May 2016 Traditional Jewish Attitudes Toward Poles

; “Slavery in Medieval Europe,” Internet: .

The Radanites were one of three groups that dominated the white slave trade at the time. They were the ones who controlled the western overland route from the Slav territories to Muslim Spain via Germany and France. The northern route, via the Baltic, was run by Viking traders. The various eastern routes, via the Dnieper, the Don, and the Volga, were run by either Viking or Khazar traders. All three trading groups worked with each other, particularly the Radanites and the Khazars (who converted to Judaism). The slave trade resulted in the banishment in 995 of Adalbert (Vojtĕch in Czech, Wojciech in Polish), the bishop of Prague, who condemned the practice in his treatise “Infelix Aurum.” Adalbert fled to Poland where he continued to ransom Christians sold into slavery. In this context, it is irrelevant that some Christians abetted this activity (just as some Blacks in Africa were implicated in the Black slave trade—in fact, most of the slaves were caught and sold by Black chiefs or middlemen as slavery was a well-established practice in Africa long before the arrival of Western European slave traders), because Jews were not enslaved, but only “the others.” Put bluntly, Jews traded in Christian slaves; Christians did not trade in Jewish slaves. Suffice it to say that if Poles had been responsible for enslaving Jews in the past, that fact would be forever have been held against the Poles and would doubtless figure prominently in the history of Polish-Jewish relations to this day. It should be noted that both the Old Testament and the Talmud sanctioned the possession of non-Jewish slave: “As for your male and female slaves whom you may have—you may acquire male and female slaves from the pagan nations that are around you.” (Leviticus 25:44.)

Jews also played a significant role in the Tatar slave trade in Slavs in the Crimea, which began in the late Middle Ages and continued well into the eighteenth century. According to Mikhail Kizilov, “Slaves, Money Lenders, and Prisoner Guards: The Jews and the Trade in Slaves and Captives in the Crimean Khanate,” Journal of Jewish Studies, vol. 58, no. 2 (Autumn 2007): 189–210:
Trade in slaves and captives was one of the most important (if not the most important) sources of income of the Crimean Khanate in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. …

The sources testify that Jewish population played a highly significant role in the trade in slaves and captives of the Crimean Khanate in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. The ways, in which the Jews were engaged in this business, were varied and diversified—from mediators in trade and money-lenders to commandants of the Jewish fortress of Çu-fut Qaleh, from wealthy slave-owners to misfortunate victims of the Tatar predatory raids. Moreover, the Jews played important role in international trade and were sometimes appointed influential state officials of the Crimean Khanate.

As an Israeli scholar points out, slaveholding—particularly of females of Slavic origin—in Jewish households in the urban centres of the Ottoman Empire was widespread from the 16^th to the 19^th centuries, and Jews were involved in the slave trade as dealers. Female slaves were forced to cohabit with Jewish men, serving as their concubines and bearing them legitimate children who were raised as Jews. Marriages entered into with manumitted slaves who converted to Judaism were also common. Since Ottoman Jews did not possess or trade in Jewish slaves (except to ransom Jewish captives), there is a significant religious dimension to the holding of Christians as slaves. Descendants of Marranos in like circumstances are actively targeted by Jews to this day to return to the Jewish fold. See Yaron Ben-Naeh, “Blond, Tall, With Honey-Colored Eyes: Jewish Ownership of Slaves in the Ottoman Empire,” Jewish History, vol. 20, nos. 3–4 (December 2006): 316–32.

98 Zofia Kowalska, “Handel niewolnikami prowadzony przez Żydów w IX-XI wieku w Europie,” in Danuta Quirini-Popławskiej, ed., Niewolnictwo i niewolnicy w Europie od starożytności po czasy nowożytne (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 1998), 81–92. Other literature on this topic published in Polish and Poland includes: Tadeusz Lewicki, “Osadnictwo słowiańskie i niewolnicy słowiańscy w krajach muzułmańskich według średniowiecznych pisarzy arabskich, Przegląd Historyczny, vol. 43, nos. 3–4 (1952): 473–91; Tadeusz Lewicki, “Handel niewolnikami słowiańskich w krajach arabskich,” in Słownik Starożytności Słowiańskich: Encyklopedyczny zarys kultury Słowian od czasów
najdawniejszych, vol. 2 (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1964), 190–92; Iza Bieżuńska-Malowist and Marian Małowist, Niewolnictwo (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1987), 267–77; Zofia Borzymińska, Studia z dziejów Żydów w Polsce (Warsaw: DiG, 1995), 14–26; Ahmed Nazmi, Commercial Relations between Arabs and Slaves (9th-11th Centuries) (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Akademickie Dialog, 1998), 114–83; Hanna Zaremska, “Aspekty porównawcze w badaniach nad historią Żydów w średniowiecznej Polsce,” Rocznik Mazowiecki, vol. 13 (2001): 177–91, here at 178.

99 Robert Chazan, The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom, 1000–1500 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 205–6.

100 Pogonowski, Jews in Poland, 159; Bernard D. Weinryb, The Jews of Poland: A Social and Economic History of the Jewish Community in Poland from 1100 to 1800 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1972), 9–10.

101 Jonathan Krasner, “Constructing Collective Memory: The Re-envisioning of Eastern Europe as Seen Through American Jewish Textbooks,” in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 19: Polish-Jewish Relations in North America (Oxford and Portland, Oregon: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2007), 229–55, here at 241.

102 Israel Bartal, “Relations between Jews and Non-Jews: Literary Perspectives,” The Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, Internet: