges
granted by his predecessors to the Jews was in
such straits that he was compelled to pawn the
ibes and silverware of his queen. And Sigismund
I, with a frankness not always to be met with
long the diplomatic Poles, declares in a decree
of 1539 that the Jews Hving on the estates of the
Shlakhta and paying taxes to them were entirely
the power of their noble landlords. " Similarly, "
le proceeds, "we do not wish to know anything
ibout the wrongs inflicted on these Jews; for those
who offer us no advantages have no right to count
on our protection. "

However, it is an unprofitable, as well as an un-
imfortable occupation, to dig too deeply into the
lotives of human action. Looking back upon the
;tory of the Jews of Poland, we may gratefully
:knowIedge that the statesmanship of the Polish
igs, if not their tolerance, made Poland a haven
refuge for the Jews; while the rest of Europe,
id even the rest of the Polish nation, seemed to
ive made common cause to destroy them.

I The so-called "general privileges" of Polish
as distinguished from the privileges ac-
jrded from time to time to individual Jews, are
I based upon the charter which was granted in

364, during the partitional period, by Boleslav

32 Jews of Russia and Poland

the Pious of Kalish, Duke of Great Poland, to the
Jews of his principality, and was, in the following
centiuy, confirmed by King Casimir the Great,
who extended it to the Jews of the whole kingdom.

The charter of Boleslav and Casimir, the provi-
sions of which were no doubt drafted by the Jews,
and were patterned by them after similar privileges
obtained by them in some countries of Western
Europe, forms the comer-stone of the legal position
of Polish Jewry. It was prompted, as is expressly
stated in the postscript, by the desire of the king
that "the above Jews, whom we have reserved for
ourselves and the country, and for our special
treasury, may realize during our happy reign that
they have found comfort with us." The provi-
sions of the charter are made up of positive rights,
insuring the economic progress of the Jews, and of
negative privileges, protecting their personal and
religious security. To the former belong the
freedom of transit, of trade, and of financial opera-
tions, which latter pursuit occupies a prominent
place in the document. The charter in particular
confers upon the Jews the right of receiving all
kinds of pledges and also mortgages upon the es-
tates of the nobility. To the latter class belong the
numerous provisions securing the personal and
religious safety of the Jews.

The Jews are placed under the patronage of the
king, they are send camerce, though in a more deli-
cate form than in Germany, Their jurisdiction

^^ oni

Ksh

■thi
ai

Polish Regime 33

is entrusted into the hands of the Voyevoda and
the Starosta, two dignitaries of high rank who were
regarded as the personal representatives of the
king in the various provinces and towns of Poland.
The Jews are exempted from the jurisdiction of the
ecclesiastical as well as the municipal law courts,
both, as we shall see, uncompromisingly hostile
to them. They are to be judged by a special of-
ficer appointed by the Voyevoda, who, though a
Christian, is, on account of his functions, to be
designated as the "Jewish Judge." To guard
against any miscarriage of justice, only too likely
to occur in the case of a Jew, it is provided that
the testimony of a Christian against a Jew must
be corroborated by a Jewish witness.

The Jew is vouchsafed inviolability of life and
limb. Murder and injury inflicted on the Jew
are severely punished, just as severely, — this is in
one instance expressly stated, — as in the case of a

ihlakhchitz. Heavy fines are imposed for invading

le house of a Jew or for kidnapping his wife or

child. A fiu-ther clause which is evidently directed

against the endeavours of the clergy forbids the

annoyance and maltreatment of a Jew who enters

Christian house or visits the municipal baths.

A special paragraph, surprising in its humane-

less, imposes a fine on the Christian neighbours
of the Jew who refuse to come to his aid when he
cries for assistance in the night-time. Particular
emphasis is laid, and we shall subsequently see

L

34 Jews of Russia and Poland

how greatly this emphasis was needed in Poland
and how little it availed, on securing the Jews
against the charges of ritual murder or the violation
of the host. Such charges, having, as the charter
states, been refuted by the authority of the Pope,
had no validity unless corroborated by the testi-
mony of four Christians and three Jews, all of them
Polish citizens and "unshakable in their faith."
The Christian who fails to substantiate these charges
is to be punished by death and confiscation.

A number of paragraphs are designed to secure
the religious freedom of the Jews. Attacks on
Jewish synagogues or cemeteries are heavily pun-
ished. The form of the Jewish oath is rendered
more dignified and less offensive to Jewish senti-
ment. The Jew cannot be forced to return his
pledges on Sabbaths and holidays ; he is allowed to
apply his method of slaughtering animals and to
sell the ritually unfit meat to the Gentiles.

Finally, a number of paragraphs contain the
germ of the vast Polish- Jewish autonomy of sub-
sequent times, with which we shall deal in a later
chapter. The "Jewish Judge" appointed by the
Voyevoda is bound in his verdict by the approval
of the Jewish Elders. He is to sit near the syna-
gogue or in any other place indicated by them.
Certain cases may be tried by the Jewish Elders
themselves, without the interference of the officials,
and the refusal to obey their verdict is pmiished
by severe fines.

Polish Regime 35

Opposition of Polish Estates

This charter of Boleslav and Caslmir, which was
ratified by almost every subsequent king of
Poland down to the very end of the commonwealth
represents the maximum of toleration which the
Jews were able to secure during the whole of the
Middle Ages in Christian Europe, and, it may be
added, in many countries of today. But its fate
was determined by the fact that it was not a spon-
taneous gift of the Polish people, which, on the
contrary, begrudged the slightest favour shown to
the Jews. As a matter of fact, when we examine
the provisions of the charter, we find that they
already presuppose the existence of forces bitterly
opposed to them. They are not so much a charter
of privileges as a sort of safe-conduct through an
enemy's land. The kings were able to grant
liberties to the Jews, but they were not able to
grant them liberty. This charter is rather the
starting point of a systematic and more or less
organized warfare against them on the part of the
Polish nation, as represented by its various estates.

This warfare may be said to constitute the sum
and substance of the external history of the Jews
in Poland, — history, in the dismal connotation of
the Jewish Diaspora, that is, history not made by
the Jews, but made against them. The belliger-
ents in this struggle are, on the one hand, the Jews
supported, more or less efTectively, by the kin^.

/
/
/

/

36 Jews of Russia and Poland

and, on the other, the three estates of Poland, the
Allies, if you wish: the Church, the Shlakhta, and
the burghers, who fight against the Jews, generally
in separate campaigns, occasionally in combined
attacks.

The peasants, or khlops, are hors de combat^
except that the Jews occasionally serve as the light-
ning-rod of their hatred against their noble oppress-
ors. As for the other estates, their war against the
Jews is not a succession of pitched battles or spec-
tacular defeats or triumphs ; it is a slow and grinding
struggle in the subterranean regions of economic
life. It 'is waged by the imobtrusive method of
economic and social restrictions on the part of the
Synods of the Church, the Sayms of the Shlakhta,
and the municipalities of the burghers, and is only
at intervals varied by the more violent contrivance
of public riots and charges of ritual murder. It
is, to use an illustration now so familiar to us,
essentially a siege war. Both enemies are strongly
fortified, trenches are taken and retaken, the ene-
mies advance and recede for a few yards; open
fighting above ground is varied by secret mining
operations under ground, resulting in an occasional
explosion ; in short, every inch of ground has to be
fought for. It would be a difficult, and indeed a
useless task to follow this long and uninterrupted
warfare in its slow and tortuous zigzag course.
The description would be just as tiresome and just
as unenlightening as the daily bulletins about some

Polish Regime 37

of tlie operations in the present war. It will,
therefore, be best to sketch this whole process in
its broad outlines, confining the description to a
few salient incidents.

Polish- Jewish history, like Polish history in gen-
eral, is divided into two natural halves: the period
prior to the end of the Yaguello dynasty, in 1572,
when the royal charters and the protection of the
kings exercised, if not a controlling, at least a
restraining influence; the second period begins
after 1572 with the establishment of an elective
monarchy, when the royal liberties, though just as
frequently given and confirmed, are nothing but a
"scrap of paper," which, to be sure, is still to be
bought and to be paid for by the Jews, but is in
its operation as powerless as is the king himself.

Hostility of the Church

Our analysis of the attitude of the Polish Estates
towards the Jews must begin with the Church, not
only on account of her power over the minds of
individuals, but also on account of the fact that,
being controlled by cosmopoHtan influences and,
therefore, less concerned about the local interests of
the country, and being also, in consequence of her
enormous wealth, financially far more independ-
ent of the Jews than the king and the Estates, she
was indefatigable in her efforts to destroy Jews and
Judaism. Her attitude toward the Jews is tersely

38 Jews of Russia and Poland

expressed in the resolution adopted by the Ecclesi-
astical Synod of 1542, which reads:

Whereas the Church tolerates the Jews for the sole
purpose of reminding us of the torments of the Saviour,
their number must not increase under any circum-
stances.

This gospel of hatred, uttered in the name of one
who commanded to love one's enemies, became her
inviolable rule of conduct throughout the whole
extent of PoUsh history.

Already in 1266, two years after the promulga-
tion of the charter of Boleslav, and as a protest
against it, the S5niod of Breslau adopted a number
of severe restrictions against the Jews on the plea
that

whereas Poland is a new plantation on the soil of
Christianity, it is to be feared that her Christian
population will jdeld more easily to the influence of
the superstitions and wicked customs of the Jews
living within it.

Hence the Synod strictly prohibits any form of
social intercourse between Jews and Christians,
an intercotirse which was as common in ancient
Poland as it was in early Western Etirope. To
prevent this intercotirse the Synod proposes to
segregate the Jews in ghettos, and to distinguish
them from the surrounding population by a special

Polish Regime 39

head-gear, and by a number of other restrictions
of a similarly degrading character.

Of all the canonical prohibitions, the most far-
reaching is the one barring Jews from collecting
customs, and from occupying other public offices.
Similar rules were adopted or confirmed by the
later Church councils, one of which (that of Kalish
in 1420) goes so far as to force upon the Jews living
in the Church districts the payment of a special
tax to the Church by way of compensation for
having displaced the Christians.

In general, these demands of the Church re-
mained, during the period under consideration,
merely pia desideria, the realization of which the
kings endeavoured to prevent. But in some cases
the heavenly power triumphed over earthly roy-
alty. Thus, when Casimir IV, who was greatly in
need of money, confirmed the ancient privileges of
the Jews, the Archbishop of Cracow threatened
him with the torments of hell and compelled him
to revoke the charter previously confirmed by him,
a fact which was advertised by heralds in all the
places of the kingdom and was accompanied by
anti-Jewish riots.

It is needless to say that the Church did not
neglect the well-tried and never-failing contrivance
of ritual murder and host Hbels, although, as we
have seen, they had been made legally inadmissible
by the royal charters. In this particiUar en-
deavoiu: the Church was readily assisted '"

40 Jews of Russia and Poland

inhabitants of the towns, the burghers, who had
special reasons to fear the Jews. As elsewhere,
these charges serve as an index of the intensity
with which the Jews were hated. They break out
like pus, reveaUng the progress of the hidden
disease.

• During the first period, ecclesiastical trials
against the Jews, owing to the protection of the
kings, did not assiune the frequency which char-
acterized them later on. They formed neverthe-
less an important weapon in the warfare of the
Church. In 1399 thirteen Jewish elders of Posen,
a city in which the economic struggle between the
Jews and Christians was particularly intense, were
charged with having stolen and pierced three hosts,
from which, of cotirse, blood was miraculously
flowing, and they were burned alive on a slow fire.
To add insult to injury, the Jews had to pay a
yearly tax for having committed the crime, a tax
which was levied upon them until the end of the
eighteenth century. In 1699 the Christian com-
munity of Posen celebrated the tercentenary of
this great miracle, and from that time onwards
representatives of the Jewish community were made
to head the annual procession, while carrying a
large picture representing the crime, — an honour
from which the Jews freed themselves only in
1724 by a heavy ransom. In 1407 the charge of
ritual murder engineered by the clergy led to a
terrible riot in Cracow, in which numbers of Jews

Polish Regime

41

were killed and robbed. Jewish pogroms were
a not infrequent occurrence. A special feature
from the earliest time of Poland was the so-called
SchiUergelaitj, a term coined by the Jews, designat-
ing the systematic attacks of young priests, the
pupils of the Church colleges, who were employed
very much in the same manner as the gangsters
of today, not only to assault the Jews but also
to force from them, by blackmail, economic
concessions.

The advent of the Reformation intensified the
hostility of the Church towards the Jews. The
success of the liberal doctrines was ascribed to the
influence of the Jews, who were even charged with
having converted a large number of Christians to
Judaism. Litemry anti-Semitisrrrof the medieeval
"made in Germany" brand raised its venomous
voice against the hated tribe. These sentiments
foimd their expression in the resolution of the
Synod of 1542, already referred to, beseeching the
king to enforce the canonical rules passed on pre-
vious occasions ; to check the increase of the Jews
in the country, to prohibit the building of new
synagogues, and to bar the Jews from acting as
stewards of the Shlakhta Estates, as weU as from
exhibiting their goods in public, and other resolu-
tions of the same humane character.

To convince the adherents of the Reformation
of the mysteries of the Eucharist, a new host trial
was arranged in Sokhachev in 1556, with the help

^

42 Jews of Russia and Poland

of a papal nuncio. King Sigismund II, who was
sufficiently enlightened to perceive the true motive
of the agitation, sent at once an order to stop the
trial, but the clergy outwitted the king, and three
Jews were burned at the stake prior to the arrival
of the royal warrant. It is unnecessary to go into
further detail. The facts quoted illustrate suffi-
ciently the attitude of the Polish clergy, which
was not a jot better than that of their " brethren in
Christ" in Western Europe; with this distinction,
however, that its real power in Poland began
after 1572, at a time when in Western Europe its
power was already on the wan,e.

Economic Prosperity of Polish Jewry

The struggle between the Jews and the other
two estates is mostly of an economic and partly
of a social character, though it clothes itself
occasionally in an ecclesiastical garb.

To appreciate the issues involved in this par-
ticular struggle, we must become clear about the
economic position of the Jews in Poland. We have
seen above that the Jews were welcomed by the
kings primarily as capitalists, and, since capital
was especially scarce in Poland, both king and
people were even more than elsewhere sadly in
need of it. It is natural, therefore, that the Jews
became, what they had long become in other
countries, money lenders. The bulk of Casimir's

Polish Regime

43

charter consists of paragraphs dealing with this
occupation, and from the liberties granted we can
infer that money lending was considered to be an
absolute necessity for the economic progress of
Poland.

But the Jews of Poland were not only possessed
of capital, they were capitalists, that is, they were
the only ones who, in a coimtry handicapped by
the lack of executive ability among its inhabitants,
knew how to apply capital. The Jews, therefore,
became the financiers or the bankers of Poland.
Already in the twelfth century the Jews acted as /
farmers of the royal mint, and we possess from that/
century coins on which the names of the Polish
kings are stamped in Hebrew characters. In'
consequence of this financial and executive ability,
the Jews became tax farmers, that is, they leased
the numerous varieties of public revenue, and they
were able, not only to collect them much more
efficiently than their Christian fellow-citizens, but
also to advance in cash the enormous sums repre-
sented by them. The Jews were furthermore
frequently employed as the financial agents of
the king and the court, thus becoming both the
Geldjuden and the JJoJjuden.

Apart from these financial operations, the Jews
were busy in opening up the natural resources of
Poland. They became the captains of industry,
farming the mines, the salt quarries, the timber of
the country, as well as managing the estates of the

44 Jews of Russia and Poland

kings and nobles. Their efficiency may be gauged
from the fact that, in spite of ail ecclesiastical pro-
tests, the Synod of 1643 had to pass a resolution
condemning the bishops who employed the Jews
as stewards of their estates.

The Jews, engaged in all these pursuits, formed
the upper layer of Jewry, whose influence and
success may be illustrated by a few examples.
Viezhynck, a Jewish merchant of Cracow, of the
fourteenth century, presented to the granddaughter
of Casimir the Great, as a wedding gift, the sum of
one hundred thousand florins in gold, equal to her
dowry from her grandfather. Abraham, a Jew
of Bohemia of the early sixteenth century, who was
recommended to Sigismund I by the King of Bo-
hemia and the Emperor of Germany, farmed the
Jewish taxes for the whole of Pol;md, for a huge
sum, which he was able to advance in cash. His
contemporary, Yosko (Joseph), occupied, under
Alexander Yaguello, a king otherwise unfriendly
to the Jews, the post of royal farmer of tolls and
customs in nearly half of Poland. Michael Yose-
fovich, of Brest, in Lithuania, equally of the six-
teenth century, was the farmer of the royal revenue
in the whole of Lithuania, and acted sometimes as
the treasurer of the Grand Duchy, paying the
salaries of the officials as well as the creditors of
the king. The members of this Jewish Hante
Finance, which forms a typical element in the
composition of Polish Jewry, particularly in its

i

Polish Regime 45

early period, also enjoyed the personal favour and
protection of the king, and considered and con-
ducted themselves as noblemen ; in Lithuania they
were dubbed the " Shlakhta of Jerusalem. "

The middle class of PoUsh Jewry was made up
of merchants, shopkeepers, and traders who carried
on domestic and foreign commerce, an avoca-
tion to which centuries of practice had inured the
Jews. The lowest class was finally made up of
handicraftsmen, an occupation which became more
and more characteristic of the economic life of
Polish Jewry.

Rivalry of Ike Burghers

In the pursuit of these their economic endeav-
ours, the Jews were bound to clash with the two
Polish Estates, the Shlakhta and the burghers.
I shall discuss the struggle with the latter first,
because it affected the broad masses of Jewry, and
was conducted with much greater violence and
perseverance than the fight between the Jews
and the Shlakhta.

The interests of the burghers and the Jews were
conflicting from the very beginning. Both had
been encouraged by the early PoHsh kings to
immigrate into Poland and to settle in the towns,
and they both engaged in trades and handicrafts.
Moreover, these burghers were far more serious
opponents than the Poles; they were industrious,
they were persistent, and they were well organized

46 Jews of Russia and Poland

in their magistracies, merchant guilds, and trade-
unions, and, in addition, they imported with them
the virus of German anti-Semitism,

The success of the Jew was sufficient to whip
their latent antagonism into open opposition.
For with all their German thrift and industry,
which made them so superior to the. Poles, they
were no match for the Jews. One only has to re-
call the type of medieeval German shopkeeper so
exquisitely portrayed in The Cloister and the Hearth,
who in his postprandial nap was so forgetful of his
business interests that the lady customer in her
despair "poked the point of her Uttle shoe into
the sleeper and worked it round in him like a
gimlet," to realize that still less in his adopted
country could he hold his own against the agility
and quick-wittedness of the Jew. Moreover, the
Jews, through their relations with their co-reHgion-
ists iu other lands, and through an aptitude ac-
quired in the course of centuries, were particularly
successful in their foreign commerce, establishing
and almost monopolizing the commercial relations
with far-ofE Crimea and Turkey, as well as with
nearby Germany and other coimtries of Western
Europe. Finally, being far more inclined than his
Christian fellow-citizen to seek the comforts of
life in the study and practice of his rehgion, he
was more easily satisfied with the goods of this
world. No wonder, then, that the Jews became
. dangerous and successful opponents.

Polish Regime

47

I

The fight against these rivals assumes the double
form of open violence and silent restriction.
Attacks of the mob upon the Jews, generally
organized with the ever -ready help of the clergy,
became a favourite weapon of war in the large
cities. But here the burghers were up against the
kings, who energetically intervened against this
method of solving economic problems. Thus,
when in 1455 a violent pogrom, engineered and con-
ducted by the famous papal nuncio Capistrano,
was raging in the capital of Cracow, the king him-
self, Casimir IV, appeared on the scene and, after
stopping the disorders, imposed upon the authori-
ties of the city the heavy fine of thirty thousand
gulden. Still more characteristic is the action of
Sigismimd I, who, in 1530, when anti- Jewish riots
were being arranged for In the same city, not only
issued a decree threatening the rioters with death
and confiscation, but also forced the burghers of
Cracow to deposit ten thousand gulden as a
pledge that public order would not be disturbed.

More successful proved the silent warfare of
restrictions. The Jews in the cities, in accordance
with the royal privileges, formed an estate by
themselves; they were legally exempt from the
operation of the municipal courts and subjected
to the jurisdiction of the Voyevoda. Yet the
burghers managed, in the course of time, to restrict
their right of residence and trade in these cities.
To be sure, de jure a ghetto was never recognized

■ Th'

■ of I

48 Jews of Russia and Poland

in Poland, but de facto it gradually came into use.
Thus when a fire broke out in Cracow, m. 1494,
during which the property of the Jews was pillaged
by the mob, King John Albrecht, evidently yield-
ing to the desire of the burghers, ordered the Jews
to settle in the suburb Casimiezh, which since that
time has remained a purely Jewish town.

This tendency became accentuated towards the
end of this period, owing partly to the spread of
the Reformation and partly to the increased im-
migration of the Jews from Bohemia and adjoining
lands. In 1532 the Jews of Posen were Hmited to
their old quarters and the number of Jewish houses
was confined to forty-nine. In smaller cities the
Jews were similarly segregated and there were a
number of towns which received the special privi-
lege, called de non-tolerandis JiidtEis, of prohibiting
the settlement of Jews altogether. Alongside of
the restrictions in residence, commercial disa-
bilities were similarly wrested from the king, who
often had to yield to the powerful municipaUties
which occasionally acted in common, as was the
case with Posen, Lemberg, and Cracow.

The result of this agitation was the gradual
elimination of the Jews from the retail trade and
their limitation to wholesale business, which was,
in turn, hedged in by all kinds of restrictions.
Thus in 1515, the Jews of Lemberg, at the request
of the municipahty, were ordered by Sigismund I
to limit their commercial activities to the' sale of

Polish Regime 49

cloth at the fairs, while a few years later (in 1521)
they were confined altogether to wax, furs, cloth,
and cattle. The Jews of Posen were forbidden, in
1520, to keep shops in the market-place and to buy
food and other commodities until the Christians
had finished their purchases.

Finally, royal support having proved unavailing,
the Jews were forced to open negotiations with the
magistracies themselves, and to make arrange-
ments with them, on terms, needless to say,
advantageous to the burghers. The earliest agree-
ment of this kind is the one concluded between the
Jewish community and the magistracy of Cracow
in 1485. Such agreements now became a regular
feature, insuring a modus vivendi for some time to
come. In spite of all these restrictions, the Jews
during this period still remained essentially town
dwellers. But the limitations imposed upon them
by the burghers were inevitably bound to drive
them from the cities into the country, a tendency
which will assume vast proportions in the following
period and will, to a large extent, characterize it.

Enmity of the Shlakhta

The struggle with the burghers affected the
Jewish middle class, the tradesmen and artisans.
The opposition of the Shlaklita was directed
against the upper class of the Jews, the capitahsts.
The members of the Shlakhta were not disturbed

so Jews of Russia and Poland

by the Jewish merchant, for they loathed com-
merce and forfeited their patent of nobility when
they managed to overcome their loathing. But, rich
or poor, they were always in need of cash and they
had a great deal to do with the Jewish money
lender, whom they hated the more the less they
were able to dispense with him. Nor were they
above the desire of getting hold of the huge profits
which they saw flowing into the pockets of the
Jewish tax farmer, although they had none of his
ability or energy. And, above all, they deeply
resented the social position of these Jewish finan-
ciers who sometimes controlled the finances of the
kingdom and arrogated to themselves the rank of
noblemen, and whom they hated with a triple
hatred as men of low birth, as members of a de-
tested race, and as professors of an accursed
religion.

It is greatly to the credit of the Shlakhta and
due largely to that fortunate Polish appreciation
of extemahties, which we had occasion to point
out previously, that their sentiments never as-
sumed the shape of open violence. An old legend,
in all likelihood invented in a later period, tells of
a Jewish deputation from Germany which came
early in the ninth centurj- to the ruler of a PoHsh
province, applying for permission to settle on
Polish territory. To their anxious inquiry, "Will
you murder us?" the Jews received the reply,
"Folska sslachla nie morduje" ("Polish gentlemen

Polish Regime

51

do not murder"). To the second inquiry, "Will
you rob us?" the answer wasgiven, " Polskasdachia
nie rabuje" ("Pohsh gentlemen do not rob").
And, indeed, it must be owned that this has been
the attitude of the Polish nobles towards the Jews
throughout the ages. But this attitude ought not
to bhnd us as to the real sentiments of the PoHsh
nobility. For these ancient noblemen, who are
described in the legend as hating all that is cruel
and violent, were the progenitors of the Poles of
our own day, who not so long ago were patrolhng
the streets of their cities to prevent the outbreak
of pogroms and who only a few years later did not
hesitate to throttle the Jew by a method just as
cruel and far more deadly, but perfectly clean and
respectable,^the method of the economic boycott.
In accordance with this characteristic, the fight
of the Shlakhta against the Jews proceeds along
"legitimate" lines, and assumes the form of parlia-
mentary legislation adopted at their diets. Al-
ready at the Saym of 1347, during the reign of
Casimir the Great, the staunch protector of the
Jews, the Shlakhta passed a set of laws restricting
their financial operations, and these restrictions
were officially justified by "the wicked endeavours
of the Jews to destroy the welfare of the Chris-
tians. " Both the restrictions and the reasons for
them, the latter in an even more offensive form,
were repeated, with additional limitations, at
subsequent diets, — such repetitions being neces-

52 Jews of Russia and Poland

sary in Poland where life and law were always at
loggerheads with one another.

The general recrudescence of anti-Semitism in
the sixteenth century also manifested itself in the
attitude of the nobility. Having crushed the
burghers politically, the Shlakhta was now willing to
gratify them by restricting the economic liberty of
their Jewish opponents. The culmination of this
tendency is found in the constitution of the Saym
of 1538, which contains a special section dealing
with the Jews.

We hereby decide and prescribe that from this time
onward and for all times, all the farmers of revenues
must unconditionally consist of landed nobles and
persons professing the Christian faith. . . . We decide
for inviolable observance that no Jews be allowed to
farm the collections of any form of revenue. For it
is undignified and in contradiction with divine right
that people of this description should be admitted to
honours of any kind or to the discharge of public func-
tions among Christians.

The constitution of 1 538 further provides that the
Jews shall have no right of unrestricted trading,
but shall in every instance carry on their com-
merce with the special permission of the king or
under a special agreement with the municipal-
ities. The trade in the villages is closed to them.
The financial operations of the Jews are hedged in
by a whole set of restrictions, and, in conclusion,

^

Polish Regime

53

the constitution reaffirms the ancient regulation
of the Church, imposing a special headgear upon
the Jews.

This constitution of 1538, which was affirmed
again in 1562 and 1565, may be said to sum up the
official line of conduct of the Shlakhta in the first
period of Polish-Jewish history.

Looking backward at this period as a whole, we
find that it opens with a fair promise of Jewish
Kberty, and that it closes with the menace of
economic and social rightlcssncss, while the inter-
val is characterized by the slow but steady advance
of the forces that aim at the destruction of Judaism.
If, in spite of all this, Poland shines brightly on the
firmament of the Jewish Diaspora, it is because of
the intense blackness that covers the other Jewish
centres. The protection of the king was, on the
whole, a fair safeguard against the violation of
life and limb. The strife between the Estates, the
laziness of the Shlakhta, and the helplessness of the
country, gave the Jews a little breathing space and
enabled them to make a Evelihood. This was all
that the average Jew — I am not speaking of the
few exceptions — demanded of his Christian en-
vironment. For while his misery was due to his
neighbours, his happiness, which was in very truth
not of this world, depended on himself, and we shall
see in the chapter dealing with the inner hfe of ''^"'
Polish Jews that the sixteenth cp

54 Jews of Russia and Poland

growing anti-Jewish sentiment and anti-Jewish
legislation, was the classic age not only of Jewish
communal organization but also of Jewish spiritual
activities.

The Jews oj Lithuania

This is the place to insert a few words about the
Jews of Lithuania, which down to its amalgama-
tion with Poland in 1569, three years before the
end of our period, continued as a separate duchy,
in which the position of the Jews was somewhat
different from that of the Jews of the Crown, or
Poland proper. The origin of Lithuanian Jewry is
wrapped in obscurity. According to the current
hypothesis, it was made up of two streams of
immigration: an older stream flowingthroughsouth-
em Russia from the east and a later one coming
from the west. These two elements were grad-
ually blended together, although some far-reaching
differences in the mental make-up and even in the
physical features of Lithuanian Jews, which may,
in part, be due to different origin, have not been
obliterated down to this day.

