Jewish autonomy in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth : from the 16th to the 18th century

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Jewish Autonomy

in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

from the 16, h to the I Slh Century

Volume 1

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Andrzej Bryk

Jewish Autonomy

in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

from the 16th to the 18lh Century

Volume 1

[*]

AKADEMICKA

Kraków

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Review:

Prof, dr hab. Stanislaw Grodziski

Language review:

Team

Editor:

Mateusz Kijewski

Cover Design:

Emilia Dajnowicz

ISBN978-83-7638-339-2

KSIĘGARNIAAKADEMICKA ul. św. Anny 6, 31-008 Kraków tel. /faks: 012 431-27-43, 012 421-13-87

e-mail: akademicka@akademicka. pl

Księgarnia internetowa:

www. akademicka. pl

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In memoriam

R afael S charf

(1914-2003)

a Polish Jew

Cracovian at heart

a guardian of memory

and of the unrealized hope

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Seek the peace of the city to which I have exiled you.

And pray on its behalf to the Lord.

For in its peace shall you have peace.

Jeremiah (29: 7)

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Maurycy Gottlieb, Jews praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur

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Introduction

Withinthe entire Jewish historythe Polish-Lithuanian chapter, the period between the 16th and 18th centuries, must be considered among the most glorious ones. It corresponded to the most original, culturally vibrant and politically powerful his

tory ofthe Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a strikingly unique and influential form ofpoliticalcommunity in Europe of thattime. The Jewishhistory within the Commonwealthwith its spiritualsignificanceand manycolorful aspects cannot be underestimated. 1This fact has oftenbeen difficult toadmit. SincetheSecond World War, during whichthe European Jews were nearly annihilated by Nazi Germany,the Jewish consciousness and historiography has had a natural tendency to look upon Jewish history in Europe as a chain of failures, anti-Semiticpolicies and impossi

bilitiesleading to the Holocaust, ahistory of futileattempts to create adecent home withinanessentially hostile or utterly indifferent European - firstthe Christian, then the liberal -environment, the very fact confirming the urgent need andjustness of creating the final Jewishstate in theHolyLand.

1 Throughout their long, nearly four millennia history, Jews have had, generally speaking, five or six great spiritual motherlands: Egypt (1600-1200 B.C.), the Promised Land (1200 B.C. - 70 C.E.), Mesopotamia, where the bulk part of Talmud was created (70 C.E. - 6th c.), the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth extending into the Polish Republic (1918-1939) with its unique Yid

dish civilization,and of course modem Israel (since 1948), which constitues the last, this time the Zionist redefinition of the Jewish fate. One can also say that in certain respects the United States has constituted such a spiritual home for Jews since the end of the 19th c.

But evenif there exist deep andwholly understandable psychological and po litical reasons for such an approach to Jewish history, they mustnot obscure the real history of the Jewish people inEurope and its many rich, glorious and im

mense versatile chapters. Suchreasons should also not hide the most obvious of factsthat the EuropeanJews constituted until the Second World War an important part of anextremely complicated network of states and societies within the con

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12 Introduction

voluted and often dramatic historical contextand that they were able to develop astoundingly rich techniques notonly of survival and adjustment butof flourishing and influence as well. The European Ashkenazi Jews were thus notsimply helpless victimsof events beyond their control,as thenewly created Israeli ZionistHebrew cultureright after 1948 wantedto portray them, in order to cut itself off from the woeful and dark past and expose, in comparison with it, the dramatic glory of the new state of Israel. They wereoften skillful players ata complicated game of politics and economy,even if such a position was achieved more by theirindustri

ousness,resilience, internal cohesion, andlast butnottheleast, a strong feeling of exceptionality with aconviction that being the children of Abraham in Covenant with Yahweh they could not be abandoned, a powerful, fiercely internalized reli gious code making them resistant to any temptation of looking at themselves as insignificant and prone to final failure. Jews, as children ofAbraham, challenged theirfate inhistory through aprismof theirreligion and culture which gave them an astounding resilience,perseverance and bravery when facingadversity.

Thevitality of any civilizationis measuredby religion and culture through which it is being defined, and Jews had an innate feeling of their uniqueness and faithful ness which created their distinctivefeatures ofcharacter tofaceexternal problems.

These features had to befiercely inculcatedand Jews as quintessential nomadic peo

ple afterthe second destructionof theTemple hadto internalizethem quickly and adapt to the changing and often dramatic conditionsahead ofthem. This they did brilliantly within the context of the Ashkenazi civilization, which for a long time was commensurate with Christianitas, withwhichJews developed a fascinating and multilayered relationship which had both its dark and bright side. Despite many problemsstemming from its complicatedpolitical,social and economic history, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth definitely became for the Ashkenazi Jewsa place which,in general, representeda bright side of theirhistory. True, the Commonwealth eventually turned out to be an anachronisticandblind alleyof history devoured by its aggressive neighbors,freezing its diverse people,including Jews,withintheEast- Central European imperial frameworkfor a long time.But this is another story.

Jews have been a minority throughout the European history, but unlike many other minorities they have survived till today. This survival from a purely human point of view - excluding the Providential intervention - was due to their religious and cultural cohesion resisting the assimilationists’ pressures, the ability to develop astounding techniques of adaptation to the conditions ofthe dominant society and sheer luck. This survival hasbeenremarkable, sinceJewswere specifically selected inthetwentiethcenturybytheNazi Germany for a total,systematic, and meticulous

ly executed destruction, the spasmatic, genocidal instance of the logic of modernity and its racist policies. Thatnearly total destruction ofthe Jewishpeopleduring the courseofthe Second World War, pursued within thecontextof thegenocidal policies towards othernations in Eastern Europe executed by both totalitarianpowers - the Nazi Germanyand the Soviet Union - has sometimes clouded not only the Jewish consciousness but also the consciousness ofthe people who takeit for granted that

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Introduction 13 history isgoverned by some definite, deterministic iron laws,meaning that whatever happened had to happen as a necessary steppingstone for the final event. Such an approachprevents looking at specificevents on their own terms, showing their poten tialitiesand discerning theirfascinating and unique features.The Jewish exceptional story within the history ofthe Polish-Lithuanian Noble Commonwealth constitutes oneof themostinterestingchapters of their experience. Notonly cannot theJewish history in Europe beexplainedand understood without taking into account their life within the borders of thePolish-Lithuanian state, but its present predicament can be better comprehended if the legacy of that long chapter ofthe Jewish existence can be properly worked out.

