Table Of Content"The House of Hannover": Gezeirot Tah in Modern Jewish Historical Writing
Author(s): Gershon Bacon
Source: Jewish History, Vol. 17, No. 2, Gezeirot Ta"h: Jews, Cossacks, Poles and Peasants in
1648 Ukraine (2003), pp. 179-206
Published by: Springer
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Jewish History 17: 179-206, 2003.
W ? 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
"The House of Hannover" : Gezeirot Tah in modern
Jewish historical writing*
GERSHON BACON
Bar-Ilan University, Israel
Abstract. This essay traces the development of modern Jewish historiography on
the events of 1648-1649. It focuses mainly on treatments of the events in single
volume and multi-volume general histories of the Jews, and on entries in encyclo
pedias. Immediate historical memory, as exemplified by the Hebrew chronicles and
liturgical poetry composed soon after the events, was transformed into history in
the writings of the modern Jewish historians of the 19th and 20th centuries. In the
process, the chronicle of Nathan Hannover dominated modern perceptions, for the
most part uncritically accepted, albeit not on all counts. The major features of the
modern historiography of the Gezeirot Tah ve'Tat are surveyed by discussing the
causes of the attacks, their results, the number of victims, and the ways in which
all three were incorporated in the larger Jewish historical scheme. Recently, some
long-held approaches and conclusions have been revised, which suggests directions
for future research.
In the spring of 1650, the Council of the Four Lands, the nation-wide
consultative body of Polish Jewry, proclaimed an annual fast day on the
20th day of the Hebrew month Sivan, the anniversary of the slaughter
of the Jews in Niemir?w, the first large community to be destroyed
in the Cossack uprising of 1648.l Some communal leaders approached
Rabbi Yom Tov Lippman Heller, the rabbi of Krakow, asking him to
compose some new liturgical poems (piyyutim) to commemorate the
recent calamities that had struck Polish Jewry, as he had done for
Prague Jewry some years before. At first Heller demurred, claiming
that the Prague case was different, since Jews had been in danger not
as Jews but as citizens of a city under siege, "... but the present
events were like the decrees of old, and that which was perpetrated
against the fathers was perpetrated against the sons, and the elders
had already composed prayers and told of the events ..." He decided
to collect appropriate poems from earlier eras and use them for the
newly instituted fast day (or perhaps re-instituted fast day, for it fell
on the same date supposedly fixed as a fast day in memory of an earlier
*
Research for this article was carried out with the support of a research fellowship
from the American Council of Learned Societies. My thanks to Professor Kenneth
Stow for his comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.
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180 GERSHON BACON
act of martyrdom in Blois in France in 1171).2 After all, noted Heller, in
Krakow itself there were three occasions during the year when persecu
tions against local Jews were commemorated, and the previous rabbis
of the community had felt no need to compose new liturgical works.
Finally, Heller decided to compromise on the issue, taking a medieval
poem and replacing the last few stanzas with new ones of his own that
recounted the recent persecutions. After the first observance of the 20
Sivan fast day, a large number of people approached Heller and asked
him to give a more extended poetic account of the latest catastrophe,
for just as it is considered meritorious to give a lengthy account of the
Exodus from Egypt on Passover, "... so are we obligated to tell future
generations that which befell us ..." Thus Heller acquiesced to public
pressure and composed another more lengthy elegy to the 1648 martyrs
which was added to the prayers for that fast day.3
Heller's initial hesitation and later second thoughts, as well as the
demands of the Jewish public, symbolize the complex process by which
the events of 1648-1649 entered Jewish historical consciousness and
memory. In his classic study of Jewish historical consciousness, Zakhor,
Yosef Hayyim Yerushalmi noted the resistance to novelty in history
writing, and the pronounced tendency to fit the recent catastrophe into
the mold of past tragedies, exemplified by Rabbi Heller's conviction
that the elegies composed five centuries earlier were quite sufficient to
embrace contemporary events as well, "for all is one."4 If in the realm of
liturgical poetry, which by nature lent itself more to perennial themes
and motifs of expression, there was a struggle over memorializing the
events (was this something new, or the repetition of a pattern going
back to the beginnings of Jewish existence?), how much more so would
there be hesitation in the realm of historical chronicles, a much less
common literary genre, as to how to present the events. Should one
fall back on traditional ways of "digesting" the events, themes that
hark back to Middle Ages,5 and perhaps as far back as the Bible
and Rabbinic aggada, or should one chronicle the present events as
something new in nature and scope that demanded newer forms of
expression and sensibilities? This first encounter on the liturgical level
symbolizes the struggles that historians would have with these events.
