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THE JEWISH CONVERT. IN'

CZARtsT RUBSIA

by,

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~ Mindy B. Avrieh-Skapinker

, .1 A thesia"~ubmitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Researcn in partial fulftlment of the j ~equirements for the degree of .. Master of Arts

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Department of Jewish Studies / M~Gill University

1 M01'ltrea l, canada October 1980

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'-. + ------. ~' 1; i, tf ~ TABLE OF CONTENTS î~ l' G §, Page 4,: ~s tract- ...... i .'" Resume ...... · .' ...... ii

Prefà.ce •••••••••••• Il • ...... iii " Introduction • ••••••••••••• , ...... If • ...... v

Chapter l •.••••••..•. • •••••••• (1 • ...... l C-h-apter 2 ...... -' . . .. • • . . 10

Chapter 3 ...... " ...... •...... \, ... "J- 15 . Chapter 4 ...... \ ...... 31 1

Chapter 5 ...... ~ ...... • •• 1 •••••••••••••••••• Chapter 6 ...... ,..,...... ,

Chapter 7 ...... 11 ...... • ••••••••••••• Il ••••••••• 1163 , Conclusion ...... , ......

Footnotes • fi ...... ~ • ...... 82 r!

Bibliography · ...... ~ . • tI •••••• 95 \

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\ o ,,' ABSTRACT ..

G. , ~ .. " The nineteenth century saw dynamic and fundament·al changes in bath Russian and RUBsian-Jewish life. In the course of the \ eentury Russian Jewry faced many new challenges both from within

i ts own ranks and from outs ide. Con.vers ion represented one

response to these chal1enge~. Because conversion tou'ehed on

and/or grew out of sorne of the rnost basic issues and

developments in Russian-Jewish ~life in this period, the history . , 1

"j of conversion in the Czarist Empire in sorne measure at least, refleets the Russ!an-Jewish-" experienee as-a who le •

The Jewish convert 'was not cast as it were, from one ~uld:

he came from a wide var!ety of backgrounds. Sirnilarly, he was

not prompted to conversion by one JOOtiver his motivation 1 depended. quite natural1y, on the cireumstanees of his life, his personal make-up, etc. The Russian rulers, by virtue of the

polieies they brougHt to bear at different times, piayed their

part in the decisions----- of many eonverts. 50 too in its way did

the Jewish community,. And al though in the end the cOOverts 'tIere .. individuals, ~ertain types can be identified.

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J ' Name: ---pfindy Avrich-Skapinker·

Title of Thes!s: The Jew!sh Convert in Czarist RUBsia

Department: Jewish Studi~s

Degree: Master of Arts

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" , RESUME \

Le dix-neuvième siècle a vu apparaftre des .changements \ , 1 fondamentales et dynamiques dans la vie des _juifs-russes aussi

bién que dans la vie des russes. Au cours de ce siècle, la , \ c0l9'1lunaute juive devait faire face a plusiers nouvelles

~ ~ 1 demandes. La conversion representait une re ponse a ces

demandes. Parce que la conversion a touché' quelques unes des

, ~ plus importantes issus et developments dans la vie juive-russe

dans cette é'poque,. l'histoire de la C9~~~üm dans l'Empire Czarist symbolisai t, au moins tians certaine senses, l'experience juive-russe em sa to'talit~. Le convert juif n'~ta~t pas un seul, gènr\, il répresentait \ rt~ une divérsité de classes et de coûturnes. ne la meme faCjon, il ~ C ~. ;,. ~', , n'avait pas un seul motive. Sa motivation dependait 1:l . 1 l,' naturellement sur les circonstances "de ·sa vie, sa personalite à~ ~ t, 1 ~ g etc. Les monarchs russes, a cause de leurs plans, ont joue ~I leurs role'" dans les dec1sl,onsl'. • de plusiers converts. La

, 1 communaute juive aussi a eu son influence. Et 'bien que , " finallement chaque convert un nous 1.' ~tait individ~, pourri~ns J quand même identifi~r. certains~, génres • 1 ,- , ..

Noml Mindy" Avrich-Skapin'ker-

,Titre de la' These:" ") Le Convert Juif dans la Russie Czatiste

JI ':,. - Departement: Etudes Juives ., " o Degre: KartN cie. &!'ts -

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• , ... '1 ... '.. ."" ~ ... __ r" • ... r __ ... _" PREF~CE

Ta d~te, the whole issue of apçsta,sy in 1 the Russian Empire

has received but scant attention from historians.. This i9 true . '\\ despite the fact that Jewish -converts were present on the

Russian scene in greater and 1esser 1umbers in every period of

Russian-Jewish history and despite the fact that for certain 1 periods' at least, ample archivaI materials ate available and

accessible.

Al though this author was unfort.unaihey no~ able to consult

th~ following documents,___ ~~s aware of their existence: l) YlVa

Institute, Archives of tve Lithuanian Consistory in Vilna- J Conversions Records containing files of Jews who converted to

Russian Orthodoxy in Lithuania from the 1630s until World War

\ '. IIr 2) the Papers of the Church's Mission to the Jews, the 1 " !' former London Society for the Promotion of Christianity among

the Jews in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, containing materials , \. on cClf;l.,versions in Russia in the late nineteénth and early l twentieth centuries.

The bio,i'aphies- of th~ bes~-knô~ converts of the period

were collected in ~our volumes entitled Meshumodim, ti pn un

siluetn- funem noentn over (Warsaw u.d.) by Sh.L. Tsitron, and in

one volume, Heshumodim in Rus1and (New-York, 1946) by the

historian Saul Ginsburg. Unfortunately, neither provided

sources for the facts Ol' the bibliographies. Michael Fred,

Stanislawski, in his Ph.D. thesis (unpublished) for Harvard / o Upiversity, 1979, devoted a section tc'conversion during the reign of Nicholas ~I.2

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( \ , f \ (- , ~~ 1 iv - • 'l, Ü J i- " This study presents' an overview of the issue oi conversion " f-: in the Russian Empire in the nineteenth century. Its main a~m ~, ~: i8 to discover the motivations of the various types of converts t - f' in any given period and to relate them to the issues - , \~' political, socio-economic, ~c., of the day. It is hoped that . by 100'king at the policies of the. four regimes in question and

the details of the biographies of certain representati ve

individuals, that a picture of the nin~teenth century

Russian-Jewish convert in his various -guisês wi1~ _emerge.

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l Hi_iael Jtre4 Stanislavski, D' TrIUl~I'!!!'tfQ!l 0' lewish societl ÏJ. Itu!lâa 18""'1"', ,.210 ",- t ni' • j

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INTRODUCTION ( The connection between an individual and his commun!t:.y, . : 1 f·------­ wrLtes Arthur Ruppin, i9 not immutatlle or indissoluble. f t Gi~en a èertain set or combination of circurnstances' then, the d:~ individual will willingly or unwillingly sornehow alter or even

sever his original relationship wïth his community. Conversion

represrnts one way, a drastic way in the eyes of sorne, th~t the

individual can effect this change in pis relations with the . communi t y •

Ordinarily, conversion, the substitution of one religion / for another, does not involve a change in anything but the

individual's religioue affiliation. In the case of the Jews, \ howeverj becaus~ of the interdependent natu.re of religion and

nationality, or differently put, because of the all-pervasive " nature oi the Jewish religion, conversion'usually represents a great. deal more than the replacement of Judai\rn by, for ex~mple,

Christianity or Islam. The act of conversion tends tô affeçt . the whol~ of the individual'rather' than....--- only that part of him ~ which is a religious being. The secularism which is present'in

our age, it is worth bearing in mind, is of fairly recent .

ori-ginr it w.as not possi'ble in éarlier ages t.o simply opt out,

to withdraw into non-denominationalisrn. Religion was not, in

otner words, "a private l'\atter".

1 There have been two types of conversion, in the long

experience of the Jewish people - volunta~ and involuntary. o Involuntary conversion is forced conversi0n, conversion .,' undergone un~ler-

conversion on the other, hand, involves at teast sorne measur~ of choice. An indi~.ridual may Ç?hoose .to convert for a vari'ety"of

reasons ~ he rnay be genuinely convinced of the tenets of his

adoptive faith - a believer~ he may have career goals that

cannot be realized unless he is 1:>aptized r he may s'eek conversion in order to marry, to acquire 'certain advantages, status

perh'aps ~ he may simply want to be rel·ieved of burdensome disabilities. Whatever the lti:iti vation and regardless "-;;'f whether undergone eagerly or reluctantly, both voluntary and involuntary

con~ersion -have contributed significantly at various tirnes toward the depletion of Jewish numbers. And although conversion 1 in and, of itself has never constituted the mDst serious threat to Jewish survi val, it has been an endurJ.ngl ' feature of Jewish bistory, including Russian-Jewish history. The following study seeks to explore the question of

";. conversion by Je~s to Christianity in the Czarist Empire in'--fhe nineteenth century. Who is the J'ewish convert and what 'are his' motives? What forces are at work in the society Which convince

/------a person of the neceésity or desirability of taking this step 1 - or, conversely, act against his taking this step. What are~~-~ the

j pOllcies of the four monarchs who ruled during this period: do . / " they favour baptisrn, actively encourage it? How do the changing tirnes and historical events affect the rate of and the reasons , for conversion?. Does the act of.! conversion allow the indi vidual to realize those needs or goals for'which he undergoes it - i8 o , ) the host society, in otl}er words, receptive te the convert or ." o

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does he retain the stigma

does -he remain active in that community and wnen and where does

1 he become lost to or even active against .it? These a.re the !O -\ -~. issues which will be addressed in the ensuing pages.

Assimilation and what may he called assimilation' s mst ex:-reme exp~ession, conversiorr, never achieved the level or the !

," intensity in Czarist Russia that they did for example, in t- ~ i- , Germany-. A variety of factors, ranging from the m~ch great.eI.. ,--- ~ 1 density of the Jewish population in -tlle Russia,n Pale of ~ t~l ,. Settlêment to the failure of the Jews to achieve, or the " ~ government to grant, emancipation, ensured that this was 50. ," ) ~ Nonetheless although less prevalent, conversion both voluntary

and involuntaty, did play" its part oin Russian-Jewish history.

1 " The term voluntary as applied to conversion in nineteenth-

century RUBsia t and as will become cleaI" in the, course of thi~ j\, ~ paper, ie a rel~tive term, more accllrately rendered perhaps as Il" .f "voluntary" .' Conditions were such in RUBsia that convers ion- not i- .- -_._.L__ ----onïY offerea --tl1e1ndiviùual the means of ~scaping the very real

pressures that existen for him as a Jew, it aiso promised him,

very real rewards. The freed6m of choice gener~lly itnplied by • the term volunt~y,- then, was to', a great extent meaningless for \ the Jew unless he was a confirmed believ~r, since there was

never a question in Russia of simply choosing between two 0 faiths, ail other things being équal.

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" , CHAPTER 1 ( f{lSTORIAL BACKGROUND

The end of tne eighteenth century saw the beginning of a

n'ew era in the li,fe of both West European and East European

JeW"fYc,., In the "West;.~ the new era, symbofized if not in~tiated by

the FrenQh Itevolution, held at least ,the promiseC'o'f better times

ta come -for the Jews; in the East, the new era; inaugurated by: J

t'he partitions of Po1and (1772-95) ~aw a s'teady decline in the

circumstaooes of .Tewish life. The' East European Jews foùnd ' thems~l ves hè'ing reduced to the statùs of ',pariahs precisely at - 0 - - ,

that· junc'ture in histor'y when, West European, Jewry was beginning , . 2 to emerge from this Jdnd, of degraded existence. , ' O In 1772 wi th tbe firet partition of Polahd, the quarantine

G that RUBsia had maintained against the Jews waa---fl:nally 1;>roken. / By 1795 after the 2nd and 3rd pa~titions, the country which

barely a' gen~ration œfore had not' tolerated a single Jew wit~in " . o ite borders, now included the territory with the l~rgest -J~is?

population in the wor1d. ,Thus d:i:'d the bu1k of Polish Jewry , '

bec:ome subject to Ruesian rule and the subjectfl of ,the, OrthGdox. l Christian C'zare . . --- 'il The Jews wlth their religious practices, soc~al

:----- inttitutÎons and economic life ~e1=e regarded by'tbe Czars aS' a

generally harmfu1 quantity within the Empire, il rootless ~opl:e ~ , , moreover, wi thout clai,ms to a national terri tory such alJ the o 3 POles or F!nns. At a 10ss as to how te deal wi t.h them, ,

the Czars applied theJr various mech~niams in a sporadic, and

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2 ( arbitrary manner, legislating, rescinding, terrorizing, enticing •

.., Th'eir perception of 'the Jews as a group of at once vulnerable

and stubborn intrUderS~different and semehow threatening, le~~r Russia' s rulers to mai n the special stamp it I?laced on the . Jewish population from th first-. and to emphasize the things 4 that set the .1ews apart fr-Om the other peoples of the Empire.

The most persistent é!-nd bitterest of the policies laid

down by the Czars for their Jewish subjects was the confinement of the Jews to the area known as the Pale of .. Settlement. The Pale was a large ghetto outsid'e of Which

--- only a few Jews by virtue of their wealth, education,

occupation or military service were permitted to reside.

C) Even within the Pale Jewish righte of reeidence were

restricted, a city like Kiev f9r example, only being opened

to Jews in 1861.

The Czars also devised legislation that differentiated J'

" , ' Jew fl;om non-Jew in the Empire and even within the Pale.

The Jews were subjected to special taxes, barred from

certain occupations and 9 i ven restricted accese to others: ... --,~ at times educat:l,.onal opportuni ties were deniep. them ~"

outrlght, at times severely cùr~ailed; periodically thet were expelled from the rural,," areas in Which they lived. 1 Y~t, paradoxically, as Tobias notes,' even as the regime •

expended gr,eat efforts to separate Jew and non-Jew, it .f -- souçht to break ~own the 'separateness of the Jew, his ,j -4!) 5 t \ • "~ traditional identity. Czars Alexander l and Nicholas l ~ Il 'j

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- 3 - ( , for example, tried to draw the Jews into new occupations and the

farther reaches of the Pale by creating agricul tural colonies in'

Russia 1 S new Bouthern frontiers. Nicholas l and Alexander II

attacked Jewish traditional dress and hairstyles - again trying

to make the Jew conform. Nicholas l abolished the Kahalle formally in 1944, trying to stamp out the remnants of Jewish

communal autonomy. Sometimes the tactic was more subtle ~

Alexander II endeavoured to promote assimilation by opening up

the Russian schools and universities and granting governrnent

posi tions to gradua tes.

The Jews were dist,inguishable from their neighbours in

several other ways. Their religious practice gave them unique

o customs, diet~ry habits, holidays and educational institutions.

They used different languages - Yiddish and Hebrew. They also

~iffered markedly from their neighbours in their economic ~ . -" , , ( structure. nètably in their relationship to the làhd.' The Jew

remained outside the two chief socio-economic "estates of the

Empire, the landlord and the peasant. Compared to the

percentage of the general population involved in agriculture, an l~sfgnificant number of Jews farrned for a livi~g both as a result of custom and legislation: the --eoncentratièm of Jews in

towns was very high when eompared wi th -ether peoples in the

Empire. J

Because of the legal constraints he was qnd"er and because·

of his Dinsecure staj:.us as' a member of an alien minority, the jew

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faced greater hazarde in hie efforts to earn his living than

did the Christian: when Jewish and Christian merehant,

manufacturer or artisan met they naturally carne into

competition w~th each other - almost always to the 6 disadvantage of the Jew. The hostility engendered by

economc competition was only one aspect of the

? I-1 Jewish-Christian confrontation in Russia. The hard-pressed I

RUBsian peasant often took out his frustration and wrath Oh

the local Jewish inn-keeper or trader and sometimes on the

entire local Jewish population. 7 In the -last decades of

the Empire in particular the Jews experienced the wholesale

violence of E9groms often supported or even instigated by a

~ Cl regime seeJdng tt> divert attention from its own malpractice.

The pelieies (usua11y repressive) of \~e

nineteenth-century Russian Czars took place against a

background Qf population and urban growth. Between 1847-97 8- national increase alone trebled the Jewish POPulation.

At a time when the Jews represented on1y 4-5% of the total 1 •

population of the Empire, they constituted sorne 57.9% of the - 9 urban POPulation of the northwest provinces in 1897.

1 The figures were slïghtly lower for - the less dense1y sett1~d J 1

south but still way out of proportion to Jewish numbers in .. general. State measuref! alone in other words did not produce

l 1 aU the economic difficulties of the Jews, although they-

certainly made an-already very bad situation worse. 1 :1· 1"

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- 5 - ( As the century prbgressed, industrialization and

urbanization proceeded apace bringing the Jewish and Christ"ian

populations into ever greater competition. The Jews found

themselves discriminated against in the new mills and factories

bath by employers (Jewish employers as well as Christian) and

employees. Pauperization, estimated hy the number of families

seeking public assistance at Passover, increased rapidly~ by the

late 1890s a fifth of the Jewish population required \hiS .d 10 a~ . Economie strangulati,on often led to desperate

measures and emigration becamé a permanent feature of life

towards the end of the century though it could not ke'ep pace 1 wi th the misery.

The Jewish community responded to the increasingly

difficult conditions it had to live under out of the resources 1 \, of its own hist.orical tradition." The v~st rnajority of Jews from ! l' f the time they came under·RuBsian ru1e "unt!l the final days of

the Empire in 1917, managed -despite aIl the efforts" of the

Romanovs to preserve their cultural identity.. While in Western '- Europe the old forms of Jew!sh life were break!ng up, the 1 1 cultural development of the East European.. Jewish masses relllained for a long time, unchanged. Thel two dominating ford@s i~ th~

spiritual life of East European J~wry, Rabbinism and Hasidism,

zeaiously guarded the status quo. The whole life of the Russian Jew, down to the m~st minor details of his daily routine, W(ÎB involved, with and guided -by religious precepte.

