May 2016 Traditional Jewish Attitudes Toward Poles

By weaving tougher elements from earlier Jewish traditions, Jews developed a ceremony in the late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century Germany and northern France that in many ways parodied and subverted aspects of Christian rituals and symbols. … Eating special cakes baked with foods that symbolize Torah (flour, honey, milk, and oil), and shelled hard-boiled effs on which words of Torah were written served as a Jewish antidote to the increasingly more prominent central Christian rite of the Eucharist [eucharist in original] that bound Christians to one another and to the living sacrificed Christ.¹³¹
Significantly, 18^th century Polish scholarship was well aware of at least some of the offensive Jewish beliefs and practices, as well as the writings of the Talmud which were replete with disgusting and spiteful references to Jesus, Christians (non-Jews), and Christian beliefs.¹³² German Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz elaborates on the central, and destructive, role that the Talmud played in Jewish society in the Commonwealth of Poland:
The study of the Talmud was a greater necessity in Poland than in the rest of Europe. The rabbis, as has been already said, had jurisdiction of their own, and decided according to Talmudical and Rabbinical laws. The great number of Jews in Poland, and their fondness for litigation, gave occasion to intricate law cases.

A love of twisting, distorting, ingenious quibbling, and a foregone antipathy to what did not lie within their field of vision, constituted the character of the Polish Jews. Pride in their knowledge of the Talmud and a spirit of dogmatism attached even to the best rabbis, and undermined their moral sense. The Polish Jews of course were extraordinarily pious, but even their piety rested on sophistry and boastfulness. Each wished to surpass the other in knowledge of what the Code prescribed for one case or another. Thus religion sank, not merely, as among Jews of other countries, to a mechanical, unintelligent ceremonial, but to the subtle art of interpretation. To know better was everything to them; but to act according to acknowledged principles of religious purity, and to exemplify them in a moral life, occurred to but few. Integrity and right-mindedness they had lost as completely as simplicity and the sense of truth. The vulgar acquired the quibbling method of the schools, and employed it to outwit the less cunning. They found pleasure and a sort of triumphant delight in deception and cheating. Against members of their own race cunning could not well be employed, because they were sharp-witted; but the non-Jewish world in which they came into contact experienced to its disadvantage the superiority of the Talmudical spirit of the Polish Jews.¹³³

For God’s “Chosen People” the “rival” Polish messianistic movement which developed in the 19^th century proved to be particularly unpalatable and met with scorn. Unlike the situation in countries where Jews formed a tiny presence, given their large numbers in Poland they felt little or no compunction to rein in their negative feelings toward the surrounding population.

Stephen Bloom’s book about an ultra-Orthodox Jewish enclave (the Chabad Lubavitchers, a prominent Hasidic movement founded in Lithuania) in Postville, Iowa, in the 1980s, sheds some light on what relations must have been like between many Jews and Poles in Eastern Europe before the rise of the Nazis. Hasidic Jews who moved to the Iowa town practiced self-imposed apartheid. They used only their own schools. They did such things as demanding exclusive use of the town swimming pool for part of the day. They refused to participate in an ecumenical service at a neutral locality. They ignored greetings from neighbours, they did not want to touch Gentiles, they resisted eye contact with them as they walked down the street. They had no knowledge or interest in Gentile life around them. They appeared “obnoxious and imperial” to local people, they cheated local merchants, and they used oil in their candelabras because oil, which doesn’t mix with other liquids, symbolizes Jewish separateness from all non-Jews. “Wherever we go,” one Chabad leader (Lazar) said, “we don’t adapt to the place or the people. It’s always been like that and always will be like that. It’s the place and the people who have to adapt to US.” Continuing his interview, Bloom remarked: “Lazar’s comment underscored the Hasidim’s contempt for non-Jews, which wasn’t limited to the Postville gentiles, but to all Christians … Lazar’s gentile-bashing reminded me of the Yiddish aphorism Er shmekt nit un er shtinkt nit (‘He doesn’t smell and he doesn’t stink’), used derisively to describe non-Jews, who are viewed as inconsequential and unimportant.” Such attitudes were not limited to the unassimilated. Bloom, a much-assimilated largely non-observant American Jew, recounts what his parents said: “A common expression used by Jews to describe a slow, dense person was—and still is—‘He’s got a goyischer kop’, which literally means ‘He’s got a gentile head’ but figuratively means ‘slow-witted’.” “Postville people, by and large, were tolerant,” says Bloom, “… [but the Hasidic Jews] were downright rude. They seemed to go out of their way to be obnoxious, especially when it came to business dealings … At first, the locals welcomed the Jews, but even the simplest offer—a handshake, an invitation to afternoon tea—was spurned. The locals quickly discovered that the Jews wouldn’t even look at them. They refused to acknowledge even the presence of anyone not Jewish.” The Postville residents, for their part, grew increasingly tired of being told to be tolerant. A Jewish boy was run off the road, causing injuries that required stitches. Derogatory remarks about the Jews grew more and more common. Bloom grew concerned that the Gentiles were hardening their attitudes: “The problem, as I saw it, was that although the locals might have been right about the atrocious behavior of some of the Postville Jews, not a few of the locals began using this behavior to generalize about all Jews … All Jews were greedy, all Jews bargained, all Jews reneged on their agreements.” In the end, the Postville locals voted to rezone the area in hopes that it would drive the Lubavitchers out. Bloom, who had visited the Postville area many times to be sure of his conclusions, sided with the locals.¹³⁴

