hello and welcome to jewish history lab today we're going to look at the origins of
polish jewry really the uh the origins of the entire eastern european jewish population but
poland is one of the most central and memorable of the countries that we'll be looking at
and for those of you who took the time off to celebrate the holidays recently
i hope that you come to us refreshed and relaxed and for all of us i wish you all a wonderful new
year of blessings by the way if you're not aware this is the year 5782 according to the traditional
count now that we're past rosh hashanah the the jewish new year and someone told me that he's
been very careful to go on a new diet this year where he will never eat more than the number he
will never eat more calories than the calendar in number and then he says thank god i'm jewish right
sorry to do that i know a lot of you don't like my humor but i couldn't help it let's
talk about the origins of polish jewelry so when i say poland i'm really using the term somewhat
anachronistically because the the region as a whole was dominated by something called the polish
lithuanian commonwealth you can see in this map which has the the borders of the commonwealth as
of the year 1618 but superimposed on contemporary political boundaries so you get a sense of where
it was it was this massive territory poland was at sort of like the the southwestern
core of it but after this dynastic union with lithuania it spread really to a massive area
almost stretching from the baltic sea to the black sea uh well into european russia
down into the east central european countries as well and um so the the material that i'm
discussing today does not really apply strictly speaking to poland as we understand it by 21st
century boundaries but to this larger entity which includes of course ukraine and belarus
and lithuania where there are very very large numbers of jews residing the southern part of
latvia is also very important because it was part of the russian pale of settlement which we'll get
to in a few lectures from now but anyway where did the jews come from in this region which became the
dominant center of the world jewish population in the early modern period so there is a small
migration that extends back really to the uh the first centuries of the common era perhaps even a
little bit before the common era and these are jews that come from byzantine lands and
make their way through the khazarian empire as well the extent of khazarian influence is very
very difficult to quantify it appears to have been minuscule there are occasional references
uh to hazarian jews for example in one of the early russian chronicles the povest
which not strictly speaking russian but refers to cave and rusty the region as it was known at
that time and there's references to jews from khazaria being involved in kiev in particular
and they left behind as we've discussed in previous lectures
about khazaria they left behind very very little trace of their presence either in um you know
cultural aspects literary aspects and so on we don't really know a lot about how extensive this
penetration was and and how much it affected the later dominant polish jewish population
the really big migrations into poland come in the 12th and especially up into the 16th century
and they're coming from the western part of europe they're coming primarily from germany and france
making their way sometimes through austria hungary places like that but that's really where you have
the dominant polish population of jews there you see lots of traces of european evidence lots of
very significant connections between cultures that started uh for example in the rhineland and then
made their way to the east yiddish of course is the overwhelming lingua franca of the jews
and that is basically a medieval german dialect written with hebrew letters they're not bringing
with them too much of the uh the you know languages of the khazars for example so we
begin to see uh some legendary elements of their appearance in the region from as early as the 8th
and 9th century but it really begins to coalesce around the 10th and 11th centuries and one of the
things that we see them doing for example in a very early period is that jews are serving
as royal mentors meaning they're making money here have a look at these coins i mean literally
making money like producing money things to be used as money not necessarily making money for
themselves which i'm sure goes on to end with it but the some of the earliest coins in the
poll of sultan wayne and commonwealth are actually written with hebrew characters here you see a few
kind of stencils of several of them and here's a better view of one that has the term uh moshka
karol or mashka karo which is clearly the hebrew phrase for king nyeshko a 12th century polish
ruler here of course this is highlighted in red to make it a little bit easier to read now it's
fascinating you know why would the early polish nobles and kings make coins with hebrew letters
it speaks most likely to the widespread illiteracy which was common to the region and the fact that
the jews would use the hebrew alphabet because you know jews are the ones who are working with the
money primarily in small commerce that it became relevant um we'll have a lot more to say about
this in a future lecture when we talk a little bit about the economic basis of polish jewry
but for the time being this is just some of the archaeological evidence of their early settlement
uh from about the 10th century onward now when we look at why jews migrated to poland and the
polish lithuanian commonwealth more properly there are both push and pull factors meaning there were
factors which drove jews out of western europe and there are factors which drew jews into
eastern europe eastern europe was definitely a place of refuge for jews you can see here
a beautiful representation by uh a man named garrison representing king kazimier who is
accepting the jews and giving them you know protection and refuge so much so that you see
some of the great scholars like moshe israelis from uh from uh galicia who referred to poland uh
with kind of like a fanciful etymology from hebrew po lin meaning here po lin we will rest or here we
will find refuge so in terms of the push factors what was driving jews out of western europe
the first marked thrust that drove jews to uh you know pursue homes in the eastern part of
europe were the first crusade massacres of 1096 that we discussed a while ago a horrific massacre
is primarily in northern germany that seem to be outside of the control of the legitimate
state authorities to manage and jews were very frustrated by this because as a minority jews
are always vulnerable to mob violence and they rely on the legitimate authorities to maintain
a rec meaning a society governed by law as we've discussed in in many previous lectures jews are
typically very happy to live in environments where there is some minor discrimination against them a
certain degree of endemic anti-semitism but only if the rule of law is protected meaning perhaps
there will be a numerous clauses and jews will not be allowed to enter university or perhaps there
will be um you know certain uh tax breaks they're not allowed to take advantage of or whatever it is
as long as they know that if someone throws a rock through their storefront window they will
be able to go to the police and the police will investigate and if they catch the culprit then
they will have a proper criminal trial and so on so jews fear mob violence like any minority
and when you had these series of massacres that accompanied these traveling bands of crusaders or
