Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
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
With a Map
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
Cbe fmicfcerbocfter press
1915
COPYRIGHT, 1915
BY
ISRAEL FRIEDLAENDER
INTRODUCTION i
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
PAGE
Militarism as Agency of Conversion Enlighten-
ment as Agency of Conversion Culmination of
Anti-Jewish Policy Reign of Alexander II. Policy
of Amalgamation Anti-Jewish Reaction Recent
Times.
CHAPTER III
INDEX 211
The Jews of Russia and Poland
The Jews of Russia and
Poland
INTRODUCTION
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 broad daylight. The
fearlessly in
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
to last.
Reign of Paul
The
short reign of her son Paul (1796-1801) is
of no importancein the history of Russian Jews,
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 life by pro-
hibiting the Jewish language and the Jewish form
of dress, by handicapping the extraordinary zeal
of the Jews for religious 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 establishment by the
government of a special printing press for the
publication of Jewish religious books, "with philo-
8
H4 Jews of Russia and Poland
Reign of Alexander I
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 were
n6 Jews of Russia and Poland
The
Statute of 1804, which has been dubbed the
"Jewish Constitution" of Russia, aims, in accord-
ance with the general Russian policy, 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, Polish, or German was to form a com-
pulsory subject of instruction. A knowledge of one
n8 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 allpublic 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,
Changes of Policy
The conduct of the Russian autocracy during
the varying phases of the great European conflict
I2O Jews of Russia and Poland
reveals so luridly the catand 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
Conversionist Endeavours
Effects of Reaction
Reign of Nicholas 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
9
130 Jews of Russia and Poland
Ritual-Murder Trials
Economic Repression
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 lives on the altar of faith.
The Jewish young men who, being of a maturer
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
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
Policy of Amalgamation
Anti-Jewish Reaction
Recent Times
"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 Judaism
Polish-Jewish Autonomy
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-
Jewish Ceremonialism
Jewish Intellectualism
Literary Productivity
Standards of Judgment
Effects of Hassidism
Danger of Isolation
.---
48 123 f.
( BHTD LD APR
EC 18 1977 i..i
T 30 1979
LOAN
General Library
LD21A-60m-3,'70 University of California
(N5382slO)476-A-32 Berkeley
324941