On the one hand, they would look for the cyclical, the common themes
of martyrdom through the ages, connections with times present and
future, but they would also look for the time and place specific. Two
competing frameworks would exist for these momentous events.
As Joel Raba comments at the outset of his lengthy survey of the
development of historiography on Gezeirot Tah, Between Remembrance
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THE HOUSE OF HANNOVER 181
and Denial, "... the massacres perpetrated on the Jewish popula
tion of the Ukraine in 1648-1649 entered the nation's historical con
-
science [sic GB] before the days of the pogroms were over ..."6
Not only the events themselves made their mark on the collective
memory of Polish and world Jewry, but also the framework in which
these events would be viewed. Thus at the time, some of the earliest
chroniclers, certainly echoing more widely-held views, attempted to
place the 1648-1649 catastrophe within the framework of the tradi
tional Jewish conceptions of Messianic redemption, regarding the mass
slaughter of Tah-Tat as phenomena connected to hevlei Mashiah, the
period of suffering immediately preceding the coming of the Messiah.7
This concept would have immense implications in the Messianic up
heaval associated with Shabbetai Zevi in the 1660s. Shabbetai Zevi
himself exploited this theme, as in his fabled meeting with some rep
resentatives of Polish Jewry, when the chronicle Tzuk Ha 'Ittim report
edly lay open on his table as the Polish Jews were ushered into his
presence.8
Thus the momentous events of 1648-1649 left their mark on Jewish
historical memory, especially through the influence of the historical
chronicles composed in the wake of the disaster. In the present article,
I would like to point out some of the ways which this historical memory
was transformed into history with the development of modern Jewish
historiography. As noted by Raba, Polish and Ukrainian historiogra
phy of the Cossack uprising went through a number of stages in the
subsequent two centuries. Jews, however, jumped directly from the
Hebrew chroniclers and elegists writing soon after the events to the
modern historians, with no real intermediary stage. The agenda and
the approaches of the seventeenth century Hebrew chroniclers, most
notably Nathan Hannover, made the transition to the works of the 19th
and early 20th century historians intact, with little serious revision.
For the most part, not only the agenda and approach, but even the
basic historicity of the chroniclers' narratives found a willing reception
among modern historians such as Graetz, who had their own ideological
agenda. In this article, I propose to document this process, as well as
examine the ways in which modern historians "located" the events of
1648-1649 within the wider contexts of Jewish history. The frameworks
constructed around these events reflect more general notions of anti
Semitism and its nature, of East European Jewry and its place in
the Jewish world, of Jewish-Polish and Jewish-Ukrainian relations,
of persecution and its place in Jewish history, of historical "turning
points" and more.
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182 GERSHON BACON
As Joel Raba's compilation demonstrates time and time again, the
various historical narratives of the events of 1648-1649 reveal as much,
if not more, about their authors as they reveal about the events them
selves. For the most part, Jewish historians have relied on a closed set
of data (this need not have been so, but until lately such is the reality),
invoking essentially the same sources. Thus the question of packaging
and context is critical for understanding the viewpoint of each historian.
This article will focus on those areas of historical literature that Raba
did not treat in detail, namely multi-volume and one-volume histories
of the Jews, as well as encyclopedia articles, to see how the events were
reported and where they were "located" on the continuum of Jewish
history. What is noticeable in the many summaries of the events is how
small turns of phrase can shift the whole understanding of the period,
as in this typical example, taken from Cecil Roth:
in every city or township which was entered, a veritable holocaust
took place, in many instances the Poles betraying their Jewish
neighbors in the mistaken hope of saving their own lives .. .9
Roth employs the well-known story in Hannover's chronicle about
the betrayal of the Jews in Tulczyn by their Polish co-defenders, and
generalizes from it, thus turning betrayal into a common pattern. He
somehow overlooks Hannover's own observation that the events in Tul
czyn actually dissuaded Poles in other towns from betraying Jewish
neighbors. Treachery was of no avail, since the Cossacks did not spare
the Poles in the city.10
For purposes of the present paper, I would like to focus on a few key
issues as later historians have seen them: the causes and background of
the gezeirot; estimates of losses in the gezeirot; and long and short term
results of the gezeirot. However, one general observation is in order.
