![History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, Volume 2 [of 3] / From the Death of Alexander I until the Death of Alexander III (1825-1894) cover](/books/content/15729/OEBPS/1190945675794117880_15729-cover.png)
About eighty Kahal elders and other prominent Jews of Ushitza and adjacent towns, including two rabbis, were put on trial. The case was submitted to a court-martial which resolved "to subject the guilty to an exemplary punishment." Twenty Jews were sentenced to hard labor and to penal military service, with a preliminary "punishment by Spiessruten through five hundred men." [1] A like number were sentenced to be deported to Siberia; the rest were either acquitted or had fled from justice. Many of those who ran the gauntlet died under the strokes, and are remembered by the Jewish people in Russia as martyrs.
[Footnote 1: Both the word and the penalty were introduced by Peter the Great from Germany. The culprit was made to run between two lines of soldiers who whipped his bare shoulders with rods. The penalty was abolished in 1863.]
The scourge of informers was also responsible for the Mstislavl affair. In 1844, a Jewish crowd in the market-place of Mstislavl, a town in the government of Moghilev, came into conflict with a detachment of soldiers who were searching for contraband goods in a Jewish warehouse. The results of the fray were a few bruised Jews and several broken rifles. The local police and military authorities seized this opportunity to ingratiate themselves with their superiors, and reported to the governor of Moghilev and the commander of the garrison that the Jews had organized a "mutiny." The local informer, Arye Briskin, a converted Jew, found this incident an equally convenient occasion to wreak vengeance on his former coreligionists for the contempt in which he was held by them, and allowed himself to be taken into tow by the official Jew-baiters.
In January, 1844, alarming communications concerning a "Jewish mutiny" reached St. Petersburg. The matter was reported to the Tzar, and a swift and curt resolution followed: "To court-martial the principal culprits implicated in this incident, and, in the meantime, as a punishment for the turbulent demeanor of the Jews of that city, to take from them one recruit for every ten men." Once more the principles of that period were applied: one for all; first punishment, then trial.
The ukase arrived in Mstislavl on the eve of Purim, and threw the Jews into consternation. During the Fast of Esther the synagogues resounded with wailing. The city was in a state of terror: the most prominent leaders of the community were thrown into jail, and had to submit to disfigurement by having half of their heads and beards shaved off. The penal recruits were hunted down, without any regard to age, since, according to the Tzar's resolution, a tenth of the population had to be impressed into military service. Pending the termination of the trial, no Jew was allowed to leave the city, while natives from Mstislavl in other places were captured and conveyed to their native town. A large Jewish community was threatened with complete annihilation.
The Jews of Mstislavl, through their spokesmen, petitioned St. Petersburg to wait with the penal conscription until the conclusion of the trial, and endeavored to convince the central Government that the local administration had misrepresented the character of the incident. To save his brethren, the popular champion of the interests of his people, the merchant Isaac Zelikin, of Monastyrchina, [1] called affectionately Rabbi Itzele, journeyed to the capital. He managed to get the ear of the Chief of the "Third Section" [2] and to acquaint him with the horrors which were being perpetrated by the authorities in Mstislavl.
[Footnote 1: A townlet in the neighborhood of Mstislavl.]
[Footnote 2: See above, p. 21, n. 1.]
As a result, two commissioners were dispatched from St. Petersburg in quick succession. On investigating the matter on the spot, they discovered the machinations of the over-zealous officials and apostasized informers who had represented a street quarrel as an organized uprising. The new commission of inquiry, of which one of the St. Petersburg commissioners, Count Trubetzkoy, was member, disclosed the fact that the Jewish community as such had had nothing whatsoever to do with what had occurred. The findings of the commission resulted in an "Imperial Act of Grace": the imprisoned Jews were set at liberty, the penal conscripts were returned from service, several local officials were put on trial, and the governor of Moghilev was severely censured.
This took place in November, 1844, after the Mstislavl community had for nine long months tasted the horrors of a state of siege. The synagogues were filled with Jews praising God for the relief granted to them. The community decreed to commemorate annually the day before Purim, on which the ukase inflicting severe punishment on the Jews of Mstislavl was promulgated, as a day of fasting and to celebrate the third day of the month of Kislev, on which the cruel ukase was revoked, as a day of rejoicing. Had all the disasters of that era been perpetuated in the same manner, the Jewish calendar would consist entirely of these commemorations of national misfortunes, whether in the form of "ordinary" persecutions or "extraordinary" afflictions.
CHAPTER XV
THE JEWS IN THE KINGDOM OF POLAND
1. PLANS OF JEWISH EMANCIPATION
Special mention must be made of the position occupied by the Jews in the vast province which had be n formed in 1815 out of the territory of the former duchy of Warsaw and annexed by Russia under the name of "Kingdom of Poland." [1] This province which from 1815 to 1830 enjoyed full autonomy, with a local government in Warsaw and a parliamentary constitution, handled the affairs of its large Jewish population, numbering between three hundred to four hundred thousand souls, independently and without regard to the legislation of the Russian Empire, Even after the insurrection of 1830, when subdued Poland was linked more closely with the Empire, the Jews continued to be subject to a separate provincial legislation. The Jews of the Kingdom remained under the tutelage of local guardians who were assiduously engaged in solving the Jewish problem during the first part of this period.
[Footnote 1: Compare Vol. I, p. 390, n. 1.]
The initial years of autonomous Poland were a time of storm and stress. After having experienced the vicissitudes of the period of partitions and the hopes and disappointments of the Napoleonic era, the Polish people clutched eagerly at the shreds of political freedom which were left to it by Alexander I. in the shape of the "Constitutional Regulation" of 1815.[1] The Poles brought to bear upon the upbuilding of the new kingdom all the ardor of their national soul and all their enthusiasm for political regeneration. The feverish organizing activity between 1815 and 1820 was attended by a violent outburst of national sentiment, and such moments of enthusiasm were always accompanied in Poland by an intolerant and unfriendly attitude towards the Jews. With a few shining exceptions, the Polish statesmen were far removed from the idea of Jewish emancipation. They favored either "correctional" or punitive methods, though modelled after the pattern of Western European rather than of primitive Russian anti-Semitism.
[Footnote 1: The author refers to the Constitution granted by Alexander I., on November 15, 1815, to the Polish territories ceded to him by the Congress of Vienna. The Constitution vouchsafed to Poland an autonomous development under Russian auspices. It was withdrawn after the insurrection of 1830.]
In 1815 the Provisional Government in Warsaw appointed a special committee, under the chairmanship of Count Adam Chartoryski, to consider the agrarian and the Jewish problem. The Committee drew up a general plan of Jewish reorganization which was marked by the spirit of enlightened patronage. In theory the Committee was ready to concede to the Jews human and civil rights, even to the point of considering the necessity of their final emancipation. But "in view of the ignorance, the prejudices and the moral corruption to be observed among the lower classes of the Jewish and the Polish people"—the patrician members of the Committee in charge of the agrarian and Jewish problem accorded an equal share of compliments to the Jews and the Polish peasants—immediate emancipation was, in their opinion, bound to prove harmful, since it would confer upon the Jews freedom of action to the detriment of the country. It was, therefore, necessary to demand, as a prerequisite for Jewish emancipation, the improvement of the Jewish masses which was to be effected by removal from the injurious liquor trade and inducement to engage in agriculture, by abolishing the Kahals, i.e., their communal autonomy, and by changing the Jewish school system to meet the civic requirements. In order to gain the confidence of the Jews for the proposed reforms, the Committee suggested that the Government should invite the "enlightened" representatives of the Jewish people to participate in the discussion of the projected measures of reform.