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Isaac Levitats writes:

l'he Russian Jew of the first -,half of the nineteenth , ' century' was by predilection pious, regardle'ss~ t~e 0 pa~icular orthodoxy he professed. Whether 1 e the Miébagid, he placed the emphasis of his religi on _ study, or like the Hasid, he centered it upon the Tsaddik, or whether he was a follower of the moralist movement (Mus!'lr) then in its incipiency, - he wa~ bounô to his fellow Jews by thè common tie of one religion, the basic validity of which nobody doubted. j Even the small number of secularist's were for the ... most part practisinq Jewso As a result, Jewish communal life bore a deeply rel!gious character which brooked of no heresies ••,~It; was this inner soli<'larity springing from a commen fai th, that enabled the Jews to withstand the pressure from without and to maintain and uphold the mi1lenial 'iîwish traditions and the uniformity of Jewish lire. '

The war betwen Rabbinism and Hasidism was fough~, 'it

must be pointed out, essentially on religious grounds, the ~ c ~, issue being only the "type" of bel iever ~ the old form f " (Rabbinism) whichemphasized the scholastic and ~ .,> ," ritualistic aspect of/Ju4iasm fought for roughlya quarter

v centtfry against the ecstatic_ rnystièism and the blind "cult i\ ~ 12 t of saints Il of the Hasidism. 1 tjo The fact of Jewish 'piety did not mean of course that 1 indiviiiuais din not attem~t to challenge the status . quo or to step, as Oit 'were, off the beaten track. The authority

of the Jewish spiritual leaders, however, combined with . / - r the rigiC! ~onserv~sm that ddminated Jewish life rendereo

futile the efforts of the cha~lenger or innovator:' In

most places in the Pale until late -in the nineteenth l '~

c~ntury! virtually anyone,whoprotested against the /

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( .. customs and practices of the Pale was ground fnto , 13 conformity-by the enormous weight of tradition. ~.,f. '" ' The slightest deviation from a custom, or rite, from t~e'f 'old-way' of thinking or 'doing, such as the reading of

hOOKS in a foreign language or even the reading of s~cular

booKs in Hebrew, meant severe hard-ship or puni~~ment for

whoever was caught. ,,"Hany" wri tes Dubnov, "were t~e victims of this petrified milieu, Whose protest against ! the old order of things and whose strivings for a newer life \\Tere nipped in the bud." i4 The traditional form of education remained as ever1,

the.old system of heder and yesh~va with fts exclusive training &n Talmud was a service of tremen~ental stimulation to its students but failed te prepare them for practical life; girls and women were excluded from

sch 00 li ng ent i ré' 1 y. 15 Just as firmly entrenched

remained the old, style of family with its ~arly marriages, the lengthy support of married children in the parental l ' ' - , home, the early / and high rate of childbearing amid t

hapitual pOverty "with its reduction of'phy~ical t.o

1 16 the point of ,exhaustion and dèg~neration." , This self-centered Jewish world from wi thin and wi thout d.ur in9 the co' of the .1 oP nineteenth century. The steadily inc of insecurity about life- and property and feelings of

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hopelessness about the future called forth a variety of 1 responses within the Jewish 'cornmunity varying from a , 1 renewea nationalism in the forrn either of a political C1t'

cul tural Zionism to a desire to opt out eit-her through

emigration or conversion. Vntil the downfall of the

Romanovs the desires of most Jews ana those of the Czarist

government were almost always at oddei "'hat the Jews , • 1 wanted to maintain of their own particular way of life the

regime wanted to destroYi when the Jews did begin to reach 1 .... beyond the limits of their.community, the/ regime responded

by limiting their opportunities~ ) The internaI cohesion of the Jewish communi ty not 1". ~ Cf i surprisingly, began to erode under the pressures of ~ f • ~ broad environmental change. The ch1ef instrument of ~ - i- change, however, came from within in the form of the t ; ..t. Haskalah, the Jewish version of the Enlightenrnent. As ô 1 difficult as it was to penetrate the barrfer erected by ~ ______"1 1 Rabbinisrn ~nd Hasi~isml already i~e earl.y ~ear;s of. the l.9th q~ntury, the free-thinkin9 "Berliner" as he was

called~ _. moving toward the RuSsian border. Decked out

in 1!is sh'art German coat, the symbol of enlightenrnent, .J his earlocks and beard shorn, this early Haskil spoke ,0 i J German or the language of the land and ven~rated Moses Me,1delssohn. The culture whi~h the - "Berliner" re~resented

was still samewhat shallow, more concerned with the O". ·

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appurtenances of enlightenment, Buperficial things such as dress and appearance than true enlightenment. Appearances wère deceiving however7 the Haskalah was to have enormous , repercussions and implications for Jewis~ thinking and f ) ! ultimately for the Jewish future. 1 J Even if one does not accept historians ... Buch as Heinrich Graetz and Simon who desIgnate the French Revolution as, the "dawn of a new day after a riightmare --17 of the deepesb horror" one must concede the force of the impact of the Revolution and its byproduct, the emancipation on

.' 1 the Jew and Jewish history. The history of the Jewish people l , J from the Revolution down to our own day has been a reaction to, Cl an attempt to èome to terms with the fact of Emancipation. 1 l. There have been numerous reactions to the Emanèipation, to

the effor~s of the Jew to become ernancipated a~d his

{ - frustrations and sometimes failure tO'achieve this coveted . " "goal. Al! the major movements wi thin Jewish life rnay be Been

" as a, r,esponse -to Emancipation - Reform Judiasm, Zionism, Jewish

socialism and our subje.ct~ - total assimilation through convers ion. ""f Before proceeding to the enlightenment anQ an examinatiorl" " ,

. , \ of its impac:t on the Jew, a detailed' look at the effect of

which is n~cessary for our~purposes because the enli~htenment J and the emancipation represent the major factors in the whole issue of conversion in the modern period,. it is mandatory ta l, " ).: know something of the status and thinking of the Jew in the period immediatley preceeding the enlightenment. ,...... - _._- _ ~ , ... f·· - ... , _...... - , '''~ .... l , t

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CHAPTER 2 ( THE ~-MODERN PERlOn

Is there aught ,in the vain events of ~veryday life, queried the historian Azariah de Rossi, that is not already contaioed in' the Torah of Moses \' and the Holy Scriptures. -~-

1 ~ Prior to the second half of the eighteenth century, prior ..... that is, to 'th.e -J'rench Revolution and the Emancipation, isolation bath voluntaristic in nature and imposed by the

'':; outside world may he said to have been the most basic feature of

) Jewish life. This isolation, Which was halanced by a very high 1 degree of autonomy, was at once a, reflection of the division of ! 1 t the whole society into separate and autonomous corporations~ c~ each with its specifie and delineated rights and responsibil~ f f, ities and a reflection of one of th~ most fundamental precèpts ":S' .r, of pre-modern Jewish thinking - the rejection of the surroundin~ ~ "'f. environment. ~r ~ Dubnov remarks that for aIl its shortcomings '''This old ~ , order had one great virtuel it was a c9mplete and consistent way of life. ,,19 What D,1lbnov meant ta convey by thts statement

it seems to this writer~ is that in this 'long period of extreme

isalat~on (~nd this isolation it must be unoerstood-- was not, 'could not have been absolute - there wer,e en1ightened Je~s in

virtually every agé ta Whom ~uropean culture was not unknown;

there were ~lways economic links between Jew and non-Jew and in o .!'

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- 11 - ( / the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Hofjud~ had made his mark in the highest courts of Europe) the Jew knew exact1y what and who he was.. This certainty about his identity, about his role and place in the wor1d - this

Jew!sh consciousness if you wil~, was the result of several factors. / /' In the period prior to Emancipation, the Jews defined themselves as followers of Jewish law: it was unthinkable

to he a Jew without accepting in sorne measùre at least the discipline of Halacha. It was impossible in other words, to lose onels faith and somehow remain a Jew outside of the religious contexte This definition takes on aIl the .. CI more significan~e ~n one considers the al1-embracing nature of judaism, which to a greater degree than most other religions; emphasizes the daily life of its •

~ / adherents 1 and when one understands the tightly interwoven 1 manner in which the Jewish religion was perceive~ as bound

up w~th Jewish tradition~ clvilization and peoplehood.

/ The Jew'too, it shobld he emphasized, looked upon hirnse1f as a member of the chosen people and as a temporary resident of the land in Which he happened to

live, ~here by dint of the exile until the coming of the '", Messiah. Bec~use of this perception of himself and his position, until the mod.ern period, the Jew concerhed ~ 1 1 .' himself but little with the judgment of the alien and ~

1 f

-----~ .' •

,~~ ____ ._"""'.___ '_'IIIl"!_' ______

- 12 - (

generally hostile wor1d around him. Azariah de ~OSSi'S query, quoted at the beginning of this section, accurately .1 reflects it seems to this writer, the pre-En1ightenment attitude and sentiments of the Jew. "The scorn of his

enemy hu~t, but it did not wound him: it co~ld not degrade him in his own eyes. For it was God's inscrutable-will that the redemption should he preceded by exi1e ••• The

~atred of the world threatened the physical existence of ~

the J ew, but 2t. h a d not power to corrupt h'"2~ soul ••• n 20 1 f " To the non-~ew as weIl, the basic criterion of the f , i Jew was his religion. Historically of course, in Christian eyes the Jew was the perpeterator of the ' -_ f o horrible crime of deicide for which aIl generations of ., , -' , Jews were responsible. For the medieva1 Christian it was " J the Jewish religion whi~h distinguished the Jew. The Jew remained a Jew even when he adopted the vernacular of the

region 7, he only, ceased to be a Jew when and if he became a r Christian. By this step he changed his identity and no ,longer belO?ged te Jewry.2l (There were exceptions

to th~s1 in Spain for examp1e the Jews who ~onv,erted

formed a new 1reup, sep~rated,both for Jews and Christians. They were known as New Çhristians - i.e. the

1 mark of their origin remained despite their baptism.) ,tl Until, the late ,eighteenth century then, the social­ l religious barrier, between Jewish and non-Jewish society

, c (,

,, ...~-~~.,.,..,,....,-..,,....,---_ ...... - ...... ------_.-I._------______._,._,- c., ------,..-'" .. _-~----- •

,._ ttl4 • d.

- 13 -

stil..l:ps tooc!". Jacob Katz·notes that althouqh the Court , . Jews for exarnple, d1d have contact with members of J non-Jewish society even 'in matters not related to

business, at the very most persona1 ties were formed

between the Hofjude and his'patr6n: social life and even

more, cultural and religious life rernained tied to the 22 inner Jewish circ le. simply put, unti 1 the late

eighteenth century, "the non-Jewish world ••. remained

essentially foreign territory that could he entered .only , J by way of conversion • .,2:i ~ 1

The.;position of Jewish law vis-a-vis çonversion does "

not séem to he clear eut. Louis Finklestein says that Ci ", IIThe extent to which even conversion to another fai th

affects the status of an individual within Judaism is a

subject of considerable d~scussion in Rabbinical \ 1 literature. Many authorities consider such a person a !' JeWt desp~te his conversion. 1,2. The implication is of course, that certain other authorities do not consider

\ < a convert to be a Jew. Jac~ Sega)t in ,his 'article "Is An

Apostate a Jew" writes: "The origin of the answer to this

problem probably stems from the Talmudic statement 1 (Sanhedrin 44a) made by Rabbi Abba· bar Zab~a concer~ing

the statement in the Book of Joshua (7:11) "Israel has

sinned". Rabbi Abba bar Zabda comments on this 1 -, statem~nt. "Even though he! has sinnen, he ls to he , \ • . , . Jo. ... 1 ...... "' ... ,- .. -- ..

----~--,-----_._------

1'4 1 - -, (,

considered a Jew., Il 25 segàl 90es on to say that the /' , 1 Talmud, codes and the responsa literature are laden with / - j, deeisions indieating that no matter What sin "a Jew eommits } ( 26 1 he always remains a' Jew. t As far as Jewish soc~ety was coneerned however, until

\ the late eighteenth century, and in many plac~s mueh , l i 1 later, the apostate was considered as dead, deemed to he 1

i the epitomy of, tilesertion· and treason for having crossed , ,t .. 1 over from the side of the persecuted tO the side of the

t pe;rsecutor7 the conv,~rt was eut off from the Jéwish cornrnunity.27 o

,.

1

/1

" - .- Ç)

" (

': -.~~ { 0 ,,. }~',~ .J . , , , ' , ~- , CHAPTER "'3

( THE ENLIGHTENMtNT

An immense dIstance separates the ferventlyoo!thodoxJew who was the norm in the pèriod we have been discussing from ,the' Jew of the third or fourth geneTation of the post-en!lghtenment

It periao who was more likely to regard religion ~s an outmoded hangover of former days and whose identity was anythipg but

certain as had been his ancestor's. ~lliat, we may reasonably ( ask, occurred in the interve'ning years to cre~te such à change • after 50 many centuries? How did the problematical 'typel of t'!1e enlightenme3t whom we shall soon meet,' arise from "the ,t medieval religiously.and intellectually cloistered Jew of the t~ Ci ghetto? For it ia w1th the enlightenment that Jewish identity became segmental and hence problematic'. c If. ia the enlightenment f-i< too that made possib~e the redefinition (or at l~ast offered •t~ ~. ,t another definition) of the Jew in non-religious, terms. ./ ~ 1 The revolution brought about in the nature of Jewlah ~n, < the profound change wrought in his psyche, was not a l , J self-initiated nor-a Jewish-founded movement:,it waa rat~er

events and developments in the pol.itica~,. social, economic and , ' above aIl the intellectural spheres in the surlZounding. non-. " Jewish world that were responalble for'the transformation of the Jew, in this pe~iod and in later ~riods. ~. 28 There ha'd ta

, '~ 'he prese~t of course, at least sorne degree of willingness and

" readiness on the part of the Jew or preaumably h~ would have ( J remained unaffected as he had in previous centuries.

% Il. (1) .... __ ...-.--..11-1___ a .... _, ..u,, __ .,.' '.11.:.1 ___....-_ ...... ~ __ .w __

- 16 -

( 1

1 • --;.1 ------·--we---are----concernel'l. •1'ré're- Btëf1YWl1:.11 €he irreeIlecturaI -- ~ 1 ramifications of the en1igh enmentUage. It is irnEQ-rtant to ~

note, however, t~at while the majority of Jewry on the ~ve of the French Revolution remained confined to the ghettos, subject

'1 to the sarne disabilities, taxes, etc. that had been their lot , for centuries, incr,easing numbers of "J"ews were s10wly OOg1nning /

Il to edge into the world beyond the ghetto and to take advantage Jof the new commercial order engendered by the new mercantilisrn and capitalisrn. It was the economic security that a small number of the Jewish entrepreneurs managed to win that provided a material basis for the political, social and cultural ernancipation that ensued. 29 o The political, social and cultural eman?ipation referred to

iJ above did not take place overnight, nor did- 'aU Jews experience : r i t in the sarne way or at the sarne time. It began in France in the second haolf of the eighteênth century and' spread té> the --- 1 ; , educated class~s of Europe, rnaking its influence feit eventually

even in the backwaters of Eastern ~urope. Everywhere ~ÔhOOk ;the foundations of traditionai Judaisrn and ofJtradition~ Jewlsh cl soc.iety. The most enduring and profound effect of the enlightenrnent however, was the radical change that took place in the psycho- logical make-up of the Jewish people. As had been pointed out,

" until the secon9 h~lf of the eig~teenth century the Jew lived ' 1 within his own sodial and cultural circle, by and according to

,l'

1 ( _ . .L_.. " ••'""il __.~_...... ,. ______...... ,,,..,,.,.,'"'""...,,., .... _~· ""'.,...,.,.,.,. """'.---"'"""------....- ______...... =kl·t ..... ilM .... ~I' ..IW«"'~ ...... ,~_

- 17 - (

culture, removed from and disinterested for the most part in the

worid around him and protected fr9m it by his perception of . '

himself as a Jew and his understanding of God 1 s wîli wi th regard

to the Jewish peo~le.

According to Katz, it ia only when the individuals of the

1 traditipnal society transfer their social goals to the context • " of the non-Jewish milieu that we have a deci;sive turning point"

i n t h e h ~s· t ory 0 f J ew~s . h SOC1e . t y. 30 Th ~s. 1S . i n f act wh at

began to occur in the period under discussion. For the first

time individuals within traditiQnal Jewish society bagan to ) o regard the non-Jewish society' not on1y as a framework 1>n which 0" to earn their livelihood, but aiso as a source of social 1"\:; 31 ~ratification. The alien worid that had been pretty mu ch-

banned up to this point, Wps now, for the firet ti~ in the

history of the Diaspora looked to with, a sense of inferiorityr

in fact, the opinion of- that wor1d became in this period and has •

remai.néd down to our own day, 1 the' cr i terion of the J ew for his 32 own estimate of himàelf. The 01d perception of the wor1d, of the ~xi1e collapsed, .a~ did the protective illusion aga:lnst the contempt of the world.

Prior to this time, when al1d if such a chânge in social

1 goals took place, it 1ed ,the' individ~al to transfer from t.he Jewish to the non-~ewish society, that i9,, to con»ert. The

J () ability of. the Jew ta transfer his social ambition to the l,

Mn-lM th are~a ri thout haviR, to eonvert depended OR the

- t~' ~ •

'yl t 4 •• Il ~ - _---..N __~~',.." ",,~I(;(:"'IlJI:tl!l

- 18 - ( .'

emergence of a class'-iïl"t.hat" non"'::'jewIsn'wor-ra-'t.nat"·was pre-parnct-·, -.---,

t o accep.. t th e J ew d esp1te . h'1S re 1"1910us a ff 1'1' 1a t'10n. 33

What in turn made this possible (this ~class did emerge) WaS the , '~" development of the doctrine of natural law and the growth of

rationalist phi~osphy in genera1.

From natural law carne the idea that every lndividual

possessed the right to unlimi ted independence; from rationalist

philosophy the notion that the individual need justify his

j actions on the baSlS of reason a10ne. The rationalist creed .,~ became the foundation for the nndern state which sought to wipe 34 ~ out historical distinctions so that it might dominate. l ' Q Distinctions of origin, faith, past, property and occupation were to he no more - one law for aIl was the new byword,

equality for a11: liberté, ~galit6, frat.ernité - even for the

What, is both interesting and of course highly significant / here is not çmly the nature of the Jewish response. to the cal!

of the enlighteninent but the fact of a Jewish reaction at aIl.

Spiegel remarks that in former centuries the world that 1ay

behiind the ghetto walls had been· distrusted by the resJ.dents of

that self-sarne ghetto: through the Renaissance and the

Reformation the ghetto continued in its oid pattern disregarding

the outside world and maintaining its Messianic fai th. 35

J The lige of Enli~nment however, ' found Judaisrn "enèrvated by

, . terrible prosecutions, petrified and 'exhausted by its rigorous f \.

, " ~ _ •• ~. ___ •• _. __._ •.., ..... , .... jI.... ,~_. _=c...... u..... ______...... __.,

- 19 -

( 1

adherence to tradition, deeply shaken, diâi.iïùsi6riéd" "âïid:' .---.

betrayed through fal~e messianic ITOvements. Il 36

Conditions in the Jewish world then, were ripe for change.

The more adventurous types,Who began to leave the ghetto for the

European world beyond, encountered a friendly.' reception. Ha~~ng

once ventured forth, they returned te the ghetto with new eyes

as it were i they now looked wi th shame upon the narrowness of

the ghetto, upon the old faith, and the outdated forms of life, 37 dress and speech. They returned furthermore, with doubts

. and questions about the validity of the ideas and beliefs that

had sustained them and J,ewry for centuries.

Why, it was now asked - why was the Jew always hated? Why

, ..... did so many otherwise noble and gifted nations pour out their

1 cruelty on one particular people? Was it poàsiQle that for two

thousand years the Jew should always have had rig'ht on his side 1 J" and thus suffered innocently? W~re the Jews not in fact hated 1 1 because they refused to surrender their separatene~s and be

absorbed into the communities wi1fu which they had in many cases

been boun~ up for generations? Was it not because the Jew had l:.. always lived in an illusionary dream wor1d filled with memories

of fo.rm~r greatness and empty hopes .for the future, out of touch with ~e Immediate ~ealities ~ was it not because they had been Jews so much and men so little?

The, 'significance, of this reevaluation for Jewish thinking

cannot h7 overestimated. Up until th~s time it was only the

J ~~_-.. .-.r_"._"_iIII...... ~~.,'"''' ..''''T' ;;CW_i5l11'JJ1",",.. ~I"", _._""IIi!I~.'AlI!!lh~.4":"iIIIII.".... at_ .._ .._,_. _._ .. ,__

- 20 - (

non-Jew who had thus spoken of the Jew. The reproach of

centuries, the charge of lan alien people scattered in our

midst' first sounded in the days of Queen Esther, was now turned

by the Jew U'pon h~rnself.39.4. AS may we Il he un d ers t 00, d the

consèquences of this were enormous.

Jewish consciousness had once stemmed fr6m and invol\red the whole of life. It was sustained by customs, traditiÔns, considerable legal autonorny, and'by the hostility of the gentile world. But when in the last years of the eighteenth cent ury Europe slowly showed itself ever more ready to integrate the Jew, the priee­ was always elimination of incongruous prerogatives and peculiarities.· It was a price the more acculturated "elements were perfectly willing to pay. For them the old Judaism resembled an all-encompassing ahell which now fel t strange and confining. Yet if the shell were cast away, what was left? Was one any longer a Jew? What did i t mean ta he a Jew when one no longer re~8gnized every iaw and custom as possessing divine sanction?

What indeed in the age before na~ionalist and secularist

theories were developed and a Jew could be something other than

a religious being?

These doubts and questions, once formulated, were ~not

easily auppressed. The enlightenment did not onl'y bring the

walls of the ghetto tumbling down: by placing Jewry and its

separate existence in question it also destroyed the defences

\ of the Jew, shattered his peace of mind and plunged him into an

identity crisis from which he has yet to recover. j The Jewish version of thé En1ightenment, the Haskalah, is

.. usually taken as having or~i~ated in Berlin with' Moses

Mendelssohn. Although the Haskalah in both Western and Eastern 1 ~, J b 11 It

21 - l }

• Europe shared many of the same, ideas and included similar planks in their ma~y platforms, the East European Haskalah displayed 1 sorne unique features from the beginning which became

increasinqly important with the passage of~time. A brief pis.cussion of the differences between the Berlin Haskalah and its Russian counterpart ie necessary for our purposes in order

to illustrate DOW in Eastern Eur9pe involvement with the Haskalah mlght represent not only a route to assimilation and perhaps ~onversio~ but also an alternative to that route. The early Maskilim (proponents of the Haskalah) in RUBsia

~ere admirers of Germany and German culture not only because of

their intr\in~ic value but also beèause Russian culture was not deemed worthy of emulation at this time. Sacher observes that despite 'their infatuation with German cuiture, science and technology, the Maskilim never considered Germanizing themselves s_piritually, emotionally, or religiously.41 "In contrast

wi th many of the Emancipation-ob"sessed Jews of Germany the ~ore ) 1 traditional Russian Jew, if he was a humanist, sought to create the modern Jew and not simply the modern Jewish-German or Jewish 42 Russian. " The great major! ty of Maskilim remained or at least gave 1 the impression of remaining, attached to the traditional 1 religion and genuinely devoted t~ the perpetuation of the Jewiéh j tradition fo~ all that they visciously attacked Hasidism and / what th.ey eonsiàered the superstitions and exèesses of Judaism. - 22 - , It is impossible to know whether all of these Maskilirn

actually were devout Jews or just appeared ta be in order to

survive and work in the various towns and hamlets of Eastern / Europe. Such was the power of the tradition and suspicion. of change and new ideas' that a Maskil in RUBsia often had to

disguise himself to avoid being, run out of town. D'espite the

repressive circurnstances in which he was virtually trapped both

because of the attitude of Jewish society and that of th~ hoat

society however, the Rusaian Maskil had one distinct aqvantage 1 over his German counterpart: a' potentially huge audience. The 1 \ German Maskl1 of the post Mendelssohn generation, ho matter how

t,teeped in Judaica he might he, sirnply did n()t have an audience ( ) , to appeal to. This was the case because from the beginning

enlightenment in Germanr was bound up with emancipation and

emancipation with assimilation. The German Haskalah, although 1. originally imbued with at least as much energy as the Russian

Haskalah, because of t,he conditions (political, social, etc.),. • prevailing in Germany, was unabl~ to sustain itself. In Russia: ~n the other hand, until the relgn of Alexander

II, the possibility of emancipation clearly di('i not exist, a

factor which· doubtless lessened the pressures exer:ted on and by

the Russian Maskilim in the direction of assirnilat'Ïon. As 1

Mahler notes, until the era of liberal reform in ~ussia, the

partic'ular conditions of Jewish life in Eastern Etirope preclUded

the formation of an assimilationist wing Which had been so 43 influential in the German Haskalah. Thus While there were

/

/ /

) , " ft -,.

- 23 -

{ 1

progràms calling for assimilation in Eastern Europe they tended

to be advance'd by those concerned (as in Germany) more wi th

themsel ves than wi th the enligbtenment of their ~ellow Jews.

The vibrancy of the East European Haskalah, the striving toward

a genuinely Jewish enlightenment, provided ah alternative te the 1 straight road of assimilation and/or the necessity of

convers ion.

The other major difference between Berl'fn Haskalah and the

" Russian Haskalah was the type and degree of opposition each

encountered. The Berlin Haskalah had to face only one opponent -

tradi tional Judaism, an opponent that in the Germany of the day () does not seern to have been able to muster either enough

opposition or opposition of a high ~nough leveI j to have

effectively interf~red with the process of a~similation

engendered by the Haskalah. - i In Russia, the Haskalah ran headiong into two formidable

foes, Hasidism and traditional Judaism,~each strong in its own \ right but together (and they put. aside their differences to

~ombat what they perceived as the greater threat) a truly

powerful force, zealously committed to preserting the status

quo.

- ••• in Eastern Europe, the Haskalah was confronted by autochthonous Jewish forces which before its appearance, independent of aIl aHen influence, had flared forth from the folk soul - (forces which had either anticipated the enlightenrnent thernselves, preparing the transition to modern thought or else, through a deep-going mystic revival, had4iendered the masses quite impervious to the Haskalah ••• ~

f'

.1

TT v,' .. / - '" ._.".,.~~~,. ... ""'~"'tI'-W"~~"""'~' ____ ...... ~ __ ~_ 1

- 24 (

, JlJ D .,- ~a.lOm Spiegel i.s referring to the reform instituted by Rabbi

Elijah, the Vilna Gaon and to Hasidism. His intention is to , point out the vitality, of East Europ~an Jewry which instead of

impo'rting a foreign ideology as a cure for its condition, had utilized its o~n creative ~nergies to cure itself. 45 It is not our' intention here to go into 1Lhe reasolts (much d'ebated) as ~i " , to why Has~dism was so suc~essful in Easter Europe. Suffice it ,

to say tha the Hasidic movement, which came to ,dominate 1 . , 1 virtual1.y JaIl of 'Eastern Europe with the exception of Lithuania, increased if anything, tlhe religious fanaticism and isolationism ;f- j of the Jewish masses. In capturing the attention and energies of (: the Russian Jews there se~ms little doubt but that Hasidism constituted an 'effective b10ck to assimilation in Russia and as \ such, an alternative in a way. to conversion. Hasidism with its

emphasis on faith, only served to make the Jewish population more

hostile to the Haskalah •

• 1 • Haskalah became synonymous in the mind of 'Russian Jewry with apostasy or licentiousness. 46' "They ha~ disco~ered to their 1 ~ ~ ...... r; great sorrow, that' like E1isha "ben Abuya, the apostate in the'

Talm~d, those who once enten~d the paradise f(of enlightenment) returned no more ••• The very mime ot the seat cf ltaskalah was an

abomination to the pious. To he called 'Berlinchick' or

'deitschel', was tantamount to being called infidel and ep_icurean,

anarçhist and outlaw. The old ins~inct of self-preservation ••• , 1 (),- asserted itself again. As the Talmudic rabbis excluded certain

/

~ .... ., - .J (

- 25 (

books from the canon, as the study of even the Jewish

philosophers was later prescribed by certain French rabbis, so

the Russian rabbis laid the ban upon whatevei- savoured of German "Aufklarerei" • 47

.1 This att.itude on the part of thé Russian rabbis and the

Jewis1;l masses must have been eminently discouraging at the very

least, to the Maskilirn and anyQne who thought to become a Maskil.

The uncornpormising opposition o~ th,e Jewish religious leaders was

based on solid grounds from their point of view, even if the

battle was ul timately a losing one. The orthodox way of life had 1

1f after aIl, proven itself ta have .been the most effective means to l f , date of s~feguarding both Judaisrn and the Jewish people in the ,\ ~ c'} 48 Diaspora. "Nay more than that., Il writes Greenberg, "as 1; ~ long as the Jew was cornpelled ta live in ghettos, traditional ~ ( " Judaism offered a spirit.ual substance which compénsated for the

~ l, disab1ities imposed upon them. Many of the religious 1ead~rs were also aware of Ithe spiritual frustration that: awaited ...... 1 - •i. educated youth who through secular educatfon were being equipped 1 for a wor1d that would not accept them but were at the sarne tirne rendered unfit for life in the ghetto."" Many understood

moreover, that the acquisition of sec-ular knO\~ledge unaccompanied

by the granting of ci vic rights, would tempt -many Jews to desert

their fai th in order to pursue a career or escape the

restrictions plàced upon them as Jews. (These fears were

confirmed.) The priorities of certain influential mernbers of lill/lA. h.S .' •• 111 ,_

", /

- 26 - (

the Russian Jewish leadership are perhaps most clearly revealed in their approach toward Napoleon and the French Revolution.

\ Shneour Zalman,' the founder of ~abad Hasidism, (Lubavitch) 1 1 l' , expressed their sentiments thus: l, i Should Bonaparte win, the wealth of t~e Jews will be. l increased and their civic position will be raised. At ," the same time their hearts will be estranged fram our Heavenly Fath~r. , Should however our Czar Alexander win, the Jewish hearts will draw nearer to our Hea~enly Father, though the pover5~ of Israel may become çreater and his position lower ~"_. ' '

~ Dubnov observes: "This was tantarnount to saying that civic rightlessness was preferable to civic equality, inasmuch as the former bade fair to guarantee the ihviability of the religious life, while the latter threaténed to bring about its () \ , • i 51 P • d J.S :Lntegrat on • . In view of the extrernely negative opinion in which they were held and the fa ct that they were often madathe victime of cruel / persecution especiatly by the Hâsidim,52 it is not ,/

surprising that sorne Maskilim saved themaelves throug~ conversion. Whàt we rnay weIl ask, did conversion mean at this

time? ' Isaac Levitat 'a anawer ls unequi~ocal. In Eastern Europe, he ~aya, tho~~ Who took that final step to the baptismal 'font, faced'total social and economic ostracism(by the dommunity with 53 resultant .lOBS of aIl means of support. This statement 'is ,1 , ' confirmed by no less an authority than Czar Alexander l himself

in an ukase (edict) issued on'M~rch 2Sth, '1817,\ calling for the

formation of ,a society of ·Israelitish Christians to astÜst .. 1 1 i ' , , . "

; - 27 (

c nverted Jews and Jews preparing for conversion. We have learned - the usake reads - of the difficult situation of those Jews who, having by Divine Grace perceived' the light of Christian truth, have embraced the same, Br are maldng ready ,to' join the flock of the good shepherd ard the saviour of souls. These Jews,'whom.the Christian religion has severed from their brethren in the flesh, lose every means of cont!act with them, and not only have forfeited every cl~im to their assistance, but are also exposed to al! kinds of persecutions and oppressions on their p~,rt. Nor do they readily find shelter among Christians, their new 54brlthren in the faith, to wham they are yet unknown •••

~ N0t on1y then, did the convert have to f.ace being • campletely cut off from aIl he knew, he also had to gain "1 acceptance by non-Jewish society, a feat accomplished, one must p/esume, only if ~he individual could speak'the language of the 11\ Cf

t ~.J.and,1. knew ~ts customs and was not recogOl,zably.. Jew~sh. - f. r JI. " r:, There did exist in Russia even at the very heginning of the r !, nineteenth century, a tiny group ,af very wealthy Jewish ~ q l "merchants and government cont.ractars wha were t.alerated in ~ \ , 1 P,etersbu~g because of their close business ties with government t o~.fibials. These plutocrats did nat suffer fram e~onomic {, \ disabilities~ut rather from the contemptuous attitude displaYed towards the Jews in general with whom they were lumped despite , ::. 1 their wealth and pigh level of assimiLation. Judah Leib

II~Vll:bovltcb (177\6-1831) became the spo~esman for' this group, publishing in 1804 a pamphlet entit1ed the Qutcry of the ..---'-

D~ughter of Judah. leYlklaMiteh F who had persona11y felt the • contempt of the non-Jewish wcrld, been made ta feel a stranger, j , ' j

l..... ~!~,,'7'~'-::":':'?':-c.,:",,~ $~~cr~~.~--_ .~I."!.t:~, ...,." '~"- ...... ~,'"""!".'.~. ,!"" !!"~ ;;~>j",,"~_I""i ______"".'!"':'\.,;-:.," .... ~.~~:-:. .'1t/'7j~ .. ~", :~~--__.< __OIII· ... · ....S ~..'!';."'~ - 28 - , r ( ,

a Zhid, described the bitterness with which this filled

h1m.. 55 "To be scorned , t h at i s a pa i n Wll1C . h 19 . greater than

ali misfortunes in the world", wrot.e Nevëklr:>vitch, "this ie the,

,...... 1n d 0 f pa1n . Wh' 1C h no one i scapahl e (' 0 f measun.ng....' ,,56'

'.vùhovitch's hooklet, the fir;st ever published by- a Jew in

the Russ~an language, overflowed with ,patriotism and rnonarchist 57 loyalty. The Outcry of the Daughter of Judah calle~_ upon

the Jews to than'k the Russian rulers (1) for aH the' favours.

conferred upon theml No mention o.r complaint is made about the - sufferings of RUBsian Jewry - the poverty, the repression, the

countless .laws enacted to curb Jewish rights. Nevèl'dl:>vitch, ( speaking for himseif and his peers complained only that his

;. Russian compatriots did not ~ecept him because of his religion l' and scorned and hated him. His pleading was -self-abasing in the

/) extreme: his bowing and scraping which as Mahler points out was / ' ,\ . without precedent even by the Prussian Jewish Middle clase, did

-not stop at betr,ayal of national solidarity. Sa NevëiclX:>vitch

asked that at least other enlightened Jews like himself ahpuld

nct hé blamed -for the sips of the whole people and should be -

<>~dmi t ted as brothers •

.:5evakhovitch'. pleas fell on deaf ears. Sorne years after the PUbl;ration ~f thè Statute Concerning Je1ws (Dec. 9, 11804 ) which put an end to Jewish hopes, Nevak!ovi tch adQpted the Lutheran

faith. C\ One"'" can only' specu~ate as te w'hy Revelthovitch~ (and he was not \;,1 .... ~....--~· ...... ~--_.--__..-o)_ ...... IW... , .... J_""u~ ._. _____... __ .__ ...

- 29 - ( ,1t .... alone, in this) once having made the decision to convert, chose , , to become a member of the Lutheran Church rather' than the

dominant Rus"sian Orthodox Churchca One must assume that by

becoming a Christian - even a Protestant - lfevakbovÏteh realized--

his goals in converting. It appears however, that he preferred, \ possibly becël.use he did not want to join the majori ty group that

had not accepted him as a Jew (almost spitefully it seems ~ to

remain outside the mainstream, a member still of a minority. \ , ,j '- A "- • ,1 \ Dawidowicz mentions the fact ,that in the f890s Jews wa:nting to r --, c:., " gain admission to the universities 'began to conve~t 'rO lsla~ 1 - 59 ~ until the government put a stop to tlle practiee l,~ This ~il,. , () suggests a similar motive to that which prompted .~teh- to become, a Lutheran. "

1 -rnterestingly, Saul Ginsberg remarks t}:lat the baptis1R of ',$-

1 Leib .e~tqJt and his friend Abraham Peretz had a saC. effect ~ -'" on enlightenment in Russia because it ended the peace '~tween 1 religion and Haskarah on l which moderately-disposed religious 'J . , circles, had depended1 noW the brthodox pointed fingers and warned - - 60 .. this is what secular knowledge leada to.

To calI levakhoviteh a typical convert of ,this early ~eriod

be would prOl:\ably an exaggeration. He does serve as an example ! ~ 1 of the man who converts nct out of belief or even to free himsel f .\ " of severe disabilities but to. attempt to equalize hia status and

his pos'ition. That a conversion of th!. type ahou~d 'have been 1, ,,1 aco,eptablè. ta the 'Rue si ans and not looked upon as a fraud, remai

,.

',' ,_ l, ..... " . .. ~~ ~...... ~;' ·re~-;l; ...... -;.... , ~ .. _ ....\ .. t ...... " . .. Il

,1

- 30 - (i

a source of surprise to this,writer. Vet this see~ to have been ~ t ! r the case. Conversion: in other "lords, worked. - ~~ ~. Leib ReTakhoyiteh changed .his name to Lev Nikolaevitch after ·1 / 4 his conversion and became an official in the finance ministry: he also was awarded a tobacco monopoly in poland and occupied 61 11 h~msel;f with 1iterature. .,,'ftIkhovitcb'. children (and this 1 f'

1 1 • i' is most definitely typical ) ma1nta1n'edV . s11ence about the r fat.her ~

l, and their Jewish roots., It was S. Ansky, the Yiddish writer and

dramatist, says Ginsburg. who first told Illya Metshnikov, the

world-famous scientist and Nobel prize winner Who was

Bev•• iiâ'. grancison, that his grand'father had be,en the author 62 o of the Outcry 9f the Daughter of Judah ahd a Jew.

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l,

CHAPTER 4 () THE REIGN OF ALEXANDER l

Czarist poliey vis-a-vis the Jews alternCl:ted o'Jer the years

between bribery and compulsion, the latter being the poliey more

often in favour 0" We have already made referenee to the ukase

issued by Alexander l in 18170 The ukase reflected the second

phase of Alexander 1 s reign, eommonly called the reaetionary

phase. that began after Napo,leon' s defeat and the Congress of

Vienna. nIt was quite in harmony with the spirit of the new u era", says Dubnov, "that the solieitude of the Russian government

for tne Jews should have manf'fested itself in an attempt at

saving their souls ... 63 Al'exander and his Miniater of / ; Ecclesiastic Affairs, Golitzin, both mystically inclined, o conceived the idea of becoming the instruments of Divine , . 6-4 Providence in converting the Jews 0 In addition to the

ukase, the government aUotted free crown lands with the right of

founding all types of settlements 1;0 the converts and granted

them full civil equality, extensive communal self-government and " - 65 -j special exemptions from taxes.

Th'e appeal by the Czar was without effect. fbree years

'la~~~ ~and- conti~ued ~ stand empty having fail~,~ _a~tract

even a single group of converts·. t",,, -,

, . CHAPTER 5

( .. THE REIGN OF NICHOLAS l

Nicholas l, considered by some the harshest of aIl Russia 1 s

, t rulers in the modern period, reigned from 1825 to 1855. His l [ policies as they affectd the Jews weIl illustrate that mixture of

enticement and force mentioned above, that characterized the policies of 50 Many of Russia' s soveteigns... We deal below with the two major policies of the period that concerned the Jews -

the cantonist system and the establishment of the Crown school

system.

Saul Ginsburg ohserves that even in Nicholas 1 time, the

• official position (ie. what was on paper) on religion proclaimed

freedom of religion in Russia for everyone including the Jews,

o 'although Russian Orthodoxy was declared the first arid dominant 66 'religion, the only one allowed to proselytize. There were

1 rnoreover, edicts on the books stating that Jewish soldiers were

permftted to practise unhindered their religion in their free

time and that Jewish children attending.. public sc11001s jlere not

to he compe1led to change their religjion and were not 'bound to , 67 attend classes in Christian theology.

These regulations were however, meaningless: freedom of

religion never existed in Russia and especia11y saya Ginsburg, j not in the time of Nicholas I. 68 Nicholas was in fact, ;' obsessed with the idea of converting t'he Jews, of destroying

~Jewish separateness and most of the six hundred-odd anti-Jewish " decrees promulg'ated dur~ng his reign were ôesigned ta dirqinish

- -, } '. .'•t • - 33 - ( • the number of Jews within the Empirè by pushing them into Russian

Orthodoxy.

,According to'Michael Stanislawski, approximately 30,000 Jews

cortverted to sorne denomination of Christianity during th~ reign

of Nicholas I, of which sorne four to five thousand were voluntary

converts. This calculation is based on the assumption that roughly

25,000 Cantonists were baptized during this time" half the number

that is, of those inducted into the army. Stanislawski notes

however that this latter figure may be slightly high, that given

the high !Ilortali ty rate of Russian soldiers in general and of

Cantoni'sts in particular, it is likely that a good number of

the Jewish draftees died before they cOl,lld he converted. 69

The 1827 cons,cription law, perhaps ,the most infamous of aIl i 1 Czarist laws, provided for the conscription of'Jewish boys between

, 'the ages of twelve and twenty-fivé for twenty-five years military f 1 r service not including the six years which the minors aged twelve - f \ 1 eighteen would spend in prepara tory establishments. The young 1 draftees were known as cantonists, a term derived from the word 1.. • • 70 canton origina!ly referring to a 'prussian recruJ. tJ.ng dJ.stnct.

According to Isaac the conscription law had a confi­ 1 Levitats, dential memorandum attached ,td it declaring t~at "thé chief

benefit to be derived from'the drafting of Jews is the certainty

that i twill move them most effectively to changet their

religion •• ~The draftees should prefer~bly be young because ~the . 1 . '1 derision of their Ch~istian. comrades will influence them' more

• " '. - 34 - (

readily to abandon their superstitions than if they were 71 adults. Il J The conscription of immature boys, in other words, cornbined

wi th their prolonged separation frorn a Jewish environment and the

use of those methods likely to produce the desired results - this/

was deemed an infallible rneans of absorbing Russian Jewry into 72 the dominant; nation and Church. "But", says Dubnov, "had on the ruling spheres of St Petersburg known the history of the

Jewish people, they might have realized that the annihilation of

Judaism had in past ages been atternpted more than once by other, / no less forcible means - and that the attempt had always proved a 1 . / 1 1 1 ! () failure. ,,73 t Nicholas' conversionist pressures on the Jewish cons'cripts, i' ~ 'f; " especialLy the children, resulted in a body of literture 1ri . [ depicting the terrible sufferings of youngsters torn from family t andoonununity and brutally thrust ihto the militari life. 'With 1 the.... exception of'an infinltesimal number of, Jews Who welcomed the draft law as a' step towards emancip~tion, Jewà and non- Jews vere

deeply moveq by the horrors of the cantonist system. Alexander

Herzen, the famous Russian liberal, ~described a cantonist marc~,

,1 he witnessed in 1835 near P>errn thus 1 l, This was one of the rnost. terrible scenes 1 havé ever witnessed. Poor,' unfortunate children l 'The boys of twelve or thirteen managed som~how ta stand ) up, but the little ones of eight or ~ine" •• No ' artist's br~sh could paint the horror. Pale, emanciated, f~ightened faces looked out of the ludicruously clumsy Boldiers ,uniforms, casting ! about helpless, pitiful glances at~e soldiera. (' • " __ ~ ...... ~_ ..... ,~ ____.",~ ...l __~_, __ ...- _ .. _

- 35 - (

From their blue lips and t~e blue yeins under their eyes, it was obvioue they were suffering from fever 1. • and exposure. A sharp w~nd was blow~ng, and these sick children, loveless and 1J~lpless were marching straight to .their graves ••• Il 1

That N~cholas took an intense personal interest in the missionary activity conducted among the contonists, ls evident from the detailed notations, the approving and disapproving

comments he made in the reports submitted ta him~ it was by virtue of these remarks that he spurred the religious and military 75 functionaries to ever greater efforts. To please the Czar / \ a good many of these officiaIs resorted to very cruel methods to ~ f win converts. One cantonist relates in his memoirs: • !' The captain of our company. was a veritable wild

! beast. Immediately upon our arrivaI they began to C fleg'us, sometimes with ordinary rods; sornetimes ~' with rods soaked in salt water, and at other times wi th bare twigs. And aU these tortures, were infliGted upon us so as to campel us to accept / baptism. 'G~t yourselves baptized, scoundre1s, or ,,'r ~ el se l will f~~g you ta death l' the cormnande~, " ~ roared at / us • ~ J Another cantonist described the method of his commander Who f. apparently vowed that as long as he li ved no orie under his iIl commahd would remain a Jew. On the orders of thé commander one

of his underlings forced the Jewish boys to kneel at his 1 bedside throughout the night and then depri ved them of food on the

~ following day. This process was repeated until aIl but one boy , '. y~e. Id e d andb' em race d Ch'r1st1an~ . . t'y. 77 In light of these barbarie :Imethods and the young age of the boys, it is not surprising that the percentag'e of ': converts was

, / , " l' , Jt" • " - 36 -

( , very high. Indeed it is won'àrbüS',~~that sorne did resist. Yet / o 7B writes Saul Ginsburg, tlsuicide was not a rare phenomenon. 1I

There is a famous story told of a g~pup of Jewish cantonists who'

were to he baptized in Nicholas 1 presence. The chi1ldren were

brought to the banks, of the Volga. At the command of the ernperor

t11ey submerged thmselves and obviously having made a pact, aIl remained bel~w. 79 It iB very difficult to know how these

young boys found the strength and courage to resist especially

when so many of thern, as children of the poor, or orpharts, had

ended as cantonists,because they had been sacrificed as it were, i 1 by the Jewish community or captured by khappers - ie. kidnapped. if tl One can only speculate that either their early Jewish education ~ ! , (r was extraordinary or perhaps that death i"'as preferable to the r ... , rnilitary life. ~ ," The conscri}'tion law did nO,t prodûce the results anticipated j (r, and desired by the Czar al though a great rnany Jewish soldiers were 1 indeed baptized and thereby usually total1y alienated from the .~ 1 • h . Ba [ Jew1s communlty. , Although figures are perhaps not that i rneaningful, we offer two to give an idea of what was involved • . Ginsburg says for examp1e that in one year, 1842-43, 2,264 / ! cantonists were converted and that between 1846-54 7, 000 out of B1 14,000 cantonists underwent baptism. Despite the nurnbérs, ~ .. ' the Pale remained untouaped in essence; in fact within the

Pale, piety -arnong the Jews, who looked upo~ the 1827 1aw as punishrnent for their sins, was on the increase.~2 The youngsters were sent off to the sound of fervent prayers - 37 - 1 ( 1

entreating them to remain Jewish. Some cantonists did return to

the Pale after the completion of their serviJe: they have a place ,

in Jewish litera ture. Sorne, who had been baptized, returned. to

Judaisrn and formed the nucleus of Jewish settlements in the . . f RI • 1nter1or 0 USS1a. 83 Sorne, like Jacob Brafman, in their

deep-seated bitterness, became determined and outspoken enemies . of Juda'ism and the Jewish community. The great majority how,ever "

were 'simply ldst to the Jews either through death or absorption

into the Russian world. ,1 As had been suggested, Nicholas 1 poli

projeet. The project invoived the re-education of the Jews

1 through the establishment o~ a Crown school system for Jewish ; children and two rabbinicai seminaries to train Crown rabbis •

. Lucy Dawidowicz cites a secret decree describing the actu~l

intent of the program: :The purpose in educating the Jews ie to .' bring about their graduaI merging with the Christian

nationalities and to uproot those superstitions ,and harrnful / - 3B -

( / prejudices which are insti11ed by the teachings of the Talmud." 85 In an 1840 memorandum to the Czar, Uvarov. the same Uvarov who formulated-, the three princip1es on which the Russian regime based itse1f - Orthodoxy, Autocrac~ and

Nationalis~ - suggested thàt the conversionary purpose of Jewish 1

"re-education he carefu1ly disguised: for this, reason he

considered that secuJ.ar education would be better received by the , . Jews if it were conducted through a separate Jewish school . 86 system. ...-......

A German rabbi and r_OVDed Maskil, Max Lilien.thal, who f welcomed the idea of a secular school syst'em as progressive, l undertook at the request of the Russian government who knew of

1; t Cf his reputation as a modernist, to travel through the Pale to try ~ :' and ga1n• acceptance f 0 tllé"'- new system. A'/s lt turne d ou,t tue"'- ~ ;1 t,, Jews of the Pale understood the intentions of the Czarist l ./ government far better than the educated and worldly Lilienthal '. \ who saw his name become a household epithet for atheist and '. ~ mis leader and his person the subject of mockery and contempt l1 among the traditionalist masses. The assurances of the Russian govenment that. its aim was on1y to enlighten the Jews was met by Jewish Orthodoxy (the " overwhelming majority of Russian Jewry) with deep suspicion. Why

they asked (with unàeni~b1e logic) shou1d the'Russian government show so much concern about/the education of the Jews amongst whom

) i1litercy was the exception, when they were content to ,l

Russian masses among whom illiteracy was the rUle, in total ignorance?87 The Russian Jews understood that the design of the

governmen~ was the ultim~te conversion of the Jews. They were convinced moreOVer (or at least their leaders were) that secular edUGat10nJ • and,especially secular education without emancipation 1 led in only one directi~n~ to heresy and baptisme The Jews of Minsk reacted to Lilienthal's visit and proposaI that they support·the Crown school system thus: As long as we are not granted civic rJghts, education will be only a rnisfortune for us. In his present cul tural state the Jew does not disdain the humiliating livelihood of a broker or a usurer, and finds comfort in his religion... But when the Jew will ,,, receive ~ modern education, he wi~J become sensitive to his legal disabilities and then: d~ssatisfied with his bitter lot, he will he prompted tb desert'his • faith. An honest Jewish father8~ill never agree to train his child for conversion. , j Although the Jews lof Minsk were rejecting 'the }dea of the iii Crown school system as put forward by Lilienthal and the. , . government, they were not, it appears obvious fram the above

• j quote, rejecting the idea of secular education per se. Their objection was to modern education for Jews under prevailing

conditions, the impl~cation being that were the Jews to be -1<.... '. granted c~vic rights-emancipation secul~r education would be Il .: acceptable. This attitude, it must he realized, was by no means - '. general in the Pale. The powers-that-be in the Jewish commuity df Minsk at·the time were apparently of a very modern,

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/ - 40 - / 1 \- ( 1

progressive cas~. One would not have heard a simiiar respohse from,a community '~mi~ated for example ~ Hasidim. 1 A Vilna elder/expressed bimself on the subject as follows us'ing 1 the example of Germany bf way of illustrating his poïnt. /, l, In Germany, where tbey have negiected the study the Talmud these past thirty years, and have' 0; / indulged in the·; study of aIl kinds of profane / sciences, our Jewisb religion has been sadly wronged, the ties of the beavenly yoke have be loosened; the old respect for our sacred ordi is gone, and many of our brethren have embr Christiani ty. I8 it not in the interest of ur / creed to keep away from aIl these innovatio s, t9 adhere to our ancient mode of life, to edu ate ~ur children as we have been educated in findrng in' the past a safer guarant for our existence/than /in present innovations? Sg / /1 / The Jewish masses resisted this furthér ayfempt by the ( government to convert them; the heders yeshivot remained full while the Crown schools were pupiled s in the case of the

càntonists by the poor and orph~ned~ \ "Every year in the / autumn" relates a wri ter, ".there was a kind of compulsory, , recrqiting of Jewish children for the Government schoel,

accompan~ed sometimes by struggles between the victims and their enemies - scenes without a paralIel; in sorne respects, in the civilize~orld. l remember how poor mothers and siatera wept ! ' with despair when sorne boy of the family was carried off or.

enlisted by the office~s te ibe a pupil in ;i Government 91' school" .. ' \ In the l840s the government scbools were shunned by the rich

and respectable whose desire it still was tc'have a son-in~law

.. )

' . t .... > ., - 41 -

weIl versed in Torah. Barely a generation later, the ambition of . this sarne group was to have a son-in-law who was a graduate of • these self-sarne schools - a gymniast or better yet, a uni versi ty \, graduate. In the sarne spirit the Jews refused to accept the graduates of the rabbinical serninaries as xabbisi they were prepared to recognize thern only as government functionaries and '0 generally treated thern with contempt.

Lilienthal finally came to realize t11'at he was being used by

the C~arist government ta further its program of forced assimilation without the granting of elementary ci vic rights" and - 1 departed Russia suddenly for the United States. In 184B he Cl wrote: "The C~r will he satisfied only when the Jew will bow to the Greek cross." 92 In his book, "My Travels in Russia" 1 \ .1 Lilienthal further adrnitted that the opponents of the Crown school system had been right, that education without ernancipation . 93 o was in factthe straightest road to conversion. Those men,' he wrote, who have' acquired/ from study an idea of the rights of man, and that the Jew ought to enjoy 1;he sarne privileges as every other citizen: those men: who tr·ied, by the knowledge they had obtained, to open for themselves better prospects in life and now saw every hope fr~strated by laws inimical to them only as Jaws, ran,. from mere despair into the bosorn of the Greek - Church. The harass ing care for a living, the terpible difficulties in s.urmounting them forced them in an hour of distress, to deny their faith. l always cpmpared them with the Anusim (forced converts) of Spain. Among them there .,1 is no religious indifference as ia the case in Western Europe and Germany; and l have met with many converted Jews there, who, with tears !n their eyes, cornplained of heartburnings and pange of conscience; aij~ they looked upon themselves as eternally lost... r . , ' ,1' /' ' . ' • , ;, - 42 ) - <.. The picture of the Jewish convert painted by Lilienthal

above ia, of course, highly romant!cized. Certainly life was

terribly difficult in the Pale, even desperate. Yet the vast­

maj9rity of Jews did not jo!n the Church. They remain~d Jewa.

'/ And though th~re were doubtless sorne converts who .... suffe:J;"ed pange • l') J of conscience, etc. it is probablt fairly safe to assume that most individuals who had undergone baptism had come to terms with rd their consciences and/or decided that the advantages attaching to '" conversion outweighed whatever ~uilt bhey might suffer. Despite Lilienthal's romanticized view, in other words, there were both

converts with genuine regrets and converts who had no' 1 1 li ! difficul ties cutting ties with their past. J f From the above discussion of the cantonist, system and the \ (~ ) " 1 Crown school system several things are apparent. In the first f , v t f place there ia the role of the Russian government which actually i t '. formulated pôl~cies at th~highest l~vel concerning the ~ u "integration" of the Jewish populaçe. The direct role of the

regime here ia obviously very grea~. In the second place, ft ls

obvious that the Jewish rèligious leadership in Russia exeroised

a' high degree of authority and sway over the masses. Thirdly, 1 there are the Jewish masses themselvea -' ·ultra-Orthodox, ultra- '1 1 conservative, highly resistant "'to innovation • The forces working ., against assiIl!ilation ilnd conver~ion werÔ' in other worde, much more powerful-decisively so it would seem - in .;l RUBsia than for example, in a country such as Germany. )

• 1 .. " ! 1 0 .. J' 1 - 43 -

The one measure (ilS had been proven in Weste:rn Èurope)iwhicq .. ( ,1 would have been certain to accelerate Jewish assimilation, ,

namely, thè outright granting of emancipation,.the Russian 95 go vern ment failed to take. The Whole Jewish historical

) experience would seem ta justify the maxim that the rate and \ 1 degree of Jewish assimilation increas(E!s wlth the level of {, l tolerance or liberation of the host socl'1ty. This tèndency le ," proven again during the reign of Alexander II Who came to power

in 1855.

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, ,:', ...#' " , 1 i": :~_ ~ 1 f. "' .. , '- ',4>' .. ' '1 ,,~ .; , ' , . ---- u ,y , 1 • CHAPTER 6

THE REIGN OF ALEXANDE~ II

J Alexander II ,f s liberalism has been greatly exaggerated. The

Czar Liberator as he was called, made concessions not out of

convictlo,n but rather out of necessity. With respect to the .Jews

[ .. he, like N'lcholas, placed a great dea1 'of empnasis on \ . <) amalgamating the Jews with the 'Russian ~OBle. Wherèas Nicholas

'h,n penal i z..ed "useless" categories of Jew,s byi ncreas~ng t e1r \l

l, disabi1ities, Alexander chose rather to reward the "useful"

1 e1ements of the Jewish population - those who by virtue of their

wealth, education or ski11s could contribute to the we1fare of 96 the state, by extending" their rights and/or privileges. 6,\ ~e more valuable a clas~ of 3ews was to the state, so 1 +, t proportionately would its ri~hts he enlarged. Here, Russia, Dt! 1ag91n9 rough1y a century behind the ~est, sought to apply the , 97 1f system favoured by Frederick the Great of Prussia. Ù~~er·A1exander the oid Czarist missionary zeal that cha~acterized the two reigns befare,o began to dec1!ne} the ! bribery, torture and economic pressure that had been applied to try and bring about Jewish apostasY'Vf!1'f!! gradually 9B abandoned. Several me~sures in force under Nicholas (and ï 1 of interest in' that they reveal certain other features of

Cl 0 \ ~icholasr policy not rnentioned above) were abolished. In 1 ,.,. - December 18~1 for example, the baptizing of Jewish chi1dren und~r

j 1 the age of fourteen wi~hout the consent of thelr parents was

out1awed. In 1864 the government put a stop to the handing out , ' l,... :

, l' , --... l',;-~,,:,,,i1'T"'--:",,!, 1>:"', - __...... ____ ...... ___ .. _____ ...... _ ...______.. _ -' 1 *'" III._n'. + , .. ! 1 1

- 45 - (

of monetary gifts made to Jewish privates who converted. In 1866

the regime did aw~y wi th the practice of lessening ~ the punishrnent for non-Christian offenders who during trial would embrace 00 Christiani ty.' '

By a gover.nment edict of 1865, Jewish merchants of the first and second gui Ids (merchants of lst 9uild paid an annual

tax'of about 11,000, , rubles), university gradua tes andl skilled

1 artisans who managed to pass certain gove+nment tests, were "given leave to reside outside the Pale of Settlement. This " . extension of residence rights opened a valve in the desparately ) overcrowded Pale caustng more and more Jews to press through the openipg, many illegally. These illegals lived by police bribery and in constant fEfar of the knock on the do or which ) - meant arrest and deportation back ta the Pale. , Both within and outside the Pale then, new Jewish communities were established, /peop1ed mainly by the "privileged" - wholesale merchants, financiers, acac:lemics, indùs tralis ts and artisans, Jews, that is, whose vocations brought them into closer contact " wi th Russian life and rendered them more susceptible '~:Ito assimilation. IOO These men and women who represented the upper • 1 segment of, Russian Jewr.y were quick to adopt ·the Russian styler of dress and behaviour, the Russian language, ta send their,

Ch1. 1 dren to RUSS1an. sc h 00Il' 5 and general y ra1se t h em as Rusalans.. 101 The change in) the inner cultural life of this group, says or

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Dubnov, may be likened to the rapid and intense transformation of the , - I02 German Jew on the eve of Jewish emancipation. The Russian

Jew like his German counterpart;. became "sensitive to non­ /' Jewish opinion as he emerged from isolation. The tremenrlous

eagerness with which many Russian Jews sought to bridge the gap

separating them froI'l\ their non-Jewish compatriots ciften led them

to interpret gestures such as the appearance of Russian officiaIs

at Jewish functions or t,'Pe admis,sion of a few Jews to,Russian

social clubs as a rea1 about face. TPJfact was - with perhaps

t 1) predictable consequences - Uthis wild rush for spiritual 1 regenerâtion lt as Dubnov calls it, "was out of proportion to the f snail-like tardiness and piecemeal character of civil enamcipation ; Ct 103 ~ in Russia. u i ~ \ The factor that waS most influentia1 in this regeneration , 1 was the secular school. both the Russian school and the Jewish 1 \, 1 Crown school which due to the prospect of a free li fe amidst the " . Russian people, saw young men rushing to the gymnazia and the J universities from every corner of the Pale. The fears that had

1 been expressed by Jewish religious leaders - namely the

~cquisition of'a secular education unaccompanied by the granting

of civic rights would tempt those Jews ambitious for a career to

desert their fai th - were confirmed in this period r there were a

large number of conversions in the 1850s and 18608 by Russian

r' Jews who wanted to pursue an academic career (closed to Jews even

du ring Alexander 1 s reign), to rise in government servic~, or ta • _ ----_ ___------~----~~------.---.-~------_.~---.--_._._.;~ 'b L " .,t w*( j ~-~_ .... """ .. --,_._, ---_.-, ....-----

- 47 -

( ) acquire legal and social statue commensurate with their . 104 pas i tlons.

Dan,~el Chwo1son, the farned Orientalist, is a classica1 1. } example of thé former breed of convert. "Daniel Chwo1son", wrote 1,

Baron Dav.id Gunzburg 1 Il is the Jewish careerist par excellence: he became an apostate for a university professorship in Czarist Russia.II~05 \ Chwolson, who was bern in the Pale in 1819 received a tr,aditiona1 rabbinica1 education, went to Germany in search of a secu1ar educa.tion, and returned to St. Petersbur,g in 1851. He converted in 1855 in order to take the chair of Hebrew and Syr!ac at St. Petersburg University. As the story is told, When asked r () if he had been baptised out of conviction, Chwo1son is said to

haye repl~ed: "Yes, l was c0!lvinced it was better to he a professor in St. Petersburg th an a me1amed in Eyshishok." 106 Although Chwolson served the Jews aIl his life, figpting blood libe1_ accusations, remaining active in the Society for Promotion of Culture Among Jewe, etc., as Qeems the pattern; his children no longer had any contact with Jews, and his grandchildren disappeared entirely from_thé- 'Jewish \'iew. 107 __ .~ f Lev Abramovitch Cooper~iK is another example of the convert -----~------~ of this peri-ed-.~1§orn in 1B45 into a well-to-do intellectual fami1y of Lithuanian origin, Coopernik grew up in a home that was a center of Haskalah. He received a Jèwish education but went to the gymnasium. In the gymnasium Lev was drawn into the stream

,j .".:; Ir !

- 48 - (

of assimilation which was tren 50 strong in Jewish life in

certain circ les . In Moscow where he went on to study law 'at the 107 university, the assimilating influence w~s even greater.

Wliile studying, Coopernik fell in love with and married the

daughter of the famous Russian dramatist, M.S. Shsepkin., To "' rnarry her he converted. IIIn those days", says Tsitron in his

account of Coopernik. "_ the end of the 1860s - in certain

intellectual Jewish circles, conversion was undergone very

cas~ally, especial1y when an act of love was involved, and did

not consti tute treason to one' s people. ,,108 coopernik f remained devoted to his people after his baptisrn,helping Jews who 10 came from near and far by virtue of his legal talents. He defended ten Jews accused on a blood libel charge in 1879 and

played a majolF' role in the Kishinev and Gomel pogroms (1903) f /' " ~' where he defended---- 36 young people who were arrested for their participtaion_ in the Jewish zelbshutz (sel·f-defence group)

organized to deal with the pogrornists.

; As in Western Europe, the new aristocracy of Russian Jewish

life, that is the tiny fraction of Russian Jewry who through

liquor concessions or railrod building or as purveyors during the

Crim~an war had amassed enormous fortunes and who had been

allowed to prosper' by the closer contact wi th Russians and

Russian life artd culture now open to them, quickly proclaimed ~ . , their support for the regime; they declared their: attach-., -.1 () ment to RUBsia an~ its culture and encou,raged theix;

/ ù

/ 1 1. 1 - 49 -

fellow-Jews to also Russify themselves and thereby win privileges from the government. The young people who had come -through the J Russian school system were partlcularly eager in adopting the cry of Russification. This state of affairs quite naturally resulted in an alliance as it were, between this group and the government, a situation of course, which did nothing to win the trust of the Jewish masses or 1to further the cause of enlightenment among th em. 109 One might add here that this situation must only have served to furtherrdistance the members of this group from their roote and the Jewish community. Russification, according to Dubnov, was divided into diff~rent stages, the initial stage being th~ acquisition of the Cf Russian language, the final stage being the complete

identification wit~ussian culture, Russian national ideale and involving the renunciation of 'the religious and national traditions of Judaism. l10 Whether one advocated èxtreme Russification, that is complete assimilation on the West European pattern, or whether ) )' one fa~oured a more moM"rate form of Russification, by embarking on such a course, one initiated, it seems to us, what-was in

effect an irreversible process. HaVi~g begun,{ having whetted onlels appetite, one could never return to the narrow perimeters J of Jewish life and thought. Also, one necessarily opened onesèlf

\ up to potential frustration: if the doors to the universities, , , \ ~;,. .'\ \ professions or Russian cultural life beyond the Pale were closed "',

j

*.11 _

- 50 - (

to the Jews once again as they were in the second ha If of

Alexander 1 S reign and increasingly during Alexander 111 ' s reign, one would be- faced with difficult and pressing qyestions about

one' s attachment to the Jewish fai th and -"the Jewish people. We

mention the above because inherent in it we see a strong

motivation for conversion as weIl as for the search for

alternatives to assimilation.

1 In Russia, like in Germany, the period of liberalism which 1

saw the upper class of Russian Jew~ ernerge from isolation and

make c;ontact with- Russian 'high society in a similar fashlon to

Berlin's salon era of a century ear1ier, was short-lived. Mother / Russia, as it turned OU}, was not yet prepared ta erase the • ! dividing line between her children -'and her step-children, however

Russified.

As in Germany too, so in Russia the period of liberaliam was

fol10wed by a long period of reaction.The Russian 90vernm~nt,

greatly alarrne~ by the Poliah uprising of 1863, took a long bard " , . look at its 'Jewish policy' and discovered that whereas the urge , for Russification was indeed strong among the new intelligentsia

and the industira1 aristocracy, the overwhelming mass of Jewry

had responded but littl'e to Alexander' s "reforms". 111

The government was aided in reexamining its policy 9Y a \ certain Yakov Brafman. Yakov Brafman, perhaps the ITOst infamous

of ~ussian-Jewish converts, iWas born in Kletsk in the province of

Minsk in 1824.'112 In order to avoid military service,

ft 1~

/

.~ .. ~ • oI'li" ..

.pt? L * .. • 1

- 51 -

Il Brafman ran away from Kletsk' and began to wander from t9wn to

town trying his hand at various occupations; knowing want, and

always trying to keep one step ahea-d\ of t~e Kahal-leaders of

l' ,Kletsk Who continued to search for him. Finally, in order to 1 '"t 1 es~ape the wandering life and to free himself of the Kletsk

Kahal, Brafman converted to Russian Orthodoxy in 1858. Brafman 1 s

,experience with the Jewish cornrnuni:ty and its leaders had fostered ( in him a deep-seated hatred of the Kah~ and a desire to wreak ! 1 vengeance not only upon the Kahal but upon the very idea of t< . h . i 113 JeW1S co~unal organ~zat on. 1

Thus, when Czar Alexander II passed through Minsk in 1858

Brafman submitted a written memorandum on how one cou1d better o 114 spread Russian Orthodoxy arnong the Jews. This memorandum ~hich ~eW forth an invitation to appear before the ~,) Holy Synod in St. Petersburg with further explanations led to

Brafmarl ' s apointment in 1860 as teacher of Hewbr~~ in the

Orthodox seminary in Minsk and as a missionary. Brafman "' conducted his rnissionary activity in Min~k and the ,surrounding

shtetls amongst the poorest member~ of the Jewish population

where, according to Ginzburg, he thought that for a small sum he might win sorne converts. 115 ThSs wise> n'a _succeeded in .. - 116 converting a few dozen JeWBI)", mostly crippIJ;!s.

'. In the summer of 1866 Brafman want to Vilna, where he published several articles in the official organ of the province,

the Vilenski Vyestnik (Vilna Herald). Brafman contended in " ".

- 52 - (

\ . thise pieces that the Kahal which had supposedly been officia1ly

abolished in 1844 continued in fact to exit: not qnly did it

exist, it constituted a secret organization which wielded despotic

power over the Jewish communities, inci ted the Jewish masses

against th~ government, the state and Christianity and fostered a

dangerous national separatism and fanaticism in these"

t 117 , ' masses. Every Jewish group and society from the local psalm

group in a small Lithuanian bown to the Alliance Universelle in

Paris constituted a link in the hidden Jewish organization, the

secret purpose of which was to concentrate the whole world in Jewish

hands .118 According to Brafman moreover, the only way to / 10 eradicate this ft ~ecret Jewish government Il was to destroy "'hat remained of Jewish communal autonomy by closing down aIl religious

and social institutions. J

1 Brafman' s articles were republished in 1869 as the Kniga

1 Kabala (Book of the, I

officiaIs in fighting the internaI enemy. The many artic!-es

written by Jewish writers pointing out Brafman's ignorance of

rabbinic lore aq9 his distortion of the oid role of the Kahal were

writt.Èm in vain. The authorities in 't. Petersburg seized 'upon

Brafman! s discoveries as definite proof of the existence and oesire

-fOr Jewish separatism and justification .. for their "cautious" 119 approach to the Jewish problem.

C~) Although then it was the impression of, the Czarist regime

"

, 1 -. '," "', ,~ .. )

53 • 1 (

that Russification had made but little headway, and true to a

large extent,, there iB no doubt. that changes - fundamental changes that would transform the character of Jewish life in a n very short period - were already stirring in the Pale.

As the second ha!'f of the nineteenth century progressed, the

political, social and economic changes that had transformed the

West slowly rnoved into Eastern Europe. The industrial revolution

br~ght technological change and accelerated scientific activity.

MQst important however for our interest were the new \

philosophical currents of the day - positivism. uti~itarianism,

social iam, a Il emphasizing the brotherhood of man and the

destruction of rel~9iou~ and national barriers - which began ta

he rapidly and readiJy absorbed by the Jewish youth in t.he

secondary schoele and the universities.

Thel;le new philosophies in combination with a variety of

other conditions and forces present in Rusian life were to

produce the revolutionary movement which was to culminate; in one (? of the major historical events of the twentieth century. Not . " surprisingly, there"were Jews who were attracted to the movement

even from its earliest Pe9innings. 1 turn now ta an examination

of the revolutionary movement in its initial phase (pre-IBBI)) to

Populism and its effect on the tendency toward conversion among

/ Jews. In generai the revolutionary movement in Russia, regardless

of the form it took, embraced atreism. By becoming an atheist

...

" ii 1 "i ~i ._,~.~ ______~------~.~'~~'~'~r~~7 • " '

• _____ - ______,.-.::.J ______) 1 i

- 54 - '. 1.

one cou1d in effect abandon Judaism witbout conver.ting. Popu1ism

( howeverl because -of the nature of its ideo1ogy, tenàed to pull ( ( t sorne Jews not ,only out of the Jewish camp q\it into the Christian }, j one. Jewish involvement in the RussIan revolutionary movement 1 1 \ only began in the 1870s with the growth of a sufficien~ly i assimi1ated Jewish intelligentsia. The early Populists came • predominantly from assimilated, well-off families and were the

first sizable generation of Russian Jews to be brought up without

a substantial Jewish education and thus wlth little or at least ' i h " .. 120 lees know l e d ge 0 f t h e Jew s trad1t10n • • Whi1e most writers assume the Jews to have always (> contributed disproportionately large nurnbers to the revolutionary movemertt Leonard Shapiro says that prior to 1881 Jewish numbers were ro~ghly proportionate to the Jewish percentage of the population (after 1881 the numbers did rise sharply).121

The Jewish contribution to the movement even in its Popu1ist

phase was nonetheless sig~ificant with the exception of on the ideological front, not surprising in light of the fact ihat

Populisrn stemmed from a tradition rooted in the mystique of Sla~ 1

hationalism "which" says Shapirq -fi even the Jew for aIl his great

capacity for assimilation wou1d ha~e found difficulty in , 122 . absorbing. fi

The Jewish Popu1ists were no~ motivated by any specifica11y Jewish motive except perhaps in the sense that the Jew would

\ ; ( , ."

~ ~ ------..--"..,.-'-'-.. - ...... - -

o

- 55 - (

benefit vicariously if,and when freedom was obtained for aIl the inhabitants of the Russian Empire. ln fact, according to Lucy Dawidowicz, what made the revolutionary movement attractive to these early Popuiists was the vision held out of a society J without Jews, the promise of which was important to them because

! Q \ they were obsessed with a des ire te escape from the Jewish group

and to wlpe out their Jewish identity.l?3 Il "," • the most ,striking feature of the Jew in this revolutionary movement in

this period, n confirms Shapiro, Il ls the extent to which his whole mode of action and thought beéame assirnilated'to a spepifically ! Russian form and tradition, even in sorne cases, a Christian • 1\ 124 J tradition. This was perhaps inevitab!e When one ; Cl ~ remernbers the emphasis plac~ by the Narodniki (Populists) on the ~, f t qualities of the Russian pèasant - his basic ,goodneSs, etc. and J;" how he was the repr~sentative of the 'real' Russia. Tb enter î into this movernent then, the Jewish Populist had to turn his back 1 } on his Jew!sh past, something he seeme to have done says Shapiro,. , 125 ! with great readiness. 1 j Because of the wide gap that separated the shtetl from the . big city and traditiona! Jewish thinking,fram radical think!ng

the break with his surroundings,was much greater for the Jew~sh , 126 o revolutionary than for his Russian comrade. And although ' • he'was thorougroLy caught up by the revolutionary spirit, as Lev Ddytsh Who lived through the experience points out, spirit was

not enougb! there were praticali~ies involved in becorning a

1 • _-,.._____ -- -;~-..,-.,-...... ,-,"';'t-"'!.. "'"'":", ~------t _n.... __ •• '.IIIIII.IIiIUIMll_lQqllliîlô!

j .~ ,1. )

- 56

Narodnik (Populist)., Qhe had to know not only the Russian

language but also various fo1k-sayings ~nd expressions, sornething

" about peasant life and agriculture. To go among 'the people'-one had as weIl to have physical strength •. "From where", asks , J Daytsh, "could an ernaciated, skinny and quièt Jewlsh boy who had

/ / seldom been out of the city' or shetl, acquire the neces~ary abiiities and knowJiedge?"l27 J Where indeed? For aIl that the Jewish fadicai believed devoutly in his new-found faith, it was a faith that' derived not / 128 " from an inner source, but/second-hand, from books. A ,..-- wall ~toàd between the Jewish Narodnik and the Russia~ peasant. i 'i', Some"tried to bridge the wall by oonverting. But4 says Tcherikover, 'neither Russification nor even conversion, not the l'/0 w l 1 1 changing of one 1 s cIo1CPes for a peasant 1 s jacket, nor the delusion that one had become a RusBian equal to aIl Russians, ! helped th:ZWiSh Narodnik ta truly penetrate 'the soul of the . k 129 Russ i an mu • :- li Nonethé1ess a gteat many of the Jewish Narodniki were

baptized. The number of converts among the reyolutionar~es was l' l " highest among the women. Conversion took on epidemie proportions

among them wi th the foremost reas~n being Virtually a11 the- well-known Jewfsh wornen r.evoutionaries rnarried J 130 .,,1 non-Jews. This is less surprising perhaps When one,

revolution.~ reali~es(~ it meant for a young woman to join the .c. ,1 C~ When a Jew~sh girl forsook her home to enter the camp.of RUBsian , , , ------1------.. ~ ~-~------,------.... ----.

57 -

radicals, very often her parents sat shiva (mourned) for her. Like her Russian sister, the Jewish female revolutionary paid

deariy for her part in the revolution. Probably b~cause the

break with her past was even -sharper for her than for her male

counterpart, personal tragedy was more prevalent among the Jewish

wo~en revolutionaries than among the men. Sorne took their lives • j

out of despair, sorne were sentenced ta .death or killed, sorne were

sent into exile or to camps where they died.

Convers ion was probably a small price to pay (if viewed 'as

-payment at aIl) for women who had decided t--e- 9ive themselves to

the cause of the revolution, or, if marriage was the ~otive, to

.find a mate and companion "Whose thinking matched her ~. Many of the conyersions wete undergone no doubt simply for the sake df

convenience, in order to avold restrictions 'On residence in the

capital, to more easily conduct propaganda among the peasants, or

esca~e other disabilities. There were, however, cases o~ genuine

conversion to Russian Orthodoxy where the Jewish revolutionary

was led either by his revolutionaryfaith in 'the people' or at'

least his des ire ta overcpme his distance fran ,the"'peaple', "to.

embrace the tràditional faith of his baro the Russian mujik. Joseph Aptekman was an example of the latter type. He 1 J became active in revolutionary circles While studYlng medicine in

St. Petersburg but foun~ !=-hat his Jewishness alienated him fran

the Russians and created an obstacle to his tlgoing to the

people", the physical and symbolic act of reaching out ta the

,. {l ,l'

" . - -- ._ .. _~(;) .. _---- .- -~.- .. _-- /

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1 masses both to educate and to learn form them that developed as 131 an idea and then as a movement in the 1870s. Aptekman,

un1ike his Russian confreres cou1d not work pp the prop~r feeling

of debt t'o the Russian people, no sense Qf repentence. "where", l ' 1 he asks, "shou1d ! get it from? As & rember of an oppressed

people, l shou1d rather have presented a bill for payment than myself pay some imaginary debt. ,,132 He goes on to point out ~\ his fundamenta,l alienation from the Ruséians and especia11y the

Russian peasant and his anxiety about app~oaching the latter

personage as a Jew. "1 did not know the Russian people, for born

in town l 'practically never sa.w the village. Besides, l was

alien ta this people by blood. l knew RUBsian history very Ct ( poorly and l mu~ admit l did not care for it. l was a Jew. How would the Russian people,ceceive my propaganda? Wou1d they take '" it from me?,,133 , ...... /1 In the end, Aptekman could not~live with the distance he saw

as deriving from his Jewishness and apparently seized with a

vision, he decided to conv,ert. "1 was -ba.ptized", he wrote, "and

l tell you. l feit liJ:te "newborn.. l am 90in9 to the people l

It is not difficu1t to understand the IOOtivation of a young '; Many like Aptekman, eager ta participate in the mOVément of the ! day,' a movement tl)at while it' he'ld out 'the. future promise of a

world in which hie Jewishness wouldn 't be of issue, for the • , h '~"L<._ ...... ~ ___ .. __ ----

~ / - 59 L ri '" ./ prese~t only emphasized it. What is more difficult to understand i ~ is how' the act of conversion cou).d suddenly'dispel one 1 s '--, r.- , , 135 :- a 1l.ena tl.on • t ~ In Meir Mlodetski, also a young man Who joined the ranks of

the revolution, we have yet another type of convert. Mlodetski

1 was the son of a small shopkeeper in Slutsk, a distinguished [ ~ l ;, yeshiva student knoWn arnong the local youth as an ilui (child ! . prodigy) • Al though he educated himself he could not stick to one t 1 f goal: he did not pass the exam in the gYmnasium and was not

admitted to the technological instituter he was thrown out 'of St.

Petersburg and ended in the revolutionary movement. Unable to

find his 'niche or any recoqni tion . in the Irovment he decided on

his own ini tiati ve to shoot Loris-Melikov, a very highly placed /

1 government official wi th a reputation as a liberal who 'was then

the chairman of the "Supreme Highest Commission for the J Preservation of Peace and Order". Narodnaya Volya disclaimed

c r::,sponsiblity for the act. '1 Eight rnonths prior to the attempted assassination for which

he ';'as to pay with his life, Mlodetski wrote a letter to the

Archbi~hop of the Russian ,Orthodox Church in Vilna in Whicb he

. requested admission to that Church. He had seen the truth of

Christianity, he wrote, and the clurnsiness of the Jewish Torah

and his Je~ish teachers. Mlodetski was baptized in July 1879.

Mlodetski, it appears obvious ~rom the details of his , biography, was.. essentially a disappointed unsuccessful indi vidual '1

( - 60 -

a' misfit. He blamed his teachers and the fanaticism ol his

father who had not wanted him to learn even the Russian language,

for his failu'res. As Tcherikover points out, what we have here , "

js 8 case of vulgar rationalization of the type Which prompted

not one but many of the \ntelligentsia in 1:j.hat -maskilic age to 136 break with Judaism.

Mlodetski in addition to being interesting-as an individual,

is interesting because of the manner in which the regime looked

upon and dea 1 t wi th him. Pes i te the fact that at the t ime of his

sentencing and execution Mlodetski was a Ch~1stian, the Russian

government and press chose to ignore this and exploit the fact of

Mlodetski 's origin for their' own purposes. Tcherikover observes J that reactionary circles used the case to mount so forceful an ~ ~

antisemitic propaganda,campaign that (even) the Times of ~ondon 137 found lt necessary to proteste "The fact of Mlodetski's

Jewish origin, " wrote the Times, "was excuse enough in certain

circles· of society and in cert'ain organs of the press, especially

t.hose which appeal to tlle masses, to sound once again the old v 1 g- \'.'r ca11" t;o persecute the Jews. ,,138'

In fact, although many young Jews did convert to 1 1

:' Christian!ty, the big attractor for revolutionary youth was not 1 Christianity but nihilisme "The young Jewish intellectual"

observes 1 Shapiro, "found the wine of nihilism as Q intoxicating 8S

his Russiah counterpart - perhaps, after the somewhat sterile _1 ~ o intellectual nourishment of confined Jewish life in Russia, even /

···~.:;:·::'';.-~o-''''''':""'' ----- .... --.. -...... _.0...- ..... ""'1"',1'0,_...-- .-...... 0--' 5'".w ...... , " L 61 - 1 ( ,

more so. Lev D~t8h describes how yeshivah students, hitherto

almost fantatically absorbed ~n the minuti.ae of scriptures and

Talmud, would throw over the vbol@4tradition in which they had

hitherto lived after only two or three conversations with a nihiliste ,,139 , 140 Doytch as Shapiro points out, is doubtless exaggerating.

Any yfeshi va student who had mastered the Rus'sian 1angugage ta the

extent that he cou1d even converse wi th a nihilist had already \ \ obviously rejected a great pa,rt of his heritage. The yeshivot

• moreover, were in decline and sorne even producing their share of

radicals. The implication nonetheless is clear. Jewish youth " even in the most traditional environments (many a revolutionary

emerged ~from the yeshivot) were being infected'by the new

currents in the air. Life in ~e Pale Was becoming increasingly

difficult and held oût litt1e hope for the future. Apostasy W2lS _ r not the answer for young people in se~rch of a better warld

àlthough it may have had appeal for those only interested in

furthering a career or evading Jewish disabilities. (According

to Tcherikover, the nùmber of Jews among the intelligentsia who

apostasized for ~areerist reasons was at least as high as that of 141 those who apostasized among the revolutionaries).

The revolutionary moyement on the other hand did seem to

offer Itself as a possible ans~er and altho~9h it usually meant a

!'" complete' break with oneth Jewish environment and tradition

1 1 - -.-_ ._____ J.. ____ ._ ._- '-_. - - - -...:.....~--~ ,.~ -~,------!.-~.------.....>•. --- ____~ ~ .!.-.o.. ____ i ,

- 62 -

(perhaps because it did) the movemênt began to draw more and more

yôunq Jews into its rankso This was eapecially the case after

1881 1 when Marxism appeared on the scene10 And while lit was not so

difficult to undergo conversion for the sake of a better union 1 with the Russian people in the pre-188l era, after IB81 and the 142 pogroms the resu1t was often internaI tragedyo. l' It is my considered opinion, and a fairly safe assumption l

think,~to .say that had events followedthe We~t Europea~ pattern,

had emancipation been 9tanted the Jews, the revo1utionary movement in al1. its guises would never have exercized the s~.,:) R3 ::.... \':.L ru "A influence in Jewish life. "The torrent ,hich ha~been dammed~ , ,\ \, 143 up in one channel rushed violently into another. Il a Once l- ù again, however, .the circumstances of Russ.ian life contrived to

~

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1

1 1 - -- - "-_. __ .~.-_ ...... _.. _. __ .. - ~ ,-- - -

ŒAPTER 7

c 1 ü""ALE~ER III AND BEYOND

1· 1881 ie one of the important dates. în Russian ~Jewish history

(as well as in Russian history) being the year of the

assassination of A'lexander II, the year which marks the outbreak

of a series of violent pogroms in the Empire, the' start of the

rea1, exodus of Russian Jewry, primarily to America etc. Not

~ surp?="ising1y, the events that took place at the beginning of the

1880s a1so were to affect the conversionist trend, at least among 1 the upper segment of Russian Jewry.

The year 1881 in which a wave of pogrbms (over 600) swept b southern Russia, marked the first major break among enlightened

Jews with the phi1osophy and program of en1ightenment and / . .::;;" 144 emanc~pation. "Not since 1648 had the consciousness of

being Jewish iri an alien and hostile world been so vivid. ,,145

Ruasian Jewry was caught unawares. "The 1mpress10ns. . ' of the

recent • era of reforms' were still fresh in their minds. They

still remembered the initial steps of Alexander II's govenrnmerit

in the'direction of the complete civil emancipatiort of Russian ... Jewry, the appeals of ~ .i1ftel~ectual classes of Russia calling

(fi upon the Jews to- draw nearer to them, the bright prospects of a . rejuvenated Russia. ,,146

Suddenly this Russian people into whom the progressive o I.J le> forces of Russian Jewry had been sc desparate1y striving to

merge·, to the point of losing their own identity, emerged as a • ~ monster, a people who if theya, themselves did not 100t and '9"o

, " ------_.. ~---~_. \"

\

- 64 - (...... , 147', , and pogromize, stood slently by as others d~d. Radlcal

Russia was as silent as libera1 Russia to the very great 1

disil1uBionment of revolutionary Jewish youth. One intelligent

responded as fol1ows: .

When l remember what has been done to us, ,how we have been taught to love Russia and RUBsian speech, how we have been induced and compelled to introduce the RUBsian language and everything RUBsian i,nto our .... families so that our chi1dren know no other language but RUBsian, and' how we are now repu1sed and persecutèd, then our hearts are fi lIed wi th sicke~!fl9 despair "from which there seems to he no escape ••• Il '

Once having gotten o~ér the Bhock (if one ever did) the

reactions to the pogrom wave and to the myriad of new or revived " anti-Jewish legislation 'Were varied. Suffice it to mention C) o three, - only the la st of which concerns us here al though the first two were more important. in ,tt!rms of Jewish history: emigration, the deve10pment of Jewish natic;malisltl in aQ~ide variety of forms, and baptisme

1 .. (:-\ "With each new penalty that the Czarist government ~~stowed (j ! on Je~B for being Jewish," writes Lucy Dawidowicz, "the flight

from .:fews and Judaism accelerated among the careerists and

se1f-seekers, the anxi.ous and the unstable, the self-haters and 1 149 xenotJ!'0pists. Il This picture of the convert~ of this

period is, in the estimation of this writer, unf,air, or at least 1

1 only ~artially true. An examination of the policy of the Czarist

regimes towards the Jews in the final years of the riineteent~

1 1

~ _.1, ..il . .1.; ,.... • - 65 - (

century, will show l think, why Many ordinary people who would not fit Dawidowicz' s description Wu provokedinto this move by,-, /. totally unrea~onable and damaging'"' legislation. Many of the ,jJ individuals in question, it is worth remembering, had by this

l~ ". tirne, so integrated themselves into Russian life and culture and so disassociated themelves from Jewish life and culture as to

\1 have had little alter2ative.

The pogroms represented onlY,çrhe beginning of what would ... become Pobedonostsev's long-term solution to the Jewish problem: ,J one-th'ird to convert, one-third to emigrate, one-third to perish \, i from hunger, etc. Pressure was applied by the following i ! enactments among others. The regulations confining the Jews to t C.:i \) ,,'0 .f the Pale began ta he rigidly enforced and Jews living outside the ! , ~ , Pale were driven back into it on the slightest \pretext. Even ! ~ l,\ those who because they had been classed as skilled arti~ans or 1, i' . discharged army \"eteru. had been allowed to live outside the l ! ~ Pale were expelled with . their families. 150 Further adding i to the congestion of the cities and towns of the Pale and the 1 :-., economic woes of its Jewish inhàbitants was the arder expelling 1 the Jews, often at a few days notice, from the villages where

many had lived, for centuries. Jews were now too excluded from the professions which had been open to them during the l860s and

l870s and in which they had dene extremely weIl, notably in the' .. legal profession. Jews were also no longer allowed te hold any . ' () civil or municipal office an'd were. even forbidden to act as

" • 1 J 66 -

151 nurses in hospitals or tutors in private hOmes.

, • f From 1882 onwards,the admission of Jews to seco~dary schools and universtt1es was restricted by the introduction of a quota system. In 1886 the government limited the attendanèe of Jews residing within the Pale to ten percent in aIl schools and universities, a ridiculous figure when one considers that in many centers of the Pale Jews formed 80% or even more of the

population. In early '1887 Jewish students were limited to 5% outside the Pale, 3% in St. Petersburg and in Moscow. "Of aIl the laws which swept down upon them from Sti Petersburg and

1 Moscow," wrote an observer, "those 'which the Jews find harQest to V bear are the regulations that block their entrance to the Russian univ~sities. ,,152

Finally there were the expulsions - fr,om St. Petersburg in

1890, Moscow in l89~, Novgorod, Riga and Yalta in 1893. An eyewitness reported on the Moscow expulsion.

People who ha~ lived in Moscow for twenty, thirty , or even fort y years were forced to se1l their property CJ within a short time and le~ve the city. Those who were;, too paor to comply, wi th the orders of the police, or who did not succeed in selling their prope~ty for a mere song ~ there were cases of poor people disposing oj' their whole furniture for one ort,wo rubles - were thrown into jail, or sent to the transportation pris~g~ together with criminals and aIl kinds of riff-raff ••• " " Lucy Dawidowicz says that the expulsions from Moscow alohe , . 154 ~ 0 .' , prodùced 3,000 converts. The leg~l and illegal Jewish

population of Moscow amounted to so~ 30,000. Sorne 20,000 Jews "-

/ 1 ,1 ! - 67 - <: who had 1ived in Moscow, fram 15-20 years were forcibly removed to the Pale. 155 "/ [ Pauline Wengeroff, a womàn who experien~ed the pain of her 1 \ [ own chi1dren's baptism, summed up the situation in the Rperiod we i . ; have been discussing thus: (she i80f course referring only to a r t certain segment of the Jewish population) ,t In the eighties, with antisemitism raging all over RUBsia, a Jew had two choices. He could, in the name of Judaism, renounce everything that had become indepensable to him, or he cou1d choose freedom with its offers of education and career - through paptism. Hundreds of enlightened Jews chose the latter. These apostates were not converts out of conviction~

the above two quotations would lead one te believ& that the

~ conversionS in this period were undergone almost exclusively f0r , practical reasons. Although this may indeed have been the rule, there were people who converted for ether reasons - faith for ) example, or as in the case of Alexander Kraushar, out of an

0,' .' 1")1

, - 68 - ( overriding sense of identification with the people and culture

of his home>and. Alexander Kraushar wae a Polieh Jew ~o was born and l~ed in Conqress Pol and, the section of Pol and around Warsaw that was not absorbed by the partitioning powers although 1 ' it was under Rus~iantcontrol after the partitioni~g of Poland by '> Russia, Pruùssia and Austria, so called because it "was sanctioned as it were by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. / Al though it is not our intention to trace the history of conversion in Poland but only to sketch, through the biography of one individual, a portrait of the process of total

assimilation in Poland in J the latter half of the nineteenth

~ntury, we have decided to inciude this sketch of Kraushar

because certain of the~~etails of Alexander Kraushar's~~iography clearly illustrate the pattern 9f assimilation and conversion. Congress Poland was only incorporated into the Russian Empire proper after the uprising of 1863. While the 400,000 Jews had-been subject to discrimination as Jews, they had never

suf~ered as they had under direct Russian rule and a comfortb1e / \ Jewish middle clase, familiar with the Polish language and

Polish traditions d~veloped and provided a base for a signlficant Polish Jewish intelligentsia. The rate of

acculturation was much faste~ among the upper class in Poland than in the Russian Pale, no doubt in part at least because of the greater freedom and closer contact both on the economic and,

cult~fal-intellectual levei wlth Western Europe.

.',1 }

( - 69 -

The assimilationist movement among Jews originated in \ Pol and in the nineteenth century as an attempt te escape the low " • '\ rJ status, degradation, etc. that attached to ones being a Jew. The movement was cènnected both with Poland's ong01ng struggle for independence and with the beginning of iridustralization in Poland. 158 The assimilationists accepted the viewof Pelish intellectuals on the Jewish problem and the solution

1 advocated by them, namely Polonization: this meant basically that the Jews should become Poles distinguised fram other Poles only in the matter of their religion. 159 These

individuals, like their German 1>rethren~ became Poles of the -", 1 c) Mosaic faith. In spite, however, of their deterroined efforts, I· f Reform never ,succeeded in becoming institutionalized in i· . 160 , f,~ POland. (It must be borne in mind that the· overwhelming f ,f majority of Pollsh Jewry were Hasidim and devoutly religious.) s Historical1y, conversion wa~ the on1y way a Jew in Poland

~ 1 cou1d escape the Jewish group. Among the ninet'eenth century • ,.J 1 assimilationists conversion wa'è general1y a two or three , generation process. The first generation men who succeeded ~n commerce, industry, etc. usually embarked on the assimi1ationist

road in the knowledge that only their children or grandchi~dren would ijcease to bear the ,distinctive marks of the!r origin and be , 161 truly Polonized. This generation consc!ously set out ta socialize their children into • the dominant culture. The children often had themselves baptized upon reaching adulthood,. ,./"'

.... ( 70 -

bringing to a logical conclusion a process that had begun in

their childhoods, beg~n, one might add, not on their initiative. -\ Alexander Kraushar, Polish historian, was\born in 1843 of \ ,Jewish parentage and died in 1931 a devout Cath~lic. The

assimilation proceS$ outl1ned above, ended\jJl conversion / ~hich in this case in the third generatipn, was beg n by; Alexander' B

grandfather, Meir. Meir Kraushar, so Jacob S atzk~ tells us, was half-maskil, half-misna~id.162 the PoUsh rebellièn of that year, he served \Warsaw municipal

guard. Mlich although it, required its me know POliah, ~ / accepted the bearded Orthodox unlike tne guard which 1 o insisted on clean-shaven and western-dres a fact Which would suggest that Meir had not h~t faloQ,Ut of the Jewish world.

Meirle Bon and A~exander's later

changed his .name to Herman,. received a sem education; . he did study sorne -Hebrew, and sorne religio subscribe in

'later life to works of Polish Judaica, wri lish. MAs a

well-to-do Jew and as a member of the.., 'Germ t (Herman) co,nsidered hirnself to be là" "Vtive 1 and he believed that it was necessary to become thoroug!tly home n the

culiture of the county, and to become "a ful citizen" .16'3 ,-, And though he eonsidered it his dutY as it

respêcted by POles, BO it was equally his du '. i? faithful to that sector of Jewish communal which he"

. " .. ,;t . , .. ------""------'

- 71 -

164 identified himself. , \ Herman's son Alexander, was sent ta the real-gymnasium in { i t, Warsaw, a model school attended by no more than ten-Jews and a center for the forging of the poliah nationalist rrovement. Here 1 • were trained the elite who, q were to lead Poland and'determine her fate. Although he was active in a self-education cirele for Jews, even as a youth Alexander' Kraushar identified with the . - 165 1 totality of PoUsh life. . 1 Kraushar originally published in a Polish Jewish journal f (Jutrzenka) and dealt w~th Je~ish themes and the'suffering of

the J~ws ofchis generation. After oompleting a History of the () Jews of Poland (in Polish), which he justified wri ting on the gr;ounds of civic obligation to Poland and to prove the

long-standing attaohment of the Jews to Poland, the Jewish subjeet matter disappeared rrom~ Kraushar'.s writings. 166

From this time forward he wrote of the PoliSh nobility, of J' 1 courts and '<>castIes, of Po1ish wars and, national patriotic themes • Shatzlty commènts that' his wor'k looked tike the "work of an old PoUsh land lord who was deepy rooted in the 01!! PoUah a ' tradition. He was apo,logetic in his treatment.. of tl}e Polish past and never allowed himself one. ward of criticlsm of POland'a 167 historical past .• .-"

'1 _The period following the 1863 'uprising Sh <,froWlng-' " ", . hostil.ity to the influence of the Polonizèd Jewi.h plutocracy ,in' , the economie life of Poland and the·atart of a.debate on .. " '. -.-.-, ---_.~----

•\ r r t 1 f " , ' .\ o 72 -- assimilation. "Under the political conditions of the time assimilation 'did not mean merely embracing Polish culture. The 1'" Rom~n Catholic Church played tao important, a role in the preqervation of Po,lish culture to make it, possible to separate '. 168 ' ~ 1 ~ Catholicism from Poloniam". Celia Hellér confirma this " idea of linking nationality ~nd religion1 in the final analysie,

shé observ~s, notbfng the assimllationists did or could do with the èxception of converting, was Bufficient to set them apart ~

, l/. j fro~ the mass ~f Jewry an~ make them Poles in the Polish , " 169 Imind. The prevailing conception remained "To be Foliah . ' " . - is to he Catholic". This wa" a180 the- case in Germany· where

\ L • from the aécond decade of the 19th century to he German was te o , be Christian. Perhaps this seeming need te proclaim the distinetiveness ot'one's national group shared by Germany and polan~/was influenced by the fact that both underwent occupation by a foreignl " power in these perioda • • KaU.har dia not experie~6e any difficulty with the idea

expressed aboyer he had lon~ sinee come to believe that Ç]. • 170 Catholicism and Polonism were synonymous. In 1895 - Kraushar and his fam~ly embraeed Roman Catholicism. Kraushar's ,- : be conversionIj cannat ascribed to careerist or utilitarian

'motives .", It ~s clear th~ Re identified in a complete way with

the sp~itual a~d Icultural life of the people and the country whan he claimed as his own •. 1- 'Kraushar of course :J.s unusu~l. As suggested above, Most /

, " _-_ ._ ...... ~_; ______.~_Ul_61 .... ' __•___ ~~._)

1"

- 73 - (:

conversions were motivated ic reasons. Jan Bloch, financier, railway contractor, r sch ar, economist was one

~ 1 171 such. Aptly called the loyal' con~ert"by Dawidowicz Bloch, although baptized as a young man, remained devoted to and

indeed motivated by Jewish interests and concerns his Whole life. He not only supported Jewish institutions but-actively conducted 1 research and compiled data on the connitions of .:iews living in the

0, Polish provinoes of the Czarist Empire. Shatzky:rem:lfs, that

f ; Kraushar could never comprehend the PhilanthrOpy' -~~~e_d" the , 172 • Jews by his contemporary and fellow convert, Ja~ Bloch. ' A Christian all of his adul-t life, Bl.,och·s testament read: CI "I was my whole life a Jew and 1 die as a Jew.,·173 It ia rintersting that Polish society wou1d have acccepted a man who

made no pretense of the fact that his ~ristianity was essentia11y no more than a cover for his true self. As a

1 Christian, BlocÎ1 was 'probab1y in a better position to he1p the Jewa.

? From the viewpoint of sorne, the convert must have appeared

to have had everythin9 to gain and virtually nothing ta 10se • • .. By becoming a convert to the Orthodox Russian Church, wrote Raisin in 1913, a Jew is immediately freed ftom aIl the degrading restrictions. on his ·freedom of movement and his choice of profession. Converts, witbout distinction of sex, are helped financially by an inunediate payment of surns frÇlrn 13-30 rubles and until r,cently were granted freedom from taxation for

..

" _4i

" ""~-;:~''''~~ ...."''"';.;- ~!t''' ~- ,: ~',. '.. ; A " "1~ , ~

.~ï~,,:.~;Li:~:I~lIf~~~.4,D'«*2'5'~r :-;~ w,,~Jf~ :";t.:P1'j@I"';

1 the inducements of the government and despite the very real pressures placed upon Russian Jewry, the road to the baptismal

fo~ was never a crowded one in Russia. Pobedonostsev did achiev.e rather notable success rin two of the elements of his master planJ more than a million Jews emigrated from Russia in the last decades

of the nineteenth and early years o~ the twentieth centuries.

Death 'through starvation and illness certainly1 also claimed very large numbers. Pobedonostev's hope however, of forcing a third of RUBsian Jewry to convert was doomed to disappointment. Conversion

"'" ... only affected a tiny rninority in the very large Russian Jewish population. Whatever the impression - and it ls inevitably the famous, the important and the wealthy who are written about - this period of RUBsian Jewish history did not Bee conversion become a

dominant force any more than any other p:eriod although by no~

secularization was proceeding apace. If anything, this era markéd the reawakening of Jewish consciousness, a revivai of' interèst in ~ . the pl,ight and the future of the Jewish people. r - - ~--~--_. - --... ---- c

CONCLUSION (

Trends toward complete assimilation with t~e environ-... ment have always been prevalent within the-Jewish ,.,., population. They are generated by the Jewish position in the world. 175

By the Jewish position in the world Engel;nan means Jewish

statelessness, a condition which had resul ted in the Jews being a

{j ( minority, often a persecuted minority, everywhere. Because, in 1 other words, the Jew had always been the outsider and almost

always an object of hatred or seorn because of his religion, the temptation to join the .' dominagt group must always have existed for sorne members of hi~ people. That temptation acquired varying

degrees of strength quite nat~rally over the centuries depending

bath on external conditions and on what was happening at the time C,:' within the ,Jewish world itself. In Ru,sia in the period l have been discussing, conversion

1 became more preva~ent than it, had been for mal1Y centuries. The

two ma jor factors respons ible for the increase in the number of

baptisms were the cantonist system and the enlightenment. And

while the former produced more eonverts in absolute terms, its

effect on the thinking and future of Russian Jewry was minimal

and not long-lived. The enlighbenment on the other hand gave

birth as it weret to the modern age: it initiated a process~

probably an irreversible process that has been gaining momentum

down to our own day.'

.The weakening of rel igious Hes Which accompanied the

enlightenment had a well-nigh disastrous e.ffeot on the

èonsciousness of community that"had existed among the Jews for it ( - 76 -

was basically the religion in its traditiônal form which had kept

them tog'ether. The wi t};ldrawal or whi t tling down of communal

autonomy also contributed significantly to the erosion of Jewish

consciousness and to Jewish problems of identity, thereby

.spurring the cause of assimilation and conversion. Once religion \ ceased ta he' or ceased to be seen as the ,overriding force of

one 1 s life, once one ceased to reject the outside world and began

to question one's values, a Whole new world of possibilities was

revealed. New ways of expressing one's identity had to he found

in this essentially new world. 1 Conversion represented one way of dealing with the pressures r c ( " and/or opportunities of the age. A number of other responses to r the crisis generated bythe enlightenment and the various events

in Russian life in general evo~ved over time - Jewish nationalism

for example or Jewish sociàlism - and in taking root among

Russian Jewry came often to constitute alternatives ta

assimilation and conversion and to di vert energy that mdght

otherwise have been directed towards these ends. Unlike in

Germany or Poland where Jewish intellectuals often converted and

contributed their talents to German or Polish culture,

Russian-Jewish intellectuals were often drawn into the new

movements springing up in Jewish life. ./ People choose to convert as we have seen, for a variety of () reasons. Their decis"ion ls hased either on objective 01' subjective factor"~ or perhaps a combination of bath. The rate

- 1 n Il J Hi' ••ni Il '.MU , \ '::r '.' '1.~

71 -0 (

of conversion is of course affected by the tenor of the times.

The town fool of Slutsk summed - up the very grave situation in

Rus~ia at the ,end of the ninet,eenth century: "Jews, brothers" he

1 cried, "hurry and get converted as quickly as possible,; a timl will come ,when t'hey won't permit you even ~atl... l76

Prevailing trends in public thinking also affected trends

toward conversion. Acccording to Ruppin, mixe' rna.rriag~s are >lot more frequent when Jews enjoy social equ'ali ty and free

intercourse wi th non-Jews, and baptisms are more common where .. 1 t . 171 t h ey h ope to escape certa~n soc~a os raC1sm. Where

antisemitism is strongest and where the Church has lost its hold

on public opinion, baptism, says Ruppin, rio longer helps the Jew 118 and the number of baptisms decreases.

Another objective factor affecting the rate of conversion is

the host society. Not aIl Jews, even enlightened Jews, had-.equal , , , , . '1 prospects of.being absorbèd by Christian society. Wealthy Jews f t and especially the children 'of weal thy Jews had a distinct

1 advantage in that their weal th put. them on equal., footing wi tH thelr non-Jewish contemporari,es

and influence in certain cir~les. Jews fram lesser circumstances

and particularly if they still bore traces of their origin in

speech and manner had difficulty gaining entry into non-Jewish

society and even into nationalist cireles Where a certain degree

of assimilation was required. () Ta be worthwhilè, conversion had of course to be effective.

,~ j' 1 ____ --;--,. __ '~,~. _--,...... ,-:,------....1""'&""iJâ~r_ ..iIi'li!~~~~ 1 f.~ ~~--__~'~!~"~'C~'--~------~o--'~~'~I'-,~--~'~'-'-'------~----~------______.. ~"-'---

( - 79

l ' The government of the host society wou~ presumably have tried to

ensure this. The Russian government however, despi te i ts

concerted efforts to convert the Jews, maintained a perverse law ; j on the books from 1850 onwards by which a converted Jew was only '. f permi tted to change his first name; he and his descendants were i required to continue to bear their Jewish family name, the mark / l79 of their tainted origin, for aIl time. This law,

needless to say, was not always observed and probably

unenforceable. 1n ,most cases c;:onverS'ion does seern to have been

successful, if not for the first generation at least for the

second or third who disappear without a trace into the Chr!stian le population. In the final analysis, the decision to cbnvert t rested with the individual. Because the decision was a personal, essentially subjective one in which diverse psychological and

sociological factors came together, it is not surprising that the

Jewish convert came from a wide range of backgrounds and

experiences. It ie possiblè nonet.heless, to categorize, if only

roughly the different converts by type.

The most obvious convert is the true believer. This type,

it would seern, is an embarrassment to Jewlsh wri ters for as StatT-,islawski6' points- out, neither Ginsburg, nor Tsitroh iw their wr!~tngs on converts m~ntionso the believers.

r The convert who cornes closest te the bel iever but yet .1 re~ai~B in a class by himself, ia the type Who accepta t~e faith

o f the nation with whom he strongly identifies because the faith

'. ------~------~----.....------"""I9

\ , ", _ ~ .~ ____~"'tU~ ..,~«IU'.4tft<:t ... ,,~ ___~_~ __ ~

- 79

and the nation are perceived as one. Kraushar is an example of

this type.

Perhaps the most typical convert is the person \')iho

apostasizes in order to pursue educational or career goals denied

41 to him as a Jew - the careerist or opportunist. The practical

converts such as Bloch, Coopernik, Chwolson and the Narodniki who

marr~d to facilitate their work, fall into this group. Members

of this grQup may have come to regard ~aptism not as apostasy but

only as a corollary .of a~similation. In the case of the three

'men mentioned above at least, conversion while allowing them to 1 ,1 enter society or realize career goals, did not end their contact 1 - 1 1 with the Jewish communi ty suggesting that this was nct in fact

Cf the aim at aIl. This continued affiliation of the convert with " , the community, however, doe~ not apply to their descendents.

Another type o~ convert about whom much has been written is

the renegade. Tsitron bitterly remarks that a great many pages

of Jewish history are soaked with tears and b~ood thanks to

converts, that no sooner does a person convert does he become an

enemy of the whole Jewish people using every 'opportuni ty to 180 pe~secut~ them. Brafman was' a "renegade-type Il convert.

uMlodetski, the man who shot Loris-Melikov' may be said to be

yet another type Whom l câll for want of a better word, a misfit.

Men who were failures at whatever they tried their hand, unhappy

men fu'11 o~ Tesentment, strike back often in str-ange ways and

often end only by hurting themselves. "How", asks Tcherikover, ----_.------..:-.__ . -- - -

\

1 1 j - 80 ! t l could this sarne yeshiva-student, the terrorist, have feU whén

just a moment before his hanging there stood before him a pri~st

with a cross which he had to kiss ministering ~o_ him his last

1 rites?,,181 ,- j ,1 The final category is the very poor and the crirninal. The poor included servant girls, t~ homeless and forlorn, who were sometlmes. the targets of t h e mlSS.Oi onarJ.es . or targets of bn.bes,

given by men like Brqfrnan. As we have s~en toc, conversion also

secured t'he reduction if not the complete dropping of a criminal

charge. Ruehen Ru~instein, the father of the musician and

composer Anton Rubinstein, went bankrupt in St. Petersburg at the

beginning of the 1830s. At that time one was jailed and lost one's right of re~idence fo~ bankruptcy.182 Rubenstein in, ,0 '/' his search'for a way out of his difficulties decided to accept

Il Russian Orthodoxy. "In Nicholas the l's day", writes Ginsburg,

"conversion was the best solution for any troubles or , mis fortunes • The baptismal water cleansed not ~ only the sin , , 183 against God, but the one against the stat.e as weIl. Il

According ~o the laws of the time even the worst law breakers

thieves and murderers wére freed from hard" labour and given

much milder punishments if they converted at the ti~e of trial; 1 merchants who found thems~lves in,the position of Rubinstein and

• 1 agreed to ernbrace Orthodo,Xr were cornpletely re'leased from their 184 debts and not ,~eprived o~ the!r rights of residence. , 1 This type of law se~ms to have applied also - if only de

';1

". .. ,... ' .. \' ,r ~ ------.-----

- 81 - /C )

,) facto - in the ..... me, of Alexander 1. Duhnov says 1 that Nevahovlt.ch f s patron, Abraham Peretz converted, having been ruined in the War

o f 1 B 1 2 by ml."1" Hary con tracts. 185

A brief look at some statistics might be use fuI. In 1848

there were 2,445 converts; in 1854 - 4,439; these years are

presumably so high because of the cantonists. Between 1860-80

there were approximate1y 350-~50 per year. In 1881, the year of "- progroms - 572~ 1882, the year of the May Laws,' displacement trom

the villages and generally increased hardships, 610; 1883 - 186 461. When viewed against the absolute number of Jews in

Czarist Russia - over 5 million by World War I, the number of

converts is pretty insignificant. Raisin says trOreover that with ~ the spread of Zionism in Russia, conversions continued to

diminish although there were relapses in ~891 (expulsion from

" Il a87 Moscolfl) and with the pogroms of 1901. This was also no

doubt true of 1905 following thè" disappointment of the aborted

revolution.

l, [' convert In the end, we must rem~mber, the Jewish was an individual " with his own needs and motivations. Unlike the majorit.y of Jews

the convert either felt he nad little to lose by abandon4.ng

Judaism or somethlng ta gain. In summation then, for many thousands ot Jews in the period we have been discussing, conversion

represented either the solution ta a personal problem or the best

way of handling the various traumas and opportunities of the

age. ------,-=~-~.- : ..... -, :1 •

,--_._------_.- ----.- -

i, !. FOOTNOTES t i' " (J " 1Arthur Ruppin, The Jews in the Modern World, London, ~ Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1934, p. 273.

1 2Simon Dubnov, A History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, Vol. l, p. 139. / ! 3Henry J. Tobias, The Jewish Bund in Russia from its Origins to 1905, p. 3.

1

5 Ibid. , p. 2.

6 Ibid. , p. 5. > 7Ibid• /,

-'" aIbid. , p. 7. ~I v- o I -r. 9 Ibid•

p. 9. --~---,/ llIsaac Levitats, The Jewish Community in Russia,(1772- 1944, p. 173".

12Dubnov, A Jews History of the1 in Rus!ia and Poland, Vol. l, p. 380.

l3S • M• Sacher, , •. i,. The Course of Modern Jewish History',' p. ·196.

14 Dubnov, A Hiet0!X of the Jews in ~u"sBia and Po1and, Vol. Il, p. 114.

lSIbid• v~i. l, p. 380. --- ...

, , .

" :. )

, , . , , " ' ------,-·!-----I,.---~· .. "" ----

.-

- 93 -

l7salo Baron, "Ghetto and Emancipation", Menorah Journal, Vol. XIV, p. SIS.

'18 Sha10m Spiege1, Hebrew Reborn" p. 45.

1 ~ 19 Dubnov, Natidna1ism and History, p. 132. l, • .~ 1 20 i Spiege1, op. cit., p. 59. I-

l 21 Ruppin, op. cit., p. 275.

• 22;acob Katz, Tradition and Criais: Jewisb Society at 'tthe End of the Middle }\ges, p. 250. ()

24 Il Louis Finkelstein, The Jewish Reli9ion~ lts Beliefs and Practices~' Vol. II, ,Louis FinJcelstein, ·-ed., The JewSI Their Histo~,'Cuïture and Religion" p. 1799.

25JaCk Segal, -"Is an Apostate a Jew· in .!!'!!... Reconstructionist, p. 10.

" 26 v Ibid.

27 . Enclyclopedia Judaica, 'Vol. 3, p. 210.

~8selma Stern-Taubler, "The Jew in the Transition from Ghetto to".Emanctption~·,. Historia Judaica, Vol. II, p. 110.

29Sacher, op. cit., p. 38......

, ' '-

'/ : '. , . . ' . ,

... ",,' c -----t---- -,,'"------~-+---I------~-- ... -~~.- -

(j~ -' 84

31Katz , op. cit., p. 251. ,i • --32' " ---4-- ~e1, op. cit., p. 61. f J 33Katz , op. cit., p. 251. J 34spiege1, op. ci~., p. 52, \ f ! 35~., p: 53. 1 , , - > • 1 .' ,r ", 37 ','" 1 _ ~.,' p., 54~ l, 38Above Jl8;ragraph Maed. on ~., pp. 61-62_" ! • - . o 39 Spiegel" QP. cit~, p. 62. • <

4lsacher, op. cit., p~ 202.' ".

j), 43Raphael Mahler, A History of Modern Jewq. 1780-1815, p. 539. . " 1 1 44 ,Spiegel," op. cit •• p. 75.

45 . 'Ï'he' Vilna Gaon,' 8 reform wou1d ,ha~ ._fJected 'on1y ~ . _ama1l elit:e. Hasidi.sm, however, wu a malj'a, ,m~vement. \ . " , '. . '.

_. .,

" .. 1 " . ,. / /,.4_.' -:.'~' _,_ .1 l !,

_ ...... ___I-- __.. ____ ... ~-- ,~ ______~ ____..... II ...... I.·.I ..... L.r.l.r .. _____ .. + ..,

1 85 ( \ - 47Raisin, op. cit.. , p. 133.

/ 48LOuis Greenberg, The JeW8 in Russial The Stru9g1e

t QL 188.___ for Emancipation. p. fi '1 f_ .. ' 11 , t , - i /' 49~.,' pp. 1~8"'189. ':\ 91 , 50Qu'o'ted in Dubnov, Vol. 1 •• 1916, .p. 356.' ." ~ : ~; 1/ .. , . -/ ~ " ~ S1~., p. 357. . , .d 'l' r- .. r' I 52 ' . Dubnov, Vol. II, op~ ,dt. , p. 132. ~ \, A P .. 53 ' t;evitat., ~E· cit. l'. pp. 176-177. , o 54IA Dubnov, Vol. l,' p. 396. # 0 ... l '" 0 55 " sau1 Ginsburg~ Historical Wor'ka, Vol. 1.-11, Convert., .. in Czàrist Russia (Studiee ln Russlan Jewry), p •. 43.:, )...

....J .. 5'IbieJ. , -, - /, 57Mah1e~~, 22- c1t.~ , p. 580. . " 1 .. ' 58LU~ Dawidowicz,. ad. The Golden Tradition* Jewiah'" Lite and thought in ;Eastern 'Eurôp!, p ~ 48. , ! , r, • , ' . .r ". ',' . ,<) 60 ' . " GinSbU~~, Vql. ~

~ ~ , . , .. 61 ' "

{ '. .__ .- f 1 i 1 . tr· --86 " "0 63 \ 1 Dubnov, Vol. l, -op. cit., p. 396 ••

64 • ,-Ibid •

'" 1< ~ 65~., p. 397. . ,. \ 66 , . Ginsburg, Historic~l Works, Vol. III: Jewisn Martyrdom in Czarist Russia,-p. 58. s \

67~., pp. SB-59.

,69Michae1 '~red Stants1awski, The Transformation of Jewish Society in Russia 1825-55, pp. 210-11 and footnote p. 211 • . , 70 o , Dubnov, Vol. II, p. 18. ; 71 . Levitats, op. cit., p. SB •

72 '- . ~~ , Dubnov, Vol. II, p. 15. ~--- 73 Ibid • .. 1)

1 740uote~ in ,Gr~enberg, op. c1t;.. , p. 49.

75 Ibid., P( 50 •. j - , 16 1 r~"t~ ouoted in ~., p. 50. "

\ ' ~ 77 Ibid• - . ~

7Bouot.ed in Greenber~, cit. , p. 51.- °E· \ / J

, - -~--~------

o

- 87'-

79Ibid• - •

80Levitats, op'lcit., 'p. 67. , . ..,

·81 " '\ Ginsburg, Vol. III, pp. 62-63. ) ,

82.Lev1tats, op. C1t.,. p. 67 •

83_ Ra1S. i n, op. c i t., p. l' 39 •

./ 84 Sacher, op. cit., p. 90.

85Quoted in Lucy Dawid,owicz (ed.) The Golden Tradl'tion: Jewish Life and Thought in Eastern Europe, p. 30.

1 0 , \ 86Lev1ta . t s, op. cit. p. 91. 0 ~ 87 . • LeV1 tats, 012' cit. , p. 85. -. as Quoted in Greenberg, op. cit. 1 pp. 35-36.

B9 -- Quoted in Levitats, 012 cit" p. 84. 90 ' ' In time the Crown schools did serve a secularizing if - not the convers!onist purpose they were designed for.

91Quoted in Raisin, op. cit., pp. 183-184.

92Quoted in Dawidowicz, op. cit., p. 32. .. 93 Raisin, op. cit., p. 177 • ../ - , 94' \ O~oted in Raisin, OPt cit., p. 177. C 't._.éJ

>,

'i ~ \

" . " ------_.--.----*------.------

o - 88 - 95 Levitats, op. cH:.., p. 79..

96 Dubnov., Vol. II, op. cit., p. 158.

f.)7 ~ sacher, op. cit., p. 184 •

. . 99 Regulations frorn Greenberg, op. cit., p. 80.

J 100 r Sacher, op. cit., p. 185. 102 Dubnov, Vol. lIt op. cit.~ p. 2.06.

o - 103Ibid • \

104Greenberg, op. cit., p. 172.

105Ibid •

106I l>id.

107sau1 Ginsburg, Vol. II, op. cit.~ p. 265.

108_ -S.L. Tsitron, Converts. Types and Silhouettes from the Recent Past, Vol. Ir p. 140.

~~ 109 Dubnov. , Vol. II, 012· cit., p. 213. "r~ 1 ( • llOIbid.- , p. 211. e t> -.....----1 ." ~ .' .:~~ .. ." - ,

" ! . lit) .f",,; .....t ... , ,ÇWlJ~ .-, '.tSI\ t...... ~.l/\.~, ~ ....4". '., " ___'______~,~.,._~. ______l __ _ -, --:....! ----~-- •

1 ~ y ... ,,''

q o 11 lsacher , ~., Pr lB7.

112Although Brafman' s activities belong te the reign of Alexander II, the motivation for them rests solid1y in the period before ..

113 Dubnov, Vol. II, op. cit., p. 188.

114 \ . J • Ginsburg, Vol. II, op. cit., p. 67.

~lbid.

117 ~ . Dubnov, Vol. l,l, op. cit., p. 188. o 118Ginsburg, Vol. II, op. cit., p. 70. ll9Dubnov, Vol. II, p. 190.

120 Dawidowicz, op. cit., p. 43.

l2lLeonard Shapiro, "The Role of the Je,,!s' in the Russian Revo111tionary Movement'ft" S1avie and East European Review, Vol. XI, p. 151. • ...----. 123 Dawid,?wicz,: op.- cit., p. 45.

124shapiro, op. cit., \ P'~' , -- 125 • '" Ibid

,, ".' .

~\< À 9.:, ~~::." 1 • ,.~~;:r.sal-,a"'.J. .. H9~4j;,W.1'"i".. !&.,j~!JÙt ...(!iJ ~ U ft , . ~ ___ ,.. __ ... _:WU_M'" __ dl'" la: CJh Il Il 1

, /

" • - 90 - ... 126 " Elias Tcherikover, Yidn Revolu~nern in Rusland in " di 60er un 70 er yorn~ Historishe ~hriftn. BIll unde~ editorship ""of E. Tcherikover, A. Menes, F. Kurski and A. Rozen, (Vilna-Paris, YIVO, 1939), p. 125. .

~ 127 Quoted in Ibid. , p. 135.

128'-Ibid• , p. 131------• 129Ibid• , p. 134.

130 • 4 •.1' Ibid p. 133. f ~ 1310awidowicz, op. cit., p. 44.

132Quoted in Ibid. 1 \ ' t 133 ! 0 ;;,-.,ouoted in Dawidowic,z, op. cit., p. 44. l 134Ibid• t 1, ~~_13~In 1881 when t.he pogroms b~o~e out Aptekmim was a member of Narodnaya Volya (The Peoples Will) which grew out of the Populist movement. When he saw the murdering, raping, ete.

1f by a mob that turned not on landlords but on Jews 'wi th 'pOliee 1 ,1 standing by and the, members of his own organization silent, he 1 went, insane. There were however, other members of Narodnaya Volya of Jewish origin who helped write and disseminate anti­ semitic propaganpa.

136aased on Tcheri'kover, pp. 142-144:

137 Tcherikover, Qp4 cit., p.'144.

o

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cP J 139shapiro, op. cit. , p. -153. 140--Ibid • p. 154. Q 141Tcherikover, op. cit. , p. 133. ,

142Ibid • )

143Quoted in Rai,sin, op, cit. , p. 256.

144 . d i Daw~ ow cz, op. cit. , p. 47.

145Ibid •

146 Dubnov, Vol. II, °E' cit. , p. 324. ) 0 1~ 7 Ibid.

148Quoted in Dubnov, Vol. II, op. cit. p. 326.

149 . d i Daw~ ow CZ, op. cit. , p. 48.

150 · . Ra1s~n, op. cit. , p. 272-273. , . - ï 151Ibid• ~~

t> 152Quoted in lbid. , p. 276.

15~ov, Vol. II, cE· cit. , p. 405.

154 Dawidowicz, op. cit. , p. 48.

b 155DUbnOV, op. cit. 1 p. 406~

~ 1 l' .------"

J ,)~~ " ll')

() ~ 156pauline Wengeroff, "Memoirs of a Grandrnother" in L. Dawidowic (ed.) The Golden Tradition: Jewish Life and Thou ht in' Ea tern Euro e, p. 168.

157 Quoted ~ awidowicz, op. cit., p. 48.

15Bce1ia Stopincka HelIer, "Po1es of Jewish Background: The Case of Assimilation without Integration in Interwar Poland tt in Joshua Fishman Studies on Polish Jewry: 1919-30, p. 2~5.

159__Ib1_.,'d p. 246.

1 1 160 , 1 HelIer, op. ciL, p.247. 'r

161IbTd., p. 252.

162 Jacob Shatzky, "Alexander Kraushar nd his Raad to 1 <=, Total Assimilation", YIVO Annual, Vo L--V II , 195t, p. 148.

t 163 Shatzky, op. t p. 149. t cit. t 164 • , " Ibid p. 150. t - i 165Ibid • , -..,,--

166Ibid • , p. 160. i 1 r ., 167Ibid., p. 164.

168..1 Shatzky, 012' cit. 1 p. 165.

169 HelIer, op. ciL, p. 261.

170shatzky, 012' cit., p. 168. "-r"~- _.... _-~,-~-....,._...... ,,---

- 93 ,-

.1

111 Nahum Sokolow, "Jan Bloch: The Loyal Convert." in Dawidowicz, L. The Golden Tradition: Jewish Life ~nd Thought in Ea stern Europe, pp. 344-349. l, 'il 172shatzky, op. cit., p. 16e.

173 Sokolow, op. cit., p. 344.

174 Ra~s'i n, op. c~t.,' p. 212 •

175 En~elman, op. cit., p.52

116Quoted in Stanislawsk~.cit., p. 222.

~ 177 Ruppin, op. cit., p. 334. )

118tido 1 ./

119 stanislawski, op. cit., p. 221.

1BOTsitron, Vol. l, op. cit., p. 8.

! 1B1 h 'k it 144 1 Tc erl. over, op. c ',.p. • i

,1B2 Gl.ns • b urg, VIio. II, op. ct., p. 2BO •

1B3 Ibid• '

1B4Ibid•

) 18SDubnov, Vol. Ir~ op., cit., p. 45. ...--..

------,------

j

- 94 -

186Quoted in Raisin, op. cit., footnote, p. 278. ,.

187 Ibid .

. ' !

CL----- • 1 !

/

, ,_2- , "

.J'-l- ',~, ,. ..J ,1 r 1 ·1 BIBLIOGRAPHY ( 1 Baron, Salo. "Ghetto and Emancip'ation", Menorah Journal, Vol. XIV (June 1928).

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__-."._---,-_. Historical Works, Vol. III: 'Jewish Martyrdom in Czarist Russia, New York, S.M. Ginsburg Testimonial Cornmittee, 1937.( in Yiddish) __ -

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HelIer, Celia Stopnicka. "Poles of Jewish Backgroun~: The Ca~e of Assimilation wi thout Integration in Iriterwar Po1and" in Jushia Fishman (ed.) Studies on Polish.Jewry: 1919-39, Ne~­ York, YIVO Institut.e for Jewish Research, 1974. Katz, Jacob. Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages, New York, Schocken Books, 1961. Levitats, Isaac. The Jewish Community in Russia 1772-1844, New York, Columbia UnIversIty Press, 1943. g .Mabler, Raphael. A History of Modern Jewr,' 1780-1815, London, o Va1le~tine, Mitcbell and Co. Ltd., 19 1. i L 1 ,

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Meyer, Michael A. The arigins of the Modern Jew:[ Jewish Identity and European Culture ln Germany: 1~49-l824, De~roit, Wayne State University Press, 1967'1' Raiéin, Jacob. The Haskalah Movement in Russia, Philadelphia, Jewish P,ublication SociQty, 1913. Ruppin, Arthur. The Jews in the Modern World, London, Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1934. Sacher, H.M. The Course of Modern Jewish History, New York, Publishing Co., 1958. Schapiro, ·Leonard. "The Role of the Jews in the Russian Revolutionary Movement", Slavic and East European Review, Vol. XI (1961). Segal, Jack. "Is an Apostrte a Jew" in The Reconstructionist, New Yor~, January 10, 1964., 1 Shatzky, Ja'cob. "Alexander'-Kraushëfr and his Road to Total Assimilation", New York, YlVa Annual, Vol. VII, 1952.

f( Sokolow, Nahum. "Jan Bloch: The Loyal Convert" in Dawidowicz, L.The Golden Tradition: Jewish Life and Thought in Eastern -Europe, Bos~on, Beacon Press, 1967. Spiegel, Shalom. Hebrew Reborn, Philadelphia, Jewish Publication Soc,iety of America, 1930. Stanislawski, Michael Fred. The Trânsformation' of Jewish Society , , ' in Russia 1825-55, unpublished Ph.D. thesis for Harvard , '<, University, September, 1979.

Stern-Taubler, Selma. "The Jew in th~ Transition from ,Ghétto to Emancipation", Historica Judaica, Vol. II, New York, 1940.

"

Tcherikover, Elias. - Yidn Revolu~nern in Rusland in di 60er' un 70er yorn,~Historishe Shrlftn, BIll under editorship of E. TCherikover, A. Menes, F. Ku~ski and A. Rozen, Vilna-Paris, YlVa, 1939. Tobias, Henry J. The Jewish Bund in Russia from its Origins' to 1905, Stanford, Stanford Un~versity Press, 1972.- Tsitron, S.L. Converts, Types and Silhouettes from the Recent Past, Vol. l, Warsaw, Aheesfr, undate~. (in Yiddish) Wengeroff, ,Pauline. "Memoirs of a Grandmother" in Dawidowiczi L. o , (ed.)' The Golden Tradition: jewish Life and Thought in Eastern Europe, Boston, Beacon Pre~s, 1967.

1

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