THE GREATEST HORROR,
THE GREATEST TRIUMPH
Poland as a “Jewish State”
 Polish and Lithuanian kings, like many other
Christian rulers, invited Jews to settling in
their lands during the 13th and 14th centuries.
 The Jews brought experience with trade and
money-lending, and they helped boost the
heavily agricultural economies of these
Eastern European countries.
 Over time, the Jews were able to rent land and
farm, and as their families grew, the Jews spread
throughout Eastern Europe.
 However, they still usually lived separated from
their Christian neighbors, in small villages called
shtetls.
 It’s a measure of how insular their communities
were that these Jews spoke a combination of
Hebrew and German (Yiddish), more often than
Polish or Lithuanian.
Four lands, one people
 Over the centuries of relative freedom, the
thousands of separate shtetls around Western
Russia, Lithuania, and Poland came to form a
federation called the Council of the Four
Lands.
 The Council, which acted like a behind the
scenes, independent Jewish parliament
transcending national boundaries, ruled on
legal issues concerning the Jewish people.
The Chmielnicki Massacres
 Over time, Poland has slowly
annexed increasing portions
of the Ukraine. However,
many of the Greek Orthodox
Christians in the Ukraine
weren't exactly pleased to be
gobbled up by a Catholic
country.
 In 1648, the Ukrainian
Cossacks rebelled (Cossack
Rebellion), led by a man
named Bogdan Chmielnicki
(some say “Khmielnitski”).
 Much like the ethnic cleansing that happened
in the late 1990s in Serbia and Croatia, these
men tortured and massacred everyone who
wasn’t of their religious faith, slaughtering
Polish nobles, Catholic clergy, and, of course,
Jews.
 Poland allied with Sweden to fight off the
rebellion; the Cossacks allied with Russia.
 The warfare was intense, and both sides
slaughtered the Jews. As many as 10,000
Jews died, and the fighting led countless
thousands of Jews to flee to Germany and
Lithuania.
 These areas became major centers for Jewish
education and culture over the next 300
years.
The Dawning of a New Age
 Outside of Poland and the surrounding areas,
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were
less violent, but in many respects more
restrictive.
 For example, in 1555 Pope Paul IV ordered
that all Jews live in “ghettos”. In places like
Germany and Prussia, Jews were imposed
taxes on all cattle and any new Jews.
The Enlightenment
 By the time The Enlightenment came to be
(especially during the American Revolution),
about only 2,000 Jews were living in the U.S.
at the time, but this freedom would later
bring over a million Jews to the American
shores. (The idea that even though Jews may
have different rituals, customs, and beliefs
they were still human and deserved natural
rights too!)
http://video.about.com/europeanhistory/Overview--TheEnlightenment.htm
Let them eat matzah!
 The French Revolution of 1789 changed the
face of Europe, and the French Declaration of
the Rights of Man, which specifically notes
that no one should be persecuted for their
religion, brought the Enlightenment to the
political arena.
 However, when a group of Jews soon after
asked to be accepted as citizens, the French
National Assembly debated the issue for two
years before finally agreeing.
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=french+declaration+
of+the+rights+of+man&FORM=HDRSC3#view=detail&mid
=0E0076D4EBD959905CA00E0076D4EBD959905CA0
 While there were, of course, many people in the
Assembly who didn’t want to see the Jews given any
rights, the primary issue echoed inside the Jewish
community too:
 Were the Jews a separate nation or people, or were they
French people (or German people or Italian people, or
whatever) who were adherents of a Jewish religion?
 Napoleon Bonaparte raised this issue once again in
1807 by gathering a number of rabbis and Jewish
scholars as a new “Sanhedrin” (ruling legal body)
which would decide important Jewish matters.
 As it turned out, this Sanhedrin was only a
shallow political gesture.
 It was called to assembly only once for the
express purpose of allowing Napoleon to ask a
series of questions about the Jews’ loyalty to
France.
 Astonishingly, this was the first time in history
that a Jewish court of authority officially agreed
that Judaism was a religion and not a separate
people.
 The Jews of France first had loyalty to France,
they said, not to the Jewish people.
 Napoleon was pleased with the result and spread
this particular message of Enlightenment
throughout the countries he conquered.
 Other rulers, too, began to be more tolerant of
religious differences during this time.
 The Jews were often allowed to leave their
ghettos and attend schools, though most Jews
tended to be ware of mixing too much with the
non-Jewish population.
*DAWNING OF A NEW AGE ASSIGNMENT*
Beyond the Pale
 In the 1770s, after years of fighting, Poland was
partitioned and absorbed by Lithuania, Austria, and
Russia.
 Russia had little interest in the Enlightenment or
emancipating the Jews, or just about anyone else,
either.
 Trying to figure out what to do with the hundreds of
thousands (perhaps millions) of Jews it had recently
acquired, Russia set aside an area, called the Pale of
Settlement, inside which the Jews were allowed to live.
While the region was enormous, this segregation from
the rest of Russia kept contact and trade with Christian
communities to a minimum.
 Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, not content
simply to segregate the Jews, tried
various means to convert them to
Christianity.
 He used all the old tactics, like making life
as miserable as possible.
 Finally, in 1827, the Tzar instituted a
quota of Jewish boys to be conscripted into
the Russian army and lowered the minimum age from 18 to
12, sometimes as early as 8.
 The term of service was 25 years; many either converted or died
due to poor treatment.
 It was clearly a systematic and cruel attempt to humiliate and
punish the Jews into assimilating.

