History of the Jews in Russia and Poland Volume I Part 10

In September, 1648, Khmelnitzki himself, marching at the head of a Cossack army, and accompanied by his Tatar allies, approached the walls of Lemberg, and began to besiege the capital of Red Russia, or Galicia.

The Cossacks succeeded in storming and pillaging the suburbs, but they failed to penetrate to the fortified center of the town. Khmelnitzki proposed to the magistracy of Lemberg, that it deliver all the Jews and their property into the hands of the Cossacks, promising in this case to raise the siege. The magistracy replied that the Jews were under the jurisdiction of the king, and the town authorities had no right to dispose of them. Khmelnitzki thereupon agreed to withdraw, having obtained from the city an enormous ransom, the bulk of which had been contributed by the Jews.

From Lemberg Khmelnitzki proceeded with his troops in the direction of Warsaw, where at that time the election of a new king was taking place.

The choice fell upon John Casimir, a brother of Vladislav IV., who had been Primate of Gnesen and a Cardinal (1648-1668). The new King entered into peace negotiations with the leader of the rebels, the hetman Khmelnitzki. But owing to the excessive demands of the Cossacks the negotiations were broken off, and as a result, in the spring of 1649, the flame of civil war flared up anew, accompanied by the destruction of many more Jewish communities. After a succession of battles in which the Poles were defeated, a treaty of peace was concluded between John Casimir and Khmelnitzki, in the town of Zborov. In this treaty, which was favorable to the Cossacks, a clause was included forbidding the residence of Jews in the portion of the Ukraina inhabited by the Cossacks, the regions of Chernigov, Poltava, Kiev, and partly Podolia (August, 1649).

At last the Jews, after a year and a half of suffering and tortures, could heave a sigh of relief. Those of them who, at the point of death, had embraced the Greek Orthodox faith, were permitted by King John Casimir to return to their old creed. The Jewish women who had been forcibly baptized fled in large numbers from their Cossack husbands, and returned to their families. The Council of the Four Lands, which met in Lublin in the winter of 1650, framed a set of regulations looking to the restoration of normal conditions in the domestic and communal life of the Jews. The day of the Niemirov ma.s.sacre (Sivan 20), which coincided with an old fast day in memory of the martyrs of the Crusades, was appointed a day of mourning, to commemorate the victims of the Cossack rebellion. Leading rabbis of the time composed a number of soul-stirring dirges and prayers, which were recited in the synagogues on the fateful anniversary of the twentieth of Sivan.

But the respite granted to the Jews after these terrible events did not last long. The Treaty of Zborov, which was unsatisfactory to the Polish Government, was not adhered to by it. Mutual resentment gave rise to new collisions, and civil war broke out again, in 1651. The Polish Government called together the national militia, which included a Jewish detachment of one thousand men. This time the people's army got the upper hand against the troops of Khmelnitzki, with the result that a treaty of peace was concluded which was advantageous to the Poles. In the Treaty of Byelaya Tzerkov, concluded in September, 1651, many claims of the Cossacks were rejected, and the right of the Jews to live in the Greek Orthodox portion of the Ukraina was restored.[129]

As a result, the Cossacks and Greek Orthodox Ukrainians rose again.

Bogdan Khmelnitzki entered into negotiations with the Russian Tzar Alexis Michaelovich, looking to the incorporation, with the rights of an autonomous province, of the Greek Orthodox portion of the Ukraina, under the name of Little Russia, into the Muscovite Empire. In 1654 this incorporation took place, and in the same year the Russian army marched upon White Russia and Lithuania to wage war on Poland. Now came the turn of the Jews of the northwestern region to endure their share of suffering.

3. THE RUSSIAN AND SWEDISH INVASIONS (1654-1658)

The alliance of their enemies, the Cossacks, with the rulers of Muscovy, a country which had always felt a superst.i.tious dread of the people of other lands and religions, was fraught with untold misery for the Jews.

It was now the turn of the inhabitants of White Russia and Lithuania to face the hordes of southern and northern Scythians, who invaded the regions. .h.i.therto spared by them, devastating them uninterruptedly for two years (1654-1656). The capture of the princ.i.p.al Polish cities by the combined hosts of the Muscovites and Cossacks was accompanied by the extermination or expulsion of the Jews. When Moghilev on the Dnieper[130] surrendered to Russian arms, Tzar Alexis Michaelovich complied with the request of the local Russian inhabitants, and gave orders to expel the Jews and divide their houses between the magistracy and the Russian authorities (1654). The Jews, however, who were hoping for a speedy termination of hostilities, failed to leave the city at once, and had to pay severely for it. Towards the end of the summer of 1655 the commander of the Russian garrison in Moghilev, Colonel Poklonski, learned of the approach of a Polish army under the command of Radziwill. Prompted by the fear that the Jewish residents might join the approaching enemy, Poklonski ordered the Jews to leave the boundaries of the city, and, on the ground of their being Polish subjects, promised to have them transferred to the camp of Radziwill. Scarcely had the Jews, accompanied by their wives and children, and carrying with them their property, left the town behind them when the Russian soldiers, at the command of the same Poklonski, fell upon them and killed nearly all of them, plundering their property at the same time.

In Vitebsk the Jews took an active part in defending the town against the besieging Russian army. They dug trenches around the fortified castle, strengthened the walls, supplied the soldiers with arms, powder, and horses, and acted as scouts. When the city was finally taken by the Russians, the Jews were completely robbed by the Zaporozhian Cossacks, while many of them were taken captive, forcibly baptized, or exiled to Pskov, Novgorod, and Kazan.

The Jews suffered no less heavily from the riot which took place in Vilna, the capital of Lithuania, after its occupation by the combined army of Muscovites and Cossacks in August, 1655. A large part of the Vilna community fled for its life. Those who remained behind were either killed or banished from the town at the command of Tzar Alexis Michaelovich, who was anxious to comply with the request of the local Russian townspeople, to rid them of their Jewish compet.i.tors.

Shortly thereafter a similar fate overtook the central Polish provinces on the Vistula and the San River, which had hitherto been spared the horrors of the Cossacks and Muscovites. The invasion of Sweden, the third enemy of Poland (1655-1658), carried bloodshed into the very heart of the country. The Swedish King, Charles Gustav, reduced one city after the other, both the old and the new capital, Cracow and Warsaw, speedily surrendering to him. A large part of Great and Little Poland fell into the hands of the Swedes, and the Polish King, John Casimir, was compelled to flee to Silesia.

The easy victories of the Swedes were the result of the anarchy and political demoralization which had taken deep root in Poland. It was the treachery of the former Polish sub-Chancellor Radzieyevski that brought the Swedes into Poland, and the cowardice of the Shlakhta hastily surrendered the cities of Posen, Kalish, Cracow, and Vilna, to the enemy. Moreover the Swedes were welcomed by the Polish Protestants and Calvinists, who looked for their rescue to the northern Protestant power in the same way in which the Cossacks expected their salvation from Orthodox Russia.

The Jews were the only ones who had no political advantage in betraying their country, and their friendly att.i.tude towards the Swedes no more than corresponded to the conduct of the Swedes towards them. At any rate, their patriotism was no more open to suspicion than that of the Poles themselves, who joined the power of Sweden to get rid of the yoke of Muscovy. Nevertheless, the Jews had to pay a terrible price for this lack of patriotism. They found themselves, in the words of a contemporary chronicler, in the position of a man who "fleeth from a lion, and is met by a bear."[131] The Jews who had been spared by the Swedes were now annihilated by the patriotic Poles, who charged them with disloyalty. The bands of Polish irregulars, which had been organized in 1656, under the command of General Charnetzki, to save the country from the invader, vented their fury upon the Jews in all the localities which they wrested from the Swedes.

