August 2017 Traditional Jewish Attitudes Toward Poles
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The figure of the peasant did not serve the authors of the Haskalah as a positive model (although some Haskalah writers speak of the need to improve the difficult conditions of peasants’ lives, which were attributed to political and social injustices). For this reason, it is difficult to find depictions of individual peasants in the literature. Rather, they are depicted stereotypically, as part of a mass, with common identifying features: similar facial features, identical items of dress, and the personality characteristics (violence, coarseness, ignorance, drunkenness) alluded to above.115 But it was not just Polish peasants who were demeaned. This deep-seated prejudice—which is often covered up—extended to virtually all Poles. In her work Żydzi polscy (1947–1950),116 Irena Hurwic-Nowakowska, a sociologist of Jewish origin, included a section on Jewish prejudices against Gentiles that was—tellingly—omitted from the Israeli edition of the book. The censored content contained the following discussion: the feeble “goy’s head (mind)” and the “Jewish head” (mind), which is supposedly far cleverer than the Polish one; “goyish luck” (fool’s luck), which goes against the run of things, is undeserved by the Poles and unexpected for Jews; “goyish blood,” meaning an explosive nature (“a Pole in a fit of rage can even kill a loved one”), or the opposite, “Jewish heart,” meaning goodness and kindness; and, lastly, “as drunk as a goy.”117 This phenomenon is not simply a historical relic. Orthodox Rabbi Avigdor Miller, writing in 1962, unambiguously believes that, notwithstanding the gentile righteousness that comes from obeying the Noahide Laws, the goyim are inferior ethically to Jews. This owes not only to God’s special blessings to the Jews, and the sanctification that comes from having and obeying the Torah, but also as something that is innate to Jews. He comments, Y [Youth]. So you say that, both by heredity and by the Torah influence, Jews are far superior to the nations of the world in qualities of character. S [Sage]. There is no doubt about that, as one can plainly see even by superficial observation. But you do not realize how vast is the difference between Israel and the nations.118 Compared to the lot of the peasant, Jews enjoyed prerogatives which were by and large respected, and had recourse to higher authorities when faced with occasional attempts to violate their rights. For example, the Jews of Pinsk [Pińsk] enjoyed freedom to trade, lend money, lease customs rights and estates, and maintain the [Christian] serfs attached to them. They also seem to have been permitted to engage freely in crafts. Their privilege rights assured them of a significant degree of security for their lives and property. In a case of murder or injury, Jews insisted on compensation and punishment of the perpetrator. Usually, with the help of the administrative authorities and the courts, they prevailed. … Pinsk Jews sued for large amounts of money in cases of bodily injury where the defendant was a nobleman. When a Jew was the attacker such cases were fairly frequent), he would also be summoned to court in the same manner as a nobleman, and on the basis of the same law. … Lawlessness and violence were prevalent generally, in the Christian community too; the primary victims were peasants subject to the nobility. The fact is that sometimes Pinsk Jews were accused of attacking Christians. … The sources also show that sometimes Jews who were sued by Christians were given preferential treatment by the judicial authorities. … It can be assumed that bribery played a crucial role in such instances. … In 1646, David Jakubowicz, one of the most important of the Pinsk arrendators, appealed a verdict reached by a nobility court in Pinsk. David, together with his nobleman lord, Lukasz [Łukasz] Olkowski, had been accused of killing a peasant who worked in Olkowski’s distilleries. The nobleman was fined sixty-four kopy for damages, but the Jew claimed that according to the Jews’ privilege the nobility court was not competent to judge him. The judges (who included the podstarosta) accepted this argument, and his case was referred to the podstarosta’s court sitting in its capacity as the sad [sąd] zamkowy, which was empowered to judge Jews. … As arrendators, they dealt with the nobility and clergy who gladly leased their latifundia to Jews. They also, in line with the economic realities of the period, profited by the feudal labor and tax obligations of peasant serfs bound to leased properties. … In this period, the peasant serf of the Pinsk region did not display any particular hostility toward the Jews. … They were indifferent as to the question of who would exploit them. … The only recorded cases of serfs acting against Jewish arrendators in particular involve incitement by their nobleman master who fell out with the arrendator, or instances where the Jew committed some egregious injustice that clearly went against custom or law.119 (Bribery of state officials, which is mentioned in the above account, is a phenomenon that requires further exploration.120) However, when a Jew was attacked or robbed by a serf, the situation was radically different and the serf could expect no mere fine or mercy. On the night of September 6 and 7, [1648], while they were camped in a field near the village of Osowiec, they were attacked by a gang of local [Orthodox] men posing as Cossacks, who broke open four of the trunks in the wagons and stole cash, silver utensils, and valuables. … The kopa investigation, done with summary severity, succeeded in identifying the guilty parties. They turned out to be four serfs of the nobleman Buchowiecki, the owner of Osowiec, who were interrogated by the kopa. … the case was brought for judgment before the nobleman Buchowiecki, the lord of the accused serfs. Buchowiecki gave up his claims to the escaped serfs, thereby giving the aggrieved Jews the right to catch them and bring them to trial. Buchowiecki sentenced to death the two serfs who had been captured and imprisoned. Since the Jew did not have an executioner on hand, the prisoners remained in jail in the Jews’ custody and were later brought to Pinsk.121 Social interaction between Christians and Jews was, until the modern period, minimal and superficial. For most Poles and Jews it simply did not exist. Almost all dealings were on the economic level, and mostly in the marketplace. The non-Jews were seen by the Jews primarily instrumentally, as the source of parnose (livelihood) through everyday economic exchange. However, as with the peasants, their everyday interaction, purely functional as it was, together with their differences in appearance, language, and customs, reinforced rather than diminished the sense of ‘otherness’ felt by the Jews towards their economic partners. Underlying this sense among the Jews of the otherness of the peasants were feelings of scorn and suspicion. But if similar feelings among the peasants towards the Jews were prompted by their perception of the latter as endowed with characteristics beyond their grasp, the Jewish perceptions of peasants were the reverse: they represented the uncivilized and uncultured. The term goy, referring generally to non-Jews, was actually used to denote ‘peasant’ in the everyday Yiddish idiom across the Polish territories. It denoted people and things that were backward, ignorant, driven by unrestrained animal instincts and physical aggression—everything that a Jew did not want to and should not be. This value-laden distinction was inculcated in Jewish children from infancy, and their sense of superiority emerged even more forcefully from Jewish religious convictions. Because of their cult of icons, statues, and other ‘graven images’, the Jews held Christians to be idolatrous, especially the rituals observed by the peasantry.122 Here [i.e., in the town’s marketplace] the peasants of the neighboring villages came to sell their products, buy urban products from the Jews, and use the services of the Jewish artisans. In the course of centuries this contact was seldom of lasting duration or of profound value. The relationship usually remained on the level of mutual distrust. To the Jew, the non-Jew was the symbol of raw instinct, of physical power and primitive reflexes. To the peasant, the Jew represented slyness, brains, and, most of all, religious heresy.123 Other descriptions of the marketplace highlight the potential for antagonism—one that extended in both directions: The marketplace was the quintessential meeting place for Jews and non-Jews, and it was an environment where the Jews felt confident and at home. Like markets around the world, it was also a centre for disagreements, insults and fights. Jewish stall-holders felt no compunction against trading insults with Christian competitors, importuning potential buyers, manhandling troublesome customers or boxing the ears of the street urchins who filled the marketplace. Tavern-keepers, whose livelihood depended on catering to human weakness, had even less respect for many of their customers, especially those who asked for credit or became drunk and disorderly. Such patrons were unceremoniously shown the door. In short, the meek and mild Jew, cringing before the Gentiles, is very much a fictional creation.124 In fact, although many Jews do not admit it, religion also had an enormous impact on how Jews perceived non-Jews. In his