Turning their eyes towards the West, where Jewish assimilation had already begun its course, the Polish Committee decided to approach the Jewish reformer David Frieländer, of Berlin, who was, so to speak, the official philosopher of Jewish emancipation, and to solicit his opinion concerning the ways and means of bringing about a reorganization of Jewish life in Poland. The bishop of Kuyavia,[1] Malchevski, addressed himself in the name of the Polish Government to Friedländer, calling upon him, as a pupil of Mendelssohn, the educator of Jewry, to state his views on the proposed Jewish reforms in Poland. Flattered by this invitation, Friedländer hastened to compose an elaborate "Opinion on the Improvement of the Jews in the Kingdom of Poland." [2]
[Footnote 1: A former Polish province, compare Vol. I, p. 75, n. 2.]
[Footnote 2: It was written in February, 1816, and published later in 1819.]
According to Friedländer, the Polish Jews had in point of culture remained far behind their Western coreligionists, because their progress had been hampered by their talmudic training, the pernicious doctrine of Hasidism, and the self-government of their Kahals. All these influences ought, therefore, to be combated. The Jewish school should be brought into closer contact with the Polish school, the Hebrew language should be replaced by the language of the country, and altogether assimilation and religious reform should be encouraged. While promoting religious and cultural reforms, the Government, in the opinion of Friedländer, ought to confirm the Jews in the belief that they would "receive in time civil rights if they were to endeavor to perfect themselves in the spirit of the regulations issued for them."
This flunkeyish notion of the necessity of deserving civil rights coincided with the views of the official Polish Committee in Warsaw. Soon afterwards a memorandum, prepared by the Committee, was submitted through its Chairman, Count Chartoryski, to the Polish viceroy Zayonchek. [1] Formerly a comrade of Koszciuszko, Zayonchek later turned from a revolutionary into a reactionary, who was anxious to curry favor with the supreme commander of the province, Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich. [2] No wonder, therefore, that the plan of the Committee, conservative though it was, seemed too liberal for his liking. In his report to Emperor Alexander I., dated March 8, 1816, he wrote as follows:
[Footnote 1: He was appointed viceroy in 1815, after the formation of the Kingdom of Poland, and continued in this office until his death in 1826.]
[Footnote 2: He was the military commander of the province. See above, p. 13, n. 2.]
The growth of the Jewish population in your Kingdom of Poland is becoming a menace. In 1790 they formed here a thirteenth part of the whole population; to-day they form no less than an eighth. Sober and resourceful, they are satisfied with little; they earn their livelihood by cheating, and, owing to early marriages, multiply beyond measure. Shunning hard labor, they produce nothing themselves, and live only at the expense of the working classes which they help to ruin. Their peculiar institutions keep them apart within the state, marking them as a foreign nationality, and, as a result, they are unable in their present condition to furnish the state either with good citizens or with capable soldiers. Unless means are adopted to utilize for the common weal the useful qualities of the Jews, they will soon exhaust all the sources of the national wealth and will threaten to surpass and suppress the Christian population.
In the same year, 1816, a scheme looking to the solution of the Jewish question was proposed by the Russian statesman Nicholas Novosiltzev, the imperial commissioner attached to the Provincial Government in Warsaw.[1] Novosiltzev, who was not sympathetic to the Poles, showed himself in his project to be a friend of the Jews. Instead of the principle laid down by the official Committee: "correction first, and civil rights last," he suggests another more liberal procedure: the immediate bestowal of civil and in part even political rights upon the Jews, to be accompanied by a reorganization, of Jewish life along the lines of European progress and a modernized scheme of autonomy. All communal and cultural affairs shall be put in charge of "directorates," one central directorate in Warsaw and local ones in every province of the Kingdom, after the pattern of the Jewish consistories of France. These directorates shall be composed of rabbis, elders of the community, and a commissioner representing the Government; in the central directorate this commissioner shall be replaced by a "procurator" to be appointed directly by the king.
[Footnote 1: See above, p. 16.]
This whole organization shall be placed under the jurisdiction of the Minister of Public Instruction, who shall also exercise the right of confirming the rabbis nominated by the directorates. The functions of the directorates shall include the registration of the Jewish population, the management of the communal finances, the dispensation of charity, and the opening of secular schools for Jewish children. A certificate of graduation from such a school shall be required from every young man who applies for a marriage license or for a permit to engage in a craft or to acquire property. "All Jews fulfilling the obligations imposed by the present statute shall be accorded full citizenship," while those who distinguish themselves in science an art may even be deemed worthy of political rights, not excluding membership in the Polish Diet. For the immediate future Novosiltzev advises to refrain from economic restrictions, such as the prohibition of the liquor traffic, though he concedes the advisability of checking its growth, and advocates the adoption of a system of economic reforms by stimulating crafts and agriculture among the Jews. In the beginning of 1817 Novosiltzev's project was laid before the Polish Council of State. It was opposed with great stubbornness by Chartoryski, the Polish viceroy Zayonchek, Stashitz, and other Polish dignitaries, whose hostility was directed not so much against the pro-Jewish plan as against its Russian author. The Council of State appointed a special committee which, after examining Novosiltzev's project, arrived at the following conclusions:
1. It is impossible to carry out a reorganization of Jewish life through the Jews themselves.
2. The establishment of a separate cultural organization for the
Jews will only stimulate their national aloofness.
3. The complete civil and political emancipation of the Jews is at variance with the Polish Constitution which vouchsafes special privileges to the professors of the dominant religion.
In the plenary session of the Polish Council of State the debate about Novosiltzev's project was exceedingly stormy. The Polish members of the Council scented in the project "political aims in opposition to the national element of the country." They emphasized the danger which the immediate emancipation of the Jews would entail for Poland. "Let the Jews first become real Poles," exclaimed the referee Kozhmyan, "then will it be possible to look upon them as citizens." When the same gentleman declared that it was impossible to accord citizenship to hordes of people who first had to be accustomed to cleanliness and cured from "leprosy and similar diseases," Zayonchek burst out laughing and shouted: "Hear, hear! These sluts won't get rid of their scab so easily." After such elevating "criticism," Novosiltzev's project was voted down. The Council inclined to the belief that "the psychological moment" for bringing about a radical reorganization of the inner life of the Jews had not yet arrived, and, therefore, resolved to limit itself to isolated measures, principally of a "correctional" and repressive character.
2. POLITICAL REACTION AND LITERARY ANTI-SEMITISM
Such "measures" were not long in coming. The only restriction the Government of Warsaw failed to carry through was the enforcement of the law of 1812 forbidding the Jews to deal in liquor. This drastic measure was vetoed by Alexander I., owing to the representations of the Jewish deputies in St. Petersburg, and in 1816 the Polish viceroy was compelled to announce the suspension of this cruel law which had hung like the sword of Damocles over the heads of hundreds of thousands of Jews.
On the other hand, the Polish Government managed in the course of a few years (1816-1823) to put into operation a number of other restrictive laws. Several cities which boasted of the ancient right de non tolerandis Judaeis[1] secured the confirmation of this shameful privilege, with the result that the Jews who had settled there during the existence of the duchy of Warsaw were either expelled or confined to separate districts. In Warsaw a number of streets were closed to Jewish residents, and all Jewish visitors to the capital were forced to pay a heavy tax for their right of sojourn, the so-called "ticket impost," amounting to fifteen kopecks (7½c) a day. Finally the Jews were forbidden to settle within twenty-one versts of the Austrian and Prussian frontiers. [2]
[Footnote 1: See Vol. I, pp. 85 and 95.]
[Footnote 2: The law in question was passed by the Polish Government on January 31, 1823, barring the Jews from nearly one hundred towns. It was repealed by Alexander II. in 1862. See below, p. 181.]
