History of the Jews in Russia and Poland Volume I Part 24

The urban Jew was either a business man or an artisan or a saloon-keeper. In many cities the Jewish mercantile element was numerically superior to the Christian. The increased Jewish activity in the export trade is particularly noticeable. Jewish merchants traveled annually in large numbers to the fairs abroad, particularly to that of Leipsic, to buy merchandise, princ.i.p.ally dry goods, at the same time exporting the products of Poland and Russia, such as furs, skins, etc.

The gradual absorption of Polish territory by Russia opened up a new, immense market, that of the central Russian provinces, for the goods imported from abroad. It was natural that the Jews began to flock to those provinces. But their way was at once blocked by the local Russian merchants, who began to clamor against Jewish compet.i.tion, and forced the Government to recognize the monopoly of native "interests," to the detriment of the consumer.[253]

True, the monopolists did not succeed altogether in shutting the Russian interior to foreign cheap goods and finery, which the Jewish merchants still continued to import, under the clause in the Statute of 1804 which granted Jews the right of visiting the interior Governments on special gubernatorial pa.s.sports. Yet an untrammeled development of Jewish commerce was rendered impossible by this artificial barrier between Western and Eastern Russia.

The second urban profession, handicrafts, was considered of lower rank than commerce. It was pursued by the poorest cla.s.s of the population.

Artisan labor commanded very low prices. Purely Jewish trade-unions were rare, and when a Jewish artisan summoned enough courage to leave his native townlet and seek employment in a large city, he was sure to encounter the animosity of the organized Christian guilds. We have seen that before the second part.i.tion of Poland such an "encounter" a.s.sumed the shape of a pogrom in the Polish capital.[254]

By the side of the store and the workshop stood the public house or saloon, which was generally connected with an inn or a hostelry. The sale of liquor in the cities depended primarily on the peasants arriving from the villages on festival and market days. On the whole the liquor traffic occupied a subordinate place in the cities. Its mainstay was in the villages.

All serious observers of the economic status of the Jews at that time bear witness to the fact that in the majority of cities Jewish labor formed the corner-stone of a civilized economic life, that without the Jew it was impossible to buy, or to sell, or to have any kind of article made. The Jew, who was satisfied with small wages and profits, was thereby able to lower both the cost of production and the price of merchandise. He was content with a pittance, his physical needs being extraordinarily limited. Thanks to the mediation of the ubiquitous Jewish business man, the peasant was able to dispose of his products on the spot, even those which because of their small value would not be worth carrying to the city. In spite of all his indefatigable, feverish labors, the Jew was on the average as poor as the peasant, except that he was free from the vice of drunkenness, one of the sources of the peasant's economic misery. The poverty of the Jew was the artificial result of the fact that the cities and townlets were overcrowded with petty tradesmen and artisans, and this congestion was further aggravated by the systematic removal of the Jews from their age-long rural occupations and the consequent influx of village Jews into the towns.

It is necessary to point out that when the official records harp on the "liquor traffic" in the villages as the sole occupation of Jews, they fail to appreciate the many-sidedness of the rural pursuits of the Jews, which were connected with the liquor traffic, to be sure, but were by no means identical with it. While leasing from the squire or the crown the right of distilling, the Jew farmed at the same time other items of rural economy, such as the dairies, the mills, and the fishing ponds. He was furthermore engaged in buying grain from the peasants and selling them at the same time such indispensable articles as salt, utensils, agricultural tools, etc., imported by him from the town. He often combined in his person the occupations of liquor-dealer, shopkeeper, and produce merchant. The road leading from the village to the city was dotted with Jewish inns or public houses, which, before the age of railroads, served as halting-places for travelers. This whole economic structure, which had been built up gradually in the course of centuries, the Russian Government made its business to demolish. As early as the reign of Catherine II. the governors frequently drove the Jewish villagers into the cities, acting under the "organic law" which makes it inc.u.mbent upon Jews to "register among the merchants or burghers." The ambiguous ukase of 1795, to the effect, that "endeavors be made to transplant the Jews into the District towns, so that these people may not wander about to the detriment of society," gave the zealous bureaucrats a free hand. When the Law of 1804 ordered the expulsion of all Jews from the villages at the end of three years, many squires, without waiting for the time limit to expire, refused their Jewish tenants the right of residence and trade in their villages. The Jews began to rush into the cities, where even the long-settled residents could not manage to make a living.

True, the Government was luring the persecuted Jews into two new vocations, the establishment of factories and of agricultural colonies.

But the impecunious village Jew had neither the capital nor the capacity for opening factories. Moreover, it was of no conceivable use to call industries artificially into being, without having first secured a market for the manufactured products. Several woolen mills had been founded by Jews in Lithuania and Volhynia, but all they could do was to provide work for a few thousand people. It was thus natural that all eyes turned towards agricultural colonization.

The Statute of 1804 promised to provide impecunious Jews desirous of engaging in agriculture with free land in several Governments, to grant them loans for their equipment, and exempt them from taxation for a number of years. The exiled village Jews clutched at this promise as an anchor of salvation. In 1806 several Jewish groups in the Government of Moghilev appealed to the governor to transfer them to New Russia, there to engage in corn-growing. The delegate of one of these groups, Nahum Finkelstein, even traveled to St. Petersburg to lay the matter before Minister Kochubay, and was dispatched by the latter to the Government of Kherson for the purpose of inspecting and selecting the land. The Minister, acting in agreement with the Governor of Kherson, Duke Richelieu, decided to set aside separate parcels of land in the steppes of that region and to settle Jews on them under the auspices of the New Russian "Immigration Bureau." Scarcely had the two Moghilev groups completed the arrangements for their emigration, when scores of similar applications began to come in from Jewish groups in other Governments of the Pale. By the end of 1806 the number of applicants mounted up to fifteen hundred families, numbering some seven thousand souls. The Russian authorities found themselves in an awkward position. They were caught unprepared for the transfer of so many persons at the expense of the state. In 1807 four colonies of Jewish agriculturists were established in the Government of Kherson, the first among the Jewish colonies of South Russia. The number of settlers amounted to some three hundred families, consisting of two thousand souls.

The number of applicants desirous of settling on the land continued to increase. In the course of 1808, when the expulsion from the villages was in full swing, the White Russian governors bombarded the Minister of the Interior with pet.i.tions to allow as many Jewish families as possible to proceed to New Russia. The Governor of Vitebsk reported that the rural Jews

have been unseasonably expelled, ruined, and reduced to beggary.

A large part of them is without daily bread and without shelter, and they emigrate in considerable numbers to New Russia. Many Jews, in the expectation of being transplanted to New Russia, have sold all their belongings and beg leave persistently to go there, though it be only for a domicile.

At the same time reports from the New Russian Immigration Bureau and from Duke Richelieu were constantly reaching St. Petersburg. They emphasized the necessity of stemming the tide of emigrants, in view of the fact that even the first parties of colonists had found it difficult to establish themselves, while the new ones could not expect to find either huts or any other accommodations. By the beginning of 1808 the Immigration Bureau was in charge of about one thousand colonist families, and, in addition, several thousand immigrants who had arrived "voluntarily" were waiting for their turn to be settled. As a result of the unaccustomed climatic conditions and the lack of housing accommodations and provisions, disease began to spread among the new-comers. All these circ.u.mstances decided the Government to put a temporary stop to the settling of Jews in the New Russian colonies (ukase of April 6, 1810).

The attempt to convert a part of the Jewish population into agriculturists would undoubtedly have met with huge success, had the Government been sufficiently prepared for such a momentous economic transformation. Ten thousand emigrants had already gone to New Russia, and the compact starving ma.s.ses were rushing after them. But the Government was overwhelmed by the difficulties of the task, and brought the whole movement to a standstill. Simultaneously a stop was put to the expulsion from the villages in the western Governments, which threatened to lead to an unparalleled economic catastrophe. Thus, after many vacillations and upheavals, the economic structure of Jewish life was re-established on its old foundations--commerce, handicrafts, and rural occupations.

FOOTNOTES:

[246] See p. 330.

[247] See p. 318.

[248] The insistence on Hebrew in the latter case is connected with the rabbinical form of promissory note, the so-called _Shtar Iska_ [a form of partnership agreement which was designed to obviate the difficulties arising out of the Biblical prohibition to lend money on interest. A similar legal fiction was introduced by the medieval Church].

