Trudy Gold
‘The Deluge’ 1648: The Massacres in Ukraine and its Consequences

Trudy Gold | The Deluge of 1648 The Massacres in Ukraine and its Consequences | 05.12.22

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- Good evening, everyone, from London. And I think really today’s going to be quite a tough presentation. I’ve said to you many times before that sometimes Jewish history and what’s going on in the outside world, it’s kind of an inside-out history. And now we’re going to deal, having looked at that period when Polish Jewry, and remember the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which also incorporated the Ukraine. It was a period of relative stability for the Jewish community. And I took as our case study Krakow and we looked at the rise of some of the great rabbinic figures. We also looked at how rabbis like Moses Isserles would not just study Torah and Talmud, but did discuss philosophy, which was a really interesting development. He said that Maimonides had done it, so he had no problem with it. And, of course, he looked at astronomy. He looked also at geography and mathematics, all of which were considered very useful for the study of the Torah.

Tragically, the age of Polin comes to an end and it’s got nothing to do really with the Jews. It’s got to do with the weakening of the Polish state. As I’ve said to you many times before. When do Jews prosper? When the state is stable, when the secular ruler holds sway, when there is economic, political, and social evenness. It’s when these forces are upset that the Jew becomes the scapegoat. And I also find it fascinating that the word scapegoat itself comes from the Jewish tradition. I’m sure you all know the story of Yom Kippur, that a goat is taken from the tribe, the black goat, he’s thrown over the cliff and all the sins of the tribe are put on that goat. Now, we’ve also looked at Jewish economic patterns in Poland, and one of the things I did mention to you is that when the Lithuanian and Polish nobility parcelled up the Ukraine, remember Ukraine means borderland. And at this stage, it’s under the control of the Polish-Lithuanian crown. It’s very important to remember that the noble class in Poland had far more power than anywhere else in Europe. They made up about 7% of the population, and they were responsible for electing the kings of Poland. And some of them were vastly wealthy and had these huge estates.

Now, particularly in the Ukraine, as they annex this area, it was the nobility who went in and it was the nobility who carved up the area. But who do you think really did it? Who was working for them? Of course it was the Jewish community. What the Jewish community did working for the landed gentry, they were the ones that parcelled up the estates. They were the ones that made sure that the peasants were producing the right amounts of grain. They were the middlemen between the peasantry and, of course, the crown. And, of course, when times are hard, who do you blame? And then Sweden becomes very, very unstable. And it’s during the reign of Sigismund Vasa. He was king of Poland from 1587 to 1632, but he was also King of Sweden. He was the son of the King of Sweden, and his wife was the daughter of the last Jagiellonian monarch. And remember, the sjem now elects. So he is king of both. Now, think about what’s happening in Europe. Again, one of the problems of studying Jewish history, you’ve got to know what else is going on. He is a staunch Catholic.

What were the forces at work in Europe at the time? Look, if you think of the 30 Years’ War between 1618 and 1648, Europe had been engulfed in the Wars of Religion between the new Protestantism and Catholicism. It was a terrible, terrible, terrible war. And it wasn’t, obviously, just about religion. It was about the power of the secular ruler, the power of the church. It was about breaking away from the power of the church and, of course, the Holy Roman Empire. But it was a period of great devastation. In the main, it didn’t infect Poland. But now you have a Catholic monarch who has at his disposal the forces of the Counter-Reformation. Of course, the Reformation, the reforming of Catholicism, had meant that quite a few states became Protestant. Holland, for example, became Protestant. Much of Germany became Protestant. Protesting. In Germany, it was Lutheranism. In Switzerland, it was Zwingli. As a response, the church hit back. It hit back with the Counter-Reformation and the Jesuits. So please know this is a time of great religious fervour. Plus, when you are looking at Poland, Lithuania, and the Ukraine, there is a division of religiosity. It is either Orthodox in the east, Greek, Russian Orthodox, or in the west, the Uniate, which is in the Slavic tradition, but it moves towards Catholicism.

So the area of the Ukraine is very much split in those two. And as I said, they both have the Slavic liturgy. Also in the west of the empire on the Prussian borders, there were Lutheran minorities, think about it, on the German border. Later on when Prussia emerges as an important state, it is a Protestant state. It’s Munich in the south that is Catholic. It’s the south of Germany that’s Catholic. It’s Austria, that’s Catholic. Now, there were also Muslim Tatar settlements towards the east. So the Polish crown had to deal with Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, and the great split between Greek Orthodoxy and the Uniate. Plus, of course, paganism. And I may have mentioned this to you before, when I was working in Eastern Europe a lot, I went to an exhibition in the Ukraine of images of the Virgin Mary. And sometimes it was straw goddesses. And also I went to a museum of the devil when I was in Ukraine. And please don’t think, think also about the edge of that empire.

The Subcarpatho Mountains, the land of the legends of the werewolves, et cetera. It’s a very superstitious, primitive part of the world. So you have Sigismund Vasa on the throne. He is a very, very strong Catholic. He wants to introduce absolutism in the state, which causes huge problems with the nobility. He also goes to war with both Russia and with Sweden. So you have a lot of instability and a lot of death. And when his son takes over, Wladyslaw IV, this is when it all breaks. And we come to one of the worst periods in Polish history, in Jewish history. And that is the time of the Khmelnytsky massacres. Do you think we could please see the next slide? If you don’t mind? Yeah. There you have Bogdan Khmelnytsky. Bogdan Khmelnytsky was a Cossack. Now Cossack, the word, actually the Russian word is Kozak. And in the Turkish it comes from Kazak, an adventurer, a nomad who inquires to wander. Now the Cossacks were a group of tribesmen, probably of Turkish origin, who lived… Certainly Bogdan Khmelnytsky lived around the Zaporozhye Forest at the edge of the Dnieper River. The Dnieper River is what divides the east and the west of Ukraine. And those of you who are following the news will know all about this.

Now, Bogdan Khmelnytsky, he leads a revolt of the Cossacks against the Polish crown, attacking in the main the Polish nobility who control many of the estates, Polish Catholics, and, of course, the Jews who are the middlemen who are seen as the hated ones. And it’s one of the most appalling massacres in the history of the Jewish people. And I’m going to give you a bit of background to Khmelnytsky. Can we flick onto the next slide before we go back to him? That, of course, is going to be the massacres, a depiction of the massacres. But I want to go to the next slide as well. That is a monument to the great hero Khmelnytsky in Kiev. He’s also a hero in Russia. I said we are dealing with inside-out history. So can we please, if you don’t mind, Judi, go back to his face. Strong face. He was born to a family of Cossack landowners. The Cossacks were landowners. Later on, they’re going to be the private guard of the czars. And in 1848, the year of revolution, Czar Nicholas I lent his cossack regiment to the new leader of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Franz Joseph, so he could quell his revolt. They were descended from serfs. They’d fled bondage to the wild steppes of the South Ukraine.

They were often at war with warring tribes in the Ukraine. And they become more and more militaristic. It’s important that you see them as wild horsemen. They are bought up to be able to ride horses. What is prized is strength, military prowess, the physical body. And if you want, the greatest juxtaposition that I can possibly think of, the hero of the Cossack is the great strong man, the pitiless man. Who is the hero of the Jew at this time? If you think about the world I’m talking about where the greatest prize in marriage for the rich man’s daughter is the rabbi. And what is the rabbi? He is a scholar. You can go as far as to say that after the destruction by the Romans, when the Tannaim and the Talmudists wrote, they deliberately excised Messianism and militarism from Judaism because what happened when the Jews revolted? Their kingdom was destroyed. So you can have no more opposing image, can you not, of the pale scholar steeped in knowledge and of the Cossack, the wild horseman of the steppes. So, as I’ve said, at this period, Ukraine is under the domination of the Lithuanian Commonwealth. And it has been so since Kievan Rus’, which we’ve already talked about and which William’s talked about, the principality was shattered by the Mongol invasions. And as a response, many of the Orthodox peasants were confined to serfdom in the Catholic part of the kingdom.

Now, there are lots of legends about Khmelnytsky. The story is told that his property was raided and seized by representatives of the Polish crown. His son was beaten and died shortly afterwards. And he petitioned, and there is another story that his wife was raped and murdered. He petitioned higher-ranking authorities, but he got no justice. Subsequently, he’s a very strong leader. He begins meeting with other Cossacks. There’s deep resentment on the part of the orthodox population amongst the Cossacks and also amongst the peasantry who are virtually serfs. He’s a great charismatic, he begins to pull people together. And beginning in December ‘47, December, sorry, 1647, he leads a small force of Cossacks to disperse a small garrison in Zaporozhye. Now I’ve taught in Zaporozhye and, of course, you are hearing about in the news. Even when I was there 10 years ago, it’s still the Wild West. It’s a very… I remember when we took a car from Odessa all the way down to Dnipropetrovsk, going through the countryside, which was lush, but it was still a peasant population. It’s a fascinating country.

Anyway, there was a counterattack. He defeated it. And so he’s a great hero. He’s made a great stab for freedom. So he’s elected the Hetman. And within a few months, he and his forces go on the rampage through Kiev, they take Kiev. Can we turn over to the next slide, if you don’t mind, Judi. And there are many, many images of the Cossack massacres. They rampage through Kiev, Chernihiv, Lviv. At the Battle of Zboriv, they crushed a 25,000-strong Polish army. In this case, they were aided by the Muslims of the Crimea. This is the Cossacks and the Muslims coming together to defeat the Catholics. And who were their greatest targets? The Polish gentry, the Jews, any priest that they could get their hands on. And it was a terrible, terrible, terrible thing. I’m going to read to you an account of the Khmelnytsky massacres. This is from a chronicler of the time. I remember when I first started teaching, there was an elderly man in the class whose grandmother had managed to get out of the Ukraine. And the story of this massacre was told from generation to generation. It is considered a lot…

If you think of the ninth of Av, the fall of the Second Temple, 1492, and then the Khmelnytsky massacres. And this is what the chronicler had to say. “Many communities beyond the Dnieper and close to the battlefield, such as Pereiaslav.” I hope I pronounce them properly. “Borisova, Pyriatyn, and Boryspil, Lyudvin, and Lachalvy, and their neighbours who are unable to escape, perished for the sanctification of God’s name. These persons died cruel and bitter of deaths.” 'Cause the Cossacks on the rampage are about as cruel as you can imagine. “Some were skinned alive and their flesh thrown to the dogs. Some had their hands and limbs chopped off, their bodies thrown on the highway only to be trampled by waggons. Some had wounds inflicted on them and were thrown onto the street. Others were buried alive. The enemy slaughtered infants. They were sliced into pieces.” And I’m not going to go on. It is absolutely appalling, but I’m just going to, “Many were taken by the Tatars into captivity. Women were ravished. Similar atrocities were perpetrated in all the settlements which they passed.”

Also against the Polish people, these cruelties were perpetrated, especially against the priests and the bishops. “The Scrolls of Law were torn to pieces and turned into boots and shoes for their feet. Some were used for kindling purposes and others to stuff the barrel of their guns. The ears ring at the hearing of this.” Now, how many died? And this is, again, where we have a historic controversy. Many Jewish historians put the numbers as high as 100,000. The latest research by Jewish historians has cut it to 60,000. Ukrainian historians put it much lower. But the point is, it was the cruellest, most appalling massacre. And it goes down in history as one of the great tragedies of the Jewish people. Now, the Cossacks then sign, after a serious defeat, they sign a treaty with the Russians. It’s an important treaty. They sign this treaty with the Russians, which is an Orthodox kingdom, remember? And Khmelnytsky swears an oath of fealty to the czar. Now it’s very, very important to remember this because this oath of fealty, what it meant was that this whole area of Eastern Ukraine, because Khmelnytsky, he’s defeated the Polish armies. And after the Treaty of Pereyaslav, he does this deal with Czar Alexis over the eastern part of the territory as far as Lviv. Huge Jewish settlements there.

Against this backdrop, the Swedes invade from the north, and there’s an orgy of destruction there which affects the Jewish community. There’s 13 years of struggle for the Ukraine. And in 1667, in the end, the agreement was Eastern Ukraine from the left bank of the Dnieper River now belonged to Russia. Kiev was leased for two years, but never returned. And eventually, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth recognised Russian control of it. The King John Casimir abdicated in 1688. It’s been estimated that the whole of the population of the south was reduced by 1/3. It was not just the appalling massacres. There was raids. You see, when there’s anarchy, raids of slaves, there was plague, there was a epidemics. Many cities were absolutely reduced to rubble. And it ruined the economic base of the country. How did they pay for the war? By large scale minting of useless currency, they debased the currency. So consequently, on top of everything else, you had runaway inflation. So you’ve got this appalling situation. So what’s to say except, by the late 17th century, really it is the terminal decline of the great Kingdom of the Ukraine.

But before I want to go onto this, we must talk a little bit more about Khmelnytsky, himself. Now, can we go back to the statue of Khmelnytsky, which is the next one on, I think, Judi. Thank you. The Ukraine’s current national anthem is based on lines from a 14th-century Ukrainian poem, “O Bogdan, Bogdan, our great Hetman, for what purpose did you give Ukraine to the evil Moskals?” Sorry, that’s a 19th-century poem. “How on earth can you give away our country?” And the Moskals is the derogatory Ukrainian term for the Russians. In 1954, which was the 300th anniversary of the Treaty of Pereyaslav between Khmelnytsky and Czar Alexis, Khrushchev transferred the administration of this area to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and changed the name of the city of Proskurov to Khmelnytsky. Khmelnytsky, believe it or not, is also a hero of Russia. And in 2018, in a poll about Khmelnytsky. He’s a great national figure. He appears on certain bank notes in the Ukraine. 73% of the population had a very, very positive role about him. And in 2005, when Viktor Yushchenko was sworn in as president, he held a mace, when he was president of of Ukraine, he actually held a mace in his hand that had belonged to Khmelnytsky. So in the Western Ukraine, he is hated.

In the Eastern Ukraine, he is a hero. And this is from the Soviet historian, Mikhail Pokrovsky. “History is present-day politics projected onto the past.” And this statue of Khmelnytsky is in front of Kiev’s Saint Sophia Cathedral. And it really is a magnificent monument. He plays a huge part in Ukrainian cultural heritage. There are cities named for him. There are parks named for him. So he’s revered for his battle against… So let’s sum up, he’s revered for his battle against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and for laying the foundation of Ukrainian identity. He’s decried by Ukrainian nationalists for pledging allegiance to the czars, which set the stage for the eventual incorporation of much of the territory of present-day Ukraine into the Russian Empire. For the Poles, he’s a major enemy because he was really one of the biggest impetuses that led to the decline of the Polish-Lithuanian Empire. And for the Jews, he is one of the greatest enemies of the Jewish people. So isn’t it fascinating that, at this time, when the Ukraine it’s such a powerful, what’s going on there is such a tragedy and such a powerful force that we actually are going back to that time in the history of that region where you begin to see a beginnings of forging of identity. Ukrainian identity doesn’t really come to the fore until the 19th century, by which time the bulk of the territory was under Czarist rule. So now.

So gradually, the massacres are over. Poland, it’s in terminal decline. But nevertheless, there is a need to rebuild lives. And I should mention that, from the Swedish end, there were massacres to the north. There were massacres in Vilna and in Lublin, but on the whole, the north was spared the worst ravages. And that’s going to be very important when we look at the history of what’s going to happen to the Jewish people. Now, the sjem issued an order that any Jew who’d been forced to convert could now return to Judaism. Because one of the things that did happen, sometimes the Cossacks showed mercy and allowed conversion. And it was the nobility, of course, who invited the Jews in to rebuild their towns and to basically help with the reconstruction of life. And also, many of the Poles, you got to remember, the towns and shtetl are on the estates of the nobility. And many of the Polish-Lithuanian nobility realised the usefulness of the Jews and wanted to build them up again. The nobility was incredibly wealthy, remember? And the first challenge that they faced was to increase agricultural production and to reestablish the sale of it. Because think of trade. Yes, we’re in the 17th century, but countries need to trade. Ukraine, Poland, they are the bread baskets of Europe.

As I said too, I’ve been there, I’ve seen the soil. It’s almost black, it’s so fertile. And if you could come onto the next slide, please. This is a stone-built synagogue in Zolkiev. This is on the estate of one of the Polish nobles. And he himself lent the Jews money to actually build a synagogue in stone. It’s almost like a fortress because they don’t want anything terrible to happen. And it was actually. I beg your pardon. It wasn’t a noble, it was the king. It was Jan III who lent them 8,000 zlotys to construct it. And it was constructed in conjunction with the king’s architect, Piotr Breslau. So you begin to see the rebuilding. And what I’m going to show you now is a picture. Can we see the next one? Yeah, this is a French watercolorist who went on a journey through the Ukraine looking at the gradual reestablishment of the towns and the cities. However, let’s look at the Jewish community now. As a result of the massacres, a huge burden falls on the Kehelot. So many people, you know. I mean the most terrible massacres, people’s lives have been destroyed. The study centres are destroyed. The economic base has been decide. How on earth are they going to help them rebuild their life? And also when you have this kind of calamity, it’s a cheapening of life. And that’s going to lead to corruption.

The majority of Jewish historians believe something like ¼ of the population of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, mainly in the Ukraine, were murdered. However, life goes on. And what is also interesting is that, by the end of the 18th century, the Jewish population had increased fourfold. How do you make up for a terrible catastrophe? You marry, you have children. That’s what the Ultra Orthodox said at the end of the Shoah, remember? But you have a declining economy. It’s making it more and more difficult to earn a living. And by the middle of the 18th century, as much as 1/3 of the Jewish population are scattered in small communities throughout the countryside. Now, the exception was Lithuania. It’s in close proximity to Prussia, which is emerging as a, it’s emerging as a very important state. It had trade connections with the West and the Jews of Vilna and the other important towns in the region maintained a certain prosperity. And also, of course, it’s going to become one of the main centres of Ukrainian thought. Can we see the next slide please, Judi? Thank you.

One of the other professions of the Jews in Eastern Europe was, of course, tavern keeping. And that got them into a lot of trouble because here you see the peasants. What else did they have? They could come in and get drunk. Who were the middlemen who owned the taverns? Who also were the producers, in the main, of alcohol? The Jews. So, again, it’s another reason for hostility. Now, what happens to a people who have been so crushed? What happens to a people who have lost their study centres? Who have lost… And remember, Judaism is very much a religion of knowledge. Next week I’m going to do a session on Messianism. You’re going to see the arrival amongst this kind… In any time of horror for the Jewish people, there is an upswing in Messianism. Messianism is the dream that the Almighty will send his anointed one to the earth. He will be a man and he will lead the Jewish people into a time of peace and prosperity. He will come and, according to all the references, he will come from the House of David, the Davidic line. He’ll be son of man and he will save the Jewish people, which will light up the world. Now, at times of huge tragedy, this is what the Jewish people turned to. And it led to a belief in one of the most extraordinary characters in Jewish history, Sabbatai Zevi.

Now, my colleague, Lyn Julius, a few months ago, gave a brilliant lecture on Sabbatai Zevi in the context of the Turkish Empire. So I’m not going to repeat it. Suffice to say that it was the most important Messianic movement since the destruction of the Second Temple. and the Bar Kokhba revolt. Bar Kokhba, don’t forget, was also proclaimed Messiah at the time. And it arose because of the horror. And Khmelnytsky, he was, and it also arose because the growth of Lurianic Kabbalah. Isaac Luria, a very, very important scholar, in Tzfat. “Messianism, hand in hand with mysticism.” I’m quoting now from him. “All beings have been in exile since the creation and the task of restoration is given to the Jews whose historic fate and destiny, symbolising the fate of the universe at large. But they are held captive by evil and must be redeemed. Redemption will be affected by a long chain of events that prepares the way. Restoration and tikkun, tikkun olam, in which the shattered elements of the world will be restored to harmony. The essential task of the Jewish people and the final task must be the appearance of the Messiah.”

And what happens? Those who had lost all hope begin to focus on Kabbalah. And Sabbatai Zevi, who arose in the Turkish Empire, he became an incredibly important figure. Because, don’t forget, also the Jewish world was also reeling from 1492 and 1497 when they had been expelled from Spain and then from Portugal. So the notion of Sabbatai Zevi spread throughout the Jewish world. And it also entered the world of the Gentiles. Ironically, in the Gentile world, there was the belief that 1666 would be the year when the Christian Messiah would come back to this world. It’s the thousand plus 666, the sign of the beast in Revelation. The the notion of Sabbatai Zevi spread so much that it is even recorded in Samuel Pepys’ diary in London. Amongst Protestant scholars, there was a re-interest in Hebrew, the reading of the Hebrew Bible. This was also true in Amsterdam. And it’s going to tie in with the figure of Manasseh ben Israel, who I’ve already talked about many times. He was, of course, the rabbi who was responsible for petitioning the Jews to come back to England. This is all this period.

