Jews under threat -- and Jews seen as a threat: Rabbi Wein explains

In this, the fourth in his series of eight lectures on ‘The Jewish World 1880-1914’ Rabbi Wein continued his discussion of the plight of the Jews in Russia, taking up with the last of the Romanov Tsars—Nicholas II (right), who strictly enforced the harsh decrees imposed by his father Tsar Alexander III.

These three decrees were as follows:

1.       Jewish men of 18 had to serve in Russian Army for 25 years. Around 50,000 Jews were forced into the army; hardly any came back as observant Jews. Many tactics were employed to evade this conscription, such as changing surnames to make it look as though there was only one son in the family.

2.       All Jews had to live within the Pale of Settlement; this excluded them from living in the great cities of Moscow and St Petersburg. Once again, it proved possible to get round this restriction, at least for the wealthy.

3.       Heavy taxes were imposed, but these too could be evaded since Russia had a culture of corruption.

Nicholas was the head of the heavily antisemitic Russian Orthodox Church. He was also a cousin of Kaisar Wilhelm in Germany and King George V of England. All were grandchildren of England’s Queen Victoria and this was assumed to be a positive indicator of peace. Unfortunately it did not, since nationalism drove the family apart and led to the First World War.

The Jews in this period were divided. The maskilim (secularists) believed that society could order itself without religion and that history displayed a progressive improvement in human life and conduct. This movement began in Germany but spread throughout Europe. The maskilim regarded Judaism as being devoid of culture, with no real culture, literature or music of its own. Their philosophy is now reflected in the acronym DEI (“diversity, equality, inclusivity”) and in denial of the notion that the Jews are a special, unique people.

The Russian government, with which the maskilim cooperated, was sympathetic to this view, and to the solution of the Jewish problem by converting one-third, killing one-third and driving the remaining third out. Local rabbis were the “enemy”.

The orthodox community was not however beaten. Thanks to the Gaon of Vilna (left), the foundations of Jewish survival through Torah education were firmly established in the institution of the yeshiva. The establishment of the yeshiva enabled the best and most promising students to study in depth and also involved whole communities in their support.  Yeshivot also produced communists and free-thinkers, as well as what turned out to be leaders of the Zionist movement. One by-product of the establishment of yeshivot was the ongoing tension between the Rosh Yeshiva and the Rabbi of the town: not many people could fulfil both functions at the same time.

The yeshiva world was not immune from disagreement and dispute. Reb Chaim Brisker’s popular new way of analysing the text of the Talmud was at odds with the traditional methods used by the Netziv. This caused a split in learning methodologies that exists to this day—but in the nineteenth century they were both taught within the same institution. Added to this was the emergence of the Mussar Movement of Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, focused on establishing a world view based on ethical and behavioral values. Some yeshivot were in favour of mussar, others against it. And then came the political issue of Zionism: should the yeshivot be for it or against it? All these issues contributed to the fragmentation of the Torah world, not just in Lithuania but throughout the world.

A further idea promoted by the Gaon was that the Jews should stop waiting for the Messiah and should move to Israel. He encouraged those whom he influenced to leave and settle here. He himself got as far as Odessa, but never completed his Aliyah. The idea of moving however took root in Russia, where entire villages were emptied out as the Jewish poor fled to the United States to escape the cruelty of Tsar Nicholas. They knew they would struggle in their new land but reckoned that it was worth the struggle for the sake of their children.

There were however some Jews who did not want to leave Russia: they wanted to remain there and improve the country. They spoke Russian but were seen as a constant threat to Russian society because they tended to espouse far left and anarchist political causes. Nicholas was always worried about the threat that these Jews posed. Hounded by the police in Russia, some of them left for the United States, bringing their left wing sentiments with them.

The power of "ignorance, illiteracy and superstition": Rabbi Wein

Last night, in the third of his eight lectures on "The Jewish World 1880-1914", Rabbi Wein introduced us to the condition of the Jews in the days of the Russian Empire. This lecture was quite unlike its two predecessors. While Jews were moving into Western Europe and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, quite the opposite was happening in Russia where it was the Empire that was moving into areas that already contained Jews.

Much of this lecture was taken up by Rabbi Wein’s vivid depiction of social, political and religious conditions in Russia which, remarkably, had remained more or less unchanged since the 15^th century. Russia was a primitive, feudal country that was controlled by a powerful aristocracy. The country was also dominated by the Russian Orthodox Church—a body that cultivated deeply superstitious and sometimes pagan practices, and which could not tolerate, within the borders of Russia, the presence of those who worshipped any other religion. This was because, for the Russian Orthodox Church, Russia was effectively The Holy Land.

For those who were not members of the aristocracy, life was hard. With an illiteracy rate of 95% there was no educated middle class to counter the power of the Church. Nor was there any trade of the sort that brought prosperity to the lands further to the West. The vast majority of the population consisted of serfs—effectively slaves—who worked the land in exchange for the food they ate. The serfs had no rights and could not leave the land to which they were born. Poverty was endemic but, because all were poor, being poor carried neither shame nor stigma.

Russian society was in effect frozen. The aristocracy wanted no change since they lived comfortably off the labour of the serfs. The Church likewise had no interest in change since it was only by keeping the masses ignorant, illiterate and superstitious that they could retain their influence and, as Rabbi Wein quipped, “The wonderful thing about a superstition is that you can never prove it wrong”.

It was not until the Napoleonic wars that there was any thought that change might occur. While the invading French army overreached itself and had to retreat, Russians who encountered the French were shocked into realising what a backward and primitive people they were, when compared with their better educated and more sophisticated invaders.

From this point onwards, the stability of serf-bound Russia began to weaken. Moves were made to emancipate the serfs, which alienated the nobility and while leaving the serfs with nothing they could do with their freedom. Meanwhile anarchists began to spread their doctrine that man was basically good and that it was only government that was bad: destroy government and self-rule by the inherently good would follow.

It was against this backdrop that the Tsars (Alexander I, right, and his successors) had to consider what to do with the Jews who lived to the west of their empire. The government, increasingly paranoid, imposed censorship on all Hebrew publications and simultaneously operated contradictory policies: it was sought to assimilate the Jews into Russian society via military conscription—thus forcing them to learn the Russian language and become part of Russian culture—while also depriving them of basic legal rights.

What happened after that? Stay tuned to Rabbi Wein’s next lecture to find out!