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Page 3
Among those who laid the foundations for the study of this almost
unexplored department of Jewish history, the settlement of Jews in
Russia and their vicissitudes during the dark ages, the most prominent
are perhaps Isaac B�r Levinsohn, Abraham Harkavy, and Simon Dubnow.
There is much to be said of each of these as writers, scholars, and men.
Here they concern us as Russo-Jewish historians. What Linnaeus, Agassiz,
and Cuvier did in the field of natural philosophy, they accomplished in
their chosen province of Jewish history.[1] Levinsohn was the first to
express the opinion that the Russian Jews hailed, not from Germany, as
is commonly supposed, but from the banks of the Volga. This hypothesis,
corroborated by tradition, Harkavy established as a fact. Originally the
vernacular of the Jews of Volhynia, Podolia, and Kiev was Russian and
Polish, or, rather, the two being closely allied, Palaeo-Slavonic. The
havoc wrought by the Crusades in the Jewish communities of Western
Europe caused a constant stream of German-Jewish immigrants to pour,
since 1090, into the comparatively free countries of the Slavonians.
Russo-Poland became the America of the Old World. The Jewish settlers
from abroad soon outnumbered the native Jews, and they spread a new
language and new customs wherever they established themselves.[2]
Whether the Jews of Russia were originally pagans from the shores of the
Black and Caspian Seas, converted to Judaism under the Khazars during
the eighth century, or Palestinian exiles subjugated by their Slavonian
conquerors and assimilated with them, it is indisputable that they
inhabited what we know to-day as Russia long before the Varangian prince
Rurik came, at the invitation of Scythian and Sarmatian savages, to lay
the foundation of the Muscovite empire. In Feodosia there is a synagogue
at least a thousand years old. The Greek inscription on a marble slab,
dating back to 80-81 B.C.E., preserved in the Imperial Hermitage in St.
Petersburg, makes it certain that they flourished in the Crimea before
the destruction of the Temple. In a communication to the Russian
Geographical Society, M. Pogodin makes the statement, that there still
exist a synagogue and a cemetery in the Crimea that belong to the
pre-Christian era. Some of the tombstones, bearing Jewish names, and
decorated with the seven-branched Menorah, date back to 157 B.C.E.;
while Chufut-Kale, also known as the Rock of the Jews (Sela'
ha-Yehudim), from the fortress supposed to have been built there by the
Jews, would prove Jewish settlements to have been made there during the
Babylonian or Persian captivity.[3]
Though the same antiquity cannot be established for other Jewish
settlements, we know that Kiev, "the mother of Russian cities," had many
Jews long before the eighth century, who thus antedated the Russians as
citizens. According to Joseph Hakohen they came there from Persia in
690, according to Malishevsky in 776. It is certain that their influence
was felt as early as the latter part of the tenth century. The Russian
Chronicles ascribed to Nestor relate that they endeavored, in 986, to
induce Grand Duke Vladimir to accept their religion. They did not
succeed as they had succeeded two centuries before with the khan of the
Khazars.[4] Yet the grand duke, who had the greatest influence in
introducing and spreading Greek Catholicism, and who is now worshipped
as a saint, was always favorably disposed toward them.
There were other places that were inhabited early by Jews. There are
traditions to the effect that Jews lived in Poland as early as the ninth
century, and under the Boreslavs (992-1278) they are said to have
enjoyed considerable privileges, carried on a lively trade, and spread
as far as Kiev. Chernigov in Little Russia (the Ukraine), Baku in South
Russia (Transcaucasia), Kalisz and Warsaw, Brest and Grodno, in West
Russia (Russian Poland), all possess Jewish communities of considerable
antiquity. In the townlet Eishishki, near Vilna, a tombstone set in 1171
was still in existence at the end of the last century, and Khelm,
Government Kovno, has a synagogue to which tradition ascribes an age of
eight hundred years.[5]
The Jewish population in all these communities was prosperous and
respected. Jews were in favor with the Government, enjoyed equal rights
with their Gentile neighbors, and were especially prominent as traders
and farmers of taxes. Their monoxyla, or one-oared canoes, loaded with
silks, furs, and precious metals, issued from the Borysthanes, traversed
the Baltic and the Euxine, the Oder and the Bosphorus, the Danube and
the Black Sea, and carried on the commerce between the Turks and the
Slavonians. They were granted the honorable and lucrative privilege of
directing and controlling the mints, and that of putting Hebrew as well
as Slavonic inscriptions on their coins.[6] In the Lithuanian Magna
Charta, granted by Vitold in 1388, the Jews of Brest were given many
rights, and about a year later those of Grodno were permitted to engage
in all pursuits and occupations, and exempted from paying taxes on
synagogues and cemeteries. They possessed full jurisdiction in their own
affairs. Some were raised to the nobility, notably the Josephovich
brothers, Abraham and Michael. Under King Alexander Jagellon, Abraham
was assessor of Kovno, alderman of Smolensk, and prefect of Minsk; he
was called "sir" (jastrzhembets), was presented with the estates of
Voidung, Grinkov, and Troki (1509), and appointed Secretary of the
Treasury in Lithuania (1510). The other brother, Michael, was made
"fiscal agent to the king." In the eighteenth century, Andrey
Abramovich, of the same family but not of the Jewish faith, was senator
and castellan of Brest-Litovsk.[7] They were not unique exceptions.
Abraham Shmoilovich of Turisk is spoken of as "honorable sir" in leases
of large estates. Affras Rachmailovich and Judah Bogdanovich figure
among the merchant princes of Livonia and Lithuania; and Francisco Molo,
who settled later in Amsterdam, was financial agent of John III of
Poland in 1679. The influence of the last-named was so great with the
Dutch States-General that the Treaty of Ryswick was concluded with Louis
XIV, in 1697, through his mediation.[8]
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