The later introduction of Christianity among the
original inhabitants of Lithuania and the adher-
ence to the Greek orthodox faith on the part of the
conquered population prevented the Church from
gaining her ascendancy as quickly and as thor-
oughly as in the lands of the Crown. This weakness

Polish Regime

55

of the Church, coupled with the purely agrictdtural
character of the country, secured for the Jews of
the Duchy a larger amount of religious tolerance
and a greater latitude in their economic pursuits.
In the fourteenth century most of the important
communities of Lithuania appear to be firmly
estabHshed. The legal position of the Lithuanian
Jews is based on a charter of privileges granted to
them by Grand Duke Vitold in 1388, which was
similar in content to that of Casimir the Great.
The greater religious tolerance of Lithuania fav-
oured still more so than it did in Poland the rise
of a class of influential Jews who, as tax farmers
and big merchants, attained to considerable wealth
and influence. The occupations of the lower
dasses of the Jews were more varied than in Poland
and included down to modem times the pursuit
of agricultiu-e.

With the growing rapprochement of the two
countries the anti-Jewish influences of Poland
gradually penetrated into the Duchy. Even the
scourge of ritual murder libels was introduced into
Lithuania towards the end of this period (in 1562),
so that Sigismund II, in his capacity as Grand Duke
of Lithuania, was compelled to intervene energeti-
cally on behalf of the Jews. The triumph of
anti-Semitism is reflected in the so-called second
Lithuanian Statute, published in 1566, three years
before the amalgamation with Poland, which incor-
porated the anti-Jewish constituf- " "-''

56 Jews of Russia and Poland

Diet of 1538. The following restrictions of that
Statute may be quoted as an illustration of the
position occupied by the Lithuanian Jews prior
to that period :

Jews shall not wear costly clothing nor chains, nor
shall their wives wear gold or silver ornaments. The
Jews shall not have silver mounting on their sabres and
daggers. They shall be distinguished by character-
istic clothes, they shall wear yellow caps, and their
wives kerchiefs of yellow Unen in order that all may
be enabled to distinguish Jews from Christians.

Decline of Polish Jeivry after IS 72

The second period of Polish-Jewish history
begins with 1572 and extends until the year 1772,
in which, through the first partition of Poland,
a compact mass of Jews was brought for the first
time under the dominion of Russia. The death of
the last Yaguello and the subsequent conversion
of Poland into the hybrid form of a republican
monarchy sealed the triumph of the centrifugal
forces of Poland. With the loosening of royal
authority, the Jews lost their principal point of
support and became an easy prey to the powers
opposed to them. To be sure, the Polish kings,
including even the anti-Semitic rulers of the Saxon
dynasty, still continued to ratify the ancient
Jewish liberties and even to add new ones. But
there was no reason in the world why their voice

Polish Regime

57

should have been more Kstened to in matters affect-
ing the Jews than it was in the general affairs of
the kingdom.

The valorous Sobieski, who delivered Vienna
from the siege of the Turks, a staunch friend of
the Jews, whose memory still lingers among the
Jewish people in Poland, was brutally insulted at
the Diet because of his interest in the Jews. The
last King of the Poles, Stanislav Poniatovski, was
elected on condition that he refrain from showing
favours to the Jews, although he was not barred
from the empty formality of confirming their
ancient charter of liberties, a formality which was
of little value to the Jews, though it may have
been of some monetary value to the king.

As a result, the powers of darkness which we saw
timidly raising their heads in the previous period,
now stalk about fearlessly in broad daylight. The
Church, having triumphed over her enemies within
Christianity, now proceeds openly and system-
atically against the Jews, the enemies outside of
it- The Synod of 1733, at a time when in Western
Europe new birds began to herald a new season,
repeats the mediaeval gospel of hatred, preached
in 1542, that the reason for the existence of the
Jews is

that they might remind us of the tortures of the
Saviour, and by their abject and miserable condition
might serve as an example of the just chastisement
of God indicted upon the infidels.

I

58 Jews of Russia and Poland

The Synod of 1720 forbade the Jews to build new
synagogues or even to repair old ones, and the
desire, underlying this resolution, was openly
voiced by the literary representatives of the
Church, who demanded the wholesale expulsion
of the Jews from Poland.

Ritual murder trials became the order of the
day.and the countryin which ritual murder charges
were officially forbidden eclipsed during the seven-
teenth and eighteenth century, by the number and
severity of these trials, the rest of Europe. It is
typical of the wide gap between theory and practice
in Poland that, although the ancient privileges
making such charges impossible continued to be
confirmed, although as late as in 1578 such charges
^_ were branded in a special edict of King Stephen

^H Batory as base slander, no less than thirty ritual

^V murder cases and twenty host trials took place

^H during the seventeenth century alone, and these

^H cases, in open violation of the ancient royal

^H pledges, were no longer tried by the king but by

^^1 the regular courts which imposed inhuman pun-

^^B ishments on the innocent victims. Thus in 1639,

^^M to mention one or two illustrations, two elders of

^V the Jewish community of Lenchytza, charged with

^H having murdered a Christian boy, were literally

^^L cut to pieces and himg on flag poles on the cross-

^^H roads, while the remains of the supposed martyr

^^^ were exhibited in the local Bemardine Church and

^^V nroved a lucrative source of income, — showing that

Polish Regime

59

I

the Church of Poland had greater business capacity
than the bulk of her population. In 1753 eleven
Jews of Zhitomir were flayed alive on a similar
charge, while the picture of the pretended victim,
pierced by pins, was sold all over the country
to inflame the Poles against the Jews. The at-
tacks of the theological students, the so-called
Schulergdattf, now became a permanent scourge in
Polish towns, which could be bought off only by
the payment of a regular tax to the local theological
colleges.

The burghers, freed from the restraint of royalty,
now proceeded to square their old accounts with
the Jews. In many cities the municipalities forced
the Jews, in opposition to their ancient privileges,
under the jurisdiction of their courts. They
segregated the Jews in separate quarters and re-
stricted in every possible way their freedom of
trade and handicraft. When King Vladislav IV
had granted the Jews of Cracow, in June, 1642, the
express permission to engage in export business,
he was forced by the protest of the municipality
to withdraw it two months later. This peaceful
means of warfare was varied by methods of a more
violent kind, for anti-Jewish riots now became a
regular feature, and they were no more stayed by
the hand of central authority. There is just one
feeble ray in this darkness of pogroms, and it may
be found in the fact that the Te" " ' -vtt

the dumb victims of th(

6o Jews of Russia and Poland

in Posen, in 1687, the Jews were able, with weapons
in their hands, to defend themselves against the
rioters for three successive days.

As for the SHakhta, true to its traditions, it
discouraged in its Saym resolutions the use of
violent measures, but it countenanced the quiet
and far more effective procedure of strangling the
Jew by way of economic restriction. The Saym
of 1670, in passing various hmitations upon the
financial operations of the Jews and confirming
some of the old ecclesiastical rules, justified its
action by the desire "that Jewish perfidy and
licentiousness may not gain the upper hand."
The Diet of 1768 reaffirmed the old constitution of
1538, making the trade of the Jews dependent on
the permission of the magistracies, their mortal
enemies. The Diet of 1643 fixed the legitimate
maximum of business profits as follows: "Seven
per cent, for the Poles, five per cent, for foreigners,
and three per cent, for the Jews. " And while the
commercial liberties of the Jews were thus con-
stantly curtailed, their burden of taxation was
more and more increased until it became intoler-
able. In 1740 the Shiakhta even made the at-
tempt to pass a law whereby the Jews living on the
Shiakhta estates were declared the "hereditary
subjects" of their noble owners; in other words,
were to be turned into serfs, but the proposal was
rejected on account of the loss it would entail
to the exchequer.

I

Polish Regime 6i

As a result of this coalition of forces, Polish
Jewry deteriorated not only politically but also
economically, and we shall have occasion to learn
afterwards that the deterioration affected no less
its spiritual life. No amount of industry, ability,
and frugality could save the Jews, who were cor-
nered and helplessly outnumbered by their ruth-
less enemies. True, here and there we still find a
Jewish capitalist of the old type who is able to
overcome a world of enemies and makes himself
indispensable to the king or the exchequer. But
these Jews are no longer a type; they are rare
specimens of a fast vanishing species. Jewish
trade is burdened with innumerable discriminations
and becomes unprofitable. The Jews now rush into
the crafts, and organize themselves into separate
Jewish trade-unions, soon becoming the bulk of the
artisans of the kingdom, as they have practically
remained until this day. But owing to the opposi-
tion of the Christian trade-unions and their own
oversupply of labour, the crafts yield starvation
instead of a livelihood. The Jew who had formerly
been providing capital to all the classes of Poland
now has to seek financial assistance from the same
classes; the lender becomes the borrower. This
indebtedness to the clergy and the Shlakhta, re-
presenting loans contracted not only by individuals
but also by communities for communal expendi-
tures and soon running into enormous sums,
weighs like a nightmare upon the Jewry of Poland.

62 Jews of Russia and Poland

The poverty of the Jews of this period may be
gauged from a few facts accidentally reported to
us. Thus the Jews of Posen, who had formerly
occupied the best shops of the town, now had to
pawn their synagogue curtain in order to be able
to build a fence around their cemetery. In the
same formerly rich Jewry the number of weddings
was reduced by order of the communal authorities
to four annually, and strict injunctions were issued
to economize on the wedding feasts. The Jews
of Vilna, having ransacked all of their assets to
pay a debt to the local priest, were forced with
broken hearts to pawn their synagogue lamp.
The cities which at the beginning of our period
still harboured the bulk of the Jewish population
of Poland were evidently resolved to spit out their
Jewish inhabitants, Polish Jewry was facing an
economic catastrophe. But at this jimcture, a
new factor entered upon the scene of history:
the rise of the landed nobility and the movement
of the Jews from the cities into the estates of the
Shlakhta.

The Jews uTider the Dominion of Ihe Great Nobles

The history of Polish Jewry, like the general
history of Poland, may thus be conveniently
divided into a royal period and a Shlakhta period.
If in the preceding period its main support is
found in the kings, in the second period it is found

Polish Regime

63

I

L

in the Pan. The sixteenth century is marked by
the rise of the big nobles who obtain possession of
enormous tracts of land, sometimes covering whole
provinces, and, amidst the loosening of central
authority, assume the r61e of practically independ-
ent sovereigns. Poland, to all intents and pur-
poses, is no more a uniform empire. It falls into
the condition of a regular Kleinslaaterei, being
split up into a multitude of territories connected
with one another by the loose threads of a power-
less royalty. The whole country is now officially
divided into the cities and lands standing under the
jurisdiction of the Crown and the territories owned
and controlled by the Shlakhta. The big land-
owner, or the Pan, is the undisputed master of his
khlops, or serfs, as well as of all others who chose
to settle on his estates. He is free from all re-
sponsibilities to the Crown, or at least he can easily
make himself so if he wishes to.

Now the same reasons which induced the kings
in the earlier period to welcome and protect the
Jews forced the big Shlakhta during this later
period to offer them shelter and assistance. For
the Jews were as necessary to the Shlakhta as the
Shlakhta was to the Jews. So far as the Jews were
concerned, they had become so terribly over-
crowded in the royal towns and the restrictions in
trade and residence had become so numerous
and burdensome, that they were almost mech
ically forced to seek their welfare outsj'''

64 Jews of Russia and Poland

towns. The Shlakhta, in turn, were neither able
nor willing to cultivate their estates, and they
found in the Jews a welcome substitute for their
own laziness and incapacity. Polish Jewry is thus
split into two sections ; the royal Jews, that is, the
Jews subject to the jurisdiction of the kings, and
the Sklakkta Jews, subject to the power of the Pans,
and this dualism is sanctioned by King Sigismimd
n, who, in his decree of 1539 already referred to,
limits his protection entirely to the Jews of the
royal towns, while surrendering the others into
the full power of the Shiakhta.

The development and economic stratification
of the Shiakhta Jewry runs on a miniature scale
through the same stages of development as the
royal Jewry of the previous period. The upper
layer is made up of those who succeeded in becom-
ing the financial and industrial agents of the great
nobles. They handled their financial affairs,
colonized their estates, managed their property,
opened up and marketed the natural resources of
their territories. Practically every Pan had "his"
Jew, his "factor," as the term was, or rather his
factotum, who rendered every conceivable and
inconceivable service to his noble master and
enabled him to pursue to the fullest extent what
was frequently his sole ambition in life, that of an
uninterrupted succession of pleasures and amuse-
ments. A famous instance of this type of Shiakhta
agent was Saul Katzenellenbogen, the favourite of

Polish Regime

65

the Lithuanian magnate Radziwill who, while
gaining enormous wealth for his master, was said
to command an annual income of four hundred
thousand dollars. He enjoyed, at the same time,
in^mense influence at the Court, was granted the
privilege of carrying a sword, and is said to be
identical with that mythical Saul Wahl who,
according to a wide-spread legend, occupied the
Polish throne for one night.

In the towns which now rapidly sprang up on
the territory of the Shlakhta, the Jews became the
collectors of revenue, despite the official law deny-
ing this privilege to them. The Jews also became
the shopkeepers and traders of these towns.

The less favoured among the Jews, and these
were the vast majority, moved into the villages
where they became engaged in a number of rural
occupations.

The movement of the Jews into the villages
marked a complete economic transformation of
Polish Jewry and gave rise to problems, which, as
we shall see in the next chapter, stand in the fore-
front of Jewish economic history during the Russian
regime. It is, therefore, necessary to gain a clear
insight into the character of this transformation.

The Jews settling in the villages were prevented

partly by natural ineptitude, and partly by the

^L miserable condition of the khlops from engaging

^1 in agriculture. It was, therefore, natural that

^H they should have preferred to apply their innate

66 Jews of Russia and Poland

commercial ability to rural life. Hence the Jew
became an arendar, from the medieval Latin
arrendare "to rent," that is, a lessee or tenant who
farmed the rural products of the Pan, his mills,
distilleries, dairies, fishing, game, and other items
of agrarian economy. He also became the keeper
of the village inn, or the karckma- — in Yiddish,
kraychme^Which, primitive as it was, provided the
only hotel accommodation in the country. The
Englishman William Coxe, who travelled in Poland
in 1784, testifies to the fact that on the whole high-
way between Cracow and Warsaw, extending over
258 English miles, the only places for the reception
of travellers were the inns kept by the Jews.

With the keeping of the inns was inseparably
associated the sale of liquor. The liquor traffic
was the cap- and comer-stone of the whole rural
economy of Poland and one of the most important
items in the budget of the kingdom. The produc-
tion of alcohol, owing partly to the wealth of com,
which lack of transportation facilities kept within
the country, and partly being due to the intemper-
ance of the population, fomied a most important
article of revenue for the Pan and the state, in the
same way as it has remained until very recently
the most valuable item in the state finances of
Russia, The right of distilling, or, as it was called
by a semi-Latin term, the right of propinacya, had
been accorded to the landed nobles as far back as
1496, The latter, therefore, were anxious to

Polish Regime

67

promote the consumption of their article to the
best of their ability, and their natural and eager
customers were their serfs. For the Pan who had
full power over his khlops, both in secidaribus
and in spiritualibus, did nothing for his serf,
except to keep him on the lowest rung of secular
and spiritual deterioration. The only privilege
left to the khlop was that of starving and dying,
and the only spiritual uplif tment provided for him
— spiritual in a very literal sense of the word — was
the permission to get drunk on the spirits turned
out by the distilleries of the Pan.

The Jew who farmed all other products of the
magnate took over at the same time — and we
know of some cases where he was compelled to do
so by law — this most important item, the sale of
liquor to the peasants. The Jewish innkeeper
thus became, by a natural process, the keeper of
the tavern where the khlop tried to drown his
misery in alcohol. As a result, the tragic anomaly
is created, — an anomaly for which the Jew has
had to pay dearly not only in Poland but also in
Russia down to this day,— that the most sober
people on earth is turned, in the interest of the Pan,
into the most potent factor of spreading dnmken-
ness among the neighbouring population.

Demoraliiing Effect oj Shlakkta Rule

The transition of Polish Jewry, or, at least, of
a considerable portion of it, from the power of the

68 Jews of Russia and Poland

kings into that of the Pans, was accompanied not
only by its economic deterioration but also by its
moral decline, and had not the Jew been saved by
his sf atmch adherence to his religion, this deterio-
ration would have resulted in utter degeneration.

For during the royal period of Polish- Jewish
history the influences both friendly and hostile to
the Jew, such as the kings, on the one hand, and the
Church and the burghers, on the other, were of an
impersonal character. They were guided, even in
Poland, by impersonal principles, and they could be
won over or fought off by impersonal means.
During the second period, however, the welfare of
the Jews depended entirely on the personal disposi-
tion of an tmprincipled, or rather non-principled,
Shlakhta, whose favour or disfavour could be ob-
tained or averted only by a loss of personal self-
respect. The attitude of the Pan toward the Jew
was not marked by that systematic and persistent,
one might almost say consistent, hatred which was
typical of the Church and the burghers. But it was,
on the other hand, dictated by a sentiment which
was less dangerous perhaps, but infinitely more in-
jurious, — ^that of boundless, unspeakable contempt.

This contempt, a part of the arrogance with
which the Polish nobleman looked down upon the
rest of mankind, was accentuated in the case of the
Jew by his difference in religion and nationality
as well as by his whole conduct of life. The at-
titude of the Shlakhta toward the Jew is illustrated

Polish Regime

69

by that utterance of Moravsld, the Polish Minister
of War, whom we shall meet later on, who was
horrified by the thought of the noble blood of the
Poles mixing with that of the Jews. It is perhaps
even more strikingly illustrated by the story still
circulated in Poland, which is possibly fiction, but
is certainly far truer than fact, of a Polish noble-
man, who, after the Polish insiurection of 1863,
was fleeing from his Russian pursuers into the
house of a Polish Jew. While lying in hiding
under the bed, the Shlakhchitz noticed with dis-
pleasure that the Jew, who was sheltering him
at the risk of his life, was, after the custom of his
'race, keeping his cap on his head, and, from be-
neath his hiding-place, he indignantly shouted:
"Psiakrew, zydzie, zdymchapke!" — "You dog of a
Jew, takeoff your cap!"

The Pan would not think of indulging in sys-
tematic persecutions or pogroms against the Jews
on his estate ; he would, in accordance with the
given by the ancient noblemen in the
, neither murder nor openly rob them, but,
following his whim, he would do anything to tor-
ture his Jewish subjects and above all to humiliate
them.

Contemporary chroniclers tell strange stories of
such high-handed actions perpetrated by the Pans
against the Jews. Solomon Maimon, a Polish
Talmudist and afterwards a famous German
philosopher, who had spent his childhood on an

68 Jews of Ri

_.^ anc Poland ^^^^^

kings into that of tlu

^MHS Lithuanian mag-

only by its economic ■'

,,3 itauiobiography to a

moral decline, and Ii "'"

,2^ ie wildest flight of

his staunch adherenr

^t .-cips^- Thi^ interest-

ration would have i-

^ -Of, was at the same

For dtiring the ""

-^ attCnisted with main-

history the influent*^

^^a^aoce into a church in

the Jew, such as the l^ •"

1 ^j-KU outrage. On the

Church and the bun*

impersonal character -

' J-t*«I to make amends and

Poland, by impersont

jang it than by ordering

won over or fou^l-

:£ the place to present

During the second i

.■hurch as an atonement

the Jews depended '

r-v-ther occasion the same

tion of an unprin^ '

-;.. barber to bleed him.

Shlakhta, whose f::

:ho magnate, who was, of

tained or averted

. -ables on the poor Jew,

respect. Theattr

-uitl began to bleed, or

was not marked 1;.

-;-.u'ijrtunate barber, while

one might almost y

...iing the surgical skiU of

typical of the Chu i

- r;itlier, when eight years

on the other han<'

,-.t meeting another scion

was less dangeron

, iiffered him a glass of

jurious, — that of 1

■d the kindly offer, the

This contempt

1 lu don't drink brandy,

which the Polish

liereupon a pail fuU of

rest of mankind, ■

l)Oy was flogged until

Jew by his difit;"

^(h the result that his

as well as by hit.

i.j-mined. Of another j

titudeoftheShlai

■■""I* time the hi'' ' y

^^ to whi

Polish Regime

of a royal Starosta, the story is told that, having
once by accident shot a Jewish arendar belong-
ing to his neighbour, he at once made amends by
literally packing a wagon fuU of Jews and sending
them to the adjoining estate where they were un-
loaded like so many bags of potatoes. The same
gentleman amused himself by forcing Jewish
women to cUmb trees and to crow like cocks. He
would then shower them with bullets and roar at
the sight of those falling down, whereupon he
would compensate his victims by throwing coins
among them.

Having no regard for the Jew's life and Hmb,
the Pan certainly had no respect for his reUgious
susceptibilities. He would occasionally call his
Jewish tenant and make him stand on one foot
while reciting to him Ma-yophes, one of the hymns
simg at the Sabbath table, a practice the memory
of which has survived down to this day in the ex-
pression "Ma-yophes Jew" which is widely applied
in Poland to the type of modem Jewish flunkey,
a direct descendant of the old Pan-ridden Jew.

We have quoted these examples because they
illustrate not only the cruelty of the Pans, but also
the aimlessness of their cruelty. It was sheer
madness, a madness without a particle of method
in it, and the Jew had no means whatsoever to
guard himself against it. There was no redress
against the noble barbarian , for the only authority
to which the Jew could appeal against the Pan

72 Jews of Russia and Poland

was the Pan himself. The Pan was not an enemy
of the well-defined type of the clergyman or
btirgher, with established policies and idiosyncra-
sies. He was, as the Jew properly called him, a
PoritZf from the Hebrew verb paratz, "to break
the bonds," an unfettered, imrestrained tyrant.
Hence, the only way to appease the Poritz was to
yield, to crouch and cringe, and to accept all in-
dignities with a pleasant smile. One can easily
calculate the frightful effects which centuries of
dependence on such masters were bound to have
on the charact^ of the Polish Jew. We have al-
ready had occasion to observe the ruinous effect
which the Pan's political imruliness had on the
nattirally disciplined and self-restrained Polish
Jew. But it is no exaggeration to say that what-
ever faults may attach to the Polish- Jewish char-
acter, — ^faults which the Polish Jew, knowing his
worth, can well afford to confess openly, — ^they
are the outgrowth of this dependence on the Pan,
who would allow his Jewish arendar to live on
him and his Jewish "factor" even to thrive on him,
but would exact a frightful toll from the Jewish
soul for the advantages he would accord to the
Jewish body.

The Cossack Persecutions

The description we have just given of the eco-
nomic and moral changes in Polish Jewry applies,

Polish Regime

73

with a gradual downward tendency, to the whole
period extending from 1572, the abolition of the
hereditary monarchy, until 1772, the first partition
of Poland, Black as this background may seem,
there stands out against it a patch of such appalling
gloom that in comparison with it all the sufferings
ever endured by the Jews, either in Poland or else-
where, since the great war of the Jewish people
against Rome, — ^unless we except the horrors
inflicted upon the Jews during the present war, —
fade into insignificance. We refer to the fateful
decade of 1648 to 1658, beginning with the Cos-
sack massacres in 1648, the so-called Gnezerolk
Tah, followed by the sufferings caused by the inva-
sion of Poland through the Russians and Swedes,
This perhaps blackest of aU chapters in the his-
tory of the Jewish Dispersion is largely due, at
least in its inception, to that ill-mated and ill-
fated co-operation between the Jew and the Pan,
the effects of which we have just had occasion to
describe.

The amalgamation between Poland and Lithu-
ania in 1569 brought the immense south-eastern
frontier provinces of the empire, the so-called
Ukraina ("frontier"), comprising the present
governments of Chernigov, Poltava, Kharkov,
Kiev, and parts of Podoha and Volhynia, into close
touch with the central provinces of Poland, The
popidation of these provinces was by race Russian,
or, more correctly, Little Russian or Ruthenian;

74 Jews of Russia and Poland

by religion they beloixged to the Greek Orthodox
Church. They were, moreover, of a waxUke spirit,
which had been bred in them by their constant
fights against the invasions of the neighbouring
Tatars. The most courageous among them had
penetrated even farther east and had established
a sort of military republic behind the falls of the
Dnieper. The members of this republic, who, by
the way, had received a considerable admixture of
Mongolian blood, were designated as Cossacks^
a Tataric word signifying "robbers."

At the end of the sixteenth century the territo-
ries of the Ukraina began to be colonized by the
Polish magnates. While keeping themselves at a
safe distance, they sent their stewards to exploit
the Ukrainians. Among these stewards were
many Jews who served as sponges to convey the
wealth of the country and the toil of its inhabitants
into the pockets of the Pans. They acted as
"arendars," in the various ftmctions connected
with this term; they were frequently employed as
collectors of customs and tolls, in which capacity
they exercised a certain amotmt of jurisdiction
over the native population. The treatment of the
Ukrainians was little different from that accorded
to their fellow-khlops in the lands of the Crown,
but they were of a more independent spirit, and
deeply resented the rule of masters, who were not
only of a different race, but also endeavoured to
lure them by fair, and often by foul, means from

Polish Regime

75

their Greek Orthodox creed into the fold of Roman
Catholicism,

At last the exasperated Ukrainians, led by Bog-
dan Khmielnitzki, whose infant son is said to have
been flogged to death by a PoUsh noble, managed
to ally themselves with their brethren beyond the
Dnieper, the Cossacks, and to call to their aid their
former enemies, the Tatars, who kept a. covetous
eye on disintegrating Poland and were only too
glad to have a share in the booty. The united
hordes of the Ukrainians, Cossacks, and Tatars
had no difficulty in shattering a Polish army sent
against them, and the Ukrainian khlops, freed
from their bonds, began an orgy of carnage which
knows few parallels in the history of mankind.
Every Catholic priest they met was hung up at the
high altar, together with a Jew and a dog. Through-
out the Ukraina the Polish nobles, such as were to
be foimd there, were hunted down, burned, blinded,
flayed, and sawn asunder.

The fury of the serfs, directed against the Pans,
who had tormented them physically, and against
the CathoUc priests, who had oppressed them
spiritually, vented itself with particular vehe-
mence upon the Je^^-s, whom they regarded as the
immediate vehicle of their oppression. Led by
Bogdan Khmielnitzki and his henchmen, the
savage Haidamacks, — or rioters, as they were
called in their native dialect, — started a systematic
hunt of the Jews throughout the country, begin-

76 Jews of Russia and Poland

ning with Podolia and Volhynia and penetrating,
by way of Galicia and the region of Lublin, as far
as the borders of Lithuania and White Russia.
Whole communities, numbering thousands of Jews,
were wiped out in one day ; young and old, men and
women, not one escaped from the clutches of these
beasts in human shape. In Niemirov (Podolia),
the first target of the Haidamacks, six thousand
Jews were put to death in one day. In Polonnoye
ten thousand, in Narol twelve thousand, and in
Bar — ^all of them either in Volhynia or Podolia —
fifteen thousand Jews suffered the same fate. Yet
death was kindness in comparison with what pre-
ceded it. Our ears, though hardened by the tales
of actual or fictitious atrocities on the present
battlefields, are incapable of listening to the deeds
committed by these savages who called themselves
Christians. I say advisedly "Christians," for it
is a dreadful truth that the Tatars were a paragon
of humaneness in comparison with the Greek
Orthodox Cossacks, the ancestors of those of our
own day who display similar savagery for the
benefit of European civilization.

As for the Jews, needless to say they gloriously
justified their reputation for martyrdom, which
they had long before acquired in other countries.
The Jews of Poland were not quite as easy game
as their brethren of Western Europe had been in
former days. We have several reports of armed
resistance offered by them to their enemies. We

Polish Regime

77

hear of the defence organized by the Jews in con-
junction with the Poles, and we are told that the
Polish army operating against the Cossacks in the
field contained also a Jewish regiment of one
thousand men. But in the main the Jew knew
better how to die than how to fight, and, encour-
aged and led by his spiritual guides, he joyfully pre-
ferred rack and torture to apostasy, which would
have saved him from both.

