History of the Jews, Vol. 4 (of 6)

by Heinrich Graetz

But the very fact that the German Jews needed a defender proves that their condition was not easy. For Emperor Maximilian was not a man of decided character, but was swayed by all kinds of influences and insinuations; nor did he always follow his father's advice. His conduct towards the Jews, therefore, was always wavering; now he granted, or at least promised, them his protection; now he offered his help, if not for their sanguinary persecution, at least for their expulsion or humiliation. At times he lent ear to the lying accusations that the Jews reviled the host, and murdered infants, falsehoods diligently promulgated by Dominican friars, and, since the alleged martyrdom of young Simon of Trent, readily believed. Hence, during Maximilian's reign, Jews were not only expelled from Germany and the adjoining states, but were hunted down and tortured; they were in daily expectation of the rack, and of the martyr's death, so that a special confession of sins was drawn up for such cases, and the innocently accused, summoned to apostatize, sealed their confession with death, and joyfully sacrificed themselves for the One God. When, either with the sanction or by the passive permission of the emperor, Jews were banished, he felt no compunction in confiscating their property and turning it into money.

The emperor did not, indeed, expel the Nuremberg community, but for a pecuniary consideration gave the citizens leave to do so. Yet Christians presumed to reproach Jews with making money unjustly, whereas only the rich did so, and then only on a small scale. Immediately after the emperor's accession, the townsmen of Nuremberg appealed to him to permit the expulsion of the Jews on account of "loose conduct." This "loose conduct" was explained in the indictment to be the reception of foreign co-religionists, whereby the normal number of Jews had been excessively increased in the town; the practice of inordinate usury; fraud in recovery of debts, whereby honest tradesmen had been impoverished, and finally the harboring of rogues and vagabonds. To stir up hatred against them, and to confirm the Latin reading (i. e., the educated) classes, in the illusion that Jews were blasphemers, revilers of the host and infanticides, the rich citizen, Antonius Koberger, had the venomous anti-Jewish Fortalitium fidei of the Spanish Franciscan, Alfonso de Spina, reprinted at his own expense. After long petitioning, Emperor Maximilian at last granted the prayer of Nuremberg, "on account of the fidelity with which the town had ever served the imperial house," abrogated the privileges enjoyed by the Jews, and allowed the town council to fix a time for their expulsion, stipulating, however, that the houses, lands, synagogues, and even the Jewish cemetery should fall to the imperial treasury. He, moreover, granted to Nuremberg the privilege of being forever exempt from receiving Jews within its walls (July 5th, 1498). The town council at first allowed four months only for the exodus—and the cultured, virtuous and humanity-preaching patrician, Willibald Pirkheimer, afterwards so strong a pillar of the Humanists, was then a member of the council! Upon the supplications of the unfortunate people, the short reprieve was prolonged by three months. But the Jews, summoned to the synagogue by the sheriffs, had to swear to leave the town by that time. At last, on March 10th, 1499, the much reduced community left Nuremberg, to which it had returned after the Black Death.

At about the same time the Jews of other German towns, Ulm, Nordlingen, Colmar, and Magdeburg, were sent into banishment.

The community of Ratisbon, then the oldest in Germany, was to fare still worse; even then it heard the warning voice to prepare for expulsion. Since the inhabitants of that imperial city, through the disputes with the Jews growing out of the false blood-accusation, had suffered humiliation and pecuniary loss at the hands of Emperor Frederick, the former friendly feeling between Jews and Christians had given way to bitterness and hatred. Instead of attributing to the right cause the troubles and misfortunes which had come upon the town by its attempted secession from the empire, the citizens charged the Jews with being the authors of their misfortunes, and vented their anger on them. The priests, exasperated by the failure of their plot against the Jews, daily stirred up the fanaticism of the populace, openly preaching that the Jews must be expelled. The millers refused to sell them flour, the bakers, bread (1499), for the clergy had threatened the tradespeople with excommunication if they supplied them with food. On certain days Jews were not admitted into the market place, on others they were allowed to make their purchases only after stated hours, when the Christians had satisfied their wants. "Under severe penalties," imposed by the senate, Christians were prohibited from making purchases for Jews; the former were to "secure the glory of God and their own salvation" by being cruel to the latter. The town council seriously discussed applying to Emperor Maximilian to give his consent to the expulsion of the Jews, allowing about twenty-four families to remain. For a few years more they were permitted to drag on a miserable existence. Besides Ratisbon, only two large communities remained in Germany, viz., at Frankfort-on-the-Main and Worms, and even these were often threatened with expulsion.

There were many Jews in Prague, but this town was not in Germany proper; Bohemia was counted a private possession of the crown, under the rule of Ladislaus, king of Hungary. The Bohemian Jews were not too well off under him; the Jewish quarter in Prague was often plundered by the populace. The citizens were sincerely anxious to expel the Jews from Bohemia. But the latter had their patrons, especially among the nobility. When, at a diet, the question of the expulsion or retention of the Jews arose, the decree was passed (August 7th, 1501) that the crown of Bohemia was for all time to tolerate them. If any one of them offended against the law, he only was to be punished; his crime was not to be visited on the whole Jewish community. King Ladislaus confirmed this decision of the diet, only to break it very shortly after, for the citizens of Prague were opposed to it, and spared no pains to frustrate its fulfillment. They so strongly prejudiced the king against the Jews as to induce him to decree their expulsion, and to threaten with banishment such Christians as should venture to intercede for them. By what favorable dispensation they remained in the country is not known. Though in daily expectation of expatriation, they grew reconciled to having their habitation on the verge of a volcano. A descendant of the Italian family of printers, Soncinus, named Gershon Cohen, established a Hebrew printing office at Prague (about 1503), the first in Germany, nearly four decades after the foundation of Hebrew printing offices in Italy.

The Prague community does not seem to have excelled in learning; for some time not a single scientific work, not even one on a Talmudic or rabbinical subject, issued from the press of Gershon; it merely supplied the needs of the synagogue, whilst Italian and Turkish offices spread important ancient and contemporary works. We find but one rabbinical authority mentioned in those days: Jacob Polak (born about 1460, died about 1530), the originator of a new method of Talmud study, a foreigner, and, with the exception of his namesake Jacob Berab, in the East, the most profound and sagacious Talmudist of his time. Curiously enough, the astonishing facility of ingenious disquisition on the basis of the Talmud (Pilpul), attributed to Polak, which attained its highest perfection in Poland, proceeded from a native of Poland.

After Italy and Turkey, Poland was in those days a refuge for hunted and exiled wanderers, chiefly for those from Germany. Here, as well as in Lithuania, united with Poland under one sovereign, Jews enjoyed a better position than in the neighboring lands beyond the Vistula and the Carpathians, though the monk Capistrano had for a while interrupted the good understanding between the government and the Jews.

Kings and the nobility were, to a certain extent, dependent on them, and, when other interests did not conflict, generally granted them privileges, because with their capital and commerce they were able to turn the territorial wealth of the country into money, and to supply its inhabitants, poor in coin, with the necessary funds. The farming of the tolls and the distilleries were mostly in the hands of Jews. It goes without saying that they also possessed land, and carried on trades. Against 500 Christian there were 3,200 Jewish wholesale dealers in Poland, and three times as many artificers, including workers in gold and silver, smiths and weavers. The statute of Casimir IV, so favorable to Jews, was still in force. For though, constrained by the fanatical monk Capistrano, he had abrogated it, yet in view of the advantages that the crown of Poland derived from the Jews, he re-enacted the same laws a few years after. The Jews were generally treated as citizens of the state, and were not compelled to wear ignominious badges; they were also allowed to carry arms. After the death of this politic king, two opponents arose against them: on the one hand, the clergy, who saw in the favored position of the Polish Jews an offense to Christianity, and on the other, the German merchants, who, long settled in Polish towns, had brought with them their guilds and old-fashioned prejudices, and hated the Jewish traders and artificers from sheer envy. United they succeeded in prejudicing the successors of Casimir, his sons John Albert and Alexander, against the Jews, so that their privileges were abolished, and the Jews themselves confined to particular quarters, or even banished altogether from certain towns (1496–1505). But the next sovereign, Sigismund I (1506–1548), was favorably disposed towards them, and repeatedly protected them against persecution and expulsion. The strongest supporters, however, of the Polish Jews were the Polish nobility, who hated the Germans from national and political antipathy, and therefore, both from policy and inclination, favored the Jews, and used them as their tools against the arrogant Germans. And since the nobles held the high official posts, the laws against Jews, to the vexation of the clergy and the guilds, remained a dead letter. Poland, therefore, was an asylum much sought after by persecuted Jews. If a Jew who had turned Christian, or a Christian, wished to become a Jew, he could do so as freely in Poland as in Turkey.

The rabbis were important agents for the crown. They had the privilege of collecting the poll-tax from the communities and paying it over to the state. Therefore, the rabbis of large towns, appointed or confirmed by the king, became chiefs in the administration of communal affairs, represented the Jews before the crown, and bore the title of chief rabbi. The rabbis retained the civil jurisdiction, and were authorized to banish unworthy members, and even to inflict the punishment of death. But in Poland, the country which for several centuries was to become the chief home of the Talmud and the nursery of Talmudic students and rabbis, which was long enveloped, as it were, in a Talmudic atmosphere, there were no prominent Talmudists at the beginning of the sixteenth century; it became the home of the Talmud only after the immigration of numerous German scholars. Coming from the districts of the Rhine and Main, from Bavaria, Suabia, Bohemia, and Austria, swarms of Jewish families settled on the banks of the Vistula and the Dnieper, having lost their fortunes, but bringing with them their most precious possessions, which they defended with their lives, and which they could not be robbed of, namely, their religious convictions, the customs of their fathers, and their Talmudic learning. The German rabbinical school, which at home had no breathing-space, established itself in Poland and Lithuania, in Ruthenia and Volhynia, spread in all directions, and, impregnated with Slavonic elements, transformed itself into a peculiar, a Polish school.

But the Jewish-German fugitives transplanted to Poland not only the knowledge of the Talmud, but also that of the German language, as then spoken; this they imparted to the native Jews, and it gradually superseded the Polish or Ruthenian tongue. As the Spanish Jews turned portions of European and Asiatic Turkey into a new Spain, the German Jews transformed Poland, Lithuania, and the territories belonging thereto, into a new Germany. For several centuries, therefore, the Jews were divided into Spanish and German speaking Jews, the Italian speaking members being too small in number to count, especially as in Italy the Jews were compelled to understand either Spanish or German. The Jews settled in Poland gradually cast off their German awkwardness and simplicity, but not the language. They honored it as a palladium, as a holy remembrance; and though in their intercourse with Poles they made use of the language of the country, in the family circle, and in their schools and prayers, they adhered to German. They valued it, next to Hebrew, as a holy language. It was a fortunate thing for the Jews that at the time when new storms gathered over their heads in Germany, they found on her borders a country which offered them a hospitable welcome and protection. For a tempest burst in Germany, which had its first beginnings in the narrow Jewish circle, but eventually drew on the Jews the attention of all Christendom. An eventful, historical birth, which was to change the face of European affairs, lay, so to speak, in a Jewish manger.