"The House of Hannover": Gezeirot Tah in Modern Jewish Historical Writing Author(s): Gershon Bacon Source: Jewish History, Vol. 17, No. 2, Gezeirot Ta"h: Jews, Cossacks, Poles and Peasants in 1648 Ukraine (2003), pp. 179-206 Published by: Springer Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20101497 . Accessed: 09/01/2014 14:55 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Jewish History. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 192.55.244.171 on Thu, 9 Jan 2014 14:55:31 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Jewish History 17: 179-206, 2003. W ? 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. "The House of Hannover" : Gezeirot Tah in modern Jewish historical writing* GERSHON BACON Bar-Ilan University, Israel Abstract. This essay traces the development of modern Jewish historiography on the events of 1648-1649. It focuses mainly on treatments of the events in single volume and multi-volume general histories of the Jews, and on entries in encyclo pedias. Immediate historical memory, as exemplified by the Hebrew chronicles and liturgical poetry composed soon after the events, was transformed into history in the writings of the modern Jewish historians of the 19th and 20th centuries. In the process, the chronicle of Nathan Hannover dominated modern perceptions, for the most part uncritically accepted, albeit not on all counts. The major features of the modern historiography of the Gezeirot Tah ve'Tat are surveyed by discussing the causes of the attacks, their results, the number of victims, and the ways in which all three were incorporated in the larger Jewish historical scheme. Recently, some long-held approaches and conclusions have been revised, which suggests directions for future research. In the spring of 1650, the Council of the Four Lands, the nation-wide consultative body of Polish Jewry, proclaimed an annual fast day on the 20th day of the Hebrew month Sivan, the anniversary of the slaughter of the Jews in Niemir?w, the first large community to be destroyed in the Cossack uprising of 1648.l Some communal leaders approached Rabbi Yom Tov Lippman Heller, the rabbi of Krakow, asking him to compose some new liturgical poems (piyyutim) to commemorate the recent calamities that had struck Polish Jewry, as he had done for Prague Jewry some years before. At first Heller demurred, claiming that the Prague case was different, since Jews had been in danger not as Jews but as citizens of a city under siege, "... but the present events were like the decrees of old, and that which was perpetrated against the fathers was perpetrated against the sons, and the elders had already composed prayers and told of the events ..." He decided to collect appropriate poems from earlier eras and use them for the newly instituted fast day (or perhaps re-instituted fast day, for it fell on the same date supposedly fixed as a fast day in memory of an earlier * Research for this article was carried out with the support of a research fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. My thanks to Professor Kenneth Stow for his comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. This content downloaded from 192.55.244.171 on Thu, 9 Jan 2014 14:55:31 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 180 GERSHON BACON act of martyrdom in Blois in France in 1171).2 After all, noted Heller, in Krakow itself there were three occasions during the year when persecu tions against local Jews were commemorated, and the previous rabbis of the community had felt no need to compose new liturgical works. Finally, Heller decided to compromise on the issue, taking a medieval poem and replacing the last few stanzas with new ones of his own that recounted the recent persecutions. After the first observance of the 20 Sivan fast day, a large number of people approached Heller and asked him to give a more extended poetic account of the latest catastrophe, for just as it is considered meritorious to give a lengthy account of the Exodus from Egypt on Passover, "... so are we obligated to tell future generations that which befell us ..." Thus Heller acquiesced to public pressure and composed another more lengthy elegy to the 1648 martyrs which was added to the prayers for that fast day.3 Heller's initial hesitation and later second thoughts, as well as the demands of the Jewish public, symbolize the complex process by which the events of 1648-1649 entered Jewish historical consciousness and memory. In his classic study of Jewish historical consciousness, Zakhor, Yosef Hayyim Yerushalmi noted the resistance to novelty in history writing, and the pronounced tendency to fit the recent catastrophe into the mold of past tragedies, exemplified by Rabbi Heller's conviction that the elegies composed five centuries earlier were quite sufficient to embrace contemporary events as well, "for all is one."4 If in the realm of liturgical poetry, which by nature lent itself more to perennial themes and motifs of expression, there was a struggle over memorializing the events (was this something new, or the repetition of a pattern