The Jewish self-government or the Jewish autonomy in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries is afascinat ing phenomenon within the entire Europeanhistory. What follows is an attempt at a synthetic (even if, out of necessity, selective)analysis ofthis phenomenon, which cannot becomprehended withoutaprior understandingofthe Commonwealth’s po litical, economic andreligious structureswhichcreated a generally hospitable envi ronment for the Jewishlife there. The wholly exhaustive study ofthe subject under considerationis of course not yetpossible at the presentstate of research. One also has to remember thatthe studies of the history of Jews in Poland have been influ

enced by the present - not entirely similar -Polish andJewish narratives of their own self-understanding. This isa general phenomenon, a part of the so-called histor ical politics to which historians arenot and cannot be entirely immune.History is not justa process of recovery of facts but facts filtered by a larger narrativecombined with many other influences of which we arenot entirely aware.They always color people’s approach tolife and historyshaping their inner,deeply internalized values determining their identity.

It may be disputed whether the Jews in Poland-Lithuania had autonomy, that is the possibility to proclaim their own laws, or only self-government, that is the possibility of self-governing within the framework of laws imposed onthem.2 This is a spurious problem which stems from an impositionon thepast of the clear-cut classifications and practices ofthe present moment. Nevertheless, for the sake of the analysis athand, I feel inclined to adoptan evolutionary modelproceeding from a formal self-government towards real autonomy. In this context one might also dwell a little on another fascinating problem,whether the Jews in the Kingdomof

2 The terms ‘autonomy’ or ‘self-government’ are sometimes used interchangeably, although self-government seems here a more precise of the terms. The real differences between autono

my and self-government are, for instance, explained in M. Sczaniecki’s Powszechna historia państwa i prawa, 4th ed., Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Warszawa 1985, p. 592. See also J. Bardach, ‘Autonomia Żydów w dawnej Rzeczpospolitej’ (Jewish Autonomy in the Old Com

monwealth) in A. Link-Lenczowski, T. Polański (eds.), Żydzi w dawnej Rzeczypospolitej.

Materiały z konferencji "Autonomia Żydów w Rzeczypospolitej Szlacheckiej Międzywydziałowy Zakład Historii i Kultury Żydów w Polsce, Uniwersytet Jagielloński, 22-26IX1986 (Jews in the Old Republic. Conference Materials), Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, Wrocław 1991, p. 345.

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14 Introduction

Polandand then the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth constituted a separate fifth estate next to the nobility, theburghers,theclergyandthe peasants. If so, one has to aska question whether therewas in thePolish, and sincethe 16,h century, the Polish- Lithuanian development,something significantly differentfrom a traditional Euro

pean estate society to meritsuch aname of a separate estate, andif so, what exactly constituted sucha difference. One could argueconvincingly that theJewishrole in the economy, especially initsfinancialand administrative fields,together with their separate privileges granted themby kings and feudal barons, accorded themedieval Jews a position similar to an estatein the traditional sense ofthe term. Nevertheless, only few historiansconcede thispointovertlyand ifthere exists anyjustification for such a claim, it candefinitelybe foundmostly in the Polish-Lithuanian Common wealth. That is why in the Polish historiography this tradition of countingJews as aseparateestate has alwaysbeen very much present andwell-argued.

Inthehistorical literature concerning the Jewish autonomy in Poland, there ex

ist, roughly speaking, two modelapproaches, which can beillustrated by two clas

sical works of historical scholarship. One of them comes from a fairly distant past ofthe beginning ofthe Jewish historiography, the other from more recent times.

Although thesemodels havecoexistedfor along time, theymaystill beconsidered a goodstarting point to studytheJewish autonomy in the Polish-Lithuanian Com

monwealth, a topic, one must add, which for a long time had not been considered important for the Jewish historians, burdened by thecatastropheof theSecond World War andsubconsciously treating Jewishhistoryas simply preparing the way for the calamity and thus worth forgetting. Simon Dubnow (1880-1941), a great Jewish historian livinginEastern Europe atthe time of dramatic upheavals within the Euro

pean as well as Jewish history,may be considered as a symbolic figurerepresenting oneof these two major approaches.Dubnowsawperceptivelyadisintegrationof the Jewishcivilizationpredominantly located in theEast-CentralEurope, mainly within the borders ofthe Russian empire which took over the overwhelming number of thepost-Commonwealth Polish-LithuanianJews as aresultofthe Russian, Austrian and Prussian partitions at the end of the 18th century. He discerned changeswithin his own community,subjectedinexorably tothe forcesof modernity with its inces sant rationalism and secularism. Additionally, Dubnow realizedthat the rise of the new assertivenations alltrying toescape fromthe bondage ofempires around them, faced Jewswith adramatic dilemma of finding theirstrategy of response. That re

sponse -claimed Dubnow - was to bemade not onlyin relation to external events, butwasto be done in relation to the corresponding disintegrationofthe Jewish tra ditionalcommunities withtheirsocial,culturalandreligious heritage.

Dubnow triedto respond to these newchallenges facing the Jewishpeople with a newnarrative, appropriate for the modem times and in accordance with his own religious skepticism and rationalism. He thus decided to dowhat the Europeanlib

eral intellectuals after the French Revolution of 1789 had done. They substituted historical progress andrationalism for religiouseschatology ofChristianity. Dubnow came up with itsJewish version, substituting Jewish historical messianismfor the

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Introduction 15 traditional Jewish religious messianism. Hetried to weave the Jewish history into the context of particularnations’ histories so to prepare anintellectual ground for the Jews positioning themselves consciouslywithinthe modem history. As a Jewish historianLucy S. Dawidowitch remarked, Jewish history wasfor asecularist Dub now a fascinating substitute or surrogate for Judaism. Such an act ofsubstitution was a natural moral imperative for the rational, secular Jews, for whom religious Judaismbecameat best justcultural Judaism, atworst a sourceof oppression hinder

ing Jewish access tothe universal liberal progressive society, meaning the universal brotherhoodof humanity. This leap towards the new secular “religion” was atragic misconceptionwhichled many Jews intoan alliance with communism, next toGer

manNazismthe most horrid ideology of the twentiethcentury.3

3 A good overview of this overwhelming access of secular Jews to the generally progressive causes of which communism turned out to be the most murderous one, is given by Norman Pod

horetz in Why Are Jews Liberals?, Doubleday, New York 2009. Podhoretz, one of the leading liberal intellectuals of America in the 1960’s, then moving into a neoconservative political camp a decade later, points out this fascination of Jews with the progressive causes whatever it takes, as a way of escaping their tradition which for them was bound inexorably with the submission to a larger gentile society, predominantly Christian. Podhoretz’s book is a fascinating example of an approach by a brilliant intellectual immersed in his tradition but at the very same time incapable of escaping many secular prejudices, which might stem from his overt adulation of liberal America, the Jewish New Jerusalem since the aliyah of 1880’s. An interesting and a much more sophisti

cated approach to this relationship between secular Jews, Judaism, liberalism and gentiles see Μ. Himmelfarb, Jews and Gentiles, ed. G. Himmelfarb, Encounter Books, New York 2007, esp. pp. 3-68, 243-254.

It was thus solely history, the only availablestage of truehuman existence and at the very same time the new god ofthe non-religious andrationalisticJews and non-Jews alike,with whichDubnowcouldidentifyas a Jew,satisfying his longings.

But at the same time, such an approach could still make him a part ofthe Jewish community wherever it actually lived and from which there was no escape in the conditionsof the Diaspora, especially in EasternEurope. Dubnow was a fascinating andoriginal scholar but his methodological approachwas peculiar.His pioneer stud

iesof Hassidism, justtotakeone example,were taken up froma thoroughly rational perspective, but even this modem perspectivedidnot deprive Dubnowof his inner, deeplyheld belief in this mystic,metaphysical in fact, force of survival ofJews and their will to livewithin history. It was exactly for this very reason thatDubnow was fascinated with an ideaofthe Jewish autonomytreated asapoliticalprogram ofhis times and, becauseof this, considered Jewish institutions, includingsuch institutions inthe Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, tobe very important for the history ofthe Jews. Since such Jewish institutions,on such a large and sophisticated scale,were in factcreated only inthePolish-Lithuanian Republic, he accorded Jewish institutional history there a prominent placewithin its overall history.

Dubnow wasprobablythe most prominent representative ofamovement called the Jewish Autonomism, andbecause of this he was definitely notaZionist. In fact,

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16 Introduction

the Jewish Autonomism politically competedwith Zionism once the latter emerged in Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early20th century. Dubnowcalledthis Jewish Autonomist movement folkism and believed with the other Autonomists that the future survival ofthe Jewish people as a modemnation dependedmainlyon their spiritual and cultural strength. There was thus a need, so he thought, for Jews to de velop a “spiritual nationhood” and to become viable and vibrant just within the Jew

ish Diaspora. But to be successful in this endeavor, Jews hadto develop and maintain communities with extensive self-governing institutions. Thiswas to be theonlysuc cessful way, Dubnow thought,to resist assimilation. Within this framework, if they thoughtabout survival as a separate and successful people, the modem ideological fever could not captureJewish imagination iftheythought about survival as asepa

rateandsuccessful people. For Dubnow, movements suchas Zionism, Socialism or Communismconstitutedblind alleysand did not guaranteea survivalofthe Jewish nation. Itwas tobe the innate strength of the Jewish culture andtheirorganizational skills which were to enable them to carve outtheir autonomous life withinthe larger, dominantcommunities within which they actually lived. Such an epicperspective pursuedby Dubnow in his scholarly workaccorded the YiddishJewry in East Cen tralEurope a very special andprominent place in thisendeavor. Forthisveryreason, the Autonomists were prone intheirworkstoshowthe brilliance and success of such a tacticin the historical context.

That is why the Polish-Lithuanianchapter ofthe Jewish Yiddish history with its extensive networkof autonomous institutions fitwell into such a perspective.What wasneeded, Dubnowthoughtwas simply toapply such a tactic tothe modem condi tions, and one ofthecultural resources requiredforsuch ataskwasa development of modem Yiddish culture. To pursue thathe set up a Yiddishe Volkspartei (Jewish People’s Party), ofwhich he became the main ideologue. Its program postulated a development of national Jewish culture in the Diaspora, in Yiddish.4Dubnow pre

4 Dubnow presented his view of the Polish and the Polish-Lithuanian autonomy in His

tory of the Jews in Russia and Poland. From Earliest Times to the Present Day, 3 Vols., Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia 1916-1920, repr. Ktav, New York 1975. See also Lucy S. Dawidowicz’s observation about Dubnow in The Golden Tradition. Jewish Life and Thought in Eastern Europe, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York 1967, p. 232; although Dub

now stressed the importance of the Jewish autonomous institutions in the Polish-Lithuanian Com

monwealth, this fact did not hide his negative attitude towards the latter. As Anthony Polonsky wrote, Dubnow, “perhaps influenced also by pervasive Russian hostility to Poland-Lithuania, highlighted the negative attitude of the surrounding society, while stressing the importance of the Jews in achieving a wide degree of autonomy”. A. Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Rus

sia, Vol. 1: 1350 to 1881, Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, Oxford-Portland 2010, p. 39.

Polonsky’s comment indicates how Dubnow’s attitude towards the Polish-Lithuanian history was influenced by the historical narrative imposed on Eastern Europe by the empires which destroyed the Commonwealth, in this instance Russia. Such a narrative got into the major stream of histori

cal research of the West in the 19th century, was strengthened by the Communist subjugation of Easter Europe after 1945, and still dominates the Western, including the Jewish perspective on the history of Poland, including as well some part of the Polish historians. The proper approach to

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Introduction 17 sented his viewof history as follows Every generation in Israel carrieswithin itself theremnants ofworlds created and destroyed during the course ofthe previous his

toryof the Jewishpeople. Thegeneration, in turn, builds and destroys worlds in its form and image, but in the long runcontinuesto weave the thread that bindsall the linksof thenation into the chain of generations. [...] Thuseach generation in Israel is more the product ofhistory thanitis its creator. [...] We, the people ofIsrael living today,continue thelong thread that stretchesfrom the days ofHammurabiand Abra hamto the modern period. [...] We see further that during the course of thousands ofyears the nationsof the world have borrowed from ourspiritual storehouseand added to their own without depletingthe source. [... ] TheJewishpeople goes its own way, attracting and repelling, beatingout foritself a unique path amongthe routes of thenations of the world.5

the Jewish history in Poland-Lithuania and then Poland in general has thus to begin with shaking off this historical narrative imposed by the partitioning empires on the Western consciousness, a kind of a neo-colonial approach, both by the Jewish but also some of the Polish historiaus. Only then, the Jewish history in Poland can be property narrated and with that its true importance and glory shown. This is essentially a general cultural task to be taken up by Polish culture after the fall of communism in 1989 also within the context of discussions about modemistation of Po

land and Eastern Europe in the European Union today. See K. Łazarski ‘Czy wizerunek Polski w świecie może być zmieniony?’ (Can the Polish Image in the World’s Percepción be Changed?), Arcana, nr 4-5, 2013, p. 33-56; E. Thompson ‘Sarmatyzm i postkolonializm’ (Sarmatism and Postcolonialism), Dziennik, 18.11.2006; A. Bryk ‘The Strategies of Modernisation in East

ern Europe within the Context of the Post-1968 Model of the European Union’s Integration’ in B. Szlachta (ed.) Myśli i Polityka, Kraków 2011, vol. Ill, pp. 161-198.

5 Simon Dubnow ‘The Survival of the Jewish People’ in idem Nationalism and History, Philadelphia 1958, pp. 325-335, 326-327. Of course one of the major reasons Dubnow took up his program was a sharply deteriorating condition of the Jews in the Russian Pale of Settlement.

