Trudy Gold
‘Polin’ Here We Will Rest: Poland’s Golden Years?

Trudy Gold | ‘Polin’ Here We Will Rest: Poland’s Golden Years? | 05.10.22

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• Welcome, everybody. And today we continue with our programme. Now, it’s interesting, when William gave his brilliant presentation yesterday on Ivan the terrible, I think I’d better explain why we’re running parallel courses. The point was, apart from that little, that small amount of Jewish settlement in Kiev and the Radhanite and Khazaria, there was no Jewish settlement in Russia proper. On the contrary, just as Russia is beginning to develop as a nation, the kingdom of Poland emerges as one of the most prosperous, important countries in Europe, and it’s to Poland we’re going to see Jewish settlements. And Poland encompassed far more than the area that you know today. Poland through a marriage treaty is joined with Lithuania. I talked about that a couple of weeks ago. And then annexes what is today the Ukraine. It’s only later when the kingdom of Poland begins to collapse at the end of the 18th century that it is dismembered, and that is when the Russian bear takes the majority of the land, some going to Prussia, some going to Austria.

So that’s why in these early sessions when William and the others are concentrating on Russia, I’m coming back to Poland. And Polin, here we will rest. That’s actually a Hasidic notion that when the rest of the world became inhospitable, Poland opened up to the Jews. And the Polish crown, remember, actually welcomes refugees. Now, why would the Polish crown do this? If you think about it, the Jews of western and central Europe had had the most terrible time. The Crusades and then the Black Death. Whereas the Jagiellonian monarchs, as they’re expanding their country, they have the largest selection of nobles per capita. There’s 7% of nobility. Particularly as the country expands, more and more and more estates, you have a peasant population and a nobility. What do you need to do? You need to invite into your country, particularly after the ravages of the Black Death, which decimated the population. And I did some checking on the extent of the Black Death in Poland. It certainly wasn’t as bad as in Central Europe, but yes, it did happen. And there is, if you like, a lack of people, and what’s the lack of people that’s most important is who will oil the wheels of a very succinct economy. And this is why the Jews are actually invited into Poland. Kazimierz the Great, and we talked about him, he was the king who invites them in, ratifying a previous treaty, and he’s called the King of the Serfs and the Jews.

And this is a comment on him from Howard Morley Sachar, who’s a brilliant historian. “He subordinated water politics, crushed the lawlessness of the nobility, created a famous code of law, built cities, promoted commerce, developed the trade of his country. His epitaph: he found a Poland of wood and left behind him a Poland of stone.” And he really welcomes the Jews in as they are an essential factor in his reconstruction policy. And he extends the charter of Bolesław to all the Jews in, to Jews in all the kingdoms that he’s conquering. Now, there were 50,000 Jews in Poland by 1500. That number by the 20th century is to go up to three quarters of a- The 19th century is to go up to three quarters of a million. By the 19th century, three quarters of the Jews of the world, the majority of Ashkenazi Jewry, either live there or trace their descent there. And those of you online, and I said this to you a couple of weeks ago, whether you’re living in America, Canada, South Africa, Israel, England, I guarantee if you’re representative of a normal strata of Jews, three quarters of you will trace your descent back to this particular settlement. So it’s very, very important, I think, as a settlement for us to actually study. And can we have the first slide, please, if you don’t mind, Lauren?

Now, I couldn’t help but bringing in Julian Tuwim, who was one of the most important poets of the 19th century, 20th, of the 19th, 20th century. Very important Polish poet. He really had a feel for the importance of the Jews in Poland. And of course, by this time we are in interwar Poland after the destruction of the Tsarist empire. And this is what he has to say after the Shoah. This is after the Shoah. “Gone are the little towns where the shoemaker was a poet. The watchmaker a philosopher, and the barber a musician. Gone now are the little towns where the wind joined biblical songs with Polish tunes and Slavic sounds. Where old Jews and orchards in the shade of cherry trees…” I’ve lost the slide. “Lamented for the holy walls of Jerusalem. Gone now are those little towns, through the poetic mists, the moons ponds, winds, and stars above them have recorded in the history of centuries the tragic tale, the history of two of the saddest nations on earth.” And of course I’m completely jumping forward now because one of the big issues in Polish Jewish relations today, and if ever you get an opportunity to travel to Poland, Polin, which is the Jewish museum in Warsaw, is one of the great Jewish museums of the world. But having said that, there is a very uneasy relationship between the Jews and the Poles. They both see themselves as victims. And I will be talking more about that as we go through.

But can we please turn to, let’s, before I turn onto the slides, though, I just want to clear up a little bit about the Jews of Russia. Now, the tsars would not allow Jews into Russia. In fact, in 1545, talking about the reign of Ivan the Terrible, he sent a delegation to Sigismund Augustus, who was the king of Poland, about boundary disputes. Evidently certain Jews of Brest had come to Moscow without permission and all their goods were burnt. And because evidently they brought with them some red ochre and the Russians believed that what they were were medicines, herbs which would poison the Christians. So they are not allowed to enter the Moscovite territories. In 1550, Sigismund actually asked Ivan to permit Lithuanian Jews to trade in Russia on the strengths of agreements between Jews, between Poland and Lithuania. The tsar refused and he said this. These are the words of Ivan the Terrible. And as William explained, though, as a… I mean, the man was a psychopath, but his relations with the Jews are no better than his relations with anyone else. And this is what he said. “It is not convenient to allow Jews to come with their goods into Russia, since many evils result from them, for they import poisonous herbs and lead astray many Russians from Christianity.” That is Ivan the Terrible. And one of the issues… Can we come to the next slide please, Lauren? Yeah, this, I think there was a slide before that, wasn’t there? Can I see the one before that? Yes, that’s Kazimierz IV, who is, he’s a very important king.