going back to the beginnings of Jewish existence?), how much more so would there be hesitation in the realm of historical chronicles, a much less common literary genre, as to how to present the events. Should one fall back on traditional ways of "digesting" the events, themes that hark back to Middle Ages,5 and perhaps as far back as the Bible and Rabbinic aggada, or should one chronicle the present events as something new in nature and scope that demanded newer forms of expression and sensibilities? This first encounter on the liturgical level symbolizes the struggles that historians would have with these events. On the one hand, they would look for the cyclical, the common themes of martyrdom through the ages, connections with times present and future, but they would also look for the time and place specific. Two competing frameworks would exist for these momentous events. As Joel Raba comments at the outset of his lengthy survey of the development of historiography on Gezeirot Tah, Between Remembrance This content downloaded from 192.55.244.171 on Thu, 9 Jan 2014 14:55:31 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE HOUSE OF HANNOVER 181 and Denial, "... the massacres perpetrated on the Jewish popula tion of the Ukraine in 1648-1649 entered the nation's historical con - science [sic GB] before the days of the pogroms were over ..."6 Not only the events themselves made their mark on the collective memory of Polish and world Jewry, but also the framework in which these events would be viewed. Thus at the time, some of the earliest chroniclers, certainly echoing more widely-held views, attempted to place the 1648-1649 catastrophe within the framework of the tradi tional Jewish conceptions of Messianic redemption, regarding the mass slaughter of Tah-Tat as phenomena connected to hevlei Mashiah, the period of suffering immediately preceding the coming of the Messiah.7 This concept would have immense implications in the Messianic up heaval associated with Shabbetai Zevi in the 1660s. Shabbetai Zevi himself exploited this theme, as in his fabled meeting with some rep resentatives of Polish Jewry, when the chronicle Tzuk Ha 'Ittim report edly lay open on his table as the Polish Jews were ushered into his presence.8 Thus the momentous events of 1648-1649 left their mark on Jewish historical memory, especially through the influence of the historical chronicles composed in the wake of the disaster. In the present article, I would like to point out some of the ways which this historical memory was transformed into history with the development of modern Jewish historiography. As noted by Raba, Polish and Ukrainian historiogra phy of the Cossack uprising went through a number of stages in the subsequent two centuries. Jews, however, jumped directly from the Hebrew chroniclers and elegists writing soon after the events to the modern historians, with no real intermediary stage. The agenda and the approaches of the seventeenth century Hebrew chroniclers, most notably Nathan Hannover, made the transition to the works of the 19th and early 20th century historians intact, with little serious revision. For the most part, not only the agenda and approach, but even the basic historicity of the chroniclers' narratives found a willing reception among modern historians such as Graetz, who had their own ideological agenda. In this article, I propose to document this process, as well as examine the ways in which modern historians "located" the events of 1648-1649 within the wider contexts of Jewish history. The frameworks constructed around these events reflect more general notions of anti Semitism and its nature, of East European Jewry and its place in the Jewish world, of Jewish-Polish and Jewish-Ukrainian relations, of persecution and its place in Jewish history, of historical "turning points" and more. This content downloaded from 192.55.244.171 on Thu, 9 Jan 2014 14:55:31 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 182 GERSHON BACON As Joel Raba's compilation demonstrates time and time again, the various historical narratives of the events of 1648-1649 reveal as much, if not more, about their authors as they reveal about the events them selves. For the most part, Jewish historians have relied on a closed set of data (this need not have been so, but until lately such is the reality), invoking essentially the same sources. Thus the question of packaging and context is critical for understanding the viewpoint of each historian. This article will focus on those areas of historical literature that Raba did not treat in detail, namely multi-volume and one-volume histories of the Jews, as well as encyclopedia articles, to see how the events were reported and where they were "located" on the continuum of Jewish history. What is noticeable in the many summaries of the events is how small turns of phrase can shift the whole understanding of the period, as in this typical example, taken from Cecil Roth: in every city or township which was entered, a veritable holocaust took place, in many instances the Poles betraying their Jewish neighbors