[249] See Nikitin, "The Jewish Agriculturists" (in Russian), St.

Petersburg, 1887, p. 16.

[250] [See p. 347.]

[251] See p. 340.

[252] [The word is used here in the sense of leader of partisan, _i. e._ irregular, troops. Davidov attained to great fame during the War of 1812, in which he interfered effectively with the communications of the French.]

[253] Compare the prohibition barring Jews from registering in the mercantile guilds of Moscow and Smolensk, p. 315.

[254] See p. 286 and p. 287.

CHAPTER XI

THE INNER LIFE OF RUSSIAN JEWRY DURING THE PERIOD OF "ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM"

1. KAHAL AUTONOMY AND CITY GOVERNMENT

The system of state patronage spread its wings also over the self-government of the Jewish communities. Towards the end of Catherine II.'s reign the Government clearly betrayed its tendency to curtail the extensive communal autonomy which the Jews had been guaranteed earlier, in 1776, when the promise of the Empress, to allow the Jews of annexed White Russia "to retain their former liberties," was still fresh in the official mind. But the Russian Government, not in the habit of tolerating such "licentiousness" among its subjects, looked askance at the large economic, spiritual, and judicial functions granted to the Kahals, in addition to their fiscal duties as the collecting agencies of the state taxes. As a result of this att.i.tude, the ukases of 1786 and 1795 had limited the range of activity of the Kahals to spiritual and fiscal affairs. The "Jewish Const.i.tution" of 1804 went one step further by dividing these two functions between the rabbinate and the Kahals, which had previously formed one whole. The rabbis were given permission "to look after all the ceremonies of the Jewish faith and decide all disputes bearing on religion," while the Kahals were ordered "to see to the regular payment of the state taxes." This was all that was left of the ancient autonomy of the Jewish communities in Poland, with its vast network of inst.i.tutions and central a.s.semblies, or Waads.

It is apparent that in real life the power of the communities was larger than on paper. The Jews went on submitting most of their cases, even those involving monetary disputes, to their own rabbinical tribunals.

The prohibition of imposing the herem (excommunication) upon obstreperous members of the community was occasionally disregarded, since the "spiritual" tribunals had no other means of coercion at their disposal. On the other hand, the Government itself, being in need not only of the fiscal services of the Kahals, but also of a responsible organization to be consulted upon Jewish matters, could not help tolerating the extension of Kahal activities far beyond the range of fiscal interests. When the Government was desirous of ascertaining the views of the Jewish communities on some of the measures planned by it, it addressed itself, as was the case in 1802, 1803, and 1807,[255] to the Kahals, and authorized them to send delegates to St. Petersburg or the provincial capitals.

This extension of Jewish autonomy was a concession wrested from the Government by the force of circ.u.mstances, by the power of a compact population living a life of its own and refusing to efface itself to the point of merging with the surrounding population and fusing all its public interests with the affairs of the general city administration.

Yet it was just this "munic.i.p.alization" of the Jewish communities that the Russian Government had been aiming at for a long time. From the time of Catherine II. it cherished the thought of "destroying Jewish separateness," by forcing the Jews into the framework of the Russian cla.s.s organization, particularly into the estates of the merchants and burghers.

When, shortly after 1780, the Jews were accorded the hitherto unheard-of privilege of partic.i.p.ating in the city government with the right of active and pa.s.sive suffrage for the magistracies and munic.i.p.al courts, the lawgivers of St. Petersburg were confident that Russian Jewry, in a transport of delight, would throw overboard its old Kahal autonomy, and eagerly coalesce with the Christian urban estates, to form a common munic.i.p.al organization. But neither the Jews nor the Christians justified these confident expectations. The former, while clinging as heretofore to their time-honored communal organization, were glad to partic.i.p.ate in the elections to the magistracies, in which up till then their traditional enemies, the Christian merchants and burghers, had been the masters, and in which they frankly proposed to protect their interests, representing as they did a considerable portion of the urban population.

But here they encountered furious opposition on the part of their Christian fellow-residents. In the two White Russian Governments of Vitebsk and Moghilev several Jews had been elected to the magistracies as aldermen and members of the law courts. But in the majority of cases the Christians managed to obtain an artificial majority and keep the Jews out of the munic.i.p.al administration. Complaints lodged with the central authorities in St. Petersburg were of no avail, for the Russian, and even more so the Polish, burghers regarded the bestowal of munic.i.p.al rights upon the Jews as a violation of their own chartered privileges.

Yielding to this mood of the Christian population, the administrators of the southwestern Governments established on their own responsibility a restrictive percentage for the partic.i.p.ation of Jews in the magistracies, by limiting, even in places with a predominatingly Jewish population, the number of Jewish members to be elected to the magistracies to one-third. The representatives of the Jewish majority of the population in the city administration were thus invariably reduced to a minority, and were not in a position to protect the interests of their coreligionists, either in the a.s.sessment of the munic.i.p.al taxes or in the cases brought before the munic.i.p.al law courts. Here, too, the protest addressed to St. Petersburg by a delegate acting on behalf of the Podolian Jews did not remedy the situation.

In the two Lithuanian Governments which had fallen into the hands of Russia after the third part.i.tion of Poland, in 1795, the Christian opposition scored even a greater success. For here it became necessary to suspend altogether the operation of the law granting the Jews representation in the magistracies. When the Senatorial ukase of 1802, making the Jews eligible for public office, became known in Vilna, the local Christian population raised a cry of indignation. The Philistine arrogance of the old "city fathers," combined with the low motives of religious and cla.s.s hatred, manifested itself in a pet.i.tion addressed in February, 1803, by the Christian burghers of Vilna to Alexander I.

In this pet.i.tion the residents of Vilna protest against the violation of their ancient privilege, in pursuance of which "Jews and members of other faiths are forbidden to hold office" in Lithuania. The admission of Jews to the magistracies is a misfortune and a disgrace for the capital of Lithuania, for

they [the Jews] have not the slightest conception of morality, while their form of education does not fit them for the calling of a judge, and altogether this people can only maintain itself by all kinds of trickery.... The Christians will lose all interest in accepting public office once the Jews are given the right to dominate them.

The pet.i.tioners point out threateningly that the domination of the Jews, _i. e._ their partic.i.p.ation in the magistracies, though it be limited to one-third of the number of aldermen, will undermine the people's confidence in the munic.i.p.al administration and judiciary. "For the obedience of the mob will be turned into defamation when the Christian who enters the sacred place [of justice] beholds a Jew as his superior and judge, submission to whom is unnatural, by reason of cla.s.s and religion."

The Christian population of Kovno resorted, in presenting a similar pet.i.tion, to another incontrovertible argument against the admission of Jews to munic.i.p.al offices. Referring to the cross with the "sacred figure" of the crucifixion, which is placed on the court table for the administration of the oath, the pet.i.tioners a.s.sert that the Jewish members of the court "will refuse to look upon it, but, by reason of their faith, will think disrespectfully of it, so that, instead of judicial impartiality, there will be mockery of the Christian law." The Government found these arguments convincing, and in 1805 repealed the ukase of the Senate concerning the election of Jews to the magistracies of Lithuania.

In this way the stolid rancor of the "privileged" burghers in some places handicapped the activity of the Jews in the city administration, and in others entirely suppressed it. The Jewish communities, backward though they were, displayed sufficient civic courage to send their representatives to the camp of the enemy to work in common with him for the benefit of the whole urban population. But the narrow-minded burghers, who were thoroughly saturated with medieval prejudices, would not recognize the Jews as their fellow-townsmen. The Jews had to reckon with this coa.r.s.e conservatism of the surrounding population. They were still able to fall back upon their own communal self-government, and, had their social energies been directed towards that end, the old Kahal autonomy, in spite of all Government restrictions, might to a certain extent have come into its own again. But another factor thwarted this revival--the deep rift in the Russian Jewish community, which began with the rise of Hasidism in the second half of the eighteenth century, and was an accomplished fact at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

2. THE HASIDIC SCHISM AND THE INTERVENTION OF THE GOVERNMENT

The period of Poland's part.i.tions was also a period of divisions within Polish Jewry. The external division was accompanied by an internal split; the political part.i.tion, by a spiritual schism. The body of Polish Jewry was divided among Russia, Austria, and Prussia, and its soul between Rabbinism and Hasidism. There was even a significant coincidence in dates: the first declaration against Hasidism by the rabbinate of Vilna, which started the religious schism, was issued in 1772, in the year of the first Polish part.i.tion, and the second emphatic declaration of the same rabbinate, which completed the schism, followed close upon the third part.i.tion of Poland, in 1796.

The interval between these two dates represents one continuous stretch of Hasidic triumphs. The Russian Southwest, Volhynia, the province of Kiev, and Podolia, had by the end of the period, been almost completely conquered by the Hasidim. With the exception of a few cities, they now formed the predominating element in the communities; their ritual was adopted in synagogue worship, and their spiritual rulers, the Tzaddiks, exercised control over the official rabbinate. As far as the Northwest is concerned, Hasidism had managed during that interval to obtain a foothold in White Russia, the only Polish province which for over twenty years had been under Russian dominion, and thus politically severed from the rest of curtailed Poland. Under the leadership of the Tzaddik Shneor Zalman of Lozno, a strong Hasidic center had been built up in that part of the Northwest, but there were yet no compact Hasidic communities in that region. In the majority of towns the communities were composed of both elements, Hasidim and their opponents, the Rabbinists, who were nicknamed _Mithnagdim_ ("Protestants"), the preponderance being now on this side, now on the other, a state of affairs which gave rise to endless dissensions in the Kahals and synagogues.

In Lithuania alone, the stronghold of Rabbinism, Hasidism failed to take root. Here a few small Hasidic groups were ensconced in a number of cities. They held their services in modest rooms in private residences (_minyanim_), which they were often forced to hide from the gaze of the hostile Kahal authorities. In Vilna, the residence of the great zealot of Rabbinism, Elijah Gaon, the Hasidim const.i.tuted an "illegal" secret organization. Only in the suburb of Pinsk, in Karlin, the Hasidim succeeded in establishing themselves firmly, and could boast of having their own synagogues and Tzaddiks.[256] Karlin became the seat of a Hasidic propaganda extending all over Lithuania, where the Hasidim were accordingly nicknamed "Karliners."

The second and third part.i.tion of Poland, which united Lithuania and White Russia under the sovereignty of Russia, tended to buoy up the oppressed Lithuanian Hasidim, who could now join forces against the common enemy with their brethren all over the northwestern region. The Hasidic propaganda took on new courage. To enhance the success of their missionary activity, the Hasidim spread a rumor, that the former anti-Hasidic thunderer, the veteran Rabbi Elijah Gaon, was sorry for all the hostile acts he had committed against the sectarians, and that in consequence the excommunication formerly hurled by him against them was no longer valid. When this clever ruse became known in Vilna, the indignant champions of Rabbinism prompted the aged Gaon to publish an epistle in which he reaffirmed his former att.i.tude towards the "heretics," and declared that all the herems previously issued against them remained in force (May, 1796). The epistle was intrusted to two envoys, who were dispatched from Vilna to a number of cities, for the purpose of stirring up an anti-Hasidic agitation. When the envoys arrived in Minsk, and set about executing their instructions, the Hasidim started a rumor to the effect that the Gaon's signature under the epistle was not genuine. The Kahal of Minsk sent an inquiry to Vilna, and in reply received, in September, 1796, a new energetic appeal of the Gaon addressed to all the gubernatorial Kahals of Lithuania, White Russia, Volhynia, and Podolia.

Ye mountains of Israel--cried the great zealot--ye spiritual shepherds, and ye lay leaders of every Government, also ye, the heads of the Kahals of Moghilev, Polotzk, Zhitomir, Vinnitza, and Kamenetz-Podolsk, you hold in your hands a hammer wherewith you may shatter the plotters of evil, the enemies of light, the foes of the [Jewish] people. Woe unto this generation! They [the Hasidim] violate the Law, distort our teachings, and set up a new covenant; they lay snares in the house of the Lord, and give a perverted exposition of the tenets of our faith. It behooves us to avenge the Law of the Lord, it behooves us to punish these madmen before the whole world, for their own improvement.

Let none have pity on them and grant them shelter!... Gird yourselves with zeal in the name of the Lord!