Trudy Gold
Nicholas I and the Jews: 1825-1855 From Cruelty to Attempted Seduction

Trudy Gold | Nicholas I and the Jews, 1825-1855 From Cruelty to Attempted Seduction | 06.16.22

Visuals displayed throughout the presentation.

- Anyway. Today we’re going to be, having said to you that what we have to look at now are the czars under whom the Jews live. Just to recap, Jews made their way to Eastern Europe, to the kingdom of Poland, which incorporated Lithuania and Ukraine. And of course, what happened beginning in 1772, culminating in 1815, the bulk of the Jewish population were now swallowed up into Russia. They didn’t move, the Russian Empire did. You also had a sizable population that became subjects of Prussia, and another sizable population, subjects of the Hapsburg Empire. But the majority of Jews are now living under the czars. And I also told you a lovely little conundrum, that if you want to remember the czars of Russia, you start with Catherine. Her son Paul, he did nothing as far as Jewish history’s concerned, so we leave him out. But it’s Catherine, Alexander, Nicholas, Alexander, Alexander, Nicholas. And now we come to Nicholas I, and, important to remember, I’m giving you a quote now from the historian, Michaelis. He’s talking about Russia; in Nicholas’s reign, it’s absolutely at the height of the size of the empire, and it’s a rather lovely description. “Russia extended from the banks of the Vistula to the Siberian steppes, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, the Byzantine cupolas of the cities. The primitive thatched huts of the countryside, where peasants slept on the same floor as their animals, the timelessness of daily life. The czarist Empire was an autocratic empire, all engulfing religiosity reigned supreme.” Can we please see a picture of Nicholas I, please?

He took the throne from his brother Alexander, who we’ve already looked at. Alexander, of course, was the czar who went against Napoleon. And my last presentation, I looked at the response of the creator of who actually wrote to another rabbi, “I would rather my people suffer under the czars than live in peace under Napoleon, because Napoleon will be the end of the Jewish people.” So Nicholas takes the throne from his brother after the failed Decemberist riots of 1825, which William’s taken you through. One of the things that we are trying to do with this series on Russia is to coincide the majority of the presentations at the 5:30 slot. And the next big programme is going to be France, and we’re going to try and do the same. But having taken note of what some of you have said, we are going to prepare, I’m going to discuss this with Wendy, a sheet that will give you a sort of forward notice of what we plan to do over the next month or so. Anyway, Nicholas, the autocrat, Nicholas, who believed he ruled by divine right, yesterday when Wendy and Helen were chatting, when Helen gave that brilliant presentation about Mary Magdalene, Wendy talked about the nature of power and charisma. And it’s important to remember that with these czars, they believed they ruled through divine right. Nicholas was deeply pious. He believed in the tenets of the deeply pious Russian Orthodox Church, the Greek Orthodox church. And he believed he ruled through the will of God. And as I said, he was a total autocrat. His word was law. Now he, as I’ve already mentioned to you, the Russian empire is absolutely at its height. He ruled over 7.7 million miles. That’s nearly a fifth of the land surface of the globe. And you can just imagine, the areas from the west, which was once Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, et cetera, all the way through Siberia to the edge of Manchuria.

That was the Russian empire, and a deeply illiterate empire with an aristocratic class. And it’s only now that we are going to be seeing the rise of a middle class, but only a very small middle class. He married Princess Charlotte of Prussia. At this stage there were over 350 separate city-states in Germany, Catholic to the south, Protestant in the north. And many of the princes and kings of Europe look for their wives to Germany. He married a Protestant, and she converted to Russian Orthodoxy and becomes as pious as him. Now this is a, I’m going to read you a couple of character analysis of Nicholas from various historians. This is from one of his biographers, Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, who was of course a Russian biographer. “He displayed determination, singleness of purpose, and an iron will, along with a powerful sense of duty and a dedication to very hard work. He saw himself as a soldier, an officer consumed by spit and polish. A handsome man, he was highly nervous and aggressive. Trained as an engineer, he was a stickler for minute detail. In his public persona, Nicholas came to represent autocracy personified, infinitely majestic, determined and powerful, hard as stone and relentless as fate.” And this is the man who is now going to be ruling over the largest Jewish population in the world. And, as a member of the Russian Orthodox Church, as in fact the secular head of the Russian Orthodox Church, he had an unbelievably negative attitude to the Jews.

