History of the Jews in Russia and Poland Volume I Part 6

[49] The parliamentary order of Poland was somewhat complicated. Each region or _voyevodstvo_ (see above, p. 46, n. 1), of which there were about sixty in Poland, had its own local a.s.sembly, or _sejmik_ (p.r.o.nounced _saymik_), _i. e._ little Diet, or Dietine. Deputies o these Dietines met at the respective _sejms_ (p.r.o.nounced _saym_), or Diets, of one of the three large provinces of Poland: Great Poland, Little Poland, and Red Russia. The national _sejm_, representing the whole of Poland, came into being towards the end of the fifteenth century. Beginning with 1573 it met regularly every two years for six weeks in Warsaw or in Grodno. Before the convocation of this national all-Polish Parliament, all local Dietines a.s.sembled on one and the same day to give instructions to the deputies elected to it.

[50] [Gnesen as seat of the Primate; Cracow as capital.]

[51] [Warsaw was originally the capital of the independent Princ.i.p.ality of Mazovia. After the incorporation of Mazovia into the Polish Empire, in 1526, Warsaw emerged from its obscurity and in the latter part of the sixteenth century became the capital of united Poland and Lithuania, taking the place of Cracow and Vilna.]

[52] According to another version, they forged the contents of the royal warrant.

[53] [With the gradual weakening of the royal power, which, after the extinction of the Yagh.e.l.lo dynasty, in 1572, was transformed into an elective office, the favorite designation for the Polish Empire came to be _Rzecz_ (p.r.o.nounced _Zhech_) _Pospolita_, a literal rendering of the Latin Res _Publica_. The term comprises Poland as well as Lithuania, which, in 1569, had been united in one Empire.]

[54] They are referred to in his edicts as _calumniae_.

[55] [The Arian heresy, as modified and preached by Faustus Socinus (1539-1604), an Italian who settled in Poland, became a powerful factor in the Polish intellectual life of that period. Because of its liberal tendency, this doctrine appealed in particular to the educated cla.s.ses, and its adherents, called Socinians, were largely recruited from the ranks of the Shlakhta. Under Sigismund III. a strong reaction set in, culminating in the law pa.s.sed by the Diet of 1658, according to which all "Arians" were to leave the country within two years.]

[56] [_Arendar_, also _arendator_, from medieval Latin _arrendare_, "to rent," signifies in Polish and Russian a lessee, originally of a farm, subsequently of the tavern and, as is seen in the text, other sources of revenue on the estate. These arendars being mostly Jews, the name, abbreviated in Yiddish to _randar_, came practically to mean "village Jew."]

[57] [Literally, _lord_: the lord of the manor, n.o.ble landowner.]

[58] There is reason to believe that he is the hero of the legendary story according to which an influential Polish Jew by the name of Saul Wahl, a favorite of Prince Radziwill, was, during an interregnum, proclaimed Polish king by the Shlakhta, and reigned for one night.

[59] [See pp. 29 _et seq._ Kiev was captured by the Lithuanians in 1320, and remained, through the union of Lithuania and Poland, a part of the Polish Empire until 1654, when, together with the province of Little Russia, it was ceded to Muscovy.]

[60] See p. 55.

[61] [Stephen Batory inst.i.tuted two supreme courts for the realm: one for the Crown, _i. e._ for Poland proper, and another for Lithuania. The former held its sessions in Lublin for Little Poland and in Piotrkov for Great Poland (see p. 164).]

[62] A second edition of the book appeared in 1636.

[63] [In addition to the regular Diets, which a.s.sembled every two years (see above, p. 76, n. 1), there were held also Election Diets and Coronation Diets, in connection with the election and the coronation of the new king. The former met on a field near Warsaw; the latter were held in Cracow.]

[64] [Moghilev on the Dnieper, in White Russia, is to be distinguished from Moghilev on the Dniester, a town in the present Government of Podolia.]

CHAPTER IV

THE INNER LIFE OF POLISH JEWRY AT ITS ZENITH

1. KAHAL AUTONOMY AND THE JEWISH DIETS

The peculiar position occupied by the Jews in Poland made their social autonomy both necessary and possible. Const.i.tuting an historical nationality, with an inner life of its own, the Jews were segregated by the Government as a separate estate, an independent social body. Though forming an integral part of the urban population, the Jews were not officially included in any one of the general urban estates, whose affairs were administered by the magistracy or the trade-unions. Nor were they subjected to the jurisdiction of Christian law courts as far as their internal affairs were concerned. They formed an entirely independent cla.s.s of citizens, and as such were in need of independent agencies of self-government and jurisdiction. The Jewish community const.i.tuted not only a national and cultural, but also a civil, ent.i.ty.