He was the one who defeated the Teutonic Knights, and in fact, he really expands the kingdom of Poland and makes the Jagiellonian house, this is the joint crowns of Poland and Lithuania, into one of the most important monarchies in Europe. Now, he felt very strongly that he wants to develop his country. So what he is doing, he’s allowing Jews to come in and trade. And this is when Bishop Oleśnicki, let’s see the man, please. The next slide. There, I introduced you to him last week, and this is what he wrote to the king, and the king is, of course, living in Kraków. Those of you who’ve been to Poland, Kraków, which is now the third city of Poland, in the period of the Jagiellonians up until 1569, the end of the Jagiellonian dynasty, Kraków was the capital. And Kraków is a particularly good town to visit from the point of view of Jewish history because it wasn’t destroyed. Ironically, the evil Frank, one of the most evil characters of the Nazi regime, he put himself up in the Wawel Castle, and they liked Kraków, so they didn’t destroy it. They did not destroy the Jewish quarter in Kazimierz. They misused it. Of course, they murdered the population. They used the synagogues for the most horrific things. But the point is they still stand and you can get a sense, and I’ll be talking about that later on. So the crown is in Kraków at the Wawel Castle.

If you remember, it was built by Kazimierz III. It’s the seat of the dynasty. And there’s already a large Jewish settlement there. And this is Bishop Oleśnicki, And this is what he’s warning Kazimierz. “Do not imagine that in matters touching the Christian religion you are at liberty to pass any law you please. No one is strong enough or great enough to put down all opposition to himself when the interests of the state are at stake. I therefore beseech and implore your majesty to revoke the aforementioned privileges and liberties, prove you are a Catholic sovereign, and remove all occasion for disgracing your name and worse offences that are to follow.” Now, you’ve got to remember that this was very much the attitude of the Catholic church, particularly after the fear of Islam, the conquering of Jerusalem, and of course, the crusading movements. And even though during the Black Death the Pope did not want the wholesale murder of Jews, Catholicism has a real problem. And these are the words of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who was given further honour, ironically, in the 19th century, in the time of Pius IX, and these are the words of Bernard of Clairvaux about the Jews. “Killing for Christ is malicide, not homicide. Extermination of injustice to kill a pagan is to win glory since it gives glory to Christ.”

Ironically, the major protagonist who went against him was an extraordinary man called Peter Abelard, lived from 1079 to 1142. And I’m going back a couple of centuries, but what I need to show you how deep it is in the church. And of course, he actually has a dialogue with Jews, and he believes that the way forward, his dialogue, he wants to convert them, but he doesn’t have that appalling hatred. And on that particular subject, what is fascinating at the moment, and some of you may have actually read this, that in England, this year is the 800th anniversary of the Fourth Lateran Council, when Jews had to wear a badge, a Jew badge, very much the notion of Innocent III, who we looked at last week. And the church is going to have a… They’ve had a ceremony and now they’re going to have a big conference to apologise to the Jews. And it’s for you to debate whether these ideas are interesting or not. But that is happening because I think they’re now in the church is a realisation that the thousands of years, and I’m going to go as strong as that, of anti-Judaism in the gospels and in the Catholic church pushed the Jew into the marginal occupations. The fact that Jews couldn’t join guilds, the fact that Jews were outside society pushes them into money lending, it pushes them into merchanting, for which they are later despised. So consequently, you have a situation where the Jewish community is under threat, and this notion of the Catholic Church is getting worse. And what is fascinating about Poland is that the Polish crown at this particular time was far more interested in creating a good secular economy.

Consequently, it would allow Jews into the country. Not only that, but it gave them all sorts of charters of rights, and we’re going to see that later on allows them to set up almost a kingdom within a kingdom. Now, in 1500, we know that there were about 100 Jewish settlements with a population of 25,000. And in the beginning, Jews lived mainly in royal towns and more often, or in towns and villages, especially in the eastern parts on the land of the nobles. I’ve already mentioned to you the nobles make up 7% of the population and they are going to become a very important factor. Now, these nobles might have estates the size of Wales and/or Texas. And in order to develop their estates, who is going to collect the taxes? Who is going to actually sort out the whole of the country? Who is going to allow the nobles to live the kind of life they wanted? And of course it is the Jews. Now, Moses Isserles, who was a great rabbi in Kraków, who I’ll come back to later, he, this is what he wrote in 1572. “The hatred of us in this country has not yet overwhelmed us as in the German lands. May it remain so until the coming of the Messiah.”

And it also has to be said that the Polish government was prepared to allow in Christian dissenters, as well, because these Christian dissenters, also merchants, German merchants, they are useful to the crown. So this is very, very important. Now, can we go on to the next slide, please? There you see Sigismund the Old. He is the monarch who is going to go further. He, when he was grand Duke of Lithuania, and then he takes the whole crown of Poland-Lithuania, he did allow expulsions from Vilna, but then he changed his mind. And when he became king, he said basically any monarch that is a good monarch will be just and tolerant. So it’s the Jews and it’s the Protestants. It’s a far better place for them to live than anywhere in Europe. And it’s going to be fascinating because Poland is going to be very well repaid. Those of you who have visited Poland will know what a fertile country it is. If you’ve been to the Ukraine, and as I told you, I’ve taught there. Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland. Ukraine, the soil is almost black because it’s such a fertile land. So you can imagine these estates, particularly after the annexation of the Ukraine around 1560s. What happens is the landowners have these huge estates. Who do you think goes into the Ukraine to… And Ukraine, by the way, means borderland. Who do you think went into this borderland to parcel up the land for the important landowners? Can we see the next king, please? That is his son, Sigismund Augustus. He was also very tolerant towards the Jews. And to give you a notion of the power of the nobility, he married a woman called Barbara Radziwiłł.

I’m sure many of you will know of the Radziwiłł family. They were one of the most important of the Lithuanian families, and of course, there are branches of them alive today. Now, Barbara Radziwiłł had huge estates in Lithuania, in the Ukraine. She marries, and she’s just representative of one of the important land owning families who really had incredible power. So I want you to imagine, those of you who know of the shtetle, quite often shtetle were little villages on the estates or towns, small towns, shtetls, on the land of the nobility. So the nobility in the Ukraine, they’ve moved into the Ukraine. And I think I should talk a little bit more about this. Ukraine means borderland. Who lived there? It was runaway serfs, Cossacks, Tartars. It was the wild west. And now that it’s annexed by the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, which is officially joined, by the way, in 1569, what happened, and can we see the next map, please? ‘Cause I think this will show you what I’m talking about. Here you go, and stretch it out. Yes, now, those of you who are so interested in that tragic situation in the Ukraine, this gives you a notion of what it was like.

This is 1569 when Poland and Lithuania officially unite. They’ve been united by personal relations for 200 years. They officially unite and they take over this wild area in the Ukraine. It’s the land… And you see at the bottom the Zaporozje. That is the land of the Cossacks at the end of the Dnieper River. And these landowners, this is where you have their huge estates, and of course so many Jews are going to settle there. Most landowners had a Jew as their main agent and he would be responsible for making sure that taxes were gathered. And if you want to know about Jewish communal responsibility, the Jews were taxed as a body, not the individual. And I think this is going to set up a very interesting system of charity, which I’m going to talk about later. So in the Ukraine, this fertile land, the peasants would be tilling the land. The peasants are serfs, illiterate. In the east, they are Greek Orthodox. In the west, they are Uniate. There’s a great division in the Ukraine between the religiosity and some, and the Uniates moved far more to the west and to Catholicism. Now, the Jews living on these estates, they are allowed many freedoms. They have far more flexibility of employment than they had in the west. For example, in the towns and in the villages, you have the important merchants. You have the important characters who are collecting the grain from the peasants, the merchants. And the fact that I’ve told you that Ivan the Terrible wouldn’t allow them into Russia, it shows you that they’re still merchanting.

Who do you think is bringing back the furs of Poland to the western courts? Even though those times are bad for Jews, secular rulers still need luxury goods. So in the Ukraine, in these little towns and villages, Jews would be shoemakers, they would be blacksmiths, they would be innkeepers, they would enter into so many other professions than they were allowed to do in the west. So what I want to do now, because what happens, though, after the death of Sigismund Augustus, he dies without issue. And from then on you’re going to see the power of the Polish Parliament. Can we see, no, actually, I think we’d better stay there for just another minute because I really want you to have a look at that map because it’s so important. What’s that great quote of ? The trouble with Jewish history, too much history, not enough geography. But the point is to understand Jewish history, you have to understand so much about other people’s histories. And of course I have a pointer. You can see Warsaw there. There is Vilna. If you go along, of course, this is, there’s Raków. That’s the land of the Zaporozje. They haven’t yet come down to Odessa. That’s not going to happen until that land is annexed by the Russians. Odessa is going to be built by Catherine the Great, and I’ll be talking about that in a couple of weeks. So basically it’s important that you understand just how huge that area of land is. Okay, let’s move on, please, to the sejm. I hope I pronounced, yes.

Now, this is the Polish Parliament. When Sigismund dies childless, remember, 7% of the population are nobles. This is the Polish Parliament from now on. And you see, of course, the king on one side. You see the nobles. You see the church. And the Polish Parliament is going to have more power than… Made up of nobles, it has to be said. It has more power than any other parliament in Europe. And basically these important nobles from now on are going to elect kings. So from now on, Polish kings are going to be elected. So, and many of the kings and many of the people who elect them, remember, are Polish-Lithuanian nobles. And by this time the Lithuanian mobility had become pollenized. So basically, these nobles, they are interested in their estates. They are interested in protecting what they have. And that meant also protecting the Jews. And the first notion we have of some Jewish communal body is actually in 1519. But it’s not until 1580 that the Polish Parliament is going to ratify something known as the Council of the Four Lands. But a little about that later, because before I do that, I want to give you a real sense of Jewish life in Poland. And to do that, I’ve decided on Kraków, because we have so much more there than in any other town or village in Poland, Lithuania, or the Ukraine, as I said before, because it was not destroyed. And remember, it’s the capital of Poland until the end of the Jagiellonian dynasty, and the new king, who is actually a Swede, moves his capital to Warsaw.

So let’s have a look at Kraków, and I’m starting in rather a strange way. Can we see the next slide, please? This is Kazimierz. As I said, it hasn’t been destroyed. Now why on earth am I showing you a picture of the Ariel Cafe? The Ariel Cafe, look, basically, we will be doing this in an awful lot of detail. Independent Poland is destroyed by the three great powers of Prussia, Russia, and Austria and the Habsburg Empire. Poland reemerges at the end of the First World War, manages under Piłsudski, manages to create an independent state ratified by the League of Nations. Jewish life, there’s still huge Jewish life in Poland, and Kazimierz is the centre. If you remember when I was talking about Kazimierz the Great, Kazimierz was a town on the outskirts of Kraków that became known as the Jewish town. And I chose the Ariel Cafe because it’s fascinating to visit. I started going to Poland just as communism fell because we were teaching over there. And any young Jew with any interest in Poland went to Kazimierz, went to the Ariel Cafe, and you would meet all sorts of young people with dreams of what they’re going to do with Jewish life in Poland. And of course, this whole issue of whether Jewish life can be resurrected in Eastern Europe has got a huge question mark against it. But that is on the edge of a huge square. Can we move on, please? Yes, that is the Alta Shul.

The Alta Shul is one of, the Old Synagogue. It’s now a very beautiful museum. It’s one of the oldest synagogues in Europe. And it was actually built in 1409. And you can see it’s built in a very special style. It’s a very, very beautiful. There are seven important synagogues in Kraków at this particular time. Now, as far as Jewish learning is concerned, we don’t know very much about Jewish learning in Poland until the end of the 15th century. We know that Jacob Pollak settled in Kazimierz and founded the first yeshiva, and it’s through him that Talmudic learning is going to spread throughout Poland. We also know that there were many doctors, many physicians living in Kazimierz. Moses of Przemyśl, which is another town to the south, is mentioned in 1465. He’s one of the community elders. and can we have a look at the Bocian Shul, please? Oh no, can you run on two or three and then go back? Sorry, I’m coming back to that. I want to go to the next one. That is the Bocian Synagogue that was founded in 1620 by a very interesting family and man called Wolf Popper. He was an important merchant. He made his fortune in large-scale international trade.