What had happened to the Jews under Catherine Alexander was a picnic compared to what’s going to happen to them under Nicholas I of Russia. And remember, I’m calculating that probably about, I would say probably about 60% of you listening, maybe more, you traced your ancestors’ roots to this area. So I think it’s very important to understand the forces that actually led them in the end to emigrate. And this is now from a Jewish historian, the brilliant Howard Morley Sachar. He wrote “the course of modern Jewish history”. In my mind, it is the best attempt to actually bring together all the strands in one volume. I can recommend many, many books to you, but if you want one volume, it’s Howard Morley Sachar, “the course of Modern Jewish History”. And this is what Sachar said: “Nicholas I was so murderously reactionary that by contrast, the leaders preceding 1825 seemed quite mild. Nicholas I character presented many of the complexities that baffled” beg your pardon, “presented none of the complexities that baffled Alexander’s biographers. He was a military man with a clear but narrow mind of the professional soldier. He believed passionately in the principles of autocracy and divine right, and was prepared to defend them, not just in Russia, but in the rest of Europe.” He is the czar and, and of course you will have more detail on his outside life from William, but he was the czar who ruthlessly crushed the Polish uprising in 1830. And in 1848, 52 revolutions broke out across Western and central Europe, England just about managed a Chartist demonstration in one of the great London parks.

It’s fascinating. What was it Disraeli said? “The English, because of the fog, will never have a revolution.” I wonder if that’s true even today. But going on, what he did, the autocratic czar, he was horrified by the revolutions, and he lent Franz Joseph, it was Franz Joseph, the Habsburg monarch, who we’ve discussed in previous sessions, who came to the throne in 1848. Nicholas lent his fellow autocratic monarch, the Cossacks to put down the revolt. This is the czar who now is going to be in charge of Jewish destiny. Could we turn to the next slide please? And this is what he said about them, “the cunning stubborn tribe to be set to rights.” And this is now Michael Stanislawski, one of the best historians of the period: “To Nicholas, The Jews were an an anarchic, cowardly, parasitic people, damned perpetually because of their deicide and their heresy. They were best dealt with by repression, persecution, and if possible conversion.” You see, the Orthodox Church, along with the Catholic Church, believed that one of the greatest deeds a Christian could perform was to bring the Jews to conversion, because that will hasten the second coming of Jesus. He also though, wanted to change Russia into a properly governed state. On one level, he did see himself as a figure of the enlightenment, an autocratic enlightenment, but nothing, just with Catherine, in no way was it going to touch the Jews. So, he has to, remember he’s ruling an empire, the largest in the world. So his, what happens with the Jews is going to, there’s no single policy. He’s going to try many different policies. And in 1827 though, he came up with a policy that reinterpreted Russia’s conscription laws. The draught in Russia had been in effect for several decades. Russian youth were subjected to conscription for a 25 year purpose.

Now, from now on, it’s known as the cantonist system, from now on, from 1827, it’s a ukase, a Russian edict of 1827, Jewish children were to be drafted into the Russian army from the age of 12, they were to spend six years in preliminary cantonment, which is actually a military camp, before the normal period of 25 years service. They are to spend 31 years in the Russian Army. Now, it was not a general obligation. Military service was imposed selectively on different estates. Up until now, Jews had been exempted from military service because they were classed as merchants from the point of view of conscription, so therefore paid an exemption tax. Because basically up until then, the government have felt that Jews would make bad soldiers, to just get as much money off them from possible. Now, Nicholas believed it could be a major factor for what he called his school for virtue, and the transformation of his Jewish subjects. The quota varied from year to year, but Jews were required to furnish between four and eight boys for every thousand taxed Jews. And it increased laterally as he became more and more involved in war. Now remember, a cantonist, a canton is an army group. Now, it had existed, these cantonist schools, for criminals and vagabonds under 25, and some of the Polish and Ukrainian nobility who had participated, the children of the nobles who participated in the 1830 uprising. He did exempt some categories of Jews, rabbis and those who had completed courses in state sponsored education, which I’m going to come on to later. And also those living in agricultural colonies. In the end, over 70,000 Jewish children are going to serve in the army, about 5% of the Jews in Russia. And basically, the conversion rate was personally supervised by Nicholas. And about 50,000 Jews actually converted, Jewish children, converted as a result of the cantonist system. And it was the most terrible thing, because, think about the bureaucracy of Russia.

It’s one of the worst things that could have happened. The Jews, you would not have had a note from the czarist authorities, a letter to your family saying that you should deliver your son or your brother or your cousin to the cantonist system. And at age 12, before the mitzvah, no, it was left to the Jews themselves to decide who should go into the system. And I’m going to read now, it was a journalist called Alexander Herzen, an extraordinarily interesting Russian journalist. He was known as the father of Russian socialism. He was usually in exile, and he spent much of his time in London. And he attempted to influence, he was a very brilliant writer, and he attempted to influence opinion in Russia against the cruelty, and he witnessed a group of cantonists being pulled in by the kidnappers. And if a town or village refused to deliver children, then the kidnappers would come in and kidnap. And sometimes the children, according to Herzen, were as young as eight years old. And this is a description again from Howard Morley Sachar. “Once its children were conscripted, no Jewish family ever expected to see them again. Either they would die or be converted. Whatever their fate, the Kiddush was intoned for them. After the children reached the camp, the conversionary purpose was revealed. Few tortures were too brutal for the camp master to apply. The children were beaten, starved, doused with water, and driven by whips to church services.” We’ve got a lot of evidence of this, a lot of eyewitnesses, where the battalion priests cooperated fully in the missionary endeavour. Not infrequently, young Jewish recruits preferred suicide to baptism.