Activity: Russification under the Tsar: http://bifshistory.wikispaces.com/file/view/russification.pdf/162392487/russification.pdf
Responses to Enlightenment
 By the beginning of the 19th century, not all
Jews in Western Europe were happy about
their emancipation.
 For example, some wealthy Jews who had
enjoyed special benefits in the more
restricted society resented the new freedoms
of the lower-class Jews.
Conversion
 If Judaism was a religion rather than a nation
or a people, then Jews could choose to be
Jewish or not.
 Suddenly, the Jews of Germany and France
no longer felt they had to conform to a Jewish
culture, resulting in a loss of a strong Jewish
community.
 There were many solutions to this problem
proposed both by Jews and non Jews, but the
decisions that German Jewry made had the
greatest impact on modern American Judaism.
 Many Jews, finding the Western society,
philosophy, and culture more exciting and
fulfilling than the Judaism they had grown up
with, decided to convert to Christianity.
 Most of these Jews didn’t believe in Christian
theology any more than a Jewish one.
Reform
 It was very difficult for Jews entering the
mainstream, Christian, Western European
culture of the 19th century.
 One response to these difficulties from the
Jewish side was reform Judaism, which tried
to demonstrate that Judaism could conform
to modern secular life.
Four main points about Reform:
 Early Reform Judaism insisted that there was no
such thing as Jewish people; Judaism was only a
religion.
 When religious scholarship began to recognize that
Judaism had evolved over time, the reformers felt
that all sorts of changes were possible.
 They tried to make their observance look like those
of their Protestant Christian neighbors. (Ex- played
organ music on Shabbat)
 They instituted Jewish schools which emphasized
secular studies over Talmudic studies, and they
generally taught Jewish law was less important than
the ethical teachings of the Prophets.
To change or not to change
 Many Western European Jews rejected the
Reform movement’s policies; some even tried
to get the government to stop them.
However, the traditional “orthodox” world
also split into two camps: Ultra- Orthodox
and Neo- Orthodox”
 There were those who
wanted to continue
living as they had in the
ghetto. For them,
maintaining tradition
meant never changing
with the times. These
are the folks that today
we tend to call “UltraOrthodox”.
 On the other hand, there
were other rabbis who
felt the necessity to
change with the times,
but also refused to strip
away the millennia of
Jewish tradition.
 These were known as
“Neo-Orthodox”. Rabbi
Samson Raphael Hirsch
laid the foundation for
this term.
Reactions to reactions
 The 1800s were fertile years for Jewish
thought throughout Europe, and a number of
other movements besides the Reform and
Orthodox Jews appeared.
 The roots of Conservative Judaism, which
would have a major impact in American
during the 20th century, were laid by
Zachariah Frannkel (1801-1875), who
accepted that the Jews were a people but
rejected the literal truth of the Torah.
 Similarly, the Musar (morality) movement,
started by Rabbi Israel Salanter (1810-1883),
felt that Talmud study had to be accompanied
by ethical good works and great humility in
the everyday real world.
The Rise of Nationalism and Racism
 The 19th century saw the growing zeal of
nationalism, and large nationalist groups in Germany
and France became increasingly powerful.
 All nationalist ideology rests on an “us-vs-them”
mentality, whether its “our country is better than
theirs” or “our pure white race makes this country
great, and impure racial stock weakens us”.
 In an “us vs them” mentality, no matter how
ludicrous or simple-minded, the Jews were slated to
be on the losing “them” side. The Jews, especially
those who believed that as they assimilated they
would be increasingly accepted, had a rude
awakening.
The return of anti-Jewish policies
 In the 19th century, it quickly became clear
that many people didn’t care whether or not
the Jews considered themselves as a separate
nation, or even whether or not the Jews were
fiercely nationalistic French or German
citizens. In some countries, such as Austria,
politicians began running on specifically antiJewish platforms.
Examples
In England
In France
 No Jew could be inducted
 In 1894, a high ranking
into Parliament b/c he
would have to take a
“Christian” oath.
official in the French army,
Alfred Dreyfus, was framed
for treason just b/c he was
Jewish. In his trial, the
mobs repeatedly chanted
“DEATH TO THE JEWS”.