study Exclusiveness and Tolerance,125 Jacob Katz acknowledges that both Jews and Christians had stereotypical views of each other (p. xiv), and Jewish views of Christianity were just as unflattering as the reverse. Katz comments: “The biblical name of Edom was, in Talmudic times, applied to Rome. In medieval poetry, however, it is synonymous with Christianity.” (P. 16.) Throughout history, Jews had tended to see Christians as idolaters (e.g., pp. 27, 53, 100). Following Talmudic law, this would have forbidden Jews from having business dealings with Christians. Consequently, “Practical considerations required the dissociation of Christianity from idolatry, and this was rationalized by means of halakhic casuistry. But this rationalization cannot be assumed to imply that, from a theological point of view, Christianity was no longer regarded as a ‘pagan’ religion.” (P. 162; see also p. 108.). The 16th-century seminal Jewish thinker Maharal (Rabbi Judah Loeb of Prague) thought that: “However, his criticism [of Jews] did not affect his basic conception that Jews were, essentially, of a superior religious and moral caliber to others. Their inadequacies were incidental only, and attributable to the trials of the Exile; at a different level, Jewish deficiencies had a direct relationship to the Jews’ superior spiritual nature.” (P. 141.) Until the 11th century, and sometimes later, Jews could own slaves (p. 41). As for usury, both Christians and Jews employed a double standard. Christianity forbade usury among Christians, but regarded Jewish conduct as outside its jurisdiction. For its part, Judaism forbade Jew-on-Jew usury, but allowed Jew-on-gentile usury (p. 57). Since time immemorial, Jews had preferred to live among their own kind. Compulsory ghettoization came much later. Katz comments: “But contrary to what might be expected, the institution of the closed Jewish quarter was not in itself resented by Jews. It was accepted as a provision appropriate to a group of their status, and as corresponding to their social and religious needs; moreover, it provided a measure of security. Jews were content to be recognized as a socio-religious unit, distinct from the general population.” (Pp. 132–33.) According to other Jewish scholars, As Gershon Hundert has put it, ‘the norms of both the Church and the Synagogue were strongly segregationist in intent, and … each faith taught that the other was spiritually and morally inferior’. The preacher and moralist Tsevi Hirsh Koidonover (d. 1712), in his Kav hayashar, argued strongly against any contact with the society of non-Jews, which he saw as ‘full of idolatry, violence, and drunkenness’. Christians, lacking divinely taught ethics, were in the process of sliding steadily into chaos. A Jew could best save his soul by avoiding all contact with them. Historically, Ashkenazi Jewry’s categorization of Christians as idol worshippers had indeed created numerous legal barriers to Christian-Jewish interaction, at least from the Jewish perspective.126 Jews did express in prayers strong negative views of Christianity, and of Jesus and Mary, sometimes even calls for vengeance. Although passages offensive to Christianity were later removed [by censors] from Jewish prayers, an early sixteenth-century collection of penitential prayers published in Cracow still contained a few references to Christianity as a religion of the “hung-one,” an expression to denote the crucified Jesus, and references to “menstruating women.” According to medieval Jewish counternarrative of the Gospels, Jesus was born of a menstruating woman, in Jewish tradition a powerful and insulting denotation of impurity. Such prayers played on the contrast between Christian impurity and defilement and the ritual purity of the Jews. Christians were portrayed as the impure uncircumcised.127 Laws separating Jews from non-Jews (or “Israelites” from “non-Israelites”) appear in the Torah, or the Pentateuch. In the early postbiblical Jewish literature, the Mishnah—and especially the section ‛Avodah Zarah—delineated the boundaries and served as a foundation for subsequent rabbinic laws on contacts between Jews and non-Jews. … in the rabbinic law or halakhah, prohibitions appear against Jews celebrating non-Jewish holidays and attending non-Jewish weddings. There are laws attempting to limit friendly interaction between these two groups and to restrict the use of each other’s bathhouses and doctors. … Jewish dietary laws of kashrut also would have limited contacts, at least to Jewish homes … But Jewish law was often about restricting actual socializing rather than simply about the observance of kashrut. … … the Mishanic prohibitions that forbid Jews to leave their animals with gentiles, because of the gentiles’ alleged inclinations to bestiality, and that disallow Jews from being alone with gentiles because they are suspected of easy bloodshed. These prohibitions present non-Jews as dangerous, as licentious sexual predators or as killers. … Indeed, the Jewish leaders desired that Jews dress distinctly in order to prevent any possibility of intimacy … … the Shulḥan ‛Aruk, in Yoreh De‛ah 154.2, prohibited a Jewish woman from helping a gentile woman in childbirth unless she was known to the birthing woman and the help was performed for payment. … it was also prohibited to teach gentiles crafts. This prohibition comes from the Mishnah, and as the text states it was intended to prevent a Jewish woman from helping to bring an idolater into the world … The Shulḥan ‛Aruk, on the other hand, established professional boundaries between Jewish and Christian women, discouraging contacts based on friendship. To avoid such intimacy and friendship, rabbinic authorities made a payment part of the relationship.128
Because socializing and eating together could lead to simple friendships, then to emotional closeness, and eventually also to sexual relations, neither Jewish nor Church authorities wanted to encourage the crossing of boundaries. Both clearly saw contacts between Jews and Christians more as opportunities for corruption within their communities and as threats to religious loyalty among their co-religionists than as opportunities to gain converts.129 Much has been said about how Christians viewed Jews as the “wrong” religion, whose members might contaminate the faithful and whose only merit was their potential for conversion. However, strong anti-Christian sentiments also permeated Judaism and traditional Jewish society. Salo Baron points out that Jews thought exactly the same of Christians, as exemplified by the teachings of the famed rabbi Moses Maimonides. On account of their Trinitarian doctrine the Christians are legally in the category of heathens with whom one must not have any dealings on Sunday or, in Palestine, even during the preceding three days. Evidently, living in a Muslim environment, Maimuni could only indulge in the luxury of prohibiting commercial intercourse with the Christian minority during one to four days a week. On the other hand, in view of their qualified approval of the Jewish Scripture, they may be given instruction in its Jewish interpretation, in the hope that they may realize their error and join the ranks for full-fledged Jews.130 Based on a study of Hasidic sources, Jewish scholar Moshe Rosman provides the following historical perspective on this topic: Based on their respective theologies, Jews and Christians shared an assessment of Jews’ fundamental otherness within dominant Christian society. … Rabbinic laws and communal ordinances attempted to restrict contact with non-Jews, and Jewish folklore often assigned a demonic role to its gentile characters. But in their otherness, Jews maintained a positive evaluation of themselves and their way of life, entertaining feelings of Jewish solidarity and rejection of, and even superiority to, the hegemonic culture.131 Alongside the belief in the non-Jews’ demonic nature and the fear and mistrust of Gentile society, some of these tales hint at a very different evaluation of the theological-moral standing of the non-Jews. According to Jacob Katz, given the religious rivalry between Judaism and Christianity, the members of each group adopted a double standard of morality towards each other. There was no religious rationale for treating outsiders according to ethical norms. Jews frowned on mistreating or cheating non-Jews not on moral grounds but from enlightened self-interest: such behaviour would bring Jews into disrepute and result in sanctions or even violence being brought to bear against them.132 Raphael Mahler writes in a similar candid vein about the theological prejudices the Jewish people inherently held against Christians (non-Jews). The views of the Hasidim … were a direct outgrowth and development of the Weltanschauung of the Kabbalah. The Jewish people were not simply the chosen, but were the only people of God; “Israel and the Torah and the Holy One, blessed be He, are one.” According to the Midrash, the whole world was created only for the sake of the Jews … Consequently, their feelings of social involvement did not reach beyond their own people. The positive expression of this attitude was the principle of the unconditional solidarity of the Jews and the idea of ahavat yisrael (love of the Jewish people), [which became a main theme] in the stories and legends of the prominent Hasidic rebbes in the first half of the nineteenth century. However, a negative attitude toward Gentiles, which took the form of contempt, was also an unavoidable consequence of this position. As Mendel of Rymanów put it, “A Gentile does not have a heart, although he has an organ that resembles the heart.” Simon of Jarosław asserted that the Gentiles will be held responsible not for their evil decrees—these were actually divinely inspired and had been prophesied in order to “cleanse [the Jews] of their sins”—but for their “vengefulness and revelry in the distress of the Jews.” The symbol for the Gentile in the Hasid’s consciousness was the brutal landowner or the enslaved and boorish peasant.133 Mahler also mentions that the Rabbi of Izbica taught that Jews are innately good, even when they do evil deeds, simply because they are Jews. Gentiles are innately bad, even if they do good deeds. These principles also apply to the Rabbi of Izbica’s teaching with regard to the Jews and the gentile nations … Just as God chose individuals from among the Jews in accordance with His will, bestowing the light of His Torah upon them in greater abundance than upon others, … so did He select the Jews to be His chosen people. … But all these differences among the gentile nations with regard to each other are as nothing when compared with the abyss which exists between them and the Jews. Even “the good qualities and the beneficent knowledge” of gentile nations, which are reflected in their wealth and possessions, are there in exile, since idol worshippers do “the reverse of God’s will”; but when the Jews have one of these qualities, then God’s will is fulfilled through it, for the Jews are the “instrument by which God’s will is implemented.” … So beloved are the Jews in the eyes of God that even if they do deeds like those done by the Gentiles, they are good precisely because they are the deeds of Jews. Even the wicked among the Jews have goodnesss at the root of their lives, for it is only their acts which are not good, and those can be amended through penitence. However, the root of the gentiles is bad and their acts are evil, even though they seem good “in their outer guise,” as in the outer shell of Amalek, who “stretches forth his cloven hoof, as if to say, I am a clean animal.” The quality of the Jewish people is that of Aaron, kind and peaceful, whereas the quality of Edom is one of murder, as it is written (Gen. 27:40): “And by the sword shalt thou live.” It is true that it is stated (in Mal. 1:12): “Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?—but this resemblance is merely external, for “God is aware that they are not equal.” Also, ‘it seems that Esau and Jacob hated each other in the same way; but Esau’s hatred of Jacob is a deep-rooted hostility, since he hates him in his very essence,” whereas Jacob dislikes Esau for “the evil of his nature, because he is irate and cruel.”134 Thus Christians were inherently evil and, what is more, beyond salvation. At least in Christian theology Jews (and infidels) could redeem themselves by accepting Christ. Apparently this was not so in Judaism. Encumbered with such baggage, how could good relations with Christians possibly flourish? In a social order that mandated or encouraged separation (unlike those that mandated assimilation), how could Poles be seen—and judged—other than through the prism of their alleged innate anti-Semitism? Zvi Gitelman believes that tradition-minded Jews were more inured to anti-Semitism because they reckoned goys as Esau—always an enemy of Jacob.135 This distinction between Jews and non-Jews was reinforced on a daily basis. Religious Jews would say in their morning prayer, “Blessed are You, Eternal our God, who has not made me a gentile.”136 (Christians prayed the Our Father without any such differentiation: “And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”) An important sociological study of the shtetl by Mark Zborowski and Elizabeth Herzog, Life is With People: The Culture of the Shtetl,137 takes note of various themes that can be confirmed, and developed, when looking at conditions in various localities: reciprocity of de-legitimization, Jewish elitism, and the impact of Jewish religion. Each group will use animal terms in speaking of the other, implying that it is subhuman. If a Jew dies, a peasant will use the word for animal death in reporting the event, and a Jew will do the same for a peasant. The peasant will say that a Pole umiera and a Jew zdechl [zdechł]. The Jew will say that a Jew shtarbt and a peasant peygert. A peasant “eats” and a Jew “gobbles” when a peasant is talking, and when a Jew speaks the usage is reversed. The peasant will say, “That’s not a man, it’s a Jew.” And the Jew will say, “That’s not a man, it’s a goy.” (P. 157.) Yüklə 2,4 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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