The largest concentration; of Jews ― about 5 million ― was located there, representing 40% of the Jewish population worldwide.
From 1791 until 1915, the majority of Jews living in Eastern Europe were confined by the Czars of Russia ― starting with Catherine the Great ― to an area known as the "Pale of Settlement" (meaning "borders of settlement"). The Pale consisted of 25 provinces that included Ukraine, Lithuania, Belorussia, Crimea, and part of Poland (which had been partitioned between Russia, Prussia, and Austria in 1772).
The western side of what had formally been Poland was absorbed into the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This western half of Poland (which contained important Jewish communities such as those located in Galicia) contained a smaller, but not insignificant, number of Jews. The physical and economic situation of these Jews of the eastern Austro-Hungarian Empire was generally much better than their fellow Jews living in western end of Czarist Russia.
The Jews of Russia were specifically expelled from Moscow and St. Petersburg and forced into the Pale. Later they were also expelled from rural areas within the Pale and forced to live only in shtetls.
Despite the oppression some amazing things happened in the Pale.
For one thing, charity ― tzedakah, which in Hebrew means "justice" ― thrived, as Jews helped each other. The historian Martin Gilbert writes in his Atlas of Jewish History that no province in the Pale had less than 14% of Jews on relief, and Lithuanian and Ukrainian Jews supported as much as 22% of their poor population:
"Among the charitable societies organized by Jews were those to supply poor students with clothes, soldiers with kosher food, the poor with free medical treatment, poor brides with dowries, and orphans with technical education."
This was an incredibly sophisticated social welfare system. In times of great hardship, no Jew was abandoned.
This caring for each other did not escape the notice of non-Jews.
In fact, as far back as the Middle Ages Rabbis had instituted takanot (rabbinic enactments) which forbade conversion to Judaism.1 The primary fear was that there would be an anti-Semitic backlash against the Jews for "stealing" a Christian from his faith, but there was also another reason. Why would a Christian want to convert to Judaism-which could possibly lead to arrest and execution? They realized that no Jew ever starved to death in the street, whereas if you were a Christian peasant you could easily starve to death in the street because no one was going to take care of you. The government wasn't going to do it and the Church wasn't going to do it. Even though the Jewish community gave charity to their Gentile neighbors the rabbis didn't want Judaism being flooded by insincere converts who were trying to save their lives by becoming Jews and benefiting from the Jewish social welfare system.
Torah Learning
Another amazing thing that happened in the Pale, despite the oppression, was the creation of the modern Yeshiva (school for Torah study).
Torah studies (as we saw in Part 52) was a "luxury" largely not available to the masses of Eastern European Jewry in the 18th century and had become a preserve of the elite.
In 1803, Rabbi Chaim ben Isaac of Volozhin (1749-1821), a student of the Vilna Ga'on, set about to revolutionize the concept of the Yeshiva. Most yeshivas during this period were small institutions of learning supported by individual towns in which they were based. Rabbi Chaim proposed to found a large institution, for the top students, and supported by many communities.
He sent letters to the chief rabbis of cities throughout Europe asking them to send to him their best students to study at his yeshiva in Volozhin, Lithuania, (which was later named Etz Chaim ― "Tree of Life" ― in honor of its founder) where he promised to provide them with financial support, top teachers, and a high-level standardized curriculum. The response to his letter was very positive and a large number of students were sent to the Volozhin Yeshiva, which eventually enrolled 450 students.
Unfortunately, the Volozhin Yeshiva didn't last too long as the Czarist government of Russia saw what was going on and tried to force it to adopt a more secular curriculum as part of making it less Jewish. It was closed by the Czarist government in 1879 and was reopened in 1881. While the Volozhin Yeshiva was able to yield to some of the demands of the Czarist government, the demand that all faculty members have diplomas from recognized Russian educational institutions in order to teach "Russian language and culture" was not acceptable. And so, the yeshiva was closed in 1892 by Russian inspectors and its students exiled.
Although it had been in operation less than 100 years, it had become the model and inspiration for the modern yeshiva. By the time the Volozhin closed, other yeshivas based on its models were already in operation, many started by the students of the Volozhin. A letter written in 1865 by Rabbi David Moses of Krynki, a former student of the Volozhin, attests to greatness of Rabbi Chaim and the Yeshiva he founded.
...the yeshiva of Volozhin is the mother and source of all the yeshivot and Talmud Torahs in the world. The latter are as pipes which come from the source... before our holy rabbi (Rabbi Chaim) founded the "house of God" the world was empty, literally without form; it was void, for even the term yeshiva was unknown, let alone what activities took place in one... Were it not for the fact that our holy rabbi founded his yeshiva, the Torah would have-God forbid-been forgotten to Israel. 2
Another major educational innovation of the period was the founding of the Beis Yaakov School for girls. The school was founded by Sarah Schnirer in Cracow, Poland in 1918 and later developed in a large education network that spread to both America and Israel.
The Mussar Movement
During the same period of time that saw the re-birth of Torah studies there arose in the Pale a new emphasis on what should be the primary focus of those studies. The impetus came from a very important movement within Judaism called the Mussar Movement ("Morality Movement").
Its founder was a most unusual man, Rabbi Israel Lipkin of Salant (1810-1883), better known as Rabbi Israel Salanter.
Many stories are told about his goodness. Among the most famous is the story of his disappearance one Yom Kippur from his synagogue. As the congregation fretted for his safety, delaying services until he arrived, one young mother took the opportunity to rush back home to check on her baby, which she had left alone. There she found the rabbi, rocking the cradle. Hearing the baby crying, he had stopped to comfort it, putting the needs of another human being ahead of his personal spiritual fulfillment.
Rabbi Salanter, though the epitome of kindness, could also be confrontational when the question of ethics or morality was at stake. Such was his stance, when he learned that a poor widow's two sons were drafted into the Russian Army, because a rich man had bribed the officials so that his son would not be taken. He confronted the entire community in the synagogue regarding the matter in order to win justice for the widow.
Rabbi Salanter was driven to establish the study of morality and ethics as a distinct subject within the larger curriculum of study in the yeshiva. He felt that the over emphasis on Talmudic study had neglected the methodology of developing one's relationship to God or in becoming a better person in relationship to one's fellows. The 18th century work by the Kabbalist Moshe Chaim Luzatto ― The Path of the Just‘ ― was adopted as the "manual" of the Mussar movement.
At the time that Rabbi Salanter initiated Mussar studies, his system was controversial simply because it was new. Orthodox Jews were worried at first that this might be another type of "reform" and the time spent on Mussar study would detract from the time spent on Talmud study.
But the Mussar movement overcame their misgivings and its teachings are now central to the curricula of many yeshivas.
The most famous of the yeshivas specializing in Mussar studies were the Navaradok Yeshiva, founded by Rabbi Joseph of Navaradok in 1896, a disciple of Rabbi Salanter and the Slobodka Yeshiva founded in 1863 by Rabbi Nassan Tzvi Finkel (which moved to Hebron, Israel, and when destroyed by the Arabs, to Jerusalem and Bnei Brak)
Other yeshivas, many of which were founded by the graduates of the Volozhin Yeshiva and which incorporated the teachings of Rabbi Salanter and the Mussar Movement, were:
- the Mir founded in 1815 (the great yeshiva which migrated to Shanghai during the Holocaust and eventually relocated in Jerusalem and Brooklyn)
- Telshe founded in 1875 (now in Cleveland, Ohio)
- Slutzk founded in 1896 (now in Lakewood, New Jersey).
- Pressburg founded in 1807 by Rabbi Moses Sofer (the Chatam Sofer) in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, (today called Bratislava in Slovakia) was the largest and most influential Yeshiva in Central Europe.
Forced Secularization
While most of the students studying in the yeshivot accepted and embraced the Mussar movement after an initial hesitation, the non-Orthodox continued to oppose it.
Chief among the opponents was a group called the Maskilim ("the Enlightened Ones"), who opposed traditional Judaism in any way, shape or form.
This was the group that aided the Czarist government in the closing of the Volozhin Yeshiva. Why? Because the Maskilim wanted their fellow Jews to drop Judaism and join the Russian culture. They argued: "Let's study Russian culture... let's speak in Russian and write in Russian... let's be just like them, and they'll accept us, and we'll be able to integrate more effectively into society and end the horrible poverty so many live under."
An important figure among the Maskilim was Dr. Max Lilienthal (1813-1882), a German Jew who came to Russia as director of the "enlightened" Jewish school of Riga. He was eventually appointed by the Russian government (of Czar Nicholas I) as the Minister of Jewish Education and went about attempting to convince the Jews of the Pale of the Czar's "benign intent" in establishing a new educational system for them.
A glimpse at part of the plan created by these maskilim for the Jews of Eastern Europe gives a clear sense of their plans for the Jews of Eastern Europe:
Maskilim to Govenors of the Pale ― A Program for Russification 1841:The Russian government's objectives in the encouragement of enlightenment among the Jewish people [should be] special emphasis to the moral as opposed to the academic aspects of the education of the Jews... To pay special attention to the teaching of Russian history and language, for there is nothing which unites diverse ethnic groups... better than the dissemination of information concerning that nation's history and literature...In order to thwart the harmful influence of the Talmud, without at this stage destroying the book... the rabbis should be empowered to prepare a short religious text... in accordance with the accepted principles regarding civil responsibilities to the tsar and the motherland... the Jews must be ordered to change their dress for the clothing commonly worn throughout the country...3
This was during the time when the Czar was attempting to "restructure" the Jewish society in Russia with laws forbidding the wearing of traditional clothing, decrees against Talmud study, and division of Jews into "useful" (farmers, artisans, skilled workers) and "useless" (unskilled workers, rabbis, orphans, the sick and unemployed).
In this climate, in 1843, a conference was convened on the subject of Jewish education, which pitted Lilienthal against Rabbi Yitzchak of Volozhin and Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, the Rebbe of Chabad Lubavitch also known as the Tzemach Tzedek. Lilienthal could not stand up to the arguments of these rabbis, who managed to win the right for Jews to retain their traditional school system in competition with Lilienthal's new school system. (See Berel Wein's Triumph of Survival, p. 157.)
Within a decade, Lilienthal's schools closed for lack of faculty and students, though Lilienthal's defenders claim that he left because he realized that the Czar's "benign intent" was to convert Jews to Christianity. He migrated to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he headed up a Reform congregation.
The early 1800s marked the beginning of a significant change for Jewish life in Eastern Europe. The change took place in many different spheres and on many levels.
Population Explosion
The first was simply demographic: the Jewish population exploded during the 19th century. It is estimated that at the time of the Napoleonic Wars (i.e. the beginning of the 1800s) there were about 2.25 million Jews in the world. By 1880, that figure had reached 7.5 million. By 1900 it approached 9 million!
Many reasons are given for this population explosion. One is that it is not so much that the Jewish rate of birth increased as that the Jewish rate of death decreased, especially in the area of infant mortality.
Jews also married younger. The average age of marriage in Eastern Europe was estimated to be between 14 and 16. These young marriages helped increase the number of families and of children being born.
Urbanization
The second factor was the coming of the Industrial Revolution to Eastern Europe and the urbanization of its population. The Jews had lived in small, isolated communities—villages, farms, rural areas—as an agricultural-based people who lived among the peasants of Russia and Poland. The city of Warsaw had a very negligible Jewish population in the late 1700s. By 1850 it had 125,000 Jews, and by the time of the Second World War, it had a Jewish population 350,000.
The Jews came to the cities for various reasons. But they came for the same reason that urbanization was popular throughout the world. The cities meant an opportunity to get ahead. It meant a job. It meant getting off the farm.
During the 19th century therefore the Jewish people changed from a rural people to an urbanized one. And since the Jews, for whatever reason, had less attachment to the rural society, they urbanized much more quickly than their non-Jewish neighbors. They found the opportunities a grand challenge for their talents and their lifestyle.
Jews on the Move
A third matter that occurred then, in the beginning of the 19th century, was the complete mass emigration of Jews from one place to another. The Jews began to move.
They began to move within Russia, Poland and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. There was a shift in population of the Jews in Germany, from the eastern part close to the Austro-Hungarian border into Poland. Eastern European Jews began to move to southern Russia and the Ukraine. The large settlements of the Jews in northern Poland and northern Lithuania began to move south, as far as the Black Sea at the port of Odessa. There was a large Jewish migration from Galicia and from southern Poland to Romania and Hungary, so that the Jewish population increased tenfold there.
The coming of the Chassidic Movement to those areas of Europe where it had not existed before was part of this mass emigration. Beginning in the 1840s there was a trickle of emigration to the United States, but by the time of the American Civil War there were already 50,000 Jews in New York. Even though the basis of Jewish life there country was founded upon German Jews, who came first, Eastern European Jews began to come almost immediately thereafter. Then the great waves of migration in the 1880s until the First World War, and after it, brought millions of Jews to the shores of the United States.
Jews moved to England in great numbers, particularly Lithuanian Jews. A great number of Lithuanian Jews moved to such exotic places as South Africa, where in the Boer Republic that was established in the 1850s and 1860s there was already strong and with significant Jewish representation. At the time of the Boer War, at the end of the 19th century, there were almost 75,000 Jews in South Africa.
Jews moved to France. By 1850, there were 25,000 Eastern European Jews in Paris. Jews moved, for the first time, to Vienna, Budapest and Berlin. These cities now had sizeable Jewish populations.
All of this – the movement, the population explosion, the urbanization and the Industrial Revolution, the springing up of factories and different types of labor — served to unhinge the Jewish population. It brought an element of chaos into Jewish life. The old was going, never to come back again. The new was frightening, different, unpredictable, and the Jewish world was being thrust into it not only without preparation but without protection, with nothing to ease their way.
The Evil Decrees
The Jews were loyal to Russia during the Napoleonic War. This loyalty was rewarded by a series of decrees which, in the history of the Jewish people, are arguably the single worst series of decrees Jews have ever undergone. It would begin with Czar Alexander in the early 1820s and continue with his son Nicholas and then by Alexander III. Their intent was the utter destruction of the Jewish people.
It is rumored that the Czar’s minister said that the Jewish program of the Russian government was “one-third extermination, one-third emigration, and one-third assimilation (or conversion).” It is not overstating it that the elimination of the Jewish people in Russia was one of the goals of the Romanovs. It is interesting to see how that attitude was inherited by the revolution that overthrew the Romanovs, the Communist Revolution. The decrees were different but their purpose was the same.
The Pale of Settlement
The first main decree, which was put to effect in 1825, was establishment of the Pale of Settlement. This was an area within Russia where Jews were allowed to live. No Jews were allowed outside the Pale of Settlement. Within the Pale, Jews were not allowed to live in certain cities.
The Pale of Settlement decree, in effect, prevented any chance for Jews to advance economically. It was the ghetto on a grand scale. Jews were prevented from living anywhere within about 35 miles of the Russian border, which was heavily populated by Jews. The Russians openly said that the Jews were a risk and therefore they could not live close to the border. That meant that about 100,000 Jews were uprooted and forced to become refugees.
The Czar also forbade the Jews from living in any of the main cities of Russia. For instance, Jews were driven out of Kiev. They lived in all the small towns around it. The strong Jewish centers of population were overrun by penniless, itinerant Jews. All of this was meant to make certain that the Jews would not be able to adjust.
The Cantonist Decrees
In 1827, Czar Nicholas signed into law, “The Decree of the Cantonists.” From the beginning of the 1700s until the 1820s, Jews technically were liable for service in the Russian army. However, a Jew could legally buy his way out. If he paid a certain amount of money the conscription would be waived.
As part of the Czar’s program to break the Jewish people and force them to convert, and to help exterminate some of them and send a message to the rest that they had no future in Russia, the Czar passed a decree that no longer would it be acceptable to pay money to be exempted from the army, and that all the Jewish communities had to fulfill their quota.
The rate of suicide among the Jewish children who were taken was almost 60%, because they would not convert. From the moment they were taken away, they were forced to attend Russian Orthodox services. Many were forcibly baptized.
These children were taken into very rough conditions, to freezing cold places with poor sanitation. Not every 8-year-old child can march 10 or 12 miles every day. Out of those children who went into the army, very few came back. And out of those who did come back, very few of them came back as Jews.
The decree was unspeakably cruel. And it stayed in effect for almost 30 years. It was enforced more rigidly at some times and more leniently at others, but it was always there.
Good, Old Anti-Semitism
In 1840, Czar Nicholas produced the Mein Kampf of the Romanovs. He said exactly that the reason Jews cannot be assimilated into Russian society, and are not entitled to any of the Russian privileges, was because of their “terrible religion.”
Nicholas said that the problem with the Jews is that they believed in the “cursed book,” the Talmud. In Europe, there was an expression, “a Shas Jew” (Shas is a Hebrew acronym standing for the Six Orders of the Mishnah/Talmud). A Jew who knew the Talmud knew how to be a Jew. That is one of the reasons that even today in any sort of intensive Jewish education the emphasis is on Talmudic studies, even though the boy is not going to be a rabbi and may not even become a scholar. That has nothing to do with it. If he has studied Talmud for a number of years, then he has a chance to understand what it is to be a Jew.
The Czar also said that the problem with the Jews was that they thought of themselves as being in exile, because they were removed from Palestine, and therefore they wait daily for a Messiah to come and bring them there. All of these things were incompatible with Russian society and Russian patriotism.
He therefore appointed a commission called the Bureau of Jewish Affairs, whose purpose was to destroy the Jewish people. Part of the program was the establishment of schools, supported by the Russian government, that would teach Judaism — but not in the spirit of the Talmud. They would teach the Czar’s brand of Judaism.
They also would disband all the Jewish religious councils, and force the rabbis to take competency tests. These tests covered speaking, reading and writing in the Russian language, knowledge of Russian history and so on. Almost no rabbi in Russia could pass, or was even interested in passing, these tests.
The first half of the 19th century in Russia was a terrifying time for Jews. They were constantly targeted by the authorities, who placed upon them a series of terrible decrees whose impact lasted well into the latter half of the century and beyond. The sum total of these decrees would ultimately unleash various new and destabilizing Jewish movements in Eastern Europe, which in turn would spawn other Jewish movements to counteract them. The aftershocks of all these movements and events were so powerful that their repercussions can still be felt reverberating in the Jewish world today.
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