Light and Darkness in Eastern Europe
Judaism has always been an amalgam of contrasting experiences in many lands and the transmission of ancient teachings containing within themselves the power of renewal and development.
Ashkenasi and Sephardi Judaism give one example of the polarities which shape Jewish faith, just as the struggle between rationalism and mysticism must be seen as a creative dynamism always present in Jewish thought. The countries which opened themselves to the Jews play their part in this development. After the expulsion from Spain (1492) Poland had become a place of refuge. Where Central Europe became a place of persecution, Poland and Eastern Europe offered new hope and opportunity. Great Jewish centres developed, and the Council of the Four Lands, a natural development once King Sigismund Augustus had granted the Jews self-government in 1551, legislated for a community grown rich not only in material but also spiritual possessions. Great scholars arose, academies were established and the time of Babylonia seemed about to re-emerge. But appearances were deceptive. Economic circumstances changed, and the Jews became the outsiders, used as scapegoats which the nobility interposed between themselves and the peasants. For example, church keys would be held by Jews, so that a poor couple could not enter the church to have their child baptised until the fee was paid. Jews were used to collect taxes. It was not only the church teaching of deicide, but also such tactics as these which created a virulent and enduring anti-Semitism in Poland and Russia.Anti-Semitism had taken on a most particular shape in the Middle Ages. Xenophobia here mingled with the hatred of an exposed community who were used both as scapegoats and as outlets for rebellion against Judaism’s ancient teachings. Yet it was the Christian insistence upon the Jews as Christ-killers and ‘defilers of the Host’ (both accusations were used to shore up loyalty to church doctrine) which proved most destructive.
Martin Luther is often cited here, with his pamphlet, Concerning the Jews and their Lies. Here is an almost complete outline of the Nazi tactics: ‘destroy and burn their books, their synagogues, their homes, enslave them, imprison them’. But these were the teachings of a man grown old, sick and afraid; the young Luther had written a book acclaimed by many Jews, That Jesus Christ was a hornJew, in which he spoke in favour of that persecuted people. Thejews welcomed him, and even changed Kabbalistic prophecies to apply to him (in 1524, Rabbi Abraham took a messianic prophecy and wrote, ‘We first thought that the man prophesied by the stars would be the messiah, the son of Joseph; now it is proven that he (Luther) is the man about whom all speak, who is noble in all his actions...’) -11 Yet at the centre of Luther’s teaching was the awareness that the Old Testament which he loved had to be taken away from thejews; and that the Christians, not thejews, were the chosen people. Christians defined themselves in terms of the Jews; and Jews had to assert their identity against Christianity, in Eastern as in Western Europe.Enormous pressure had descended upon thejews of Eastern Europe. Their life had been narrowed, compressed, intensified in the cauldron of suffering. In the process, they achieved an adamantine identity, with the rough surface concealing the deep brilliance of the precious centre. The persecutions damaged the social structure: an alliance of the few wealthy and powerful with the rabbinic scholars made fife even more difficult for the Jewish masses. But the deep learning and great academies, the encouragement given to education, and the knowledge of both Talmudic and mystical sources, created a storehouse of religious treasure here which feeds Jewry even today. The few remnants left after the Holocaust show how much greatness rested beneath that grim exterior of Jewish fife in the East. Even if much of that learning seemed wasted by the pilpul interpretation ofTalmudic texts (mental gymnastics, more concerned with showing brilliance than meaning, taught first by Rabbijacob Pollak (d. 1541)) and was not applicable to daily life, it gave an intellectual excitement and a standard of excellence to that rabbinic learning which has not been surpassed.