At the same time, the Polish legislators were fair-minded enough to refrain from forcing the Jews, these disfranchised pariahs, into military service. In 1817 an announcement was made to the effect that, so long as the Jews were barred from the enjoyment of civil rights, they would be released from personal military service in Poland, in lieu whereof they were to pay a fixed conscription tax. About the same time, during the third decade of the nineteenth century, was also realized the old-time policy of curtailing the Jewish Kahal autonomy, though, as will be seen later, this "reform" did not proceed from the Government spheres, but was rather the product of contemporary social movements among the Poles and the Jews.
The political literature of Poland manifested at that time a tendency similar to the one which had prevailed during the Quadrennial Diet.[1] Scores of pamphlets and magazine articles discussed with polemical ardor the Jewish problem, the burning question of the day. The old Jew-baiter Stashitz, a member of the Warsaw Government who served on the Commission of Public Instruction and Religious Denominations, resumed his attacks on Judaism. In 1816 he published an article under the title "Concerning the Causes of the Obnoxiousness of the Jews," in which he asserted that the Jews were responsible for Poland's decline. They multiplied with incredible rapidity, forming now no less than an eighth of the population. Should this process continue, the Kingdom of Poland would be turned into a "Jewish country" and become "the laughing-stock of the whole of Europe." The Jewish religion is antagonistic to Catholicism: we call them "Old Testament believers," [2] while they brand us as "pagans." It being impossible to expel the Jews from Poland, they ought to be isolated like carriers of disease. They should be concentrated in separate quarters in the cities to facilitate the supervision over them. Only well-deserving merchants and craftsmen, who have plied their trade honestly for five or ten years, should be allowed to reside outside the ghetto. The same category of Jews, in addition to those married to Christian women, should also be granted the right of acquiring landed property. The ghetto on the one end of the line, and baptism on the other—this medieval policy did not in the least abash the patriotic reformers of the type of Stashitz.
[Footnote 1: Compare Vol. I, p. 279 et seq.]
[Footnote 2: Referring to the term Starozakonni, the Polish designation for Jews.]
Stashitz's point of view was supported by certain publicists and opposed by others, but all were agreed on the necessity of a system of correction for the Jews. The discussion became particularly heated in 1818, after the convocation and during the sessions of the first [1] Polish Diet in Warsaw. Three different tendencies asserted themselves: a moderate, an anti-Jewish, and a pro-Jewish tendency. The first was represented by General Vincent Krasinski, a member of the Diet. In his "Observations on the Jews of Poland," he proceeds from the following twofold premise: "The voice of the whole nation is raised against the Jews, and it demands their transformation." This titled publicist declares himself an opponent of the Jews as they are at present. He shares the popular dread of their multiplication, the fear of a "Jewish Poland," and is somewhat sceptical about their being corrigible. Nevertheless he proposes liberal methods of correction, such as the encouragement of big Jewish capital, the promotion of agriculture and handicrafts among the Jewish masses, and the bestowal of the rights of citizenship upon those worthy of it.
[Footnote 1: i.e., the first to be convoked after the reconstitution of
Poland in 1815.]
Krasinski was attacked by an anonymous writer in an anti-Semitic pamphlet entitled "A Remedy against the Jews." Proceeding from the conviction that no reforms, however well conceived, could have any effect on the Jews, the writer puts the question in a simplified form: "Shall we sacrifice the welfare of three million Poles to that of 300,000 Jews, or vice versa?" His answer is just as simple: the Jews should be forced to leave Poland. Emperor Alexander I., "the benefactor of Poland," ought to be petitioned to rid the country of the Jews by transferring them to the uninhabited steppes in the South of Russia or even "on the borders of Great Tartary." The 300,000 Jews might be divided into 300 parties and settled there in the course of one year. The means for expelling and settling the Jews should be furnished by the Jews themselves.
This barbarous project aroused the ire of a noble-minded Polish army officer, Valerian Lukasinski, a radical in politics, who subsequently landed in the dungeon of the Schlueselburg fortress. [1] In his "Reflections of an Army Officer Concerning the Need of Organizing the Jews," published in 1818, Lukasinski advances the thought that the oppression and disfranchisement of the Jews are alone responsible for their demoralized condition. They were useful citizens in the golden age of Casimir the Great and Sigismund the Old [2] when they were treated with kindness. The author lashes the hypocrisy of the Shlakhta who hold the Jews to account for ruining the peasants by selling them alcohol in those very taverns which are leased to them by the noble pans. Lukasinski contends that the Jews will become good citizens once they will be allowed to participate in the civil life of Poland, when that life will be founded on democratic principles.
[Footnote 1: In the government of St. Petersburg.]
[Footnote 2: i.e., Sigismund I. (1506-1548). See on his attitude towards the Jews Vol. I, p. 71 et seq.]
The choir of Polish voices was but faintly disturbed by the opinions expressed by the Jews. An otherwise unknown rabbi, who calls himself Moses ben Abraham, echoes in his pamphlet "The Voice of the People of Israel" the sentiments of Jewish orthodoxy. He begs the Poles not to meddle in the inner affairs of Judaism: "You refuse to recognize us as brothers; then at least respect us as fathers! Look at your genealogical tree with the branches of the New Testament, a d you will find the roots in us." Polish culture cannot be foisted upon the Jews. Barbarous as may appear the plan of expelling the Jews from Poland, the persecuted tribe will rather submit to this alternative than renounce its faith and its ancestral customs.
The views of the progressive Jews of Poland were voiced by a young pedagogue in Warsaw, subsequently the well-known champion of assimilation, Jacob Tugenhold. In a treatise entitled "Jerubbaal, or a Word Concerning the Jews," Tugenhold contends that the Jews have already begun to assimilate themselves to Polish culture. It was now within the power of the Government to strengthen this movement by admitting "distinguished Jews to civil service."
While this literary feud concerning the problem of Judaism was raging, an unhealthy movement against the Jews started among the dregs of the Polish population. In several localities of the Kingdom there suddenly appeared "victims of ritual murder" in the shape of dead bodies of children, the discovery of which was followed by a series of legal trials against the Jews (1815-1816). Innocent people were thrown into prison, where they languished for years, and were subjected to cross-examinations, though without the inquisitorial apparatus of ancient Poland. It is impossible to say whither this orgy of superstition might have led, had it not been stopped by a word of command from St. Petersburg. In 1817, as a result of the energetic representations of "the Deputies of the Jewish People," [1] Sonnenberg and his fellow-workers, the Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs, Golitzin, gave orders that the ukase which had just been issued by him, forbidding the arbitrary injection of a ritual element into criminal cases, be strictly enforced in the Kingdom of Poland. This action saved the lives of scores of prisoners, and put a stop to the obscure agitation which endeavored to revive the medieval spectre.
[Footnote 1: Compare Vol. I, p. 394, and above, p. 74.]
The Polish Diet of 1818 reflected the same state of mind which had previously found expression in political literature: an unmistakable preponderance of the anti-Jewish element. Some of the deputies appealed to Alexander I. in their speeches and openly called upon him to give orders to lay before the next session of the Diet "a project of Jewish reform, with a view to saving Poland from the excessive growth of the Hebrew tribe, which now forms a seventh of all the inhabitants, and in a few years will surpass in numbers the Christian population of the country." For the immediate future the deputies recommend the enforcement of the suspended law barring the Jews from the liquor traffic [1] and their subjection to military conscription.
[Footnote 1: Compare Vol. I, p. 304, and above, p. 94.]
One might have thought that the Diet had no need of extra measures to "curb" the Jews. It was quite enough that it tacitly sanctioned the prolongation of the ten years term of Jewish rightlessness which had been fixed by the Government of the Varsovian duchy in 1808. [1] This term ended in 1818, while the first Diet of the Kingdom of Poland was holding its sessions, but neither the Polish Diet nor the Polish Council of State gave any serious thought to the question whether the Government of the province had a right to prolong the disfranchisement of the Jews. This right was taken for granted by the Polish legislators who were planning even harsher restrictions for the unloved tribe of Hebrews.
