BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
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. . and Mrs. Ir R. Mil!
In :f
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Mrs. Leonard 1. I
Cn-^rter Boston iter
^EIS UNIVERSH
IIONAL W OMMITTEE
THE JEWS OF EASTERN EUROPE
By kind permission oj A'r?'. i>. //. Uox\
THE "ARK' (CONTAINING THE SCROLLS OF THE LAW) CLOSED
Frontispiece
The Jews in Eastern Europe.
JEWISH STUDIES
Edited by A. Lukyn Williams, D.D.
THE JEWS OF
EASTERN EUROPE
BY THE REV.
J. H. A.DENEY, M.A.
MISSIONARY TO THE JEWS IN ROU.MANIA
WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
CENTRAL BOARD OF MISSIONS
AND
SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING
CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE
NEW YORK: THE MAC MILL AN CO.
1921
2>s
A
j>->
PREFACE BY THE EDITOR
No modern nation has taken more interest in the
Jews than the English-speaking peoples, none has
tried to deal more fairly with them. Yet it cannot
be pretended that we English know much about
their post-Biblical history, practices, and beliefs,
much less that we have studied these in relation to
Christianity past and present.
The aim of this series is to do something towards
supplying this want. It will endeavour to describe
Jews as they have been and as they are, to state and
explain the efforts of Christians in past centuries to
win them, and the methods used, and both to set
out and to weigh their chief doctrines.
Thus gradually but surely a collection of hand-
books will be formed, which Jews and Christians
alike may use, and each learn to understand better
the religion of the other. Naturally the books will
be Christian, and because they are Christian will try
both to represent Christianity in its proper spirit,
and to exhibit it as the supreme truth.
A. LUKYN WILLIAMS.
651 J 3
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
This little book has been written in the intervals of
a very busy missionary life in a peculiarly difficult
year. This must be its apology for its many im-
perfections. My most grateful thanks are due to my
friend and fellow missionary, Rev. L. Zeckhausen,
for his great kindness in reading the proofs and
drawing up the index, and to him and the Editor
for many most useful suggestions.
Vi
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION ...... 9
CHAPTER
I. HISTORY: TO THE PARTITION OF POLAND - 12
II. HISTORY: THE DIVIDED KINGDOM - - 18
III. HISTORY: THE OVERFLOW - - 28
IV. HISTORY: SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE - - 33
V. POST-WAR CONDITIONS - - - 37
VI. ANTISEMITISM: ITS CAUSES AND REMEDY - 42
VII. THE GHETTO JEW IN HOME AND TOWN - 48
VIII. LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE - - - 56
IX. PHASES OF RELIGIOUS LIFE - - CI
X. ZIONISM - - - - - 66
XI. CHRISTIANITY AND THE EAST EUROPEAN JEWS • 72
XII. PRESENT POSITION AND NEEDS - - 82
Vll
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
THE "ARK" CONTAINING THE SCROLLS OF
the law - - - Frontispiece
jews of lemberg - - - - facing page 1 6
JEW WEARING THE TALLITH - • ,, 51
MISSION SCHOOL, BUCAREST „ 84.
Vlll
THE JEWS OF EASTERN
EUROPE
INTRODUCTION
The train which was speeding ns from Berlin to
Bucarest in those pre-war days had come to a stand-
still in the early hours of the morning at Czernowitz
in Bukovina. Alongside of us was a train which
had come in from the East. The carriages were full
of Jews, the Jews of Eastern Europe of the orthodox
type., clothed in long kaftans — men with long beards
and ringlets at the side of their faces. There they
stood with their faces turned towards Jerusalem,
with praying shawl and phylactery, swaying to and
fro as they said their prayers in the full view of
everyone. We had reached the home of the Jew —
American Jews, English, French, German, or what
not; the majority of them are only removed by a
generation or two from the home of their fathers
in Eastern Europe. There is their real home;
there are the surroundings which have left their
indelible trace upon the Jew's very features, and
moulded his character and made him what he is
to-day.
The total Jewish population of the world is
reckoned at 13,500,000. Of these 10,000,000 live
in Europe, and of them no less than 8,500,000 in
9
10 THE JEWS OE EASTERN EUROPE
Eastern Europe. A century ago the proportion was
still more marked, before the great tide of emigra-
tion had overflowed into the great Jewry of America
and the lesser Jewries of the British Empire. In spite
of massacre and repression and the disastrous effects
of Ghetto life, as well as the constant drain of assimi-
lation and baptism, the numbers are ever on the
increase, and the surplus forces are thrust out upon
the highways of the world. Hence no one can hope
to understand the Jewish problem of to-day who
has not studied the Jews in the lands which have
been the home of so large a proportion of their
race for so many centuries.
The following figures will make this still clearer,
and help to a just appreciation of the Jewish problem
in each country and the corresponding call to the
Christian Church there and throughout the world.
GENERAL JEWISH STATISTICS, 1919
The statistics here given are pre-war figures,
which will need radical revision at a later date;
but they embody some alterations since 1918, es-
pecially in regard to the United Kingdom, the figures
of which have been brought up to date.
Total Jewish Population of the Would
Europe 10,003,047
Asia
Africa . .
America
Australasia
499,079
380,805
2,545,550
19,415
Grand Total .. .. 13,449,102
INTRODUCTION
11
Jews in Europe
Russia
Austria (1910)
Hungary (1910)
Germany (1910)
British Isles (1918)
Roumania (1915)
Holland (1909)
France (1911) ..
Greece (191 3 J 1
Turkey (1913) 1
Bulgaria (1913) 2
Italy (1911) ..
Switzerland (1910)
Serbia (1913) ..
Belgium (1910)
Bosnia-Herzegovina (1910)
Norway-Sweden (1910)
Denmark (1911)
Spain-Portugal
Crete (1911) ..
Luxemburg (1910)
Gibraltar
Cyprus and Malta
Total
6,060,415
1,313,687
932,410
615,029
275,700
239,967
106,309
100,000
88,300
80,000
67,650
43,929
19,023
15,730
15,000
12,169
4,957
5,164
5,000
487
1,270
1,300
145
10,003,647
1 The Jewish and general population has since been
reduced by the war.
2 Reduced by the war to 30,000.
CHAPTER I
HISTORY: TO THE PARTITION OF POLAND
The dispersion of the Jews had already begun long
before St. James wrote his Epistle to the sojourners
of the Dispersion. They had already reached the
more important cities of the Roman Empire. With
the fall of Jerusalem and the deportation of a great
part of the Jews, their numbers everywhere vastly
increased. As slaves at first, and afterwards as
freedmen, they penetrated into the more remote
parts of the Empire. Wherever the Roman built his
roads and opened up the way to commerce, there
the Jew followed. This brought them into the lands
of Western Europe.
Later, after the Empire had become Christian,
the} 7 followed in the wake of the Christian missionary,
bringing to the inhabitants of heathen lands the
wares of civilisation. With the missionaries of the
Western Church they advanced towards the North
and West, and with those of the Eastern Church
towards the North and East. The latter were the
forerunners of the great masses of Jews which to-day
constitute the Jewries of Eastern Europe. Their
numbers were, however, insignificant, and we must
rather follow the fortunes of those who pushed up
from the western lands of the old Roman Empire
into the Germany of to-day. As the power of the
12 %
HISTORY: PARTITION OF POLAND 13
Latin Church increased, so did the sufferings of
the Jews. Their stubborn rejection of the pre-
dominant religion brought upon them the wrath
of the ecclesiastical authorities. Homeless wan-
derers as they were, all lawful occupations were
more and more closed to them, and they were
forced to live as best they could by money-lending
and such-like business, in which the Church forbade
its members to engage. Rulers found it very con-
venient to relieve the Jews from time to time of
the wealth they had amassed. Their treasuries
were often depleted in those days of continual war-
fare, and a contribution imposed upon the Jews
was an ever- ready means of replenishing them.
The Jews were then allowed to start business afresh,
and, keeping this possibility in view, not unnatur-
ally exacted the utmost from their victims. The
result was that they were cordially hated by the
populace. It was a temptation which could not be
resisted, to raise an outcry against the Jews and get
them banished, and so to escape the payment of
debts. The ignorant fanaticism of the Middle Ages,
fanned to a flame by the zeal of a heresy- hunting
hierarchy, was easily incited to shout, " Away with
the murderers of Christ !" Again and again the
Crusaders, following the example of Peter the Hermit,
raised the cry of "Hep!" and fell with wild fury
upon the Jewish Ghettos of Central Europe. Still,
though alternately driven out and invited back, and
compelled often to grasp the wanderer's staff, there
were intervals of peace and rest, when life could be
built up again and the study of the Law, in which
Israel so delighted, could be ardently pursued.
14 THE JEWS OF EASTERN EUROPE
It was then that there fell upon the western
world in 1348 and the succeeding years the awful
scourge of the Black Death, that terrible bubonic
plague which swept across Europe from distant Asia,
carrying off millions in its course. Probably on
account of their superior sanitary laws and their
temperance, the Jews were not so liable to it as their
Gentile neighbours. In an ignorant age nothing
was easier than to suggest that it was the Jews
themselves who had originated the plague, and
therefore did not suffer so much from it. The
fact that some Jews were so unwise as to boast
that they were immune naturally gave additional
support to the belief. The story was soon con-
cocted that Jews who had come from Spain had
brought poison with them and poisoned the wells.
There were only too many who were ready to
believe anything against the Jews. Immediately
the terrified mobs made for the Jewish Ghettos,
sacking and murdering and burning whatever came
in their way. The extraordinary Order of the
Flagellants made it their mission to exterminate
the Jews wherever they found them. In this way
thousands upon thousands of Jews perished.
As in every other time of persecution, the Jew had
to look about him for some refuge from the storm.
He found it in the kingdom of Poland, then under
the beneficent rule of Casimir the Great (1333-
70). Some Jews had already found their way
there, but we know very little of the history of the
Jews in Slavic lands up to this time. We do know
that Casimir enacted a statute on the lines of similar
instruments of Boleslav the Pious and Frederick,
HISTORY: PARTITION OF POLAND 15
Duke of Austria, giving the Jews protection against
unjust changes, and rendering their intercourse
with their Gentile neighbours easier.
Thither then the Jews fled before the avenging
fury of the Flagellants and the wild frenzy of the
pi ague- stricken population of the German States,
and were favourably received by the King. There
is a story told of a second Esther, with whom the
King was in love, and who had succeeded in winning
the favour of the King for her people. Be that as
it may, they came in ever-increasing numbers,
and settled down in all parts of the kingdom.
They brought with them the German speech of those
days, and have retained it, strange to say, in spite
of their new surroundings, up to the present day.
They settled down on the large estates of the nobles,
to whom they became indispensable both in their
character of middlemen, and as supplying the busi-
ness acumen which the Polish peasant lacked. As
the kingdom was extended and the neighbouring
States were subjugated, the Jews became useful
to the rulers as gatherers of the exorbitant taxes
which were imposed upon the subject peoples.
These were farmed out to the Jews, whose interest
therefore it was to get as much as they could.
They were not slow to take advantage of their
opportunity. The success of the Jews in business
in the Polish kingdom, and their connection with
the hated ruling class in the other States, naturally
led to jealousy on the one hand and hatred on the
other. Thus the story of Jewish persecution was
again enacted, though the nobles and rulers in their
own self-interest protected them as well as they
16 THE JEWS OF EASTERN EUROPE
could. The ignorant clergy again and again incited
the populace against them. They used the infamous
Blood accusation and the charge of desecrating the
Host as their weapons. The Jews were supposed
to use the blood of a Christian child in the prepara-
tion of their Passover bread, and to vent their spite
upon the Host if by any chance they were able to
obtain a piece of it. Still on the whole they were
better off than they had been in Germany. ^he
study of the Talmud nourished, and Poland became
the source of Rabbinic learning for the Jewries of
the West.
These comparatively peaceful days were rudely
brought to an end by the insurrection of the Cos-
sacks under Chmielnicki in 1648-51, and again
in 1654-55. As the tax-gatherers of the Poles,
the Jews were specially obnoxious to the Cossacks,
who fell upon them with wild fury. Later, the
Tartars and Russians joined in the fray, and thou-
sands of Jews were massacred. The result of this
was for the time being a turn in the tide of emigra-
tion, and refugees from Poland filled all the Jewries
of Western Europe, bringing with them their Tal-
mudical knowledge and peculiar theological system.
Gradually, however, the stricken communities began
to recover from these death-dealing blows. Yet
they had perforce to share in the poverty which had
overtaken the land. They followed the kingdom
into its days of political decadence till the ill-fated
partitions of Poland, the first of which was in 1772,
the second in 1793, and the third in 1795, with
subsequent modifications by the Vienna Congress
of 1815.
JEWS OF LEMBERG
p. 16
HISTORY: PARTITION OF POLAND 17
The end of the eighteenth century thus finds the
Ghetto of the Jews of Eastern Europe split up into
separate parts. There was Prussian Poland, con-
taining the provinces of Western Prussia and
Posen, with a comparatively small population.
Its centre was the city of Posen. Then there was
Austrian Poland, formed by the crown province of
Galicia, with a Jewish population of a million.
Its centres were Cracow and Lemberg. Lastly there
was Russian Poland, containing all the rest of the
ancient kingdom, with a Jewish population of some
three millions. Its centre was Warsaw.
CHAPTER II
history: the divided kingdom
In German Poland the Jews were accorded the
same rights as the other Jews of the German Empire.
Nominally they had absolute equality with non-
Jews, in reality they were excluded from certain
occupations, notably from the Army and the Civil
Service. Germany, the home of Antisemitism,
understood how to give and yet not to give full
liberty to the Jews.
Attracted by German culture, the Jews became
the supporters of the Government, and assisted them
in their efforts to Germanise the Polish land. They
thereby made themselves thoroughly hated by the
Poles. Economically they were far in advance of
the Pole, and many a Polish landowner became
hopelessly in debt to the Jew, and finally had to
part with his estates to him. This naturally added
to the ill-feeling against the Jews.
In language and education they have profited
much by their connection with the more advanced
culture of Germany. Religiously, too, they have
been greatly influenced by their connection with
the liberal thought of Western Germany, though
through their proximity to Russian Poland they
have still preserved not a little of their original
orthodoxy.
18
HISTORY: THE DIVIDED KINGDOM 19
In Austrian Poland, again, the Jews shared in
all the advantages of the connection with the more
advanced portions of the Austrian Empire. They
were accorded civil liberty. The picture was, how-
ever, very different from that of German Poland.
In the latter they were but a small minority scattered
over the whole land ; in the former they formed one-
eighth of the total population, and still continued
to live in closely-packed Jewries. In Germany they
were in comfortable circumstances and often attained
to wealth; in Austria they were for the most part
deplorably poor. The cause lay partly in the general
poverty of the country and partly in the Jew himself.
He failed to take part in agriculture, which was the
main wealth of the country. Instead, he concen-
trated his energies upon trade and commerce in
a land which was too insufficiently developed to
maintain many small business men and artisans.
The result was a grinding competition, which caused
him to cut prices till he himself could not live.
The root cause was the repression of ages, which had
built up in the Jew this ineptitude for all else but
trade and commerce. The natural outcome of
this was a constant stream of emigration to the
neighbouring lands of Hungary and Roumania,
where a living could be more easily made.
In Russian Poland the Jews came under the sway
of the Tsar of all the Russias. There were Jews in
Russia before the annexation of Poland, but they
were few in comparison with the teeming millions
who now became the problem of Russia. Had they
been scattered over the whole of the Russian Empire,
their small number in proportion to the total popu-
20 THE JEWS OF EASTERN EUROPE
lation might have made them a comparatively
negligible quantity. They were, on the contrary,
massed together in one corner, and that near to the
western frontiers. The history of the Jews in Russia
is largely the history of the different types of Russian
rulers. Peter the Great (1682-1725) welcomed
them; his daughter, Elizabeth, expelled them.
Catherine II. (1762-96) admitted them. Alex-
ander I. (1801-1825) favoured them; Nicolas I.
(1825-55) revoked the privileges which they had
enjoyed under his brother. His successor, Alex-
ander II. (1855-81), the Tsar Liberator, began by
granting reforms, but, after the Polish rebellion,
ended by taking most of them back. Under Alex-
ander III. (1881-94) reaction was in the ascendant.
Great hopes were formed by Nicolas II. (1894-1918),
but they were not fulfilled.
The problem of the Russian Emperors was how to
unite the various peoples who formed the population
of their Empire. The simplest way seemed to them
to be to induce them all, by hook or by crook, as
they lived under one Tsar, to adopt one language,
Russian, and one Faith, that of the Orthodox
Church, and so eventually to weld them into one
people. Some considerable measure of success
attended these efforts, but not among the Jews.
Every such attempt only brought out into stronger
relief the stubborn opposition of the Jew. Assimi-
lation meant to him the loss of his Faith and his
nationality, and. for these he had suffered and died
through long centuries in every land. The only
result was to drive him in ever more and more upon
himself, and to hinder the progress which would have
HISTORY: THE DIVIDED KINGDOM 21
been advantageous to him, and might have done
something to create better feeling between him and
his neighbours.
Failing to root out what was to them an evil
growth, the ruling authorities adopted the plan of
limiting its extent. Just as in the days of old a
wall was erected round the Jewish Ghetto, beyond
which no Jew might venture, so now a line was
drawn round the district in which they were allowed
to live. By the law of May 13, 1835, this Pale
of Settlement, begun in 1791, was made to consist
of the Provinces of Kovno, Grodno, and Wilna,
Volhynia, Podolia, Minsk, Mohilev, Vitebsk, the
Russian portion of Poland, Kiev, the South Russian
Provinces of Bessarabia, Kherson, and Taurida, with
the exception of the holy city of Kiev, and the town
of Nicolaiev, and the fortress of Sebastopol. The
line started from the Baltic, in the neighbourhood of
Meinel, and followed the course of the Dnieper until
it approached the Black Sea, just including the
Crimea. Its western boundary was the western
frontier of Poland. Thus the Jew was enclosed
between the frontiers of Germany and the Dnieper,
the Baltic and the Black Sea. It is true that there
were districts not included in the Pale where Jews
had lived and still continued to live, but thev were
as nothing compared to the Pale of Settlement.
Even here the Jews were subjected to all kinds
of restrictions in their cultural and economic life,
with the object of hindering them from exerting an
evil influence on the surrounding Russians, and
from competing upon equal terms with them in
trade and commerce.
22 THE JEWS OF EASTERN EUROPE
The Jew understood perfectly well what the
Government policy was, and resisted it to the utmost
of his power. Thrust in upon himself he grew ever
more and more suspicious. Even when schools
were specially created for his children, he avoided
them as only another means of attaining his undoing
by bringing about his assimilation. Confined within
a narrow circle, he grew ever more and more narrow
in his outlooks. The policy of the Tsar Nicolas I.
was to lead the Jews to enlightenment, and so on to
assimilation, but they would have none of it. The
influence of the modern movement among the Jews
of Germany was not without its effect upon the
Russian Jews also, and a party arose which was
willing to respond to the Tsar's offers, but its in-
fluence was too small to have any real effect.
Foiled in his well-meant efforts, Nicolas I. turned
against the Jews, and one repressive law after
another was issued. In 1843 it was enacted that no
Jew should live within fifty versts (about thirty miles)
of the German and Austrian frontiers. The osten-
sible reason for the law was the smuggling and
espionage which the Jews near the frontier were said
to have carried on. Thousands were driven out from
their homes at almost a day's notice, and were com-
pelled to fill to overflowing the already crowded
districts of the Pale. Finally the right of living
in the open country was taken away from them,
and they were driven into the towns and cities,
which were already overfull.
On the accession of Alexander II. (1855) it seemed
as if halcyon days were about to break upon the
Jewish horizon. What might they not expect
HISTORY: THE DIVIDED KINGDOM 23
from the Tsar Liberator, that noble spirit who
with a word struck off the shackles from 23,000,000
serfs, and made them free men throughout the
length and breadth of the Empire ? And truly
his reign opened well, for the laws of Nicolas I.
were largely repealed. Permission was given to
Jewish merchants of the first of the three guilds into
which Russian merchants were divided to live any-
where in the Empire. The merchants were divided
into guilds according to the amount of income tax
they paid, those of the first guild being the richest.
The same right was accorded to Jewish doctors,
workmen, and ex-soldiers, though in the latter case
without permanent permission to live in the cities
chosen. Jews were allowed to buy real estate and
to enter the Civil Service. The Government schools
were improved and put in charge of the Jews them-
selves. Thus a great measure of freedom was ac-
corded to them in the hope that gradually they
would become more enlightened, and be a help rather
than a difficulty to the country, and that eventually
all restrictions could be removed. Then came the
fatal revolution in Poland in 1863, in which a number
of the more educated Jews took part. This so en-
raged the Tsar that he became embittered, and gave
up all hope of improving the relations of the Jews to
his Empire. Largely influenced by Germany, the
home of modern Antisemitism, the feeling against
the Jews grew steadily worse, and the All-Russia
Party actively promoted it.
In 1874 conscription for all alike was introduced.
This was a hard blow to the Jews, who hated the
army from religious motives. It forced them to
24 THE JEWS OF EASTERN EUROPE
break so many of their traditional laws, that they
avoided it as much as possible, and thereby angered
the people still more. Charges of using Christian
blood at the Passover were again made.
The effect of the reaction following the Polish
insurrection was to increase the Nihilist movement,
in which a proportion of Jews took part. As a
consequence new regulations were continually in-
troduced limiting the freedom of the Jews. They