Hannover's decisive influence
Even before beginning, it was clear that Nathan Neta Hannover's chron
icle Yeven Metzulah {The Deep Mire), first published in 1653 and
many times subsequently, as well as translated into many other lan
guages, would loom large in any evaluation of Jewish historiography
of the Cossack uprising. In fact, this is so, to the point that to call
Hannover's portrayal a "master narrative" is an act of supreme under
statement. Reconstructions of the events follow the outline of Hannover,
accept his conclusions en bloc with little comment, and reflect his views
and prejudices. Dubnow incorporates long quotations from Hannover's
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THE HOUSE OF HANNOVER" 183
book in his History of Jews in Russia and Poland11 and also in his
World History of the Jewish People.12 In Dubnow's view, so important
and credible was Hannover's account that he contended that Meir of
Szczebrzeszyn's Tzuk HaTttim (published in 1650) was dependent on
Hannover's account (published only in 1653), a chronological anomaly
he could explain only by claiming that Hannover's book circulated in
manuscript even before its publication.13 Dubnow (and he is not alone
in this) also saw fit to reject the reliability of historical sources or the
opinions of various historians simply on the basis that they did not
conform to Hannover's testimony. One blatant example of Hannover's
influence is the almost universally positive attitude in Jewish works to
Prince Jarema Wisniowiecki as protector of the Jews and their avenging
angel.
In any discussion of the sources for the fate of the Jews in Gezeirot
Tah, Hannover's reputation for reliability stands in stark contrast to
the attitude toward most other Jewish sources. Heinrich Graetz, for
example, calls Hannover's account "faithful and reliable."14 With some
exaggeration, Jacob Shatzky claimed that except for Hannover's chron
icle all the others were merely 'dry verses'.15 Raba notes how, in his
multi-volume history of the Jews, 19th century Polish Jewish author
and journalist Hilary Nussbaum based his narrative of 1648-1649 events
for the most part on Hannover.16
Nor was this universality of use of Hannover's chronicle limited
to Jewish historians. In an attempt to downplay Ukrainian atrocities
against Jews, one Ukrainian historian even cited Hannover in an apolo
getic article on Ukrainian-Jewish relations in the mid-17th century:
... not all Ukrainians participated in these massacres. For exam
ple: when the Cossacks left the city of Tulchyn, "the Ukrainian
inhabitants of the city dealt kindly with them (the Jews) and sent
them away." Moreover, some Cossacks married Jewish girls, who
however, preferred suicide to being a Cossack's wife. Furthermore,
after the peace treaty of Zboriv (1649), the Cossacks did not harm
the Jews, but on the contrary, according to Hannover, "in those
places where the Cossack dwelt, business was good."17
What explains the dominance of Hannover's version of the events of
1648-1649? First and foremost is the more 'modern' nature of Yevein
Metzulah, an orderly prose narrative that shows interest in social condi
tions and in modern notions of causation, as opposed to other chronicles
which are less complete, more unwieldy in nature (rhymed prose, com
mentaries on the liturgy, lists), and more old fashioned which made
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184 GERSHON BACON
them appear, at least on the surface, less reliable. Thus Joel Raba's
characterization:
... there is no doubt, nevertheless, that the chief witness is Nathan
Hannover. Among the Jewish writers he had been the only one to
take into account the sufferings of the non-Jewish population in
the territories devastated by the war; he also made an attempt to
formulate an attitude towards the circumstances and causes for
the disasters of 1648.18
In the case of non-Jewish historians some of the Jewish historians
(and
as well), Hannover's chronicle was readily accessible in various Euro
pean languages, the only such Jewish chronicle available to non-Hebrew
readers. On another level, Max Weinreich pointed to Hannover's per
sonal odyssey and ultimate fate as symbolic of the upheavals undergone
by Jewry in the 17th century:
... was it not in his tragic fate the entire history of the Jew the
eternal wanderer was reflected? Of German origin, he came to
Ukraine, and by a miracle saved himself from the gangs of Khmil's
marauders. Then he wandered all his life all over Europe only to
die a violent death somewhere in Moravia.19
Until very recent times, one can speak with justification of Han
nover's dominance in the writing of this chapter of Jewish history.
