Читать книгу History of the Jews in Russia and Poland (Vol. 1-3) - Dubnow Simon - Страница 32

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

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

Michael Vishniovetzki (1669–1673), who was elected King after John Casimir, extended his protection to the Jews by virtue of family traditions, being a son of the hero Jeremiah Vishniovetzki, who had saved many a Jewish community of the Ukraina during the sinister years of the Cossack mutiny. At the Coronation Diet138 Vishniovetzki ratified the fundamental privileges of the Polish and Lithuanian Jews, "as far as these privileges are not in contradiction with the general laws and customs." This ratification had been obtained through an application of the "general syndic of the Jews," Moses Markovich,139 who evidently acted as the spokesman of all the Kahals of the ancient provinces of Poland. The benevolent intentions of the King were counteracted by the Diets, which, controlled by the clergy and Shlakhta, issued restrictive laws against the Jews. The Diet of Warsaw held in 1670 not only limited the financial operations of Jewish capitalists by fixing a maximum rate of interest (20%)140—this would have been perfectly legitimate—but also thought it necessary to restore the old canonical regulations forbidding the Jews to keep Christian domestics or to leave their houses during the Church processions. In these Diet regulations, particularly in their tone and motivation ("in order that the perfidy and self-will of the Jews should not gain the upper hand," etc.), one cannot fail to perceive the venom of the Catholic clergy, which once more engaged in its old métier of slandering the Jews, charging them with hostility to the Christians and with the desecration of Church sacraments.

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

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

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

My enemies have arisen against me, and have spread their nets in the shape of a false accusation in order to destroy my possessions. They took dead bodies, slashed them, and spoke with furious cunning: Behold, the ill-fated Jews drink and suck the blood of the murdered, and feed on the children of the Gentiles. Three years did the horrible slander last, and we thought our liberation was near, but, alas, terrible darkness has engulfed us. Our sworn enemies dragged us before their hostile court. The evil-doers assembled in the week before the New Year, and turned justice into wormwood. A wily and wicked Gentile judged only by the sight of his eyes, without witnesses; he judged innocent and sinless people in order to shed pure blood. The horde of evil-doers pronounced a perverted verdict, saying: "Choose ye [for execution] two Jews, such as may please you." A beautiful pair fell into their nets: Rabbi Israel and Rabbi Tobias, the holy ones, were singled out from among the community.142 These men saw the glittering blade of the sword, but no fear fell upon them. They clasped each other's hands and swore to share the same fate. "Let us take courage, and let us prepare with a light heart to sacrifice ourselves. Let us become the lambs for the slaughter; we shall surely find protection under the wings of God." On the sixth day these holy men were led out to execution, and an altar was erected. The wrath of the Lord burst forth in the year of "Recompense,"143 on the festival of Commemoration [New Year]. The bitterness of death was awaiting [the martyrs] in the midst of the market-place. They confessed their sins, saying: "We have sinned before the Lord. Let us sanctify His name like Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah." They turned to the executioner, saying: "Grant us one hour of respite, that we may render praise unto the Lord." The lips of the impure, the false lips of those who pursue the wind and worship corrupt images, came to tempt them with strange beliefs,144 but the holy men exclaimed: "Away, ye impure! Shall we renounce the living God, and wander after trees?"145 The holy Rabbi Israel stretched forth his neck, and shouted with all his might: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one." Thereupon the executioner stretched forth his hand to take the sword, and the costly vessel was shattered. When the holy Rabbi Tobias saw this loss, he exclaimed: "Blessed art thou, O Rabbi Israel, who hast passed first into the Realm of Light. I follow thee." He too exclaimed: "Hear, O Israel, who art guarded [by God] like the apple of the eye." And he went forth to die in the name of the Lord, and [the executioner] slew him as he had slain the first.

Another tragedy took place in Cracow, in 1663. The educated Jewish apothecary Mattathiah Calahora, a native of Italy who had settled in Cracow, committed the blunder of arguing with a local priest, a member of the Dominican order, about religious topics. The priest invited Calahora to a disputation in the cloister, but the Jew declined, promising to expound his views in writing. A few days later the priest found on his chair in the church a statement written in German and containing a violent arraignment of the cult of the Immaculate Virgin. It is not impossible that the statement was composed and placed in the church by an adherent of the Reformation or the Arian heresy,146 both of which were then the object of persecution in Poland. However, the Dominican decided that Calahora was the author, and brought the charge of blasphemy against him.

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

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

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

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

In reality the only defender of the Jews was the King. At his court appeared the "general syndics," or spokesmen of the Jewish communities, and presented various applications, which John Sobieski was ready to grant as far as lay in his power. This humane attitude towards the "infidels" was on more than one occasion held up against him at the sessions of the Senate148 and the Diets. At the Diet held in Grodno in 1693 the enemies of the court brought charges against the Jew Bezalel, a favorite of the King and a royal tax-farmer, accusing him of desecrating the Christian religion, embezzling state funds, and other crimes. After passionate debates, John Sobieski insisted that Bezalel be allowed to clear himself by oath of the charge of blasphemy, while the other accusations were disposed of by the chancellor of the exchequer.

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