Together with other distinguished historians such as Yuly Gessen or Ilya Orshansky they focused on strenghtening the Jewish cultural identity, based not on religion but on peoplehood.

Dubnow had no doubtwhat kind of power existed in Russia and he found deep sources of hatred against Jews existing there in the Byzantine political, cultural and religious heritage takenover by Muscovy in the 15th century, when the latter nominateditself the only heir to the fallenConstantinople as aseatof the Orthodox faith and as the final Third Rome. He thought that theRussian self-image as a fol lower ofthe European path of development was a clever diplomatic game focused on convincingthe European elitesthat Russiawas not an autocraticcountry. In such a perspective, Dubnow’s efforts to find historical antecedents to his autonomist ideology must have elicitedfrom him a fairly common-sense observation thatthe Jewish autonomy in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealthwastruly an exceptional one, even if atthe sametime he did not fullyunderstand this Commonwealth, and had a fairly prejudiced attituale towards it, the legacy of the Russian colonial his

toricalnarrative. Nevertheless he accordedita prominent place in his multi-volume history of the Jewish people in Russia and Poland. Dubnow, of course, realized the pervasive Russia’s hostility towards Poland-Lithuania destroyed by it in the

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18 Introduction

18th century and thatprobably caused him to look in a much more favorable way atthe Commonwealthwithin which theJewish autonomy thrived. But at the same time Dubnowdidnot conceal, in fact he highlighted, the mutualalienation between Jews and thesurroundingpopulationof theNoble Republic evenif atthe very same timehealso stressedthetruly exceptional nature ofthe Jewish autonomous institu tions andtheir importance. Maybe, just maybe, he realized that only withinsuch a society asthe Polish-Lithuanianmulticultural Commonwealth with its dispersed sovereignty in whichJews could utilize their skills, flexibility, politicalacumen and cunning,could his postulate of Jewish flourishing life asa pre-condition of Jewish survivalbe realized.

If Dubnow and people likehim thought ofthe Jewish life in Eastern Europe within the context of an autonomous model, then Russia could be treated just as a negative point of reference. But the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, as a modelon the oppositepole, could beviewed, he seemed to think, as a starting point ofamuch more realistic approachtotheJewish predicament beforethe First World War than the fantasies, as Dubnow thought, of the Zionists, socialists or communists. Historyfollowed a different path, butitseems thatpart of thelong- lastingresentment whichmany of theEastern European Jews harbor towards Po

land today could have stemmed from a deeperreasonthan the complicated rela

tions between both nations during the Second World War, which ended with the annihilation ofthe PolishJews and the enslavement and decimation ofthe Poles bythe Germans. Psychologically, someJews mourn the fact that the trueJewish New Jerusalemdid not turn out to be Eastern Europe, that their homeland should have beenlocated there, not in Israel,that in fact it was trulytheir land in which theyhad aright to dwell and a right to be treated as equals. Dubnow definitely expressed this sentimentwell and hence his approachto theJewish autonomy in thePolish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Butsuch a dream was subconsciously ex pressedlater on bya part of theJewish socialistmovement as wellon, for instânce the Polish Bund.

But another schoolof scholars does notattach much importance to the Jewish au

tonomyin the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Among these, a historian Bernard Weinryb might be consideredto represent an especially striking case. Weinryb re

gards these autonomous institutionsas essentiallyinsignificant. In his classical “The Jews in Poland” he considered them to be marginal since there was an organic tie between thePolishJewsandthePolish(and then the Polish-Lithuanian)state.Wein

rybthus does notsay that such institutions were notimportant, but considers themto be importantmore fromthepointof view of the Polish-Lithuanian state andits elites thanthe Jewish interests as such, in other words the interests which wereaimed at developing an autonomous lifeaccording to the separate Jewish aims.Weinrybtells thestoryof development and growth ofthePolish Jewry from its beginnings around the year 1200, attemptingto capture their unique and rich community life. But he focuses more on the exigencies of ordinarylifeand beliefs, activities and occupa-

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Introduction 19 tions, considering the Jewish autonomous institutions in the Commonwealth to be insignificant within the overallpicture of the general Jewishlife in Poland.6

6 B. D. Weinryb, The Jews in Poland. A Social and Economic History of the Jewish Com

munity in Poland from 1100 to 1800, Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia 1973.

7 A. Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia... A similar position is taken by other promi

nent contemporary historians of the Jewish life in Poland and the Polish-Lithuanian Common

wealth. There are on the Jewish side the late Jacob Goldberg, Gershon Hundert, Adam Teller or Subsequent works dealing with the historyof the Jewish autonomous institu tions in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth have developed a fairly nuanced and appreciative attitude towards this subject, although onemay observethat his

torical presentism can sometimes be detected an attempt toimpose on the past the present narratives of historical politics. An argument over the real significanceof the autonomous Jewish institutions within the context of Polish history is defi

nitely going to continue. But there is no doubt that this unique chapter ofJewish history canno longerbetreatedas insignificant. Its interesting, original develop ment shapedthe Jewish self-perceptionto sucha great extent that Jewish life today would have looked entirely different if it had developed within a context of a dif ferent civilization. More andmore historians, both on the Polish and the Jewish side, concede thispointespecially that this is an entirelyclosed chapter, naturally not eliciting any more from theparticipantsto this debate any kinds of emotional responses which still mar, for instance, adiscussionabout the Holocaust.

In general, one may say that this subject of the Jewish autonomy within the Polish-LithuanianCommonwealth is more andmore recognized as notonly a fairly significantperiod of Jewish history but also as achapter which cannotbe properly appreciated without the simultaneous understanding ofthe workings ofthe Com

monwealth and its unique political and constitutional system. Only then can it be shown that the Jews in the Commonwealth, or- one should better say - the Jewish elites, were also skillful participants in its politics and could notbe considered as a marginal, helpless minority. Moreover, their positionwithin the overall structure ofthe Commonwealth’s estate society and economy, despitemutual religious and culturalseparation,was significantly betterthan of many othergroups, for instance peasants.The Polish-Lithuanian multi-ethnic anddivided into estatesnoblerepublic could assign itsJews such a position becauseitwas, in fact, federalin characterwith aconstitutional system of dispersed sovereignty. One should also add that moreand more works on the Jews in the Commonwealth seem to apply a widerperspective, not only within the European context but within the world context as well,for in stance comparing the Jewish economic situation in Europetothe role of the Chinese inEast Asia in the early modem period.