In Polonnoye, three hundred Jews, clad in their
shrouds and prayer-shawls, gathered in the syna-
gogue, and with fervent prayer on their lips,
awaited the murderers. In Tulchyn, the Jews
exhibited even greater heroism. They had, in
conjunction with a few hundred Polish Pans,
managed for a long time to defend this fortified
town against the besieging Haidamacks, when
they suddenly learned that the Pans, in spite of
their solemn oath, intended to save their lives by
betraying the Jews to their enemies. The Jews
proposed to make short work of the Polish traitors,
but here arose Rabbi Aaron, the President of the
local Talmudic Academy, and reminded them of
the danger in which they would place by such an
act their brethren throughout the Polish Empire.
The Tulchyn Jews, led by the same Rabbi, allowed
themselves to be betrayed and butchered to a
man. It may perhaps afford some satisfaction to
learn that the treacherous Pans did not escape their
nemesis. For a new horde of Cossacks speedily

78 Jews of Russia and Poland

arrived and, chiding them for their treachery,
sent them to their fate.

Nor did the women yield in heroism to the men;
they surrendered their lives rather than their
honour. Many Jewish girls were carried away
by the Cossacks and forced into marriage. One
of them, while on her way to the wedding cere-
mony, jimiped from a bridge and was drowned;
another made the Cossack believe that she knew
a charm against bullets, and thus tricked her
husband into killing her.

All of these massacres, however, were merely
a prelude to further sufferings. Khmielnitzki was
finally compelled to stop his outrages, but the
Russians came on the heels of the Haidamacks.
The barbarism of massacres, a gruesome parallel
to contemporaneous events, was followed by the
terrorism of the soldiery. In 1654, the eastern
part of the Ukraina, the so-called province of Little
Russia, was annexed by the Russian Empire, and,
in accordance with its traditions, the few Jews who
had survived there were totally expelled. Simul-
taneously, the Russian army, supported by the
Ukrainians, invaded the provinces of White Russia
and Lithuania in the north-east^ spreading death
and misery among the Jews of the region hitherto
spared by the Cossacks. The occupation of the
Polish cities by the combined hosts of the Cossacks
and Muscovites spelled expulsion to all Jews and
death to those who remained behind. Large com-

Polish Regime

79

mimities like those of Moghilev, Vitebsk, and par-
ticularly the famous commimity of Vilna ceased
for a time to exist.

And while Russia was thus dealing with the
north-east of Poland, the Swedes, as if to complete
the parallel of today, invaded Poland from the
west and penetrated into, the very heart of the
country, taking one city after the other, including
Cracow and Warsaw, and the Polish Jews, to re-
peat the Biblical simile quoted by an eye-witness,
were like the man who "fleeth from before the
lion and is met by the bear, " It is interesting to
note that throughout this period of invasion the
Jews exhibited remarkable loyalty to Poland.
While the burghers of Lithuania submitted with
undisguised satisfaction to the Russian invader,
the Jews, together with the Polish nobles, fought
for the honour of Poland. In Vitebsk the Jews
took a most energetic part in the defence of the
city, a fact which was duly reported to the Polish
king by six hundred Lithuanian nobles, and a little
later the Jews of Brest, although they had become
so impoverished that they owned no more than
sixteen shops in the city, offered of their own
accord to tax themselves heavily for the benefit of
the war against the Russian enemy. Yet the
mere fact that the Swedes behaved like human
beings and treated the Jews as such was sufficient
to cast aspersions upon the loyalty of the Jews,
and the Polish army operating against the Swedes

8o Jews of Russia and Poland

now began a campaign of slaughter and persecu-
tion against the Jews of Great Poland and Little
Poland which laid waste whole communities and
brought the Jewish population to the brink of de-
spair. And as if to crown the destruction of man,
Heaven poured forth its wrath upon the Jews who
became the victims of a. terrible plague that broke
out after the war.

Effects of the Cossack Persecutions

It is difficult even approximately to estimate the
number of Jewish victims who fell during this most
gruesome decade. A contemporary writer calcu-
lates the number of the slain at 675,000; they cer-
tainly amounted to hundreds of thousands and
exceeded by far the combined Jewish victims of the
Crusades and Black Death. Poland was bent, it
would seem, on making up for lost time. Nearly
seven hundred communities were destroyed and
the material loss was incalculable. The economic
condition of the Jews, which, as we have seen, had
prior to this time suffered a severe decline, now
sank to still lower depths. In the once flourishing
Ukraina only one-tenth of the Jewish population
remained, while in the part ceded to Russia Jews
for a time disappeared altogether. Polish Jewry
was bleeding from a thousand wounds and it
seems a miracle that it did not bleed to death.

To us of today it must be of special interest to

Polish Regime

8i

know how the sufferings of the Jews in Poland
affected the Jews outside of Poland. The response
was truly magnificent. An avalanche of Polish
Jews, driven by fear of death and baptism, swept
all over the countries of the civUized world, not
only over Germany, Austria, Moravia, Bohemia,
Italy, and Holland, but also over Turkey, Egypt,
and North Africa, Everywhere the refugees
were offered material help and, what is more,
brotherly sympathy. Thousands upon thousands
of Jewish captives were carried by the Tatars
to the east, particularly to Constantinople and
Saloniki where they were ransomed by their fellow
Jews at high prices. The town of Texel, in Hol-
land, gave a friendly reception to three thousand
Lithuanian Jews. The Jews of Venice spent large
sums of money on ransoming their Polish brethren,
while the members of the Jewish community of
Livomo passed a resolution taxing themselves to
contribute twenty-five per cent, of their income
towards the rehef of the unfortunate. Particu-
larly sympathetic were the Jews of Germany,
although they were themselves the poorest of the
poor and had just passed through the horrors
of the Thirty Years' War. The interest of the
European Jews in the Polish relief work was so
great that the poor of Palestine were starving in
consequence of this neglect, and they had to
send a special envoy to remind the European Jews
of their needs.

82 Jews of Russia and Poland

Nor were the Jews outside of Poland left unre-
warded for their brotherly kindness. With the
stream of Jewish refugees came a wave of spiritual
energy which moistened and fructified the soil of
the Jews of the Diaspora. Many prominent
scholars were soon occupying leading rabbinical
positions in the cities of Western Europe. The
seeds of Polish- Jewish culture were carried all over
EiiTope and they grew into new plantations.
Some historians are inclined to look upon the
spread of this culture as a step backward, since it
retarded the progress of enlightenment among the
Jews. But they have overlooked the fact that
the same influence has also stayed the ravages of the
so-called Enhghtenment. At any rate, the Jews
of that time felt most grateful for the spiritual help
accorded to them and paid an unstinted tribute
of gratitude and admiration to the superiority of
the Polish Jews.

As for Polish Jewry itself, those who had under-
gone the sufferings of that terrible period seemed
to think that jt5^r61e had come to an end. But
they had underestimated its^vitaUty. Aided by
a strong central organization, — an organization
with which we shall have to deal later on, — the
Polish Jews began gradually to recover from the
horrors of destruction and they were soon able to
hold their own. To be sure, a cloud had perma-
nently settled upon the mental horizon of Polish
Jewry and was from now on fed by the vapours

Polish Regime

83

of the general economic and political disintegration.
Yet it still remained a depository of enormous
spiritual energies. Polish Jewry still exceeded in
numbers aU other Jewries of the world and, right-
less as the Pohsh Jews were, they had, after all,
more rights than the Jews of Germany who could
eke out an existence only by lending money or sell-
ing old clothes. The Polish state was, to use the
words with which the Diet of 1764 was opened,
"like an open house, like a dwelling devastated
by storms, like a building without an owner,"
and the Jew was less disturbed in his search for a
few crumbs of bread than he was in the strictly
managed and well-kept households of Western
Europe. Owing to the appalling growth of poHti-
cal anarchy and the almost incredible economic
deterioration accompanying it, the Jews, in spite of
all prohibitions, managed to fill the trades and to
remain the only standard-bearers of the commer-
cial interests of the country; but withal PoHsh
Jewry was merely the shadow of its former self.
It was dragging along wearily until the partition
of 1772 sounded the death knell of Poland.

The Polish period of Jewish history ends in a
shrill discord. In the pandemonium preceding
the dissolution of Poland, the Ukrainian Haida-
macks broke out once more against the Poles and
the Jews, and perpetrated countless massacres
which culminated in the terrible Jewish butchery

84 Jews of Russia and Poland

of Uman. In perpetrating these massacres, the
Haidamacks were encouraged by the Rtissians
and, — SL terrible omen for the future, — a fictitious
ukase was circulated in the name of Catherine
II calling upon the Greek Orthodox to murder the
Poles and the Jews. These cruelties marked the
entry of the new owner into the ownerless house.
Four years later, in 1772, the first partition of
Poland was an accomplished fact.

History of Polish Jews after 1772

I shall now, in conclusion, pass in rapid survey
the salient facts of Polish-Jewish history after 1772.
The first partition of Poland split Polish Jewry into
three parts. The Jewry of the province of Posen
soon fell under the spell of German culture, and
while still manifesting a distinct and vigorous
mentality, which singles it out even within the
highly cultivated mentality of German Jewry,
has been lost forever to its old Polish associations.
Galicia fell at first under the misdirected policy
of compulsory efilightenment of Joseph II and,
though for the last two generations protected and
favoured by the benign sway of Francis Joseph,
has been kept by the Polish rulers of the land in
a state of economic helplessness and spiritual
depression.

As for Poland proper, the catastrophe of 1772
seemed at first to bring the nation to its senses. . In

Polish Regime 85

a fit of repentance the Polish people began to
remedy the evils which had led it to ruin. The
Jewish problem could not but force itself on its
attention. The investigation of a special com-
mittee had brought out the fact that the Jews, who
multiplied rapidly, now formed nearly one-eighth
of the whole population. They furnished nearly
50% of the artisans of the country and controlled
75% of the exports, but were, in spite, or rather
because, of it, in a precarious economic condition.
One-twelfth of them were idle and one-sixtieth of
them consisted of beggars. Having been cooped
up in the towns, a large number of Jews had moved
to the land and eked out a miserable existence by
selling hquor to the peasants. Instead of attempt-
ing to remedy the underlying causes of the evil,
the Poles began to sacriiice the interests of the
Jews to those of the khlops and the burghers, whom
they were now anxious to compensate for past
indignities. The Saym of 1768 had already placed
the Jews in the towns at the mercy of their com-
petitors and haters, the municipalities. The same
poUcy led to the expulsion of the Jews from War-
saw in 1775 and to the perpetration of a pogrom
in the same city, thou^ in a mild Polish form, in
1790.

This attitude towards the Jews, contrasting
strangely with the hberal tendencies which had
but recently penetrated into Poland from revolu-
tionary France, was now explained and excused by

86 Jews of Russia and Poland

the complete isolation of the Jews from the sur-
rounding population, that isolation which was the
unavoidable result of the whole social structure
of the Polish Empire, To be sure, there were
noble-minded Poles who wished to include the
Jews in the new tendencies of regeneration, and
made their voice heard at the national assemblies,
but all their projects were conveniently shelved
in the parliamentary committees. The famous
constitution of the 3d of May, 1791, which was to
be the Magna Ckarla of rejuvenated Poland, and
jemoved the ancient evils of the monarchy, such
as elective royalty, the Liberum veto, the rightless-
ness of the burghers, and the misery of the khlops,
did not contain a single word of cheer for the Jews.

The year 1793 brought the second partition of
Poland, which was followed by the popular uprising,
led by Kosciuszko. The Jews, though segregated
from the rest of the people, offered their sympathy
and co-operation to the noble dictator. In War-
saw, during the siege by the Russian army, a
regiment of Jewish volunteers was organized by
Berek Yoselevich, which covered with their bodies
the road on which the army of Suvorov finally
entered the Polish capital.

The erection by Napoleon of the Varsovian
Duchy, in 1808, marked the introduction of French
laws and liberties into the new commonwealth,
but it brought no relief for the Jews. While
granting liberty and equality to all its citizens.

4

L

I

Polish Regime 87

the Duchy of Warsaw managed to deny them to
the Jews by its decree of 1808, which, with true
Polish politeness, suspended the operation of the
new constitution in favour of the Jews for ten years,
until "they have eradicated their pecuhar char-
acteristics," The temper of the Ducal Govern-
ment and the singular make-up of the Polish
character are perhaps best shown by the fact that
when Berek Yoselevich, the hero of 1795, who
had in the meantime continued to fight for Poland,
died a warrior's death in 1809, after a series of
glorious exploits against the Austrians, he was
eulogized in an eloquent oration by the mighty
Pototzki, while the profound gratitude of the
coimtry expressed itself in the munificent privilege
granted to his widow and denied to other Jews, —
the right of selling whiskey on one of the principal
streets of Warsaw.

In 1813, the government of the Duchy lifted
its hand to strike a fatal blow at the economic
interests of the Jews by issuing a decree forbidding
the sale of Uquor by the Jews in the villages, a
measure spelling ruin to tens of thousands of
Jewish families. Only the dissolution of the
Varsovian Duchy averted this danger.

The Congress of Vienna of 1815, which gave its
assent to the formation of an autonomous Pohsh
kingdom under the sovereignty of Russia, provided,
though in ambiguous diplomatic phraseology, for
the emancipation of the PoUsh Jews. Needless

88 Jews of Russia and Poland

to say it remained a dead letter, although, in the
meantime, there had arisen in Poland, particularly
in Warsaw, a class of modernized Jews who were
itching to sacrifice their Jewish peculiarities to
Polish liberties. On the contrary, the formation
of Russian Poland called forth a recrudescence of
the anti-Semitic disease, and in 1818 it began to
break out in the form of ritual murder charges
which, curious to relate, had to be stopped by
the mighty word of St. Petersburg.

This anti-Jewish attitude has remained the key-
note of Poland tmtil this day, interrupted only by
those critical moments when Jewish co-operation
seemed more profitable than Jewish hatred.
When the insurrection of 1830 broke out the Jews
of Warsaw were eager to show their loyalty to their
country and to fight for it. They were, at first,
roughly rebuffed by Moravski, the Polish Minister
of War, who loftily exclaimed: "We shall not
allow that the blood of the Jews shall bQ mixed
with the noble blood of the Poles." The Jews
were finally permitted to sacrifice their lives, and
the type of these patriotic volimteers may be
gauged from the fact that, refusing, on religious
grounds, to shave their beards, they formed a
special regiment of bearded Jews who were
dubbed "the beardlings."

The same spirit of patriotism manifested itself
on even a larger scale during the insurrection of
1863, when the orthodox Chiefrabbi of Warsaw, \

Polish Regime 89

Rabbi Berish Meisels, and the modem preacher,
Doctor Marcus Jastrow, went hand in hand with
the representatives of the Church in protesting and
fighting against Russian tyranny. On the day of
the Jewish New Year, the Jews of Warsaw prayed
in their synagogues for the success of the Polish
cause, and concluded their divine services by
singing the PoUsh national hymn, Jeszcze Polska
nie zginela, "It is not yet over with Poland,"
Simultaneously the Revolutionary Government
issued a proclamation to the Jews which ended
with the following high-sounding promise:

And it shall come to pass when, with God's help, we
shall free our country from the tyranny of Muscovy,
we shall enjoy in common the fruits of peace. You
and your children shall be in unrestricted possession
of all civil rights. For the Government of the People
will not inquire into faith and religion, but solely into
the place of birth.

The failure of the last great insurrection of
Poland robbed the PoHsh people of the possibiHty
of redeeming their promise. But whether the
sentiments expressed in this proclamation have
been maintained by the descendants of the heroes
of 1863 is a question, the answer to which hes no
more within the province of the historian, though
it may be suppUed from contemporary events.

After decades of cruel and crushing suffering,

90 Jews of Russia and Poland

the Poles, awakened by the sound of liberty, are
encouraged again to sing their hymn Jeszcse Pol-
ska nie zginela. The Jewish people throughout
the world, which has dreamed more fervently of
freedom and has tasted more deeply of oppression
than any other race, cannot begrudge the gift of
Hberty to a nation which has always loved lib-
erty, though it may not always have understood
it, and which, by the staunch adherence to its
traditions and aspirations in the time of adversity,
has atoned for many of the errors committed in
her days of prosperity.

As for the Jews of Poland, deep down in their
hearts there has always lived the feeling that they
are part and parcel of the country which they have
helped to build up from its foundations, in which
they have faithfully shared the joys and sorrows of
its prospering and suffering people. But we Jews,
being the descendants of the Prophets, believe as
firmly in righteousness as we beheve in Hberty.
We know that tzedoko teromem gay, "righteousness
exalteth a nation," and no amount of poHtical
; and diplomatic allurements will save the
Poles, unless, learning from bitter experience,
they will bury their past, with its inequalities and
discriminations, and turn over a new leaf on which
shall be engraved the ancient ideal of Poland,
though in a fuller and happier meaning: Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity.

CHAPTER n

THE JEWS UNDER THE RUSSIAN REGIME

THE history of the Jews of Russia is, as we have
now had occasion to leam, the history of
the Jews of Poland under the regime of Russia.
The death of Polish Jewry as a political entity is
the birth of Russian Jewry. Our logical point of
departure is, therefore, the year 1772, when the
first partition of Poland brought for the first time
compact numbers of Jews under the dominion of
Russia.

Earlier Phases of Russian- Jewish History

Just by way of introduction I shall rapidly sketch
the earlier attempts of the Jews to settle on Russian
territory,- — attempts that led to no permanent re-
sult and are rather of archaeological than histori-
cal significance. For the early Jewish settlements
in Russia have no more connection with present-
day Russian Jewry than has the English Jewry
of the pre-expulsion period with the modem Jews
of England.

Already the earliest be^nings of Russia are

92 Jews of Russia and Poland

mysteriously interwoven with the destinies of the
Jews. For the very dawn of the Russian monarchy-
is marked by her bitter struggle against the
mighty Jewish kingdom of the Khazars, whose
capital was situated at the mouth of "Mother
Volga, " the Rhine of the Russians. A deputation
of these Khazar Jews appeared before Prince
Vladimir in 986, who, in his search for a new re-
ligion, invited the old historic creeds to present
their claims. Russian victories forced the Khazars
to retire into the Crimea, where they amalgamated
with the native Jews who had been settled there
from time immemorial — perhaps prior to the
Christian Era.

Partly from the Crimea and partly from Byzan-
titim an early Jewish immigration wended its way
into the old Russian principality of Kiev. The
holy city of Kiev, — ^which today, though situated
in the heart of the Pale of Settlement, is only
famous, — or shall I say, infamous? — ^for its peri-
odic hunts on the Jews illegally residing there, —
harboured in the eleventh and twelfth century
a prosperous Jewish commtmity which engaged in
trading and tax-farming and was noticed favour-
ably by two contemporary Jewish travellers, Ben-
jamin of Tudela and Petahiah of Regensburg.
We even observe signs of a spiritual activity, and
a certain Moses of Kiev is reported to have been
in correspondence with the Gaon Samuel ben Ali
of Bagdad.

Russian Regime

93

However, the latent spirit of intolerance fed
from Byzantium speedily asserted itself. The early
ecclesiastics of the Greek Orthodox Church in
Kiev were inflaming the people against the Jews,
"the enemies of God," and as far back as 1 113 his-
tory records a regular pogrom which was perpe-
trated upon the Jews of that city.

In the fifteenth century we hear of a certain
Zechariah, a Jew of the same city, who settled in
the RepubUc of Novgorod, in Northern Russia,
at that time already an important commercial
centre affiUated with the Hansa League. Zech-
ariah had the fortune, or rather the misfortune, of
convincing a few Greek Orthodox priests of the
truth of Judaism. The priests came afterwards
to Moscow and, favoured by a few exalted person-
ages, began to spread this so-called "Judaizing
heresy" in the recently chosen Russian capital.
The new doctrine was barbarously uprooted in
1504, but cropped up from time to time, down to
the nineteenth century and served as a further
deterring influence against the admission of Jews. ■

We have stray reports of other Jews who managed
to penetrate beyond the magic borders of Russia,
some of them even becoming the body physicians
of Muscovite princes, but all these attempts

^^ were sporadic and remained without permanent

^L results.

^H For already in the sixteenth century the anti-

^H Jewish policy of Russia appears to be well defined.

Mb— 1

ml

94 Jews of Russia and Poland

In 1545, Ivan the Terrible, gave orders to bum in
Moscow the goods imported by Jewish merchants
from Lithuania, while, in 1550, the same ruler
bluntly refused the request of the Polish king,
Sigismund II, who was anxious to secure for his
Jewish subjects the right of admission into Moscow
— on the ground that the Jews imported "poisoned
herbs (t. e., medicines) into Russia and lured the
Russians away from Christianity." A little later
the same inhuman despot manifested his anti-
Semitism in a manner worthier of his reputation.
When in 1563 he took the Polish city of Polotzk, —
a city familiar to American readers through Mary
Antin, — ^he gave orders to drown in the Dvina all
Jews refusing baptism. In the treaty concluded
in the following century (in 1678) between Russia
and Poland, the clause permitting merchants from
Poland and Lithuania to enter Moscow contains
the fatal words kromye zhydov ("except the Jews*'),
— ^that gruesome formula which still rests like a
blight over Russian-Jewish life.

Peter the Great — ^the revolutionary on the
throne — ^maintained, in spite of his liberalism, the
same anti- Jewish attitude, persistently disregard-
ing the representations made to him on behalf of
the Jews during his stay in Holland. His wife and
successor, Catherine I, went further, and issued
in 1727 a rigorous decree expelling all Jews from
the province of Little Russia which had been
incorporated in the Russian Empire in 1654 and

Russian Regime 95

into which the Jews, in spite of all prohibitions,
had managed to penetrate.

A little later, the Russian Government was at
one time inclined to yield to the urgent appeals of
several provinces and permit the temporary visits
of Jewish merchants. But the conversion of a cer-
tain Voznitzin, a captain of the navy, to Judaism,
which was the result of his intercourse with
the Jewish merchant Borukh Leibov, led not only
to the pubUc execution of both culprits, but also
to the withdrawal of all previous favours.

The policy guarding the Russian Empire against
the contamination of Jews fotind its definite formu-
lation in the reign of Empress Elizabeth (1741-
1762), the daughter of Peter the Great, who man-
aged to combine Greek Orthodox piety in pubHc
life with a very questionable morality in her
private conduct.

Since, in spite of aU legal prohibitions, the Jews,
driven by the economic breakdown of Poland,
managed to penetrate into Russian territory, the
pious Empress issued a decree in 1741 ordering the
immediate expulsion "from our entire empire,
both from the Great Russian and the Little Rus-
sian cities, villages and hamlets, of all Jews, both
of the male and female sex, of whatever occupa-
tion and calling." The Jews were "henceforward
under no circumstances to be admitted into our
empire for any purpose, unless any of them shall
be ready to accept the Christian faith of the Greek

96 Jews of Russia and Poland

persuasion; such [Jews], having been baptized,
shall be allowed to live in the empire, but shall not
be allowed to leave it." When inhabitants of
Little Russia, and particularly of the newly-
annexed province of Livonia, addressed urgent
appeals to the Senate pointing to the disastrous
economic consequences of shutting off Jewish
merchants from the commercial centres of the
empire, and the Senate, moved by these represen-
tations, begged the Empress to yield, Elizabeth
wrote down her famous resolution (December,
1743)- "From the enemies of Christ I do not
desire any gain or benefit." As a result of this
policy, large numbers of Jews — some say as many
as 35,000 — ^were driven from their homes, an act
of Christian piety, foreshadowing many similar
deeds on the part of Orthodox Russia.

The accession of Catherine II, or the Great
(1762-96), brought no relief to the Jews. Being
personally free not only from religious prejudices
but also from religious convictions, an admirer
of Voltaire and Diderot, and in turn admired by
them, this shrewd German princess who, as she
herself boasted, was guided entirely by "circum-
stances, conjectures, and conjimctures," considered
it to her advantage to uphold the brutal anti-
Jewish policy of her predecessors. As early as on
the fifth day of her reign Catherine II attended a
session of the Senate at which the admission of the
Jews into Russia was unanimously recommended

Russian Regime

97

I
I

to her by the Senators. In spite of her liberal
principles, she realized, as she herself frankly
informs us in her memoirs, that, having been called
to rule over a pious people and to defend the Ortho-
dox faith, having, as we may add, deposed and
murdered her husband on the ground of his anti-
Russian tendencies, she did not dare to inaugurate
her rule by a measure which might expose her to
the suspicions of her adopted coimtry. She there-
fore decided to have the whole question postponed,
and when in the same year (1762) she issued a
manifesto inviting foreigners to settle in Russia, she
added the fateful Russian formula kromye zhydov
("except the Jews"). Actuated by the same
motive, she denied two years later the repeated
appUcations of the Little Russians for the admis-
sion of Jewish merchants into their province, and
the only privilege accorded to the Jews was the
permission granted in 1769 and for the time being
purely academic in character to settle, together
with Greeks, Armenians, and Italians, in the
empty southern provinces which had recently
been annexed under the name of New Russia.

Thus, at the very beginning of our period, we
are brought face to face with the fact that, with-
out having as yet any Jews, Russia managed to
have a Jewish problem. She had already bound
herself by a barbarous policy, shutting the doors
of her vast and undeveloped territories to the en-
ergy and enterprise of the Jews, and heaping miser-

\

98 Jews of Russia and Poland

ies and misfortunes upon the Jewish people which,
by the decree of fate, was now to be driven in ever
larger numbers imder her inhospitable roof.

Contrast between Polish and Russian RSgime

In comparing the history of the Jews under the
Russian regime with that under the regime of
Poland, we are struck by the diametrical difference
between the factors controlling them. On the
surface, the determining influence in both cases
seems to be one and the same: the policy of the
rulers. But, while the kings of Poland were the
originators of Jewish rights, the Czars of Russia
were the founders of Jewish rightlessness. In
Poland, the opposition to the Jews^ comes from
below. It rises among the people and pushes its
way upwards to the throne. In Russia, the op-
position to the Jews originates on the throne and
trickles gradually down to the masses of the people.
The whole external development of Russian Jewry
is one iminterrupted variation upon this sad leit-
motif y — ^the hatred of Russian autocracy against
Jews and Judaism. It may sink into a tender
pianissimo, calling to conversion and assimilation ;
or it may swell into a thunderous fortissimo,
threatening persecutions and massacres, but it
always keeps to the same theme: kromye zhydov
("except the Jews"), no peace for Jews as long as
they are determined to remain Jews.

Russian Regime

Hence Russian- Jewish history represents a pro-
cess far less complex than the history of Polish
Jews. The opposition to the Jews is not, as was
the case in Poland, thinly spread over a socially
heterogeneous population; it is condensed in the
personalities of the successive rulers. The Jewish
struggle for existence is not the fight against a
nation with varied and conflicting interests; it is
the constant attempt to escape from beneath the
crushing vice of a powerfully centralized autocracy.
It is not a contest for big stakes, for power, or for
glory; it is a sad and sordid struggle for a little
breathing space, for a little elbow-room and, above
all, for a piece of bread. It is not a measiunng of
swords between equal combatants ; it is the struggle
of the dove writhing in the claws of the vulture.
It is not a war waged in the open and followed by
victory or defeat; it is an ugly wrangling in the
dark against an overwhelming and merciless enemy.
It is the kind of struggle foreshadowed in the
noctiunal wrestling of the Patriarch Jacob with a
mighty opponent. The result has thus far been
the same: Israel is wounded but not defeated, and
we can only hope that the fight of Russian Jewry
against Russian autocracy or rather of Russian
autocracy against Russian Jewry wiU have the
same sequel; at the breaking of the day Israel
will wrench a blessing from his opponent and,
cured by a healing sun, will peacefully proceed on
his historic joiu-ney.

100 Jews of Russia and Poland

Anti- Jewish Policy of Czardom

The anti- Jewish policy of Russian Czardom is of
a twofold character. It is directed on the one
hand against the economic status of the Jews, and,
on the other hand, against their spiritual or religious
development.

To tmderstand in their full import the principles
and methods applied in this policy, we have to recall
to our mind the economic and spiritual condition
of Polish Jewry at the moment of her transition
tmder the new master. Polish Jewry, which by
that time amounted to well over a million, was
about equally divided into an urban and a rural
population. To begin with the former, the Jews
in the towns were principally tradesmen and handi-
craftsmen. Owing to fierce competition, the restdt
of horrible congestion, the latter again the result
of the rapid increase of the Jewish population, the
Jews of the towns had been reduced to a state of
economic misery and, in spite of their frugality,
which was officially attested by a Polish committee
of investigation, could do no more than keep body
and soul together.

The hostility of the Russian Government to the
urban Jewish population manifested itself nega-
tively in shutting off the only possible avenue of
relief, viz. : the opening up of the vast and thinly
populated regions of Russia to the Jews. Only
a short while after the acquisition of Polish ter-

I

Russian Regime loi

ritory, the Pale of Settlement was ofScially

established, and the rapidly increasing Jewish
population became cabined, cribbed, and confined
in that gigantic prison. A little later even this
limited area was gradually narrowed down by
eliminating from it a number of cities distinguished
for their military or historical significance as well
as a long strip of territory stretching from the
Baltic to the Black Sea within fifty vyersts of the
western border of Russia. Still later, the govern-
ment, not content with this policy of mere negative
suppression, proceeded to make the intolerable
life of the urban Jews still more intolerable by all
kinds of positive disabihties. It seems as if Greek
Orthodox Czardom wanted to live up to the
mediaeval principle that the Jews had only a right
to exist in order to remind the Christians of the
torments of their Saviour.

As for the rural Jewish population, its main-
stay was the Jewish "arendar," or lessee, or
tenant, who, as was pointed out in the preceding
chapter, was at the same time the innkeeper and
liquor dealer. Lest we form exaggerated opinions
as to the prosperity of this Jewish exploiter, let me
at once state that in most cases he was wretch-
edly poor, — just as poor, in fact, as the peasant
or khlop, — though never as miserable, for, different
from this imfortunate serf, he sought comfort in
religion, instead of looking for it in the whiskey
bottle. The English traveller William Coxe, who

I02 Jews of Russia and Poland

was quoted on a previous occasion, gives the fol-
lowing description of the comforts offered and
enjoyed by a Jewish "arendar":

In these assemblages of huts the only places of re-
ception for travellers were hovels belonging to Jews,
totally destitute of furniture and every species of
accommodation. We could seldom procure any other
room but that in which the family lived; in the article
of provision, eggs and milk were our greatest luxuries
and could not always be obtained; otir only bed was
straw thrown upon the ground and we thought our-
selves happy when we could procure it clean.

However, the fact that in all his wretchedness the
"arendar" was the economic prop of rural Jewry
and, therefore, of Polish Jewry in general sufficed
to call the mighty Russian autocracy to arms
against him.

The official slogan of Russian bureaucracy
in its war against rural Jewry was its solicitude
for the peasant whose inebrity and economic
misery were laid at the door of the Jewish "aren-
dar." For while the Polish Republic had always
evinced complete indifference to the fate of her
peasantry and, as we have seen at the end of the
first chapter, only as late as in 1812, in a fit of
repentance, began to search for a scapegoat and
found it in the Jew, the Russian Government
always manifested, or rather paraded, its affection
for the peasant, without, however, at least for a

Russian Rdgime

103

veiy long time, doing anything for him. There-
fore, instead of perceiving the beam in her own
eye: the paralyzing and demoralizing state of
serfdom which she allowed to continue undisturbed
for the benefit of the still powerful Polish nobility,
Russia found it more convenient to behold the
mote in the eye of the helpless Jew. In vain was
the government reminded by its official committee
of investigation in 1812, that the "arendar" was
an indispensable factor in the rural economy of the
coimtry and that the misery of the peasant was
the result of circumstances for which the Jew was
not in the least responsible. In vain was it told
that the drunkenness of the peasant was due not to
the Jew but to the Polish Shlakhta, who continued
to enjoy the ancient and extremely lucrative right
of propinacya, i. e., the right of distilling whiskey,
and that the Jew was merely an accidental and,
under the circumstances, unavoidable medium of
conveying the alcohol of the noble to his serfs.
In vain was the attention of the government
called to the equally miserable condition of the
peasant in the central Russian provinces where the
Jew was not allowed to hve, — Tut nichts; der Jude
ivird verbrannt. The rural Jew, one of the central
pillars of the economic structure of Russian Jewry,
is to be destroyed.

Thus, we are confronted by the curious fact that,
while the Jews had been driven by the Poles from
the towns into the villages, they were now chased

104 Jews of Russia and Poland

by the Russians from the villages into the towns.
The expulsion of the Jews from the countryside is
now the devout consummation of Russian auto-
cracy until, after a long succession of experiments,
it was finally realized in our own day, spelling ruin
and starvation to one-half of Russian Jewry, and
by driving the exiles into the overcrowded cities
and towns, bringing misery and deterioration to
the other half.

The second aim of the Russian policy against
the Jews was the shattering, or at least, the
weakening of their spiritual and religious position.

While economically Polish Jewry had been in-
extricably botind up with the general interests of
Poland, spiritually it remained an absolutely in-
dependent entity. This independence or separate-
ness was not altogether a spontaneous product of
inner Jewish development. We shall learn in the
following chapter that in the earlier and happier
period of Polish-Jewish history, the Jews of Poland
were by no means as utterly estranged from their
environment as they became afterwards. Their
isolation was very largely a part of the social
structure of the Polish people. The Jews had
been invited and welcomed by the Polish kings
as a separate estate and they were kept in this
separateness just as carefully as were the other
estates. The arrogance of the Shlakhta, which
had usurped all the powers of the state, made it
impossible for the Jews, just as it made it impos-

Russian Regime

105

sible for all other estates, to exert or even to claim
the slightest influence on the general affairs of the
country. As for the towns, the municipal auto-
nomy guaranteed to the German burghers by their
Magdeburg Law, excluded Jews from aU partici-
pation in the city government and forced them to
bmld up in self-defence an organization of their
own, the Kahal, or the Jewish Commtmity, with
rights similar to those of the Christian municipal-
ity. The Polish rulers, as we shall have occasion
to see in the next chapter, were zealous in encour-
aging and maintaining the autonomous character
of PoHsh Jewry, and if the latter, chilled by the
icy breath of hatred and contempt, withdrew into
their own shell and took advantage of these con-
ditions to establish and to safeguard their religious
distinctiveness, it can only redound to their credit.
And no less than their social separateness was
the cultural separateness of the Jews in Poland
the result of the general status of the country.
If the Jews, to mention but two palpable examples,
continued to speak their German vernacular, it
must be remembered that Polish itself became a
national tongue only in a later period of Polish
history and that even then it was powerfully
rivalled by Latin. Or if the Jews at the beginning
of the Russian period were differently attired from
the Polish popiilation,this was the result of Pohsh
sumptuary laws which aimed at marking off the
Jew from his fellow-citizens, and the unwillingness

io6

Jews of Russia and Poland

I

with which the Jews gave way to this discrimina-
tion may be gauged from the paradoxical fact that
down to this day the orthodox Jews of Poland wear
the national Pohsh costume of the fifteenth and
sixteenth century which the Poles themselves have
discarded for the more modem German form of
dress. Thus, the isolation of Pohsh Jewry, while
powerfully instrumental in segregating and con-
solidating Judaism, was thoroughly in accord with
the whole social make-up of the Pohsh Republic.

The advent of the Russian regime marks a
sudden reversal of policy with reference to this
inner condition of Polish Jewry. From the
very beginning, Russia showed herself implacably
opposed to what she officially termed "Jewish
separateness, " which was in reality tantamount
to the preservation of Judaism. The defenders of
the Greek Orthodox faith manifested an almost
affectionate anxiety for the salVation of Jewish
souls, and we have documentary evidence from the
time of Alexander I and Nicholas I, showing that
nothing short of the conversion of the Jews was the
express, though not always the expressed, ambition
of the Russian rulers.

From the very inception of our period, the
Russian Government is solicitous in breaking
down the barriers which guard the entrance
to the sanctum of the Jews' inner life. This
soHcitude expressed itself in an endless variety
of measures — sometimes ridiculous in their petti-

Russian Regime

107

ness — -tending to transform not only the mental
and psychological make-up of the Jew, but also
to change his outer self, such as the restriction of
the use of Yiddish and the prohibition to wear
the Jewish form of dress or the traditional ear-
locks. The same motive called for the constant
limitation and degradation and final annihilation of
those insignificant remnants of autonomy which the
Jews had managed to save from the Polish dSbdcle.
Prompted by the same desire, the Russian
Government attempted by various measures to
lure the Jew away from his spiritual moorings by
crippling in every possible manner his traditional
and highly developed system of education and by
forcing upon him Russian civilization,— such as
Russian civilization was at that time.^measures
which, as the Jews instinctively felt, carried with
them the germs of apostasy. That the Russian
Government, in pursuing this cultural policy, was
not actuated by the desire for legitimate Russifica-
tion, i. e., for linking the Jew with the general Ufe
of the cotmtry and making him part and parcel
of the great citizenship of Russia, is evidenced by
the fact, that when subsequently the Jew shook
off his shackles and began spontaneously and
eagerly to attach himself to Russian culture and
Russian interests, he was brutally halted on his
way, and the restrictive educational measures of
the Russian legislation of today form one of the
saddest features of the Russian Jewish tragedy.

io8 Jews of Russia and Poland

Thus, both economically and spiritually, the
attitude of Russia towards the Jew has had but one
goal : the ultimate annihilation of Judaism. The
tightening of the territorial and economic separate-
ness of the Jew on the one hand and the loosening
of his cultural and rehgious distinctiveness on the
other form the two poles of this policy. Their
forms of manifestation may be different, varying
in accordance with the personal tastes and predilec-
tions of the individual rulers, but their character
and direction remain one and the same from first
to last.

Reign of Catherine the Great

The reign of Catherine the Great, the first Rus-
sian sovereign of a compact Jewry, already fore-
shadows the various aspects of this policy. The
first partition of Poland in 1772 brought the 200,-
000 Jews of the province of White Russia, covering
the present governments of Vitebsk and Moghilev,
under her sceptre, while the second and third parti-
tions added the hundreds of thousands of Jews
hving in Lithuania, Volhynia and Podolia. We
have already had occasion to observe that Cather-
s hberalism did not extend to the Jews. To be
more exact, we may add that it exhausted itself in
their case in mere phrases and formalities. Thus
the opprobrious term Zhyd Qew)— the same word,
by the way, does not carry with it the same
uncomplimentary connotation in PoHsh — grad-

Russian Regime

109

ually disappears from the official vocabulary and
is replaced by the more respectable word Yevrey
(Hebrew), with no other result than this that the
Russian Jews, whose whole life is edged in by the
formula kromye yevreyev, no longer suffer as Jews
but as Hebrews. The ukases, or decrees, of Cath-
erine and her advisers are garnished with liberal
phrases, and one senatorial rescript even goes so
far as to point reproachfully to the discriminating
character of former Pohsh legislation against the
Jews. As a matter of fact, the reign of Catherine,
particularly towards the end of her life when the
radical practices of the French Revolution chilled
her liberal theories to the freezing point, marks
the inauguration of the principal features of the
anti-Jewish policies of all subsequent reigns.

The confinement of the Jews within the old
PoUsh provinces engaged the serious attention of
the new mistress of the Russian Jews from the
beginning. When in 1786, fourteen years after
the occupation of White Russia, some of the im-
poverished Jews begged permission to carry on
trade in the city of Riga, their application was
refused on the ground that the Imperial decrees
did not provide for the settlement of Jews outside
the provinces annexed from Poland. When again
four years later, a few Jewish merchants from the
same province were found to carry on trade in
Smolensk and Moscow, the Council of State,
yielding to the protests of their Christian competi-

no Jews of Russia and Poland

tors, denied the Jews the right of settlement out-
side the old Polish provinces, with the curious
justification that "no advantage can be seen in
allowing them to do so." The ukase of June 23,
1794, promulgated after the second partition of
Poland, enumerates the Polish territories acxes-
sible to the Jews and thus marks the formal initia-
tion of the Pale of Settlement which, with slight
variations, has remained the same down to this
day, in spite of the fact that its number of Jews
has increased manyfold. And as if Catherine
had been anxious to ridicule the aspersions cast
by her Senate upon the anti- Jewish character of
Polish legislation, the very same ukase imposes
upon the Jews in the towns the payment of a tax
" double the amount of that levied on burghers and
merchants of the Christian faith," — a tax upon a
cruel disability.

A rescript issued in the same year (1795) antici-
pates the subsequent persecution of the rural Jew.
For it orders the governors "to make efforts,"
thus surrendering the Jews into the hands of a
capricious and venal officialdom, to transfer the
village Jews into the district towns, "so that these
people may not wander about but may rather
engage in commerce and promote manufactiu^es
and handicrafts, thus furthering their own interests
as well as the interests of society. "

As for the inner life of the Jews, Catherine's
policy equally foreshadows the attitude adopted

Russian Rdgime iii

by her successors. In the official announcement
or "Placard," proclaiming the annexation of White
Russia, the Russian Government solemnly assured
the inhabitants of the province "by the sacred
name and promise of the Empress" that their
religious liberties, their personal and property
rights as well as their estate privileges would re-
main inviolate. An additional clause provided
expressly, though not without a humiliating com-
mentary, for the inclusion of the Jewish societies,
i. e., of the Jewish communal organizations, or
Kahals, in "this humaneness of her Imperial
Majesty." As a result, only a few years later, in
1776, the Kahals were legally acknowledged in
their former capacity, not only as religious but also
as' fiscal and judicial agencies.

Soon, however, the Russian Government forgot
its solemn pledges and began to squeeze the Jews,
who were deprived of their rights as a separate
estate, into the social mould of the urban popula-
tion. The Jews were granted the right of partici-
pating in municipal government, on the one hand,
while simultaneously the Kahals were considerably
reduced in their functions and were merely retained
because it suited the convenience of the Russian
exchequer. The municipal privileges, which the
Jews imder the Polish regime had neither possessed
nor claimed, were undoubtedly a step in advance,
but they remained a dead letter, owing to the
hostile attitude of the Christian townspeople.

f

112 Jews of Russia and Poland

while the restrictions imposed upon the Katials
succeeded only too well in weakening and disor-
ganizing the scanty remains of the former citadel
of Jewish autonomy.

A striking illustration of the real sentiments
harboured by the Russian Government toward the
religious beliefs of the bulk of Russian Jewry is
the preferential treatment accorded to a small and
insignificant section within it. The Karaites of
Southern Russia were exempted from all the re-
strictions imposed upon the Jews and were later
on completely equalized with the Christian popu-
lation. This measure was evidently inspired by
the conviction, which afterwards found open ex-
pression in the reign of Nicholas I, that the Talmud
was a potent and hence objectionable factor in
fostering the distinctiveness of the Jews and in
shielding them against the danger of assimilation.

Thus, Catherine the Great fully justified the
title she was fond of claiming for herself. She
was in truth a commenceuse, a starter. She laid
the foundations of Jewish rightlessness. Succeed-
ing emperors have built upon these foundations.

Reign of Paul

The short reign of her son Paul (1796-1801) is
of no importance in the history of Russian Jews,
except for the preparations which were made
toward the consolidation of the general tendencies
of the previous reign.

Russian Regime

"3

Prompted by the miserable condition of the
peasants in the annexed Pohsh provinces, the gov-
ernment conceived the shrewd idea of applying for
advice to their owners, the PoKsh nobles, i. e.,
to the men who had brought about their misery
and were now thriving on it. And the Pohsh
Pans, with almost incredible self-complacency,
threw the blame upon the poor Jewish "aren-
dar, " whose main endeavour had been to enrich
them. The result of these investigations was an
official "Opinion," composed by the Russian poet
Dyerzhavin.

In this "Opinion" the semi-civilized Muscovite,
proceeding from the conviction that the Jews were
devoid of all moral sense and that they had "no
conception of humaneness, unselfishness, and other
virtues," proposes, on the one hand, "to curb the
greedy pursuits of the Jews, " and suggests, on the
other hand, to transform their inner hfe by pro-
hibiting the Jewish language and the Jewish form
of dress, by handicapping the extraordinary zeal
of the Jews for rehgious education, and by sub-
stituting for their inner Kahal organization an
officially controlled machinery. Finally, Dyerzha-
vin recommends, and it is impossible to suppress
a smile when one recollects the primitive stage of
Russian culture and thought in the beginning of
the nineteenth century, the estabUshment by the
government of a special printing press for the
publication of Jewish religious books, "with philo-

114 Jews of Russia and Poland

sophic annotations." This "Opinion," with its
semi-European varnish and semi-Asiatic crudeness,
betraying, above all, a phenomenal ignorance of
Jews and Judaism, was laid before the Senate
in 1800, to serve as a basis for the contemplated
codification of Jewish legislation. But the murder
of Paul and the sudden accession of Alexander I
turned for a moment the political life of Russia
into different channels.

Reign of Alexander I

Alexander I (1801-1825) was, to quote his own
words, "a happy accident on the throne of the
Czars." The disciple of a Swiss revolutionary,
endowed with a kindly and even lovable disposi-
tion, filled with the ambition to be "the first
gentleman of Europe, " Alexander did not, however,
possess the strength of character and the firmness
of purpose to translate his sentiments into action.
In his later years, when after the overthrow of
Napoleon, he became the acknowledged master of
Europe, he renounced his former liberalism and,
given over to Christian mysticism and all sorts of
superstitious practices, became the most powerful
promoter of that unholy combination of forces
which, by a curious perversion of history, has been
called the Holy Alliance, fettering Europe and
Russia in the chains of a terrible reaction. Rising
as the morning star of liberty on the sky of Russia,

I
I

Russian R6gimc 115

he descended amidst the black clouds heralding
the tempest of despotism which broke over the
unhappy land with unprecedented futy imder his
successor Nicholas,

The Jewish policies of Alexander were destined
to pass through the same transition, although they
were at no time, not even in the early years of his
reign, free from that inveterate prejudice against
the Jews, which seems to be inseparable from
Russian autocracy.

One of the first actions of Alexander affecting
Jewish interests was the appointment, in 1802,
of a special "Commission for Ameliorating the
Condition of the Jews," for the purpose of con-
sidering the proposals embodied in Dyerzhavin's
"Opinion." When alarming rumours about the
tendencies of this Commission began to spread in
the Jewish Pale, the governors were instructed to
reassure the Jewish population as to the benevo-
lent intentions of the government. An attempt
was even made, and a few years afterwards re-
newed, to permit the participation of Jewish re-
presentatives in the elaboration of the proposed
scheme, although the attempt, through no fault
of the Jews, remained barren of results and was
ultimately abandoned.

With the retirement of the reactionary Dyer-
zhavin from office, the Commission was fortunately
enabled to start out on a new and less reactionary
path. Within the Commission two currents w^

ii6 Jews of Russia and Poland

struggling for mastery. The liberal tendency was
represented by Speranski, at one time the most
powerful adviser of the Czar, a man far in advance
of his age, who, already in the beginning of the
nineteenth century, cherished the glorious vision
of a free constitutional Russia, of which only a
faint and distorted reflection struggled into being
in the beginning of the twentieth century. The
views of this remarkable man, whom Napoleon
called "the only clear head in Russia" and to
whom the present Russian Duma owes both its
name and conception, are incorporated in one of
the protocols of the above-mentioned Commission,
and they stand out so radiantly against the gloomy
backgroimd of Russian politics, that their very
imiqueness entitles them to a place of honour in
the history of Russian Jewry.

Reforms [says Speranski], brought about by the
power of the state, are, as a rule, unstable and are
particularly untenable in those cases in which. that
power has to cope with the habits of centuries.
Hence it seems both better and safer to lead the Jews
towards perfection by throwing open to them the
avenues leading to their own happiness, by observing
their movements from a distance, and by removing
everything that might lead them astray from this
path, without using any manner of force, without es-
tablishing any special agencies for them, without en-
deavouring to act as their substitute, but by merely
unfolding their own activities. As few restrictions as

Russian Regime 117

possible, as many liberties as possible— these lire the
ample elements of every social order.

The traditional Russian attitude towards the
Jewish problem was championed by the other
members of the Commission and their voice pre-
vailed in the end. The report of the Commission,
drafted in the conventional spirit of Russian re-
action, met with the approval of the Czar, and
found its embodiment shortly thereafter in the
"Statute Concerning the Welfare of the Jews"
which, issued on December 4, 1804, determined
for a whole generation the legal position of the
Jews of Russia.

The Statute of 1S04

The Statute of 1804, which has been dubbed the
"Jewish Constitution" of Russia, aims, in accord-
ance with the general Russian pohcy, at the
economic and cultural transformation of Russian
Jewry. The cultural rejuvenation of 'the Russian
Jews, which, reflecting the predilections of Alex-
ander, is placed at the head of the Statute in a
special section "on Education, " was to be brought
about by granting them full access to Russian
educational institutions, from public school up to
university, or by allowing them to open their own
secular schools in which one of the three languages — -
Russian, PoHsh, or German — was to form a com-
pulsory subject of instruction. A knowledge of one

I

■ the

H the

^M weri

1 18 Jews of Russia and Poland

of these languages was, within a few years, to be
required of the Rabbis as well as of Jews occupying
public office either in the Jewish Kahal or in the
non-Jewish municipality. At the same time the
use of Hebrew and Yiddish was to be excluded
from aU public and communal documents; in
addition, the Jews who were elected members of
the municipalities were to abandon their tradi-
tional Jewish costume in favour of the Polish,
Russian, or German form of dress.

The economic transformation of Jewry was to be
attained by the grant of a number of privileges to
Jews who would take up agriculture In the sparsely
populated provinces of Southern Russia. Simul-
taneously the present pursuits of the Jews, in par-
ticular the liquor traffic, were discountenanced.
Needless to say, the limitations of the Pale of
Settlement were reaffirmed. Measures of a more
radical character were projected against the Jews
in the villages : they were to be entirely removed
from their places of residence.

While the privileges granted in this Statute,
which ran counter not only to the noble principles
of Speranski, but also to the deeply implanted
traditions and habits of the Russian Jews, were
more or less problematical and, in any event,
merely scratched the surface of the Jewish question,
the restrictions of the Statute tending to suppress
the present economic occupations of the Jews
were fraught with palpable realities and reached

Russian Regime 119

into the very heart of Jewish life. The most im-
portant provision of the Statute of 1804 is
undoubtedly Clause 34, which categorically for-
bids, after the lapse of a period of four years,
the residence of Jews in villages and all the rural
occupations connected with it. This measure
threatened with expulsion and starvation nearly
one-half of Russian Jewry, and it soon became evi-
dent that no less than half a million Jews were
involved in the impending calamity. No wonder
then that the Jews who could scarcely appreciate
the endeavours of the Russian Government to foist
upon them a foreign culture, a culture inferior
to their own, saw only the hand lifted to deliver
a crushing blow. As the time set for the execution
of the measure, — the beginning of 1808 — was ap-
proaching, a cry of despair went up from the
unfortunate victims, accompanied by shouts of pro-
test from many of the landed proprietors for whom
the sudden removal of the Jews from their estates
involved serious economic injury. The voice of
Jewish misery and of ordinary common sense would
have scarcely been heeded by the Russian Govern-
ment, had it not been seconded by the grave politi-
cal complications which soon drew Russia into the
whirlpool of contemporary European history.

Changes of Policy

The conduct of the Russian autocracy during
the varying phases of the great European conflict

I20 Jews of Russia and Poland

reveals so luridly the cat and mouse attitude of
Czardom, that it deserves to be told in detail and
to be studied with particular attention at the
present centenary repetition of those great events.
It was in the latter part of 1807, just about the
time when the term set for the expulsion of the
Jews from the villages was drawing nigh, that
Napoleon, who had just crushed the power of
Prussia and was now moving towards the borders
of Russia, convoked the Jewish Sanhedrin in
Paris. This step was viewed by Russia — a view
shared by the Government of Austria — as a device
of the shrewd Corsican to win over the compact
Jewish masses of the two empires. A special cir-
cular was sent out to the governors of the Pale of
Settlement ordering the suppression of any possible
contact between the Jews of Russia and their co-
religionists of France. As a means of arousing
the distrust of the orthodox masses of Russian
Jewry, — the same masses whom the Statute of
1804 wished to lure into the fold of enlightenment
and, through it, into the bosom of the Greek
Orthodox Church, — the governors were shrewdly
instructed to spread among them the notion
that the French Sanhedrin was favouring Jewish
Reform and was harbouring dangerous designs
against traditional Judaism. It is characteristic
of Russian astuteness that simultaneously the
Holy Synod issued a proclamation in which it
warned the Greek Orthodox Russians against

I

I

Russian Regime 121

Napoleon, because he had convoked this very same
Sanhedrin and intended to overthrow Chris-
tianity with the help of the Jews, who were about
to proclaim him their Messiah.

Yielding to the representations of the Minister
of the Interior, who pointed to the political risk
involved in the execution of a measure which might
arouse the Jewish population against the govern-
ment, Alexander decided to postpone the expul-
sion. He appointed a new commission to consider,
in the light of the military exigencies, the advisa-
bility of carrying out the expulsion demanded by
the Statute, At the same time he issued a rescript
to the Jews, couched in terms, reminding us in
their affectionate phraseology of the mythical
ordinance of our own days addressed by the Czar
to his "dear Jews." "Prompted by the desire
to furnish our subjects among the Jewish people
with an additional proof of our solicitude for their
welfare," the Czar invited the opinions of the Jew-
ish communities, or Kahals, as to the most con-
venient way of carrying into effect the provisions
of the Statute.

The Jewish Commimities did not fail to respond
to the invitation. Of course, they all agreed on
the pemiciousness of the proposed expulsion and
pointed out the difficulties in cormection with the
suggested cultural reforms of Jewish life. By
the time, however, the Jewish replies had reached
the capital, the political constellation had under-

122 Jews of Russia and Poland

gone a radical change. The Peace of Tilsit had
been signed and Alexander fell under the spell of
the great personality of the Corsican, Political
complications were no longer to be feared, and on
the 19th of October, 1807, the Czar issued an ukase
in which, utterly forgetful of his solicitude for the
welfare of his Jewish subjects, he demanded per-
emptorily the expulsion of the Jews, "without the
slightest delay and mitigation. "

The expulsion began. Thousands of Jews were
bodily evicted from their villages and driven, under
miUtary convoy, into the towns where they were
left on the open streets. The catastrophe assumed
such appalling proportions that the governors
themselves began to bombard the authorities of
St. Petersburg with petitions to stop the further
execution of the barbarous measure. The Czar
was forced to yield and the Jews were allowed to
remain in their former seats until further notice.

A new commission was appointed to find out
ways and means for diverting the Jews from the
rural liquor trade to more productive forms of
labour. After three years of work, the commission
submitted, in May, 1812, a report in which truth
and common sense at last raised their voice.
Some of the conclusions of this commission have
been anticipated in the beginning of this chapter.
The report gave a true estimate of the causes
responsible for the misery and drunkenness of the
peasant as well as a correct appreciation of the real ■.,

I

Russian Regime 123

position of the Jewish "arendar." It depicted
the poverty of the Jewish tavern-keeper, who only
worked for the pocket of the Pan. It pointed out
that the removal of the Jewish liquor dealer would
only result in his being replaced by a Christian
saloon-keeper of a more obnoxious type. It demon-
strated the impossibihty of a sudden elimination of
the Jews from an occupation which had provided
them with a livelihood for centuries. It finally
urged the inexpediency of still further exasperating
the already exasperated Jewish population, "in
view of the present political circumstances."

The political argument once more carried the
day. The fatal 34th clause, though not officially
repealed, was allowed to die a natural death,— not
without a subsequent attempt by the same ruler
to resuscitate it, under changed conditions. For
Napoleon's hosts were just then marching upon
Russia, invading her through the provinces of the
Pale of Settlement popidated with solid masses of
Jews.

Loyalty of Jews during the War of 18 12

During the great struggle of 1812, the Russian
Jews evinced throughout a remarkable spirit of
loyalty and patriotic devotion. This spirit mani-
fested itself in important reconnoitring services
rendered by the Jewish civilian population, — the
Jews were not yet drafted into the army, — and it
showed itself equally in popular circulars written

124 Jews of Russia and Poland

in Yiddish calling upon the Jews to pray for the
success of the Russian arms. This outburst of
patriotism on the part of a population which had
always been the Cinderella of the empire may be
accoimted for by a variety of circumstances. The
suspension of the expulsion from the villages,
decreed three years previously, was in all likelihood
taken by the Jews as a happy augury for the future
benevolent plans of the government. Moreover,
the Jewish masses of Russia, clinging tenaciously
to their isolated mode of life, were apprehensive,
an apprehension which was voiced by a famous
rabbi of the. time, — and, if I am rightly informed, is
determining the attitude of many Russian Jews
in the present struggle, — that the victory of Napo-
leon, while favourable to the Jews from the mate-
rial point of view, might carry with it the germs of
religious disintegration, such as could then be
witnessed in Germany. In any event, the loyalty
of the Jews stood in strange contrast to the attitude
of the so-called native population, the Poles, who
unmistakably sympathized with the invader,
although it would seem that the Jews, in contradis-
tinction to the modem Poles, were not yet dip-
lomatic enough or not yet civilized enough, to
turn informers against their fellow-citizens.