The ma.s.sacre of Jews began in Great and Little Poland, without yielding in point of barbarism to the butcheries which, eight years previously, had been perpetrated in the Ukraina. The Polish hosts of Charnetzki had learned from the Cossacks the art of exterminating the Jews. Nearly all the Jewish communities in the province of Posen, excepting the city of Posen, and those in the provinces of Kalish, Cracow, and Piotrkov, were destroyed by the saviors of the Polish fatherland. The brutal and wicked Charnetzki, to use the epithets applied to him by the Jewish annalists, or, to be more exact, the Polish mob marching behind him, committed atrocities which were truly worthy of the Cossacks. They tortured and murdered the rabbis, violated the women, killed the Jews by the hundreds, sparing only those who were willing to become Catholics. These atrocities were as a rule committed in the wake of the retreating Swedes, who had behaved like human beings towards the Jewish population.

The humaneness shown by the Swedes to the Jews was avenged by the inhumanity of the Poles.

While the bands of Charnetzki were attacking the Jews in Western Poland, the Muscovites and Cossacks continued to disport themselves in the eastern districts and in Lithuania. Not until 1658 did the horrors of warfare begin gradually to subside, and only after terrible losses and humiliating concessions to Russia and Sweden was Poland able to restore its political order, which had been shaken to its foundation during the preceding years.

The losses inflicted upon the Jews of Poland during the fatal decade of 1648-1658 were appalling. In the reports of the chroniclers the number of Jewish victims varies between one hundred thousand and five hundred thousand. But even if we accept the lower figure, the number of victims still remains colossal, excelling the catastrophes of the Crusades and the Black Death in Western Europe. Some seven hundred Jewish communities in Poland had suffered ma.s.sacre and pillage. In the Ukrainian cities situated on the left banks of the Dnieper, the region populated by Cossacks, in the present Governments of Chernigov, Poltava, and part of Kiev, the Jewish communities had disappeared almost completely. In the localities on the right sh.o.r.e of the Dnieper or in the Polish part of the Ukraina as well as in those of Volhynia and Podolia, wherever the Cossacks had made their appearance, only about one-tenth of the Jewish population survived. The others had either perished during the rebellion of Khmelnitzki, or had been carried off by the Tatars into Turkey, or had emigrated to Lithuania, the central provinces of Poland, or the countries of Western Europe. All over Europe and Asia Jewish refugees or prisoners of war could be met with, who had fled from Poland, or had been carried off by the Tatars, and ransomed by their brethren.

Everywhere the wanderers told a terrible tale of the woes of their compatriots and of the martyrdom of hundreds of Jewish communities.

An echo of all these horrors resounds in contemporary chronicles and mournful synagogue liturgies. One of the eye-witnesses of the Ukraina ma.s.sacres, Nathan Hannover, from Zaslav, gives a striking description of it in his historical chronicle _Yeven Metzula_[132] (1653). Sabbatai Kohen, the famous scholar of Vilna,[133] brought this catastrophe to the notice of the Jewish world through a circular letter, ent.i.tled _Meghillath Efa_,[134] which was accompanied by prayers in memory of the Polish martyrs. In heartrending liturgies many contemporary rabbis and writers, such as Lipman h.e.l.ler, Rabbi of Cracow, Sheftel Horovitz, Rabbi of Posen, the scholars Mer of Shchebres.h.i.+n[135] (_Tzok ha-`Ittim_,[136]

1650) and Gabriel Shussberg (_Petah Teshuba_,[137] 1653), lament the destruction of Polish Jewry. All these writings are pervaded with the bitter consciousness that Polish Jewry would never recuperate from the blows it had received, and that the peaceful nest in which the persecuted nation had found a refuge was destroyed forever.

4. THE RESTORATION (1658-1697)

Fortunately these apprehensions proved to be exaggerated. Though decimated and impoverished, the Jewish population of Poland exceeded in numbers the Jewish settlements of Western Europe. The chief center of Judaism remained in Poland as theretofore, though it became the center of a more circ.u.mscribed and secluded section of Jewry. The extraordinary vitality of the "eternal people" was again demonstrated by the fact that the Polish Jews were able, in a comparatively short time, to recover from their terrible losses. No sooner had peace been restored in Poland than they began to return to their demolished nests and to re-establish their economic position and communal self-government, which had been so violently shaken. King John Casimir, having resumed the reins of government, declared that it was his inmost desire to compensate his Jewish subjects, though it be only in part, for the sufferings inflicted upon them and to a.s.sist them in recuperating from material ruin. This declaration the King made in the form of a charter bestowing the right of free commerce upon the Jews of Cracow (1661). Various privileges, as well as temporary alleviations in the payment of taxes, were conferred by him upon numerous other Jewish communities which had suffered most from the horrors of the Cossacks and the invasions of the Russians and Swedes.

It goes without saying that all this could only soften the consequences of the terrible economic crisis, but could not avert them. The crisis left its sad impress particularly upon the South, which had been the scene of the Cossack rebellion. As far as the Ukraina was concerned, peace was not completely restored for a long time. By the Treaty of Andrusovo, of 1667, Poland and Muscovy divided the province between them: the portion situated on the right bank of the Dnieper (Volhynia and Podolia) remained with Poland, while the section on the left bank of the same river, called Little Russia (the region of Poltava, Chernigov, and part of the district of Kiev, including the city of the same name), was ceded to Muscovy. However, in consequence of the party dissensions which divided the ranks of the Cossacks, and made their various hetmans gravitate now towards the one, now towards the other, of the sovereign powers, the Ukraina continued for a long time to be an apple of discord between Poland, Russia, and Turkey. This agitation handicapped alike the agricultural pursuits of the peasants and the commercial activities of the Jews. In Little Russia the Jews had almost disappeared, while in the Polish Ukraina they had become greatly impoverished. The southwestern region, where the Jews had once upon a time lived so comfortably, sank economically lower and lower, and gradually yielded its supremacy to the northwest, to Lithuania and White Russia, which had suffered comparatively little during the years of unrest. The transfer of the cultural center of Judaism from the south to the north forms one of the characteristic features of the period.

Michael Vishniovetzki (1669-1673), who was elected King after John Casimir, extended his protection to the Jews by virtue of family traditions, being a son of the hero Jeremiah Vishniovetzki, who had saved many a Jewish community of the Ukraina during the sinister years of the Cossack mutiny. At the Coronation Diet[138] Vishniovetzki ratified the fundamental privileges of the Polish and Lithuanian Jews, "as far as these privileges are not in contradiction with the general laws and customs." This ratification had been obtained through an application of the "general syndic of the Jews," Moses Markovich,[139]

who evidently acted as the spokesman of all the Kahals of the ancient provinces of Poland. The benevolent intentions of the King were counteracted by the Diets, which, controlled by the clergy and Shlakhta, issued restrictive laws against the Jews. The Diet of Warsaw held in 1670 not only limited the financial operations of Jewish capitalists by fixing a maximum rate of interest (20%)[140]--this would have been perfectly legitimate--but also thought it necessary to restore the old canonical regulations forbidding the Jews to keep Christian domestics or to leave their houses during the Church processions. In these Diet regulations, particularly in their tone and motivation ("in order that the perfidy and self-will of the Jews should not gain the upper hand,"

etc.), one cannot fail to perceive the venom of the Catholic clergy, which once more engaged in its old _metier_ of slandering the Jews, charging them with hostility to the Christians and with the desecration of Church sacraments.

The influence of these Church fanatics upon the Polish schools, coupled with the general deterioration of morals as a result of the protracted wars, was responsible for the recrudescence, during that period, of the ugly street attacks upon the Jews by the students of the Christian colleges, the so-called _Schulergelauf_. These scholastic excesses now became an everyday occurrence in the cities of Poland. The riotous scholars not only caused public scandals by insulting Jewish pa.s.sers-by on the street, but frequently invaded the Jewish quarters, where they inst.i.tuted regular pogroms. Most of these disorders were engineered by the pupils of the Academy of Cracow and the Jesuit schools in Posen, Lemberg, Vilna, and Brest.

