Jews Not Nobility Exploited Peasants Levine

Economic Origins of Antisemitism: Poland and Its Jews in the Early Modern Period, by Hillel Levine.

Pre-Partitioned Poland: Jewish Middlemen, the Liquor Trade (PROPINACJA), and the Delayed Modernization of Polish Society

This work surveys Polish-Jewish relations in the centuries before the Partitions of Poland. It requires a specialized knowledge of the society of that time in order to evaluate in all its details.

DEBUNKING THE AWFULIZATION OF POLAND’S FEUDAL SOCIETY

The author provides interesting details about Polish society. For instance, there was no rank amongst the Polish nobility. (p. 70). Polish serfs did not deal only in terms of the corvee. They also had a limited use of money (p. 10), and, in certain places and times, could forego corvee in favor of rental payment. (p. 51, 57).

THE MYTH OF JEWS BEING BANNED FROM “PRODUCTIVE” OCCUPATIONS SUCH AS AGRICULTURE

It is untrue, though commonly believed, that Poland’s Jews did not become farmers owing to some Polish law forbidding it. In fact, in 1775, fourteen Jewish families, over an unspecified area of Poland, were engaging in agriculture. (p. 169). Jews, for the most part, had an “aversion” to agriculture owing to its (actual or presumed) harshness. (p. 169).

JEWS, RATHER THAN LANDLORDS, SOMETIMES EXPLOITED THE POLISH PEASANTRY

Poland’s Jews did not simply transmit the policies of the Polish landowners to the peasants. These Jews had considerable autonomy, and assumed considerable powers of their own. To begin with, the Polish owners were often absent (p. 10) or only remotely involved with their estates. (p. 62). Jews became leaseholders, or arendars. They often managed the estates. In fact, they sometimes managed entire villages, and oversaw the economic development of forests, mines, mints, breweries, etc., using serf labor. (p. 62). Clearly, the Jews were less middlemen, and more an economic class.

One quoted Russian official, Kachovsky, who visited an area after the First Partition, contended that the Jews were the ones primarily responsible for the exploitation of the peasants. (pp. 172-173). A quoted visitor, Stephens, reported observing a Jewish innkeeper wrangling with, and extorting money from, intoxicated peasants. (p. 143).

The scale of the Jewish liquor enterprise was staggering. Around 1750, about 85% of Polish Jews were in some way associated with the liquor trade. (p. 9). Moreover, the very sustenance of many Polish Jews was dependent upon the PROPINACJA (taproom). (p. 12). It is obvious that the Polish economy was alcohol-centered as much as it was Jewish-centered. It is also obvious that the Jews, most of all, had a vested interest in its perpetuation.

JEWS IN POLAND PLAYED A MAJOR ROLE IN KEEPING HER BACKWARD, AND INHIBITED THE EMERGENCE OF A POLISH MIDDLE CLASS

Levine candidly suggests that the Jewish role in the dysfunctional late feudal Polish society only postponed its end. (pp. 237-238). However, there is more to it.

The “cultural inertia” actually worked in several ways. Consider the alleged “laziness” of the landowners. To what extent was it an outcome of the fact that the Jews had assumed such dominance in estate affairs? In Poland, unlike many western European nations, the Jews did not identify with Polish society. (p. 236). Why should they, in view of their huge size and economic power in Poland? Now consider the complaints, repeatedly stated by Levine, that Polish society suffered from decentralization and backwardness, and that the landowners were, for a long time, disinterested in modernization. But, if so, what incentive would they have to do so, in view of the fact that most of the benefits would accrue to the Jewish economic class?

Author Levine suggests that anti-Semitism developed as Poles, more and more, (supposedly) unfairly blamed the Jews for the PROPINACJA. However, Levine acknowledges that Jewish prejudices also existed against Poles, and that the Jewish tavern-owner or liquor-dealer could use them to rationalize his role in the degradation of the Polish peasant. He comments, (quote) The drink was both the effect and the cause of that broken resistance and degradation. The Jew, as the primary representative of this system, as the monetizer of unmarketable grain, could avert facing his contribution to the plight of the serf–a “Goy”, he might mutter in self-righteousness, “drunken sloth is the essence of the Gentile.” (unquote)(p. 10).

SOME HARD QUESTIONS

Would Poland’s history had been better had she not admitted many Jews into Poland? And what if Poland had expelled her Jews, the way that medieval England, for example, did?