This patriotic attitude of the Jews excited the
surprise and admiration of the Russian authorities.
In Grodno, where the Polish officials were sus-
pected of disloyalty, the police administration had

Russian R^<rime

125

to be entrusted into the hands of the Jewish Kahal.
Even the imperial Jew baiter, Nicholas, who as
Grand Duke was travelling shortly after the war
through the invaded provinces, could not help
paying his homage to the unselfish and often heroic
exploits of the Jews, although in the same breath
he could not refrain from designating them as
leeches sucking the blood of the country. Czar
Alexander himself knew, and feelingly spoke, of the
patriotism of his Jewish subjects and on several
occasions promised to alleviate their lot.

It seemed at first as if the Czar actually intended
to redeem his pledges. The cause of the Jews was
entrusted into the hands of Count Gohtzin, the
new Minister of Spiritual Affairs, a man bene-
volently disposed towards the Jews, although, as
came out soon afterwards, he was far more inter-
ested in effecting their spiritual salvation than
alleviating their bodily sufferings. In 1817, a
decree was published prohibiting ritual murder
trials in the empire which, at that time, began to
crop up in various parts of the Pale. The govern-
ment even went so far as to invite an Advisory
Council of prominent Jews to help in the solution
of the Jewish problem.

Conversionist Endeavours

But all these budding hopes were speedily nipped
by the night frost of reaction which settled after
1815 over Russia and Europe, that reaction of

126 Jews of Russia and Poland

which the Czar himself was the most powerful
promoter. Carried away by a wave of Christian
mysticism, he soon forgot his promise to relieve
the material distress of the Jews and, aided by his
Minister Golitzin, the president of the missionary
Bible Society, conceived the plan of capturing their
souls instead.

In 1817, an ukase was promulgated which was a
clear manifestation of this traditional longing of
Russian autocracy for the souls of the Jews. The
ukase called for the estabhshment of a "Society
of Israelitish Christians " to assist those Jews who,
"having convinced themselves of the truths of
Christianity, " were ready "to join the flock of the
Good Shepherd and the Saviour of Souls." This
society, which was placed under the immediate
patronage of the emperor, was to assist Jewish
apostates by the grant of free lands and the
bestowal of a goodly number of other attractive
privileges. The imperial decree which was, as it
openly avowed, inspired by "reverence for the
blessed voice which caUeth unto the flock of Israel
from their dispersion to join the faith of Christ,"
was evidently meant as a bait to lure the vast
masses of Russian Jewry into the fold of the
Church. But it resulted in utter failure. The
government had set aside a huge tract of land for
the expected rush of neophytes and appointed a
whole staff of ofhcials to take care of them, but
both land and officials remained idle, and the

Russian Regime

127

society, after lingering on hopelessly for a number
of years, was finally disbanded, in 1835, by his
successor Nicholas.

The failure of the imperial pet scheme did not
improve Alexander's sentiments towards his Jew-
ish subjects. But the edge of his disappointment
was soon to be painfully sharpened by the success
of an apostasy of a diametrically opposite kind,
the conversion of thousands of his Russian subjects
to Judaism. In the same year in which the Czar
issued his ukase calling the Jews into the bosom of
the Church, he received a petition from a number
of peasants in the government of Voronyezh, a
province outside of the Pale of Settlement, apply-
ing for permission to practice freely the "Mosaic
Law." It was a resuscitation of the dreaded
"Judaizing Heresy" of yore which now began
rapidly to spread over vast regions of Central
Russia and became gradually consolidated in the
sect of the Subbotniki or Sabbatharians. The
ruling circles which were just at that time filled
with evangelic zeal on behalf of the Jews were
shocked by the sight of Christians turning to Juda-
ism. Draconian measures were speedily adopted
and the heresy was finally stamped out, but not
until thousands of sectarians had been banished to
Siberia and a vast number of villages turned into
a. wilderness. It may be of interest to add that
some of the sectarians fled to Palestine where they
still live and work as loyal Jews.

128 Jews of Russia and Poland

The "Judaizing Heresy" could not well be
charged to the Jews, since they were excluded from
those provinces, which fact did not prevent the
government from instructing, with its accustomed
shrewdness, the Russian officials to inspire repug-
nance to the new sect by calling it a Zhydovskaya
sekta. Yet indirectly the success of this pro-
Jewish heresy, coupled with the failure of his pro-
Christian policy, irritated the emperor and led to
a recrudescence of anti- Jewish legislation.

Effects of Reaction

The new spirit of reaction manifested itself in
the attempt to revive the old devout consumma-
tion of Russian autocracy, the expulsion of the
Jews from the villages. In consequence of the
outbreak of one of the periodic famines in White
Russia, the emperor issued, in 1823, a rigorous
decree expelling all Jews from the villages of that
whole province. The decree was carried out with
ruthless severity. Over 20,000 Jews were driven
into the congested towns where many of them,
owing to the lack of accommodation, lay about in
the streets during the winter, perishing from cold,
hunger, and disease. The expulsion, as was
pointed out on a previous occasion, was ostensibly
prompted by the solicitude of the government for
the welfare of the peasants. To what extent this
aim was accomplished, may be gathered from a
report of the Council of State written twelve years

Russian Regime

129

I
I

later (in 1835) in which the expulsion from White
Russia was characterized as having mined the
Jews, "though it cannot in the least be observed
that the condition of the peasants has improved
thereby."

A further ukase of 1824 forbade the residence
of foreign Jews, particularly those of Austria, on
Russian territory, while in the following year the
Jews, residing in villages within fifty vyerst of the
western frontiers, were banished from their places.
The ultimate aim of all these persecutions — this
admission was openly made in an official docu-
ment of the following reign — was the desire of
Alexander "to decrease altogether the number of
Jews in the empire."

Such was the reign of the kind-hearted and
liberal-minded Alexander. It bore all the ear-
marks of Czardom, and, though it started in hope,
it ended in despair, and served as a fitting prelude
to the horrors that were to follow.

Reign of Nicfwlas I

If Alexander claimed to be a "happy accident
on the throne of the Czars, " his brother and suc-
cessor, Nicholas I {1825-1855), was the very
embodiment of the methods and ideals of Russian
autocracy. Nicholas was wont to consider himself
the providential guardian of legitimacy and auto-
cracy against the liberal encroachments of the
"rotten West," and he was ready to help others in

130 Jews of Russia and Poland

fighting for the same cause, to serve, as he actually
did serve, as the ''gendarme of Europe." This
mission Nicholas I, very different from his gentle
and wavering brother, carried out with an energy
and vigour which rightly won for him the title of
the "Iron Czar." His mind, to quote the char-
acterization of Queen Victoria, " was an uncivilized
one and so were his methods." His reign was
initiated by quelling in blood the uprising of the
liberal Dyekabrists C* Decembrists," from Decem-
ber^ the date of Nicholas's accession), and was
maintained by a barbarous soldiery and a frenzied
police which ruthlessly suppressed the slightest
manifestation of free speech or thought. Nicholas's
regime fettered for nearly a generation the mighty
giant of the north, who was allowed to stretch his
limbs for a brief moment only under his successor,
Alexander II.

There is no need to say that the Jews more than
any other portion of his subjects were apt to feel
his iron hand. For from the very beginning Nicho-
las was full of hatred and prejudice against them.
Already in 1816, while still Grand Duke, he desig-
nated, as we have seen, the Jews of White Russia,
in accordance with the hackneyed notions of
Russian bureaucracy, as the leeches of the country,
and in the very first year of his reign he took oc-
casion to afiirm his belief in the hideous ritual-
murder libel. No wonder then that his reign
stands out with particular blackness on the black

t

Russian Regime 131

background of Russian Czardom and forms one
of the saddest pages in the sad annals of Jewish
martyrdom.

The general policies against the Jews had already
been dictated to him by the traditions of autocracy.
They were, as we have seen, the contraction of the
economic and territorial latitude of the Jew and the
relaxation of his religious and national distinctive-
ness. But it must be acknowledged that in the
execution of these policies Nicholas I displayed
an energy and originality, which accords him a
place of distinction in the far-stretching gallery of
Jewish oppressors.

Ritual-Murder Trials

It may have been an accident, but it certainly
fonned a proper setting for Nicholas's reign, that
both its inception and its conclusion were equally
marked by a ritual-murder trial. The initiatory
case, one of the most celebrated and most hideous
specimens of this human aberration, goes back in
its beginnings to the preceding reign. In 1823,
a Christian boy of Vehzh, a town in the govern-
ment of Vitebsk, disappeared on the first day of
the Christian Easter and was afterwards found
dead in a neighbouring swamp. The principal
champion of the blood accusation was a depraved
and immoral woman, Terentyeva by name. The
Gubernatorial Court of Vitebsk dismissed the
case by acquitting the accused local Jews and

132 Jews of Russia and Poland

administering a warning to the wayward Terent-
yeva. But, bribed and inspired by local Chris-
tian fanatics, Terentyeva remained active. Taking
advantage of the visit of Alexander I to Velizh,
she managed to hand him a petition, asking him
to re-open the case and falsely declaring that the
murdered boy was her own son. Alexander I^
disregarding, with his usual inconsistency, his
edict of 1 817 which prohibited the prosecution of
ritual-murder charges, complied with the request
of the prostitute. The result was the impeach-
ment of forty-two prominent Jews and the fabrica-
tion of an enormous cobweb of lies which was
presented to Nicholas, who had in the meantime
ascended the Russian throne, as a proof of the per-
nicious doctrines and practices of the hated Jews.
The new ruler, in commenting upon the report
submitted to him, openly expressed his belief in
the existence of this bloody rite among the Jews
and gave orders to close the S3magogues of the
Velizh community which he evidently regarded as
the seats of religious cannibalism (August 16,
1826).

The further prosecution, however, assumed sudi
fantastic dimensions that Nicholas himself became
somewhat shaken and ordered a new investiga-
tion. After passing through numerous vicissitudes
and law courts, the case finally reached the Coimcil
of State, and ended in 1835 in the tritimphant
acquittal of the accused and the indictment of the

Russian Regime

133

accusers. In ratifying the decision of the Council
of State, Nicholas reiterated his belief in ritual
murder, with the modification that not the whole
body of Jews, but rather a sect among them were
guilty of that practice, — a loop-hole which has
enabled many an up-to-date Haman to harmonize
his modernism with his medisevalism. He con-
sequently refused to comply with the suggestion
of the Council to republish the edict of his prede-
(^ssor, making such trials impossible.

The ritual-murder case of Saratov, which marked
the end of Nicholas's reign, was less complicated,
This time the customary charge was made against
the handful of Jews who Uved in that central
Russian town. As a result, Nicholas ordered,
towards the end of his reign (in 1854), the appoint-
ment of a committee which was not only to investi-
gate this particular crime, but also "to inquire
into the dogmas of Jewish religious fanaticism. "
The supposed perpetrator of the murder, a certain
Yushkevich, was, in i860, in the reign of Alexander
II, sentenced to banishment for life, but was par-
doned by him in 1867, at the request of Cremieux,
then president of the Alliance Israelite Universelle.

Economic Repression

Returning to the more permanent policies
of Czar Nicholas, we may conveniently divide
them, in accordance with our scheme, into the
measures directed against the economic welfare

134 Jews of Russia and Poland

of the Jews and those aimed at their spiritual
extermination.

The economic policy of restriction ran in the
accustomed groove of Russian autocracy. The
inviolability of Russian territory against the pene-
tration of the Jews was emphatically reaffirmed.
When, in 1835, the Cotmcil of State considered the
proposal of admitting Jewish merchants of the
first guild to the interior of Russia, the Czar put
down the laconic resolution: **This question was
already decided by Peter the Great. I dare not
alter it. " The Czar was as good as his word, for
the obstreperous Jews, who were caught outside
the Pale, were exiled to Siberia or drafted as penal
recruits into the army.

On the other hand, the previous tendency of
contracting the area of the Pale of Settlement was
pursued farther. The cities of Kiev, Sebastopol,
and Nicholayev were closed to the Jews. The
provinces of Courland and Livonia were forbidden
to all Jews not bom there. The decree of Alex-
ander I, expelling the Jews from the villages
situated within the fifty vyerst border zone, was
extended, in 1843, to the cities within the same
area, although the measure could not be carried
out, as it threatened to lay waste entire regions.

Also the old consummation of Czardom, the
annihilation of the rural Jew, made a step in ad-
vance by the exile, in 1835, of all the Jews from the
villages of the governments of Grodno and Kiev.

h

Russian Regime

The banishment of the Jews from the villages of
the remaining governments was only checked by
the representations of the Council of State which,
referring to the expulsion from White Russia in
1823, pointed out the uselessness of this measure,
since, having ruined the Jews, it had not brought
the slightest reUef to the peasants.

The rigour with which Nicholas endeavoured to
preserve the autocratic heirloom of Jew-baiting
attracted the attention of Western Europe. Dur-
ing his stay in London, Nicholas was approached
by Enghsh Jews, bespeaking his mercy on behalf
of his Jewish subjects. A similar motive led
afterwards, in 1846, the noble Moses Montefiore
into the den of the lion. Montefiore, who was
personally recommended to the Czar by Queen
Victoria, was received with all the courtesies in
which the Russian diplomats are such past-masters,
but his mission led to nothing.

On the contrary, Nicholas extended the poHcy
of economic repression to the Jews in the towns.
The "Temporary Rules concerning the Classi-
fication of Jews, " which were adopted by the Czar,
in spite of the energetic protests of a few noble-
minded dignitaries, were intended to set apart a
special class of "unsettled burghers," comprising
those tens of thousands of Jews who, owing to the
policy of territorial contraction, pursued by that
very same government, had been unable to find a
settled occupation. This new class of Jews was

136 Jews of Russia and Poland

to be subjected to increased restriction and oppres-
sion. The execution of this terrible measure,
which struck terror into the hearts of innumerable
Jews, was fortunately interrupted by the outbreak
of the Crimean War and, later on, by the death of
the Czar.

Militarism as Agency of Conversion

Truly original, however, Emperor Nicholas was
in carrying out the spiritual aspect of the auto-
cratic policy against the Jews. The gentle
methods of his predecessor did not appeal to the
Iron Czar. The Russian Bible Society, presided
over by Count Golitzin, was disbanded, as was
the Society of Israelitish Christians, on which his
brother had built such great hopes. The Czar
believed in discipline and he, who had never put
on civilian clothes since the day he entered active
military service in his early youth, naturally
thought first and foremost of the army as a most
effective means of drawing, and, if necessary, of
dragging, the recalcitrant Jews into the fold of
Christianity.

Up till then, the Jews had not performed active
military service, but were, like the Russian mer-
chant class in general, held to pay large sums of
money in lieu thereof. We can vividly realize
what the service in Nicholas's army, with its
ferocious discipline and its inhuman duration of a
quarter of a century, meant to the strictly ortho-

Russian Regime 137

dox and completely isolated Jews of Russia.
What the Jews feared, viz., the de-Judaizing effect
of such a protracted military service in a Christian
environment, fascinated Nicholas, and the draft-
ing of Jews into the army was speedily decided
upon.

But this was not enough. The highly developed
state of Jewish education had resulted in accelerat-
ing the maturity of the Jewish youths who, at the
early age of eighteen,— the year of conscription, —
were proof against proselytizing influences. Hence
the iron hand of the Czar had to strike at the tender,
age of the Jew. The Jews were to be drafted into
the array, not at the age of eighteen, as in the
case of the Christian population, but at the age
of twelve, although the twenty-five years of service
were to be counted only from the eighteenth year.
These six years of impressionable adolescent, life
were to be spent by the Jewish youth, far away
from the Pale of Settlement, in military establish-
ments called Canteens, or Cantons, — hence the
name of Cantonists appHed to these Jewish lads,—
where they were to be prepared for the army and —
this, of course, was not openly said though clearly
intended — for the Church. Each Jewish com-
munity was to be made collectively responsible for
the supply of a certain quota of Jewish recruits.

Characteristic of the spirit of the whole measure
are the details prescribed for the administration
of the oath of allegiance to the recruits. This

138 Jews of Russia and Poland

ceremony ^ras to take place in the synagogue before
the open Ark and was to consist of a long and
gruesome formula to be recited amidst burning
candles and the blowing of the "Shofar" {the
ram's horn), while the recruit was wrapped in his
prayer-shawl and phylacteries. Evidently it
demanded great solemnity to force allegiance of
this kind upon the Jewish victims of this unique
method of conscription.

This plan, which was obviously residy in the
mind of Nicholas in the very beginning of his reign,
was carried out soon afterwards, without awaiting
the customary reports of the official experts. The
ukase was signed on August 26, 1827.

The conscription ukase descended upon the Jews
of Russia with the effect of a stunning blow. The
wildest flight of imagination had not foreseen such
a catastrophe. It seems that the authorities were
prepared for Jewish resistance, but the Jews imder
Russian rule had been only too effectively cowed
into submission. History records but one solitary
case of protest which took place in a small Vol-
hynian town (in Old Constantine) and manifested
itself with proverbial Jewish gentleness, A peti-
tion, complaining against the Czar of Russia, was
duly executed and put into the hands of a dead
member of the conmiunity who was about to be
buried, in order to present it before the throne of
the Almighty. This typical Jewish mutiny might
easily have led to serious results, for it became

Russian Regime 139

known to the authorities of St. Petersburg, and
the Czar had given strict orders to have all such
cases tried before courts-martial.

Inhumanly hard as the measure was, it was not
as hard as its manner of execution. It affected
not only the victims but the whole social and
moral structure of Russian Jewry. It was but
natural that at the promulgation of the measure
the poor Jewish lads, liable to this kind of military
galley service, should have tried to evade it. They
began to disappear and to hide wherever they could,
concealing themselves in the woods and in caves.
Since, however, the Jewish communities were
collectively forced to supply a definite quota of
recruits, they had to resort to violent measures to
make up the shortage. They appointed special
agents called "catchers," or, in Yiddish, "khap-
pers, " who went about, literally kidnapping Jewish
recruits. The "khappers" were not, and perhaps
could not be, very fastidious. To fill the quota,
they often kidnapped children below the prescribed
age of twelve, sometimes seizing youngsters of
eight, stating an older age when submitting them
to the authorities. They often took them away,
nay, literally tore them away, from the arms of
their mothers, leaving behind them howling or
speechless misery. This terrible conscription had
a most demoraHzing effect upon the whole public
life of the Jewish community. It bred, among
other evils, the disease of denunciation {or tnesira)

140 Jews of Russia and Poland

which for a long time ate like a canker into the
vitals of Russian Jewry.

As for the victims themselves, no imagination,
not even that of the Jew acquainted with the
sufferings of his people in the past, can adequately
picture the horrors that awaited the so-called
Cantonists. Immediately on being drafted, or
rather kidnapped, the recruits were placed in a
gaol where they were kept until the official con-
scription. Thereupon they were loaded like sheep
on a wagon and dispatched to their points of de-
stination, mostly in the outlying provinces of the
empire where they were to spend thirty or some-
times forty years. Most of the little ones, and
many of the older ones, died on the road. Those
who arrived at their points of destination were
placed in the Canteens and at once taken in hand
for the purpose of inducing them to baptism. No
cruelty was cruel enough to bring about this result.
Flogging was one of the mildest preparations for
the adoption of Christianity. The tender chil-
dren were denied sleep and kept on their knees
tmtil they perceived the truth of the Christian
doctrine of love as interpreted by the Russians.
Others were denied food or, conversely, were forced
to eat highly seasoned food and denied drink after-
wards. Many of the children, particularly the
very young ones, gave way under these inhuman
sufferings. But the older lads — ^those who had
already drunk from the fountain of Jewish tradi-

Russian Regime 141

tion — became martyrs to their faith, — a martyr-
dom of children unequalled in Jewish or in general
history. A popular legend tells of a solemn cere-
mony when all the Jewish Cantonists were drawn
up in a line on the banks of a river and prepared
to take their baptism in it. Following the word
of command, they jumped into the river, but
none rose to the surface. They had sacrificed
their Hves on the altar of faith.

The Jewish young men who, being of a maturer
age, became soldiers at once, without first going
to the Canteens, were safe against the allurements
of baptism, but their ordeal was no less heavy.
And when they finally passed it, many distinguish-
ing themselves in battle, the first recognition paid
to them was to drive them back into the Pale.
Only during the following reign were the so-caUed
"Nicholas soldiers" reluctantly permitted to live
outside the Pale,

Enlightenment as Agency of Conversion

It seems, however, that for one short moment the
rays of European enlightenment strayed into dark-
est Russia and conjured up before the Czar's mind
the vision of a Jewish conversion accomplished by
more gentle and yet more effective means. This
diversion was due to the influence of a few Uberal
men in the environment of Nicholas, notably of
Uvarov, the Minister of Public Instruction, a man
kindly disposed towards the Jews, — perhaps tPU

142 jews of Russia and Poland

kindly, for he, too, was one of those who like the
Jews best when they have ceased to be Jews.

Only a few years previously, in 1835, the rights
of the Jews, or rather their lack of rights, had again
been codified in a new " Statute, " even harsher than
the Statute of 1804 in its policy of economic and
spiritual repression. Five years had passed and
the reports of the Russian officials, who were evi-
dently of the opinion that an imperial ukase was
strong enough to undo the development of 3000
years, indicated that no change of heart had taken
place among the Jews who, in their wickedness,
remained as loyal as ever to their superstitions,
The Council of State, therefore, while considering,
in 1840, the theoretic foundations of the Jewish
problem, struck at the novel idea of imitating the
de-Judaizing methods of Western Europe and
decided to break up the isolation of the Jews by
educational and cultural measures, the latter to
be followed, in case of failure, by the abolition of
Jewish autonomy, of which only a few shreds had
survived, and finally to be crowned by radical
economic suppression.

On December 27, 1840, a special commission
was appointed bearing the characteristic title:
"Commission for Finding Ways and Means for the
Radical Transformation of the Jews of Russia."
The soul of the Commission was the Minister of
Public Instruction, Uvarov, who, in his report on
the subject, declared that his plan aimed — al-

Russian Regime

143

though, as he cautiously added, this aim was to be
kept secret — at the suppression of the Talmud and
the purification of the religious beliefs of the Jews,
adding significantly that the religion of the Cross
was "the purest symbol of universal citizenship."
His plan consisted in opening in all the cities of
the Pale elementary and secondary schools for
teaching secular subjects as well as for instruction
in the Jewish religion, "according to Holy Writ."
These institutions were gradually to supersede the
existing Jewish schools which taught the perverted
doctrines of the Talmud.

In order to secure the co-operation of the Jews,
or rather to ward off their opposition, Dr. Max
Lilienthal, who had established a modem Jewish
model school in Riga, was invited to act as the
propagandist of the government. In carrying out
his task, Dr. Lilienthal met with a certain amount
of encouragement from the few Jews already
modernized or longing for modernization, but
foimd himself face to face with the stubborn
opposition of the conservative bulk of the Jews
who plainly asserted that the government's hidden
purpose was to lead them to the baptismal font.
These Jews were somewhat pacified by the solemn
assurance of Dr. Lilienthal that he would im-
mediately abandon his post if he foimd the
supposition to be correct.

In 1844, the Czar issued two decrees, one to be
made public, calling for the establishment of a net-

144 Jews of Russia and Poland

work of Jewish elementary schools as well as of
two rabbinical seminaries. Another, confidential,
decree instructed the authorities how to handle
these schools, advising them that "the aim of the
education of the Jews consisted in bringing them
nearer to the Christian population and in eradica-
ting the prejudices inspired by the Talmud."

In the following year Lilienthal suddenly left
Russia, and went to the United States. Needless
to say, he had fathomed the designs of Russian
autocracy.

Among the measures directed towards the spirit-
ual uplift of the Jews was also the old petty •
contrivance of Czardom : the restriction or prohibi-
tion of Jewish dress. In 1844, an impost of five
rubles ($2.50) was levied on Jews who insisted on
wearing their traditional skullcap or yarmolka.
An imperial ukase of 1851 prohibited male Jews
to wear the old Jewish costume or to retain the
traditional ear-locks, while a separate ukase, issued
in the following year, forbade Russian- Jewish
women to follow the old Jewish custom of shav-
ing their heads on entering into marriage. The
governors and governor-generals of the Russiaa
provinces had nothing more important to do than
to watch over the execution of this truly hair-
splitting bit of Muscovite tyranny. Jews were
caught in the streets and forcibly deprived of
their ear-locks. Jewish women were examined and
the barbers attending them as well as the rabbis

Russian Regime 145

present at their weddings were summoned to
court. In spite of all these measures, the opposi-
tion of the Jewish mass prevailed in the end against
the whims of the Czar, and the law became a dead
letter.

These "educational" measures did not interfere
with the application of more palpable methods of
suppression. Many of the territorial and eco-
nomic restrictions referred to above were passed
during this period of official enlightenment. In
1844, the Jewish Kahals, the last vestiges of
Jewish autonomy left from the PoHsh inheritance,
were abolished. Characteristically enough the
only Jewish communal officials who were allowed
to survive were the "conscription elders," who
bore the responsibility for the supply of recruits,
and the Jewish tax collectors, since to the old Jew-
ish meat revenue, the so-called korobka, was now
added the new impost on Sabbath candles to
provide for the educational experiments of the
government.

Culmination of Anti-Jewish Policy

But the true genius of Nicholas lay, as we saw,
in the domain of militarism, and we are not sur-
prised to find that towards the end of his reign he
reverted to this pet scheme of his youth.

The inhuman conditions attaching to conscrip-
tion had made the Jews dread military service to
such an extent that many resorted to self-mutila-

146 Jews of Russia and Poland

tion. As a consequence, the shortage in recruits
was considerable. Several decrees, one more
cruel than the other, dealt with this Jewish anti-
militarism. One of these decrees prescribed that
the shortage was to be fiUed by men of every age,
including fathers of families, and the "conscrip-
tion elders" themselves were liable to be drafted
into service, so that they had no other alternative
than to become, as a contemporary tersely puts it,
either murderers or martyrs.

But the most devilish piece of legislation is
probably the ukase of 1853, giving every Jew per-
mission to capture any one of his corehgionists
who might be foimd without a passport and to
present him to the government as a substitute
either for himself or for a member of his family,
or to sell him to another Jew who might be in need
of such a substitute. As a result, many a Jew,
outside of the official "catchers," was tempted
into becoming a kidnapper. Bands of Jewish
gangsters sprang into being who prowled about the
inns for the purpose of robbing Jewish travellers of
their passports in order that they might afterwards
capture them for substitutes. Of all the horrors
of that most horrible contrivance of Czardom, the
Jews felt most bumingly this fiendish stratagem
to sully the soul of the Jew and to turn him into an
accompHce of the misdeeds of Russian autocracy.

Fortunately, there is an end to everything. The
despotism of the Iron Czar, who was turning mil-

Russian R^ime 147

lions of human beings into lifeless and soulless
machines, tottered under the crashing blows which
the forces of the "rotten West," allied in the
Crimean War, were dealing out to it. Nicholas I,
who on his death-bed seemed to realize the failure
of his policies, was superseded by Alexander II,
whose reign was fraught with beautiful promises
— alas with promises only — ^for the suffering and
despairing Jewry of Russia.

Reign of Alexander II

The accession of the Czar- Liberator marks a new
era in the history of Russia. Czardom had over-
reached itself. The Russian collapse in the Cri-
mean War in which the Orthodox empire was fight-
ing against the "rotten West "had luridly revealed
its own rottenness, and Russian autocracy had to
beat a retreat. This retreat was happily facili-
tated by the personal disposition of the new ruler
who strongly resembled his namesalce Alexander
I, and had been educated by the poet Zhukovski,
the masterly interpreter of western classics to his
countrymen. The abolition of serfdom, the crea-
tion of a modem judicial system, the grant of rural
self-government, and other great reforms followed
one another in quick succession. However, as in
the case of Catherine the Great and Alexander I,
the end of the liberal reign was a betrayal of its
beginning. The Czar-Liberator, as if to nmvp the
stubbornness of Russian autc

148 Jews of Russia and Poland

liberating his people. He had loosened its chains,
but he refused to remove them, and the Russian
giant, tantalized by half -measures, brandished his
fetters and felled the man who had loosened them.
In the case of the Jews, too, Alexander only-
loosened their chains but failed to remove them.
His era was, and still is, looked upon as the Golden
Age of Russian Jewry, but, when analysed closely,
its only claim to this title is found to consist in
the pitch-dark backgrotmd of the preceding and
the following reign. In reality, Alexander II
maintained, though in a more modem disguise,
the traditional anti- Jewish policy of the Czars.
He was the Czar-Liberator of the Jews only in so
far as he abolished the juvenile conscription, that
fiendish masterpiece of Muscovite tyranny, which
had no place in rejuvenated Russia. On the other
hand, he persistently refused to grant them liberty,
and even the few liberties he finally decided on
granting them had to be wrenched from him by
his more Uberal-minded advisers.

Policy of Amalgamation

When, in 1858, his attention was called to the
barbarous injustice of expelling the discharged
Jewish soldiers from the places outside the Pale
where for twenty-five and more years they had
served their coimtry, he declared that he was
"energetically opposed" to the idea of allowing
Jews to reside outside the Pale. Only nine years

Russian Regime

149

later was this primitive piece of justice ultimately
wrested from him. His personal view of the
Jewish problem is expressed in his injtmction to
the newly appointed "Jewish Commission," in-
structing it to revise the existing Jewish legislation
"with a view to harmonizing it with the general
tendency leading to the amalgamation of this
people with the native inhabitants, as far as the
moral condition of the Jews permits it." This
"amalgamation," i. e., not the inclusion of the
Jews in the general citizenship of the country, but
the siurender of their national and religious dis-
tinctiveness, was only a modem translation of the
poHcy of conversion which his father Nicholas had
endeavoured to bring about by brutal, and his
uncle Alexander I, by gentle means. The educa-
tional policy of Alexander II, as applied to the
Jews, was prompted entirely by this motive, and
the economic and political hberties granted by him,
liberties which only benefited a thin layer on the
surface of Russian Jewry, were avowedly the result
of this desire for "Jewish amalgamation,"

Proceeding on the lines of the educational policy,
marked out by his predecessor under the influence
of Uvarov, Alexander 11 decreed in 1855, shortly
after his accession, that after the lapse of twenty
years only such Jewish rabbis and teachers were
to be appointed to these offices who had received
their training in the official rabbinical seminaries
or in some other secular institution. In 1856, a

150 Jews of Russia and Poland

strict government supervision was established over
the Heders (elementary Jewish schools) and the
Melameds (elementary Jewish teachers), these
measures being intended to crush out the "per-
nicious influence of the Talmud. " Even the petty
warfare against the traditional Jewish kaftan (a
long robe) and Jewish ear-locks was not forgotten.
For after they had offended the eyes of the Czar on
one of his visits to Poland, they were cut by the
Russian officials with greater energy than ever, as
if the only misfortune of Russia was the survival
of the Jewish "Peies. "

Alexander's economic legislation with referwice
to the Jews was, as indicated above, marked by the
same poUcy of amalgamation. It followed on the
heels of a report of the "Jewish Commission,"
which pointed out to the Czar that the amalgama-
tion of the Jews was hampered by their terrible
disabilities. We have already seen that Alexander
was watching with the same superstitious awe over
the Jewish Pale, as his predecessors had done.
But as an allurement to amalgamation, it was
decided to single out a few categories among the
Jews for the piupose of opening to them the for-
bidden interior of the empire. After several years
of discussion and investigation, this privilege was
finally accorded to merchants of the first guild,
to graduates of a Russian university, and to
mechanics affiliated with trade-unions.

It may appear strange that the doors of the

Russian Regime 151

congested Pale should have been opened just to
those privileged classes of Jews who suffered least
from that congestion, but it becomes clear to us in
the light of the general utilitarian attitude of the
Russian Government towards the Jewish problem.
In addition to the motive of selecting only such
Jews as were already amalgamated or hable to
amalgamation, the government was actuated, as
was afterwards boldly betrayed by two liberal-
minded dignitaries, not by the wish to benefit the
Jews, but by the desire to introduce Jewish capital
and Jewish energy into the semi-civilized central
provinces of the empire.

If we except the abohtion of juvenile military
conscription, we find that the Uberalism of this
celebrated Golden Age exhausted itself in the per-
mission granted to a limited number of Jews to
escape from the Pale and in a few more privileges,
such as the admission to the bar and participation
in rural self-government, which, though valuable
in themselves, affected but an insignificant number
of Jewish individuals.

Anti-Jewish Reaction

But even this modicum of hberty proved too
much for the government and was repented of
almost as soon as granted. The latter part of
Alexander's reign is marked by a general reaction
in its attitude towards Russian emancipation as

I

152 Jews of Russia and Poland

a whole and by a double reaction in its attitude
towards the emancipation of Jews.

The ix)licy of amalgamation pursued by the gov-
ernment had not proved without effect, but the
effect was in exact proportion to the cause. The
government had accorded privileges to the " few,"
and the " few " were, indeed, seized by a frenzy of
amalgamation which led in many cases to a com-
plete detachment from Judaism. The "many,"
however, the compact Jewish masses gasping for
breath in the congested Pale, himgry and rightless,
were as loyal to Judaism as ever, and foxmd their
only solace and inspiration in it. They were
distrustful of the rabbis and teachers manufactured
and hall-marked by a government whose ^ main
purpose was to lure, or to drive, the Jews away
from Judaism. The decrees of 1855 and 1856,
aiming at the elimination of the traditional type
of Jewish teacher and leader, had led to no result
and had to be repealed. In 1873, the special
Jewish schools which had been organized with such
aplomb tmder Nicholas I were closed, only a few
survivals testifying to the ambitious plan of the
preceding reign. On the other hand, the admis-
sion of privileged Jews beyond the Pale had proved
only too successful, for the native merchants of
the interior began to clamor against Jewish ex-
ploitation, the synonjnn for Jewish competition
in the vocabulary of Czardom.

All this served as welcome nourishment for the

Russian Regime 153

powers of darkness which were again raising their
head. Numerous signs heralded the approach
of the reaction. An unprincipled Jewish convert,
Jacob Brafman by name, who managed to find
access to the Czar, began to accuse the Jews of all
mortal crimes. He asserted that the Jewish Kahal
organization, officially abolished by Nicholas in
1844, continued to exist and to pursue a dangerous
anti- Russian poUcy, in conjunction with the Jewish
communities throughout the world headed by the
Alliance IsraeHte Universelle in Paris, His work
{The Book of the Kahal, 1861}, containing all these
Hbels, was sent out to all the government offices of
the empire for rule and guidance. A few years
later, a former cathoHc priest, named Lutostanski,
who had been unfrocked for immoral conduct,
began to charge the Jews with ritual murder and
other horrible misdeeds. His book, containing
these charges, was not only received by the heir-
apparent, the later Czar Alexander III, but was
also sent out to the secret poUce all over the
country. An anti-Jewish riot took place in Odessa
in 1871. A ritual-murder trial was engineered in
Kutais in the Caucasus in 1878. The "Novoye
Vremya, " which had till then championed the
liberal tendencies of the "New Time," suddenly
changed front and became, as it has remained ever
since, the sewer of Russian anti-Semitism. A
special commission appointed by the Czar in 1871
was entrusted with the task of "weakening as far

154 Jews of Russia and Poland

as possible the social ties of the Jews," i. e.^ of
breaking down the unity, and, with it, the vitality
of Judaism. Ominous clouds were gathering on
the horizon, and when on March 13, 1881, Alex-
ander II fell a victim to his policy of half-measures,
there broke out a terrific storm which has been
raging ever since over the heads of Russian Jewry.

Recent Times

The reign of Alexander III (1881-1892) lies
outside the range of a historic survey, and a de-
scription of it is both tmnecessary and impossible.
Unnecessary, because it is indelibly stamped on
the minds of the contemporaries. Impossible,
because only the genius of a Dante could furnish
a worthy sequel to his "Divine Comedy," by
picturing the "tmgodly tragedy" of the Jews in
the inferno of the Czars. Only a few facts may be
added to complete the picture of the history of the
Jews xmder Russian autocracy.

Alexander's jxDlicy towards the Jews follows the
traditional lines of his predecessors, aiming at the
extermination of Judaism. But in its methods of
execution his reign presents several noteworthy
departures. Having arrived at the conclusion,
already foreshadowed in the preceding reign, that
the "goal of Jewish amalgamation is tmattain-
able," i. e., that the Jews were not ready to sell
their birthright for a mess of lentils, Alexander at
one stroke discarded all attempts to draw the Jews

Russian Regime 155

into the Orttodox Clmrch by the gentle strings of
enHghtenment. Hence the doors of the educa-
tional institutions of Russia are shut with a bang in
the face of the Jew, The annihilation of Juda-
ism demands more tangible methods of warfare.
Hence the addition of the word pogrom to the
twentieth-centiuy dictionary of Europe, The
vice of the Pale of Settlement must be tightened
to the crushing point. Hence the "Temporary
Rules of the 3d of May." The old consumma-
tion of Czardom, the destruction of the rural Jew,
is at last an accompHshed fact. Pobyedonostzev
becomes the brain and Plehve becomes the hand
of frenzied autocracy. A third of Russian Jewry
is doomed to immigration, another third con-
demned to starvation, and the last third is to be
saved by conversion,

Nicholas II is the worthy son and successor of his
father. While reaching out for the title of Prince
of Peace, he wages war to the knife against his
Jewish subjects. The primitive riots at the close
of the nineteenth century fade into insignificance
before the well-organized butcheries at the begin-
ning of the twentieth. The "Temporary Rules"
are declared in permanence. Jewish rightlessness
is spun out into a gigantic cobweb to insure the
destruction of the victim.

L However, Czardom seems again to have over-
reached itself. The "rotten West," whether it
be through the deafening roar of its cannon or

I

156 Jews of Russia and Poland

through the still small voice of its diplomacy, is
openly shattering, or secretly undermining, the
citadel of barbarism. The cobweb of autocracy,
instead of catching the fly, has only entangled the
spider. Already the wind of liberty is stirring, and
the time is near when one whiff will suffice to sweep
the cobweb and the spider into the abyss of oblivion.

The history of the Jews of Russia is the history of
the Jews tmder the Czars. It is not the history of the
Jewsimder the Russian nation or amidst the Russian
nation. We have no quarrel with the great Russian
people. We do not hold it responsible for our suf-
ferings. Many of them, forgetting their own wrongs,
have time and again uttered passionate words of
protest against the wrongs inflicted upon the Jews.
The Russian people is itself the victim of autocracy,
an! only from ignorance and shortsightedness does
it occasionally become a tool of autocracy.

As for ourselves, we need not despair. In look-
ing backward upon the war waged against Jews
and Judaism by Czardom as an institution and by
the individual Czars as its instruments, we derive
comfort and consolation from the Divine Promise
of Jewish indestructibility which we confidently
recite on our annual feast of liberty:

For not one only among them stood up against us
to destroy us, but in every single generation did they
stand up against us to destroy us. Yet the Holy One,
blessed be He, saveth us from their hands.

I

THE INNER DEVELOPMENT OF RUSSO-POLISH JEWRY

THE student of Jewish history, who, wearied
by the loninspiring vicissitudes of the external
life of the Jew, turns away to enter the sanctum of
his spiritual existence, cannot but experience a
spark of that subhme relief which was felt by the
great Jewish lawgiver when after his wearisome
wanderings in the desert he suddenly beheld the
Divine presence in the midst of a thorn-bush. We,
too, have been wandering through the dreary
wilderness of external Jewish history in the lands
of the Slavs. We saw the buds of Jewish hope
parched by the heat of hatred or swept away by

I the storms of persecution. We beheld Israel
as an unattractive thorn-bush, dry, leafless, and
prickly, a true product of the desert. But suddenly
our disappointment is turned into enchantment.
For a Divine fire is seen bursting from the un-
sightly plant, wondrously transfiguring its grace-
less forms, and a mysterious voice is heard calHng:
"Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place
whereon thou standest is holy ground."

158 Jews of Russia and Poland

Characteristics of Polish Judaisfn

K the spiritual history of the Jew in the Diaspora
is holy ground, because it represents the triumph of
the few over the many, of the weak over the strong,
of the spirit over the flesh, it is doubly holy ground
in the case of Russo-Polish Jewry. For it is in
Poland and Russia that the culture of Diaspora
Judaism has round its most perfect manifestation.

Unfortimately this Polish- Jewish culture is but
seldom appredated, not because, as is the case
with so many historic phenomena, it is too distant
from us, but, on the contrary, because it still is
too near to us. Many of us and, with us, the
majority of the Jewish people are a product of that
culture. What we are and what we are not we
owe equally to its influence, and with that un-
forttmate capacity for fault finding which a later
and inferior phase of that very culture has bred
in us we only think of what we are not, and are
ready to condemn the presimiable source of our
failings. But when we have once divested our-
selves of our personal sympathies and antipathies,
we are forced to the conclusion that Polish- Jewish
cultiu'e, or, in short, Polish Judaism is the cul-
mination and perfection of that form of Judaism
which thus far has been the only one to stand the
test of the Dispersion, the Judaism of the Rabbis,
or rather the Judaism of the Bible as interpreted
by the Rabbis.

Inner Development

159

Polish Judaism is the worthy successor of
Talmudic Judaism. Were it possible for the
ancient sages of Palestine ajid Babylonia to join
hands, across the chasm of time and space, with
the Talmudic celebrities in the lands of the Slavs;
were Rabbi Akiba or Rabbi Meir of the second
century to commune with Rabbi Moses Isserles or
Rabbi Solomon Luria of the sixteenth, or were
Abaye and Raba of Babylonia to confer with the
authors of the Shakh and Tas who lived in Poland
and Lithuania, — they would doubtless return to
their eternal rest with the blissful consciousness
that the heritage left by them was in safe and
trusty hands. Those who condemn Polish Judaism
condemn Talmudic Judaism or, more correctly,
condemn Diaspora Judaism altogether, and, if
logically consistent, are driven to the conclusion,
which many a hidebound Zionist will be slow in
accepting, that the only Judaism worthy of the
name is that produced on Jewish soil, in an in-
dependent Jewish atmosphere, and that Judaism
in the Dispersion has been one gigantic failure.

The central feature of this Polish Judaism is the
same as of Talmudic Judaism: it is the all-em-
bracing influence of religion, — religion in that
indissoluble combination of the concrete and
abstract, of the ideal and real, or of theory and
practice, which has been characteristic of the
Jewish genius from the time of the prophets down
to this day. It is, to use the ancient rabbinical

i6o Jews of Russia and Poland

terms which are without eqtdvalents in modem
phraseology, Tor ah and Ahoddh. On the one
hand, it is Abodah, religious cult or service, i. e.,
the practice of the Law, the regulation, under the
authority of religion, of the highest as well as the
lowest ftmctions in life, that ceremonial Judaism
which does not claim to bring heaven down upon
earth, but has certainly succeeded in lifting the
earth a little nearer to heaven, by transforming the
physical acts of life into spiritual values. It is,
on the other hand, Torah, the sttidy of the Law,
the theory of faith, or that Deah eth-Adonai, that
*' Knowledge of the Lord" which in biblical phrase-
ology is the nearest approach to what in modem
parlance we term religion.

This Judaism, resting upon the two pillars of
Torah and Abodah, to the exclusion of all other
extraneous influences, has remained essentially
the same throughout all the ages and in all the
dwelling places of the Jewish Dispersion. Only
once since the loss of its state and land was the
tribe of the wandering foot, yielding to the pressure
of the environment, diverted from its exclusive-
ness, — I refer to the Jewish- Arabic period when the
beauty of Jafeth, clothed in the garb of the Arabs,
sought and obtained admission into the tents
of Sem. Like all forms of diversion, the Juda-
ism of the Jewish-Arabic period has a fascina-
tion of its own, with a partictdar force of appeal
to us of the modem age who are situated in similar

Inner Development

i6i

conditions. But, while fully appreciating and
even zealously emulating the shining example of
Jewish-Arabic culture, we must not forget that
its versatility was purchased at the cost of original-
ity, and that the genuine and unadulterated form
of post -biblical Judaism is to be found in those less
shining and less fascinating ages in which the
Jews were free from outside diversions. The lack,
on the one hand, of external interference, i. e., the
separate communal and social development of
the Jews, in other words, Jewish autonomy, and
the absence, on the other hand, of disturbing intel-
lectual factors, I. e., of the influence of a powerful
foreign culture, made Talmudic Judaism, with all
its intensity and one-sidedness, possible in Pales-
tine and Babylonia; it was due to the same com-
bination of forces that this peculiar phase of
Judaism found its most faithful reproduction
in Poland and Russia.

Polish-Jewish Autonomy

Jewish autonomy, which, though to be met with
in other medieval countries, yet nowhere assumed
so vast and so varied a connotation as Jt did in
the ancient empire of Poland, is one of the funda-
mental influences which moulded the development
of Polish Judaism. It is, therefore, essential to
realize the general tendency and the particular
features of this PoHsh-Jewish self-government.

It will be remembered from our first chapter

1 62 Jews of Russia and Poland

that Jewish autonomy was only a part of the
general social structure of the Polish Common-
wealth. Poland was a land of estates. The
middle class, or the burghers, who had immigrated
from Germany formed a separate estate 'which was
granted full autonomy in the shape of the German
so-called ** Magdeburg Law." The Jews 'who were
welcomed to Poland under similar drciunstances
were accorded the same privileges. What the
Magdeburg Law was tp the Christian immigrants,
the Talmudic Law was to the Jewish newcomers.
The kings were not only willing but even anxious
to recognize Polish Jewry as an autonomous
community. For this legal position of Jewry was
not only necessitated by the general social strati-
fication of the people of Poland ; it was prompted
no less by the self-interest of the individual rulers
who were handsomely requited for their privileges
to the Jews, and it was equally demanded by the
•exigencies of the Polish exchequer.

Already the charters of Boleslav of Kalish and
of Casimir the Great contain in embryonic shape
the scheme of Jewish self-government. These
rights were gradually amplified by subsequent
rulers and reached their culmination in the six-
teenth century. The Magna Charta of Polish-
Jewish autonomy is represented by the royal
decree promulgated by King Sigismund II on
August 13, 1 55 1, embodying a full-fledged scheme
of Jewish self-government.

Inner Development 163

The basis of this autonomous organization is the
Jewish community, or the Kahal (this form of the
name is used by Russian Jews in preference to
the term Kehillah) . The Jewish Kahal enjoyed the
same jurisdiction as the non-Jewish municipality;
it might even be said that the jurisdiction of
the Kahal was more extensive, for it included
the powers wielded among the Christians by the
Church organization. The dominion of the Kahal
extended not only to the sphere of religion, —
religion in the aU-embracing Jewish sense of the
word, controlling practically every function of
physical as well as of intellectual life. It included
also full and unrestricted authority over its
members in judicial and commercial affairs. In
short, every conceivable aspect of Jewish life was
regulated and supervised by the Kahal.

It goes without saying that, entirely in keeping
with the traditions of Talmudic Judaism, one of
the most fundamental concerns of the Kahal was
to develop and to maintain the vast and all-
comprehensive system of Jewish education which
was designed to spread a knowledge of Judaism
among all sorts and conditions of Jews, extending
alike to tender childhood and venerable old age,
providing equally for the exacting requirements of
the profound scholar, or Lamden, and the modest
needs of the common man, or the Am-Haaretz.
The Kahal was no less sohcitous about keeping
up a high standard of morahty among Jews,

1 64 Jews of Russia and Poland

including their commercial and even sesnial
relations, endeavoring to counteract any tendency
towards extravagance and immoderateness, or
illegitimate smartness in business. It also took
care of the physical cleanliness of the Jew, being
charged with the up-keep of the external appear-
ance of the Jewish quarter. The vast and varied
functions of the Kahal are perhaps best illustrated
by the constitution of the Jewish community of
Cracow adopted in 1595 which not only lays down
a remarkably broad and systematic curriculum
of Jewish education but also fixes the wages of
Jewish cooks.

This authority of the Kahal was zealously and
indefatigably safeguarded by the Polish Govern-
ment. The Polish authorities time and again
warned the Jews against circumventing the juris-
diction of the Kahal by applying to the non-
Jewish courts or the powers of the State. The
Kahal was granted the right of imposing severe
penalties on its recalcitrant members. It was
empowered to subject the latter to the terrible
penalty of the Herem, or excommtmication, and,
in cases where the Herem proved ineffective and
the evil-doers refused to recant, the Polish officials
were directed to punish their disregard of Jewish
authority by confiscation and even the death
sentence.

On this substructure of the autonomous Kahal,
whose powers were limited to the individtud Jewish

community, there gradually arose, as a result of
the sense of discipline and efficiency which charac-
terized, to a striking degree, the Jews of early
Poland, a national organization which embraced
the whole Jewry of the country. The separate
Kahals banded themselves together in district
organizations called Gueliloih (from Hebrew Galil,
"District"), while the latter, in turn, ultimately
grew into Medinoth, or provincial organizations,
comprising the vast provinces of the empire, such
as Great Poland, Little Poland, Volhynia, and
Galicia or Red Russia. It is a sad reflection on the
present disorganized state of Russo-Polish Jewry,
who neither in their native nor in their adopted
lands can point to a single Chief-rabbinate, that
their ancestors of the early sixteenth century
grasped so thoroughly the value of a concentrated
reKgious authority. Every province had its own
Chief-rabbi who represented both to the Jew-
ish and the Gentile world the highest religious
authority of Judaism in his province.

It sounds no less strange to modem Jewish ears
that the impetus towards the formation of the
national organization of PoUsh Jewry came from
the Polish rabbis. Already in the early sixteenth
century the Polish rabbis met frequently to discuss
various moot points of rabbinical law which they
encountered in the course of their activities and
which they were anxious to adjust in a unifdrm
^^lanner. These conferences generally took place

I

1 66 Jews of Russia and Poland

in Lublin, partly because that city was the resi-
dence of the famous Rabbi Shalom Shakhna, the
father of Polish Talmudism and the Chief-rabbi
of Little Poland, partly because Lublin was the
place of one of the most celebrated annual fairs
which played so important a r61e in Polish life in
general and in Polish- Jewish life in particular.

For these fairs served not only as a focus for the
commercial activities of the Jews but also for their
cultural and social life. It was at these Yarids,
as these fairs were called by the Jews, that the
Jewish Intelligencia of that period met, much in
the same way as modem scientific assemblies do,
in order to exchange views and results of investiga-
tion. The Rectors of the Yeshibahs, or Talmudic
academies, who occupied an exalted rank in the
social scheme of Polish Jewry and were acknow-
ledged in this position by the authorities of the
state, made their appearance there, accompanied
by the choicest of their scholars. The fairs, curious
though it may appear to our taste, served at the
same time as opportunities for matchmaking.
For the Jewish merchants came there not only to
attend to business or to brush up their Talmudic
studies, but also to choose husbands, naturally
among the gifted and learned students of the
academies, for their daughters. It is quite possible
that eugenic marriages were yet imknown among
the Jews of Poland, but chastity and purity were
nevertheless matters of course in Polish Jewry, and

Inner Development 167

the unions concluded on these occasions were
prompted neither by the size of the husband's
pocket-book nor by the conventionalities of his
social position nor by the superficialities of his
demeanour and appearance, but were primarily
determined by the standards of Torak and Abodah,
the degree to which the bridegroom excelled in the
knowledge and practice of the word of God.

Council of the Four Lands

These rabbinical conferences, one of the principal
features of these fairs, became more and more
periodical until they were consolidated in the
Waad Arba Aratzoth, the "Council of the Four
Lands," comprising the separate organizations of
the four provinces of the Crown, or Poland proper
as distinguished from Lithuania, viz., Great Poland,
Little Poland, Galicia, and Volhynia. The Duchy
of Lithuania originally belonged to the same
Council, but since 1623 it had an organization of its
own which, however, continued to co-operate with
the larger Council. The membership of the
Council of the Four Lands which met twice a year,
generally in Lublin and Yaroslav, was made up
of six prominent Polish rabbis and a number of
scholarly laymen, a class so peculiarly charac-
teristic of the social make-up of Polish Jewry.
Altogether the number of its members amounted
to about thirty, favourably contrasting with some
modem Polish-Jewish institutions in which the

\

1 68 Jews of Russia and Poland

number of directors sometimes exceeds that of
contributors. This Wood, whose president was
practically the head of Polish Jewry, constituted
a regular Jewish government. It was the equiva-
lent of the Polish parliament or Saytn, except
that it manifested an infinitely greater respect for
law and order. The Wood was acknowledged as
such by the kings who officially refer to it as the
' ' Congressus Judaicus."

The Council of the Four Lands exercised the
same functions in national affairs which the
Kahals did in the life of the individual commu-
nities. It regulated the relations not only be-
tween Jews and Jews but also between the Jews
and the non- Jewish world. It made itself re-
sponsible for the taxation of the Jews, arranging
the total amount with the exchequer. It appor-
tioned this amount among the individual com-
munities which, in turn, distributed the taxes
over their members.

Many a modem Jew who laments the eager-
ness of Jews to appear before the government
as the spokesmen of their people will learn with
pleasant surprise that the Council appointed a
regular Shtadlan or Syndic who acted as the
accredited champion of Jewish interests before
the king and the diet. The political foresight of
the Waad may be gauged from its provision that a
sum of 1000 gulden be held in cash in every pro-
vince for the emergency of a ritual-murder libel

Inner Development 169

and that plans be formulated for securing further
funds, if required by the circumstances. The
Council frequently endorsed the regulations and
restrictions passed by the Polish diets, warning
the Jews against any infraction of the law. It
endeavoured to check the occasional tendency
among Jews to display their intellectual acu-
men in their cornmerdal transactions with non-
Jews.

In internal Jewish aEEairs the Council acted as a
magnified Kahal. Following the mandate as well
as the example of Talmudic Judaism, it gave its
first and foremost attention to the problem of
Jewish education, seeing to it that the whole
country was covered with a close network of
elementary schools or Heders and secondary
colleges or Yeshibahs. It controlled — here again
the modem Jew will be tempted to transgress the
tenth commandment— the Hterary output of the
Jews, no book being allowed to pass a Polish-
Jewish printing press, without having first secured
its Haskamah, or approbation. It protested
against the tendency towards extravagance and
luxury in dress, which latter failing was already
then typical of the Jewish fair sex. These multi-
farious activities of the Kahals became particularly
important after 1648 when the great country-wide
K calamity threatened to disrupt Polish Jewry. It
^1 was largely due to the wise and well-directed
^f efforts of the Council that the Jews of Poland

170 Jews of Russia and Poland

were able to survive the unparalleled sufferings
of those terrible years.

It is true, the national organization of the Polish
Jews did not escape the general process of de-
generation which vitiated all the political agencies
of Poland. It became more and more oligarchic
and despotic and later on was not free from the
contamination of graft and politics. Yet, with all
its shortcomings, it remained a powerful factor
for good throughout the ages and was greatly
instnmiental in furthering the development and
progress of Polish Jewry.

The Coimcil of the Four Lands was abolished in
1764, six years before the first partition of Poland,
when the government decided to take over the
collection of the Jewish head-tax and, having
no further financial interest in a national Jewish
organization, robbed it of its prerogatives. The
Kahals or individual commtmities were still al-
lowed to exist until they, too, were abolished by
the ''Kingdom of Poland," already tmder Russian
suzerainty, in 1821.

As for Russia, i,e,, the Polish provinces incor-
porated in the Russian Empire between 1772 and
1795, there the government, as we have seen in the
second chapter, looked from the very beginning
with tmdisguised suspicion upon the existence of
an autonomous Jewish organization. The Kahals
were more and more curtailed in their f imctions im-
til they were finally abolished by Nicholas I in 1844.

Inner Development 171

The Non-Jewish Environment

This much for the external agency of Jewish
autonomy. As for the internal factor in the
spiritual development of Polish Jewry, itiwas no
less iniportant, although it was primarily of a
negative character. It was the lack of a strong
cultural pressure on the part of the non- Jewish
environment. Prior to the sixteenth century
Polish culture was of little significance and had,
moreover, not yet assumed a distinct national
character. The middle class which consisted of
German immigrants were still keeping up their
affiliations with German culture. At a somewhat
earlier period German had been the language
employed in the courts and even in the churches,
while the Polish language, as we have observed
on an earlier occasion, began to assert itself as a
medium of literature as late as the sixteenth cen-
tury and even then had to divide this honour
with Latin. Apart from it, education, like every
other privilege in Poland, was the monopoly of
the Shlakhta, while the burghers were debarred
from it.

