Volume I Part 13 (1/2)
The elections of the various grades of Kahal elders[173] were held, as in former years, annually during the intermediate days of Pa.s.sover. This custom had legal sanction, and was enforced by the local authorities.
When, in 1719, the elders of the Kahal of Brest, prompted by personal considerations, were, in spite of the approach of Pa.s.sover, delaying the holding of new elections, the Lithuanian hetman[174] sent an order from Vilna branding the act of the Kahal of Brest as illegal, on the ground that, ”though obliged by law and custom to hold new elections of elders every Pa.s.sover, they have not done so, delaying the elections for their own personal benefit.”
The elections were indirect, taking place through a limited number of electors, and only persons of fairly high financial standing, such as house-owners or large tax-payers, were allowed to be candidates. As a matter of fact, intellectual qualifications were no less valued than financial standing, scholars occupying an honorable place in the communal council.
The Kahal administration was thus oligarchic in character. The lower and poorer cla.s.ses had no representation in it, and, as a result, their interests frequently suffered. In the eighteenth century complaints, coming from the Jewish rank and file, are constantly heard about the oppression of the Kahal ”bosses,” about the inequitable apportionment of taxes, and similar abuses.
During the same period litigation between individual Kahals frequently arose concerning the boundaries of their respective districts. This litigation was due to the fact that the Jewish residents of the townlets and villages were subject to the jurisdiction of the nearest Kahal, whose income they helped to swell. Since, however, the Kahal districts had never been officially delimited, several Kahals would occasionally lay claim to the control of the neighboring townlets and settlements (called in Hebrew _sebiboth_ and _yishubim_, and in the official language _prikahalki_[175]). Cases of this kind were brought either before the conferences of the District Kahals or the two central parliamentary inst.i.tutions of Polish Jewry, the ”Council of the Four Lands” and the ”Council of the Princ.i.p.al Communities of Lithuania.”
The centralization of Jewish self-government in these two Councils--that of the Crown and of Lithuania--was one of the main factors in stabilizing Jewish autonomy during that period of instability and disintegration. The meetings or Diets of these Councils, which were attended by the representatives of the Kahals and the rabbinate, afforded a regular opportunity for discussing the questions affecting the general welfare of the Polish Jews and for establis.h.i.+ng well-defined relations with the Government and the Diets of the country. Attached to the Waads were special advocates (_shtadlans_, designated as ”general syndics” in the Polish doc.u.ments), who went to Warsaw during the sessions of the Polish Chamber for the purpose of submitting the necessary applications in defense of Jewish rights or of presenting the taxation lists of the Jewish communities. The Waad of the Crown continued to meet periodically in Lublin, and Yaroslav (in Galicia), and occasionally in other places, while the Lithuanian Council a.s.sembled in different towns in Lithuania.
The activity of these central agencies of self-government was particularly intensified in the latter part of the seventeenth century, when the state of communal affairs, sorely shaken during the preceding period of unrest, had to be restored. The Government upheld the authority of the Waads in the eyes of the Jewish population, finding it more convenient to maintain relations with one or two central organizations than to deal with a large number of local agencies. In 1687 the ”Jewish Elders of the Crown” (of Poland proper), acting on behalf of the Council at Yaroslav, lodged a complaint with King Sobieski, declaring themselves unable to a.s.sume the responsibility for the collection of the Jewish head-tax to the amount fixed by the preceding Polish Diet, owing to the fact that many Jews in the cities and villages, benefiting by the protection of the pans and even the royal officials, refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the ”Elders of the Crown” and s.h.i.+rked their duty as tax-payers. In view of this, the King issued a decree condemning in strong terms ”such interference and disorder,” and enjoining the individual Kahals to submit to the apportionment of taxes by the Elders of the Crown, and altogether to acknowledge their jurisdiction in general Jewish affairs, under the pain of severe fines for the disobedient.