A recent work of Jewish historiography, a massive synthesis of Jewish history in Poland and Russiathroughout centuries written byAnthony Polonsky, testifies to this significant recognition of the unique Jewish position inside the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth7.Thus,itseems that the contemporary historiography devoted to the

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20 Introduction

study ofthe Jewishautonomy in the NobleRepublic complies more with theclassic Dubnow’s approach than with a much more recent one put forth - for instance - by Bernard Weinryb. At the very same time, Polonsky realizes that this nuanced, complicated and still notknown well enough historyofthe Jewish autonomous in stitutions in the Polish-LithuanianCommonwealth will continueto be a subjectof research for a long time tocome. Showing their fundamental importance, Polonsky cautions yet against lookingatthemin asentimental way, atask equally justifiedas probably impossibleto carry out for differentsorts ofreasons. It isnot only that the Polish or Jewish cultural and national narratives stress different aspects ofJewish life and its role in Polishhistory,but also becausetheJewish autonomy in the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth, as an important part ofthe history of the First Republic, has become part and parcel of the contemporary discussions about Poland’s self understanding and its collective identity within the context ofthe post-communist development ofPoland especiallyafter itsaccession to the European Union.

This touches especially upon a delicatequestion of the present mode ofmod ernizationof Poland, in other words, whether it will be commensurate witha post

colonial type of modernization or whether it will be a modernization which can be combined with the Polish cultural and political identity. If the former type of modernizationmaterializes,and this is still an open and threatening question, then the Jewish Autonomy in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth will belong solely to the Jewishhistorical narrative and will become a part ofthe Polish antiquated, insignificantpast. But if the latter form ofmodernization is applied, and this is the only option available if Poland isto be part of the free and just European Union- and not, together with other periphery states, a post-colonial region of economic drainage andcultural decay - than Poland will have todecipher in itsown particular tradition the seeds ofthe universal narrative.And here a Polish idea of freedomhas tobe such aguidingprinciple.Thisideamay enable Poland to be resistant both to the sentimental and futile effortsto rebuild the once glorious past and equally resistant to the efforts ofthe post-colonial modernizers, including a large chunk ofits own modernizing post-communists elites. The latter haveoften triedto “civilize”Poles through a mechanicalimposition on them of thewestern European ideas and images ofreality as defined, for instance in culture, by the countercultural generation of 1968 with their ideology of the liberal-left monism, letalonethepoisonous narrative imposed by the 19th century empires which destroyedPoland andwhich still forms thebasisofthe large chunk of theWesternhistoriography.

This Polish idea of freedom has a long history andshould be mainly preoccupied with its universal emancipating message of rights, the official language of justice and freedom today in the West. This approach enables Polesto cross the allegedly impassabledichotomy between modernization and its ownidentity.This dichotomy

Mosche Rosman, on the Polish side Adam Kaźmierczak or Anatol Leszczyński, also including the historians of the Polish-Lithuanian constitutional history who studied some aspects of the Jewish legal position within the Commonwealth, for instance Stanisław Grodziski or Wacław Uruszczak.

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Introduction 21

might beovercome by finding theseelements ofthe Polish tradition which might also be understood and important for the countries of the European Union domi

natingitsown Eastem-Europeanperipheries. Within the confines of this approach, historical ideas and events should be read in such a way as to extract from them the most universal and valuable elements andto discard the ones which do notfit the reality ofthe modem world. A recognition within the Polish tradition of such universal elements might thus be an important task of discovering a narrative of freedomas a narrative ofmodernity. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth andthe Jewish autonomywithinit, coming exactly from the pluralistic republican freedom of dispersed sovereignty, may provide here oneof themost interesting andimportant elements of creating such a narrative. The Jews inPoland today, veryactive in such discussionsmayalso benefitfrom a better understanding ofthePolishfreedom tra dition of which theJewish autonomy in the Polish-LithuanianCommonwealth was animportantpart.There is stilla needon the part of some of the most vocal Jewish intellectualstoday, usuallytreating thePolish heritage asathreat, to take up a com mon task of rebuilding the Polish devastated communityagainst the post-colonial pressures, in which historical politics,also concerning the Polish-Jewishpast, is one ofthemostpotentandpoliticized tools of imposition from top down on all, theonly acceptable, politically correct form of consciousness.8

8 See on this, for instance, D. Wildstein, ‘O potrzebie wspólnej polityki historycznej Żydów i Polaków’ (About the Urgent Need of the Common Historical Politics of Jews and Poles), Nowe Państwo, No. 1 (2013), pp. 24-26; also R. Ziemkiewicz, ‘Polski kompleks żydokomuny’ (The Polish Complex of Judeocommunism), Uważam Rze, 19-25 March 2012, pp. 54-56.

9 Historically Haggadah is a Jewish text that organizes the order of the Passover Seder. Dur

ing it, reading the Haggadah is a fulfillment of the Scriptural commandment to each Jew who was to “tell your son” of the Jewish liberation from slavery in Egypt. It was described in the Book of Exodus in the Torah: ‘And thou shalt tell thy son in that day, saying: It is because of that which the LORD did for me when I came forth out of Egypt’. Ex. 13:8. In the Sephardi and Mizrahi traditions Jews also apply the term Haggadah to the service itself not only to the text itself,since it constitutes the act of “telling your son”.

The Sarmatianheritageofliberty of the Noble Republic can thus form one of the important elements of recoveringsuch historical elements which are particular and at the very same timeuniversal. This does not meanthathistoricalresearch should fita preordained thesis intowhichonethenfitsthe facts from a distant part. It simply means that itis worth trying tolookat history from a different perspective,so asto discern in ita richness of traditions which so far havenotbeen recognized and which are indispensable to understand the past. This is the Polish equivalent ofthe Jew

ishHaggadah, butthe one in which the Jewish autonomy in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealthis not only a part of the Polish freedom narrative buta part of the universal narrative towards a final “liberation from slavery” in which the Jews in Poland also participated, having lived within a civilization which provided them with enough social and political spacetocreate a unique Yiddish civilisation of their own.9That is why this author’s history ofthe Jewish autonomyin Poland puts so

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22 Introduction

muchstressonexplaining the working ofthe Polish-LithuanianCommonwealth as a political, cultural and socialmilieu withinwhich its Jews operated as a separate quasi-estate. Without this perspective, the Jewish autonomy mightonly be lookedon as an isolatedandinsignificantchapter within the Jewish lacrimosa concept of his

tory. But it was not. Itwas much more thanthat. Understanding this fact forces one to recognize one’s mutual influences and debts as well.

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1. Jeirs and the Middle Age Christian society

1.1. Misleadingpresuppositions

Until recently, there hasbeena tendency amongtheJewish historians to lookatJew ish history, moreor less subconsciously,as a string of events which inexorably led to the Jewish catastrophe inEurope in the 20th century. On the one hand, thealmost total annihilation ofthe European Jews during the Holocaust, conceived, planned and executed by the German Nazi state seemed to cloud the entire Jewish history.

Ontheother hand, this destruction ofthe European Jews bytheGermanstends to be takenout ofthe contextofthe general catastrophe of Eastern Europe conquered and destroyed by the two totalitarian powers, the Nazi Germany andthe Soviet Union, a veritable disaster inwhich millions of othersperished, evenif Jews were among those selectedfor atotal annihilation right away. But once such a methodology was putinto operation, it tended to obscure the fact that Jewshad been part ofthe Euro

pean historyfor nearly two thousand years. If we conceive of Jews just as victims ofhistory leading to the Holocaust, the world outside the Jewish world becomes not only insignificant, with innumerablemutual influences and debts excluded, but morallycorrupt to such a great extent that itceases to be ofany worth on its own.

Within sucha perspectiveit maybelooked upon onlyas simply an incessant histori cal source of oppression.

There is no doubt that the German nearlysuccessfulannihilationof theEuropean Jewsduringthe Second World Warcast an understandable shadowover the preced ing Jewishhistory of Europe, especially of Eastern Europe where the overwhelm

ing majority of Jews resided, treated as both insignificant and essentially a story ofpreparation for the final catastrophe. But this is not true. The European history should not be looked upon as a string ofevents leading to the Holocaust, judged as acontinuing line of processes which had to create Hitler. Tothe contrary, Hitler might andshouldbe consideredas constituting a sharpbreakwiththepastEuropean history, at leastwith Christianitas, even if he might not necessarily be constituting a break withthe modem history of ideological, post-1789,politics. If so, the entire

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24 1. Jews and the Middle Age Christian society

Jewishhistory before Hitler, especially in its pre-modem period, should betreated on its own terms, which meansthatit should be looked uponnot as a stringof per

secutions, discriminations and calamities on their own but as part of the general drama of Europeitself,where Jews werenot always helpless victims but creatorsof history as well.Amongthe great modem historians of the Jewish people, Salo Baron was one ofthevery first who triedtobreakthis lacrimóse conception ofJewish his

tory, an approach which has sometimes been identified with Heinrich Graetz, the 19th-century German-Jewishhistorian forwhom the Jewish experience through the ages consisted merely of suffering and spiritual perserverence. In an interview in 1975, Baronsaid Suffering is part ofthedestiny[ofthe Jews], but sois repeated joy as well as ultimate redemption)

Baron’s approach ranessentiallycounter to the standard Zionist version of Jew

ishhistory, which, of course, had a reason to portray it as a string of disasters. For theZionist-oriented historical narrative,the history of Jews inEurope until theHolo caust hadbeen a history of calamities, anti-Semitic persecutionsand incessant fear which finallyculminated with Hitler. The Zionist theory of history here is straight forward and its message isclear: the Jewish history, especially in Europe, had consti tutedan endless suffering leading to Hitler;Israel was the only remedy andZionists were right from the beginning focusing onbuilding the Jewish statehood in histori cal Palestine as a final andsafehaven for the Jewish people. There was also avery sinister twist to such a narrative, culminating with a cold and silentdisdaindirected towards thoseJews who survived the Holocaust and who then settled in Israel, as people who were the victims oftheir own misjudgment, the attituade which was finallyabandoned in the wake of the Eichmann trial in the 1961. It isinterestingto notice how this Zionist narrativealso fits into the modem post-Maastricht official history of Europe as promulgated by the elites ofthe 1968 revolution, for which the new European Union was to be a radical break with the European past which allegedly inexorably led toAuschwitz,whereInquisition was a young cousin ofit, the anti-Jewish riotsin the towns ofthe medievalEurope were laboratories forgas chambers in the future, and religious anti-JudaismofChristiantheology was afore runner ofHitler’sracism. In suchaview, looking from ahindsight, Christianity was responsible and justa part and parcel of the string ofevents leadingtothe European suicide in the 20th century, and as a consequence its influence and historical assess mentwas to be put in this perspective. Thus, the European Union was to constitute the new gloriousbeginning, in contradistinctionto the past.12

1 P. Steinfels, ‘Salo W. Baron, 94, Scholar of Jewish History, Dies’, New York Times, 26 November 1989; on Baron’s historiography see R. Liberies, Salo Wittmayer Baron. Architect of Jewish History, New York University Press, New York 1995.

2 There had been a subtle tactics of criminalization by association used here, where anything connected with the past of Europe, especially traditional Christianity, was marred to such a great extent that it could not be used in polemics with the post-modem version of the European cul

ture. That is why, e.g. Pius XII was suddenly portrayed as the “silent pope”, “collaborating” with Hitler. The aim of this was of course to provide such a historical narrative imposed on the Catholic

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1. Jews and the Middle Age Christian society 25 Salo Baron showed that the Christian Europe was for theJewsnota calamity but a chance, giving themgreatpossibilities of development and, afterall, anontologi

cal securitywithample opportunities to create autonomousinstitutionsandavibrant economic, social and cultural life. In sucha perspective, Nazism was obviously not an evolutionary outgrowthof Christianity - the suggestion exhibiting a moral tur pitude and intellectual perversity - but itsradicalenemy, aiming at a destruction of both Christianity and Judaism. Hitler was a child ofthe anti-Christian ideological modernity, histeacherswere the philosophers and butchers ofWandee of1794, and atthe verycenter of such an ideological modernity was an assumption that progress as realized in history had its implacable enemies never to be accomodated. As the neo-gnostic cognoscentideclared, these enemies constituted a senseless resistance to thefinal gloriousend of history. Since thisdirection of history was now obvious, and therewere still people who opposedit, they needed to beeliminated. Sobegan a sinister idea, philosophicallygrounded and defended, thattherewere disposable people,whomightandshould be eliminated,takenoutof history, as obstacles to the rational ends of these who know better.Jews weresuchpeoplein Hitler’s practical execution of racism and so, in principle, wereChristians as well as all the inferior races. In the Christian theology, Jews - although inferior - wereasindestructibleas

Church and Christianity in general, so to neutralize it as the major intellectual and metaphysical enemy of the post-modern world with its ethics of moral autocreation. This European equivalent of treating the entire history of Europe before Hitler as a kind of disaster leading to the Holocaust seems to be an official subconscious cultural and ideological stance of the European Union elites.

This is the so called “Hitler’s screen” method, which was applied to the interpretation of European history by the symbolic generation of 1968 which decided to built the united Europe as a new utopia escaping its calamitous history. As a consequence anything in the past had to be judged by the “Hitler’s screen”, found wanting and thus cut off from a valuable new heritage of the new Europe. Its faulted logic pushed the European post-1968 elites to cut off nearly everything from its historical past as “contaminated” and not conforming to the high standards of the new “European values” which were to reflect a standard monistic liberalism of minute expanding rights and a hos

tility to any communal endeavors. An assorted string of ideologies of multiculturalism, feminism, transnationalism, tolerance as a leading value and annihilating any strong identity, last but not least anti-Christian attitude, was attached to this new approach towards history. This constitutes the European equivalent of the Jewish “lacrimosa” idea of history. But such an approach is ideo

logical, ineffective and falsifying history. If there might be one country which might apply such an attitude to its history it is Germany, which, being a relatively late as a political unified organism on the European stage had a history of rather disastrous events since 1871 till 1945. And Ger

many used this philosophy to rebuilt its consciousness and public philosophy brilliantly after the II World War, leading Europe in this endeavor. There is of course a significant truth in a statement that the disasters of Europe were part of the modem, ideological age which symbolically started in 1789. But definitely they were not part of the logic of historical development before 1789. On the “Hitler’s screen” approach to history within contemporary European discussions and their conscequences also for the post-colonial way of modernisation of the post-communist Eastern Eu

rope joining the European Union see A. Bryk, ‘The United States, The European Union, Eastern Europe: Challenges and Different Responses to Modernity’, Krakowskie Studia Międzynarodowe, No. 1 (2008), pp. 109-227, esp. pp. 119-169; also Z. Krasnodębski, Demokracja peryferii (Democracy of the Periphery), Słowo/Obraz Terytoria, Gdańsk 2004, Idee i Polityka.

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God was indestructible, and in the Christiantheologyof history theywere anindis pensable part and parcel of it constituting a testimony tothe Christian victory.True, anti-Judaism waspart of the practical operationof the Christian medieval Europebut it was a theological stance, not a racist one.

Modem anti-Semitism took Jews radically outside of history and made them superfluous as people to be eliminated, eventually together with the Christians and other inferior races. Hitler was an outgrowth of modernity, not its contradiction.3 Baron understood well that the Jewish history within the history ofthe medieval Christian Europeand then the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which developed itself somehow along a different road than the rest of Europe once the medieval world had ended, was a fascinating story of conflicts, tensions, persecutions and creativity but first of all the unique story of cultural distinctiveness. This was defi

nitely the cultural distinctiveness ofthe people closed off from the outside world, with astrong sense of danger of being contaminated by it in itspurity. Thiswasalso aworldwiththe Christian theologicalimaginary which accorded the medieval Jews an inferior status. Havingsaid that, Baron realized that at the very same timethat Jewish experience withinthe confines ofthe European Christianitasreflectedafas cinatingrelationship in which Jews werenot just helplessvictims ofsuch a society, that in fact they wereableto prosper, notonly despite ofit but often because ofit.

3 On this attitude of modernity in its European version towards Jews and Christians see G. Himmelfarb, The Roads to Modernity. The British, French, and the American Enlighten

ments, Knopf, New York 2005, pp. 39-40, 151-158, 168-169, 205-206.

1.2.

Christianitas, the Catholic Church and

the

Jews

Jews wereconsidered alien within the Christian society,but they wereat the very same time considered both theologically indispensable and useful as part of its socio-economic arrangement, even if belonging to another cultural and religious code. Jews, in turn, looked at themselves as a separate people, treating acivilization surrounding themas a threatto be resisted, the civilizationwhich triumphed, with Christianity consideredfrom their theological perspective as a wayward, false sect of Mosaim (taking a form ofrabbinical Judaismsince 70 C.E.). Any contact except professional one, let alone religious conversion and assimilationto it, was strictly forbidden. From the Catholic Church’s perspective, Judaism was lookedupon as a superseded faith and because of this considered tobe a harmful religion of recal citrant Jews,evenif its earthly presence testified to thetriumph ofChristianity. But exactlythat perspective gave Jews a solid and legitimate placewithin the history of Christian redemption. They were the remnant people whorejected Christ, in need of the finalconversion,but in the meantime the witness people tothe triumph of Chris

tianity. For St. Augustine (354-430), the greatest theologian and philosopherwho

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1. Jews and the Middle Age Christian society 27 shaped Christian thinking duringthe first millennium,thebiblical narrative provided a drama of whichtheChristians were part,but so were the Jews,since, as Jesus said,

“salvation isfrom the Jews ”.4

4 John 4:22

5 See Augustine, On the City of God, Penguin, London 2003, b. 18, ch. 46, p. 827.

“TheCityof God”, the most important ofall Augustine’s works,weavedinto its narrative insights about possibilities and limits ofthe human condition, combined with a sensibility of a pilgrim wandering through time, resisting a temptation of despair in the face of history’s tragedies and rejectinga delusion of having arrived at history’s end. Boththe Christians andthe Jews, thought St. Augustine, constituted theologically legitimate parts of history in theirshared exploration ofduties in ex ile, far short ofthefinal fulfillment ofthe messianic promise. Butatthe same time, the Jewish position in history was interpreted unequivocally as set apart from the Christianstory, with the latter superseding Judaism and fulfilling its eschatological promise. The supersessionist expectation was ofcourse formulated earlier than St.

Augustine’s exposition of it in “The City of God”. It was St.Paul whoprovidedits essence, but St. Augustine exposed the concept of the supersession as a claim to superiority within Christianitas, demonstrating a need fortolerance of the Jews, at thevery same time stressingtheirtheological inferior position,as a proofofthetrue nature of Christianity.5 Butitis interesting to observe that this supersessionistview was codified relatively late within Christianitas, at the Third and Fourth Lateran Councils in Rome in 1179 and 1215. This processcorrespondedto the questioning ofthe eminent Jewish position in the European finances and their pivotal position inthe banking system based on usury. Only then didJews become subject to many practical restrictions, not all of them necessarilyimplemented inall places, but aim ing at keepingthem separate from the Christians and theChurch which superseded theSynagogue.

Looking from the Jewishperspective, if theChurch’s stance was definitelyim

portantfrom the practical point of view, theologically itwas irrelevant. Jewsconsid ered themselves to be the “chosen people”, needing onlytheir sacred law. Relations tootherpeople were essentially beyond theirinterest and concern, in fact just a back

ground to their religiously unique Covenantwith Yahweh. Theirposition in history was perceived by them, inrelation to others, as theologically exceptional, and for this reason the world outside them was of no special interest. Christianity was for them just a heretical, false sect which simply turned out tobe politically successful for thetimebeing. Onlythis fact required aJewish historical responseso as toretain their uniqueness. It is thus worth stressing that this Jewish isolation stemmed not only from their historical vicissitudes in the Diaspora and the Christian pressure, but first of allfromtheir theological perspective. Ontologically, they were perpetual aliens in the alien and dangerous goim world,thatiswhy aconversion of aJew to any other faith meant,fromthe religious orthodox point ofview, hisinstant spiritual death, as well asan automaticsocial exclusionfrom the Jewish community.

