It is not difficult to discern in this project the influence of Joseph II.'s policy, which similarly sought to effect the "improvement" of the Jew through compulsory enlightenment and his amalgamation with the native population, as a preliminary for his attainment of equal rights. It seems that the project met with a friendly reception in the progressive circles of Polish society, which were animated by the ideas of the eighteenth century. The anonymous pamphlet appeared in a second edition in 1785, and a third edition was published in 1789 by Butrymovich, a deputy of the Quadrennial Diet, who added comments of his own. A year later Butrymovich extracted from his edition the project of Jewish reform, and laid it before the committee of the Diet, which was then meeting amidst the uproar of the great French Revolution.[220]
As for the inner life of this Jewish mass of one million souls, it displays the same saddening spectacle of disintegration. The social rottenness of the environment, the poison of the decaying body of Poland, worked its way into Jewish life, and began to undermine its foundations, once so firmly grounded. The communal autonomy, which had been the mainstay of public Jewish life, was unmistakably falling to pieces. In the southwestern region, in Podolia, Volhynia, and Galicia,—the last having been annexed by Austria,—it had been shattered by the great religious split produced by Hasidism. The Kahal organization was tottering to its fall, either because of the division of the community into two hostile factions, the Hasidim and Mithnagdim, or because of the inertia of the Hasidic majority, which, blindly obeying the dictates of the Tzaddik, was incapable of social organization. In the northwestern region, in Lithuania and White Russia,—the latter having become a Russian province—the rabbinical party, going hand in hand with the Kahal authorities, was superior to the forces of Hasidism. Nevertheless the Kahal organization was infected by the general process of degeneration, which had seized the country at large in the partition period. The Jewish plutocracy followed the example of the Polish pans in exploiting the poor laboring masses. The rabbinate, like the Polish clergy, catered to the rich. The secular and the ecclesiastic oligarchy, which controlled the Kahal, victimized the community by a shockingly disproportionate assessment of state and communal taxes, throwing the main burden on the impecunious classes, and thus bringing them to the verge of ruin. The parnasim, or wardens, of the community, as well as the rabbis, were occasionally found guilty of embezzlement, usury, and blackmail.
The oppression of the Kahal oligarchy went to such lengths that the suffering masses, unmindful of the traditional prohibition to appeal to the "law courts of the Gentiles," frequently sought to obtain redress from the Christian administration against these Jewish satraps. In 1782 representatives of the lower classes, principally artisans, of the Jewish population of Minsk, lodged a complaint with the Lithuanian Financial Tribunal against the local Kahal administration, which "was completely ruining the community of Minsk." They alleged that the Kahal leaders embezzled the receipts from taxation, and misappropriated the surplus for their own benefit, that by means of the herem (excommunication) they squeezed all kinds of revenues from the poor and appropriated their hard-earned pennies. The complainants add that for their attempt to lay bare the misdoings of the Kahal before the administration, they had been arrested, imprisoned, and pilloried in the synagogue by order of the Kahal wardens.
In Vilna, the capital of Lithuania, celebrated on account of its aristocracy of mind as well as its aristocracy of birth, a split occurred within the ranks of the Kahal oligarchy itself. For nearly twenty years there was a conflict between the Rabbi, a certain Samuel Vigdorovich (son of Avigdor), and the Kahal, or, more correctly, between the rabbinical party and the Kahal party. The Rabbi had been convicted of corruption, drunkenness, biased legal decisions, perjury, and so on. The litigation between the Rabbi and the Kahal had, at an earlier stage, been submitted to a court of arbitration as well as to a conference of Lithuanian rabbis. Since the strife and agitation in the city did not subside, both parties appealed, in 1785, to Radziwill, the Voyevoda of Vilna, who decided in favor of the Kahal, and dismissed the Rabbi from office.
The common people, standing between the two belligerent parties, were particularly bitter towards the Kahal, whose abuses and misdeeds exceeded all measure. A little later, between 1786 and 1788, a champion of the people's cause appeared in the person of Simeon Volfovich (son of Wolf), who, acting as the spokesman of the Jewish masses of Vilna, had to struggle and suffer on their behalf. To ward off the persecution by the Kahal, Volfovich managed to obtain an "iron letter" from King Stanislav Augustus, guaranteeing inviolability of person and property to himself and to the whole Jewish commonalty, "which the tyranny of the Kahal had brought to the verge of ruin." This did not prevent the Kahal authorities from subjecting Simeon to the herem and entering his name in the "black book," while the Voyevoda, who sided with the Kahal tyrants, sent the mutinous champion of the people to the prison of Neswizh (1788). From there the prisoner addressed his memorandum to the Quadrennial Diet, emphasizing the need of a radical change in the communal organization of the Jews, and urging the abolition of the Kahal power, which pressed so heavily upon the people. This struggle between the Kahal, the rabbinate, and the common people shook to its foundations the social organization of the Jews of Lithuania shortly before the incorporation of this country into the Russian Empire.
A somber picture of the conduct of the communal oligarchy is supplied by one of the few broad-minded rabbis of the period:
The leaders [rabbis and elders] consume the offerings of the people, and drink wine for the fines imposed by them. Being in full control of the taxes, they assess and excommunicate [their opponents]; they remunerate themselves for their public activity by every means at their disposal, both openly and in secret. They make no step without accepting bribes, while the destitute carry the burden.... The learned cater to the rich, and, as for the rabbis, they have only contempt for one another. The students of the Talmud despise those engaged in mysticism and Cabala, while the common people accept the testimony of both, and conclude that all scholars are a disgrace to their calling.... The rich value the favor of the Polish pans above the good opinion of the best and noblest among the Jews. The rich Jew does not appreciate the honor shown to him by a scholar, but boasts of having been allowed to enter the mansion of a Polish noble and view his treasures.
The rabbi complains in particular that the well-to-do classes are obsessed by a love of show; that the women wear strings of pearls around their necks, and array themselves in many-colored fabrics.
The education of the young generation in the heders and yeshibahs sank to ever lower depths. Instruction in the elements of secular culture was entirely out of the question. The Jewish school bore a purely rabbinical character. True, Talmudic scholasticism succeeded in sharpening the intellect, but, failing to supply concrete information, it often confused the mind. Hasidism had wrested a huge piece of territory from the dominion of Rabbinism, but, as far as education was concerned, it was powerless to create anything new. The religious and national sentiments of Polish Jewry had undergone a profound transformation at the hands of Hasidism, but the transformation lured the Jews backward, far into the thickets of mystical contemplation and blind faith, both subversive of rational thinking and of any attempt at social reform.