This state of affairs, coupled with the social
ostracism practised against the Jews, made it both
necessary and possible for the latter to preserve
their old dialect, the German vernacular which they
had brought over with them from Germany. By
mixing with Hebrew and Slavonian elements, this

17^ Jews of Russia and Poland

purely Teuton language was gradually transformed
into Yiddish. It may sound paradoxical, yet it is
none the less true, and applies with equal force to
other European and Oriental languages adopted
by the Jews during their Dispersion, that the
Yiddish dialect is nearer to its linguistic sotirce
than the German language. For the German
stock of the Yiddish vernacular which was brought
over by the Jews in the twelfth century from the
shores of the Rhine represents a very much older
phase of Teuton speech than the modem language
of Germany. The same isolation of the Jews
affected their development in every other sphere of
human life, including the externality of dress, so that
the Jews were able and, under the circumstances,
were, indeed, compelled, to live a life of their own,
not only politically but also socially and spiritually.
If we may illustrate the position of the Polish
Jews by a homely simile, — homely in the very
literal sense of the word, — we may say that the
Polish Commonwealth was like an apartment
house in which every estate occupied a separate
suite and in which the Jews, yielding in equal
measure to an inner desire and to the force of
circtimstances, had chosen a little apartment of
their own. In this apartment, which, to be sure,
was on occasions raided and invaded by the other
occupants of the house, the Jews were able to
maintain themselves throughout the whole dura-
tion of the Polish Republic.

Inner Development

Condilions of Imier Life

In order to comprehend the inner condition of
Polish Jewry, it will be worth our while to catch
a glimpse of the interior of this Jewish residence.
We shall observe it at its best if we will attempt
to visualize it the way it looked in the sixteenth
century, which was the Golden Age of Polish
Jewry, both from the political and the spiritual
point of view.

The apartment occupied by Polish Jewry strikes
us, on entering it, as modest but at the same time
as comfortable. There are no luxuries in it ; yet it
is well stocked with all the necessaries of life, and
neatness compensates us for the absence of luxury.
For, in spite of all commercial disabilities to which
the Jews of Poland were subjected as early as in the
sixteenth century, they managed to earn a liveH-
hood, and Rabbi Solomon Luria, a famous con-
temporary, incidentally informs us that even the
Jewish beggars could, without exception, afford to
put on a clean shirt on the Sabbath-day. An air of
peacefulness and repose pervades the dwelhng
place of Polish Jewry. United and disciplined by a
firm organization, the Jews of Poland were saved
from the spirit of disharmony and dissension
which was during the same period rending in twain
the communities of Germany.

A prominent feature of Polish- Jewish life was
Cuemilluth Ilasadim, "the doing of kindly acts," —

I

174 Jews of Russia and Poland

the imassiiming title under which philanthropy
figures in the vocabulary of the Rabbis. Nathan
Hannover, a trustworthy chronicler who wrote in
the following century, gives a glowing account of
this charitable disposition of the Polish Jews, and
we leam with pleasant surprise that their charity
was not merely a spontaneous outburst of the
tender Jewish heart but that it expressed itself
in the form of a systematic and well-organized
endeavour.

The Polish Jews not only provided generously
for the physical wants of their poor; they were just
as solicitous about their spiritual needs, and, in
accordance with the Talmudic injunction: '*Take
heed of the children of the poor, for from them
does the Torah come forth!" education was made
the inalienable prerogative of every Jew. It may
possibly not appeal to the taste of our modem
suffragettes, yet it speaks well for the comprehen-
siveness of Polish- Jewish philanthropy that, ac-
cording to the testimony of the same writer, no
Jewish girl, however poor, was allowed to reach
the age of eighteen, without having been happily
piloted into the haven of holy matrimony. The
Polish Jews showed the same charitable interest
in their brethren of other lands, and those familiar
with modem Jewish conditions in Germany will
smile at the pranks of history when they are told
that throngs of German Schnorrers were thriving,
particularly when endowed with Jewish learning,

Inner Development 175

on the generous and sometimes all too credulous
disposition of the Jews of Poland.

Contact with Non-Jews

Nor were the Polish Jews completely estranged
from their Christian neighbours, as might perhaps
be assumed by those who judge them by latter-day
conditions. To be sure, an intimate association
with the non- Jewish environment was out of the
question, largely through the attitude of that
environment itself. The relations between Jews
and non- Jews, if we may pursue our "homely"
simile, were limited to occasional meetings in the
hall. For such meetings, however, the . Polish
Jews were fully prepared. We have already
commented on the fact that, in spite of all restric-
tions, the Jews of Poland continued to wear the
Polish national dress whose offshoots today, still
recognizable by their Slavonic terms, such as
Kaftan, Kapota, Zhupitzaj Delic, etc., are con-
sidered a symbol of Jewish orthodoxy. The Jews,
here again in spite of all official prohibitions, occa-
sionally carried swords, and some Jewish homes, a
drcumstance scarcely conceivable in later times,
were decorated with arms on their walls. Even
the intimate domain of Jewish culinary art, as is
still evidenced by the names of many Polish-
Jewish dishes, was not inaccessible to the in-
fluences of the Christian environment.

As far as their spiritual life is concerned, we hear

176 Jews of Russia and Poland

of a number of Polish Jews who in 1501 took their
Doctor's degree in Padua, and a century later, in
1623, an envious Polish physician felt the need
of venting his spleen against successful Jewish
rivals in a special publication. Rabbi Solomon
Luria, referred to previously, bitterly complains
that the Bahurs, or students of the Talmudic
academies, were engaged in the study of the
ungodly Aristotle. His great compeer, Rabbi
Moses Isserles of Cracow, was a zealous student
of mathematics and astronomy and studied and
appreciated the philosophic standard work of
Maimonides.

It is a significant fact pointing in the same direc-
tion that the Reformation which deeply stirred
the souls of the Poles found an echo in the minds
of the Polish Jews. In 1581 a certain Nahman of
Belzhytz published a pamphlet in Polish, in reply
to an attack upon Judaism by a Polish adept of the
Reformation. In 1594 another Polish Jew, Isaac
of Troki, a member of the Karaite sect, issued
l^sHizzuk Emunah, "Fortification of the Faith,"
that violent onslaught on the dominant religion
which reveals an intimate acquaintance not only
with the literary sources of Christianity but also
with the religious affairs of Christian Poland, a
book which was afterwards translated into several
European languages, and was greatly admired by
a man like Voltaire. However, despised by the
Shlakhta, and hated by the burghers, the Polish

I

Inner Development 177

Jew felt most comfortable within the walls of his
home where the two repositories of traditional
Judaism, Torah and Abodah, provided him with
sufficient pabulum for mind and soul.

Jewish Ceremonialism

To begin with the latter, the practice of the Law,
which to the PoHsh Jew was not a curse but the
choicest blessing on earth, for which he fervently
thanked his Creator every morning of his life,
filled every nook and comer of his existence.

Like all other phases in the development of
Polish Judaism, this tendency, too, — the crystalli-
zation of Jewish ceremonialism, — reached its
culmination in the sixteenth century. About
the middle of that century the Shulhan Arukh,
the "Dressed Table," was given to the world,
that much-maligned and little-known code of the
Spaniard Joseph Caro, which not only summed up
the Jewish law, as contained in Bible and Talmud,
but also solidified the immense liquid mass of
religious customs which had sprung up since the
conclusion of the Talmud, during an interval of
fully a thousand years.

It is a striking example of the thoroughness and
promptness with which the exchange of spiritual
goods was then carried on in the Jewish world
that, almost immediately after its publication, the
"Dressed Table" of the Spanish rabbi, now re-
siding in Palestine, found its way into Poland,

178 Jews of Russia and Poland

where the famous Rabbi Moses Isserles of Cracow
provided it with a "Table-cloth" ("Mappah," the
title of his annotations to the Skulhan Arukh).
Isserles succeeded, as it were, in Polonizing the work
of the Spaniard, for he supplemented it by the addi-
tional usages and restrictions current among Polish
Jews, and in this improved form the Shiilhan Arukh
became the official code of law of Polish Jewry.
It is true, the Shulhan Arukh did not attain to
this pre-eminence in Polish-Jewish life entirely
without a struggle. It had to endure both competi-
tion and opposition, the former represented by men
like Rabbi Mordecai Jaffe (1530-1612), the author
of the Lebushim ("Raiments"), arival code of law;
the latter championed by no less an authority
than Rabbi Solomon Luria who perceived in the
attempts at codification the danger of a petrifac-
tion of Judaism. But neither the competition nor
the opposition was in any way prompted by the
gravity of the burdens imposed by the Skulhan
Arukh. If anything, they were rather inspired by
the excessive scrupulousness of the Polish Jews in
the performance of Jewish ceremonies. The craving
of Polish Jewry for Abodah, for religious practice,
was so powerful that even the heavily laden ' ' Table"
of Caro was not altogether able to satisfy it.

Jewish Intellectualism

But far more than the tendency of
which after all the Jews of Poland shared

f Abodah, H

d with the ^|

Inner Development

179

L

rest of their co-religionists, was Torak the pecuHar
possession of Polish Jewry. The sludy of the Law
was the real glory of the Jews of Poland and its
intensity has rarely been matched and never sur-
passed in any other country and at any other
period. Pohsh Judaism was, in this respect, an
improved edition of Talmudic Judaism, both by
the profundity and the wide currency of its Jewish
scholarship, the latter embracing not only the
sources of the Talmudic period but the immense
mass of rabbinical hterature accumulated during
the millennium of intense mental productivity after
the Talmud, to say nothing of the vast Cabbahstic
literature the centre of which was occupied by its
source book, the mysterious Zohar.

The Pohsh lands were thickly strewn with
Heders and Yeshibahs, providing elementary and
secondary education for all classes of Jews. But
the study of the Torak was by no means limited
to these official nurseries of Jewish scholarship.
Every Polish Jew was a student. To quote again
our familiar guide to the inner history of Polish
Jewry, Rabbi Nathan Hannover, there was no
community which did not provide ample facilities
for the education of its members, whether juvenile
or adult. There was no family which could not
boast of a Lamden, or an accomplished scholar, in
its midst. Sometimes it was the father, sometimes
the son, or son-in-law, sometimes it was a poor
student, or Bahur, who was offered food a]

i8o Jews of Russia and Poland

shelter to enable him to pursue his studies; some-
times all of these together could be foimd under
one roof. It was not unusual to find a commimity
of fifty which could point to thirty men in its midst
possessing the title of Morenu, corresponding in
the scale of higher education somewhat to the
modem Ph.D. And yet there was no risk of
mental over-production nor the danger of an
intellectual proletariat. For the Polish Jews
strictly adhered to the Talmudic injunction that
the Torah be studied lishmah, for its own sake,
for spiritual self-improvement, and be not made
"a spade to dig with.**

This general diffusion of Jewish learning becomes
the more remarkable when we call to our minds the
intellectual standards of Polish Jewry which, in
the case of the scholar, implied an intimate ac-
quaintance with the well-nigh boundless Talmudic
and post-Talmudic literature, — the ** Talmudic
Ocean," as it was frequently termed, — covering
every conceivable phase of human life and thought,
as well as in many cases, a knowledge of mystic
lore which was considered an integral part of
Judaism. The Jews of Poland, in very truth, lived
up to the ideal picture drawn by the Prophet of the
Exile (Isaiah liv., 13): '*All their children were
taught of the Lord, " and it is only fair to add that
the other aspiration, enunciated by the prophet in
the same breath, was no less realized by them
during the Golden Age of their history: ** Great,

Inner Development i8i

indeed, w^ the peace of their children," The
shadows of strife and dissension fled before the
light of knowledge, except for the Milhamtah-shel-
Torak, "the War of the Torah," the intense,
though peaceful and harmless, struggle on the
battlefield of learning.

Thus Polish Jewry, notwithstanding its whole-
hearted devotion to the knowledge and practice of
religion, was yet not a hierarchy, a government by
priests. It was rather, in accordance with the
democratic ideal of the Bible, "a kingdom of
priests," where all men were created equal, with
an even chance to attain to the same distinction.
The authority of the official religious leader,
profoundly revered though he was, was frequently
assisted, equalled, and even stirpassed by the
influence of the Lamden, or lay-scholar. Perhaps
one might say, employing the phraseology of
Carlyle, that Polish Jewry was a "heroarchy," a
government by the Hero who dominated the
ideals and aspirations of his fellow-men, the Hero
being represented by the Man of Letters, clad in
the robe of the PoUsh-Jewiah Lamden.

Literary Productivity

The literary aspect of this PoHsh- Jewish culture,
*. e., its manifestation in written works, is no less
a product of the sixteenth century. It was in the
beginning of that century that Rabbi Jacob Pollak
(d. 1541), the famous Bohemian rabbi, who is

i82 Jews of Russia and Poland

sometimes regarded as the originator of the in-
genious method of Tahnudic casuistry, charac-
teristically known as pilpul (literally "pepper")
moved from Prague to Lublin and established there
a Yeshibak for the promotion of Tahnudic study.
His pupil Rabbi Shalom Shakhna (d. 1558),
previously referred to as the Chief-rabbi of Little
Poland, is looked upon as the father of Polish
Talmudism, which was, in turn, firmly implanted in
Polish soil by his famous disciples, frequently men-
tioned on these pages. Rabbi Moses Isserles (called
by his initials rema, died 1 572) and Rabbi Solomon
Ltiria (similarly called m.\harshal, died 1573).

This glorious tradition was continued by Rabbi
Meir of Lublin (called in abbreviated form
MAHAHAM. d. 1616), Rabbi Samuel Edels (called
MAHARSHA, d. 1631), — the familiar companions
of every advanced Talmud student, — Rabbi Sab-
batai Cohen (called, by the initials of his princi-
pal work, SHAKH, d. 1663), Rabbi David Halevi
(called, in a similar way, taz, d. 1667), — the two
famous commentators of the Shulhan Arukh, —
accompanied and followed by a whole host of
celebrities who had only one purpose in life: to
fathom the meaning of the Law and to spread
the knowledge thereof among their people.

Standards of Judgment

Of course, in judging this remarkably advanced
stage of Polish- Jewish culture, we have no right

Inner Development 183

to apply our own standards. It seems, indeed,
utterly absurd that the champions of modernity,
whose great boast is the theory of evolution, the
notion of the ceaseless changes to which human
thought no less than human life is subjected,
should arrogantly lay claim to finality when their
own thought is concerned. The sixteenth century
cannot be judged by the standards of the twentieth.
If Polish-Jewish culture — and in this regard the
critidsm applies equally to Talmudic culture in
general — seems small and petty to us, it is no less
our fault than that of the past ages. The Talmudic
dissertation about the egg which was laid on a holy-
day may have no interest for us, but we are scarcely
more interested in the Conjunction of the Human
Mind with the Active Intellect, that profound
metaphysical conception of Jewish-Arabic thought
to which we are otherwise willing to pay our
tribute of homage and admiration. If Polish-
Jewish intellectuaHsm appears barren to us, we
must not forget that, from the point of view of the
PoUsh Jews themselves, whose life was dominated
by Talmudic law both in its civil and ceremonial
aspect, it was productive of rich fruit in its con-
stant application to reality. If that intellectuaHsm
seems too cold and unemotional to us, let us recall
the enthusiasm with which It was cultivated and
let us not overlook the fact that its chill was taken
off by a dash of warm-hearted Jewish mysticism
which appealed no less strongly to the emotions.

i84 Jews of Russia and Poland

On the contrary, disharmoiiioas as P^£sh
Judaism may a|)pear to the modem age, in its
own environment it was essentially harmomoos.
Noble Uving and high thinking characterized in
equal measure the Jews of Poland, and in this
ideal atmosphere even their conmaerciaHsm was
robbed of its sordidness, for, as they sang in their
hillabies, ''Taire is die beste Skhoire/' "the Torah
is the best merchandise." The Pdish Jews were
truly justified in claiming that the name " Polopia,*'
as they called their country, was the equivalent of
the Hebrew phrase Po-hn-ia^ "Here dweOeth the
Lord." They consecrated their life to God and
they were anxious to serve Him with all their
hearts, with all their souls, and with all their might.

Dedine of Polish Judaism

The inner life of P(£sh Jewry, Hke its external
political and social development, passes its zenith
in the sixteenth century. The fcdlowing centmy
maris the b^iimine of its decline. The crisis is
again represented by that fateful 3rear 1648 which
played such terrible havoc with the outward
prosperity of the Jews of Poland. During the
tragic decade inaugurated by that year neariy 700
Jewish c ommunit ies, mostly situated in the south-
west, in Vcdhyrda, Podolia, and the Ukraroa, were
annihilated, and with them were destroyed num-
beriess Yednbahs and other ageodes of Polish*
Vewish cnkore.

Inner Development 185

The gjiritual effect of these fiendish persecu-
tions upon Polish Jewry was even greater than
the physical. A black cloud of depression settled
upon the mental horizon of Polish Jewry, in painful
contrast to the brilliancy in her days of prosperity.
What in the sixteenth century was but faintly
outUned came out in bold relief In the follow-
ing age. Jewish mysticism which had fonnerly
served as a healthy counter-irritant against ex-
cessive intellectualism now degenerates into the
so-called "Practical Cabbala," with its sombre
spirit of asceticism and superstition.

The merciless persecutions and the harassing
ritual-murder libels of the seventeenth century
throw a pall of gloom upon the life of PoHsh Jews.
The former joyousness of existence gives way to
melancholic other-worldhness. The thought of
the people turns away from the worid of reality,
which to them was truly a valley of tears, and
loses itself in the unknown regions of the world
beyond the grave. The literatiu-e of the period,
reflecting this state of mind, is fuU of speculations
about the life hereafter, about Hell and Paradise
(mostly about the former) , or about the mysterious
agencies haunting man on this earth, such as
demons, evil spirits, magicians, amulets, and so on.
We have the evidence of several PoHsh Jews of the
seventeenth and eighteenth century who bitterly
complain that no section of Jewry was so much
given over to superstitious ideas and practices as

i86 Jews of Russia and Poland

the Jews of their own land, though it must, in all
fairness, be recalled that the same characteristic
applies to Poland in general, where, in the age
of the French encyclopsedists, they still burned
witches at the stake.

The autonomous organization of PoHsh Jewry
deteriorates more and more, both through the
hostility of the government and the inner forces
of decomposition, until in 1764 it receives its death-
blow. With the collapse of Jewish self-government
Polish Talmudism which, with all its subtleties,
had never lost its contact with reality, is now
deprived of the vivifying breath of practical life
and becomes gradually petrified in lifeless cas-
uistry. PoHsh intellectualism degenerates into
scholasticism. The pilpul method, originally
used as a mental stimulant, is turned into logic-
chopping and theory-mongering, which engulfs the
whole being of the Polish Jew, laying its impress
even on his mode of expression and gesticulation.

As the hostility of the outside world grows in
fierceness and extensiveness, the Polish Jew with-
draws more and more into the protective shell of
his inner life. Talmudism becomes to him a sort
of oxygen helmet which enables him to breathe
in a stuffy atmosphere, but also produces upon
him the abnormally exhilarating, nerve-racking
eifect of artificial respiration. In spite of all the
influences of CabbaHstic mysticism, the mentality
of the Polish Jew grows, if I may use the expression,

i

L

Inner Development 187

at the expense of his emotionahty. While in the
classic period of rabbinic tradition the ideal
Jewish characteristic was found to consist in a
"good heart" {Pirke Abotk, ii., 13), the quality
most admired among Polish Jews is now a guler
Kopf, "a good head," or an qffener Moiakh,
"an open brain." This hyper-mentality leads to
combativeness, insincerity, and intellectual snob-
bishness. Such, however, is the fate of every
plant which has been detached from its soil and
has been deprived of its natin-al conditions of
development.

Intellectual Revival in Lithuania

Withal enormous spiritual powers were still
slumbering in Polish Jewry, but their development
and manifestation were forced into a different
channel, taking at the same time a different geo-
graphical direction. From the south-west which
had suffered most severely from the ravages of the
Cossacks and those that followed in their wake,
Polish- Jewish culture turns to the north-west, to
White Russia, and particularly to Lithuania, where
once more it blossoms forth in its pristine beauty.
This renaissance finds its embodiment in Rabbi
Elijah of Vilna (1720-1797), on whom popular
affection and scholarly admiration have conferred
the venerable and long-extinguished title of Gaon,
that unique personality who appears as the in-
carnation of Torah and Abodah, who concentrates.

188 Jews of Russia and Poland

as in a focus, the glorious traditions of Polish-
Jewish culture, without the encrustations which
marred its beauty in later days.

The influence of the Gaon of Vilna who, In an
age of scholasticism, originated methods of re-
search which are still followed by modem Jew-
ish scholarship, was carried on by his disciples,
particularly by Rabbi Hayyim Volozhyner, who
gave it (in 1803) a permanent abode in the Yeshi-
' bah of Volozhyn, — whence his epithet. The acad-
emy of Volozhyn, which first took shape in the
mind of the Gaon, soon became a famous seat of
learning which down to our own days has been the
mental power-house of Lithuanian Jewry, sending
forth not only a host of Talmudic celebrities but
also, entirely in opposition to its original purpose,
some of the guiding spirits in the Jewish modernist
movement.

These traditions, called to new life by the Gaon,
have been maintained by the Jewry of Lithuania
down to our own time, and they have laid their
indelible impress upon it, marking it off sharply
from the rest of Russo-Polish Jewry, The Lithu-
anian Jews of today may be designated as the heirs
of the PoUsh Jews of the sixteenth centiuy. In
more ways than one the Lithuanian Jews, or the
Lituaks, as they are termed in Russia, may be said
to be the Scotchmen of Polish Jewry. They
exhibit the same hardiness and energy, the same
push, the same "canniness," the same predilec-

Inner Development 189

tion for philosophical and theological speculation.
Finally the Lithuanian Jews are no doubt the
best Bible students among the Jews of Russia.

Mystic and Messianic Tendencies

An essentially different development was in store
for Polish Judaism in the south-west, in Vol-
hynia, Podoha, and the Ukraina. This was, in
part, due to historic conditions, the destruction of
the Talmudic seats of learning during the Klimiel-
nitzki persecutions. But it was certainly due, to no
less an extent, to the strong emotional make-up
of the Jews of the south-west, a region in which the
number of Jewish males can still be gauged from
the number of violins hanging on the walls of
Jewish homes and which has contributed to the
modem world a larger quota of musical and other
artistic geniuses, giving voice and shape to human
emotions, than any other section of Jewry.

The profound emotionalism of these Jews was
left unsatisfied by the logical subtleties of the
Talmud, which were the delight of the other Jews,
and their artistic temperament was averse to that
minute and excessive ceremonialism which had
gradually assumed the form of stem asceticism.
The study of the Talmud deteriorated more and
more in that part of Jewry and slowly became the
monopoly of an intellectual minority. Talmudic
logic, with its cold and implacable reasoning,
did not appeal to the south-westem Jews whose

J

icjo Jews of Russia and Poland

hearts, moreover, were still reverberating with the
horrors they had undergoneat the hands of the Cos-
sacks. Gradually a gulf opened up between the
few and the many, between the Talmid Haham,
the scholar, on the one hand, and the Am-Haaretz,
the ignoramus, on the other, not unsimilar to the
spUt which divided Jewry at the time of the rise
of Christianity.

This condition of affairs was fraught with
perilous consequences for the further development
of PoUsh Jewry and was still more aggravated by
the turn of events among the Jews outside of
Poland.

It is not accidental that the year 1648 which
marks the beginning of the great crisis in Polish-
Jewish history is also the year in which the Pseudo-
Messiah Sabbatai Zevi made his public appearance
in far-off Turkey. The impressionable Sabbatai
had heard from the lips of Jewish refugees, who
had fled in large numbers from the persecutions
of the Cossacks, the blood-curdling tales of the
slaughter and torture of which they had been eye-
witnesses, and he looked upon these horrors as an
unmistakable sign of the approaching redemption
of the Jewish people.

With no less impatience did the Jews of Poland,
exasperated by their ever-increasing sufferings,
look forward to the long-promised redemption of
Israel. As soon as they, in turn, learned of the
appearance of Sabbatai, they sent messengers to

Inner Development

191

him who came back with wondrous stories about
the glories of the new redeemer. The belief in
Sabbatai Zevi, together with the heterodoxies
promulgated by him. began rapidly to spread in
the south-west, A Christian contemporary, the
Ukrainian writer Galatovski, informs us that the
Jews of his province abandoned homeand property,
claiming that they would soon be carried 'on a
cloud — the aerial journey is an integral part of the
popular Messianic notions — to Jerusalem. The
proximity of the Ukraina to the Turkish Empire
and the close commercial relations of the Polish
Jews to that country furthered the spread of all
kinds of extravagant doctrines, some of which were
distinctly subversive of Judaism. It was the
fever which reveals the hidden disease. This dis-
ease soon broke out openly in the form of the
Frankist movement.

Jacob Frank (1726-1791), or, as he was origin-
ally called, Jacob Leibovich (son of Leib), was
a PodoUan Jew who, during his sojourn in Turkey,
had imbibed the heterodox notions current among
the local Sabbatian heretics. Untrained in the
Talmudic culture of his PoUsh environment, he
discarded the Talmud, setting the mysterious
Zohar in its place, and, unrestrained by any
religious principle or moral consideration, he
catered to the masses by setting up a cult of
sensuousness and immorality which was a violent
reaction against the prevailing spirit of asceticism.

192 Jews of Russia and Poland

Ever looking out for his personal aggrandizement,
this astute adventurer finally landed, with several
hundred of his followers, in the bosom of the
Church, being baptized with great pomp, under
the patronage of the Polish king, in Warsaw.

The movement of the Frankists affected but a
fraction of Polish Jewry. Yet it luridly revealed
the inner longings of the Polish- Jewish mass which
were struggling for expression. It was providential
that Frankism was supplanted by Hassidism which
forced these longings back into the channel of
Judaism.

Rise of Hassidism

Israel **the Miracle-worker" (in Hebrew Bdol-
Shem-Tob, abbreviated to besht, bom c. 1700,
died 1760), the foimder of Hassidism, was bom
somewhere on the border of Wallachia, while his
later life was spent in the Carpathians in Eastern
Galicia. He was a native and a product of the
south-west, that same south-west in which, as was
pointed out before, historic conditions had created
a rift in Jewry, not unlike the one that threatened
to disrupt Judaism in the beginning of the Christian
era.

Being both by temperament and training, or lack
of training, a man of the people, whom he also
attracted as a healer, — the latter activity form-
ing in popular estimation part of the profession of a
Baal-Shem-Tob, — the besht resented the mental

I

Inner Development 193

snobbishness and the "holier-than-thou" attitude
of the intellectual minority of the Ukraina. He
keenly felt the bitter neglect in which the masses
had been allowed to stagnate by the classes, and
he considered it his duty to throw in his lot with
the publicans and sinners. He, too, violently
denied that he had come to add to the Law or to
take away from it; he merely wished to reassert
old truths which seemed to have been forgotten.
He championed the cause of a warm-hearted life-
giving emotionalism against the presumptions
of the chilly Talmudic intellectualism of his age.
The Hassid, or Devout, was to him more than the
Talmid-Haham, or dry-as-dust rabbinical student.
He taught that prayer, offered up fervently,
brought man nearer to God than cold abstract
scholarship. He reaffirmed the rights of religious
joyousness against the gloomy spirit of asceticism
which had descended like a blight on Polish Jewry;
the injunction of the Psalmist (c, 2) : "Serve the
Lord with gladness: come before his presence with
rejoicing," was to him expressive of the true spirit
of Judaism. The consciousness of sin which
weighed heavily upon the masses who, having
been removed from the sources of Judaism, were
pining for salvation, was lifted by his doctrine of
the Tzaddik, or the Righteous Man, who acted as
mediator between God and man. And, what was
more important, he himself appeared in the eyes
of the people as the embodiment of the ideal

194 Jews of Russia and Poland

Tzaddik who by his piety and personality brought
man nearer to God.

The doctrine of Hassidism, as enunciated by the
BESHT, was undoubtedly the right remedy for the
ills of the time which it had set out to heal. Yet,
entirely unbeknown to it, the new teaching con-
tained elements which might have perpetuated the
rift in Jewish life and widened it to a permanent
schism. Fortunately, however, the disciples of
Israel Baal-Shem-Tob were not fishermen but stu-
dents, not men of the masses who were hostile
to the classes, but men of the classes who were
ready to descend to the masses. His successors re-
established the contact between sectarian Hassid-
ism and traditional Judaism, by incorporating the
former in the latter, by leading the violent torrent
of Hassidic emotion into the broad and ptadd
current of Jewish doctrine and practice.