Either historians accepted his judgments en bloc or expended much
energy checking out one or another of his statements. In this latter
context, one recalls the now classic essays of the late Israel Halpern
which examined Hannover's statements about redemption of captives in
Constantinople and about aid and comfort to Polish Jewish victims of
the Cossack attacks,20 or Moshe Rosman's examination of the question
whether Poland declined as a Torah center after Gezeirot Tah.21
Despite the centrality of Hannover's chronicle in modern historiogra
phy, this master narrative does not dominate in all aspects. One blatant
example is Hannover's account of the events in Chmielnicki's personal
life which brought about his call for revolt. In Hannover's version, a
Jew named Zechariah Zabilenky denounced Chmielnicki to the Polish
authorities, resulting in his imprisonment, while a Jewish friend of
Chmielnicki, Yaakov Zabilenky, arranged to have him freed from jail.
For no apparent reason, the article on the Chmielnicki Massacres in
the 1941 Universal Jewish Encyclopedia accepts the involvement of a
Jew in Chmielnicki's arrest, but does not mention the Jewish friend
who aided Chmielnicki.22 Most discussions of Gezeirot Tah, however,
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'THE HOUSE OF HANNOVER" 185
skip over this part of Hannover's narrative entirely. One can speculate
that the reason for not stressing this tradition (which has no more or
no less sources backing it than most of Hannover's other stories, which
are accepted without question) is the reluctance to have a Jew directly
involved in the cause of Chmielnicki's revolt. There is no clue why other
stories are accepted, other than the fact that Hannover's chronicle is
written in a realistic manner.
Even in Hannover there are other "voices" that have not been taken
up by historians, but are deserving of further exploration. Historians
stress those aspects of Hannover's narrative which deal with historical
causation, economic background, social tensions and the like, but ignore
the larger framework and context of the book, including Hannover's
involvement in Kabbalah. To take but one example, how are we to
square Hannover's supposedly "modern" historical narrative with his
introduction laden with gematriya, which sees the events of 1648-1649
as predicted long ago by King David in the Psalms? Further, in the
light of Hannover's justly famous afterword which describes the now
destroyed institutions of Polish Jewry as the embodiment of classic
Jewish values, how should we view his account, and his particular
emphases, of the events of 1648-1649? Undoubtedly, Hannover's version
of these events was crucial in forging the collective memory of these
-
events martyrdom, Messianic yearnings, the perception of a once great
Polish Jewry which was no more, a "chosen" community undergoing
-
a supreme test of faith but does this version necessarily reflect the
realities on the ground? One could ask just as well which Hannover
is the "real" one: the semi-modern historian or the preacher regarding
events through midrashic, stereotyped images?
Even regarding those parts of the story where Hannover remains
dominant, this is not the whole story. As mentioned earlier, I had
begun the research with the operating assumption that Hannover's
narrative would be the basis for most reconstructions of the events.