It formed a Jewish city within a Christian city, with its separate forms of life, its own religious, administrative, judicial, and charitable inst.i.tutions. The Government of a country with sharply divided estates could not but legalize the autonomy of the Jewish Kahal, after having legalized the Magdeburg Law of the Christian urban estates, in which the Germans const.i.tuted the predominating element. As for the kings, in their capacity as the official "guardians" of the Jews, they were especially concerned in having the Kahals properly organized, since the regular payment of the Jewish taxes was thereby a.s.sured. Moreover, the Government found it more to its convenience to deal with a well-defined body of representatives than with the unorganized ma.s.ses.

As early as the period of royal "paternalism," during the reign of Sigismund I., the king endeavored to extend his fatherly protection to the Jewish system of communal self-government. The appointment of Michael Yosefovich as the "senior" of the Lithuanian Jews, with a rabbi as expert adviser[65], was designed to safeguard the interests of the exchequer by concentrating the power in the hands of a federation of Kahals in Lithuania. On more than one occasion Sigismund I. confirmed the "spiritual judges," or rabbis (_judices spirituales_, _doctores legis_), elected by the Jews in different parts of Poland, in their office. In 1518 he ratified, at the request of the Jews of Posen, their election of two leading rabbis, Moses and Mendel, to the posts of provincial judges for all the communities of Great Poland, bestowing upon the newly-elected officials the right of instructing and judging their coreligionists in accordance with the Jewish law. In Cracow, where the Jews were divided into two separate communities--one of native Polish Jews and another of immigrants from Bohemia,--the King empowered each of them to elect its own rabbi. The choice fell upon Rabbi Asher for the former, and upon Rabbi Peretz for the latter, community, and when a dispute arose between the two communities as to the ownership of the old synagogue, the King again intervened, and decided the case in favor of the native community (1519). In 1531 Mendel Frank, the rabbi of Brest, complained to the King that the Jews did not always respect his decisions, and brought their cases before the royal starostas.

Accordingly Sigismund I. thought it necessary to warn the Jews to submit to the jurisdiction of their own "doctors," or rabbis, who dispensed justice according to the "Jewish law," and were given the right of imposing the "oath" (_herem_, excommunication) and all kinds of other penalties upon insubordinates. In the following year the King appointed as "senior," or chief rabbi, of Cracow the well-known scholar Moses Fishel--who, it may be added parenthetically, had taken the degree of Doctor of Medicine in Padua--to succeed Rabbi Asher, referred to previously. Pursuing the same policy of centralization, the King, a few years later, in 1541, confirmed in their office as chief rabbis (_seniores_) of the whole province of Little Poland two men "learned in the Jewish law," the same Rabbi Moses Fishel of Cracow, and the famous progenitor of Polish Talmudism, Rabbi Shalom Shakhna of Lublin.

In the same measure, however, in which the communal organization of the Jews gained in strength, and the functions of the rabbis and Kahal elders became more clearly defined, the Government gradually receded from its att.i.tude of paternal interference. The _magna charta_ of Jewish autonomy may be said to be represented by the charter of Sigismund Augustus, issued on August 13, 1551, which embodies the fundamental principles of self-government for the Jewish communities of Great Poland.

According to this charter, the Jews are ent.i.tled to elect, by general agreement,[66] their own rabbis and "lawful judges" to take charge of their spiritual and social affairs. The rabbis and judges, elected in this manner, are authorized to expound all questions of the religious ritual, to perform marriages and grant divorces, to execute the transfer of property and other acts of a civil character, and to settle disputes between Jews in accordance with the "Mosaic law" (_iuxta ritum et morem legis illorum Mosaicae_) and the supplementary Jewish legislation. In conjunction with the Kahal elders they are empowered to subject offenders against the law to excommunication and other punishments, such as the Jewish customs may prescribe. In case the person punished in this manner does not recant within a month, the matter is to be brought to the knowledge of the king, who may sentence the incorrigible malefactor to death and confiscate his property. The local officers of the king are enjoined to lend their a.s.sistance in carrying out the orders of the rabbis and elders.

This enactment, coupled with a number of similar charters, which were subsequently promulgated for various provinces of Poland, conferred upon the elective representatives of the Jewish communities extensive autonomy in economic and administrative as well as judicial affairs, at the same time insuring its practical realization by placing at its disposal the power of the royal administration.

The firm consolidation of the _regime_ of the self-governing community, the _Kahal_, dates from that period. In this appellation two concepts were merged: the "community," the aggregate of the local Jews, on the one hand, and, on the other, the "communal administration," representing the totality of all the Jewish inst.i.tutions of a given locality, including the rabbinate. The activity of the Kahals a.s.sumed particularly large proportions beginning with the latter half of the sixteenth century.

All cities and towns with a Jewish population had their separate Kahal boards. Their size corresponded roughly to that of the given community.

In large centers the membership of the Kahal board amounted to forty; in smaller towns it was limited to ten. The members of the Kahal were elected annually during the intermediate days of Pa.s.sover. As a rule the election proceeded according to a double-graded system. Several electors (_borerim_), their number varying from nine to five, were appointed by lot from among the members of all synagogues, and these electors, after taking a solemn oath, chose the Kahal elders. The elders were divided into groups. Two of these, the _rashim_ and _tubim_ (the "heads" and "optimates"), stood at the head of the administration, and were in charge of the general affairs of the community. They were followed by the _dayyanim_, or judges, and the _gabbaim_, or directors, who managed the synagogues as well as the educational and charitable inst.i.tutions.

The _rashim_ and _tubim_ formed the nucleus of the Kahal, seven of them making a quorum; in the smaller communities they were practically identical with the Kahal board.

The sphere of the Kahal's activity was very large. Within the area allotted to it the Kahal collected and turned over to the exchequer the state taxes, arranged the a.s.sessment of imposts, both of a general and a special character, took charge of the synagogues, the Talmudic academies, the cemeteries, and other communal inst.i.tutions. The Kahal executed t.i.tle-deeds on real estate, regulated the instruction of the young, organized the affairs appertaining to charity and to commerce and handicrafts, and with the help of the _dayyanim_ and the rabbi settled disputes between the members of the community. As for the rabbi, while exercising unrestricted authority in religious affairs, he was in all else dependent on the Kahal board, which invited him to his post for a definite term. Only great authorities, far-famed on account of their Talmudic erudition, were able to a.s.sert their influence in all departments of communal life.

The Kahal of each city extended its authority to the adjacent settlements and villages which did not possess autonomous organizations of their own. Moreover, the Kahals of the large centers kept under their jurisdiction the minor Kahals, or _prikahalki_,[67] as they were officially called, of the towns and townlets of their district, as far as the apportionment of taxes and the judicial authority were concerned.

This gave rise to the "Kahal boroughs," or _gheliloth_ (singular, _galil_). Often disputes arose between the Kahal boroughs as to the boundaries of their districts, the contested minor communities submitting now to this, now to the other, "belligerent." On the whole, however, the moderate centralization of self-government benefited the Jewish population, since it introduced order and discipline into the Kahal hierarchy, and enabled it to defend the civil and national interests of Judaism more effectively.

The capstone of this Kahal organization were the so-called _Waads_,[68]

the conferences or a.s.semblies of rabbis and Kahal leaders. These conferences received their original impetus from the rabbis and judges.

The rabbinical law courts, officially endowed with extensive powers, were guided in their decisions by the legislation embodied in the Bible and the Talmud, which made full provision for all questions of religious, civil, and domestic life as well as for all possible infractions of the law. Yet it was but natural that even in this extensive system of law disputed points should arise for which the competency of a single rabbi did not suffice. Moreover there were cases in which the litigants appealed from the decision of one rabbinical court to another, more authoritative, court. Finally lawsuits would occasionally arise between groups of the population, between one community and another, or between a private person and a Kahal board.

For such emergencies conferences of rabbis and elders would be called from time to time as the highest court of appeal.

Beginning with the middle of the sixteenth century these conferences met at the time of the great fairs, when large numbers of people congregated from various places, and litigants arrived in connection with their business affairs. The chief meeting-place was the Lublin fair, owing to the fact that Lublin was the residence of the father of Polish rabbinism, the above-mentioned Rabbi Shalom Shakhna, who was officially recognized as the "senior rabbi" of Little Poland. As far back as in the reign of Sigismund I. the "Jewish doctors," or rabbis, met there for the purpose of settling civil disputes "according to their law." In the latter part of the sixteenth century these conferences of rabbis and communal leaders, a.s.sembling in connection with the Lublin fairs, became more frequent, and led in a short time to the organization of regular, periodic conventions, which were attended by representatives from the princ.i.p.al Jewish communities of the whole of Poland.

The activity of these conferences, or conventions, pa.s.sed, by gradual expansion, from the judicial sphere into that of administration and legislation. At these conventions laws were adopted determining the order of Kahal elections, fixing the competency of the rabbis and judges, granting permits for publishing books, and so forth.

Occasionally these a.s.semblies of Jewish notables endorsed by their authority the enactments of the Polish Government. Thus, in 1580, the representatives of the Polish-Jewish communities, who a.s.sembled in Lublin, gave their solemn sanction to the well-known Polish law barring the Jews of the Crown, of Poland proper, from farming state taxes and other public revenues, in view of the fact that "certain people, thirsting for gain and wealth, to be obtained from extensive leases, might thereby expose the community to great danger."

Towards the end of the sixteenth century the fair conferences received a firmer organization. They were attended by the rabbis and Kahal representatives of the following provinces: Great Poland (the leading community being that of Posen), Little Poland (Cracow and Lublin), Red Russia (Lemberg), Volhynia (Ostrog and Kremenetz), and Lithuania (Brest and Grodno). Originally the name of the a.s.sembly varied with the number of provinces represented in it, and it was designated as the Council of the Three, or the Four, or the Five, Lands. Subsequently, when Lithuania withdrew from the Polish Kahal organization, establishing a federation of its own, and the four provinces of the Crown[69] began to send their delegates regularly to these conferences, the name of the a.s.sembly was ultimately fixed as "the Council of the Four Lands" (_Waad Arba Aratzoth_).

The "Council" was made up of several leading rabbis of Poland,[70] and of one delegate for each of the princ.i.p.al Kahals selected from among their elders--the number of the conferees altogether amounting to about thirty. They met periodically, once or twice a year, in Lublin and Yaroslav (Galicia) alternately. As a rule, the Council a.s.sembled in Lublin in early spring, between Purim and Pa.s.sover, and in Yaroslav at the end of the summer, before the high holidays.

The representatives of the Four Lands--says a well-known annalist of the first half of the seventeenth century[71]--reminded one of the Sanhedrin, which in ancient days a.s.sembled in the Chamber of Hewn Stones (_lishkath ha-gazith_) of the temple. They dispensed justice to all the Jews of the Polish realm, issued preventive measures and obligatory enactments (_takkanoth_), and imposed penalties as they saw fit. All the difficult cases were brought before their court. To facilitate matters the delegates of the Four Lands appointed [a special commission of] so-called "provincial judges" (_dayyane medinoth_) to settle disputes concerning property, while they themselves [in plenary session] examined criminal cases, matters appertaining to _hazaka_ (priority of possession) and other difficult points of law.

The Council of the Four Lands was the guardian of Jewish civil interests in Poland. It sent its _shtadlans_[72] to the residential city of Warsaw[73] and other meeting-places of the Polish Diets for the purpose of securing from the king and his dignitaries the ratification of the ancient Jewish privileges, which had been violated by the local authorities, or of forestalling contemplated restrictive laws and increased fiscal burdens for the Jewish population.

But the main energy of the Waad was directed towards the regulation of the inner life of the Jews. The statute of 1607, framed, at the instance of the Waad, by Joshua Falk Cohen, Rabbi of Lublin, is typical of this solicitude. The following rules are prescribed for the purpose of fostering piety and commercial integrity among the Jewish people: to pay special attention to the observance of the dietary laws, to refrain from adopting the Christian form of dress; not to drink wine with Christians in the pot-houses, in order not to be cla.s.sed among the disreputable members of the community; to watch over the chast.i.ty of Jewish women, particularly in the villages where the Jewish arendars[74] with their families were isolated in the midst of the Christian population. In the same statute rules are also laid down tending to restrain the activities of Jewish usurers and to regulate money credit in general.

In 1623 the Kahals of Lithuania withdrew from the federation of the Four Lands, and established a provincial organization of their own, which was centralized in the convention of delegates from the three princ.i.p.al Kahals of Brest, Grodno, and Pinsk. Subsequently, in 1652 and 1691, the Kahals of Vilna and s.l.u.tzk were added. The Lithuanian a.s.sembly was generally designated as the "Council of the Princ.i.p.al Communities of the Province of Lithuania" (_Waad Kehilloth Rashioth di-Medinath Lita_). The organic statute, framed by the first Council, comprises many aspects of the social and spiritual life of the Jews. It lays down rules concerning the mutual relationship of the communities, the methods of apportioning the taxes among them, the relations with the outside world (such as the Polish Diets, the local authorities, the landed n.o.bility, and the urban estates), the elections of the Kahals, and the question of popular education. The Lithuanian Waad met every three years in various cities of Lithuania, but in cases of emergency extraordinary conventions were called. During the first years of its existence the Lithuanian Council was evidently subordinate to that of Poland, but at a later date this dependence ceased.

In this way both the Crown, or Poland proper, and Lithuania had their communal federations with central administrative agencies. As was pointed out previously, the Polish federation was composed of four provinces. The individual Kahals, which were the component parts of each of these four provinces, held their own provincial a.s.semblies, which stood in the same relation to the Waad as the "Dietines," or provincial Diets, of Poland, to the national Diet of the whole country.[75] Thus the communities of Great Poland had their own Great-Polish "Dietine,"

those of Volhynia their own Volhynian "Dietine," and so forth. The provincial Kahal conventions met for the purpose of allotting the taxes to the individual communities of a given province, in proportion to the size of its population, or of electing delegates to the federated Council. These Jewish Dietines acted as the intermediate agencies of self-government, standing half-way between the individual Kahals on the one hand and the general Waads of the Crown and of Lithuania on the other.

This firmly-knit organization of communal self-government could not but foster among the Jews of Poland a spirit of discipline and obedience to the law. It had an educational effect on the Jewish populace, which was left by the Government to itself, and had no share in the common life of the country. It provided the stateless nation with a subst.i.tute for national and political self-expression, keeping public spirit and civic virtue alive in it, and upholding and unfolding its genuine culture.

2. THE INSTRUCTION OF THE YOUNG

One of the mainstays of this genuine culture was the autonomous school.

The instruction of the rising generation was the object of constant solicitude on the part of the Kahals and the rabbis as well as the conventions and Councils. Elementary and secondary education was centered in the _heders_, while higher education was fostered in the _yeshibahs_. Attendance at the heder was compulsory for all children of school age, approximately from six to thirteen. The subjects of instruction at these schools were the Bible in the original, accompanied by a translation into the Judeo-German vernacular,[76] and the easier treatises of the Talmud with commentaries. In some heders the study of Hebrew grammar and the four fundamental operations of arithmetic were also admitted into the curriculum. The establishment of these heders was left to private initiative, every _melammed_, or Jewish elementary teacher, being allowed to open a heder for boys and to receive compensation for his labors from their parents. Only the heders for poor children or for orphans, the so-called _Talmud Torahs_, were maintained by the community from public funds. Yet the supervision of the Kahal extended not only to the public, but also to the private, elementary schools. The Kahal prescribed the curriculum of the heders, arranged examinations for the scholars, fixed the remuneration of the teachers, determined the hours of instruction (which were generally from eight to twelve a day), and took charge of the whole school work, in some places even appointing a sort of school board (_Hevrah Talmud Torah_) from among its own members.

The higher Talmudic school or college, the yeshibah, was entirely under the care of the Kahal and the rabbis. This school, which provided a complete religious and juridical education based on the Talmud and the rabbinical codes of law, received the sanction of the Polish Government.

King Sigismund Augustus granted the Jewish community of Lublin permission to open a yeshibah, or "gymn.a.z.ium" (_gymn.a.z.ium ad inst.i.tuendos homines illorum religionis_), with a synagogue attached to it, bestowing upon its president, a learned rabbi, not only the t.i.tle of "rector," but also extensive powers over the affairs of the community (1567). Four years later the same King granted an even larger license to "the learned Solomon of Lemberg, whom the Jewish community of Lemberg and the whole land of Russia[77] have chosen for their 'senior doctor'