One can find the same theme of mutual religious-based animosity in some memoirs from the interwar period. Leon Berkowicz, the son of a successful timber merchant from Baranowicze, writes:

The deep intolerance and hatred was caused by the poverty and ignorance which prevailed for centuries, and to no less a degree by the clergymen of all three denominations [i.e., Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Jewish] who spent more time emphasising the superiority of their own creed and the certainty of preferential treatment by the Almighty than they did in teaching the Ten Commandments or the love and compassion of Jesus Christ.
Many religious practices and traditions associated with Judaism seemed strange to Christians, just as Christian rituals did to Jews. Some Jewish customs became known to Christians, and vice versa.
The practices surrounding Tisha Ba’av were much more to my liking. … this holiday was a mournful one indeed. Commemorating as itdid the destruction of the first and second temples in Jerusalem … Jews generally observed Tisha Ba’av by denying themselves anything that gave pleasure, by debasing themselves, sitting, for example, not on chairs but on special low boxes, placing ashes in their hair, and not eating or drinking for twenty-four hours. Throughout the entire day my father wore torn clothes specially set aside for this time. Understand this and try to explain why it was that children were allowed to do what they did.

At this time of year [summer] a certain kind of prickly thistle grew abundantly in our region, which we proceeded to collect. In short order these thistles were being used as missiles within the synagogue, children taking aim at the long beards of the congregants and then throwing them. When accurately thrown they became entangled in the beards and were very hard to remove. Here were men absorbed in mournful prayer forced to be on the alert for annoying thistles aimed at them! Women were considered to be off limits, but not young girls. It was also “permitted” to sneak up on a girl and rub a thistle into her hair. Once in, it was not easily removed; at times girls were forced to cut off parts of their hair. …

You would think such disruption would tax the limits of everyone’s patience, but there was more. On Tisha Ba’av in the synagogue, children threw bricks! In the midst of solemn prayers, bricks were sent skidding along the floor! Naturally when things got out of hand people complained bitterly, but never did anyone insist that such doings ought not to be tolerated. It was accepted; it was tradition.
The year-round pieces [of dishes and utensils] remained in our house, but they no longer belonged to us. As was the custom, they were temporarily “sold,” together with the chumetz food [i.e, food forbidden during Passover], to a non-Jew, a handshake usually confirming the transaction. With the chumetz dishes, utensils, and food no longer ours, the laws of Passover were thus upheld.
So much did matzohs symbolize Passover that we used them as gifts for Polish friends, who considered them treats—ironically enough, given the ancient Christian charge that Jews baked their matzohs with blood from Christian children. I was the one selected by my father to deliver these gift matzohs, usually two or three packed together. It was customary for Jewish children to bring matzohs for their favorite teachers in public school.
All this might have been all right if the town’s dentist had not been a woman. That in itself was sufficient to keep all the orthodox Jews away from her door.¹³⁵
We used to buy meat at the kosher butcher, of course, in the Jewish store—there was no doubt about that. But it happened sometimes that we’d buy something live, like for Rosh Hashanah. We had to have a sacrificial hen. We would say a prayer and spin the hen above the head. And then we'd take the hen to the butcher, and there was this shochet that would kill it. And I really hated it when they were spinning that hen over the head. Because it was flailing her wings and I was afraid it would do something to me.¹³⁶
Nonetheless, there as in most places, day-to-day relations between Christians and Jews remained proper and entirely civil.¹³⁷ Acts of kindness were also not uncommon. A famous incident occurred in Wilno in April 1931, when an 18-year-old Polish youth drowned after jumping into the Wilejka River in an unsuccessful attempt to save a four-year-old Jewish boy from drowning. The Polish authorities commemorated this heroic deed by erecting a monument to the Pole, who became a source of pride—not shame—for the Polish community. The Jewish representatives on the municipal council chose not to support the erection of the monument.¹³⁸