As you already know, Kraków is on the main trading routes. He made his fortune in the sale of cloth and saltpetre, which is, of course, an ingredient for gunpowder. He was the richest banker in Kraków and one of the richest men in Europe, so, and he was an elder of the community, and he is known, he was, it’s known as Bocian. It’s actually, because he was known as Wolf the Stork. Evidently he could stand on one leg whilst thinking, and that’s why it’s called the Bocian Synagogue. And it’s a very, very beautiful building. Now, can we go back on ourselves again, please? Okay, let’s leave it at Moses Isserles, 'cause he was wonderful. Now also, by the 1600s, 1500s, you have many Jews fleeing from Bohemia, from Moravia. They’re also settling in Kraków. And at first they wanted to maintain a separate life from the Jews now living there. That was opposed, and it was led by a family called the Fishel family. This is another very wealthy family in Kraków. Moishe Fishel had been the banker to King Kazimierz IV and head of the Jewish community. So usually the head of the community is an important banker who works for the king. And it was in fact in 1509 that the king himself in intervened and he said there’s got to be peace between the two groups. And it wasn’t until 1519 that the two communities actually recognised one another after the leading rabbis of both communities had died, and the rabbinate and therefore the beit din transferred to the Fishel and the Polish section. We are such a quarrelsome people.

Also in the 16th century, you have a large number of immigrants from Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Why Spain and Portugal? Don’t forget 1492, the expulsion from Spain, 1497, the expulsion from Portugal. These are Sephardi Jews who move to Poland. Not a vast number, Ashkenazi always in the preponderance. But the point is many of them came with their wealth and also many of them were physicians. And there was so much intensification that it led to terrible overcrowding and the crown allowed the extension of Kazimierz. So the Polish crown is allowing the Jews to build more houses and the erection of another synagogue. And in 1564, the Jews are so useful to the crown that they actually prevent non-Jews from acquiring residence and business premises in Kazimierz. It is the Jewish town. And we know that by 1570 there are two and a half thousand people living there. So the Fishel family also erect the Bocian Gate and they liquidate all the arrears in the municipal treasury. So by 1635 there are 67 houses, mainly of the wealthy, who are erected in the new section of the town. And in 1609, the community reaches an agreement to trade freely in Kazimierz and nearby Stradom. Not in Kazimierz, in Kraków, beg your pardon. That they’re allowed to go into Kraków to set up their stores, their booths. And those of you who’ve been to Kraków proper will know the magnificent town square where there were booths, and of course, many of those booths were owned by Jews. Now, also Christian merchants were very interested in Jewish trade, particularly those who had premises, because they could lease their premises to Jewish businessmen. And it did lead to tension between the Jews and the Christians.

Don’t forget, they’re useful to the crown, but to the church, they are the people of the devil. So you’ve always got that tension. But despite this, it isn’t important, and the 16th and 17th centuries are periods of incredible cultural achievement for the Jews. By 1644, there are seven main synagogues. And also the other development, by the second half of the 16th century, there are many yeshivot in Kraków, and it really does become the centre of Jewish learning. Now, people like Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller, and I hope his descendant Michael is listening, and also Moses Isserles. And I want to talk a little about Moses Isserles because he was an absolutely extraordinary man and also gives you a notion of the Jewish reverence for knowledge. It’s one of the things I’ve always found fascinating in, if you look at Jewish society, the greatest prize in marriage for the daughter of the richest man was not the son of the second richest man. It’s the rabbi or a yeshiva student. And I think it’s fascinating that it’s the bringing together of wealth and the bringing together of academic knowledge. So you can do what you like with those ideas, but I think they’re quite important. Now, so who was Moishe Isserles, the Remuh? He was born in Kraków. His father was a wealthy merchant. His father was also one of the leaders of the community because that’s how it worked. If you have money, you are a leader of the community.

He studied in Kraków at the yeshiva. Then he goes to Lublin, where he studies under Shalom Shachna and becomes his son-in-law. He returns to Kraków and establishes his own yeshiva. And being a wealthy man, he supports the students at his own cost. Three years later, he’s very young, he’s ordained rabbi, and he’s one of the three dianim . Because what we’re going to discover when we look at the Council of the Four Lands, the Polish crown are not interested in disputes between Jews. Basically, Jews are allowed to settle their own affairs. It’s only in a dispute with a gentile, with a Christian, that the Polish crown is involved. He built a family synagogue as a memorial to his wife, who died in 1553. And can we have a look at the Remuh Shul, the synagogue, please? Yeah, that is the beautiful Remuh Shul, which of course still exists. And I must tell you something about that shul, because in fact, that is the shul that is still, that when we used to first come to Poland, it was still open, and you could make contact with Jews who outwardly were communists, but, had been communists, but were now beginning to refine, rediscover their Jewishness. When the Nazis invaded, the Remuh, Moses Isserles was so loved that what some of the community did, they buried all the tombstones. They just put lots and lots of earth on the tombstones so that the Nazis wouldn’t destroy it. And of course you can still pray at the tomb of Moses Isserles, which many, many people come to do and to see. It’s a very, very important, it’s a very important site.

Anyway, his yeshiva was very interesting, and I want to bring this into the debate. He didn’t just teach Torah and Talmud, but also geography, astronomy, mysticism, kabbalah, and philosophy. Now, I want to hold your, that thought, because one of the big debates in Judaism is what may a jew study? His student, David Gans of Prague, became the leading Jewish historian in his day. Moishe Isserles had a very open mind. And also, the Shulchan Aruch, as I’m sure you know, had been written by a Sephardi rabbi, Joseph Karo . It had been printed in Italy. Isserles recognised its importance as a guide to Jewish life, but it didn’t follow Ashkenazi custom, so he adapted it for the Ashkenazi world. Map here, the tablecloth. And this made Polish custom standard for the Ashkenazi world. And also the whole issue within the Jewish world on philosophy. Isserles was a defender, and he was reproached by Isaac Luria for studying philosophy, and he says he based it on Maimonides and his discussions of Aristotle. You know, the clash between Jewish and Greek culture. He says, this is a quote, “I follow Maimonides and only study on Shabbat and other holy days, whilst generally people take walks. So better to study philosophy than err through the Kabbalah.”

