History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume 3 of 3. From the Accession of Nicholas II until the Present Day

A year later, in 1909, the percentage restrictions governing the secondary schools were also placed on the statute books. The proportion of Jewish admissions was fixed between five and fifteen per cent. —i. e., slightly in excess of the old norm – and was extended in its application to private educational institutions with the prerogatives of government schools. This law spelled ruin to many gymnazia and schools of commerce which, though directed by Christians, were almost entirely dependent on Jewish support, eighty per cent. of their school population consisting of Jews. As for the gymnazia maintained by Jews, with very few exceptions, they never were able to obtain from the Ministry the status of government institutions.

The educational Hamans, however, went a step further, and in March, 1911, secured an ukase of the Tzar extending the percentage norm to the "externs":58 henceforward Jews were to be admitted to the examination for the "certificate of maturity"59 or for the completion of a part of the curriculum only in a certain proportion to the number of Christian externs. In point of fact, however, there were no Christian externs, since only the Jews who had failed to find admission to the schools were forced to present themselves for examination as externs. In consequence, the enormous number of Jewish children who had been barred from the schools by the percentage norm were deprived of their right to receive a testimonial from a secondary school. This law was passed during a brief interruption in the sessions of the Duma and was never submitted to it. The deputies of the Opposition brought in an interpellation concerning this action, but the "Black Parliament" laid the matter on the table, and the law which lacked all legal basis went into operation.

Swayed more and more by the tendencies of a reactionary Russian nationalism, Stolypin's Government set out to uproot the national-cultural institutions of the "alien" races in Russia. The Poles, the Finns, and other nationalities became the victims of this policy. The lash of oppression was also applied to Jewish cultural life. In 1910, Stolypin issued a circular impressing Russian officialdom with the idea that the cultural and educational societies of the "aliens" contributed towards arousing in them "a narrow national-political self-consciousness" and towards "the strengthening of national separatism," and that for this reason all the societies of the Ukrainians and Jews which were established for the purpose of fostering a separate national culture should be prohibited.

5. The Spiritual Revival of Russian Jewry

This new blow was aimed right at the heart of Judaism. For after the revolution, when the political struggle had subsided, the Jewish intelligenzia directed its entire energy into the channel of national-cultural endeavors. Profiting by the law of 1906, granting the freedom of assemblies and meetings, they founded everywhere cultural, educational, and economic (co-operative and credit) societies. In 1908, the Jewish Literary Society was established in St. Petersburg, which soon counted over a hundred branches in the provinces. The same year saw the formation of the Jewish Historico-Ethnographic Society which began to publish a quarterly review under the name Yevreyskaya Starina ("Jewish Antiquity").60 The oldest educational organization among the Jews, the Society for the Diffusion of Enlightenment, enlarged its activity and was endeavoring to create a new type of national Jewish school.

A multitude of other cultural societies and circles sprang into life with the sanction of the authorities throughout the length and breadth of the Pale. Everywhere lectures and conferences were held and heated debates were carried on, centering around national-cultural problems. Particularly passionate were the discussions about the position of Hebrew and Yiddish in public life, in school and in literature, leading to the alignment of two parties, the Hebraists and the Yiddishists. The lectures, conferences and debates themselves were generally carried on in one of these languages, mostly in the Yiddish vernacular.

In spite of their crudities, these partisan conflicts were a clear indication of the advance of national self-consciousness and of the desire for the upbuilding of a genuine Jewish life upon the concrete foundations of a cultural autonomy. Of course, anti-Semitic Tzardom could not be expected to sympathize with this inner regeneration of Jewry, and, as in the time of Plehve, it directed its blow at the Jewish-national organizations. Here and there the blow was effective. In 1911, the Jewish Literary Society, with its one hundred and twenty branches, which had displayed an energetic activity in the establishment of libraries and the arrangement of public lectures, went out of existence. In general, however, the attacks directed against the Jewish spirit proved much more difficult of realization than the attacks upon Jewish property. The cultural activities continued in their course, defying all external restrictions and persecutions.

The literary revival, which had started in the nineties, and was but temporarily interrupted by the stormy events of the revolutionary period, also came into its own again. The rejuvenation of both the national and the popular language, finding its expression in a widely ramified Jewish literature, proceeded along paralleled lines. The periodical press in Hebrew, represented by the two dailies, ha-Tzefirah in Warsaw, and ha-Zeman in Vilna, and the monthly ha-Shiloah in Odessa, found its counterpart in a popular press in Yiddish, reaching hundreds of thousands of readers, such as the dailies Fraind ("The Friend," published since 1903 in St. Petersburg), Haint ("To-day"), Moment, and others, in Warsaw. In addition there was the Jewish press in Russian: the weeklies Voskhod, Razsvyet, Yevreyski Mir in St. Petersburg, and a few other publications.

In the domain of higher literary productivity, new forces were being constantly added to the old ones. Besides the great national bard Bialik there appeared a number of gifted poets: Shneor, the singer of "storm and stress," of doubts and negations, the romantically inclined Jacob Kohan, Fichman, Reisin, David Einhorn, and many other youthful, as yet scarcely unfolded talents. J. L. Perez found a rival in Shalom Asch, the portrayer of patriarchal Jewish life in the provincial towns of Poland (Die Städtel, "The Provincial Town," 1904), and the author of charming sketches from Jewish life, as well as a playwright of note whose productions have met with tumultuous applause both on the Jewish and the non-Jewish stage (Moshiah's Zeiten, "Messianic Times," Gott von Nekomo, "God of Revenge," Shabbetai Zewi, Yihus, "Blue Blood"). His numerous co-workers in Yiddish letters have devoted themselves with youthful enthusiasm to the cultivation of this branch of Jewish literature.

In Hebrew fiction a number of talented writers and a group of novelists, who publish their works mostly in the ha-Shiloah, came to the fore. The successor of Ahad Ha'am in the editorship of this periodical, Dr. Joseph Klausner, occupies a prominent place in Jewish literature as publicist, critic, and partly as historian. If we add to these talents the not inconsiderable number of writers who are domiciled in Galicia, Palestine, Germany, and America, and draw their inspiration from the vast Russian-Jewish reservoir, the growth of Jewish literature during the last decade stands forth in bold relief.

This progress of inner Jewish life in Russia is truly remarkable. In spite of the catastrophes which have descended upon Russian Jewry during the first decade of the twentieth century, the productivity of the Jewish national spirit has gone on unchecked, and the national-Jewish culture has struck out in all directions. The assimilationist positions, which have been generally abandoned, are only held by a few loyal devotees of a past age. It is true that the process of elemental assimilation, which penetrates from the surrounding atmosphere into Judaism through the medium of language, school and literature continues to affect Jewish life with the same force as of old. But there can be no doubt that it is effectively counterbalanced by the centripetal factor of a national culture which is becoming more and more powerful. Large as is the number of religious apostates who have deserted Judaism under the effect of external pressure, and of moral renegades who have abandoned the national ethical ideals of Judaism in favor of a new-fangled decadent æstheticism, it is negligible when compared with the compact mass of Russian Jewry and with the army of intellectuals whose national self-consciousness has been deepened by suffering. As in all previous critical moments in the history of the Jews, the spirit of the nation, defying its new tormentors, has grown stronger in the worn-out body. The Hamans of Russia who have attempted to crush the Eternal People have failed as signally as their predecessors in Persia, Syria and Byzantium.

RUSSIAN JEWRY SINCE 1911

Being loath to cross the threshold of the present, we shall stop at the year 1911, terminating the first decade of the Thirty Years' War waged by Russian Tzardom against Jewry since 1881. The more recent phases of this war are still fresh in our memory. To put the new campaign of Jew-hatred in its proper light, it will suffice to point out its most conspicuous landmarks which stand out by their extraordinarily sinister features. In 1911, the organizations of the Black Hundred, with the help of their accomplices in the Duma and in the Government circles, manufactured the monstrous "Beilis case." The murder of a Russian boy in Kiev, of a family belonging to a band of thieves, and the discovery of the body in the neighborhood of a brickkiln owned by a Jew provided the anti-Semites with an opportunity to bring forward the old charge of ritual murder. In the beginning the Government was somewhat uncertain as to the attitude it should adopt towards the mysterious Kiev murder. But a political occurrence which took place at the time put an end to its vacillation. In September, 1911, Premier Stolypin was assassinated in a Kiev theatre in the presence of the Tzar and the dignitaries of State. The assassin, by the name of Bogrov, proved to be the son of a lawyer who was of Jewish extraction, though he had long before turned his back upon his people – a semi-anarchist, who at one time had been active as police agent for some mysterious revolutionary purposes. The Jewish extraction of the father of the assassin was enough to produce a paroxysm of fury in the camp of the anti-Semitic reactionaries who had lost in the person of Stolypin an exalted patron. In Kiev preparations were openly made for a Jewish massacre, but the Government was afraid that the proposed wholesale execution of Jews would mar the festive solemnity of the Tzar's visit to Kiev. The authorities made it known that the Tzar was not in favor of riots, and a bloody street pogrom was averted.