At the Polish state-run high school Leon Berkowicz attended in Baranowicze,

nobody was handicapped because of his origin or his religion. The Jewish boys excelled academically, but if they were usually first in maths and science they were nearly always last in sports. Physical education was a low priority in Jewish upbringing. Somehow, I was an exception and … the sports-master always gave me top marks. … I was very proud when the captain from the 78^th Polish infantry regiment asked me to join their soccer team and play for them in Wilno … I had two Christian friends at school … Our relationship was based on mutual respect and understanding. On a few occasions I went to their homes and they came to mine; I had the impression that the parents of both sides raised their eyebrows.¹³⁹
Among more traditional Jews, however, interaction was carefully guarded and openness to non-Jews was rare to the “Other,” as was the case in Kolbuszowa, except for those few Jewish professionals who broke out of the confines of the accepted social norms.
In this small town of ours we lived together while we remained separate and apart. Practical necessities brought us into daily contact, but these encounters were specific and brief and rarely produced mutual understanding or respect. We needed each other, often complemented each other, and so there was reason for tolerance; but there was not much incentive for eliminating the barriers that separated us.

Poles dominated the government and administration of Kulbuszowa; Jews operated nearly all of the businesses. The Jews lived largely in and around the marketplace, the Poles in an area known as New Town. Most Poles were devout Catholics, and we Jews followed in the path of orthodox Judaism. … In look, in dress, in behavior, there was usually no mistaking the Pole and the Jew. Then, too, Poles all spoke Polish, Jews mostly Yiddish. …

Acquaintances among Poles and Jews were common, indeed nearly inevitable in a town the size of Kolbuszowa; but close friendships were practically nonexistent. Poles married Poles, and Jewish boys sought out Jewish girls. The one or two exceptions proved the point. Though my father had many Polish acquaintances from business, never were any invited to my sisters’ weddings. Practically every Jew in town came, but not any Poles, nor was he ever invited to their celebrations. Organizations like the Scouts, the fire department, and the Kolbuszowa soccer team were exclusively Polish. [Later, as we shall see, the author contradicts himself on this point.—M.P.]. No Jew in town had ever set foot in the Catholic church of Kolbuszowa; Catholic priests would not look at Jews, much less talk to them. [Later the author contradicts himself on this point—M.P.: “It was my father, for example, who supplied Catholic churches in our area with candles and other items used in various church ceremonies.” In another book the same author writes: “Most Jews had absolutely no contact with the Catholic Church. Whenever they saw a priest coming down the street, they would cross over to the other side to avoid him. The Church was deeply mistrusted and was looked upon as the spawning ground of anti-Semitism. How many plots against Jews, we wondered, were hatched in the dark halls of the old stone church buildings on the edge of town?”¹⁴⁰] … Only on the rarest occasions had a Pole been to the Jewish synagogue. Catholics celebrated their holidays throughout the year and Jews theirs, neither group much concerned with what the other was about.

