CHAPTER VIII
POLISH JEWRY DURING THE PERIOD OF THE PARTITIONS
1. The Jews of Poland after the First Partition
On the eve of the great crisis which overtook the Jews of Western Europe in the wake of the French Revolution, the vast Jewish center in Eastern Europe was in a state of political and social disintegration. We refer to the position of Polish Jewry during the interval between the first partition of Poland and the second (1772-1793).
The first vivisection had just been performed on the diseased organism of the Polish Republic.[215] Russia had chopped off one flank—the province of White Russia[216]; Austria had seized Galicia, and Prussia had helped herself to Pomerania and a part of the province of Posen. Correspondingly the compact organism of Polish Jewry was divided among the three Powers. One section of this huge mass, which lived a secluded and thoroughly original life of its own, suddenly became the object of "reformatory" experiments in the laboratory of Joseph II. Another section found itself in the rôle of a "tolerated" population in the royal barracks of Frederick II., who would fain have acquired the Polish provinces minus their Jewish inhabitants. A third portion came under the sway of Russia, a country which had not yet become reconciled to the presence of a handful of Jews on the border of her Empire, in the province of Little Russia.
What was left of Polish Jewry after the surgical operation of 1772 experienced, after its own fashion, all the pre-mortal agonies of the doomed commonwealth, which was destined to undergo two more partitions. Dying Poland was tossing about restlessly, endeavoring to prolong its existence by the enactments of the Permanent Council or by the reforms of the Quadrennial Diet (1788-1791).[217] In connection with the general reforms of the country the need was felt of curing the old specific ailment of Poland, the Jewish Problem. The finance committee of the Quadrennial Diet gathered all available information concerning the number of Jews in the reduced kingdom and their economic and cultural status.
The following are the results of this official investigation, as embodied in the report of one of the members of the committee, the well-known historian Thaddeus Chatzki, who made a special study of the Jewish problem.
Officially the number of Jews residing in Poland and Lithuania about the year 1788 was computed at 617,032. Chatzki, fortified by an array of additional data, rightly points out that, owing to the fact that fiscal considerations caused the people to evade the official census, the actual number of Jews mounted up to at least 900,000 souls of both sexes. This computation agrees substantially with the authoritative statement of Butrymovich, a member of the "Jewish Commission" appointed by the Quadrennial Diet. For, according to this statement, the Jews of Poland formed an eighth of the whole population, the latter numbering 8,790,000 souls. The Jewish population, thus amounting to practically one million, multiplied rapidly, owing to the custom of early marriages then in vogue. The same custom, on the other hand, was responsible for increased mortality among Jewish children and for an ever-growing physical deterioration of the adolescent generation. The school training received by Jewish children was limited to the study of the religious literature of Judaism, particularly the Talmud.
As regards commerce, the Jews figured in it in the following proportions: 75% of the whole export trade of Poland and 10% of the imports lay in their hands. The living expenses of the Jewish business man were half as large as those of his Christian fellow-merchant, which fact enabled the Jew to sell his goods at a much lower figure. Bankruptcy was more frequent among Jewish business men than among Christians. In the provinces outside of Great Poland half of all the artisans were Jews. Shoemakers, tailors, furriers, goldsmiths, carpenters, stone-cutters, and barbers, were particularly numerous among them. In the whole country only fourteen Jewish families were found to engage in agriculture. Wealth among Jews was but very seldom retained for several successive generations within the same family, owing to frequent bankruptcy and to a propensity towards risky speculations. A twelfth part of the Jewish population was made up of "idlers," that is, people without a definite occupation. A sixtieth part consisted of beggars.