[Footnote 1: Compare Vol. I, p. 299.]
3. ASSIMILATIONIST TENDENCIES AMONG THE JEWS OF POLAND
In the beginning of the third decade of the nineteenth century the noise caused by the Jewish question had begun to subside both in Polish political circles and in Polish literature. Instead, the agitation within the Jewish ranks became more vigorous. That group of Jews already assimilated or thirsting for assimilation, which on an earlier occasion, during the existence of the Varsovian duchy, had segregated itself from the rest of Jewry, assuming the label of "Old Testament believers," [1] occupied a very influential position within the Jewish community of the Polish capital. It was made up of wealthy bankers and merchants and boasted of a few men with a European education. The members of this group were hankering after German models and were anxious to renounce the national separatism of the Jews which was a standing rebuke in the mouths of their enemies. To these "Old Testament believers" the abolition of the Kahal and the limitation of communal self-government to the narrow range of synagogue interests appeared the surest remedy against anti-Semitism. Behind the abrogation of communal autonomy they saw the smiling vision of a Jewish school-reform, leading to the Polonization of Jewish education, while in the far-off distance they could discern the promised land of equal citizenship.
[Footnote 1: See above, p. 96, n. 1.]
The efforts of the Jewish reformers of Warsaw were now systematically directed towards this goal. In 1820 there appeared an anonymous pamphlet under the title "The Petition, or Self-defence, of the Members of the Old Testament Persuasion in the Kingdom of Poland." The main purpose of this publication is to show that the root of the evil lies in the Kahal organization, in the elders, rabbis, and burial societies, who expend enormous sums of taxation money without any control—i.e., without the control of the Polish municipality—who oppress the people by their herems (excommunications), and altogether abuse their power. It is, therefore, necessary to abolish this power of the Kahals and transfer it to the Polish municipalities, or even, police authorities; only then will order be established in the Jewish communities, and the Jews will be transformed into "useful citizens."
The Government spheres of Poland were greatly pleased by these utterances of the "Old Testament believers" of Warsaw. They had long contemplated the curtailment of the autonomy of the Kahals, and now "the very Jews" clamored for it. In consequence, there appeared in 1821 a series of edicts by the viceroy and various rescripts by the Commission of Public Instruction and Religious Denominations, resulting in the demolition of the ancient communal scheme, in which certain forms of self-government, but by no means its underlying fundamental principles, had become obsolete.
These measures were sanctioned by an imperial ukase dated December 20, 1821, [1] decreeing the abolition of the Kahals and their substitution by "Congregational Boards," whose scope of activity was strictly limited to religious matters, while all civil and fiscal affairs were placed under the jurisdiction of the local Polish administration. The Congregational Boards were to consist of the rabbi, his assistant or substitute, and three trustees or supervisors.
[Footnote 1: Corresponding to January 1, 1822, of the West-European calendar.]
At first, the majority of Jewish communities in Poland were indignant at this curtailment of their autonomy, and adopted a hostile attitude towards the new communal organization. The "supervisors" elected on the Congregational Boards often refused to serve, and the authorities were compelled to appoint them. But in the course of time the communities became reconciled to the new scheme of congregations, or Gminas,[1] whose range of activity was gradually widened. In 1830 the suffrage of the Polish Jews within the Jewish communities was restricted by a new law to persons possessed of a certain amount of property. The result was particularly noticeable in Warsaw where the new state of things helped to strengthen the influence of the group of the "Old Testament believers" and enabled them to gain control of the affairs of the metropolitan community. The leaders of Warsaw Jewry managed soon to establish intimate relations with the Polish Government, and co-operated with it in bringing about the "cultural reforms" of the Jews of Poland.
[Footnote 1: Gmina is the Polish word for community, derived from the
German Gemeinde.]
In 1825 the Polish Government appointed a special body to deal with Jewish affairs. It was called "Committee of Old Testament Believers," though composed in the main of Polish officials. It was supplemented by an advisory council consisting of five public-spirited Jews and their alternates. Among the members of the Committee, which included several prominent Jewish merchants of Warsaw, such as Jacob Bergson, M. Kavski, Solomon Posner, T. Teplitz, was also the well-known mathematician Abraham Stern, one of the few cultured Jews of that period who remained a steadfast upholder of Jewish tradition. The "Committee of Old Testament Believers" embarked upon the huge task of civilizing the Jews of Poland and purging the Jewish religion of its superstitious excrescences.
The first step taken by the Committee was the establishment of a Rabbinical Seminary in Warsaw for the training of modernized rabbis, teachers, and communal workers. The program of the school was arranged with a view to the Polonization of its pupils. The language of instruction was Polish, and the teachers of many secular subjects were Christians. No wonder then that when the Seminary was opened in 1826, Stern refused to accept the post of director which had been offered to him, and yielded his place to Anton Eisenbaum, a radical assimilator. The tendency of the school may be gauged from the fact that the department of Hebrew and Bible was entrusted to Abraham Buchner, who had gained notoriety by a German pamphlet entitled Die Nicktigkeit des Talmuds, "The Worthlessness of the Talmud." [1]
[Footnote 1: He was also the author of a Jewish catechism in Hebrew, entitled Yesode ha-Dat, "The Fundamental Principles of the Jewish Religion."]
Characteristically enough, Buchner had been recommended by the ferocious Jew-baitor Abbé Chiarini, a member of the "Committee of Old Testament Believers," which, one might almost suspect, was charged with the supervision of Jewish education for no other reason, than that to spite the Jews. Chiarini was professor of Oriental Languages at the University of Warsaw. As such he considered himself an expert in Hebrew literature, and cherished the plan of translating the Talmud into French to unveil the secrets of Judaism before the Christian world. In 1828 Chiarini suggested to the "Committee of Old Testament Believers" to arrange a course in Hebrew Archaeology at the Warsaw University for the purpose of acquainting Christian students with rabbinic literature and thus equipping prospective Polish officials with a knowledge of things Jewish. The plan having been approved by the Government, Chiarini began to deliver a course of lectures on Judaism. The fruit of these lectures was a French publication, issued in 1829 under the title Theorie du Judaïsme. It was an ignorant libel upon the Talmud and rabbinism, a worthy counterpart of Eisenmenger's "Judaism Exposed." [1] Chiarini did not even shrink from repeating the hideous lie about the use of Christian blood by the Jews. He was taken to task by Jacob Tugenhold in Warsaw and by Jost and Zunz in Germany. Yet the evil seed had sunk into the soil. Polish society, which had long harbored unfriendly sentiments against the Jews, became more and more permeated with anti-Semitic bias, and this bias found tangible expression during the insurrection of 1830-1831.
[Footnote 1: The book of a famous anti-Semitic writer who lived in Germany in the seventeenth century. Entdecktes Judentum, the book referred to in the text, appeared in 1700.]
4. THE JEWS AND THE POLISH INSURRECTION OF 1831
When, under the effect of the July revolution in Paris, the "November insurrection" of 1830 broke out in Warsaw, it put on its mettle that section of Polish Jewry who hoped to improve the Jewish lot by their patriotic ardor. In the month of December one of the "Old Testament believers," Stanislav Hernish, [1] addressed himself to the Polish dictator, Khlopitzki, in the name of a group of Jewish youths, assuring him of their eagerness to form a special detachment of volunteers to help in the common task of liberating their fatherland. The dictator replied that, inasmuch as the Jews had no civil rights, they could not be permitted to serve in the army. The Minister of War Moravski delivered himself on this occasion of the following characteristic utterance: "We cannot allow that Jewish blood should mingle with the noble blood of the Poles. What will Europe say when she learns that in fighting for our liberty we have not been able to get along without Jewish help?"
[Footnote 1: Polish patriot and publicist. He subsequently fled to
France. See later, p. 109.]
The insulting refusal did not cool the ardor of the Jewish patriots. Joseph Berkovich, the son of Berek Yoselovitch, who had laid down his life for the Polish cause, decided to repeat his father's experiment [1] and issued a proclamation to the Jews, calling upon them to join the ranks of the fighters for Polish independence. The "National Government" in Warsaw could not resist this patriotic pressure. It addressed itself to the "Congregational Board" of Warsaw, inquiring about the attitude of the Jewish community towards the projected formation of a separate regiment of Jewish volunteers. The Board replied that the community had already given proofs of its patriotism by contributing 40,000 Gulden towards the revolutionary funds, and by collecting further contributions towards the equipment of volunteers. The formation of a special Jewish regiment the Board did not consider advisable, inasmuch as such action was not in keeping with the task of uniting all citizens in the defence of the fatherland. Instead, the Board favored the distribution of the Jewish volunteers over the whole army.
[Footnote 1: Compare Vol. I, p. 293 et seq.]
From now on the Jews were admitted to military service, but more into the militia than into the regular army. The commander of the National Guard in Warsaw, Anton Ostrovski, one of the few rebel leaders who were not swayed by the anti-Semitic prejudices of the Polish nobility, admitted into his militia many Jewish volunteers on condition that they shave off their beards. Owing to the religious scruples of many Jewish soldiers, the latter condition had to be abandoned, and a special "bearded" detachment of the metropolitan guard was formed, comprising 850 Jews.
The Jewish militia acquitted itself nobly of its duty in the grave task of protecting the city of Warsaw against the onrush of the Russian troops. The sons of wealthy families fought shoulder to shoulder with children of the proletariat. The sight of these step-children of Poland fighting for their fatherland stirred the heart of Ostrovski, and he subsequently wrote: "This spectacle could not fail to make your heart ache. Our conscience bade us to attend to the betterment of this most down-trodden part of our population at the earliest possible moment."
It is worthy of note that the wave of Polish-Jewish patriotism did not spread beyond Warsaw. In the provincial towns the inhabitants of the ghetto were, as a rule, unwilling to serve in the army on the ground that the Jewish religion forbade the shedding of human blood. This indifference aroused the ire of the Polish population, which threatened to wreak vengeance upon the Jews, suspecting them of pro-Russian sympathies. Ostrovski's remark with reference to this situation deserves to be quoted: "True," he said, "the Jews of the provinces may possibly be guilty of indifference towards the revolutionary cause, but can we expect any other attitude from those we oppress?" [1] It may be added that soon afterwards the question of military service as affecting the Jews was solved by the Diet. By the law of May 30, 1831, the Jews were released from conscription on the payment of a tax which was four times as large as the one paid by them in former years.
[Footnote 1: In the Western provinces outside the Kingdom of Poland, in Lithuania, Volhynia, and Podolia, the Jewish population held itself aloof from the insurrectionary movement. Here and there the Jews even sympathized with the Russian Government, despite the fact that the latter threw the Polish rulers into the shade by the extent of its Jewish persecutions. In some places the Polish insurgents made the Jews pay with their lives for their pro-Russian sympathies.]
When the "aristocratic revolution," having failed to obtain the support of the disinherited masses, had met with disaster, the revolutionary leaders, who saved themselves by fleeing abroad, indulged in remorseful reflections. The Polish historian Lelevel, who lived in Paris as a refugee, issued in 1832 a "Manifesto to the Israelitish Nation," calling upon the Jews to forget the insults inflicted upon them by present-day Poland for the sake of the sweet reminiscences of the Polish Republic in days gone by and of the hopes inspired by a free Poland in days to come. He compares the flourishing condition of the Jews in the ancient Polish commonwealth with their present status on the same territory, under the yoke of "the Viennese Pharaohs," [1] or in the land "dominated by the Northern Nebuchadnezzar," [2] where the terror of conscription reigns supreme, where "little children, wrenched from the embraces of their mothers, are hurled into the ranks of a debased soldiery," "doomed to become traitors to their religion and nation."
[Footnote 1: Referring to Galicia.]
[Footnote 2: Nicholas I.]
The reign of nations—exclaims Lelevel—is drawing nigh. All peoples will be merged into one, acknowledging the one God Adonai. The rulers have fed the Jews on false promises; the nations will grant them liberty. Soon Poland will rise from the dust. Let then the Jews living on her soil go hand in hand with their brother-Poles. The Jews will then be sure to obtain their rights. Should they insist on returning to Palestine, the Poles will assist them in realizing this consummation.
Similar utterances could be heard a little later in the mystic circle of Tovyanski and Mitzkevitch in Paris, [1] in which the historic destiny of the two martyr nations, the Poles and the Jews, and their universal Messianic calling were favorite topics of discussion. But alongside of these flights of "imprisoned thought" one could frequently catch in the very same circle the sounds of the old anti-Semitic slogans. The Parisian organ of the Polish refugees, Nowa Polska, "New Poland," occasionally indulged in anti-Semitic sallies, calling forth a passionate rebuttal from Hernish, [2] an exiled journalist, who reminded his fellow-journalists that it was mean to hunt down people who were the "slaves of slaves." Two other Polish-Jewish revolutionaries, Lubliner and Hollaenderski, shared all the miseries of the refugees and, while in exile, indulged in reflections concerning the destiny of their brethren at home. [3]
[Footnote 1: Andreas Tovyanski (In Polish Towianski, 1799-1878), a Christian mystic, founded in Paris a separate community which fostered the belief in the restoration of the Polish and the Jewish people. The community counted among its members several Jews. The famous Polish poet Adam Mitzkevich (in Polish Mickiewicz, 1798-1855) joined Tovyanski in his endeavors, and on one occasion even appeared in a Paris synagogue on the Ninth of Ab to make an appeal to the Jews.]
[Footnote 2: See above, p. 105.]
[Footnote 3: Lubliner published Des Juifs en Pologne, Brussels, 1839;
Hollaenderski wrote Les Israélites en Pologne, Paris, 1846.]
In pacified Poland, which, deprived of her former autonomous constitution, was now ruled by the iron hand of the Russian viceroy, Paskevich, the Jews at first experienced no palpable changes. Their civil status was regulated, as heretofore, by the former Polish legislation, not by that of the Empire. It was only in 1843 that the Polish Jews were in one respect equalized with their Russian brethren. Instead of the old recruiting tax, they were now forced to discharge military service in person. However, the imperial ukase extending the operation of the Conscription Statute of 1827 to the Jews of the Kingdom contained several alleviations. Above all, its most cruel provision, the conscription of juveniles or cantonists, was set aside. The age of conscription was fixed at twenty to twenty-five, while boys between the age of twelve and eighteen were to be drafted only when the parents themselves wished to offer them as substitutes for their elder sons who were of military age. Nevertheless, to the Polish Jews, who had never known of conscription, military service lasting a quarter of a century, to be discharged in a strange Russian environment, seemed a terrible sacrifice. The "Congregational Board" of Warsaw, having learned of the ukase, sent a deputation to St. Petersburg with a petition to grant the Jews of the Kingdom equal rights with the Christians, referring to the law of 1817 which distinctly stated that the Jews were to be released from personal military service so long as they were denied equal civil rights. The petition of course proved of no avail; the very term "equal rights" was still missing in the Russian vocabulary.