more as we discussed in the lecture on the crusades uh more of the ragtag followers
of the crusaders and that the local authorities including the church could not put a stop to it
that's when there's an increased push of jews from western europe moving towards the east in the 13th
century the horrible blood libels that we have also discussed in a previous class uh result in
a series of expulsions uh in france in particular there's three expulsions in the 14th century
and so there's more and more reason for jews not to live in western europe this is kind of like the
the push aspect of it as jews are finding western europe far and far less hospitable than they ever
had before now there's also pull factors at the other hand the the polish economy was actually
having a very difficult time particularly in the 13th century after the mongol invasions of 1241
and onward the uh the demography had dropped there was a very very weak economy as we saw earlier the
jews are the people actually making the money physically making the money because they don't
have a really well-functioning economy compared to uh western europe and the jews have the know-how
know how and the understanding of how to produce coins like this and so the local polish leaders
were actually inviting jews and saying please come to our area you are literate you are numerate you
will live in concentrated areas and we can take advantage of your skills in poland they also
to make this attractive to jewish migrants they created something called or they adopted something
used in the west called magda bogrecht magdeburg is the name of a city and means law and this is
basically like a medieval charter that lists the specific privileges that a community may enjoy
and although some of these charters were actually written much later and designed to look like they
were written earlier they nevertheless did reflect long-standing agreements as to what were the
privileges and sometimes disabilities of the jews in particular regions regions right of settlement
for example the right to control their own guilt the right to indicate you know when foreign jews
could move in and set up competing businesses and what monopolies jews would have well again speak
more about this when we get to the economics of eastern europe but jews were often granted
specific monopolies for example uh proper nazia the uh distillation and distribution of alcohol
that's why you know in so many jewish folk tales and ukrainian folk tales and so on you have
the jewish krechma the the jewish inn because that was actually a monopoly that was frequently given
to jewish communities bear in mind also that we're speaking about a corporate environment where it's
not like individuals simply say you know what i think i'd like to go live in krakow and then they
go move to krakow and they find you know how to fit themselves into the secular environment there
people lived within communities you were part of a jewish community you weren't like an individual
who chose to affiliate you were legally bound to that community you're you know culpable
along with the community for communal taxes and communal punishments sometimes things like that
so there were the the polish leaders uh were very enthusiastic about bringing jews into
the region and so extended to them a series of rights that guaranteed above all safety you know
rights to live in concentrated areas and things like that and also economic privileges that allow
them to apply various traits there's going to be a lot more to say about this and of course
it will break down very significantly with uh the malnitsky rebellion in the 17th century but for
the time being between the first crusade and uh you know the monolithic rebellion of 1648 this was
a pretty stable kind of environment in some cases like in the statute of kalish which comes from
uh 1264 you know these things are actually set down in writing and are promulgated and really
attracted a lot of jews to eastern europe so there's a very significant movement of jews over
these centuries to poland making it ultimately the largest single concentration of jews in the early
modern period and just to give you a sense of what that looks like here's a map that shows the
relative concentration of jews within the boundaries of the polish lithuanian commonwealth
as of 1764 and you can see that the the yellow means like less than about ten thousand jews and
uh the the deep red is more than fifty thousand jews and you can get a sense of where the
concentration is really in the the region of uh western ukraine and southern poland in particular
also some significant concentrations towards the the west on the border with germany and to the
north in lithuania in particular the the height of the achievement of jews in the polis region
in particular in terms of their self-government is undoubtedly an institution called the council of
lands also known as the council of four lands depending on the period it's referring to
and basically this was a kind of a jewish state within a state a rather amazing thing
we spoke about the communal arrangement of the jews in the kahila essentially the
self-governing jewish municipality that handled you know all of the social welfare works for
jews by collecting their own internal taxes and distributing it uh charitably to individuals as
needed and set up you know like everything from uh you know wayfarers support to uh poor brides and
orphans and you know all kinds of social services but also self-regulating by talmudic law and each
of these municipalities was basically structured very similarly and what happened was in poland
they came to terms and they united themselves across the entire scope of the polish children
commonwealth within one as it were national organization they would meet twice a year
and particularly in lublin and they would make decisions that would affect all jews living
within this massive country the largest country in europe at the time it was really a rather amazing
thing this by the way we're looking at is uh one of the a couple of pages from the minute books
of the council of lands now they had to they didn't have like for example their own police
authorities uh they worked very closely with the state and the polish state police lithuanian state
realized how valuable they were particularly at first with regards administering many social
functions that they wanted to themselves have but once they realized that it was more efficient for
them to collect taxes directly from the jews rather than have the council of lands involved
that led to the erosion of the council of lands in particular we'll talk about that as well i hope in
a future lecture but the kinds of things that they dealt with were really quite significant and
made a huge impact on the way in which jews lived and considered themselves within the polish state
this was really one of the high points of the jewish diaspora at least up until the khmernetsky
rebellion of 1648 where jews regarded poland as really a a golden era for jewish civilization
comparable in many ways to what we see happening earlier in spain and before that in babylonia it
would result in a kind of a polish jewish synthesis that was very similar in many
ways to the german jewish synthesis of the 19th century but of course uh when we get to the 20th
century we see it all unravel and that will be the topic of a future lecture but for the time being
i hope you enjoyed this lecture um if you did please subscribe i like to see the numbers go
up it it's actually kind of exciting to see that there are a lot of people who enjoy jewish history
and um yeah i guess that's it thank you very much for listening