*show video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E212ggKqKt0
 Then, as anthropology and theories of
evolution emerged, the concepts of “race”
and “racism” were embraced by many
nationalists.
 Suddenly, even converting to Christianity was
no longer a reasonable alternative for the
Jews b/c they were perceived not as a nation
or as a religion, but as a race- and clearly an
inferior one to the dominant whites.
The pogroms
 In the 1880s, the Russian government began
tolerating and even sponsoring pogroms
(massacres, or literally “riots”) directed at the
Jews.
 At the time, over half the worlds Jews lived
under Russian rule.
 Over the next few decades, hundreds of
thousands of Jews were killed or maimed in
these “riots”.
 It is important to remember, pogroms continued
into the twentieth century.
We Gotta get out of this place
 After the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in
1881, the Russian pogroms became significantly
worse, and tens of thousands of Russian Jews
decided that things wouldn’t get better anytime
soon.
 Between 1880 and 1920, about two million Jews
(about a third of the Jews in Europe) decided
enough was enough, and they emigrated.
 Some individualists moved to Palestine
(which was ruled by the Ottoman Empire
until 1917).
 Others simply moved to other Western
European nations.
 The vast majority, however, moved to the
United States.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S58ivjU9P
eE (start on 15 mins)
Passage to Palestine
 Among the many journalists who attended
the trial of Alfred Dreyfus was a man named
Theodore Herzl.
 Herzl was deeply unnerved when he heard
the crowd shout “Death to the Jews”.
 So, he believed that the only solution was for
the Jews to have their own homeland, a
country that would always take them in.
 Herzl became the father of what is now called
Zionism (the movement for a Jewish state).
 After the First Zionist Congress in 1897, Herzl
tried to talk the Sultan of the Ottoman
Empire into giving up Palestine….to no avail.
 He discussed the problem with Pope Pius X,
who told him, “The Jews have not recognized
our Lord, therefore we cannot recognize the
Jewish people”.

* show video* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47tgrvMWbRg
 As pogroms became increasingly bad in
Eastern Europe, Herzl approached England
for assistance. Their offer: Jews could use
Uganda as a temporary refuge until
Palestine worked out.
However, the Zionist
Congress insisted only
Palestine would do.
 Many Jews did sneak into Palestine, where
they were able to buy land and build
settlements. By 1909, the Jews bought
enough empty land on the Mediterranean
coast that they founded a new city, the first
all-Jewish city in Palestine, called Tel Aviv.
Close, but not quite there
 When WWI erupted in 1914, Jews enlisted in
every country where they were allowed to
serve: America, French, and…yes…Germany.
 After the Ottoman Empire entered the war,
Britain and France conquered much of the
Middle East, and in 1917 England gained
control of Palestine.

* show video: http://videos.howstuffworks.com/discovery/30142-assignment-discovery-beginning-of-world-war-ivideo.htm
 England almost immediately issued the
Balfour Declaration, which advocated a
Jewish state.
 Unfortunately for the Zionists, because of the
political realities of the day, it would be
another 31 years until the English actually
handed over power of the province.
(This will be what is now Israel)
 In 1919, Germany, the biggest aggressor of
the war, was defeated and forced to sign the
Treaty of Versailles.
 The loss of territory and incredible
reparations they had to pay pushed the
country into a terrible economic and
emotional depression in the early 1920’s. It
seemed as though Germany went from super
power to super shame over night.

*show video* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soFhWkxSZAY

*wwi worksheet*
Map of WWI before and after
BEFORE
AFTER
Hitler’s Rise to Power
 In the minds of some Germans, the loss of the
war was a flaw of emancipation.
 It wasn’t the German nation and the German
people who were at fault, but rather the
Jews- the symbol of the Enlightenment, seen
as an insidious race of foreigners- who
sapped the German spirit.
 By the early 1930s, much of the world had
fallen into an economic depression.
 In Germany, one man, who claimed to have
the answer for the country’s problems, rose
to power: Adolf Hitler.
 Hitler’s National Socialist party (which was
known by the contraction “Nazi”) offered glory,
prosperity, purpose, and a solution to Germany’s
“Jewish problem”.
 Hitler was democratically voted in as Chancellor
of Germany in 1932.
 (He won the most votes, but it wasn’t a
majority of the populace)
 A year later, he dismantled the German
democracy and became a dictator.
 The Jews, Hitler believed, were responsible for
Germany losing the war, for the economic
depression, for the communist revolution in Russia,
and for every other problem imaginable.
 He turned rationality on its head, arguing that racial
purity was the key to success:
 The Nordic Aryans were the most pure
 The Slavic peoples (group living in Central Europe, Eastern
Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia)
were the less pure
 Blacks were near the bottom of the list
 Jewish people, the worst, a race (he considered)
genetically criminal and by its very nature eroding to the
fabric of society.
 Hitler’s original plan was simple: make life so
bad for the Jews they would leave the country.
 But by 1940, Hitler changed his tune: The only
way to succeed, he felt, was to murder every
Jewish person in his expanding empire.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=631sP6Vm
sVE