This indeed would prove to be the case, even more strongly that I had
imagined. Yet even with this common basis, I could not have foreseen
the large number of variations on this theme, the wide spectrum of
nuance in regard to sequence of events, causes, effects and the various
personalities involved. Depending on the historian or encyclopedia, one
could term the situation "Hannover Lite," "Hannover with an expla
nation," or "Hannover in modern garb." For an example of the latter,
one could cite Raphael Mahler's summation of the events, which, like
Hannover's, sets the actions of the Jews in the framework of religious
martyrdom:
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186 GERSHON BACON
... both in the slaughter in the Ukraine and in the killing in Great
Poland the Jews generally had the option of accepting the Chris
tian faith and thus saving their lives. Nevertheless we know of only
a few scattered incidents in which individuals or groups saved their
lives by apostasy; tens of thousands of the victims preferred to die
unusual deaths rather than leave the Jewish people ... [they] gave
their lives in the recognition that apostasy is worse than death,
the lowest form of treason to their people ...23
One common modification of the master narrative set out by Han
nover was the greater emphasis placed on the active participation of
Jews in the common defense of Polish towns. Hannover did of course
mention deeds of valor by Jews, but these deeds rated less attention
than the carefully chronicled acts of martyrdom. This trend began way
before Zionist ideology and historiography accentuated Jews bearing
arms. Already in the 19th century, Polish Jewish historians played up
this issue to show how Jews were patriotic citizens even back in the
17th century.24
On the causes of the gezeirot
In the many accounts of the events of 1648-1649 and the Jews, the
issue of causation takes center stage, as would be expected in any
historical narrative. Historians try to weigh the relative importance
of religious, economic, national and other factors in unleashing the
massive slaughter of Jews, Catholic clergy and Polish nobles. Beyond
these standard historical discussions, however, much of the historical
narratives on these events exhibit a strong tendency to look not just
for causes, but also for the "guilty," to look for who was at fault, an
enterprise which carries with it no small amounts of apologetics, or
polemics for that matter.
In Jewish historiography on the Chmielnicki uprising, the Jews are
-
judged "guilty with an explanation" where, for example, part of the
Jews sinned, but all of the Jews suffered, or the Jews are presented
as victims of circumstance. In such explanations, historians frequently
employed the metaphor of "hammer and anvil," portraying the Jews
as placed in a tragic position between two clashing social forces. The
metaphor itself leaves some room for ambiguity, since Jews could be
in the middle of the contending forces, but could also be the allies of
the "hammer" (the Poles) who were the major force oppressing the
peasants of the Ukraine region. The early twentieth century Jewish
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"THE HOUSE OF HANNOVER" 187
Encyclopedia, for example, notes that the extravagant life style of the
Polish landlords, who spent most of their fortunes abroad, frequently
placed them in pecuniary difficulties, "and their Jewish tax-farmers
were often forced into exactions against the advice and warnings of
the wise leaders of the Four Lands, and the Jews of the Ukraine often
suffered grievously for the sins of individuals of their race."25 An exten
sive literature exists on one alleged aspect of Jewish guilt, namely the
question of Jews holding keys to churches and not allowing religious cer
emonies to take place until various taxes and fees were paid. Regarding
whether the charge was true, this particular accusation appears only
years after the Gezeirot.
In the clash of religion, ethnic identity and politics in Ukraine, the
nobles are portrayed as the real guilty ones, since they headed the
government and ruled in the Ukraine, while the Jews were merely their
assistants. Circumstances forced the Jews into those occupations which
lent themselves to exploitation.26 Related to this type of narrative is the
-
search for the guilty party in the murder of the Jews personal hatred
on the part of Chmielnicki or one of his lieutenants, the jealousy of the
Cossacks, or the enmity of Ukrainian town-dwellers as competitors of
Jews.
Within this general framework, we again can see a wide variety of
explanations which reflect the background, ideological orientation or
apologetic bent of their authors. Sometimes a single author will exhibit
all the types of explanation mentioned above. Thus Simon Dubnow
wrote that "... the Jew thus found himself between the hammer and
the anvil: between the landed gentry and the khlopi, between the
Catholic and the Greek Orthodox Church, between the Pole and the
Ukrainian. Three classes, three religions, three nationalities, clashed
on a foundation in whose depths volcanic forces lay dormant; and the
explosion was inevitable ... [emphasis in original]27 ... there were, nat
urally, strict Jewish lessees, who at the command of the pan, the master,
penalized the peasants. This in turn gave rise to animosity toward all
Jews ... In all these descriptions and sayings of the contemporaries,
the Jew is represented as the intermediary, as the one who collects taxes
for the Polish gentry. The Jew is merely a messenger, an expedient by
which the pan suppressed the peasants. Yet, when the people went on
a rampage, the Jew suffered more than the nobleman. And it is not
only the Jewish lessee who suffered, but the entire Jewish communities,
which had no relation to the leasehold ... [my emphasis - GB]."28
The apologetic mode reached its apogee in the one-volume history
by Grayzel, who opens his discussion with the general observation that
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