In this transformation, as part and parcel of
rabbinical Judaism, Hassidism began rapidly to
spread. In a marvellously short time it conquered
the whole of the south-west where the soil was
ready for its reception. It invaded a little later
Poland proper, now the province of Russian Poland,
where it was merged with the strong spirit of
Talmudism peculiar to that region, so that down
to our own days the Hassidic scholar and the
scholarly Hassid is a characteristic Jewish type of
that section of Polish Jewry.

It penetrated even as far as the north-west,

I

Inner Development 195

pushing its way into the province of White Russia,
bordering on Lithuania. But there, characteristic-
ally enough, championed by the famous Taknudist
and thinker, Rabbi Shneor Zalman of Ladi (1747-
1812), it assumed the intellectual hue of its envi-
ronment, and down to this day his followers, the
so-called habad (from the initials of the three
Hebrew words; Hokmah, Binah, Deak, Wisdom,
Understanding, Knowledge), form, as it were, the
vanguard of a mystico-rational Hassidism.

The only province which was able to withstand
the compact of the new movement was Lithuania,
the stronghold of Rabbinism, where its spread was
checked just as much by the innate rationalistic
tendency of its Jewry as by the passionate protect
of its guiding spirit, the Gaon of Vilna, and down
to our own times Lithuania has remained the
bulwark of the Milknagdim, or "Opponents," as
the opponents of Hassidism were called for short.

Effects of Hassidism

Looking backward from the distance of a.
century, marked by radical changes in the life
of the Jews, we are bound to acknowledge that
Hassidism saved Judaism in Poland. Without
it, the longings of the people, unsatisfied by the
contemporary tendencies of official Judaism, might
have found an outlet in a separate sect or hetero-
doxy, away from the high road of historic Jewish
development. Hassidism introduced a ray of

196 Jews of Russia and Poland

poetry into the grey every-day life of the Polish
Jews. It infused Hilhlahabuth, ecstasy and
enthusiasm, into the souls stunned by the shocks
of outward persecution and chilled by the abstract
logic of Talmudic reasoning. It rehabilitated
simple-minded, wann-hearted piety which had been
almost choked by the rigorous conception of duty
characteristic of Polish Rabbinism. It made life,
with all its inconceivable misery and oppression,
not only tolerable but enjoyable. It reawakened
the old Simhah-shel-Miisvah, "the joyousness in
fulfilling the Law," the spirit of optimism and
sodability, which had been clouded by the pes-
simistic Judenschmerz, the asceticism and other-
worldlioess of ofBcial Judaism in Poland. Even
its cult of Tzaddikism, fraught, as it was, with so
many extravagances and abuses, introduced, or
reintroduced, into Judaism the worship of the
Hero, with the ennobling effect which the admira-
tion of one higher than oneself always entails.

But it also had its negative effects and bred
evils from which Russian (and GaHcian) Jewry
suffers until this day. It accentuated the spirit of
Jewish separateness which, as it was, had become
only too strongly accentuated in the latter part of
Polish-Jewish history. Its emotionalism was sub-
versive of the spirit of organization and discipHne
which had characterized the earlier stages of Polish
Judaism. The warmth of Jewish mysticism rose to
the fever of Tzaddikism, with the many negative,

Inner Development

197

nay, repellent features peculiar to its later develop-
ment, with the result, subversive of all Polish-
Jewish tradition, that Jewish religious leadership
became vested in a caste of hereditary priests.

StiU, taking all in all, Hassidism, no less than
Rabbinism presented one fundamental aspect
which distinguishes it favourably from modem
Judaism. They were harmonious. The Jews of
Poland, to whichever camp they belonged, whether
they paid their allegiance to the intellectual
Rabbinism of the north-west or to the emotional
Hassidism of the south-west, lived and acted in
harmony. To quote Carlyle again :

The thoughts they had were the parents of the
actions they did; their feelings were parents of their
thoughts; it was the unseen and spiritual in them that
determined the outward and actual; — their religion,
as I say, was the great fact about them.

Danger of Isolation

This fundamental characteristic has remained
the central feature of Polish- Jewish life down to our
own days. The modem historian, who, being
aware of the vicissitudes of time, judges every age
by its own standards, can only point to one mistake
of which Polish Jewry may be found guilty, — but
that one mistake was fatal. As a matter of fact,
the mistake was not one of positive action but
rather of passive short-sighted inaction.

igS Jews of Russia and Poland

For while the Jewry of Poland remained station-
ary in one spot, the world around them was under-
going a radical transformation. Clinging with
greater tenacity than ever to their separate dwell-
ing and to every fixture in it, shutting out the
slightest ingress of light, air, and sound from the
outside, the Jews of Poland failed to perceive that
the whole structure of which their dwelling formed
a part was tottering to its fall and threatening to
bury them beneath its ruins.

A new task arose before Polish Jewry, or rather
before the few among them who were not totally
blindfolded: to get out of their isolation which
had become untenable, to come once more in
touch with the current of humanity, and to find a
new basis of readjustment between Judaism and
the non-Jewish world. The old Judeo-centric
conception of the Ghetto, which placed the Jewish
people apart from humanity, had to give way to the
new anthropo-centric point of view, which assigned
Judaism a place in the midst of the civilized world.
This task, involving a mental revolution, less ex-
tensive but not less radical than the one which is
associated with the name of Copernicus, was taken
over by the Haskalah.

Rise of Haskalah Movement

The movement inaugurated by the Haskalah
can be dealt with briefly, because its process is

Inner Development 199

not yet completed and, therefore, transgresses the
limits of an historic account.

Haskalah, the Hebrew word for Enlightenment,
a translation of the German Aufklaerung, was, like
the word itself, a product "made in Germany."
It was in that country that the isolation of Ghetto
Judaism first gave way to association and, later on,
to assimilation with the non -Jewish environment.
The spirit of separateness in German Jewry, prior
to the appearance of Mendelssohn, in the latter
part of the eighteenth century, was just as intense
as in Poland. The ancestor of the famous Gemnan
banking house of the Bleichroeders was expelled
from Berlin, at the instance of the Jewish authori-
ties, because he was caught with a German book
in his pocket. Another contemporary German
Jew, by the name of Abraham Posner, who had
had the audacity of taking off his beard, was forced
by a royal warrant, exacted by the Jewish com-
munity of BerHn from Frederick the Great, to leave
this traditional symbol of Jewish manhood un-
touched. But with the advent of Mendelssohn
(1729-1786) a rapid transformation was taking
place in the lands of Teuton culture.

Two tendencies, leading in entirely different
directions, had asserted themselves in this pro-
cess of adaptation, and both of them anteceded
the Russian-Jewish Haskalah. To remain within
the limits of our "homely" simile, the Jews of the
Ghetto either left their residence, taking

all their ^^^^M

200 Jews of Russia and Poland

valuables and heirlooms with them, and went out
in search for a new home, more in harmony with
modem tastes and requirements, or they aban-
doned their residence with all that there was in it,
gave up housekeeping altogether, and went to
board with their neighbours. The latter alterna-
tive was chosen by the Jews of Germany and
led in a remarkably short time to a radical trans-
formation resulting in many cases in complete
absorption.

Mendelssohn, himself a staimch adherent of
historic Judaism, endeavoured to bring about this
rejuvenation of Judaism from within. On the one
hand, his translation of the Bible was to lead the
Jews from the stagnant waters of their Ghetto
culture to the living fountain of the Scriptures.
On the other hand, the Hebrew language, restored
to its classic purity, was to convey the spirit and
content of European culture to isolated Jewry.
The Meassef, a Hebrew periodical founded with the
aid of Mendelssohn, was to be, as its name indi-
cated, the ** rear-guard" in this process of Jewish
modernization.

The results, however, were different from what
had probably been anticipated by the leaders of the
movement. Both the German Bible translation
and the modernized Hebrew literature served as a
means to an end, to draw the Jews into the fold
of modem culttu-e, and they were discarded as soon
as the end was reached. They were nothing but a

Inner Development 201

framework which is torn down when the structure
is completed. Germany, the homeland of the
Hebrew renaissance, was the first to advocate a
Hebrew-less Judaism and the land of Jewish
saints became the hotbed of Jewish assimila-
tionists.

The other tendency was represented in neigh-
bouring Austria, in the former Pohsh province of
Galicia, where Judaism was not only adapted to
modem culture but where modern cultm-e was
adapted to Judaism. Under the influence of men
likeKrochmal (1785-1840), Rapoport (1790-1876),
and minor luminaries a type of Judaism sprang
into being which was fully ahve to the exigencies
of the new time, yet retained aU the vigour and
vitality of its past development.

As for Poland, or rather Russia, — for in the
meantime the great political upheaval had trans-
ferred the Polish Empire, and with it the Jewry of
Poland, into the hands of the Czars, — the Haskalah .
did not arise until a generation or two later, in the
middle of the nineteenth century. Prior to it only
a few solitary swallows appeared which, however,
did not yet bring the Haskalah summer. They
were out of season and they were lost.

One of these premature heralds of the Haskalah
movement in Russia was Solomon Maimon (1754-
1800), a curious personality who strikingly typifies
the strength as weil as the weakness of Ghetto
Judaism and in a tragic manner exemplifies t

202 Jews of Russia and Poland

saying of the Wise King, often applied to the
Haskalah by its opponents (Proverbs ii., 19):
"None that go unto her return again, neither take
they hold of the paths of life." The native of a
Lithuanian village of the last days of Polish rule,
— or rather misrule, — a veritable storehouse of
Jewish learning, pressed under the yoke of matri-
mony at the age of twelve, this feverish seeker
after truth finally fled to Germany where in a
short time he became one of Germany's great
philosophers. With a briUiancy of mind which
penetrated the mist of the most puzzling problems
of philosophy, — Kant openly acknowledged that
Maimon was the only one who had fully grasped
his system of thought, — he combined an utterly
unphilosophic restlessness and an almost shocking
tactlessness. Unbalanced, unrestrained, swayed
to and fro by human foibles, he could only say
with his last breath: " Ich bin rukig," "I am at
peace." He lived and died, away from his breth-
ren, — one of the many victims of the Haskalah
who never returned again and never knew how to
take hold of the paths of life.

Haskalah Movement in Russia

The Haskalah proper begins in Russia with
Isaac Baer Levinsohn (1788-1860), — the Russian
Mendelssohn, as he has been styled. Levinsohn,
prompted by the same motives as Mendelssohn,
employed the Hebrew language as a lever for

Inner Development

203

I

conveying modern culture to the Jews of the Polish,
now the Russian, Ghetto. He became the father
of that extensive Haskalah literature in Hebrew ■
which for two generations was endeavouring to
lure Russian Jewry from the narrowness of the
Ghetto into the wide expanse of European life.

But there was a fundamental difference, as
far as their progress was concerned, between the
movement inaugurated by Mendelssohn and the
one fathered by Levinsohn : the difference between
the Wellweiser of Berlin and the recluse of an
obscure Volhynian town; the difference also be-
tween the Prussia of Frederick the Great and the
Russia of Nicholas I, In Germany, the Auf-
klaerung was, after all, a natural product of the soil.
In Russia, the modem culture which the Haskalah
was anxious to foist upon the Jews was not that of
the environment, for there was no culture worth
while adopting in the empire of the Iron Czar;
it was the culture of Germany, imported from
abroad, and for two generations we witness the
curious spectacle of Russian Maskilim — as the
adepts of the Haskalah were termed — imitating
German enlightenment as represented by their
co-religionists in that country. It was the imita-
tion of an imitation, often reducing itself to mere
outlandish superficialities.

With the naivetS characteristic of the early
Maskilim, partly due to their lack of worldly
*eresult of their blind admira-

204 Jews of Russia and Poland

tion for everything German, they failed to perceive
the devastating effect which the Aufklaerung had
produced on Jewish life in Germany, believing the
Haskalah to end with the mere harmless acquisi-
tion of the elements of modem education. And
with a short-sightedness, no less surprising, they
looked upon the Russian Government, the cruel
taskmaster with the whip in his hands, as their
natural ally in conveying enlightenment to the
Jews of Russia, with results which we had occasion
to comment upon in our account of the reign of
Nicholas I. But the mass of the orthodox, guided
by a sure natural instinct, showed a much clearer
perception both of the real issues of the Haskalah
and the true intentions of the Russian ^^Govern-
ment. They distrusted both, and subsequent
events proved them to be in the right.

The prospects of emancipation which were
smiUng upon the Jews in the reign of Alexander II
acted like a powerful stimulus upon the spread of
the Haskalah, and, in a short time, it succeeded
in modernizing the upper layer of Russian Jewry.
But this modernization, instead of keeping within
the bounds of Jewish tradition, as the champions
of the Haskalah had solemnly promised, led, on the
contrary, to rapid and complete de-Judaization.
The Hebrew language which had been the in-
separable companion of the Haskalah again proved
to be merely a ladder to modem culture, and it was
abandoned as soon as the top was reached.

\

Inner Development 205 i

In Poland, the Haskalah led, among the com- 1
paratively small number of its adherents, to a "
most radical and most repellent form of assimila-
tion which lacks all sense of dignity and does not
recoil from the baptismal font. In Russia, aided
by the rapid growth of Russian culture, it proved
to be the forerumier of a radical Russification,
with the result that the children of the Maskilim,
when overtaken by the anti-Jewish pogroms which
inaugurated the reign of Alexander III, asked in
astonishment: "Rasvye my lozhe yevreyi?" ("Are
we, too, Jews?") And the great poet of the
Haskalah,. Judah Leib Gordon (1831-1892), look-
ing back upon a life devoted to the service of
enlightenment and the cultivation of the Hebrew
muses, asked in the agony of his soul :

'Who is there who can the future foresee.
And the coming events can relate unto me?
Am I not Zion's last singer, indeed?
Are you not the last who my poems can read?'

But the blood of the pogrom victims proved the
seed of a new hope. Defeated Haskalah, finding
herself at the end of her resources, invoked the aid
of young and vigorous Jewish Nationalism.

Rise of Nationalism and Zionism

The herald of this new movement is Perez
Smolenskin (1842-1885). Smolenskin was the
first among the modem Hebrew writers to perceive

2o6 Jews of Russia and Poland

the shortcomings of the HaskaJah. Having come
to leam, from personal observation (he lived for
many years in Vienna), the real character of
modernized Judaism, he became fully aware of the
disastrous consequences to which the Mendelssohn-
ian Aufklaerung had led and to which, in his
opinion, the Levinsohnian Haskalah was bound to
lead. Beneath the magnificent exterior of West-
em European Judaism, which was the object of ad-
miration and imitation of all Russian Maskilim,
he found rottenness and decay, indifference and
apostasy, lack of vigour and courage, a gradual
paralysis of thought and sentiment, a flunkeyish
readiness to surrender the national ideals of
Judaism for the sake of currying favour with the
non-Jews. Standing out against the gloomy back-
ground of Western European assimilation, Russian
Ghetto Judaism, full of defects and deformities,
but also full of life and hope, staunch and sturdy,
ever keeping aloft the national ideal, assumed, in
his eyes, a new, undreamt of beauty. And he
realized that it was not the time to destroy, to
break down the old safeguards of Judaism, but
that It was rather, to quote the title of one of his
books, "time to plant." Smolenskin was one of
the first of his age to anticipate the modem
Zionist idea and in his Hebrew monthly, which he
characteristically called Hashahar ("the Dawn"),
he preached of the glorious day which was soon to
appear over a rejuvenated Jewry.

Inner Development 207^

The advent of Nationalism and, later on, of
Zionism marks a radical turn in the inner develop-
ment of Russian Jewry. It has given a new hope
to the despairing victims of Czardom. Imprisoned,
like criminals, in that gigantic gaol which under the
name of the Pale of Settlement Russian autocracy
had artificially erected for its Jewish subjects,
shut out from the sources of economic and cultural
progress, humiliated in their dignity as men and
threatened in their existence as Jews, their eyes
longingly turned to that natural and historic
Pale of Settlement where the Jewish people, while
retaining all the vigour of its religious and national
distinctiveness, might become a happy and useful
member in the family of nations. The rays of the
national revival have brought to blossom the buds
of modem Hebrew Hterature which is no longer the
stepping-stone to modem culture but the natural
medium of Jewish self-expression. Zionism has
called into play the inborn, though latent, ener-
gies which had almost been crushed by tyran-
nical oppression. It has revived the spirit of
self-confidence and self-detennination in Russian
Jewry. True, it has also stimulated the growth of
weeds, in the shape of tendencies which arc sub-
versive not only of the traditions of Polish Judaism
but of Jewish tradition in general. Yet, amidnt the
confusing cross-currents caused by the sudden
clash between the progressive influences of modern-
ism and the conservative forces of Ghetto life, the

2o8 Jews of Russia and Poland

bulk of Russian Jewry looks forward to a future
when its old fundamental ideals of Torah and
Abodahf of the intellectual and practical self-
assertion of Judaism, would again become the
central pillars of Jewish existence.

Russian Jews in America

Russian Jewry, to use the phrase of Ahad Haam,
its greatest interpreter, is now standing **at the
parting of the ways." Many roads are open before
it, leading out of the present chaos, and many of
them will have to be trodden. Those with a
pioneer spirit, who are courageous enough to blaze
a path for themselves, will go to Palestine to fit
the land of our fathers to become a land for our
children. Others will remain in Russia and assist
in the rejuvenation of the mighty giant of the
North. Still others will wend their steps westward,
towards the hospitable shores of our own country.

It is this latter portion of Russian Jewry
which claims our particular attention in this land.
For the future of American Jewry is indissolubly
boimd up with the future of the Russian Jews
forming part of it. There is no more urgent and
no more fruitful task before the Jewry of America
than that of conserving the immense Jewish energy
of her immigrant population and of infusing it into
the growing organism of American Judaism. We
are all acquainted with the wonderful story of the
coal, which, as the scientists tell us, is nothing but

Inner Development 209

concentrated sunKght. It is the story of primeval
forests, filled with luxurious ferns, which for years
out of number had been drinking in the rays of the
sun, but, having been buried beneath the groimd
and excluded from the reviving touch of light
and air, were gradually turned into coal, — ^black,
rugged, shapeless, yet retaining all its pristine
energy which, when released, provides us with
light and heat. The story of the Russian Jew is
the story of the coal. Under a surface marred by
oppression and persecution, he has accumulated
immense stores of energy in which wc may find an
unlimited supply of light and heat for our minds
and our hearts. All we need is to discover the
process, long known in the case of the coal, of
transforming latent strength into living power.

We are living at a moment when humanity is
passing through one of the greatest crises in its
history. The time is out of joint and our mind
involuntarily turns to the mysterious ** latter
days,** the aharith hayyatnim, depicted in such
soul-stirring colours by our ancient prophets:

And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in tho
earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. Tho sun
shall be turned into darkness, and tho moon into
blood, before the great and tho terrible day oC tho
Lord come.

14

2IO Jews of Russia and Poland

But amidst the fearful gloom which threatens to
engulf us, there is just one ray of light that saves us
from despair. It is the hope that when the great
and terrible day of the Lord will come it will not
come in vain, that it will be a day of reckoning
with the powers of evil, a day that will sweep out
of existence all the wrong and injustice which
has been accumulating for centuries in the life of
mankind. And as Jews we can but fervently trust
that the day which will inaugurate a happier era
in the life of humanity will also mark the end of the
wrong and injustice which has been so monstrously
heaped upon the Jewish people. And when the
Jews, now facing destruction in the empire of the
Czars, will emerge from the world conflict to a free
and happy existence, then will be literally fulfilled
the words of their ancient seer, uttered in a moment
of supreme national danger:

The people that walked in darkness have seen a
great light ; they that dwell in the land of the shadow
of death, upon them hath the light shined.

INDEX

Aaron (Rabbi of Tulchyn), 77
Abraham (of Bohemia), 44

— Porkhovnik, 27
Africa, North, 81
Ahad Haam, 208
Alexander I., 106, 114 ff., 132,

134, 147, 149

— II., 130, 133, 147 fif.,

204

— III., 153, 154 f.. 205

— Yaguello, 44
Alliance Israelite Universelle,

I33» 153
America, 208

Arendar, the, 66 f., 71, 74,

loi ff., 113, 123

Aristotle, 176

Armleder, 28

Austria, 81, 120, 129

Bagdad, 92
Bar (town), 76
Batory, Stephen, 58
Belzhytz (town), 176
Benjamin of Tudela, 92
Berek Yoselevich, 86 f ,
Berlin, 190

Bleichroeoers, the, 199
Bohemia, 28, 44, 48, 81, 181
Boleslav III., 6

— the Pious, 31 f., 162
Borukh Leibov, 95
Brafman, Jacob, 153
Breslau, Synod of, 38

Brest (Litovsk), 44, 79
Byzantium, 92

Cantonists, the, 137 ff,
Capistrano, 47

Caro, Joseph, 177 f.
Casimir III., the Great, 7, 15,
30, 32, 44, 51, 162

— . IV., 31, 39, 47
Catherme I., 94

— II., the Great, 84,
96 f., 108 ff., 147
Chartoryskis, the, 21, 23
Chernigov, 73
Cohen, Sabbatai (author of

Shakh), 159, 182
Constantine, Old (town), 138
Constantinople, 81
Cossacks, the, 72 ff., 187, 190
Courland, 9, 134
Coxe, William, 66, loi f.
Cracow, 6, 9, 11, 40, 44, 47,

48, 49, 59, 79. 164, 176
Crtoieux, 133

Crimea, 46, 92; Crimean War,
136. 147

Dress, Jewish, 105, 107, 118,

144 f., 150, 175
Dyekabrists, the, 130
Dyerzhavin, 113, 115

Edels, Samuel (maharsha),

182
Egypt, 81
Elijah {Gaon of Vilna), 187 f.,

195
Elizabeth (Empress), 95 f.

Estherka, 30.

Frank, Jacob, 191 f.
Francis Joseph, 84
Frederick the Great, 199, 203

211

212

Index

Galatovski, 191

Galida, or Red Russia, 6, 7,

76, 84, 165, 167, 196, 201
Germany, 15 f., 28, 46, 50, 81,

124, 171, 199 ff., 202
Golitzin, 125 f., 136
Gordon, Judah Leib, 205
Grodno, 124, 134

Hdbad (sect), 195
Haidanmcks, the, 75 ff., 83 f .
Halevi, David (author of Taz),

159, 182
Hannover, Nathan, 174, 179
Haskalah (Enlightenment), 82,

141, 198 ff.
Hassidism, 192 ff.
Hayyim (of Volozhjm), 188
Holland, 81, 94
Host libels, 34, 39 f.

Isaac (of Troki), 176
Israel Baal-Shem-Tob, 192 ff.
Isserles, Moses (reica), 176,

178, 182
Italy, 81
Ivan the Terrible, 94

[affe, Mordecai, 178

[astrow, Marcus, 89

[esuits, the, 26 f .

fohn Albrecht (king), 48

Joseph II., 84

^* Judaizing Heresy/' 93, 127 f.

Kahal, the, 105, 1 1 1, 121, 145 f .,

153, 163 ff., 170
Kalish, 6, 39
Kant, 202

Karaites (sect), 112, 176
Kasimiezh (suburb of Cracow),

48
Katzenellenbogen, Saul, 64
Kharkov, 73
Khazars, the, 92
Khmielmtzki, Bogdan, 75, 78,

189
Kiev, 8, 73, 92 f., 134
Kosciuszko, 21, 86

Kovno, 7
Krochmal, 201
Kutais (town), 153

Ladi (town), 195
Lembei:g (Lvov), 6, 48
Lenchytea (town), 58
Levinsohn, Isaac Baer, 202 f.,

206
Lilienthal, Max, 143 f.
Lithuania, 7, 8, 44 f., 54 ff., 76,

78, 79, 94, 108, 187 ff., 195
Livonia, 9, 96, 134
Livomo, 81
London, 135

Lublin, 6, 76, 166, 167, 182
Luria, Solomon (maharshal),

173, 176, 178, 182
Lutostanski, 153

Magdeburg Law, the, 15, 105,

162
Maimon, Solomon, 69, 88
Maimonides, 176
Mazovia, 6, 9
Meir, Rabbi, 159
— of Lublm (maharam),
182
Meisels, Berish, 89
Mendelssohn, 199, 202 f., 206
Michael Yosefovich, 44
Miechyslav (king), 26
Moghilev, 79, 108
Montefiore, Moses, 135
Moravia, 81
Moravsla, 69, 88
Moscow, 93, 94, 109
Moses (of Kiev), 92

NAHBiAN (of Belzhjrtz), 176

Napoleon, 86, 114, 116, 120 f.,
123 f.

Narol (town), 76

Nicholas I., 106, 112, 125, 127,
129 ff., 149, 152,
I53» 203, 204
— 11., 155

" Nicholas Soldiers, " 141, 148 f.

Nicholayev (city), 134

Index

213

Niemirov (town), 76
Novgorod, 93

Odessa, 153

Pale of Settlement, the, 3,
loi, no, 118, 123, 134, 1481.,

150 f.. 155, 207
Palestine, 81
Paul (Emperor), 112 ff.
Petahiah of Regensburg, 92
Peter the Great, 94, 134
Piast (king), 6, 2*]
Plehve, 155
Pobyedonostzev, 155
Podolia, 73, 76, 108, 184, 189,

191
Poland, Great, 6, 7, 80, 165, 167

— Little, 6, 7, 80, 165,

166, 167, 182

— Kingdom of (Rus-

sian Poland), II,

87 ff., 194
Pollak, Jacob, 181
Polonnoye (town), 76, 77
Polotzk (city), 94
Poltava, 73

PoniatovsH, Stanislav, 24, 57
Posen, 6, 40, 48,^ 49, 60, 62, 84
Posener, Abraham, 199
Pototzkis, the, 21, 23, 87
Prague, 182

Radziwills, the,2i9 65, 70
Rapoport, 201

Reformation, the, 26,41,48, 176
Riga, 109
RindJQeisch, 28
Ritual-Murder Trials, 34, 39 ff.,

55, 58 f., 88, 131 ff., 168
Roumania, 9
Russia, Little, 78 94, 96, 97

— New (Southern), 97,

112, 118

— Red, see Galicia,

— White, 76, 78, 108, 109,

III, 128 f., 130, 135,

187, 195
Ruthenians, the, 8, 73

Sabbatai Zevi, 190 f .
Sabbatharians (Subbotniki)

(sect.), 127
Saloniki, 81
Samuel ben AH, 92
Sapiehas, the, 21
Saratov, 133
Schulergelduf, 41, 59
Sebastopol, 134
Shakhna, Shalom, 166, 182
Shneor Zalman (of Ladi), 195
Shidhan Arukh, 177 f., 182
Sigismund I., 44, 47, 48

— IL, 28, 31, 42, 55,

64, 94, 162
Silesia, 6
Smolensk, 109
Smolenskin, Perez, 205 f .
Sobieski (kmg), 57
Sokhachev (town), 41
Speranski, 116, 118
Suvorov, 86
Swedes, the, 73, 79

Tatars, the, 15, 74 ff., 81
Terentyeva, 131 i.
Texel (town), 81
Tilsit, Peace of, 122
Troki (town), 176
Tulchjm (town), yy
Turkey, 46, 81, 190, 191

UeraZna, the, 9, 73 ff., 78, 80,

184, 189, 191, 193
Uman (town), 84
Uvarov, 141 ff., 149

Velizh (town), 131 f.

Venice, 8i

Victoria, Queen, 130, 135

Vienna, 206; Congress of, 87

Viezhjmck, 44

Vilna, 7, 9, 62, 79, 187, 195

Vitebsk, 79, 108, 131

Vitold (Grand Duke), 55

Vladimir (Prince), 92

Vladislav I., 7, 15

- IV., 59

Index

Volhynift, 73, 76, 108, 163, 167,

184, 1S9
Voloshya (town), 188
Voronyeth, 127
VoEnitzin, 95

Wahl, Saul, 63
WaUodua, 192
Waisaw, 6, 9, 79, 85, 86,

88, 89, 193; Duchy of, 11,

86 f.

Yadviga,7
Yaguello, 7
Yaroslav, 167
Yoeko, 44
Yushlravich, 133

Zahoyskis, the, ai
Zecbariah (of Kiev), $
Zhitomir, 59
Zhukovsld, 147
Zohar, the, 179, 191

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