The gradual deterioration of social and economic conditions in Poland rendered the activities of the Waads more complicated. The Waads were now called upon to regulate also the inner affairs of the communities as well as their relations to the Government and the urban estates, the magistracies and guilds. It cannot be said that the Waads exhibited on all occasions an adequate understanding of the political situation, or that they did full justice to the far-reaching demands of a truly popular representation. They were too little democratic in their composition to accomplish so large a task. The delegates to the Waads were not elected by the communities with this end in view, but were recruited from among the rabbis and elders of the princ.i.p.al communities, the notables and ”influential men.” However, in spite of their inadequate, oligarchic organization, the Waads were largely instrumental in unifying communal Jewish life and in enhancing discipline in Polish-Lithuanian Jewry.
One of the most important duties of the Waads was the maintenance of Jewish public schools, the Talmud Torahs and yes.h.i.+bahs, which at communal expense imparted religious instruction primarily to poor children and youths. From the minutes of the Lithuanian Waad which have come down to us we learn of the fact that every one of its conferences placed at the head of its enactments a number of clauses providing for the obligatory instruction of the young in yes.h.i.+bahs throughout the country, for the maintenance of the students by the various communities in cash and in kind, and for the formulation of the curricula and the statutes of all these inst.i.tutions of learning. No wonder that the endeavors of the Waad were crowned with success, and that the intellectual level of the Jews of Lithuania was very high. It must be owned, however, that their mental horizon was not large, inasmuch as the whole course of study, even in the highest schools, was limited to the Talmud and rabbinic literature.
Furthermore, the Council of the Four Lands established a control over the books issued by the printing-presses of Cracow and Lublin, or imported from abroad. Only such books were allowed to circulate as were supplied with a printed approbation, or _haskama_, of the Waad or some authoritative rabbis. Very frequently the Waad also intervened in the struggle of parties and sects which, as will be seen later,[176]
followed the rise of the Sabbatian movement.
Many public functions which lay outside the sphere of activity of the central Waads were discharged by the local District conventions, or ”Dietines” (_waade medinah_, or _waade galil_), the latter acting as the agencies of the Kahal federations of the given region. In official language these District federations were often designated as ”synagogues.” Especially prominent during this period were the ”Volhynian Synagogue,” _i. e._ the federation of the Kahals of Volhynia, and the ”White Russian Synagogue,” composed of the federated communities of the present Government of Moghilev. The former sent its representatives to the Council of the Four Lands, while the latter was affiliated with the Waad of Lithuania. The periodic conventions of these two ”synagogues” not only decided the allotment of taxes within the Kahal districts, but also took up questions of a general character, such as the sending of advocates to the general Polish Diet, the instructions to be given to the deputies of the central Waads, the problem of Jewish education, the rabbinate, etc. Less noticeable was the activity of the Kahal federations of the three ”Crown provinces”: Little Poland with the central community of Cracow, Great Poland with Posen, and Red Russia with Lemberg. We know, however, that they too a.s.sembled periodically, either at the initiative of the Kahals themselves or by order of the voyevoda of a given province. These conventions or ”Dietines” had their ”floor leaders” or ”marshals,” after the pattern of the provincial Polish Diets. At least such was the insistent demand of the voyevodas, who preferred to transact their official business with the responsible leaders of the conferences. The interference of the administration in the affairs of the Jewish autonomous organization became particularly frequent in the first part of the eighteenth century, when political anarchy in Poland reached its climax.
The whole Kahal organization received a severe blow at the hands of the Polish Government in 1764. The General Confederacy which preceded the election of King Stanislav Augustus, having framed a new ”const.i.tution,”
decided to change fundamentally the system of Jewish taxation. Instead of the former procedure of fixing the amount of the head-tax _in toto_, and leaving its allotment to the Districts and individual communities to the conferences of the elders and Kahals, the Diet pa.s.sed a resolution imposing a uniform tax of two gulden on every registered Jewish soul of either s.e.x, beginning with the first year after birth. This change was justified on the ground that, in the opinion of the Government, the previous wholesale system of taxation enabled the Kahals to collect from the tax-payers a much larger sum than originally determined upon.
Moreover, simultaneously with the head-tax other imposts were levied by the Kahals. This resulted in burdening the Jewish population and in hiding its true tax-paying capacity from the Government, while according to the new system the exchequer was likely to receive a much larger revenue.
To secure the accurate collection of the head-tax, a general registration of the Jewish population in the whole country was ordered.
The taxes of each community were to be remitted by its Kahal elders to the nearest state treasury. In consequence, the functions of the Kahals, as far as the apportionment of the taxes was concerned, were officially discontinued, and the Kahal elders became mere go-betweens, who handed over the tax revenues to the exchequer. The Government ceased to recognize the role of the Kahal as a fiscal agent, which it had formerly valued so greatly, and no more considered it necessary to uphold the authority of this autonomous organization. The whole machinery of Jewish self-government, all these Diets and Dietines, the Waads and District conferences, suddenly became superfluous, if not injurious, in the eyes of the Government. No wonder then that the same Diet of 1764 pa.s.sed a resolution forbidding henceforth the holding of conventions of District elders for the fixation or distribution of any tax collections or for any other purpose.
This limitation of the activities of the Kahals and the entire abolition of the central agencies of Jewish autonomy took place on the eve of the abolition of political independence in Poland itself, eight years before its first part.i.tion. We shall see later that the subsequent period of unrest, marked by the transfer of the greater part of Polish territory to the dominion of Russia, introduced even greater disorder into the once so firmly consolidated autonomous organization of the Jews, and robbed the Jewish people of one of the mainstays of its national existence.
2. RABBINICAL AND MYSTICAL LITERATURE
The social and economic decline of the Polish Jews, which set in after 1648, was not conducive to widening the Jewish mental horizon, which had been sharply defined during the preceding epoch. Even at the time when Polish-Jewish culture was pa.s.sing through its zenith, Rabbinism reigned supreme in school and literature. Needless to say there was no chance for any broader intellectual currents to contest this supremacy during the ensuing period of decline. The only rival of Rabbinism, whose att.i.tude was now peaceful and now warlike, was Mysticism, which was nurtured by the mournful disposition of a life-worn people, and grew into maturity in the unwholesome atmosphere of Polish decadence.
The intensive Talmudic culture, which had been fostered by many generations of rabbis and rosh-yes.h.i.+bahs was not distributed evenly. In those parts of the country which had suffered most from the horrors of the ”terrible decade” (1648-1658), in the Polish Ukraina, Podolia, and Volhynia, the intellectual level of the Jewish ma.s.ses sank lower and lower. Talmudic learning, which was formerly widespread among the Jews of those provinces, now became the possession of a narrow circle of scholars, while the lower cla.s.ses were stagnating in ignorance and superst.i.tion. A firmer position was still held by Rabbinism in Lithuania and in the original provinces of Poland. But here too the intellectual activity became pettier and poorer, not so much in quant.i.ty as in quality. It is still possible to enumerate a large number of names of great Talmudists and rabbis, who commanded the respect and admiration not only of the Jews of Poland but also of those outside of it. But in the domain of literary productivity these scholars did not leave so profound an impress on posterity as their predecessors, Solomon Luria, Moses Isserles, Mordecai Jaffe, and Mer of Lublin.
Even within the narrow sphere of the rabbinic literary output originality was sadly missing. The ”stars” of Rabbinism who were engaged in learned correspondence (_Shaaloth u-Teshuboth_) with one another were, as a rule, immersed in fruitless controversies about complicated and petty cases of religious and legal practice, frequently degenerating into the discussion of questions which do not arise in real life. Others wrote diffuse hair-splitting commentaries and _novellae_ (_hiddus.h.i.+m_) on various tractates of the Talmud, including those which had long lost all legal significance. Thus Aaron Samuel Kaidanover, Rabbi of Cracow, who had narrowly escaped the ma.s.sacres of 1648, commented on the section dealing with the sacrifices and the ancient ritual of the temple in Jerusalem (_Birkhath ha-Zebah_[177]). Still others wrote annotations and supplements to the _Shulhan Arukh_.[178] Lithuania, in particular, excelled by the number of its celebrities in the field of rabbinic scholasticism, all men who refused to acknowledge any branch of secular and even religious knowledge outside the domain of Talmudic dialectics.
A rare exception among these scholars was Jehiel Halperin (ab.
1670-1746), rabbi of Minsk, who wrote an extensive historic chronicle under the name of _Seder ha-Doroth_, ”The Order of the Generations.”
Halperin's work, which is divided into three parts, narrates in the first the events of Jewish history from Biblical times down to the year 1696. The second part enumerates, in alphabetical order, the names of all the Tannaim and Amoraim,[179] and cites the opinions and sayings attributed to each of them in the Talmud. The third part contains a list of authors and books of the post-Talmudic period. The original contribution of Halperin consists in his having systematized the extremely complicated material, and rendered it available for a characterization of the Talmudic rabbis. In all else he merely copied earlier chroniclers, particularly David Gans,[180] without any attempt at a critical a.n.a.lysis. He even fails to render account of such important events of his own time as the Messianic movement of Sabbatai Zevi. The essence of history to him is identical with the genealogies of scholars, saints, and rabbis; the only reason for existence which in his judgment historiography may claim is to serve as the handmaid of Rabbinism. Even this outlook upon history, narrow though it be, was entirely foreign to Halperin's contemporaries.
Side by side with the scholastic literature of Rabbinism flourished popular ethical literature (_musar_[181]). Its originators were the preachers (_darshanim_), some of whom occupied permanent posts attached to synagogues, while others wandered about from town to town. The synagogue sermons of that period, which have come down to us in various collections,[182] consist of a long string of Haggadic and Cabalistic quotations, by means of which the Biblical texts are given an entirely perverted meaning. The preachers were evidently less anxious to instruct their audience than to exhibit their enormous erudition in theological literature. Some of these preachers endeavored in particular to foist upon the people the notions of the ”Practical Cabala.”[183] The ”secret”
writings of Ari[184] and his school were circulated in Poland in ma.n.u.script copies, which went from hand to hand. The ideas embodied in the Cabalistic doctrine of Ari were popularized in the shape of ”gruesome stories” concerning life after death, the tortures of the sinners in h.e.l.l, the transmigration of souls, and the exploits of demons.
The books which endeavored to inculcate piety among the ma.s.ses by means of these stories became rapidly popular. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the Cabalist Joseph Dubno wrote a work in this spirit under the t.i.tle _Yesod Yoseph_, ”Foundation of Joseph.” Prior to its publication, Dubno's work was utilized by Hirsch Kaidanover, a son of the above-mentioned rabbi of Cracow, Aaron Samuel Kaidanover,[185]
and issued by him in an improved and amplified version in Frankfort-on-the-Main, in 1705, under the name _Kab ha-Yashar_, ”The Just Measure.” A few years later the book was published also in the Yiddish vernacular, and became a great favorite among the lower cla.s.ses as well as among women.
The _Kab ha-Yashar_ breathes a spirit of gloomy asceticism, and is expressive of a funereal frame of mind. ”O man,”--the author exclaims--”wert thou to know how many demons thirst for thy blood, thou wouldst abandon thyself entirely, with heart and soul, to Almighty G.o.d!”
The air, according to the doctrine preached in this book, is filled with the invisible spirits of the dead who can find no rest in the other world, and teems with the wandering shadows of sinners and demons, who frequently slip into living beings and force them to rage like madmen.