On each side the separateness was seen as desirable. A coming together, a mixing—no one saw any need for it, any point to it. Best to let things stay the way they were. “We could be spoiled”—that’s what Jews said would happen if we mixed with Poles. It could be threatening, could challenge the way it had always been. … Some Jews, not many, did attempt to move in the other direction. These were the modern men, professionals mostly, who wore their Judaism casually, if at all, and sought out friendships among the Poles. Dr. Leon Anderman was a notable exception …

Anderman and a few other men mingled almost exclusively with Poles, were invited to their social gatherings, seemed to move among them with ease. …

There were certain times when Poles and Jews came together in Kolbuszowa. When disaster hit, whether fire or flood, the relief committees were organized, both Poles and Jews did what they could to aid in the recovery. Jews … participated in the celebration of Polish national holidays; a portion of the festivities took place in the synagogue, where the rabbi offered remarks on the occasion before an audience that included local Polish dignitaries. Always in the municipal government a Pole served as mayor and a Jew as deputy mayor. The municipal council was equally divided between the two. On the Kolbuszowa all-star soccer team were two Jews (from the town Gymnasium) …¹⁴¹

In September 1939, the Germans ordered that the Polish troops who fell in the battle for Kolbuszowa be buried together in a mass common grave in the Catholic cemetery. This incensed the Jewish community:
The fact that Jewish soldiers had been so interred was deeply offensive to many of us. When Berish Bilfeld and Leib Lampel told the Germans of our distress, the authorities agreed that we could, if we wished, remove the Jewish dead to our cemetery. For two weeks that is precisely what we did, checking every body for identification (ID cards often indicated which soldiers were Jewish, as did circumcision). Altogether we reburied about fifty Jewish soldiers in the Jewish cemetery outside of town.¹⁴²
A Jewish woman from Radom recalled the superstitious attitude Jews harboured toward Catholic priests:
Growing up, I knew to stay away from the Poles … If we saw Polish people walking down the street, we always crossed to the other side. If we ever saw a priest—I don’t know why we did this—we would always hold on to a shirt or button coat. There was somehow supposed to be protection in that small gesture. No priest ever accosted me or anyone I knew, but I knew I was supposed to be wary of priests, to stay away, to clutch a button.¹⁴³
Rabbi Byron L. Sherwin of Spertus College of Judaica in Chicago expressed the following thoughts on the complex topic of Polish-Jewish relations:
Similarly, it does not seem to occur to some Jews that manifestations of Polish anti-Semitism might be reactions to Jewish clanishness and parochialism. As a character in Isaac Bashevis Singer’s novel The Manor puts it: ‘How can anyone move into someone else’s home, live there in total isolation, and expect not to suffer by it? When you despise your host’s god as a tin image, shun his wine as forbidden, condemn his daughter as unclean, aren’t you asking to be treated as an unwelcome outsider? It’s as simple as that.’¹⁴⁴
On a recent trip to Poland, Rabbi Sherwin describes the reception he received in a Warsaw synagogue where he was accompanied by his host, a Polish Catholic priest:
A young Orthodox Jew from New York interrupts my prayers, points to the priest, and admonishes me for bringing an ‘idol worshipper’ into the synagogue. The service ends abruptly. I introduce myself to the rabbi. A Gerer Hasid from Israel, he was born in Poland. His tenure had begun only the year before. … The rabbi says to me in Hebrew, ‘After everything that has happened to us here, you see how they still hate us. They are afraid that we might return.’¹⁴⁵
The historical complexities of Polish-Jewish relations, however, escape many Western observers and scholars, who claim that all the Jews ever wanted was to be accepted into Polish Christian society, but were cruelly rejected by them. Therefore, the argument goes, the Jews felt rebuffed and only responded in kind. (Such statements abound even though no inclusive society existed even for the majority of Christian Poles, i.e., the peasants, until well into the twentieth century.) Sociologist Naomi Rosh White is an exponent of this facile but patently false school of thought:
The absence of Polish-Jewish contact was principally the result of a refusal by Poles to accept Jews into their circles. … Despite the desire of Jews to become integrated into Polish society, Jews were excluded from non-Jewish friendship groups and from participation in Polish political and bureaucratic life.¹⁴⁶
However, the testimonies recorded in White’s study contradict this simplistic portrayal, as most of the Jews she interviewed expressed strongly defined tendencies of separateness.¹⁴⁷ Among some German Jews, Polish Jews were known for their intensely nationalistic disposition. Walter Tausk, for example, deplored the “super Zionists” among them who he believed gave Jews a bad name.¹⁴⁸

Robert Michael, a professor of European history at the University of Massachusetts, who fancies himself as being on the cutting edge of exposing Catholic anti-Semitism, claims that Jews developed anti-Christian attitudes only out of desperation. “Some powerless Jews,” he writes, “responded to anti-Semitism by stereotyping Gentile Poles as ‘dangerous, demonic, and devlish’; most Jews felt ambivalent toward Poles.” On the other hand, Michael states that Poles are responsible for all the failings in Polish-Jewish relations and goes so far as assuring us, without citing any proof, that: “Many Poles, including those well-educated, continue to insist that Jews caused World War II.”¹⁴⁹ Can such “scholarship” be taken seriously? Seemingly, and incredibly, yes.

Influenced by such views such as those expressed by Naomi Rosh White, Robert Michael and many others of that ilk, non-Jewish historians have also endorsed this skewed picture of Jewish-Christian relations. For example, Eugene Davidson writes: “the Christian populations … were likely to avoid contact with Jews except for practical purposes like trade.”¹⁵⁰ There is no inkling on his part that there may have been a bit more to the story, and that Jews may have displayed similar attitudes toward Christian Poles. Many commentators adamantly deny the possibility that there ever was any independent animus on the Jewish side. For example, Mark Raphael Baker, a lecturer in modern Jewish history at the University of Melbourne, writes:
Goyim was the generic term for Gentile used by my father and others of his generation. It was not used with hatred, but in a matter of fact way to describe the world out there, beyond his Polish shtetl, outside the confines of his closely-knit network of survivor-friendship. His Jewish world was a shell which protected him.¹⁵¹
After laying all of the blame for the mutual antagonism on Christians, Jewish-American author Anne Roiphe concedes grudgingly, albeit for a rather specious reason: “It is true that Jews in the privacy of their houses have for centuries taken revenge on the anti-Semitism of their neighbors by portraying them as dumb. Jews have long thought of Poles as less intelligent.”¹⁵² That reality is reflected in the realistic fiction of Isaac Bashevis Singer, who “in story after story … makes it clear that Jews historically regarded themselves as superior to their Slavic neighbors.”¹⁵³ Unfortunately, that legacy was transposed to North America where it also poisoned Polish-Jewish relations.¹⁵⁴

Other historians, who had had first-hand experience, are more cautious in their assessment. Zvi Gitelman, for example, writes:

Perhaps there was antecedent Jewish distrust of Poles or contempt for them, but Polish hostility bred a Jewish reaction of distrust and reciprocated hostility … But there may have been other sources of Jewish negative attitudes toward Poles. Jews may have regarded Poles (and most other east European peoples) as culturally inferior. … Religious Jews held that Poles believed in a false and pernicious doctrine.¹⁵⁵
Paradoxically, anti-assimilationist attitudes were promoted in Poland by Jews who had settled in the United States and Western Europe, even though they would never have advocated the same stance there. Lucy Dawidowicz, who paid an extended visit to Wilno before the war, where most Jews spoke Yiddish and knew little, if any, Polish, wrote: “Not knowing Polish, I didn’t get to meet many of those Polish-speaking university-educated Jews. That didn’t bother me, for I had somehow come to believe that they weren’t my kind of people and didn’t live in my kind of world. … The other Polish speakers whom I met, yet barely knew, I labeled as ‘assimilated,’ even ‘assimilationist,’ that is, advocates of assimilation. Those were a Yiddishist’s pejorative words, darkly intimating that to speak Polish instead of Yiddish was a public act of betrayal, an abandonment of one’s people.”¹⁵⁶ In was enough not to look Jewish or to be dressed in non-traditional garb to be labelled a shaygets (or sheygets) or a shikse, a pejorative Yiddish term for a Christian male or female, even if one was Jewish.¹⁵⁷ Christians were commonly referred to in derogatory terms as shkotsim (or shkotzim), and this term was also applied to assismilated Jews.¹⁵⁸

How all this impacted on the day-to-day life of many Jews in Poland, right up to the Second World War, is illustrated by the following candid testimonies. Nechah Hoffman-Shein recalls her childhood formation in the village of Serafińce near Horodenka, in Eastern Galicia: