Simon Dubnow

“ We are robbed of the gladsome opportunity of acquiring a piece of land, of building a little house, of founding a household, of erecting a factory, of engaging in commerce unhampered, in a word, doing that which God and nature hold out to man. In Warsaw we are even ordered out of the main streets. And what shall we say of those blessed liberties which citizens value most highly—the right of electing their superiors and of being elected by their compatriots, so as not to be as a dead body in the civic life of the nation? ”

“ Is the land in which our fathers, paying heavily for this privilege, saw the light of the world, always to remain strange to us? Gentlemen of the Senate, we lay before you the tears of the fathers and of the children and of the coming generations. We beg you to hasten the happy day when we may enter upon the enjoyment of the rights and liberties with which Napoleon the Great has endowed the inhabitants of this country, and which our beloved country recognizes as the possession of her children. ”

“ It is dreadful to contemplate that some venerable rabbi, presiding over a yeshibah, in his anxiety to discover and communicate to others some new interpretation, should offer a perverted explanation of the Talmud, though he himself and every one else be fully aware that the true meaning is different. Can it be God's will that we sharpen our minds by fallacies and sophistries, spending our time in vain and teaching the listeners to do likewise? ”

“ The Jewish center in Poland, marked by compactness of numbers and a widespread autonomous organization, seemed, down to the end of the seventeenth century, to be the only secure nest of the Jewish people and the legitimate seat of its national hegemony, which was slipping out of the hands of German Jewry. But in 1648 this comparatively peaceful nest was visited by a storm, which made the Jews of Eastern Europe speedily realize that they would have to tread the same sorrowful path, strewn with the bodies of martyrs, that had been traversed by their Western European brethren in the Middle Ages. ”

“ The naïveté with which he judges and completely distorts many aspects of Jewish life is astounding. The economic pursuits of the Jews, such as trading, leasing of land, innkeeping, brokerage, are nothing but "subtle devices to squeeze out the wealth of their neighbors, under the guise of offering them benefits and favors." The Jewish school is "a hotbed of superstitions." Moral sentiments are entirely absent among Jews: "they have no conception of lovingkindness, disinterestedness, and other virtues." ”

“ The most powerful estate in the country, the liberty-loving, or, more correctly, license-loving Shlakhta, protected the Jews only when in need of their services. Claiming for himself, in his capacity as slaveholder, the toil of his peasants, the pan laid equal claim to the toil of the Jewish business man and arendar who turned the rural products of his master and the right of "propination," or liquor-selling, into sources of income for the latter. At one time the Polish landowners even made the attempt to enslave the Jews on their estates by legal proceedings. ”

“ Altogether in rural economic life the Jew plays the rôle of a go-between, who can be spared neither by the squire nor by the peasant. To transfer all village Jews to the cities and convert them into manufacturers, merchants, and artisans, is a matter of impossibility, for even the Jewish population already settled in the cities is scarcely able to make a living, and to create factories and mills artificially would be throwing money into the water, especially as the exchequer has no free millions at its disposal to enable it to grant subsidies to manufacturers. ”

“ In the last two decades of the eighteenth century, when the banner of militant enlightenment was floating over German Jewry, a bitter warfare between the Hasidim and Mithnagdim was raging all along the line in Poland and Lithuania, with the result that the consciousness of the political crisis through which Polish Jewry was then passing was dimmed, and the appeal from the West calling to enlightenment and progress was silenced. The specter of German rationalism, which flitted across the horizon of Polish Jewry, produced horror and consternation in both camps. ”

“ And over it all hovers the spirit of official patronage and red-tape regulations, the curious notion that a people with an ancient culture can, at the mere bidding of an outside agency, change its position like figures on a chess-board, that strange faith in the saving power of mechanical reforms which prevailed, though in less naïve manifestations, also in Western Europe. ”

“ Yet the consciousness of military duty was keen in these men, many of whom carried arms for the first time in their lives. The Jewish regiment displayed its dauntless and self-sacrificing spirit on that fatal November fourth, the day of the terrible onslaught upon Praga by the Russian troops under Suvarov. Among the fifteen thousand Poles who lost their lives in the intrenchments of Praga, in the streets of Warsaw, or in the waves of the Vistula, was also the regiment of Berek Yoselovich. ”

“ The Kahal of Minsk sent an inquiry to Vilna, and in reply received, in September, 1796, a new energetic appeal of the Gaon addressed to all the gubernatorial Kahals of Lithuania, White Russia, Volhynia, and Podolia.
Ye mountains of Israel—cried the great zealot—ye spiritual shepherds, and ye lay leaders of every Government, also ye, the heads of the Kahals of Moghilev, Polotzk, Zhitomir, Vinnitza, and Kamenetz-Podolsk, you hold in your hands a hammer wherewith you may shatter the plotters of evil, the enemies of light, the foes of the [Jewish] people. Woe unto this generation! ”

“ The awe inspired by the statesmanlike genius of the French Emperor made the Russian Government suspect that the convocation of a universal Jewish Synhedrion in Paris was merely a Napoleonic device to dispose the Jewish masses of Prussia, Austria, and Russia in his favor. In these circumstances it seemed likely that the resentment aroused in the Russian Jews by their imminent expulsion from the villages would provide a favorable soil for the wily agitation of Napoleon, and would create a hotbed of anti-Russian sentiment in the very regions soon to become the theater of war. ”

“ Thousands of members of the Polish nation of the Mosaic persuasion, who, by virtue of having dwelt in this country for many centuries, have acquired the same right to consider it their fatherland as the other inhabitants, have hitherto, without any fault of theirs, to the damage of society and as an insult to mankind, for reasons that no one knows, been doomed to humiliation, and are groaning under the load of daily oppressions. ”

“ It reflects the utter estrangement in language, in manners, and in culture between Jews and Russians at that time, an estrangement which breeds suspicion and hostility. The Russian knew no more of the life of the secluded Jewish populace than he did of the life of the Chinese. The educated Russian looked with suspicion upon the exclusiveness of patriarchal Jewish life, the unintelligible religious ceremonies which surrounded it, the rigorism of the rabbis, the ecstasy of the Tzaddiks, the strange emotionalism of the Hasidic masses. ”

“ While warring with one another, Rabbinism and Hasidism found a point of contact in their common hatred of the new Enlightenment, which proceeded from the Mendelssohn circle in Berlin. If Rabbinism opposed secular knowledge actively, looking upon it as a competitor who contested its own spiritual monopoly, Hasidism opposed it passively, with its whole being, prompted by an irresistible leaning towards mental drowsiness and "pious fraud." Hasidism and its inseparable companion Tzaddikism, the products of a mystical outlook on life, were powerless against cold logical reasoning. ”

“ Why should we not labor to obtain our freedom which has been promised us just as firmly and sincerely as it has been to others? But first we must show that we are worthy of it.... I have had the happiness of being placed at the head of the regiment by my superiors. Awake then, and help to rescue oppressed Poland. Faithful brethren, let us fight for our country as long as a drop of blood is left in us! ”

“ It was written in Polish, though couched in the solemn phraseology of the Bible:
Listen, ye sons of the tribes of Israel, all ye in whose heart is implanted the image of God Almighty, all that are willing to help in the struggle for the fatherland.... Know ye that now the time hath come to consecrate to this all our strength.... Truly, there are many mighty nobles, children of the Shlakhta, and many great minds who are ready to lay down their lives!... Why then should we who are persecuted not take to arms, seeing that we are the most oppressed people in the world!... ”

“ The million Jews pressed their way into the eight millions of the native population like a wedge, which, once having entered, could not be displaced. For by occupying the originally empty place of the mercantile estate, the Jews had for many centuries served, so to speak, as a tie between the bipartite nation of nobles and serfs. Now a new wedge, the Christian middle class, was endeavoring to displace the Jewish element, but it failed in its efforts. ”

“ On the very eve of the second partition of Poland, when the Russian Government merely anticipated an influx of Jews, it had a fatal gift in store for them: the law of the Pale of Settlement, which was to create within the monarchy of peasant serfs a special class of territorially restricted city serfs. It should be added that the impulse towards the creation of this disability did not come from above but from below, from the influential Christian middle class, which, fearing free competition, began to shout for protection. ”

“ Do not imagine—Oleshnitzki writes to the King in May, 1454—that in matters touching the Christian religion you are at liberty to pass any law you please. No one is great and strong enough to put down all opposition to himself when the interests of the faith are at stake. I therefore beg and implore your Royal Majesty to revoke the aforementioned privileges and liberties. Prove that you are a Catholic sovereign, and remove all occasion for disgracing your name and for worse offenses that are likely to follow. ”

“ Nevertheless the economic struggle in the cities continues with ever-increasing fury, manifesting itself more and more in the shape of malign religious fanaticism. In many cities the municipalities arrogate to themselves judicial authority over the Jews—the authority of the wolves over the sheep—contrary to the fundamental Polish law, which places all litigation between Jews and Christians under the jurisdiction of the royal officials, the voyevodas and starostas. ”

“ As far as the cities are concerned, the Jews were engulfed in endless litigation with the Christian merchant guilds and trade-unions, which wielded a most powerful weapon in their hands by controlling the city government or the magistracy. Competition in business and trade was deliberately disguised beneath the cloak of religion, for the purpose of inciting the passions of the mob against the Jews. The Christian merchants and tradesmen found an enthusiastic ally in the Catholic clergy. ”

“ But not all Poles were genuinely resolved to defend the city. Many of them merely thought of saving their lives. Governor Mladanovich himself conducted peace negotiations with the haidamacks, and was reconciled by their assurances that they would not lay hands on the pans, but would be satisfied with making short work of the Jews. When the haidamacks, headed by Gonta and Zheleznyak, had penetrated into the town, they threw themselves, in accordance with their promise, upon the Jews, who, crazed with terror, were running to and fro in the streets. ”

“ The only rival of Rabbinism, whose attitude was now peaceful and now warlike, was Mysticism, which was nurtured by the mournful disposition of a life-worn people, and grew into maturity in the unwholesome atmosphere of Polish decadence. ”