He also occupied himself with secular sciences, provided it didn’t lead him to heresy. He believed that he had enough Talmud and Torah to be safe. He, as I said, he had a great liking for history. He was opposed to pilpul. Now, pilpul is fascinating. It’s, I’m sure there are people online today who know far more about this than me because I have never studied in a yeshiva. But the point is, it’s hair-splitting argument. He wanted the Talmud interpreted simply. He wanted it to be available. Pilpul requires absolute incredible intellectual gymnastics. The epitaph on him, “From Moses to Moses, there was none like Moses.” Now, so that is the wonderful Remuh Shul that you can still see. And the other point to bring out, in the early 1530s, three very enterprising brothers, Shmuel and Asher and Eliakim Halicz, established their own printing press in Kazimierz. Up until that time, they had to come from Italy. It was the first Jewish press in Polish lands. And they published texts in cheap editions. Unfortunately, they went broke. Their business failed. They reestablished it a year later and then converted to Christianity, backed with money from the church. They were obviously, they were wise boys. The community refused to buy their books. They appealed to the king, who ordered them to buy the books.

But again, they went bankrupt, and Jewish publishing after this. it languished for two decades, and then the king allowed the appointing of two new printing houses, and this time the Jewish printers had the royal patent, so that was fine. And of course, in Kraków and Kazimierz, there’s a huge range of economic opportunities. Bearing in mind the extent of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the easiest entry for Jews, of course, was international trade. And they meet, where do they meet? They’re going to meet at the annual fairs. And during the annual fairs, the Christian trading monopoly was in fact suspended. Now, what I’d like to do is to turn to the Council of the Four Lands. Can we see that slide, please? Go on, that’s the, there it is. That is actually from the catalogue of the Polin Museum. You can actually see a replica. This is what they imagined the Council of the Four Lands would be. So the Council of the Four Lands is established by the will of the Sejm to order Jewish life. The Jews themselves are going to order Jewish life. Now, bearing in mind the import trade, which they’re behind, controls the direct domestics trade through the fairs. They often are leasing land now. They can lease royal land. They sometimes don’t just look after the land of the nobility. They lease land.

So you have Jews going into farming. They fished, they lumbered, they manufactured flour, spirits. They very much were the innkeepers and the tavern keepers of Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine. And later on that’s going to be a real problem for them. They handed extended credit, they held mortgages, and also they developed their own crafts in competition with the Christian guilds. They also, by the 1700s, are pioneering ready-made clothes. How were they reviewed by the peasants amongst whom they lived? This is from Howard Morley Sachar. “As far as the devout Catholic Polish peasant was concerned, the strange Oriental people of Israel denying Christ and repudiating the Holy Ghost, practising bizarre and mysterious rights, praying in a terrifying gibberish, undoubtedly a code of the devil. What could be done but, what could they be but a cursed antichrist incarnate? Did not the parish priest make this abundantly clear at Easter?” So important to remember, even though they are living at the behest of the king and the nobility, there still is a lot of resentment from the Polish population. It starts out as religious, but then it becomes economic. And that’s one of the problems. So when we talk about church guilt in the story of the Jews, I think it’s a very, very important factor.

But let’s go back now and look at the Council of the Four Lands. So from the point of view of the king, what they were responsible for were the collecting and paying the taxes from the Jewish community, and so they were also themselves, the Council of the Four Lands covered the four districts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which encompassed the Ukraine. Later on, the Lithuanians break away and have their own separate council. But the point is they are going to be in control of everything. They were special Jewish craft guilds. And the level of participation in the kahals was incredibly high. Each kehila, the four, could make decisions. Also, there was, what was the threat that they could hold? The herem. Jews that got into trouble with Gentiles, if their activities brought trouble and problems for the community, could be excommunicated. And we also know that they even had the power of imprisonment. And also they began to pay the officials who worked for the kahal, the Council of the Four Lands, including rabbis, and only these characters were allowed to pass judgement . And the rabbi would also be the rosh yeshiva. The core in the yeshiva of the syllabus was Talmudic and rabbinic text. And it’s going to produce the scholars, really, that are going to spread out as Jews begin to creep back into Europe mainly in ghettos.

It’s Poland they’re going to be turning to, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, for their rabbis. There were many debates over, and we have lots of records. We know debates over pilpul, also some rabbis arguing it made you too divorced from reality. Tearing down, building up all your arguments, also debates on which commentary should be used. And great numbers of the Jewish population are now, their lives are, if you like, circumscribed by the councils. The outcome was almost, this is important. It’s almost autonomy in the Polish state. It’s administrative, it’s judicial, it’s religious, it’s charitable. You can go as far as to say it is self-government. And remember, its functions are performed by elected elders. When it looked after the poor, in theory, it’s to look after the poor. It’s to look after the widows. It’s to look after the orphans. It’s going to make sure that people have enough to eat. Of course there was corruption, but in theory it’s there because it’s useful. It’s useful for the people. And in the main, it creates a cohesion, which I think is so important, and I think this cohesion has really left its mark on Jewish communities, whether they live in South Africa, England, America, Canada. Why? Because you’ve got this notion of looking after each other. Of course there were terrible arguments amongst the leadership. You can just imagine. This is Jewish. We like arguing for the sake of arguing. Is that not pilpul?

And it’s the central body of Jewish life from 1580 right up until 1764 when it is destroyed. There were 70 delegates who would meet at the Council of the Four Lands. The main council met once a year and they, think of the Sanhedrin. And they meet to discuss the most important issues of the community. Now, what were the four lands? Greater Poland, little Poland, Galicia, and Volhynia. And as I said, in 1623, the Lithuanians, they had a row and they established their own council. We know that, there isn’t really enough detail, but here you have Menachem Behr of Bolesław describing it. “This council was for the children of Israel, a measure of redemption and some honour.” This is from Rav Abraham Halevi, who is in early 17th century Egypt. “Poland is a great city of God and every pronouncement made there is spread to all the cities of Ashkenaz.”

This is a letter of the rabbis of Amsterdam in 1670 address the letter to those whose fortress authority extends over the entire community of the exile. These are Ashkenazi Jews in Amsterdam writing a letter to the rabbis of the Council of the Four Lands. Also, there was always an official who would represent the council at the court, the shtetle. And if there was problems, if bribery needed to happen, if the Polish crown was short of money, he would raise the money from the Jewish community almost as a protection. And it, so I think I’ve also illustrated by reading those other issues, the other, those comments, it meant that the council enjoyed an influence way beyond the borders of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. And I’m now quoting from Sachar. “Most elaborately and highly institutional structure in European Jewish history, a national council of the Jews which existed for 200 years. Decisions affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of Jews. It sought to coordinate the hundreds of communities in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.”

And he goes on to say, “In the absence of Jewish sovereignty anywhere in the world, it served as a reminder of past Jewish sovereignty and a harbinger of the promised Messianic state of the future.” So it holds its regular meetings at the four annual trade fairs in different parts of Poland. And the Council of the Four Lands, the supreme body of 70 meets once a year. So it looks after every aspect of people’s lives, administering to the poor, medicine, making sure that the widows are looked after. But as I said, of course there’s corruption. The wealthy reign supreme. The rabbis had a huge amount of power. But compared to the situation of Jews in the rest of Europe, it’s going to be a very, very important issue. And of course, unfortunately, it’s all going to come to an end. Now, why is it going to come to an end? Why? Because tragically, what’s that Zionist line of history? The outside world acts. All the Jews can do is react. Poland is going to crumble, and it begins in 1648 at the end of the 30 Years’ War, when the Zaporozje Cossacks of the Ukraine go on the onslaught. And I’ll be talking about that on Thursday. It’s known as the Great Deluge. They destroy much of the life of the Ukraine, including Jewish life. So you have this 250 years in Poland where scholarship flourish, where Jews could live a Jewish way of life, and it became an incredible model.

The problem was, and I think this is one of the reasons why today, there’s such ambiguity about Poland, because things are going to go so terribly badly wrong that I’ve found in my teaching over the years, the majority of people I’ve taught, Jewish students I’ve taught, have much more hatred for Poland than they even do for what the Germans and the Austrians did. So I wanted to take you back to that period when there are no Jews living in the Russian Empire, when the bulk of Eastern European Jewry, the bulk of Jewry is living in the east and Eastern Europe. And remember, by the 20th century, they’re going to have different masters, but the bulk are going to stay certainly up until 1881. They’re going to stay in these areas. And it was the heartland.

So let me stop there and have a look at the questions.

Q&A and Comments

Oh, this is Gene. “Since I’ve been doing Wordle, I’ve been much better understanding of the geography.” “ of Abelard and Heloise fame?” Yes, indeed.

Q: “When and why did Poland and Lithuania split?” A: It didn’t quite happen like that. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was conquered. It was conquered and divided up. And I’ll be talking about that on Thursday. It begins at the end of the 30 Years’ War. Poland is weakened. Look, if you think about it, there’s no strong king. It’s an elected monarchy. What then happens, David, is the 30 Years’ War. Poland is invaded from the north. It’s a terrible, terrible period. And then the Cossacks go on the march. And from then on, from 1648, it takes about 130 years, but Poland begins to disintegrate, and beginning in 17- And that means Poland-Lithuania. Beginning in 1772 culminating in 1815, this whole land, this whole entity is wiped off the map, the majority of the land going to Catherine the Great, another chunk going to Prussia, and another chunk going to the Habsburgs. And the Jews went, depending on where the Jews lived, they went with the conquerors. And they’re going to have a far worse time in Tsarist Russia than anywhere else. Look, I hope I’ve got over to you, there were hundreds and hundreds of Jewish settlements. Look, it starts in 1500 with 25,000. By the time you get to the period I’m talking about, look, by the 19th century, 750,000. It’s huge. Look, please don’t forget that Warsaw in 1939 was a third Jewish. Kraków was 30% Jewish. Łódź was was 25%, sorry, a third Jewish. So these are the centres, and this is where people stayed, and later on, of course, you’re going to see the great religious divide between the Hasids and the traditional Orthodox.

Oh, this is from Serena. “Your map showed Courland, where my father’s family came from.” May I recommend to all of you a book? Martin Gilbert, “Jewish History Atlas.” It is so useful. It really is useful for you to be able to follow. I’m speaking too quickly, am I, Selma? I apologise. I get excited. “I found the Ariel Cafe by chance. Great Israeli feel.” Karen, “When I was in the Ariel Cafe, there were two brothers who didn’t get along, hence the Ariel Cafe opened next door to the Ariel Cafe. The singers went from one restaurant to the other. They were Polish singing. Yes, Kraków is very, very strange. And I was there for the opening of the first Festival of Culture. It was in the Jagiellonian University in the Great Hall. And I was with Felix Scharf. And it was a very extraordinary experience because most of the intellectuals of Poland were there. There weren’t that many Jews for the first one. And Benzion Miller, a great cantor, sang. It was very, very strange because Felix had had to leave. He couldn’t do his PhD at the Jagiellonian because there was numerous classes. "The Bocian Synagogue looks huge.” It was. The whole of Kazimierz was Jewish. That’s the whole point. It was a Jewish town. The non-Jews weren’t allowed to live there anymore.

“Interesting that Hasidic dress was based on the garb of 18th century Polish nobility, which had been influenced by 17th century Turkish dress.” Yes, it’s fascinating, isn’t it? All these byways. This is from Elaine. “When I asked my grandfather, ‘Where were you from?’ He said, ‘Depended on the day. If the Cossacks came through, it was Russia. If the Polish army was there, it was Poland.’ Around 1912.” Yes, what a story. Evelyn, “My grandfather told my father this, too. It was part of my family Jewish history.”

Q: “What do you think of the suggestion that one of the reasons the noble employed Jews to collect taxes was this drew any resentment about taxation towards the Jews, thus protecting the noble families who received the money?” A: Of course. The Jews were the middlemen, of course. Look, we were the pariahs of the Christian world. And one of the issues I have today, and I am going to say it, one of the issues I have today is that I do not think that antisemitism is just a form of racism. I think every form of racism has its differences, by the way. I hate it all being clumped together. I really think it’s so wrong and not only intellectually sloppy, but it stops us ever being able to work out the causes. Whether we can ever come up with a remedy is another thing. And I really think it’s the Christological hatred added to it envy and of course the notion, the association of the Jews with money. Look, as I’m sure you all know that by the time the Tsarist Empire was at its worst for the Jews 1881 to 1914, and my guess is that’s when the majority of your families got out. The 40% of the Jews of Eastern Europe were on poor relief from other Jews who’d already made it west. So basically, but it’s this image. It’s always the image that matters.

This is from . “You mentioned Rabbi Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller. My wife Diana, formerly Heller, is a proud descendant. We have visited his former synagogue in Prague.” Yes, that is . Evelyn, “Polish singer singing in Yiddish and playing klezmer music. Spielberg his time there while filming ‘Schindler’s List.’ I visited this beautiful museum synagogue Remuh.” Evelyn, Kazimierz is one of the most extraordinary places I have ever visited. We used to teach there. You’ve got to remember, one of the reasons I spent so much time in Eastern Europe was we were teaching Holocaust studies to non-Jews. And nothing is what it seems. I mean, yeah, there are Polish singers performing Yiddish melodies for an audience of young Poles who don’t understand the words, and yet for some it’s a nostalgia. We’ve got to be careful here. Although antisemitism is back with a vengeance in Poland, nevertheless, there are individuals who feel that they lost a lot, that, you see, the Jews were such an integral part of Poland, except that Felix Scharf did say to me once, “We walked the same earth and we looked at the same sky. How much did our worlds really entwine?” Perhaps in Warsaw and Kraków in the ‘30s. “This is Sarah.” Hi, Sarah. “I was last in Kraków a few years ago, and at the craft market in the main square were figurines of Jews counting money. It was shocking.

Q: How much do you think the revival of Kazimierz district is genuine cultural empathy and how much is a commercial enterprise? I was very confused about how the Poles really see the Jews.” A: Sarah, you’ve got to the nub of the question. It’s complicated. Look, they make a lot of money with the tourists by making little garden gnomes into Hasids. The Polish Festival of Culture is a big tourist attraction. Jews visit Poland. They know it’s a Polish revenue. But on the other hand, I have met young people studying Jewish music, Jewish literature at the Jagiellonian University who I think are totally sincere. And when we taught there, I met quite a few Polish intellectuals who really do want to rehabilitate. On the other hand, the Jews are still, you know, it’s a Christian, it’s a Catholic country again, so the old Christ killer image is back. So as I don’t need to tell you, in times of political, economic, and social unrest, add to it a pandemic, you always blame the other. And in Poland, the Jew is the main other. We thought we got somewhere with the teaching of Holocaust studies. Something very sad happened. We worked, my colleague Jerry Gotel through Felix Scharf, we worked there, we went twice a year for about 10 years, and we built up almost a pyramid. We got to the stage where they were teaching others and we thought we were becoming very smug. We thought we’ve cracked it. And then we introduced a session on the Roma and they were so hostile to this particular Polish lecturer. We also worked with Jan Gross at one stage, and of course, Jan Gross is the man who wrote the book “Jedwabnem,” which is about murders of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust. And now, of course, it’s a crime to actually in any way insinuate that Poles were complicit in any of the murders. There’s huge misunderstandings on every level. The Poles see Auschwitz as their symbol. We see it as our symbol. Under communism, none of these questions were answered. You’ve got to remember Stalin, it was the great patriotic war, and of course, there were a lot of Jews in the Polish Communist Party. Half the leadership in 1945 of the Communist Party were Jewish. People of Jewish birth. Of course, they’d thrown away their Jewishness. So the issue of being a Jew is very complicated. On the other hand, there are mystical types who really do, who are fascinated by the story of the Jews. So, Sarah, I mean, I’ve been to Poland about 20 times. Do I really, really understand it? I think I get a glimmer and then something happens to stop me.

Q: Will I be talking about the Pale of Settlement? A: Oh yes, but we don’t get there yet. And what I’m trying to do, that’s, the Pale of Settlement happens after this area of land is, after it’s annexed by the tsars. You see, when Tsarist Russia took the biggest chunk of Poland-Lithuania, what happens, and Ukraine, by the way, what happens is they restrict the Jews to a huge area. It’s called the Pale of Settlement. Paling, it means stocking.

Q: “How did the Council of the Four Lands react to the false Messiah Sabbatai Zevi?” A: Can you please wait till Thursday, because I’m going to talk about it.

This is from Jonathan. “My grandfather was from a small town on the Russian border which constantly changed hands, but he said he found Russian winters very harsh.” Oh, lovely.

Q: “Was there any assimilation at all between 16th and 17th centuries?” A: Yes, there was, and I’m going to talk about that when I talk about Sabbatai Zevi and Frankism next week. No, on Thursday, actually. And also, for example, those boys, those printers, they converted. Look, there was another family called the Fishel family were one of the richest families in Poland and some of those members converted and finished up as part of the Polish nobility. The lure of the outside world, as well.

Q: “Can I mention Slonim? My mother came to, was born in Slonim.” A: Yes, Barry, I’ll be talking about it when I come to the Pale. And I promise you, we have planned, myself and my colleagues with Wendy, we’ve planned three months on Eastern Europe. We will finally finish on the 31st of July because we thought it was so important and that will take us all the way up till today. So yes, we will be talking about these towns.

Q: Jewish population in Poland today and what was life, what is life like? A: Well, depends who’s asking the question. If you’d asked me the question before the fall of communism, I would’ve said 5,000. Now they say 30,000. What happened after the collapse of communism, you had a strange phenomenon, people of Jewish background coming out of the woodwork, and also something really strange. It’s called the shoebox babies. It appears that hundreds of children were saved by being given as babies, not children, babies, given to Polish parents who brought them up. Now, I want you to imagine you’re middle-aged to elderly, your “parents,” in inverted commas, are dying, and on their deathbed you hear, “Actually, you were a Jew.” They actually had to set up a hotline in Poland to deal, in Warsaw to deal with this phenomenon. They say about 30,000.

Q: “Question, with Poland being so strong in land and rule, what was the weak spot or vulnerability?” A: I’m going to talk about it. It’s going to, look, to start with, lack of strong leadership, too powerful a nobility, and then the 30 Years’ War. But I’ll deal with that on Thursday.

Q: “What are the statistics of Jewish citizens with Jewish family background seeking to identify as Jewish?” A: I’m not sure about that, Anna, but I’m sure it’s high.

This is Harriet. “I found Kraków to be ghoulish. At the Klezmer Cafe, Poles played klezmer music with no feeling. Kraków seems like a single-industry economy with the industry being dead Jews.” It is more complex than that. I mean, a man called Joachim Rusek used to run the original Jewish study centre, which he established with Felix Scharf. And believe me, that man wanted to know. He was a real intellectual and he really wanted to know about Jewish history. And also there were great Polish intellectuals who cared about the Jews. So I think you’ve got to be careful. There are more people honoured in Yad Vashem, more Poles than any other nation. But then, there were more Polish Jews who died. So it is, and the Poles see themselves as a victim nation. That’s why I introduced that poem right at the beginning, Harriet. It’s such a complex tale. And, of course if you come from that part of the world, and my great-grandfather came from Kraków, you do, you take it personally. Of course you do. And I think if you’re Jewish in Eastern Europe, it is complex.

This is from Pauline. “Thank you for quoting Julian Tuwim. He was one of the greatest Polish poets of Jewish descent. He was extremely popular before the war. He was unfortunately very often denigrated by Polish writers for his unabashed Jewishness.” It wasn’t just that, Pauline. He had, there was a group of young intellectuals, and many of them were Jewish. You see, in Warsaw in the ‘20s and '30s, there was a commonality. This is someone else who’s saying, “My father was a dissent of Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller. The family resemblance was so strong.”

“When we were in Kraków at the market, they were also selling Nazi paraphernalia.” That is horrible, Marion. That is a horrible thing to know. What can I say? There is a fascist party in Poland. Poland has become very right-wing. What can I say? Do we understand the human condition? No. You know that Jewish, that market in Kazimierz, that used to be a Jewish market. That’s where Helena Rubinstein started.

Helen, “When I complained about the Hasidic figures with money, my Polish guide said that people saw Jews as being good with money, so this is a good luck piece. He believed that, I did not. I had a very good guide.” Yes, perhaps they do. Look, remember there was a Lithuanian, Lithuanian guards at the camps, Ukrainian guards, no Polish guards. And yes, on the other hand, Edith Stein, the great Polish saint, died in Auschwitz as a Polish martyr, but she died because she had Jewish parents. There is such misunderstanding between the two, what was it Tuwim said? The two tragic nations.

This is from Bernice. “The Polin Museum begins with the words, 'Here we have come to rest.’ How wrong they were.” Well, Bernice, they did have 250 years, which is more than they, okay, they had a long period of Spain of relative tranquillity. Look, they’re not masters of their own destiny. But please don’t forget the majority of people living in Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, lived the most appalling lives. They were illiterate peasants tied to the land. Life was not, life was nasty, short, and cheap, wasn’t it? Po, this is the Hebrew for here. Yes.

Q: “Trudy, I’m interested to know how you presented Jewish history to non-Jewish Poles. How much did you have to adapt what you had to say? And thank you.” A: Hi, Susan. Hmm, that’s a very good question. I don’t really change what I have to say. I might say it in a slightly different way. I don’t think I was so angry when I was working in Poland because it was just as communism was collapsing. It was a long time ago. Then I became involved with the IHRA, and we really did believe we could make a difference. We really believed, and we schlepped all over the world with so many incredible colleagues. We worked with the Anne Frank. We worked with the museum, of course, with the Yad Vashem, the house in Germany. And the group of us went all over the world, spent a lot of time in China teaching, and we really thought we were getting through. Maybe we did to a few, I don’t know.

That is the original of the origin of the Hasidic phrase. Yes, exactly, Della. Oh yes, despite the numerous classes, obtained his law degree from Warsaw University. Oh yes, of course Jews were graduating. Yeah, but not as many. And of course, I think that also shows you was a genius intellectually. Ah, now I’m going to, this is interesting Vlodka. I found it interesting the most famous poetic novel and so loved by Pan Tadeusz begins, “Lithuania, my motherland,” by Mickiewicz, a Polish patriot. Now, Mickiewicz is probably, his wife was a Frankist. I’m going to talk about him. Yes, it’s very interesting. You see, my friend Felix Scharf, he adored Mickiewicz towards the end of his life. I don’t have Polish. He would read it to me just so I could understand the rhythm. Listen to Chopin and read Mickiewicz. He was born in Novogrudok, which now is in Belarus and is almost a shrine to him. People come from all over Eastern Europe to visit the man’s shrine. “I’m fascinated that many Jewish musicians from various countries live and perform in Poland and Germany.” The love of music.

Susan, “I was in Poland several times on the march of the living, and each time we visited the home of a survivor and found their furniture still in place with a Polish family. One spit on us after inviting us in.” Yes, you got to remember that the war, it brutalised. What do you think happened to all the Jewish property? Look, the expensive was taken by the Germans, but ordinary folk, yeah, they went in and took the household. I was with a group the first, I think it was the first trip we took to Poland with a group. And we were going, we, we went to a town which had once been the seat of a great rabbi. And it’s interesting, whether men are religious or not, in Poland, all the men were wearing their yarmulkes. And as we came along the street, an old peasant came out screaming, “The Jews have come to take away my property.”

And I’ll tell you another story. We were in Białystok at the Zamenhof Memorial. Of course, he was a Jew from Białystok who created an international language. And an old man shuffled up to us and began to speak to us in Yiddish. And luckilym Jerry Gotel, it was his first language, so a conversation ensued. And it turns out that Białystok once had a Jewish population of 70,000. There were now five left. This was just after communism fell. And he, it turns out he was a . There were five Jews left. And he took us back to his house where he’d been saved by his Polish sweetheart, who was now married to him. There were pictures of the Pope everywhere and he insisted on pronouncing the priestly blessing over us. So what can I tell you?

I was with another group in the beautiful square in Kraków when a couple of our party came back in a bit of a state because one of them had Polish and a Polish woman had screamed at them, “Why don’t you go back to Palestine?” And it’s interesting. And when they discussed this with Felix, Felix said, “Well, at least they’re not saying they want to kill you. They want you to go back to your Jewish home.” And there’s something else. Certainly when we were there, a lot of Poles that we spoke to were very proud of what their Jews had done in Israel. Okay? I think having completely obfuscated because it is such a complicated issue. But believe me, we’ve got a lot of time. We will be going through all of this, and I can only tell you how… But I talk about Poland today. I’m just obviously speaking completely from my own personal viewpoint. I’ve met some extraordinary people in Poland who really are sincere and, but I don’t have to tell you what’s going on there.

So let me wish you all good evening and thank you very, very much and I’ll see you all on Thursday.