The local authorities were pa.s.sive onlookers of these savage pranks of the future citizens of Poland, which occasionally a.s.sumed very dangerous forms. In order to protect themselves from such attacks many Jewish communities paid an annual tax to the rectors of the local Catholic schools, and this tax, which was called _kozubales_, was officially recognized by the "common law" then in use. However, even the ransom agreed upon could not save the Jews of Lemberg from a b.l.o.o.d.y pogrom. The pupils of the Cathedral school and the Jesuit Academy of that city were preparing to storm the Jewish quarter. Having learned of the intentions of the rioters, the Jewish youth of Lemberg organized an armed self-defense, and courageously awaited the enemy. But the attack of the Christian students, who were a.s.sisted by the mob, was so furious that the Jewish guard was unable to hold its own. The resistance of the Jews only resulted in exasperating the rioters, and the disorders took the form of a ma.s.sacre. About a hundred Jewish dead, a large number of demolished houses, several desecrated synagogues, were the result of the barbarous amus.e.m.e.nt of the disciples of the militant Church (1664).

Of the medieval trials of that period two cases, one in Lithuania and the other in the Crown, stand out with particular prominence. The former took place in the little town of Ruzhany, in the province of Grodno, in 1657. The local Christians, who on their Easter festival had placed a dead child's body in the yard of a Jew, thereupon charged the whole community with having committed a ritual murder. The trial lasted nearly three years, and ended in the execution of two representatives of the Jewish community, Rabbi Israel and Rabbi Tobias. A dirge commemorating this event, composed by a son of one of the martyrs, contains a heartrending description of the tragedy.[141]

My enemies have arisen against me, and have spread their nets in the shape of a false accusation in order to destroy my possessions. They took dead bodies, slashed them, and spoke with furious cunning: Behold, the ill-fated Jews drink and suck the blood of the murdered, and feed on the children of the Gentiles.

Three years did the horrible slander last, and we thought our liberation was near, but, alas, terrible darkness has engulfed us. Our sworn enemies dragged us before their hostile court. The evil-doers a.s.sembled in the week before the New Year, and turned justice into wormwood. A wily and wicked Gentile judged only by the sight of his eyes, without witnesses; he judged innocent and sinless people in order to shed pure blood. The horde of evil-doers p.r.o.nounced a perverted verdict, saying: "Choose ye [for execution] two Jews, such as may please you." A beautiful pair fell into their nets: Rabbi Israel and Rabbi Tobias, the holy ones, were singled out from among the community.[142] These men saw the glittering blade of the sword, but no fear fell upon them. They clasped each other's hands and swore to share the same fate. "Let us take courage, and let us prepare with a light heart to sacrifice ourselves. Let us become the lambs for the slaughter; we shall surely find protection under the wings of G.o.d." On the sixth day these holy men were led out to execution, and an altar was erected. The wrath of the Lord burst forth in the year of "Recompense,"[143] on the festival of Commemoration [New Year]. The bitterness of death was awaiting [the martyrs]

in the midst of the market-place. They confessed their sins, saying: "We have sinned before the Lord. Let us sanctify His name like Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah." They turned to the executioner, saying: "Grant us one hour of respite, that we may render praise unto the Lord." The lips of the impure, the false lips of those who pursue the wind and wors.h.i.+p corrupt images, came to tempt them with strange beliefs,[144] but the holy men exclaimed: "Away, ye impure! Shall we renounce the living G.o.d, and wander after trees?"[145] The holy Rabbi Israel stretched forth his neck, and shouted with all his might: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our G.o.d, the Lord is one." Thereupon the executioner stretched forth his hand to take the sword, and the costly vessel was shattered. When the holy Rabbi Tobias saw this loss, he exclaimed: "Blessed art thou, O Rabbi Israel, who hast pa.s.sed first into the Realm of Light. I follow thee." He too exclaimed: "Hear, O Israel, who art guarded [by G.o.d] like the apple of the eye." And he went forth to die in the name of the Lord, and [the executioner] slew him as he had slain the first.

Another tragedy took place in Cracow, in 1663. The educated Jewish apothecary Mattathiah Calahora, a native of Italy who had settled in Cracow, committed the blunder of arguing with a local priest, a member of the Dominican order, about religious topics. The priest invited Calahora to a disputation in the cloister, but the Jew declined, promising to expound his views in writing. A few days later the priest found on his chair in the church a statement written in German and containing a violent arraignment of the cult of the Immaculate Virgin.

It is not impossible that the statement was composed and placed in the church by an adherent of the Reformation or the Arian heresy,[146] both of which were then the object of persecution in Poland. However, the Dominican decided that Calahora was the author, and brought the charge of blasphemy against him.

The Court of the Royal Castle cross-examined the defendant under torture, without being able to obtain a confession. Witnesses testified that Calahora was not even able to write German. Being a native of Italy, he used the Italian language in his conversations with the Dominican. In spite of all this evidence, the unfortunate Calahora was sentenced to be burned at the stake. The alarmed Jewish community raised a protest, and the case was accordingly transferred to the highest court in Piotrkov.[147] The accused was sent in chains to Piotrkov, together with the plaintiff and the witnesses. But the arch-Catholic tribunal confirmed the verdict of the lower court, ordering that the sentence be executed in the following barbarous sequence: first the lips of the "blasphemer" to be cut off; next his hand that had held the fateful statement to be burned; then the tongue, which had spoken against the Christian religion, to be excised; finally the body to be burned at the stake, and the ashes of the victim to be loaded into a cannon and discharged into the air. This cannibal ceremonial was faithfully carried out on December 13, 1663, on the market-place of Piotrkov. For two centuries the Jews of Cracow followed the custom of reciting, on the fourteenth of Kislev, in the old synagogue of that city, a memorial prayer for the soul of the martyr Calahora.

There is evidently some connection between this event and the epistle sent by the General of the Dominican Order in Rome, Marini, to the head of the order in Cracow, dated February 9, 1664. Marini states that the "unfortunate Jews" of Poland had complained to him about the "wicked slanders" and accusations, the "sole purpose" of which was to influence the Diet soon to a.s.semble at Warsaw, and demonstrate to it that "the Polish people hate the Jews unconditionally." He requests his colleagues in Cracow and the latter's subordinates "to defend the hapless people against every calumny invented against them." Subsequent history shows that the epistle was sent in vain.

The last Polish king who extended efficient protection to the Jews against the cla.s.ses and parties hostile to them, was John III. Sobieski (1674-1696), who by his military exploits succeeded in restoring the political prestige of Poland. This King had frequent occasion to fight the growing anti-Semitic tendencies of the Shlakhta, the munic.i.p.alities, and the clergy. He granted safe-conducts to various Jewish communities, protecting their "liberties and privileges," enlarged their sphere of self-government, and freed them from the jurisdiction of the local munic.i.p.al authorities. In 1682 he complied with the request of the Jews of Vilna, who begged to be released from the munic.i.p.al census. The application was prompted by the fact that a year previously they had been induced by the magistracy of Vilna, which a.s.sured them of complete safety, to go outside the town where the census of the Jews and the Christian trade-unions was taken. But no sooner had the Jews left the confines of the city than the members of the trade-unions and other Christian inhabitants of Vilna began to shoot at them and rob them of their clothes and valuables. The Jews would have been entirely annihilated, had not the pupils of the local Jesuit college taken pity on them, and rescued them from the fury of the mob. While the riot was in progress, the magistracy of Vilna not only failed to defend the Jews, but even looked on at the proceedings "with great satisfaction."

It is necessary to point out that such manifestation of humaneness on the part of the Polish college youth was a rare phenomenon, indeed. As a rule, the students themselves were the initiators of the "tumults" or disorders in the Jewish quarter, and the scholastic riots referred to previously did not cease even under John Sobieski. The pupils of the Catholic academy in Cracow made an attack upon the Jews because of their refusal to pay the so-called _kozubales_, the scholastic tax which had been agreed upon between the Jews and the Christian colleges (1681-1682). In 1687 the tumultuous scholars, this time in Posen, were joined by the street mob, and for three consecutive days the Jews had to defend themselves against the rioters with weapons in their hands. The national Polish Diets condemned these forms of violence, and in their "const.i.tutions" guaranteed to the Jews inviolability of person and property, particularly when they found it necessary to raise the head-tax or impose special levies upon the Jews.

In reality the only defender of the Jews was the King. At his court appeared the "general syndics," or spokesmen of the Jewish communities, and presented various applications, which John Sobieski was ready to grant as far as lay in his power. This humane att.i.tude towards the "infidels" was on more than one occasion held up against him at the sessions of the Senate[148] and the Diets. At the Diet held in Grodno in 1693 the enemies of the court brought charges against the Jew Bezalel, a favorite of the King and a royal tax-farmer, accusing him of desecrating the Christian religion, embezzling state funds, and other crimes. After pa.s.sionate debates, John Sobieski insisted that Bezalel be allowed to clear himself by oath of the charge of blasphemy, while the other accusations were disposed of by the chancellor of the exchequer.

During the reign of John Sobieski Polish Jewry fully recuperated from the terrible ravages of the previous epoch. Under his successors its position became more and more unfavorable.

5. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL DISSOLUTION

The process of disintegration which had seized the feudal and clerical structure of the Polish body politic a.s.sumed appalling proportions under the kings of the Saxon dynasty, Augustus II. and Augustus III.

(1697-1763). The political anarchy, which, coupled with the failures in the Swedish war at the beginning of the eighteenth century, surrendered Poland into the hands of rejuvenated Russia under Peter the Great, was only the external manifestation of the inner decay of the country, springing from its social order, which was founded on the arbitrariness of the higher and the servitude of the lower estates.[149] In a land in which every cla.s.s had regard only for its own selfish interests, in which the Diets could be broken up by the whim of a single deputy (the so-called _liberum veto_), the Government did not concern itself with the common weal, but pursued its narrow bureaucratic interests. In these circ.u.mstances the Jews, being oppressed by all the Polish estates, were gradually deprived of their princ.i.p.al support, the authority of the king, which had formerly exercised a moderating influence upon the antagonism of the cla.s.ses. True, at the Coronation Diets of Augustus II.

and Augustus III. the old Jewish privileges were officially ratified, but, in consequence of the prevailing chaos and disorder, the rights, confirmed in this manner, remained a sc.r.a.p of paper. Limited as these rights were, their execution depended on the constant watchfulness of the supreme powers of the state and on their readiness to defend these rights against the encroachments of hostile elements. As a matter of fact, the heedless "Saxon kings," being neglectful of the general interests of the country, had no special reason to pay attention to the interests of the Jews. The only concern of the Government was the regular collection of the head-tax from the Kahals. This question of taxation was discussed with considerable zeal at the "pacific" Diet of 1717, which had been convened in Warsaw for the purpose of restoring law and order in the country, sorely shaken by the protracted war with the Swedish king Charles XII. and the inner anarchy accompanying it. Despite the fact that the Jews had been practically ruined during that period of unrest, the amount of the head-tax was considerably increased.

The local representatives of the Government, the voyevodas and starostas,[150] whose function was to defend the Jews, frequently became the most relentless oppressors of the people under their charge. These provincial satraps looked upon the Jewish population merely as the object of unscrupulous extortion. Whenever in need of money, the starostas resorted to a simple contrivance to fill their pockets: they demanded a fixed sum from the local Kahal, and threatened, in case of refusal, imprisonment and other forms of violence. All they had to do was to send to jail some member of the Jewish community, preferably a Kahal elder or an influential representative, and the Kahal was sure to pay the demanded sum. Occasionally this well-calculated exploitation was relieved by the aimless mockery of these despots, who were unable to restrain their savage instincts. Thus the Starosta of Kaniev, in the Polish Ukraina, desiring to compensate a neighboring landowner for the murder of his Jewish arendar, gave orders to load a number of Jews upon a wagon, who were thereupon carried to the gates of his injured neighbor and thrown down there like so many bags of potatoes. The same Starosta allowed himself the following "entertainment": he would order Jewish women to climb an apple-tree and call like cuckoos. He would next bombard them with small shot, and watch the unfortunate women fall wounded from the tree, whereupon, laughing merrily, he would throw gold coins among them.

The most powerful estate in the country, the liberty-loving, or, more correctly, license-loving Shlakhta, protected the Jews only when in need of their services. Claiming for himself, in his capacity as slaveholder, the toil of his peasants, the pan laid equal claim to the toil of the Jewish business man and arendar who turned the rural products of his master and the right of "propination," or liquor-selling, into sources of income for the latter. At one time the Polish landowners even made the attempt to enslave the Jews on their estates by legal proceedings.

At the Diet of 1740 the deputies of the n.o.bility brought in a resolution, that the Jews living on Shlakhta estates be recognized as the "hereditary subjects" of the owners of those estates. This monstrous attempt at transforming the rural Jews into serfs was rejected solely because the Government refused to forego the income from Jewish taxation, which in this case would flow into the pockets of the landowners.

Nevertheless the rural Jew was to all intents and purposes the serf of his pan. The latter exercised full jurisdiction over his Jewish arendar and "factor"[151] as well as over the residents on his estates in general. During the savage inroads, frequent during this period, of one pan upon the estate of another, the Jewish arendars were the princ.i.p.al sufferers. The meetings of the local Diets (or Dietines) and the conferences of the Shlakhta or the sessions of the court tribunals became fixed occasions for attacking the local Jews, for invading their synagogues and houses, and engaging, by way of amus.e.m.e.nt, in all kinds of "excesses." The Diet of 1717 held in Warsaw protested against these wild orgies, and threatened the rioters and the violators of public safety with severe fines. The "custom" nevertheless remained in vogue.

As far as the cities are concerned, the Jews were engulfed in endless litigation with the Christian merchant guilds and trade-unions, which wielded a most powerful weapon in their hands by controlling the city government or the magistracy. Compet.i.tion in business and trade was deliberately disguised beneath the cloak of religion, for the purpose of inciting the pa.s.sions of the mob against the Jews. The Christian merchants and tradesmen found an enthusiastic ally in the Catholic clergy. The seed sown by the Jesuits yielded a rich harvest. Religious intolerance, hypocrisy, and superst.i.tion had taken deep root in the Polish people. Religious persecution, directed against all "infidels,"

be they Christian dissidents or Jews "who stubbornly cling to irreligion," was one of the mainsprings of the inner politics of Poland during its period of decay.

The enactments of the Catholic synods are permeated by malign hatred of the Jews, savoring of the spirit of the Middle Ages. The Synod of Lovich held in 1720 pa.s.sed a resolution "that the Jews should nowhere dare build new synagogues or repair old ones," so that the Jewish houses of wors.h.i.+p might disappear in the course of time, either from decay or through fire. The Synod of 1733 held in Plotzk repeats the medieval maxim, that the only reason for tolerating the Jews in a Christian country is that they might serve as a "reminder of the tortures of Christ and, by their enslaved and miserable position, as an example of the just chastis.e.m.e.nt inflicted by G.o.d upon the infidels."

6. A FRENZY OF BLOOD ACCUSATIONS