in the mistaken hope of saving their own lives .. .9 Roth employs the well-known story in Hannover's chronicle about the betrayal of the Jews in Tulczyn by their Polish co-defenders, and generalizes from it, thus turning betrayal into a common pattern. He somehow overlooks Hannover's own observation that the events in Tul czyn actually dissuaded Poles in other towns from betraying Jewish neighbors. Treachery was of no avail, since the Cossacks did not spare the Poles in the city.10 For purposes of the present paper, I would like to focus on a few key issues as later historians have seen them: the causes and background of the gezeirot; estimates of losses in the gezeirot; and long and short term results of the gezeirot. However, one general observation is in order. Hannover's decisive influence Even before beginning, it was clear that Nathan Neta Hannover's chron icle Yeven Metzulah {The Deep Mire), first published in 1653 and many times subsequently, as well as translated into many other lan guages, would loom large in any evaluation of Jewish historiography of the Cossack uprising. In fact, this is so, to the point that to call Hannover's portrayal a "master narrative" is an act of supreme under statement. Reconstructions of the events follow the outline of Hannover, accept his conclusions en bloc with little comment, and reflect his views and prejudices. Dubnow incorporates long quotations from Hannover's This content downloaded from 192.55.244.171 on Thu, 9 Jan 2014 14:55:31 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE HOUSE OF HANNOVER" 183 book in his History of Jews in Russia and Poland11 and also in his World History of the Jewish People.12 In Dubnow's view, so important and credible was Hannover's account that he contended that Meir of Szczebrzeszyn's Tzuk HaTttim (published in 1650) was dependent on Hannover's account (published only in 1653), a chronological anomaly he could explain only by claiming that Hannover's book circulated in manuscript even before its publication.13 Dubnow (and he is not alone in this) also saw fit to reject the reliability of historical sources or the opinions of various historians simply on the basis that they did not conform to Hannover's testimony. One blatant example of Hannover's influence is the almost universally positive attitude in Jewish works to Prince Jarema Wisniowiecki as protector of the Jews and their avenging angel. In any discussion of the sources for the fate of the Jews in Gezeirot Tah, Hannover's reputation for reliability stands in stark contrast to the attitude toward most other Jewish sources. Heinrich Graetz, for example, calls Hannover's account "faithful and reliable."14 With some exaggeration, Jacob Shatzky claimed that except for Hannover's chron icle all the others were merely 'dry verses'.15 Raba notes how, in his multi-volume history of the Jews, 19th century Polish Jewish author and journalist Hilary Nussbaum based his narrative of 1648-1649 events for the most part on Hannover.16 Nor was this universality of use of Hannover's chronicle limited to Jewish historians. In an attempt to downplay Ukrainian atrocities against Jews, one Ukrainian historian even cited Hannover in an apolo getic article on Ukrainian-Jewish relations in the mid-17th century: ... not all Ukrainians participated in these massacres. For exam ple: when the Cossacks left the city of Tulchyn, "the Ukrainian inhabitants of the city dealt kindly with them (the Jews) and sent them away." Moreover, some Cossacks married Jewish girls, who however, preferred suicide to being a Cossack's wife. Furthermore, after the peace treaty of Zboriv (1649), the Cossacks did not harm the Jews, but on the contrary, according to Hannover, "in those places where the Cossack dwelt, business was good."17 What explains the dominance of Hannover's version of the events of 1648-1649? First and foremost is the more 'modern' nature of Yevein Metzulah, an orderly prose narrative that shows interest in social condi tions and in modern notions of causation, as opposed to other chronicles which are less complete, more unwieldy in nature (rhymed prose, com mentaries on the liturgy, lists), and more old fashioned which made This content downloaded from 192.55.244.171 on Thu, 9 Jan 2014 14:55:31 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 184 GERSHON BACON them appear, at least on the surface, less reliable. Thus Joel Raba's characterization: ... there is no doubt, nevertheless, that the chief witness is Nathan Hannover. Among the Jewish writers he had been the only one to take into account the sufferings of the non-Jewish population in the territories devastated by the war; he also made an attempt to formulate an attitude towards the circumstances and causes for the disasters of 1648.18 In the case of non-Jewish historians some of the Jewish historians (and as well), Hannover's chronicle was readily accessible in various Euro pean languages, the only such Jewish chronicle available to non-Hebrew readers. On another level, Max Weinreich pointed to Hannover's per sonal odyssey and ultimate fate as symbolic