In its place, however, a bloodless pogrom, extending over two years, was arranged in the form of the Beilis case. Minister of Justice Shcheglovitov, a former Liberal, who had become a fanatical partisan of the Black Hundred, made up his mind to impart to the trial a glaring ritual coloring. The original Judicial inquiry having failed to uncover any traces of Jewish complicity, the Minister of Justice ordered a new special inquiry and constantly changed the personnel of the investigating and prosecuting officials, until he finally secured a bill of indictment in which the whole case was represented as a ritual crime, committed by the Jew Beilis with the participation of "undiscovered persons."

For two years, the Beilis case provided the pabulum for a wild anti-Semitic campaign which was carried on among the so-called better classes, on the streets, in the press, and in the Imperial Duma. The court trial which took place in Kiev in October, 1913, was expected to crown with success the criminal design harbored by the Minister of Justice and the Black Hundred, but the expectations of the Government were disappointed. In spite of a carefully selected court personnel, which consisted of anti-Semitic judges representing the Crown, and of sworn jurymen, ignorant peasants and burghers who believed in the ritual murder legend, Beilis was acquitted, and the authorities found it impossible to fasten the guilt upon the Jews.

Exasperated by the failure, the Government wreaked its vengeance upon the liberal-minded intellectuals and newspaper men, who, by their agitation against the hideous libel, had wrested the prey from the hands of the Black Hundred. Scores of legal actions were instituted not only against newspaper editors and contributors but also against the St. Petersburg Bar Association, which had adopted a resolution protesting against the method pursued by Shcheglovitov in the Beilis trial. The sensational case against the metropolitan lawyers was tried in June, 1914, one month before the declaration of the World War, and terminated in a verdict of guilty for twenty-five lawyers, on the charge of "having agitated against the Government."

The triennium preceding the World War witnessed the rise of a new danger for Judaism, this time coming from Poland. The extraordinary intensity of the national and religious sentiment of the Poles, accentuated by the political oppression which for more than a hundred years had been inflicted upon them, particularly by the hands of Russian despotism, has, during the last decade, been directed against the Jewish people. The economic progress made by the Jews in the two industrial centers of Russian Poland, in Warsaw and Lodz, gave rise to the boycott agitation. Polish anti-Semites proclaimed the slogan "Do not buy from Jews!", aiming the cry specifically against the "Litvaks," that is, the hundreds of thousands of Russian Jews who, in the course of the last few decades, had been chiefly instrumental in the economic advancement of those two centers. The cloak beneath which this agitation was carried on was purely that of Polish nationalism: the Russian Jews were alleged, on the one hand, "to Russify Poland," and, accused, on the other hand, of an opposite tendency, of asserting themselves as the members of a separate Jewish nationality, with a press and a social organization of their own, which refuses to be merged in the Polish people.

The anti-Semitic movement in Poland, which began shortly after the revolution of 1905, assumed extraordinary dimensions in 1910-1911, when the boycott became a fierce economic pogrom, reaching its culmination in 1912, during the election campaign to the fourth Imperial Duma. The Jewish electors of Warsaw formed a majority, and were, therefore, in a position to send a Jewish deputy to the Duma. Yet out of consideration for the national susceptibilities of the Poles who insisted on sending as a representative of the Polish capital one of their "own," a Christian, the Jews were willing to accept a Polish candidate, provided the latter was not an anti-Semite. When, however, the Polish election committee, disregarding the feelings of the Jews, nominated the anti-Semitic candidate Kukhazhevski, the Jews gave their votes to the Polish Socialistic nominee Yaghello, who carried the election. This attitude of the Jews aroused a storm of indignation among the higher classes of Polish society. An anti-Jewish campaign, marked by extraordinary bitterness, was set in motion, and in the press and on the streets the Jews were nicknamed "Beilises," an echo of the ritual murder legend which had given rise to such horrors in ancient Catholic Poland. The economic boycott was carried on with incredible fury, and in a number of towns and villages the cowardly enemies of the Jews, being afraid of attacking them openly, set fire to Jewish houses, with the result that in many cases entire families were consumed in the flames.

The furor Polonicus assumed more and more dangerous forms, so that at the beginning of the World War, in 1914, almost the entire Polish nation, from the "progressive anti-Semites" down to the clericals, were up in arms against the Jews. From this armed camp came the defiant war cry: "On the banks of the Vistula there is no room for two nationalities," thus sentencing to death the two millions of Polish Jewry who consider themselves a part of the Jewish, and not of the Polish nation. Out of this soil of national hatred crawled forth the snake of the terrible "military libel," which during the first year of the war drenched Polish Jewry in rivers of blood. Over the bleeding body of the Jewish people Polish and Russian anti-Semitism joined hands. Horrors upon horrors were perpetrated before which the ancient annals of Jewish martyrdom fade into insignificance.

Nearly twenty centuries have passed since the ancient Judæo-Hellenic Diaspora sent forth a handful of men who established a Jewish colony upon the northern Scythian, now Russian, shores of the Black Sea. More than a thousand years ago the Jews of Byzantium from one direction, and those of the Arabian Caliphate from another, went forth to colonize the land of the Scythians. The Jew stood at the cradle of ancient Kiovian Russia, which received Christianity from the hands of the Byzantines. The Jew witnessed the birth of Catholic Poland, and, during the stormy days of the Crusades, fled from the West of Europe to this haven of refuge which was not yet entirely in the hands of the Catholic Church. He has seen Poland in its bloom and decay; he has witnessed the rise of Muscovite Russia, tying the fate of one-half of his nation to the new Russian Empire. Here the power that dominates history opened up before the Jewish people a black abyss of mediævalism in the midst of the blazing light of modern civilization, and finally threw it into the flames of the gigantic struggle of nations. What may the World War be expected to bring to the World-Nation? Full of agitation, the Jew is looking into the future, and the question of his ancient prophet is trembling on his lips: "Ah Lord God! wilt Thou make a full end of the remnant of Israel?"61… Let the entire past of the Jewish people serve as an answer to this question – a people which, in the maelstrom of human history, has succeeded in conquering the two cosmic forces: Time and Space.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

VOLUME I

[Yevr. Bibl. = Yevreyskaya Bibliotyeka;Yevr. St. = Yevreyskaya Starina.]

Chapter I

The Jewish Diaspora in Eastern Europe

(pp. 13-38)

Latyschew, Inscriptiones antiquae orae Septentrionalis Ponti Euxini, vols. I-II. St. Petersburg, 1885, 1890 [R].

Reghesty i Nadpisi. Svod materialov dla istoriyi yevreyev v Rossiyi ("Documents and Inscriptions. Collection of Materials for the History of the Jews in Russia"). Vol. I, St. Petersburg, 1899, Nos. 1-218 [R].

Dubnow, "The Historical Mystery of the Crimea," Yevr. St., 1914, No. 1.

Harkavy, Skazaniya Musulmanskikh pisatyeley o Slavianakh i Russkikh ("The Accounts of the Mohammedan Writers concerning the Slavs and Russians") St. Petersburg, 1870 [R].

–, Mitteilungen über die Chasaren, Russische Revue, 1877; also Yevr. Bibl., vols. VII-VIII, St. Petersburg, 1878.

–, Altjüdische Denkmäler aus der Krim, St. Petersburg, 1876.

Firkovich, Abne Zikkaron. Matzebot 'al Kibre Bne Israel bi-Krim, Vilna, 1872.

Chwolson, Corpus inscriptionum hebraicarum. Grabschriften aus der Krim, St. Petersburg, 1882.

Petahiah of Ratisbon, Sibbub, edited by Grünhut, Jerusalem, 1904.

Benjamin of Tudela, Sefer ha-Massa'ot, ed. Grünhut, Jerusalem, 1903; ed. Marcus Adler, London.

Hoker, "The Jews in Kaffa under the Genoese Régime (1455)," Yevr. St. 1912, p. 66 et seq.

Sobranie russkih letopisey ("Collection of Russian Chronicles") [R].

Solovyov, Historiya Rossiyi ("The History of Russia"). Vol. I, Moscow, 1863-75 [R]

Chapter II

The Jewish Colonies in Poland and Lithuania

(pp. 39-65)

Volumina legum. Leges et constitutiones Regni Poloniae, vol. I, St. Petersburg, 1859 (sub anno 1347, 1420, 1496, 1505).

Bershadski, Russko-yevreyski arkhiv ("Russian-Jewish Archives"), St. Petersburg, vol. I (1882), Nos. 1-39, and vol. III (1903), Nos. 1-15.

Bersohn, Dyplomataryusz dotyczacy żydów w dawniej Polsce ("Diplomatic Documents relating to the Jews in Ancient Poland"), Warsaw, 1910, Nos. 1-4, 386-402 [P].

Hube, Constitutiones synodales provinciae Gnesnensis, St. Petersburg, 1856, pp. 68-70, 159-161.

Czacki, Rozprawa o Żydach ("An Inquiry concerning the Jews"), Cracow, 1860 [P].

Gumplowicz, Prawodawstwie Polskie wzgledem żydów ("Polish Legislation relating to Jews"), Cracow, 1867 [P].

Sternberg, Geschichte der Juden in Polen, Leipzig, 1878.

Bershadski, Litovskiye yevreyi ("The Lithuanian Jews"), St. Petersburg, 1883 [R].

Schipper, Studya nad stosunkami gospodarczymi żydów w Polsce podczas źredniowiecza ("A Study of the Economic Relations of the Jews in Poland during the Middle Ages"), Leinberg, 1911 [P].

Chapter III

The Autonomous Center in Poland at Its Zenith

(pp. 66-102)

Volumina legum (1859-1860), vol. I, pp. 309, 375, 506, 524-525, 550; vol. II, pp. 624, 690-692, 725, 1052, 1243; vol. III, pp. 289, 809-810; vol. IV, pp. 39-40.

Bershadski, Russo-yevreyski arkhiv, vol. I, pp. 62-337; vol. II (St. Petersburg, 1882); vol. III (1903), pp. 36-260 [R].

Reghesty i Nadpisi, vol. I, pp. 95-871 [R].

Akty Vilenskoy kommissiyi dla razbora drevnikh aktov ("Records of the Vilna Commission for the Examination of Ancient Documents"), vol. XXVIII, containing documents relating to Jews (Vilna, 1901), Nos. 1-278 [R].

Bersohn, Dyplomataryusz, Nos. 5-246, 351-356, 401-552 [P].

Schorr, "The Cracow Collection of the Jewish Statutes and Charters of the Fifteenth to the Sixteenth Century," Yevr. St., vol. I, pp. 247 et seq., vol. II, pp. 76, 223 et seq.

Czacki, Rozprawa o Żydach, pp. 44-54 [P].

Kraushar, Historya Żydów w Polsce ("History of the Jews in Poland"), vol. II, Warsaw, 1866, pp. 144-318 [P].

Gumplowicz, Prawodawstwie Polskie, etc., pp. 36-45, 50-52, 58-76, 103 [P].

Nussbaum, Historya Żydów ("History of the Jews"), vol. V, pp. 108-223 [P].

Bershadski, Litovskiye yevreyi, chapters V-VI [R].

Dubnow, "The Jews and the Reformation in Poland during the Sixteenth Century," Voskhod, 1895. Books V-VIII.

–, "The Victims of Fictitious Accusations during the years 1636-1639," Voskhod, 1895. Books I-II.

Perles, Geschichte der Juden in Posen, Breslau, 1865. Comp. Frankel's Monatsschrift, 1864-1865.

Balaban, "The Jewish Physicians in Cracow and Tragedies of the Ghetto," Yevr. St., 1912, p. 38 et seq.

–, "Episodes from the History of Ritual-Murder Trials," Yevr. St., 1914, p. 163 et seq.

–, "The Legal Status of the Jews in Poland during the Middle Ages and in more Recent Times," Yevr. St., 1910-1911.

–, Dzieje Żydów w Krakowie ("History of the Jews in Cracow"), vol. I, Cracow, 1913 [P].

–, Żydyi lwowscy na przelomie XVI i XVII wieku ("The Jews of Lemberg on the Border-Line between the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century"), Lemberg, 1906 [P].

Chapter IV

The Inner Life of Polish Jewry at Its Zenith

(pp. 103-138)

Dubnow, "Kahal Constitutions," etc., Voskhod, 1894, Books II-XII.

–, "Documents of the Council of Four Lands," Yevr. St., 1912, pp. 70, 178, 453.

–, "The Record Book of the Lithuanian Provincial Assembly," Yevr. St., 1909-1915.

–, Wa'ad Arba 'Aratzot be-Polen, article in Sefer ha-Yobel le-Rab Nahum Sokolow, Warsaw, 1904.

–, "Council of Four Lands," article in Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. IV, p. 304 et seq.

–, "The Inner Life of Polish Jewry during the Sixteenth Century," Voskhod, 1900, Books II and IV.

–, "The Vernacular of the Polish-Lithuanian Jews during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century," Yevr. St., 1909, p. 1 et seq.

Harkavy, Hadashim gam Yeshanim. Appendix to Rabbinowitz's Hebrew translation of Grätz's History, vol. VII, Warsaw, 1899.

Schorr, Organizacya Żydow w Polsce ("The Organization of the Jews in Poland"), Lemberg, 1899.