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The Church’s attitude was different. The Church considered itself a vehicle whichbrought theGod of Israel to thenations of the world. Christianitythoughtof itself according to the Church’s interpretation, as universalizing the true message ofthe OldTestament, the universalization demandedandexpectedby it and finally realized by thetrueMessiahJesus Christ. Forthis very reason ofuniversalizationof the one true faith and its extension to all the people oftheworld, the Church had no difficulty bringing together, orrather combining, reason and theological thinking be causeit wasvitally interested in bringing all toIsrael’s God. To do this, ithadto con

front any non-Christiannarrativeand the aliencultural framework. Christians had to stepin into the pagan Agora.Athens had to be met by Jerusalem inRome.Jewish TanakhandGreek philosophy were brought togetherinto a method of extending the Covenant all over the earth. This was a colossal theological operationwith great cultural and civilizational consequences, sincebecause of it both the JewishTanakh and the Greek philosophy were not lost. Christianity absorbed, not destroyed hu manthought; it recognized great archetypical stories of other religions and cultures and their intellectual worth; it simply sanctified them, baptizedthem, subordinating everything that was greatin humanexistenceto the Christianeschatologicalstory.

Within thisperspectivetheJewishstorywasnotonly notirrelevant,it wasabsolutely great, although not complete. Thus, from the Christian perspective, Israelwas ale gitimate part of history. T amtheLordthy God, Thou shalt haveno other gods before me ’ was a cornerstone of both JudaismandChristianity.But there wasafundamental difference inrelationto reality.

For Jews thisorderwas first of allthe unequivocal demandto be faithfulto the Covenant bywhichYahveh establishedan ¿destructible bond with the people of Is rael,His people, althoughsuch a bond was to belater spreadall overthe world. But with the Christians the issue was different. Thatmessage of Yahveh communicated tothe people of Israel became now connected to the indestructible bond promised by Christ, theLogos, the Saviour. And the message wasmuch more radical. “As such it was notsimply a prohibition offoreigncults, butacall to arms, anassault uponthe antique orderof the heavens - a declaration ofwar upon the gods. All the worldwas to be evangelized andbaptized, all idols torn down, all worship givenoverto the one God who, in theselatter days, had sentHis Son into theworldforour salvation.

It wasa longand sometimes terrible conflict, occasionally exacting afearful price in martyr’s blood, but it was [...] avictory: the temple of Zeusand Isis alikewere finally deserted [... ] altars werebereft of their sacrifices, the sibylsfelt silent, and ul

timately all the glory, nobility, and cruelty of theancient world lay supine at the feet of Christ the conqueror. Nor,forearlyChristians, was this mere metaphor. A convert renounce[d\ the deviland the devil s ministers, [and thus] he was rejecting, and in fact reviling, the gods in bondage to whom he had languished all his life. [... ] He was entrusting himselfto the invincible hero who hadplundered hell ofits captives, over

thrown death, subdued the powersof the Earth, and been raised the Lordofhistory.

Life, forthe early Church, was spiritual warfare; andno baptized Christian could doubt how great a transformation -of the selfand the world - it was to consent to

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1. Jews and the Middle Age Christian society 29 serveno other god than Him whom Christ revealed. [...] [This was] Christianity’s shocking novelty. [...]// alone, in the history of the West, was a rejection and alter native to nihilism'sdespair, violence and idolatry ofpower; as such, Christianity shattered the imposing and enchanting façade behind which nihilism once hid, and thereby, inadvertentlycalled it forth into theopen. [...] The Christian God has taken everything into Himself; all the treasures of ancient wisdom, all the splendour of creation, every good thing has been assumed into the story of the incarnate God”.6

6 D. B. Hart, ‘Christ and Nothing’, pp. 48-53.

7 A good overview of St. Augustine’s position on Jews and his striking difference with St. Paul, done from a Jewish perspective see P. Fredriksen, ‘Christian Anti-Judaism: Polemics and Policies’ in S. T. Katz (ed.), The Cambridge History of Judaism, Vol. 4: The Late Roman- Rabbinic Period, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2006, p. 1016.

8 See on that from a Catholic perspective an excellent J. V. Schall, Reason, Revelation, and the Foundations of Political Philosophy, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge 1987, esp. pp. 182-224. From another, liberal and Jewish perspective showing the unbridgeable gap between Athens and Jerusalem see a classical L. Strauss, ‘Jerusalem and Athens’ in idem, Stud

ies in Platonic Political Philosophy, ed. T. Pangle, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1983;

Strauss in his analysis of this tension between Reason of Athens and Revelation of Jerusalem disregarded of course Rome and its Revelation through Reason and Reason through Revelation.

In principle, Strauss thought, that this effort brought to perfection by St.Thomas Aquinas, failed.

There was thus a powerful theological rivalry between Judaism andChristianity, andwithin such a vision the “recalcitrant” Jews were not somuch rejecting the true God, theirs wasthesame God asthe Christian one, butbeing persistent in not reveal ing and sharing His potential asexposed by Incarnation.Jews, in other words, were

“closed” people, infact egotistical within such atheology, since they refused to take fullresponsibilityfor theworld within the very theology of the First Commandment whichforbade idolatry and in fact banneditfromtheworldasauniversal,nottribal, task. Jews were ofcoursepart of the sameGod’s story and powerfullyso, but ceased to shape it.St. Augustineand the medieval Church thought that wayas well- mediation was only one-dimensional, or pointing in one direction, the supersessionistview.7 Christianself-understanding of theChurch as theagentofGod’s promisein his

tory did not need to relateto the experience ofthe Jewishpeople but it needed to relate toGreekreason as atool of engagement ofthe worldoutside the Church.8In such a perspective, Jewsconstituted a problemfor the Church in a sense that such a relation to the world neededthem, as “children ofAbraham”, to engage in that theological and rational mediation. But, as indicated, Jews didnot needthe Church or the world outside, since reason was not their way of engagementwith the world but solelya means of deciphering God’s revealedlaw givento them.

The Church in the medieval times had ofcourse a decisive advantage ofa re

ligious, cultural and political hegemony. It used theology as a way ofapologet ics, knowing and purporting to show that Christian revelation was reasonable in a sensethatit understood life in a proper way. Jewsandotherentities were a medium for Christianity to prove this task grounded intheological reason. Simultaneously,

Jewish autonomy in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth : from the 16th to the 18th century

Jewish Autonomy

in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

from the 16, h to the I Slh Century

Volume 1

Andrzej Bryk

Jewish Autonomy

in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

from the 16th to the 18lh Century

Volume 1

[*]

In memoriam

R afael S charf

(1914-2003)

a Polish Jew

Cracovian at heart

a guardian of memory

and of the unrealized hope

Seek the peace of the city to which I have exiled you.

And pray on its behalf to the Lord.

For in its peace shall you have peace.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1.

Jeirs and the Middle Age Christian society

Christianitas, the Catholic Church and

Jews