Heinrich Graetz - History of the Jews, Vol. 5 (of 6)

Condition of the Jews in Poland before the Outbreak of Persecution – Influence of the Jesuits – Characteristics of Poles and Jews – The Home of the Cossacks – Repression of the Cossacks by the Government – Jews appointed as Tax Farmers – Jurisdiction of the Synods – The Study of the Talmud in Poland – Hebrew Literature in that Country becomes entirely Rabbinical – Character of Polish Judaism – Jews and Cossacks – Chmielnicki – Sufferings of the Jews in consequence of his Successes – The Tartar Haidamaks – Fearful Massacres in Nemirov, Tulczyn, and Homel – Prince Vishnioviecki – Massacres at Polonnoie, Lemberg, Narol, and in other Towns – John Casimir – Lipmann Heller and Sabbataï Cohen – Renewal of the War between Cossacks and Poles – Russians join Cossacks in attacking the Jews – Charles X of Sweden – The Polish Fugitives – "Polonization" of Judaism.

Poland ceased to be a haven for the sons of Judah, when its short-sighted kings summoned the Jesuits to supervise the training of the young nobles and the clergy and crush the spirit of the Polish dissidents. These originators of disunion, to whom the frequent partition of Poland must be attributed, sought to undermine the unobtrusive power which the Jews, through their money and prudence, exercised over the nobles, and they combined with their other foes, German workmen and trades-people, members of the guilds, to restrict and oppress them. After that time there were repeated persecutions of Jews in Poland; sometimes the German guild members, sometimes the disciples of the Jesuits, raised a hue and cry against them. Still, in the calamities of the Thirty Years' War, fugitive Jews sought Poland, because the canonical laws against Jews were not applied there with strictness. The high nobility continued to be dependent on Jews, who in a measure counterbalanced the national defects. Polish flightiness, levity, unsteadiness, extravagance, and recklessness were compensated for by Jewish prudence, sagacity, economy, and cautiousness. The Jew was more than a financier to the Polish nobleman; he was his help in embarrassment, his prudent adviser, his all-in-all. Especially did the nobility make use of Jews in developing recently established colonies, for which they had neither the necessary perseverance nor the ability. Colonies had gradually been formed on the lower Dnieper and the northern shore of the Black Sea, by runaway Polish serfs, criminals, adventurers from every province, peasants, and nobles, who felt themselves cramped and endangered in their homes. These outcasts formed the root of the Cossack race at the waterfalls of the Dnieper (Za-Porogi), whence the Cossacks obtained the name of Zaporogians. To maintain themselves, they took to plundering the neighboring Tartars. They became inured to war, and with every success their courage and independent spirit increased.

The kings, who needed the Cossacks in military undertakings and to ward off the inroads of Tartars and Turks, granted them some independence in the Ukraine and Little Russia, and appointed a chieftain over them from their own midst, an Attaman, or Hetman, with special marks of dignity. But the bigoted temper of King Sigismund III and the Jesuits made the Cossacks, who might have become an element of strength for Poland, the source of endless discontent and rebellion. The Zaporogians for the most part were adherents of the Greek Church, the Greek Catholic confession being predominant in southern Poland. After the popes by means of the Jesuits had weakened and oppressed the Polish dissidents, they labored to unite the Greek Catholics with the Romish Church or to extirpate them. With the warlike spirit of the Cossacks this change was not easy; hence a regular system of enslavement was employed against them. Three noble houses, the Koniecpolski, Vishnioviecki, and Potocki, had control of colonization in the Ukraine and Little Russia, and they transferred to their Jewish business agents the farming of the oppressive imposts falling on the Cossacks. Thus Jewish communities gradually spread in the Ukraine, Little Russia, and even beyond these provinces. The Cossacks, for instance, had to pay a tax at the birth of a child and on every marriage. That there might be no evasion, the Jewish revenue farmers had the keys of the Greek churches, and when the clergyman wished to perform a baptism or a marriage, he was obliged to ask them for the key. In general, the position of the Jews in districts where none but Poles dwelt was better than in those which besides Polish inhabitants contained a German population, as was the case in the large cities, Posen, Cracow, Lublin, and Lemberg.

By reason of their great number, their importance, and their compact union, the Jews in Poland formed a state within a state. The general synod, which assembled twice a year at Lublin and Jaroslaw, formed a legislative and judicial parliament from which there was no appeal. At first called the Synod of the Three Countries, it became in the first quarter of the seventeenth century the Synod of the Four Countries (Vaad Arba Arazoth). An elective president (Parnes di Arba Arazoth) was at the head, and conducted public affairs. The communities and rabbis had civil, and, to a certain extent, criminal, jurisdiction, at least against informers and traitors. Hence no Jew ventured to bring an accusation against one of his race before the authorities of the country, fearing to expose himself to disgrace and contempt from public opinion, which would have embittered his life, or even entailed death. Almost every community had its college of judges, a rabbi with two assessors, before whom every complaint was brought, but the final decision rested with the synod. The synod also concerned itself about honesty in dealing and conduct, and in weight and measure, wherever Jews were affected.

The study of the Talmud in Poland, established by Shachna, Solomon Lurya, and Moses Isserles, reached a pitch attained at no previous time, nor in any other country. The demand for copies of the Talmud was so great that in less than twenty years three editions had to be printed, no doubt in thousands of copies. The study of the Talmud was a greater necessity in Poland than in the rest of Europe. The rabbis, as has been already said, had jurisdiction of their own, and decided according to Talmudical and Rabbinical laws. The great number of Jews in Poland, and their fondness for litigation, gave occasion to intricate law cases. The rabbi-judges were obliged to go back to the source of law, the Talmud, to seek points of support for such cases. The contending parties being themselves well informed and acute, the reasoning of the rabbis had to be flawless to escape criticism. Hence Rabbinical civil law in Poland met with extraordinary cultivation and extension, to adapt it to all cases and make it available for the learned litigants. Thus the ever-growing subtlety of the method of Talmud study depended on current conditions and wants, and on the circumstance that each Talmudist wished to surpass all others in ingenuity.

It would be tedious to enumerate the Rabbinical authors of Poland in the first half of the seventeenth century. The cultivation of a single faculty, that of hair-splitting judgment, at the cost of the rest, narrowed the imagination, hence not a single literary product appeared in Poland deserving the name of poetry. All the productions of the Polish school bore the Talmudical stamp, as the school regarded everything from the Talmudical point of view. The disciples of this school looked down almost with contempt on Scripture and its simple grandeur, or rather it did not exist for them.