One account of the period tells of czar Nicholas’s inspection of the military headquarters in Kazan: “Arrangements were made to have groups of cantonized Jewish children baptised in the czar’s presence. At the czar’s command, the children were submerged in the vulgar, and did not come up.” That also gives you a notion of the man. Now, can we turn to the next slide please? Now, this shows you also what it did to the Jewish community. It’s going to lead to incredible divisions, because I’m sure we can all empathise with this. Online, on lockdown, we’ve got a wonderful community here. I want you to imagine in a town or a village, you have been asked, the elders of the town and the rabbis, have been asked to produce three or four children. Can you imagine what that does to the community? Because you would do anything, I believe, to protect your son, your grandson, your brother. And this is a poem of the time. “Rich. Mr. Rockover had seven sons, not one a uniform dons, but poor widow Leah has only one child, and they hunt him down as if he were wild. Is it right to draught the hardworking masses, shop makers, or tailors they’re only asses! But the children of the rich must carry on without a hitch.” And that gives you a notion of what happened, how it led to incredible disunity inside the Jewish community. Nicholas also restricted the area of the Pale of Settlements, and of course, very few Jews are allowed outside the Pale into Russia proper.

Now, 1837, 85, he sets up the charter of, he calls in a man called Pavel Kiselyov. Can we see him please, Judy? The next slide. This is Count Pavel Kiselyov. He was actually a reformer in a very conservative age. And in his time he really tried to implement reforms. He’s admitted to the state council, and he did implement the beginnings of schools for peasant children. But, the point about him was, he understood the reactionary forces and knew that he couldn’t go very far. So when he is asked by the czar to set up the Kiselyov committee to deal with the Jews, the charter of disabilities, this is what had to be enacted. Evict Jews from the countryside around Kiev and out of the city. The Kiselyov report also reduces the area of the Pale, which I’ve already talked about. Jews were prohibited from employing Christian servants. No Jewish male was allowed to marry before the age of 18. And no Jewish girl was allowed to marry before the age of 16. They married them very young, you’ve got to remember, because in the Pale, in the traditional towns and villages, where Jews walked the same earth, and saw the same sky as their non-Jewish neighbours, but their worlds were so vastly apart. And the greatest honour in marriage, and I’ve mentioned this to you before, of any rich girl, was of course that of whom? It’s that of the rabbi’s son, or the great yeshiva student. Girls were married off very early so that their bridegrooms would now study at the expense of their father’s-in-law. And he’s trying to stop that. And he also forbids the use of Yiddish in every public document. Now, important to remember, he’s also clamping down on all his minority groups.

Later on, when Stalin was commissar for nationalities after the revolution, he codified 116 different national groups in Russia. And Nicholas the autocrat is holding them all down. The other thing he tried is, can we, if as it were, reform the Jews by pushing them into agriculture. Now this is fascinating. You get this from every anti-Semite. Let us make the Jews into farmers. Let them have touch with the soil. If they have touch with the soil, there’s a chance of reforming them. But, not only will we reform them, perhaps we can convert them. Now, ironically, I’ve always found it fascinating that later on, the socialists of the Second Aliyah believed in going back to the land. This is really about modern nationalism. So what happens is, the government actually opens Siberia up to Jewish colonisation, and promised not to conscript children if their families were farmers, several families went, but it failed miserably, mainly because the bureaucracy in Russia was so out of control. And basically, the officials in charge of giving out the seed and tools and equipment, it was sold by corrupt officials. 14,000 Jews went to Siberia, but most of them actually died. And the remainder who survived actually came back to the Pale, totally destitute. And in 1837, the authorities halted the programme. And the excuse given, “We must protect the native population of Siberia by keeping them away for the Jews. So.

The censorship continued. Censorship becomes harsher under the commission. It was applied to Jewish religious literature, Jewish printing presses and libraries, and are subjected to very heavy handed ransacking. Thousands of Hebrew and Yiddish books, quoting at variance with imperial edicts were publicly burnt. Can you imagine what that did to the incredibly religious communities, seeing the Talmud burnt, seeing the Torah burnt? But the point was, the Russian authorities who examined the Talmud, who examined, they had no idea what it was all about. For example, in 1844, the Minister of the Interior sent a note to the czar: "A secret Jewish volume, "Ramban”, requires Jews to kidnap Christian children, murder them and drink their blood.“ But in another report submitted later, "Rambam” is recommended as a text for morality. 1844. In a further attempt to break down Jewish life, they decide to liquidate the kahals. Now, how well was it implemented? It wasn’t implemented very well at all. And ironically, it kind of healed the terrible rifts within the community that had been caused by the appalling cantonist system. Guardians of communal life came together, because even within the Pale of Settlement, there are various classes being developed, even under Nicholas, and I’ll deal with this more when I deal with Alexander II, there is a wealthier class as Russia, think about the borderlands with Prussia, Austria. Think about the whole programme of modernization. It is beginning, and you do have a few interesting Jewish entrepreneurs who have money. And these characters are going to be involved in establishing Jewish communal self-help, both in the educational, the religious and philanthropic needs.