So there’s messianic fervour in the Christian world as well as in the Jewish world. When society hits rock bottom. Look, think about it now in a completely different context. We are living in a very unstable world, are we not? Economically, socially, politically, and we’ve had a pandemic. How many of you are beset by all these conspiracy theories, strange ideas? You see, we are not just rational beings, are we? We are creatures of faith. We are creatures of illogicality. And that is the other side of this, that the study centres are destroyed and there is this dream. And Sabbatai Zevi, his message spreads like wildfire in the land, in Israel itself, throughout the Sephardi Empire. And so much so that, in the end, can we see the next slide? There you see Sabbatai Zevi. And could you go on another one please, Jude? Here you see him in prison. Because what happens is, in the end, a group of rabbis from the north, from Vilna, they’re so worried that they tell the Sultan of Turkey or the grand vizier of the Sultan of Turkey that Sabbatai Zevi claims to be king of the Jews.

Now, consequently, when you say that to a ruler, what does he think? So what happens is he is brought before the sultan and the sultan offered him conversion or death. He chose conversion. And here is a representation of him being interrogated. And what happens is he then is exiled to Albania, he converts to Islam. And, according to the Jewish story, he dies on Yom Kippur 1576. Now, as I said, Lyn Julius gave a very detailed lecture of his life. And I’m sure you can get it once the website is up, because what I want to talk about, because I’m going to talk about the man who, his ideas spin from Sabbatai Zevi, but he is, in many ways, far more pernicious. And that’s Jacob Frank. And it gives you a notion of just how desperate the communities were. So here you see Jacob Frank. So at the end of the 17th century, there are numerous followers of Sabbatai Zevi in Eastern Poland. In expectation of the coming of the Messiah, they violated Jewish law. They even subjected themselves to self-inflicted pain like the Flagellants. And also they had a disregard for modesty.

The notion was that when the Mashiach came, you no longer had to be an observer of the Commandments. So who was this man, Jacob Frank? Because Frankism is going to become a very important aberration. I’m going to call it an aberration. He was born Jacob Lejbowicz in Podolia in the east of Ukraine in 1726. His father was a Sabbatean. His father was a follower of Sabbatai Zevi. Because even after Sabbatai Zevi died, many of his followers believed he ascended. He didn’t really die. He was eternal, ascended to heaven. And because he was a Sabbatean, many of the Jews in the town were violently against him. So he moved to Czernowitz in the Carpatho Mountains. And I’ve already told you what the Carpatho Mountains are like. I mean, I’ve travelled in all these areas and as I said to you before when I talked about travelling through Ukraine, primitive, primitive, primitive. So take yourself back to that kind of time. And you get a real picture. His father… In the Carpathians, it’s a real centre of Sabbatean belief. His father was a merchant and he taught him his trade. He was wealthy. They traded in textiles, precious stones. They often were in the Ottoman Empire. And they lived at the centre of the Sabbatean movement, which was, of course, still in the Ottoman Empire in Salonica and in Smyrna.

By the 1750s, he’s intimate with the leaders of the Sabbatean movement. And when he marries, these leaders are at his wedding. And he began to preach certain revelations, which he said had been communicated to him by the spirit of Sabbatai Zevi. The rabbis become very alarmed at these new teachings and they force him out. He comes back to the Ukraine. He’s forced out by the local rabbis in 1756. And there’s a congress, part of the Council of the Four Lands, because he’s attracting a following. He’s charismatic. It’s a time of terrible troubles. And the rabbis at the congress in Brody, at one of the trade fairs, they actually pronounce herem and they inform the Catholic bishop of Kamieniec Podolski that they had… Sorry, the Sabbateans, Jacob Frank and his followers, they inform the Catholic Bishop of Kamieniec Podolski that they rejected the Talmud and only recognise the sacred book of Kabbalah, the Zohar, which didn’t contradict any Christian doctrine and that they regarded the Messiah, the deliverer, as one of the three embodiments. They didn’t clarify that they believed Sabbatai Zevi to be the Messiah.

So the bishop, thinking he had converts to Christianity, took Frank and the other Sabbateans, who are anti-Talmud, under his protection. And in 1757, there was a disputation. The bishop favoured Jacob Frank and his followers, and consequently ordered the burning of the Talmud. 10,000 Talmuds were destroyed, which was a huge loss. Just think how much destruction there had already been. And even after the death of the bishop, they managed to obtain protection from the king. And in 1759, the Frankists began negotiations with the Polish-Catholic officials to undergo a mass conversion to Christianity. 500 converts, including Frank. And Frank, actually, his godparents were the king and queen of Poland. Now many of these Frankists are wealthy merchants. And now that they are Christian, they very soon join the ranks, ultimately, of the Polish nobility. Now in 1760… Now Frank’s theory. He’s taken on the Sabbatean idea that you no longer have to be a practicer of the Commandments. And also in his ceremonies, there’s a lot of licentiousness, there’s a lot of sexuality. And it’s an absolute anathema to the rabbis. In 1760, he’s arrested by a church tribunal and charged with heresy. He’s actually imprisoned in a monastery for 13 years.

In the monastery, ironically, his influence only increases amongst his followers. They are desperate for a leader. And he told them that the key to salvation was through following a mixture of Sabbatean and Christian beliefs. He’s released in 1772. Why? Because it’s the First Partition of Poland. And he is now in the Austrian side. I’m going to talk about that in a minute. And he goes to Vienna where he is greeted, he manages to have an audience with Maria Theresa. Ultimately though they realise that he’s not really a proper Christian. He’s forced to leave and he moves to a small town where he calls himself Baron Offenbach. And he gets a lot of money from his followers, many of whom are wealthy. He lives as a wealthy nobleman. He’s kept by his wealthy followers. And after his death, his daughter, Eve, becomes the holy mistress. But the sect declines and she dies in 1816. Okay, back in 1757, he’d actually accused the Jews of blood libel. He was very dangerous in many ways because he bought in, as part of his wanting to be taken seriously by Catholicism, he bought into many of the antisemitic libels.

This is the great rabbi, Louis Jacobs, described his theology, “A curious amalgam of Kabbalistic, Sabbatean, and Christian beliefs, a mystery religion which sought to transcend all the religions.” What they believed is you had to break free from all the restraints of the law. And as I said before, there’s almost an orgiastic element in it. Now, the main man behind his excommunication, by the way, was somebody I’ll be referring to again, Jacob Emden. Now, what happened to his followers? Many of them gradually transformed into proper Catholics. Remember, many of them had merged into the Polish nobility. They married into the nobility and they are the Polish gentry of Jewish origins. And the Frankists had a huge impact in Poland. Let me give you an analysis by the great Gershom Scholem. By the 1830s, the vast majority of Warsaw’s lawyers were descendants of the Frankist families. These Frankists, these these Jews who had followed this sect, converted to Catholicism, married into the nobility. As Poland developed, they become more and more important in the state.

Now, one of their greatest enemies was a man called Zygmunt Krasinski, who was one of the great Polish romantic poets. He came from the old Polish nobility and believed that the Frankists were a completely separate tribe. His great masterpiece is very important in Poland. It’s called “The Undivine Comedy.” He had an apocalyptic view of the future. Jews and converts were the problems behind everything, behind all revolutions. He said that the Talmud has taught all Jews to hate Christians, make them hate Christianity, to crave Christian blood and world domination. These Frankist converts are false Christians. And this is going to be one of the founding myths of modern Polish antisemitism. He entered into arguments with the greatest poet in Poland, Adam Mickiewicz. And this is the great Polish-Jewish paradigm. In the town of Novogrudok, which is now in Belarus, that is where Mickiewicz was born. And people come from all over that region to go to the shrine, his birthplace. And he married a woman who was descended from a prominent Frankist family.

Krasinski called her a Talmudic Jewish woman, a devil, a convert, a lunatic. Also Mickiewicz himself was alleged, by some sources, to have pure Jewish roots, by others to have Frankist roots. And he also believed that you couldn’t divorce Judaism from Christianity. And he believed that Jewish settlement in Poland was part of the divine plan. And he believed in the common Polish-Jewish destiny. He was the favourite poet of my friend, Felix Scharpf, who, of course, was born in Krakow. So it’s a strange tale I’ve told you. And the reason I’ve told this story is because I wanted you to understand the depths to which the community sunk. Now, next week, Phil Rubenstein is going to talk about the growth of another belief system, which very much came out of the horror. And that is the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov, which leads to Hasidism and the opponents of it, the Misnagdim, the opposer, centred on Elijah of Vilna and the hostility towards the two. Now, can we look at the last slide please, because this is important? Right.

Poland, think where it is geographically. It’s caught between Prussia, Austria, and Russia. Poland is more and more weakened. This is actually a painting and I took it, this extract from POLIN, which is the catalogue of the Polish-Jewish museum. And you see Maria Theresa, the Empress of Austria, Alexander, the Czar of Russia, and the King of Prussia. And what they are doing is dividing up the map of Poland because beginning in 1772 and then again in 1795, completed in 1815, Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine is wiped off the map. It has new masters. The bulk is going to go into Czarist Empire, which means the bulk of Jewry is going to go into the Russian Empire. And from then on, their fortunes are tied up with the czars. A further 70,000 into the Hapsburg Empire and another tranche into Prussia. And their lives are going to be governed by the kind of countries in which they live.

But remember, the bulk live under the czars. So from the point of view of the majority of you listening today, ¾ of you, if you are born Jewish, will come from those Jews who lived under the czars. The Jews didn’t move. Do you remember what we talked about the other day? Jews were not allowed to settle in Russia proper, but Russia conquered. And Russia becomes home to the largest Jewish community in the world. So I’ll stop there. I know I’ve thrown quite a lot of rather controversial ideas at you today. So let’s have a look at the questions.

Q&A and Comments

James, “Sienkiewicz about Poland, including the Deluge.” Yes. It’s interesting is that, I haven’t read it for a long time. One of the problems you have when you’re reading books on Polish history and books on Jewish history, they have a very different slant.

Q: Sandy, “I quoted your lecture to my friends. One asked what happened when the Jews moved eastward. Did they also go to Germany?” A: Look, Germany’s not unified until 1871. If you remember, many of them are pushed out of the German lands. Some creep back, they’re in ghettos. And it’s not until Germany is finally united in 1871 that they are emancipated. But the numbers of German Jews fall into insignificance when you compare them with Russia. And, of course, in Germany they’re emancipated. You see in Germany, in the Hapsburg Empire, they are going to become citizens of the state of the Jewish religion. In Russia, it’s a different story because the czars. There’s a brief period in the reign of Alexander II. But basically the czars did not… When you become emancipated, to become part of a society, society’s has got to have something you want. Germany, by the 19th century, had a lot that the Jews wanted. So did the Habsburg Empire. Russia? It’s an interesting question, isn’t it? Look, the serfs of Russia were not freed. 57 million serfs weren’t freed until 1863.

Oh, this is from Sarah. “I think we’re all a family. I’m in Toronto and love joining you.” Yes, Wendy has really created a family, hasn’t she?

Q: “What is the site for my Yiddish movies?” A: Aha. We will, I hope, be putting them on the website, which I believe will be up by the summer.

Q: “Why is he still revered in the Ukraine?” A: Because he’s a hero to them. He’s a hero of Ukrainian nationalism. In Russia he’s a hero.

Q: “Were they Pagans?” A: No, Adrian, they were not Pagans. They were Orthodox Christians.

Q: “The Cossacks are often depicted as tall and blonde. Would they not have been dark?” A: Yes, of course, Kariat. Look, representation is not fact, is it?

Q: “Why are they inside?” A: Presumably ‘cause it’s freezing. Have you ever been to that part of the world in the winter? I used to teach in the winter sometimes. It can be 40 below.

Q: Can I recommend any historical literature of this period? A: The Volumes of Polin, I think are probably the best. They’re edited by Antony Polonsky, who I think is the greatest scholar of Poland around.

Q: “How was Jacob Frank related to this Messianic movement?” A: He was a follower of Sabbatai Zevi. That’s why I mentioned Sabbatai Zevi. But he went a lot further.

Yes, yes, of course. She won the Nobel Prize for her book, “Jacob’s Books.” Yes, it’s about Jacob Frank. Yes. That is interesting. “The presence of Jews in greater Poland has to be understood by how they could serve the ruling classes. The landowners needed some way to get greater production. How? By selling the Jews a right to sell liquor or to give Jews the right to sell peasants things they needed or by selling protection, et cetera, et cetera. If Jews were not useful to the ruling class, they would not have been let in, not allowed to increase.” Exactly, Jack. They were not there because the Poles loved them. They were there because they are useful to the state. They are the middlemen. And basically when the state was secure and they were helping the nobility and doing whatever they did, life was fine and they entered into far more trades and professions than they could have done in the West. But it’s when everything went wrong.

“In the Jewish People’s School, I learned that 600,000 died during the Khmelnytsky massacre.” I don’t think Dubnow put it as high as that. The highest I’ve ever seen is 100,000.

Q: “When did the numbers go down?” A: You see, this is another problem, Judith. We will never know the numbers because we don’t know the real numbers of population. Jews don’t like counting. You know, the counting of the numbers. Certainly in Ukrainian history, the numbers are very much reduced and in Jewish history they’re up more. But serious Jewish scholars have knocked it down, I think, to about 60,000. But 60,000! Look, up until the Shoah, this was one of the greatest tragedies in Jewish history.

“And the Subbotniks.” Now, I know about that. I’m going to have to get back to you on that.

Q: “What book describes the Jewish history of the Frankist period?” A: There are lots of them, Teddy. I would look at the Polin novel, the Polin books.

“Amazing how through history we always managed to be our worst enemy.” I’m going to take issue on that hill. And I don’t think that’s fair. What I’m saying is I think Jews didn’t have power over their own destiny. They’re living in someone else’s country and they are allowed to live as long as they’re useful to the state. So they have to become the middlemen. They have no choices. But I think this is one of the tragedies of Jewish history. And of course the other motif, Bar Kokhba, Ben Zakkai. What happened when we were militaristic? I think it was the paras in Israel who, I don’t know if they still do, they used to take their passing-out parade at Masada, didn’t they?

“A person on my family tree was Naphtali Hirz Wessely, a close collaborate and close friend of Moses Mendelssohn. Wessely’s ancestor was Joseph Rice, was the only member of the family to survive the Cossack massacres.” Extraordinary. Extraordinary. Yeah. “Why did Sabbatai Zevi…” No, Sabbatai Zevi didn’t take the name Frank. This is Jacob Frank, a follower of Sabbatai Zevi.

Q: “How many Frankists returned to Judaism?” A: I don’t know the answer to that. I would think very little.

This is from David. “Part of my family named Kronikh administered the Polish aristocrats’ land in the area around Vilna. The Kronikhs were the wealthiest part of the family. However, Uncle Kronikh came to America to be with his beloved. That saved his life.” Yeah, yeah. Look, don’t forget, between 1881 and 1914, over 2 ¼ million Jews, the situation became so bad under Czarist Russia, that 2 ¼ million Jews got out, which would include the majority of your families in America, South Africa, Britain, Israel. Because things had become, it was either pogrom, internal migration, or poverty. 40% were on poor relief. It has to become pretty bad for you to leave. And we must never forget just how brave they must have been. And it saved their lives.

Q: “Why would they choose a Swedish king?” A: Aha. The daughter of the last of the Jagiellonians married the King of Sweden. And remember the sejm would elect the kings and it’s bribery and corruption. That’s one of the reasons Poland went down because, what else did I tell you about the sejm? Any noble could veto, which meant they were open to total bribery, total corruption. And it’s tragic because there was a period when Poland was a great country.

Q: “How did the Jews acquire the knowledge of alcohol production?” A: Very good question. I expect they learnt. They would’ve learnt, wouldn’t they? They had to survive.

This is from Linda. “Just a note to say that my late grandfather, Joseph Escarpa, was very proud of the fact that his father was rabbi to Sabbatai Zevi, who he excommunicated and wrote an important commentary on their , all documented in the Encyclopaedia Judaica. When he arrived in South Africa, they changed the C to a K in his name.” Oh, that’s fabulous, Linda. I do love this group. I can learn so much.

Q: “How many Frankists returned to Judaism?” A: I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t think there would have been many.

Q: “Who gave the hinder about Wessely?” A: I don’t understand.

Q: “Who gave the information out about Wessely?” A: I’ll go back to that in case you are looking for a relative. Only a number, I’m afraid. Doesn’t give a name. Maybe the person could put the name up.

This is the Nanette saying , “We didn’t learn any of this in secondary school.” I think one of the keys to making our families proud Jews is they should study Jewish history. It is one of my bugbears that a very intelligent people, somehow we miss our own history and I don’t understand it. And that is my mission. And those of you who are grandparents, that should be your mission as well. This is from Jackie. “On a visit to Kiev, our guide took us to the statue of Khmelnytsky. I felt comfortable in saying to her that, until Hitler, he was the worst person in Jewish history. And why is he so venerated? Her reply, ‘Because he led us in defeating the Poles.’” You see, outside history. Carol, I did know that and I can’t remember. I’d better find out. Oh, Subbotniks were days of volunteer unpaid work on weekends after the October Revolution. Aha.

Q: “Given the history, could Poland lay claim to Ukraine or even Sweden?” A: You see the problem of nations, 90% of the countries of the world have come into being through conquest, the right of conquest. You know, we talk about historic right, legal rights, religious right, but in the end, it’s usually conquest. Yes, Poland could lay claim to Ukraine or Sweden. I don’t think it will, though.

Q: “Was Spinoza aware of the Khmelnytsky massacres?” A: Yeah. Gimme Spinoza’s dates quickly. Hold on. When were Spinoza’s dates? In fact, that’s so important, I’m going to check it. Hold on. That’s an important question. They knew in Amsterdam. Certainly they knew a lot about it in Amsterdam. So let’s see what we’ve got. Sorry about this.

Q: “Does any of this history lead to Putin’s statement that Ukraine is part of Russia?” A: What do you think? Of course it does. You see, the Russians can go back to that time in history and say, but it was Russia. In fact, Ukrainian nationalism, I would suggest you, was actually quite shaky certainly until this, but now if ever a nation has become a nation, I would suggest that is exactly what has happened with Putin. And everything I’ve said to you should, in no way, detract from the appalling catastrophe in the Ukraine. 1632 to 1677. Yes, of course he would’ve known about it. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I wanted to check that date. And when we look at Holland, you’re going to see that it had a huge impact on the Dutch as well. And one of the ways that Menasseh ben Israel persuaded the British that he should come back to, the Jews should come back to England, was to say that to prepare for the coming of the Messiah, the Jews have to be scattered even to the Isle of the Angles.

Ron, “I would suggest we don’t know Jewish history in more detail because we identify primarily as citizens of the country in which we live, along with a sense of otherness, which may encourage us to identify only more fully with our country of residence. Under stress of increasing antisemitism, at least some of us feel a responsibility to earn our history and to teach that history to our descendants.” You see this is, you’ve really come to the nub of the problem, haven’t you, Ron? How long would it take us to debate what it means to be a Jew? And, certainly up until the modern period, you would know exactly what I meant. A Jew is a Jew is a Jew. Menasseh ben Israel referred to us as a nation in exile. They referred to themselves as a nation. But, of course, since emancipation, Jews in England are English. Not even British, they want to be Englishmen.

In fact, there’s a wonderful letter that Lord Rothschild wrote. He was governor of, this is 1898. He was governor of JFS, the largest Jewish primary school, Jewish school. And he said to the parents, “Don’t send your children to heder, send them onto the football field. Make them into Englishmen.” In France, become Frenchmen. In Germany, become German. America, I think, is probably a little more complicated. Is pluralist identity still acceptable in America? Irish-American, Italian-American, African-American. I don’t know. I think that knowing Jewish history helps with our identity and I think post-Shoah, there’s been such trauma in the Jewish world. I just think it’s very interesting that it’s, you see, because we’re living in such uncertain times, many people don’t feel comfortable having Jew or having a Jew kind of identity. But why not? Susan.

“If we accept Putin’s claim that Ukraine is part of Russia, we are down a very slippery slope ‘cause there are many other borders and countries that have changed ownership.” Sure, Susan, it’s a real mess. I’m not suggesting we do for a minute, but you are asking where it comes from and this is where it comes from. Oh, this is Joy. “The Subbotniks were originally Christian peasants of the Russian Orthodox Church. During the reign of Catherine the Great, they adopted elements of Mosaic Law from the Old Testament, were known as Subbotarians part of the Spiritual Christianity movement.” Thank you Joy. That’s fabulous.

“Jeremy Rosen in his lecture yesterday was bemoaning the fact that some Jews in synagogue prefer to talk and he can’t understand why they don’t take an interest in reading the wonderful poetry of the prophets in the Bible. Something similar to what you’re saying about ignorance of Jewish history.” I think it’s important to know your roots. I really do. But, you know, that’s a personal view. I find that, certainly today, when so many of our kids are going up to university not knowing their history and they’re finding it more and more embarrassing to deal with issues on antisemitism and Israel, at least if you know… I’ve always thought that knowledge is kind of like a cloak of armour and it helps. Anyway, I think that’s it, Jude.

• [Judi] Yes, it is. Well done for getting through them all.

• Yeah, I promised you I’d finish at quarter to seven. Anyway, take care. And we’ve got another lecture, have we not?

• [Judi] We do have. We have David Bolshev, Trudy.

• And this is very interesting.

• [Judi] Story of Bela Guttmann.

• Yeah, he was a great, he’s a great sporting hero who survived the Shoah. And I think it should be a brilliant presentation. So hopefully we’ll see you then. God bless, everyone. Thank you, everybody. Bye-bye.

• Bye. Bye.