History of the Jews in Russia and Poland Volume I Part 16

[189] [See p. 130.]

[190] [_Ibid._]

[191] [In Hebrew the two names are not clearly distinguishable. The former town, in Polish, _Szydlowiec_, is near Radom. The latter, in Polish, _Siedlce_, is the capital of the present Russian Government of the same name, not far from Warsaw.]

[192] [The Turkish Sabbatians, from whom this Spanish t.i.tle was borrowed, spoke the Judeo-Spanish dialect. On the abbreviation S. S., see Gratz, _Geschichte der Juden_, x^3, 379, n. 1.]

[193] [In Polish, _Lanckorona_, a town in Podolia.]

[194] [Literally, "the Lady," a Cabalistic term for the Divine Presence.]

[195] [In Podolia.]

[196] [See p. 134, n. 4.]

[197] _Tar`a de-Romem_, the legendary dwelling-place of the Messiah.

[Comp. Sanhedrin 98a.]

[198] [Literally, "Master of the Name," a man able to perform miracles through the Name of G.o.d.]

[199] An exposition of his doctrines may be found in the book ent.i.tled _Maggid Debarav le-Ya`kob_ ["Showing His Words unto Jacob"--allusion to Ps. cxlvii. 19], also called _Likkute Amarim_, "Collection of Sayings."

It was published after his death, in 1784.

[200] ["History of Jacob Joseph"--a clever allusion to the Hebrew text of Gen. x.x.xvii. 2.]

[201] _Hayye, bane, u-mezone_ [allusion to a well-known Talmudic dictum; Mo`ed Katan 28^a].

[202] [His full name was Shneor Zalman, which is used by the author later on. Subsequently he a.s.sumed the family name Shneorsohn.]

[203] In Hebrew, _Hokma_, _Bina_, _Da`ath_, abbreviated to HaBaD, from which the White Russian Hasidim received the nickname "Habadniks."

[204] ????? [_Hagro_, abbreviation of _Ha-G_aon _R_abbi _E_(?=o)lia].

[205] The custom of wearing white garments was adopted, for certain mystical considerations, by the Tzaddiks and the most pious of their followers.

[206] See p. 230.

[207] See pp. 377 _et seq._

CHAPTER VII

THE RUSSIAN QUARANTINE AGAINST JEWS (TILL 1772)

1. THE ANTI-JEWISH ATt.i.tUDE OF MUSCOVY DURING THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES

The Empire of Muscovy, shut off from Western Europe by a Chinese--or, more correctly, Byzantine--wall, maintained during the sixteenth century its att.i.tude of utmost prejudice towards the Jews, and refused to admit them into its borders. This prejudice was part of the general disfavor with which the Russian people of that period, imbued as it was with the traditions of Tataric-Byzantine culture, looked upon foreigners or "infidels." But the prejudice against the Jews was fed, in addition, from a specific source. The recollection of the "Judaizing heresy" which had struck terror to the hearts of the pious Muscovites at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century[208] had not yet died out. The Jews were regarded as dangerous magicians and seducers, superst.i.tious rumors ascribing all possible crimes to them.

The amba.s.sador of the Muscovite Grand Duke, Basil III., at Rome, observed in 1526 to the Italian scholar Paolo Giovio: "The Muscovite people dread no one more than the Jews, and do not admit them into their borders."

Jewish merchants of Poland and Lithuania visited occasionally, in connection with their business affairs, the border city Smolensk, but they had no permanent residence there. From time to time they would carry their goods even into the capital, Moscow, although such daring did not always pa.s.s unpunished. About 1545 the goods imported by Jewish merchants from Brest-Litovsk to Moscow were burned there, on which occasion the Muscovite amba.s.sador called the attention of the Polish Government to the fact that the Jews had imported forbidden merchandise to Russia, though they had not even the right to travel thither. In 1550 the Polish King Sigismund Augustus addressed a "charter" to Tzar Ivan the Terrible (Ivan IV.), demanding the admission of Lithuanian Jews into Russia for business purposes, by virtue of the former commercial treaties between the two countries. Ivan IV. rejected this demand in resolute terms:

It is not convenient to allow Jews to come with their goods to Russia, since many evils result from them. For they import poisonous herbs [medicines] into our realm, and lead astray the Russians from Christianity. Therefore he, the [Polish] King, should no more write about these Jews.

Ivan the Terrible soon had occasion to demonstrate concretely that he was not inclined to tolerate Jews in his domains. When, in 1563, the Russian troops occupied the Polish border city Polotzk,[209] the Tzar gave orders to have all local Jews converted to the Greek Orthodox faith, and those who refused baptism drowned in the Dvina. His att.i.tude towards the Poles was more indulgent. He contented himself in their case with taking them captive and demolis.h.i.+ng their churches. Fortunately a few years later, in 1579, Polotzk was restored to Poland through the bravery of Stephen Batory, the protector of the Jews.

These primitive forms of denominational politics continued for a long time to prevail in Muscovy. The Jews of Poland and Lithuania managed, though illegally, to visit the capital in the interest of their business. With the influx of Poles into Moscow during the so-called "period of unrest," the interregnum preceding the establishment of the Romanov dynasty in 1613, a goodly number of Jews penetrated into Russia.

The Muscovites became alarmed, and their apprehensions found expression in 1610, when the n.o.blemen of Moscow were conducting negotiations with Poland looking to the election of the Polish Crown Prince Vladislav to the Russian throne. An agreement was concluded, consisting of twenty clauses, setting forth the conditions on which the n.o.blemen were willing to vote for Vladislav. The fourth clause of this agreement runs as follows:

No churches or temples of the Latin or any other faith shall be allowed in Russia. No one shall be induced to adopt the Roman or any other religion, and the Jews shall not be allowed to enter the Muscovite Empire either on business or in connection with any other affairs.

In these circ.u.mstances the Jews were deprived of all opportunity to develop commercial life in the reactionary Empire. Forty years later this same Empire pushed its way into the territories of Poland and Lithuania, which were populated by Jews, and the policy of Muscovy was destined to reveal its creative genius in the domain of the Jewish question.

The first contact of the Muscovite Empire with large Jewish ma.s.ses took place when the province of Little Russia was annexed by Tzar Alexis Michaelovich in 1654. When the Russian troops, allied with the Cossacks, overran White Russia, Lithuania, and the Ukraina, they were struck by the undreamed-of spectacle of cities in which entire quarters were populated by Jews, a strange people about which the unenlightened Muscovites knew nothing except that once upon a time they had crucified Christ, and for this reason were not allowed to enter pious, Greek Orthodox Russia. Alexis Michaelovich and his military commanders began after their own fas.h.i.+on to play the masters in the temporarily occupied Polish provinces. In Vilna and Moghilev the Jews were murdered, and those who survived were expelled. In Vitebsk the Jews were made prisoners of war, while in other cities they were a.s.saulted and plundered.[210]

As a result the Muscovite Empire soon found within its precincts a strangely composed Jewish population, consisting of prisoners of war, who had been carried off princ.i.p.ally from the border towns of the Government of Moghilev, and had been deported to the central provinces of Russia, and in some cases even as far as Siberia. By the Peace of Andrusovo, concluded in 1667 between Russia and Poland, the prisoners of war of both countries were given their freedom, but the captive Jews were allowed to remain in Muscovy. These Jews formed the nucleus of a small Jewish colony in Moscow, which grew up gradually, and in which occasionally even converts were to be found. It seems that with the aid of these "legal" Jewish residents other "illegal" Jews, from the neighboring regions of Lithuania and White Russia, managed to penetrate to Moscow. A few Jewish merchants, particularly those trading in cloth, succeeded in obtaining an official permit, the so-called "red ticket,"

to visit the capital. However, in 1676 the prohibition against Jews entering Moscow was renewed. Only in the portion of the Ukraina which had been annexed by Russia, in the provinces of Chernigov and Poltava, and a part of the province of Kiev, there could still be found small groups of Jews who had survived the Cossack ma.s.sacres of 1648. Moreover, from the Polish section of the Ukraina, Jews occasionally came on business into these Cossack districts, notwithstanding the fact that, according to Russian law, the Jews were barred from residing within the borders of Little Russia.

2. THE JEWS UNDER PETER I. AND HIS SUCCESSORS

This treatment of the Jews did not improve even in the new Russia, in which Peter the Great, the Tzar-Reformer, "had broken through a window into Europe." True, Peter's reforms effected a change for the better in the att.i.tude of the isolated, unenlightened Empire towards foreigners, but this change did not extend to the Jews. We know of no laws enacted during his reign which might ill.u.s.trate the views of the new Government on the Jewish question. There is reason to believe that the Tzar, in allowing the former enactments against the admission of Jews into Russia to remain in force, took into account the primitive habits and prejudices of his people. A contemporary witness narrates that, in 1698, during Peter's stay in Holland, the Jews of Amsterdam requested the burgomaster Witsen to pet.i.tion the Tzar concerning the admission of their coreligionists into Russia. After listening to the convincing arguments of Witsen, with whom he was on a very friendly footing, Peter replied:

My dear Witsen, you know the Jews, and you know their character and habits; you also know the Russians. I know both, and believe me, the time has not yet come to unite the two nationalities.

Tell the Jews that I am obliged to them for their proposition, and that I realize how advantageous their services would be to me, but that I should have to pity them were they to live in the midst of the Russians.

Discounting the element of anecdote in this story, we may reasonably a.s.sume that Peter did not think it entirely harmless for the Jewish emigrants to settle among the benighted Russian ma.s.ses, which had been accustomed to look upon the Jew as some kind of sea-monster, and as an infidel and Christ-killer. It is possible that Peter was prompted by similar considerations when he refused to admit the Jews into the central provinces of Russia.

However, from another source we learn that the "reformer" of Russia was not free from anti-Jewish prejudices, though they were not always of a religious nature.

While inviting skilful foreigners from all over--says the Russian historian Solovyov--Peter made a permanent exception but for one people--the Jews. "I prefer," he was wont to say, "to see in our midst nations professing Mohammedanism and paganism rather than Jews. They are rogues and cheats. It is my endeavor to eradicate evil and not to multiply it. They shall not be allowed either to live or to trade in Russia, whatever efforts they may make, and however much they may try to bribe those near me."

Of course, only a goodly dose of anti-Semitic bias could prompt a view which regards in this light the economic activity of the Jews among the Russian merchants, those same merchants who had of yore given expression to their commercial principles in the well-known Russian dictum, "If you don't cheat, you don't sell."

It is possible that Peter was not unfamiliar with anti-Jewish prejudices of a more objectionable kind. In 1702 reports were received in Moscow from Little Russia, that in the town of Gorodnya, near Chernigov, "the Jews had tortured a Christian to death, and had sent his blood to a number of Jews in Little Russian towns." The descendants of Khmelnitzki had evidently succeeded in importing into Russia what was at that time a fas.h.i.+onable article in Poland, the charge of ritual murder, and these obscure rumors may have affected injuriously the att.i.tude of the Russian Tzar towards the Jews.

On the other hand, we are informed that, during the Russo-Swedish War, when the Russian army was operating on the Polish border territory, populated by Jews, Peter the Great refrained from repeating the pogrom experiments of his father, Alexis Michaelovich. In August, 1708, shortly before the celebrated battle at Lesnaya, in White Russia, he checked a military riot against the Jews which had been started in Mstislavl. A brief Hebrew entry in the local Kahal journal, or _Pinkes_, runs as follows:

On the twenty-eighth of Elul, in the year 5468, there came the Caesar, who is called the Tzar of Muscovy, by the name of Peter, the son of Alexis, with his whole suite, an immense, numberless host. Robbers and murderers from among his people fell upon us, without his knowledge, and it almost came to bloodshed. And if the Lord Almighty had not put it into the heart of the Tzar to enter our synagogue in his own person, blood would certainly have been shed. It was only with the help of G.o.d that the Tzar saved us, and took revenge for us, by giving orders that thirteen men from among them [the rioters] be immediately hanged, and the land became quiet.

During the last years of his reign, Peter began to admit Jewish financial agents to his new capital, St. Petersburg. One of the most energetic financial agents at that time was the "court Jew" Lipman Levy, a banker from Courland, who attained to particular prominence under Peter's successors.

Under the immediate successors of Peter the Great the "defensive" policy towards the Jews gradually became an "offensive" one. The magnates at the Russian court, who dominated Russia under the label of "The Supreme Secret Council," called attention to the unnecessary proximity of the Jewish colony in Smolensk to the center of the Empire. The district of Smolensk bordering on Poland harbored a group of White Russian Jews, who earned a livelihood by a trade profitable at that time, the lease of excise and customs duties. One of these big tax-farmers, a certain Borukh Leibov (son of Leib), even had the courage to build a synagogue for the few Jews of the village of Zverovich. This aroused the ire of the local Greek Orthodox priest, who in his _navete_ was convinced that the establishment of a synagogue would result in diverting his flock from the Church and converting it to Judaism. The inhabitants began to bombard St. Petersburg with their protests, the elders of the Holy Synod became alarmed, the specter of the "Judaizing heresy" once more flitted across their vision, and, as a result, Empress Catherine I. issued, in March, 1727, an ukase[211] through the Supreme Secret Council, that Borukh and his a.s.sociates be removed from their office in connection with the excise and customs duties, and "be deported immediately from Russia beyond the border."

A month later another even stricter ukase was promulgated by the Empress through the Supreme Secret Council, which affected all Jews in the border provinces, particularly those residing in Little Russia. The ukase decreed that "the Jews, both of the male and the female s.e.x, who have settled in the Ukraina and in other Russian cities, be deported immediately from Russia beyond the border, and in no circ.u.mstances be admitted into Russia, of which fact they shall in all places be strictly forewarned." The exiles were forbidden to carry gold and silver coins abroad, into the Polish dominions. They were ordered to exchange them for copper money prior to their expulsion. This ukase was a gross violation not only of the ancient rights of the Jews who had been left in Little Russia after its annexation by Muscovy, but also of the autonomy of the province and its elective authorities, the hetmans, to whom the right of initiative belonged in such cases.

The arbitrariness of the central Government called forth the protest of the Little Russian Cossacks, who were otherwise far from friendly to the Jews. In the name of "the Zaporozhian army on both sides of the Dnieper"[212] Hetman Daniel Apostol addressed a pet.i.tion to St.