Only in point of disabilities were the Jews of Poland gradually placed on an equal footing with their Russian brethren. In 1845 the Russian law imposing a tax on the traditional Jewish attire [1] was extended in its operation to the Polish Jews, descending with the force of a real calamity upon the hasidic masses of Poland. Fortunately for the Jews of Poland, the other experiments, in which St. Petersburg was revelling during that period, left them unscathed. The crises connected with the problems of Jewish autonomy and the Jewish school, which threatened to disrupt Russian Jewry in the forties, had been passed by the Jews of Poland some twenty years earlier. Moreover, the Polish Jews had the advantage over their Russian brethren in that the abrogated Kahal had after all been replaced by another communal organization, however curtailed it was, and that the secular school was not forced upon them in the same brutal manner in which the Russian Crown schools had been imposed upon the Jews of the Empire. Taken as a whole, the lot of the Polish Jews, sad though it was, might yet be pronounced enviable when compared with the condition of their brethren in the Pale of Settlement, where the rightlessness of the Jews during that period bordered frequently on martyrdom.
[Footnote 1: A law to that effect had been passed on February 1, 1843. It was preparatory to the entire prohibition of Jewish dress. See below, p. 143 et seq.]
CHAPTER XVI
THE INNER LIFE OF RUSSIAN JEWRY DURING THE PERIOD OF MILITARY DESPOTISM
1. THE UNCOMPROMISING ATTITUDE OF RABBINISM
The Russian Government had left nothing undone to shatter the old Jewish mode of life. Despotic Tzardom, whose ignorance of Jewish life was only equalled by its hostility to it, lifted its hand to strike not merely at the obsolete forms but also at the sound historic foundations of Judaism. The system of conscription which annually wrenched thousands of youths and lads from the bosom of their families, the barracks which served as mission houses, the method of stimulating and even forcing the conversion of recruits, the establishment of Crown schools for the same covert purpose, the abolition of communal autonomy, civil disfranchisement, persecution and oppression, all were set in motion against the citadel of Judaism. And the ancient citadel, which had held out for thousands of years, stood firm again, while the defenders within her walls, in their endeavor to ward off the enemies' blows, had not only succeeded in covering up the breaches, but also in barring the entrance of fresh air from without. If it be true that, in pursuing its system of tutelage and oppression, the Russian Government was genuinely actuated by the desire to graft the modicum of European culture, to which the Russia of Nicholas I. could lay claim, upon the Jews, it certainly achieved the reverse of what it aimed at. The hand which dealt out blows could not disseminate enlightenment; the hammer which was lifted to shatter Jewish separatism had only the effect of hardening it. The persecuted Jews clutched eagerly at their old mode of life, the target of their enemies' attacks; they clung not only to its permanent foundations but also to its obsolete superstructure. The despotism of extermination from without was counterbalanced by a despotism of conservation from within, by that rigid discipline of conduct to which the masses submitted without a murmur, though its yoke must have weighed heavily upon the few, the stray harbingers of a new order of things.
The Government had managed to disrupt the Jewish communal organization and rob the Kahal of all its authority by degrading it to a kind of posse for the capture of recruits and extortion of taxes. But while the Jewish masses hated the Kahal elders, they retained their faith in their spiritual leaders, the rabbis and Tzaddiks. [1] Heeding the command of these leaders, they closed their ranks, and offered stubborn resistance to the dangerous cultural influences threatening them from without. Life was dominated by rigidly conservative principles. The old scheme of family life, with all its patriarchal survivals, remained in force. In spite of the law, embodied in the Statute of 1835, which fixed the minimum age of the bridegroom at eighteen (and that of the bride at sixteen), the practice of early marriages continued as theretofore. Parents arranged marriages between children of thirteen and fifteen. Boys of school age often became husbands and fathers, and continued to attend heder or yeshibah after their marriage, weighed down by the triple tutelage of father, father-in-law, and teacher. The growing generation knew not the sweetness of being young. Their youth withered under the weight of family chains, the pressure of want or material dependence. The spirit of protest, the striving for rejuvenation, which asserted itself in some youthful souls, was crushed in the vise of a time-honored discipline, the product of long ages. The slightest deviation from a custom, a rite, or old habits of thought met with severe punishment. A short jacket or a trimmed beard was looked upon as a token of dangerous free-thinking. The reading of books written in foreign languages, or even written in Hebrew, when treating of secular subjects, brought upon the culprit untold hardships. The scholastic education resulted in producing men entirely unfit for the battle of life, so that in many families energetic women took charge of the business and became the wage earners, [2] while their husbands were losing themselves in the mazes of speculation, somewhere in the recesses of the rabbinic Betha-Midrash or the hasidic Klaus.
[Footnote 1: See on the latter term, Vol. I, p. 227.]
[Footnote 2: This type of Jewish woman, current in Russia until recent times, was called Eshet Hayil, "a woman of valour," with allusion to Prov. 31.10.]
In Lithuania the whole mental energy of the Jewish youth was absorbed by Talmudism. The synagogue served as a "house of study" outside the hours fixed for prayers. There the local rabbi or a private scholar gave lectures on the Talmud which were listened to by hosts of yeshibah bahurs. [1] The great yeshibahs of Volozhin, Mir, [2] and other towns sent forth thousands of rabbis and Talmudists. Mentality, erudition, dialectic subtlety were valued here above all else. Yet, as soon as the mind, whetted by talmudic dialectics, would point its edge against the existing order of things, or turn in the direction of living knowledge, of "extraneous sciences," [3] it was checked by threats of excommunication and persecution. Many were the victims of this petrified milieu, whose protests against the old order of things and whose strivings for a newer life were nipped in the bud.
[Footnote 1: On the bahur or Talmud student see Vol. I, p. 116 et seq.]
[Footnote 2: On the yeshibah in Volozhin, in the government of Vilna, see Vol. I, p. 380 et seq. Mir is a townlet in the government of Minsk.]
[Footnote 3: An old Hebrew expression for secular learning.]
Instructive in this respect is the fate of one of the most remarkable Talmudists of his time, Rabbi Menashe Ilyer. Ilyer spent most of his life in the townlets of Smorgoni and Ilya (whence his surname), in the government of Vilna, and died of the cholera, in 1831. While keeping strictly within the bounds of rabbinical orthodoxy, whose adepts respected him for his enormous erudition and strict piety, Menashe assiduously endeavored to widen their range of thought and render them more amenable to moderate freedom of research and a more sober outlook on life. But his path was strewn with thorns. When on one occasion he expounded before his pupils the conclusion, which he had reached after a profound scientific investigation, that the text of the Mishnah had in many cases been wrongly interpreted by the Gemara,[1] he was taken to task by a conference of Lithuanian rabbis and barely escaped excommunication.
[Footnote 1: The Mishnah is a code of laws edited about 200 C.E. by Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi. The Gemara consists largely of the comments of the talmudic authorities, who lived after that date, on the text of this code.]
Having conceived a liking for mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy, Menashe decided to go to Berlin to devote himself to these studies, but on his way to the German capital, while temporarily sojourning in Koenigsberg, he was halted by his countrymen, who visited Prussia on business, and was cowed by all kinds of threats into returning home. By persistent private study, this native of a Russian out-of-the-way townlet managed to acquire a fair amount of general culture, which, with all its limitations, yielded a rich literary harvest. In 1807 he made his début with the treatise Pesher Dabar ("The Solution of the Problem"), [1] in which he gave vent to his grief over the fact that the spiritual leaders of the Jewish people kept aloof from concrete reality and living knowledge. While the book was passing through the press in Vilna, Lithuanian fanatics threatened the author with severe reprisals. Their threats failed to intimidate him. When the book appeared, many rabbis threw it into the flames, and made every possible effort to arrest its circulation, with the result that the voice of the "heretic" was stifled.
[Footnote 1: Literally, "The Interpretation of a Thing," from Eccl. 8.1.]
Ten years later, while residing temporarily in Volhynia, the hot-bed of hasidism, Menashe began to print his religio-philosophic treatise Alfe Menassheh ("The Teachings of Manasseh"). [1] But the first proof-sheets sufficed to impress the printer with the "heretical" character of the book, and he threw them together with the whole manuscript into the fire. The hapless author managed with difficulty to restore the text of his "executed" work, and published it at Vilna in 1822. Here the rabbinical censorship pounced upon him. The book had not yet left the press, when the rabbi of Vilna, Saul Katzenellenbogen, learned that in one passage the writer deduced from a verse in Deuteronomy (17.9) the right of the "judges" or spiritual leaders of each generation to modify many religious laws and customs in accordance with the requirements of the time. The rabbi gave our author fair warning that, unless this heretical argument was withdrawn, he would have the book burned publicly in the synagogue yard. Menashe was forced to submit, and, contrary to his conviction, weakened his heterodox argument by a number of circumlocutions.
[Footnote 1: With a clever allusion to the Hebrew text of Deut. 33.17.]
These persecutions, however, did not smother the fire of protest in the breast of the excommunicated rural philosopher. In the last years of his life he published two pamphlets, [1] in which he severely lashed the shortcomings of Jewish life, the early marriages, the one-sided school training, the repugnance to living knowledge and physical labor. However, the champions of orthodoxy took good care to prevent these books from reaching the masses. Exhausted by his fruitless struggle, Menashe died, unappreciated and almost unnoticed by his contemporaries.
[Footnote 1: One of these, entitled Samme de-Hayye ("Elixir of Life"), was written in Yiddish, being designed by the author for the lower classes.]
2. THE STAGNATION OF HASIDISM
A critical attitude toward the existing order of things could on occasions assert itself in the environment of Rabbinism, where the mind, though forced into the mould of scholasticism, was yet working at high speed. But such "heretical" thinking was utterly inconceivable in the dominant circles of Hasidism, where the intellect was rocked to sleep by mystical lullabies and fascinating stories of the miraculous exploits of the Tzsaddiks. The era of political and civil disfranchisement was a time of luxuriant growth for Hasidism, not in its creative, but rather in its stationary, not to say stagnant, phase.
The old struggle between Hasidism and Rabbinism had long been fought out, and the Tzaddiks rested on their laurels as teachers and miracle-workers. The Tzaddik dynasties were now firmly entrenched. In White Russia the sceptre lay in the hands of the Shneorsohn dynasty, the successors of the "Old Rabbi," Shneor Zalman, the progenitor of the Northern Hasidim. [1] The son of the "Old Rabbi," Baer, nicknamed "the Middle Rabbi" (1813-1828), and the latter's son-in-law Mendel Lubavicher [2] (1828-1866) succeeded one another on the hasidic "throne" during this period, with a change in their place of residence. Under Rabbi Zalman the townlets of Lozno and Ladi served as "capitals"; under his successors, they were Ladi and Lubavichi. The three localities are all situated on the border-line of the governments of Vitebsk and Moghilev, in which the Hasidim of the Habad persuasion [3] formed either a majority, as was the case in the former government, or a substantial minority, as was the case in the latter.
[Footnote 1: See Vol. I, p. 372.]
[Footnote 2: From the townlet Lubavichi. See later in the text.]
[Footnote 3: Compare Vol. I, p. 234, n. 2.]
Rabbi Baer, the son and successor of the "Old Rabbi," did not inherit the creative genius of his father. He published many books, made up mostly of his Sabbath discourses, but they lack originality. His method is that of the talmudic pilpul, [1] transplanted upon the soil of Cabala and Hasidism, or it consists in expatiating upon the ideas contained in the Tanyo. [2] The last years of Rabbi Baer were darkened by the White Russian catastrophes, the expulsion from the villages in 1823, and the ominous turn in the ritual murder trial of Velizh. On his death-bed he spoke to those around him about the burning topic of the day, the conscription ukase of 1827.
[Footnote 1: i.e., Dialectics. Comp. Vol. I, p. 122.]
[Footnote 2: The title of the philosophic treatise of Rabbi Shneor
Zalman. See Vol. I, p. 372, n. 1.]
His successor Rabbi Mendel Lubavicher proved an energetic organizer of the hasidic masses. He was highly esteemed not only as a learned Talmudist—he wrote rabbinical _novellae and response—and as a preacher of Hasidism, but also as a man of great practical wisdom, whose advice was sought by thousands of people in family matters no less than in communal and commercial affairs. This did not present him from being a decided opponent of the new enlightenment. In the course of Lilienthal's educational propaganda in 1843, Rabbi Mendel was summoned by the Government to participate in the deliberations of the Rabbinical Committee at St. Petersburg. There he found himself in a tragic situation. He was compelled to give his sanction to the Crown schools, although he firmly believed that they were subversive of Judaism, not only because they were originated by Russian officials, but also because they were intended to impart secular knowledge. The hasidic legend narrates that the Tzaddik pleaded before the Committee passionately, and often with tears in his eyes, not only to retain in the new schools the traditional methods of Bible and Talmud instruction, but also to make room in their curriculum for the teaching of the Cabala. Nevertheless, Rabbi Mendel was compelled to endorse against his will the "godless" plan of a school reform, and a little later to prefix his approbation to a Russian edition of Mendelssohn's German Bible translation. His attitude toward contemporary pedagogic methods may be gauged from the epistle addressed by him in 1848 to Leon Mandelstamm, Lilienthal's successor in the task of organizing the Jewish Crown schools. In this epistle Rabbi Mendel categorically rejects all innovations in the training of the young. In reply to a question concerning the edition of an abbreviated Bible text for children, he trenchantly quotes the famous medieval aphorism:
The Pentateuch was written by Moses at the dictation of God. Hence every word in it is sacred. There is no difference whatsoever between the verse "And Timna was the concubine" (Gen. 36. 12) and "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one" (Deut 6. 4). [1]
[Footnote 1: See Maimonides' exposition of the dogma of the divine origin of the Torah in his Mishnah Commentary, Sanhedrin, chapter X.]
Withal, the leaders of the Northern Hasidim were, comparatively speaking, "men of the world," and were ready here and there to make concessions to the demands of the age. Quite different were the Tzaddiks of the South-west. They were horrified by the mere thought of such concessions. They were surrounded by immense throngs of Hasidim, unenlightened, ecstatic, worshipping saints during their lifetime.
The most honored among these hasidic dynasties was that of Chernobyl. [1] It was founded in the Ukraina toward the end of the eighteenth century by an itinerant preacher, or Maggid, called Nahum. [2] His son Mordecai, known under the endearing name "Rabbi Motele" (died in 1837), attracted to Chernobyl enormous numbers of pilgrims who brought with them ransom money, or pidyons. [3] Mordecai's "Empire" fell asunder after his death. His eight sons divided among themselves the whole territory of the Kiev and Volhynia province.
[Footnote 1: A townlet in the government of Kiev.]
[Footnote 2: See Vol. I, p. 382.]
[Footnote 3: The term is used in the Bible to denote a sum of money which "redeems" or "ransoms" a man from death, as in the case of a person guilty of manslaughter (Ex. 22. 30) or that of the first-born son (Ex. 13. 13; 34. 20). The Hasidim designate by this term the contributions made to the Tzaddik, in the belief that such contributions have the power of averting from the contributor impending death or misfortune.]
Aside from the original center in Chernobyl, seats of Tzaddiks were established in the townlets of Korostyshev, Cherkassy, Makarov, Turisk, Talno, Skvir and Rakhmistrovka. This resulted in a disgraceful rivalry among the brothers, and still more so among their hasidic adherents. Every Hasid was convinced that reverence was due only to his own "Rebbe," [1] and he brushed aside the claims of the other Tzaddiks. Whenever the adherents of the various Tzaddiks met, they invariably engaged in passionate "party" quarrels, which on occasions, especially after the customary hasidic drinking bouts, ended in physical violence.
[Footnote 1: Popular pronunciation of the word "rabbi," A hasidic Tzaddik is designated as "Rebbe," in distinction from the rabbi proper, or the Rav (in Russia generally pronounced Rov), who discharges the rabbinical functions within the community.]
The whole Chernobyl dynasty found a dangerous rival in the person of the Tzaddik Israel Ruzhiner (of Ruzhin), the great-grandson of Rabbi Baer, the apostle of Hasidism, known as the "Mezhiricher Maggid." [1] Rabbi Israel settled in Ruzhin, a townlet in the government of Kiev, about 1815, and rapidly gained fame as a saint and miracle-worker. His magnificent "court" at Ruzhin was always crowded with throngs of Hasidim. Their onrush was checked by special "gentlemen in waiting," the so-called gabba'im, who were very fastidious in admitting the people into the presence of the Tzaddik—dependent upon the size of the proffered gifts. Israel drove out in a gorgeous carriage, surrounded by a guard of honor. The gubernatorial administration of Kiev, presided over by the ferocious Governor-General Bibikov, received intimations to the effect "that the Tzaddik of Ruzhin wielded almost the power of a Tzar" among his adherents, who did not stir with out his advice. The police began to watch the Tzaddik, and at length found an occasion for a "frame-up."
[Footnote 1: On Rabbi Baer see Vol. I, p. 229 et seq.]
When, in 1838, the Kahal of Ushitza, in the government of Podolia, was implicated in the murder of an informer, [1] Rabbi Israel of Ruzhin was arrested on the charge of abetting the murder. The hasidic "Tzar" languished in prison for twenty-two months. He was finally set free and placed under police surveillance. But he soon escaped to Austria, and settled in 1841 in the Bukovina, in the townlet of Sadagora, near Chernovitz, where he established his new "court." Many Hasidim in Russia now made their pilgrimage abroad to their beloved Tzaddik; in addition, new partisans were won among the hasidic masses of Galicia and the Bukovina. Rabbi Israel died in 1850, but the "Sadagora dynasty" branched out rapidly, and proved a serious handicap to modern progress during the stormy epoch of emancipation which followed in Austria soon afterwards.
[Footnote 1: See above, p. 84 et seq.]
Another hot-bed of the Tzaddik cult was Podolia, the cradle of Hasidism. In the old residence of Besht, [1] in Medzhibozh, the sceptre was held by Rabbi Joshua Heshel Apter, who succeeded Besht's grandson, Rabbi Borukh of Tulchyn. [2] For a number of years, between 1810 and 1830, the aged Joshua Heshel was revered as the nestor of Tzaddikism, the haughty Israel of Ruzhin being the only one who refused to acknowledge his supremacy. Heshel's successor was Rabbi Moyshe Savranski, who established a regular hasidic "court," after the pattern of Chernobyl and Ruzhin.
[Footnote 1: See Vol. I, p. 222 et seq.]
[Footnote 2: See Vol. I, p. 384.]
The only Tzaddik to whom it was not given to be the founder of a dynasty was the somewhat eccentric Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlav, [1] a great-grandson of Besht. After his death, the Bratzlav Hasidim, who followed the lead of his disciple Rabbi Nathan, suffered cruel persecutions at the hands of the other hasidic factions. The "Bratzlavers" adopted the custom of visiting once a year, during the High Holidays, the grave of their founder in the city of Uman, in the government of Kiev, and subsequently erected a house of prayer near his tomb. During these pilgrimages they were often the target of the local Hasidim who reviled and often maltreated them. The "Bratzlavers" were the Cinderella among the Hasidim, lacking the powerful patronage of a living Tzaddik. Their heavenly patron, Rabbi Nahman, could not hold his own against his living rivals, the earthly Tzaddiks—all too earthly perhaps, in spite of their saintliness.
[Footnote 1: A town in Podolia. See Vol. I, p. 382 et seq.]
The Tzaddik cult was equally diffused in the Kingdom of Poland. The place of Rabbi Israel of Kozhenitz and Rabbi Jacob-Isaac of Lublin, who together marshalled the hasidic forces during the time of the Varsovian duchy, was taken by founders and representatives of new Tzaddik dynasties. The most popular among these were the dynasty of Kotzk, [1] established by Rabbi Mendel Kotzker (1827-1859), and that of Goora Kalvaria, [2] or Gher, [3] founded by Rabbi Isaac Meier Alter [4] (about 1830-1866). The former reigned supreme in the provinces, the latter in the capital of Poland, in Warsaw, which down to this day has remained loyal to the Gher dynasty.
[Footnote 1: A town not far from Warsaw. Comp. Vol. I, p. 303, n. 1.]
[Footnote 2: In Polish, Góra Kalwarya, a town on the left bank of the
Vistula, not far from Warsaw.]
[Footnote 3: This form of the name is used by the Jews.]
[Footnote 4: Called popularly in Poland Reb Itche Meier, a name still frequently found among the Jews of Warsaw, who to a large extent are adherents of the "Gher dynasty."]
The Polish "Rebbes" [1] resembled by the character of their activity the type of the Northern, or Habad, Tzaddiks rather than those of the Ukraina. They did not keep luxurious "courts," did not hanker so greedily after donations, and laid greater emphasis on talmudic scholarship.
[Footnote 1: See p. 120, n. 1.]
Hasidism produced not only leaders but also martyrs, victims of the Russian police regime. About the time when the Tzaddik of Ruzhin fell under suspicion, the Russian Government began to watch the Jewish printing-press in the Volhynian townlet of Slavuta. The owners of the press were two brothers, Samuel-Abba and Phinehas Shapiro, grandsons of Besht's companion, Rabbi Phinehas of Koretz. The two brothers were denounced to the authorities as persons issuing dangerous mystical books from their press, without the permission of the censor. This denunciation was linked up with a criminal case, the discovery in the house of prayer, which was attached to the printing-press, of the body of one of the compositors who, it was alleged, had intended to lay bare the activities of the "criminal" press before the Government. After a protracted imprisonment of the two Slavuta printers in Kiev, their case was submitted to Nicholas I. who sentenced them to Spiessruten [1] and deportation to Siberia. During the procedure of running the gauntlet, while passing through the lines of whipping soldiers, one of the brothers had his cap knocked off his head. Unconcerned by the hail of lashes from which he was bleeding, he stopped to pick up his cap so as to avoid going bare-headed, [2] and then resumed his march between the two rows of executioners. The unfortunate brothers were released from their Siberian exile during the reign of Alexander II.
[Footnote 1: See above, p. 85, n. 1.]
[Footnote 2: According to an ancient Jewish notion, which is current throughout the Orient, baring the head is a sign of frivolity and disrespect towards God.]
Hasidic life exhibited no doubt many examples of lofty idealism and moral purity. But hand in hand with it went an impenetrable spiritual gloom, boundless credulity, a passion for deifying men of a mediocre and even inferior type, and the unwholesome hypnotizing influence of the Tzaddiks. Spiritual self-intoxication was accompanied by physical. The hasidic rank and file, particularly in the South-west, began to develop an ugly passion for alcohol. Originally tolerated as a means of producing cheerfulness and religious ecstasy, drinking gradually became the standing feature of every hasidic gathering. It was in vogue at the court of the Tzaddik during the rush of pilgrims; it was indulged in after prayers in the hasidic "Shtiblach," [1] or houses of prayer, and was accompanied by dancing and by the ecstatic narration of the miraculous exploits of the "Rebbe." [2] Many Hasidim lost themselves completely in this idle revelry and neglected their business affairs and their starving families, looking forward in their blind fatalism to the blessings which were to be showered upon them through the intercession of the Tzaddik.
[Footnote 1: The word, which is a diminutive of German Stube, "room," denotes, like the word Klaus, the room, or set of rooms, in which the Hasidim assemble for prayer, study, and recreation.]
[Footnote 2: See above, p, 120, n. 1.]