Polish Middle Class Jews Delayed Hundert

The Jews in a Polish Private Town: The Case of Opatsw in the Eighteenth Century, by Gershon David Hundert. 1992

Jews Boycotted Poles First. Jews Inhibited Development of a Polish Middle Class. An Irony to Complaints About Expulsions of Jews

Correction in book title as listed: The town name is Opatow, not Opatsw.

POGROMS? MAYBE SO, MAYBE NOT

This work begins with a history of Jews in Poland, and then focuses on their role in the town of Opatow (near Sandomierz). The author generally avoids the lachrymose view of Jewish history. For instance, in discussing violence against Jews during Poland’s 17th-century wars, the author leaves it an open question whether they were targeted as Jews qua Jews. (p. 42). Then again, the fact that he leaves it an open question, instead of instantly accusing Poles as most Jewish authors do, is appreciated.

RECIPROCITY OF PREJUDICES

Author Gershon David Hundert points out that, (quote) The halakha and the traditions of the Jews, no less than the canon law and traditions of Christians, sought to limit contacts with outsiders of the other religion. There was a tendency in each group to think of the other as an undifferentiated collectivity, naturally hostile—and worse. The norms of both the church and the synagogue were strongly segregationist in their intent. Each faith taught that the other was spiritually and morally inferior. (unquote). (p. 38).

Clearly, the self-segregation of Jews was both voluntary and unremarkable. (p. 19). Only later, as the Jewish population expanded, did the restriction of Jews to the “Jewish town”, which was often overcome against the objections of the Polish burghers, become irksome to the Jews. (p. 19).

JEWS NOT PUPPETS OF THE NOBILITY: JEWS HAD CONSIDERABLE AUTONOMY AND POWER

Author Gershon David Hundert questions the broad-based applicability of anecdotal reports of the cruelty of nobles towards their Jews. He believes that unbalanced negative portrayals of the nobility emanated, at least in part, from the anti-noble bias of Warsaw positivism historians at about the time of the start of the twentieth century. (p. xv). (Could this bias also explain, in part, the customary exaggerated oppressiveness of the Polish landowners towards their serfs?)

According to much conventional spin, Jews in feudal Poland were essentially order-fulfillers of the nobility. They were locked in very narrow roles, and they transmitted the oppressive policies of the nobility to the serfs, thus becoming the undeserved recipients of peasant anger. Although the author does not directly address the latter, and does not specify the extent of the Jews’ autonomy, he does show that Jewish autonomy was considerable.

To begin with, Poland’s Jews were hardly obligated to serve the nobility. They were, to a considerable extent, free agents. Hundert comments, (quote) Indeed, the threat of Jews leaving constituted the most important limitation of the owner’s power over them. Jews put their commercial, industrial, and managerial expertise in the service of the aristocrat in return for the peace and security and good order that he provided. The revenues they produced were their end of the bargain. If the town owner did not fulfill his obligations, Jews would demand changes, threaten to leave, or actually do so. Explicit threats of this kind are known in a number of towns. In Opatow, too, at least once, Jews threatened the town owner in a similar way. (unquote). (p. 153. See also pp. 157-158).

AN IRONY TO THE EXPULSIONS OF JEWS

The foregoing is ironic. Much has been written about Jews expelled from many territories and nations in the last 2,000 years–all because the Jews were not acting in accordance with the gentiles’ liking. But it also happened that Jews essentially expelled themselves when the gentiles’ behavior was not to the Jews’ liking.

JEWS, AS JEWS, IN PREMODERN POLAND, DID HAVE SOME POLITICAL POWER

Nor is it true that Jews had no political power, that is, unless they converted to Catholicism and became ennobled. In many Polish towns, conventional Jews participated in municipal elections, if only to a degree. (p. 135).

AVERAGE JEW BETTER OFF THAN THE AVERAGE POLE, QUITE APART FROM THE WEALTHY JEWISH FAMILY DYNASTIES

Hundert writes, (quote) Most Jews were poor, though not so poor as the peasants, and there was a wealthy group of merchants and ARRENDATORS comprising about 10 percent of the adult male population, which dominated the affairs of the community. (unquote). (p. 157).

The author describes the socioeconomic stratification that existed in Poland’s Jewish community. (It paralleled, in some ways, the stratification of the szlachta and serfs in Poland’s society.) He comments, (quote) The superiority of the wealthy and learned was taken for granted in Jewish society and was part of the order of things…Particularly during the first two-thirds of the eighteenth century, a kind of Polish-Lithuanian Jewish aristocracy existed. Members of a relatively small number of families held an astonishing number of rabbinical and communal offices. Among these families were the Ginzburgs, Heilperins, Horowitzs, Rapoports,…Katzenellenbogens…Landaus…(unquote). (p. 117).

Hundert does not elaborate on the implications of the foregoing. How much of the wealth created by Jewish entrepreneurs went to Poland (that is, the Polish nobility), and how much of it went to Poland’s Jews, especially the wealthy ones?

Let us pursue this reasoning further. Hundert comments, (quote) In the second half of the century, and particularly in its last third, Opatow Jews began to move to villages or to Warsaw and Brody, reflecting the economic decline of the region and the quest for gainful employment. (unquote). (p. 157). This raises the following question: To what extent were Poland’s Jews creating wealth that would eventually benefit all the locals, and to what extent was their economic activity more of an opportunistic, self-interested nature?

THE MYTH OF POLISH DISTASTE FOR COMMERCE: JEWS INHIBITED THE DEVELOPMENT OF A POLISH MIDDLE CLASS

According to some modes of thinking, Poles in commerce are a relatively recent development. For most of history, Poles studiously avoided commerce, and brought more and more Jews into Poland to do it for them.

The truth is rather different. Author Hundert discusses the Polish burghers and their economic activities in 18th-century Opatow. Based on archival sources, Hundert tabulates, in considerable detail, the specific forms of entrepreneurial activities engaged in by Polish burghers and Poland’s Jews from 1721 through 1788. (pp. 50-53). Two striking features are evident: The responsibility of Polish burghers for a significant fraction of economic activity, and the increasing share of economic activity, with time, assumed by the Jews at the expense of the burghers. Hundert does not elaborate on the cause of this, but does mention the greater increase of the Jewish population relative to the non-Jewish population. (p. 76). Clearly, Poland’s Jews did inhibit the development of a Polish middle class.

JEWS BOYCOTTED POLES FIRST, BUT NOWADAYS ONLY POLES ARE BLAMED FOR EVENTUALLY BOYCOTTING JEWS

Book after book after book on Polish-Jewish relations mentions the Endek- and ONR-led boycotts of Jews, portraying it as a horrible injustice to Jews and a testimony of the meanness and (what else?) anti-Semitism of the Poles. We never hear about the other side of the coin.

Not surprisingly, the burghers and Jews came into conflict with each other. The burghers sought to limit the perceived or actual unfair advantages of the Jews. (e. g, pp. 54-on). Interestingly, according to a cited Yiddish-language account of burgher complaints, the Jewish merchants were instructed, in synagogues, not to buy or sell from or to Christian hosiers. (p. 48). [This corresponds with the statements, of proto-Endek and Endek thinkers in the 19th and 20th century, that, long before Poles started boycotting Jewish entrepreneurs, Jews had been boycotting Polish entrepreneurs.]

The facts are clear. The myth of “Polish dislike of commerce”, to the extent that it was at all factual, was at least as much a consequence, as cause, of Jewish economic dominance.