The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772–1881 ................. 11255$ $$FM 05-26-05 11:51:16 PS PAGE i JEWISH CULTURE AND CONTEXTS Published in association with the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania David B. Ruderman, Series Editor Advisory Board Richard I. Cohen Moshe Idel Deborah Dash Moore Ada Rapoport-Albert David Stern A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher. ................. 11255$ $$FM 05-26-05 11:51:16 PS PAGE ii TheJewsofEasternEurope, 1772–1881 ISRAEL BARTAL Translated by Chaya Naor University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia ................. 11255$ $$FM 05-26-05 11:51:17 PS PAGE iii Originally published as Me-umah le-le’om, yehudey mizrakh eyropa 1772–1881 by Ministry of Defence Publishing House, Tel Aviv, Israel Copyright ᭧ 2002 The Ministry of Defence, Israel English translation copyright ᭧ 2005 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10987654321 Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bartal, Yisra’el. [Me-‘‘umah’’ li-‘‘le’om’’. English] The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772–1881 / Israel Bartal ; translated by Chaya Naor. p. cm. — (Jewish culture and contexts) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8122-3887-7 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Jews—Europe, Eastern—History—18th century. 2. Jews—Europe, Eastern—History—19th century. I. Title. II. Series. DS135.E8B3713 2005 940Ј.04924—dc22 2005042208 ................. 11255$ $$FM 05-26-05 11:51:17 PS PAGE iv Contents Introduction 1 1. The Jews of the Kingdom 14 2. The Partitions of Poland: The End of the Old Order, 1772–1795 23 3. Towns and Cities: Society and Economy, 1795–1863 38 4. Hasidim, Mitnagdim, and Maskilim 47 5. Russia and the Jews 58 6. Austria and the Jews of Galicia, 1772–1848 70 7. ‘‘Brotherhood’’ and Disillusionment: Jews and Poles in the Nineteenth Century 82 8. ‘‘My Heart Is in the West’’: The Haskalah Movement in Eastern Europe 90 9. ‘‘The Days of Springtime’’: Czar Alexander II and the Era of Reform 102 10. Between Two Extremes: Radicalism and Orthodoxy 112 11. The Conservative Alliance: Galicia under Emperor Franz Josef 124 12. ‘‘The Jew Is Coming!’’ Anti-Semitism from Right and from Left 134 13. ‘‘Storms in the South,’’ 1881–1882 143 ................. 11255$ CNTS 05-26-05 11:51:20 PS PAGE v vi Contents Conclusion: Jews as an Ethnic Minority in Eastern Europe 157 Notes 169 Bibliography 185 Index 195 Acknowledgments 201 ................. 11255$ CNTS 05-26-05 11:51:20 PS PAGE vi Introduction This book relates the history of Eastern European Jewry from the time of the Polish partitions at the end of the eighteenth century to the pogroms that broke out in the southern regions of the Russian empire in the early 1880s. In the summer of 1772, the three neighbors of the Polish state tore off large chunks of its territory, embarking on a process that, in less than two decades, led to Poland’s demise as an independent political entity. The first partition of Poland was also the beginning of the triple encounter of the Jews of the Polish Commonwealth with the Austrian bureaucracy (in Galicia), the Russian officialdom (in White Russia [Belorussia]), and the Prussian administration (in western Prus- sia). This encounter, between a populous Jewish community (with an age-old cultural tradition) and the apparatus of the centralized state, was for the Polish Jew the commencement of the modern era. Because the Jews residing in the Polish-Lithuanian kingdom formed an absolute majority of European Jewry, the first partition of Poland can actually be viewed as the commencement of the modern era in Jewish history. Thereafter began a mass immigration movement that greatly increased the number of Polish Jews in other parts of Europe. In 1772, a complex and multifaceted process of integration and accul- turation began in the regions severed from the Polish state. The Polish- Lithuanian Jew became a ‘‘Russian Jew,’’ a ‘‘German Jew,’’ or an‘‘Austrian Jew.’’ This process was not rapid. Most Jews in the areas annexed from Poland to the neighboring states continued to maintain their old way of life for decades after they were no longer subjects of the Polish king. They regarded themselves as ‘‘Polish Jews,’’ and that is how they were seen by German, Austrian, and Russian writers and bureaucrats. As far back as the 1860s, the Yiddish writer Isaac Joel Linetzky called his anti- Hasidic satire Dos poylishe yingl (The Polish lad), although he depicted the protagonist as a Jew living in the Ukraine, deep inside the territory of the Russian empire. Jewish socialists in London published a Yiddish newspaper intended for the masses of poor immigrants from the Rus- sian empire and called it (in 1884) Der poylisher yidl (The Polish yid). According to one of its editors, this name was chosen to voice the immi- grants’ protest against the disdainful attitude adopted toward them by ................. 11255$ INTR 05-26-05 11:51:24 PS PAGE 1 2 Introduction the English Jews, who were panic-stricken that ‘‘the Poles are coming!’’1 In the 1880s, the German historian Heinrich von Treitschke, in a polemic with the Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz, expressed his fear that the German Reich would be inundated by masses of Polish Jewish immigrants. In Treitschke’s view, the fact that these immigrants clung to their national identity was antithetical to the equal political rights they had recently been granted. Moreover, it constituted a real threat to the German character of his country.2 Thus, over a hundred years after the first Polish partition, the Jews of Eastern Europe were still seen by many as a community that had preserved its ‘‘Polishness.’’ And deep into the modern era, they maintained what Gershon Hundert recently described as a positive sense of Jewish identity.3 What began as the invasions by Poland’s enemies in the last decades of the eighteenth century nonetheless changed the political base of the traditional society’s life. Although the masses of Jews underwent only partial integration, some segments of the population were considerably influenced by it. While acculturation did not cause the old Jewish cul- ture to disappear, it did augment it with cultural traits previously unknown to the Jews of the Polish-Lithuanian kingdom. The changes that affected Eastern European Jewry in the nineteenth century also gave rise to a new type of antagonism between them and the various eth- nic groups in the empires. The old religious conflict, between Catholics and Jews as well as between the Eastern Orthodox and the Jews, took the form of a radical anti-Semitism in which the influence of national Romanticism merged with messianic revolutionism. In March 1881, 111 years after the Russian army entered the towns of White Russia, Czar Alexander II was mortally wounded by assassins belonging to the revolu- tionary movement. Six weeks after the czar’s murder, the southern prov- inces of the Russian empire were swept by waves of pogroms against the Jews, unparalleled in their duration and geographical spread. In their wake, many Jews, during the pogroms or in the years soon after, began to abandon the option of integration and acculturation in favor of more radical solutions to the problems of their economic, social, and spiritual existence. The Russian Jew, like his brethren on the Austrian side of the border, began to exchange the incomplete imperial identity, which had taken shape after the Polish partitions, for alternative identities, either by emigrating to new lands or by seeking new Jewish identities unprece- dented in the history of Eastern European Jewry The boundaries of historical periods are determined by subjective considerations. On the basis of ideologies, political interests, geographi- cal links, or ethnic identity, people are likely to draw disparate time lines. The sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel states: ‘‘There are many alterna- tive ways to cut up the past, none of which are more natural and hence ................. 11255$ INTR 05-26-05 11:51:24 PS PAGE 2 Introduction 3 more valid than others. Any system of periodization is thus inevitably social, since our ability to envision the historical watersheds separating one conventional ‘period’ from another is basically a product of being socialized in specific traditions of carving up the past. In other words, we need to be mnemonically socialized to regard certain historical events as significant ‘turning points.’’’4 Indeed, why should we decide that the partitions of Poland constitute a historical turning point in the history of Eastern European Jewry? After all, one of the major claims in this book is that many of the social, eco- nomic, and cultural traits that were hallmarks of the link between the Polish feudal system and the Jews continued to exist for many years after 1772. Life in the towns of Galicia and White Russia did not change much until the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1850, very few Jews in the Russian Pale of Settlement or in Austrian Galicia felt at home in the cultures of the state. This was the time when the Hasidic movement, a consummate product of the traditional culture, was crossing the bor- ders of empires and winning the hearts of Jews throughout Eastern Europe. Similarly, one can ask whether 1881 marks a turning point in the history of Eastern European Jewry. Zionist historiography, on the one hand, and the historical research written under the influence of Jewish radicalism, on the other, designate the year of the pogroms as the beginning of a new era in Jewish history. In 1969, the national-radical historian Shmuel Ettinger (1919–88) wrote: There has been no more dramatic period in Jewish history than the years between 1881 and 1948—a relatively short span of time when measured against the annals of a nation.