of the upheavals undergone by Jewry in the 17th century: ... was it not in his tragic fate the entire history of the Jew the eternal wanderer was reflected? Of German origin, he came to Ukraine, and by a miracle saved himself from the gangs of Khmil's marauders. Then he wandered all his life all over Europe only to die a violent death somewhere in Moravia.19 Until very recent times, one can speak with justification of Han nover's dominance in the writing of this chapter of Jewish history. Either historians accepted his judgments en bloc or expended much energy checking out one or another of his statements. In this latter context, one recalls the now classic essays of the late Israel Halpern which examined Hannover's statements about redemption of captives in Constantinople and about aid and comfort to Polish Jewish victims of the Cossack attacks,20 or Moshe Rosman's examination of the question whether Poland declined as a Torah center after Gezeirot Tah.21 Despite the centrality of Hannover's chronicle in modern historiogra phy, this master narrative does not dominate in all aspects. One blatant example is Hannover's account of the events in Chmielnicki's personal life which brought about his call for revolt. In Hannover's version, a Jew named Zechariah Zabilenky denounced Chmielnicki to the Polish authorities, resulting in his imprisonment, while a Jewish friend of Chmielnicki, Yaakov Zabilenky, arranged to have him freed from jail. For no apparent reason, the article on the Chmielnicki Massacres in the 1941 Universal Jewish Encyclopedia accepts the involvement of a Jew in Chmielnicki's arrest, but does not mention the Jewish friend who aided Chmielnicki.22 Most discussions of Gezeirot Tah, however, This content downloaded from 192.55.244.171 on Thu, 9 Jan 2014 14:55:31 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 'THE HOUSE OF HANNOVER" 185 skip over this part of Hannover's narrative entirely. One can speculate that the reason for not stressing this tradition (which has no more or no less sources backing it than most of Hannover's other stories, which are accepted without question) is the reluctance to have a Jew directly involved in the cause of Chmielnicki's revolt. There is no clue why other stories are accepted, other than the fact that Hannover's chronicle is written in a realistic manner. Even in Hannover there are other "voices" that have not been taken up by historians, but are deserving of further exploration. Historians stress those aspects of Hannover's narrative which deal with historical causation, economic background, social tensions and the like, but ignore the larger framework and context of the book, including Hannover's involvement in Kabbalah. To take but one example, how are we to square Hannover's supposedly "modern" historical narrative with his introduction laden with gematriya, which sees the events of 1648-1649 as predicted long ago by King David in the Psalms? Further, in the light of Hannover's justly famous afterword which describes the now destroyed institutions of Polish Jewry as the embodiment of classic Jewish values, how should we view his account, and his particular emphases, of the events of 1648-1649? Undoubtedly, Hannover's version of these events was crucial in forging the collective memory of these - events martyrdom, Messianic yearnings, the perception of a once great Polish Jewry which was no more, a "chosen" community undergoing - a supreme test of faith but does this version necessarily reflect the realities on the ground? One could ask just as well which Hannover is the "real" one: the semi-modern historian or the preacher regarding events through midrashic, stereotyped images? Even regarding those parts of the story where Hannover remains dominant, this is not the whole story. As mentioned earlier, I had begun the research with the operating assumption that Hannover's narrative would be the basis for most reconstructions of the events. This indeed would prove to be the case, even more strongly that I had imagined. Yet even with this common basis, I could not have foreseen the large number of variations on this theme, the wide spectrum of nuance in regard to sequence of events, causes, effects and the various personalities involved. Depending on the historian or encyclopedia, one could term the situation "Hannover Lite," "Hannover with an expla nation," or "Hannover in modern garb." For an example of the latter, one could cite Raphael Mahler's summation of the events, which, like Hannover's, sets the actions of the Jews in the framework of religious martyrdom: This content downloaded from 192.55.244.171 on Thu, 9 Jan 2014 14:55:31 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 186 GERSHON BACON ... both in the slaughter in the Ukraine and in the killing in Great Poland the Jews generally had the option of accepting the Chris tian faith and thus saving their lives. Nevertheless we know of only a few scattered incidents in which individuals or groups saved their lives by apostasy; tens of thousands of the victims preferred to die unusual deaths rather than leave the Jewish people ... [they] gave their lives in the recognition that apostasy is worse than death, the lowest form of treason to their people ...23 One common modification of the master narrative set out by Han nover was the greater emphasis placed on the active participation of Jews in the common defense of Polish towns. Hannover did of course mention deeds of valor by Jews, but these deeds rated less attention than the carefully chronicled acts of martyrdom. This trend began way before Zionist ideology and historiography accentuated Jews bearing arms. Already in the 19th century, Polish Jewish historians played up this issue to show how Jews were patriotic citizens even back in the 17th century.24 On the causes of the gezeirot In the many accounts of the events of 1648-1649 and the Jews, the issue of causation takes center stage, as would be expected in any historical narrative. Historians try to weigh the relative importance of religious, economic, national and other factors in unleashing the massive slaughter of Jews, Catholic clergy and Polish nobles. Beyond these standard historical discussions, however, much of the historical narratives on these events exhibit a strong tendency to look not just for causes, but also for the "guilty," to look for who was at fault, an enterprise which carries with it no small amounts of apologetics, or polemics for that matter. In Jewish historiography on the Chmielnicki uprising, the Jews are - judged "guilty with an explanation" where, for example, part of the Jews sinned, but all of the Jews suffered, or the Jews are presented as victims of circumstance. In such explanations, historians frequently employed the metaphor of "hammer and anvil," portraying the Jews as placed in a tragic position between two clashing social forces. The metaphor itself leaves some room for ambiguity, since Jews could be in the middle of the contending forces, but could also be the allies of the "hammer" (the Poles) who were the major force oppressing the peasants of the Ukraine region. The early twentieth century Jewish This content downloaded from 192.55.244.171 on Thu, 9 Jan 2014 14:55:31 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions "THE HOUSE OF HANNOVER" 187 Encyclopedia, for example, notes that the extravagant life style of the Polish landlords, who spent most of their fortunes abroad, frequently placed them in pecuniary difficulties, "and their Jewish tax-farmers were often forced into exactions against the advice and warnings of the wise leaders of the Four Lands, and the Jews of the Ukraine often suffered grievously for the sins of individuals of their race."25 An exten sive literature exists on one alleged aspect of Jewish guilt, namely the question of Jews holding keys to churches and not allowing religious cer emonies to take place until various taxes and fees were paid. Regarding whether the charge was true, this particular accusation appears only years after the Gezeirot. In the clash of religion, ethnic identity and politics in Ukraine, the nobles are portrayed as the real guilty ones, since they headed the government and ruled in the Ukraine, while the Jews were merely their assistants. Circumstances forced the Jews into those occupations which lent themselves to exploitation.26 Related to this type of narrative is the - search for the guilty party in the murder of the Jews personal hatred on the part of Chmielnicki or one of his lieutenants, the jealousy of the Cossacks, or the enmity of Ukrainian town-dwellers as competitors of Jews. Within this general framework, we again can see a wide variety of explanations which reflect the background, ideological orientation or apologetic bent of their authors. Sometimes a single author will exhibit all the types of explanation mentioned above. Thus Simon Dubnow wrote that "... the Jew thus found himself between the hammer and the anvil: between the landed gentry and the khlopi, between the Catholic and the Greek Orthodox Church, between the Pole and the Ukrainian. Three classes, three religions, three nationalities, clashed on a foundation in whose depths volcanic forces lay dormant; and the explosion was inevitable ... [emphasis in original]27 ... there were, nat urally, strict Jewish lessees, who at the command of the pan, the master, penalized the peasants. This in turn gave rise to animosity toward all Jews ... In all these descriptions and sayings of the contemporaries, the Jew is represented as the intermediary, as the one who collects taxes for the Polish gentry. The Jew is merely a messenger, an expedient by which the pan suppressed the peasants. Yet, when the people went on a rampage, the Jew suffered more than the nobleman. And it is not only the Jewish lessee who suffered, but the entire Jewish communities, which had no relation to the leasehold ... [my emphasis - GB]."28 The apologetic mode reached its apogee in the one-volume history by Grayzel, who opens his discussion with the general observation that This content downloaded from 192.55.244.171 on Thu, 9 Jan 2014 14:55:31 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions