Class 8. Early Jews of Modern Ukraine (4)
so he sends it to an older rabbinic authority
for a kind of second opinion, just to make sure,
and this guy, his name is Rabbi Joseph Katz,
and he rules, actually, against him
and rules in favor of Simeon,
so you see it's a whole mess.
It's a jurisdictional nightmare,
and he argues that the laws of encroachment
do apply to ownerless property,
and only when there's a complete public agreement
can that law be abrogated,
and we don't know how it's resolved,
but we do know that about 50 years later,
the Council of Four Lands finally issues a ruling
banning any Jew from bidding on an arenda
that's held by a fellow Jew,
and then, the Lithuanian Council steps in and agrees.
They reiterate the ban, and they give a reason:
Competitive bidding causes damage to the Jewish community
by raising the costs of leasing the arenda,
so now, with the Council of Four Lands,
which began as, basically,
a tax collecting, you know, institution,
we actually have it regulating daily life and economic law,
and things start getting more regulated, more normal,
and more in favor
of Jewish business practices,
but there's a downside to all this liquor sales.
It may be lucrative,
and that's why people are fighting about it.
Here's a much later depiction.
You see a pretty satanic-looking Jewish tavernkeeper
who's looking on unconcerned
as the peasants are drunk and passed out,
and, you know, this is a real problem, you know,
and people begin to blame peasant drunkenness on Jews,
and they accuse the Jewish tavernkeeper
of, you know, driving up his drinking debts
and taking advantage of the peasantry,
and it causes a lot of social instability as a result.
Now, on the positive side of things,
we know from rabbinic takkanot
that non-Jews were also part of this thing
and profiting from these arendas on liquor
because you can't keep a tavern running on the Sabbath
if you're Jewish
or on holidays,
like we just had the holiday of Rosh Hashanah.
It's not lawful, so what do they do?
They have local Christians
helping them to run the taverns on those days,
and actually, it becomes a formal partnership
because that's legally, halakh-ically, what you have to do,
and so, really, you see a surprising amount of cooperation
and, you know, economic integration going on
at the local level
where, if you really wanna spell it out,
Christians are helping Jews
to get around their own Sabbath restrictions
so that they can remain profitable
and they're also making, you know,
a fair amount of money doing so,
so there's a fair amount of cooperation going on.
There are rabbis who are against this practice,
strenuously against it,
and Rabbi Betzalel Darshan of Przemysl
blames the 1648 massacres
on this practice itself.
How much time is left?
- About 10 minutes.
- 10 minutes, good, okay. (student speaks faintly)
Six minutes, okay,
so yeah, in very emotional language,
"The blood of fathers and sons,
"the blood of pious men and children, or women,
"the blood of saintly men and women
"and the blood of baby boys and girls
"still suckling at their mother's breasts
"who had never sinned or committed," sorry, "any crime,
"and the blood of rabbis and their disciples
"was spilled like water."
This is the 1648 uprising,
and Chmielnicki massacre of the Jewish communities
he's talking about.
"God is righteous."
We can't blame God for this,
and notice he's not gonna blame the Cossacks either.
He's not gonna blame Chmielnicki.
"It is we who are wicked
"because of our repeated desecrations of the Sabbath.
"A select group,
"the majority of villagers who undertake arendas,
"buy and sell on the Sabbath through the agency of villagers
"all in a deceitful manner."
They also order their gentile servants
to "do such and such work,
"and they sit and teach them
"how to repair what has spoiled the job."
This has all happening on the Sabbath,
and, of course,
God has punished the entire Jewish community for this.
"Oy for my eyes, which saw this many times,
"and I had no way of protesting."
Then he goes on, kind of like a Jewish mother.
"Now, you see what happens, and maybe you'll listen to me,"
and turns out nobody listens to him
because this practice continues.
It's the only way of running
a lucrative tavern and distillery.
In fact, rabbis get involved in writing contracts up
where they form fictitious partnerships,
and the practice continues,
but let me go back to that Chmielnicki uprising
because it's absolutely devastating,
and yet I'm not gonna condone massacres, obviously,
but it's understandable
the position of Cossacks and Ukrainians.
Now, who are Cossacks?
They're essentially peasants who resist serfdom.
They obtain horses and weaponry.
They often will ride down in the Zaporozhian district
and make, carry out raids on the Ottoman territories,
and the Polish army tries to use them
and register them in the Polish army,
but then they try to cut down their numbers,
and there a series of Cossacks revolts
against the Polish government, Polish Lithuanian government,
and in 1648,
there's a major uprising led by Chmielnicki,
who's a semi-polonized Ukrainian nobleman
who's been spurned.
He fell in love with a daughter
of very powerful wealthy Polish nobleman
who threw him into jail,
and he broke out and rode down and fomented rebellion,
and the rebellion...
Look, I mean, if they could reach the Polish nobility,
they probably would've tried,
but you can't reach them.
They're too mobile.
They're too powerful, and so who do they attack?
The perceived agents of the Polish nobility,
namely, the Jewish leaseholders
and other Jews in their midst,
and Jews are massacred in huge numbers
and in very sadistic manners.
I'm not gonna read because it's absolutely horrific,
and you wonder if there's like a little bit of imagination
going on in these chronicles.
This is the famous one by Nathan of Hanover,
but let's just say it's gruesome,
and a colleague of mine, Adam Teller,
has found a Polish version of this
that seems to pretty much verify
that this kind of thing was happening.
It's a furious massacre,
and if the Jewish population pre-1648 was 40,000,
only about 21,000 seemed to survive.
Many, 8,000, become refugees
and are wandering across Europe.
1,000 convert to save their lives,
and 3,000 are taken captive mainly by Tatars
and sold in slave markets
in far-flung places in the Ottoman Empire,
often redeemed by the local Jewish communities there,
and, you know, it's an absolute shock
to the Jewish sense of security and stability.
As a result, and I'm gonna finish here,
as a result, you know,
there's a kind of psychic trauma to the Jewish collectivity
that makes it easier
for this false messiah, Shabbetai Tzvi, to arise.
You know, it's a little bit later,
but he bases his whole career
on vengeance for the 1648 massacres
and managed to convince Jews all over the world
that he's the messiah,
and they follow him, and they sell off their possessions,
and some move to the land of Israel
convinced that the Messiah has come,
but, you know, after that disappointment
and throughout this period, really,
Jewish communities managed
to reconstitute themselves very quickly.
We know that from the number of houses.
The Jewish population continues to increase,
really significantly increase.
How do we explain this
if it was such a devastating massacre?
It seems that the poor were probably the main victims
because they have fewer means of fleeing,
you know, the Cossack armies.
The wealthy are able to flee successfully,
and they can come back and reconstitute these towns,
and that seems to be what happened in this case,
but look, this is a point in time
when the system broke down, when it didn't really work,
but I just wanna end by saying
that the system really worked most of the time,
that this was more the exception than the rule.
There was this kind of economic-based symbiosis,
really based on a relationship with the Polish nobility,
and it's really only with the decline of the nobility itself
towards the end of the 19th century
that the system breaks down completely.
That's when you're gonna have the so-called pogroms,
these anti-Jewish riots,
you know, beginning the 1880s, and then 1903 to '06,
and the worst being in 1919 and during the Holocaust.
This system usually worked
and usually kept Jewish life in the Ukraine
and the rest of Eastern Europe
relatively secure and prosperous.
Okay, thank you.
(audience clapping)
(pensive music)