And frankly, one of the areas that have always fascinated me, and I can only really talk about Anglo-Jewry, because that’s the area I obviously know best, but I know it’s also true of American, Canadian, Australian Jewry, that we brought with us to the countries of the west communal responsibility, that we do have our organisations for looking after people, for looking after the elderly, providing help. And it really goes back to communal responsibility. So ironically, when the Kiselyov Foundation decides to break down Jewish life on the czar’s orders, it has absolutely the opposite effect. They established orphanages, they set up homes for the aged, chevra kadisha which of course at that time was just a burial society. And the chevra’s were supported by every minor craft. So you have the chevra, of the shoemaker, you’d have the chevra of the carpenter, and they financed destitute families. So even if you are a poor cobbler, and if there’s a family where the breadwinner has died or can no longer work, even though you’re poor, you would have to give charity. And that was very much part of the Jewish ethos. And it’s interesting, you know. Because they never thought about emancipating the Jews, at this stage, and giving them something attractive to be part of, it makes the community more and more cohesive. But, Nicholas isn’t going to give up, and he turns to a very interesting character, a man called Count Uvarov. Now can we just see a quote now?

This is from Count Uvarov: “The Jews cannot regard any sojourn in any other land but in Palestine, but as a stay in captivity.” Count Uvarov, who is now going to be invited, he’s a brilliant man, and he is going to be invited to turn his attention to the Jewish question. So, can we please see Count Uvarov? I should also have mentioned that even before Uvarov comes onto the scene, there have been, the Kiselyov report had recommended that special forms of Jewish dress be banned as a way of diminishing Jewish separatism. Remember the Abers conversion? There was a ban on Jewish costume, it’s increasingly implemented. And from 1845, if you couldn’t wear a skull cup, if you did, you were fined between three and five rubles. The point is, they didn’t have the administration to actually see to it. And on the other hand, Jews were prepared to pay the fine. Three years later they forbade the wearing of sidelocks. And from 1851, officially, women were not allowed to shave their heads on marriage, on that one, the authorities thought that it would be welcome. But it was bitterly resented by Jewish society. And it’s this, in many ways, these horrific edicts bind the community together. The commission also divided the Jews into the productive and to the unproductive. So growing polarisation.

But, what it also led to, again, the more you attack a people, you know, it’s a very interesting debate that I’ve mentioned to you before, is anti-Semitism, in fact, the key to Jewish survival? Now let’s talk about Count Sergey Uvarov, because, he, with Nicolas, comes up with a more cunning measure. What can we do with this stubborn stick necked people, we want to convert them, and how can we bring them along? And the key, they realised, was education. So who is Count Sergey Uvarov? His dates are 1786 to 1855. He was a brilliant man. Ironically, his roots were Tatar. He was a classical scholar. He had studied in Germany. He’d been on very good terms with Humboldt and Goethe. In his early years he’d flirted with liberalism. And of course Humboldt had been a regular visitor at the great Jewish salons of Weimar, and in Berlin. So he did meet assimilating Jews, Western and assimilating Jews. And that’s going to be interesting to him. In 1832, he’s appointed Deputy Minister of National Education. He succeeded his father, he becomes president of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He was one of the most powerful men in Russia. Now he’s a conservative. And this is his manifesto for the whole of Russia. It’s very important. “It is our common obligation that the education system of our people be conducted according to the supreme intention of our august monarch in the joint spirit”, take this in very carefully, “of orthodox, autocracy and nationality. I am concerned and convinced that every professor and teacher, being permeated by one and the same feeling of devotion to the throne and the Fatherland, with all of his resources to become a worthy tool for the government and to earn its complete confidence.”

He, having visited the West, he had a scorn for it. He’s really a forerunner of a movement that we call Pan-Slavism. He believed it imperative to reject the ideas of the West. He believed they were destructive of orthodoxy. He would loathe freedom of thought. He loathed rationalism and individuality. I suppose everything that myself and most of the people I care for believe passionately in. This is what Uvarov, under the will of the czar who he worshipped , this is their mantra. However, ironically, he did raise the standard of education. He set up scholarships, academic rigour, and very high standards. You see, ironically, under autocracy, or under any closed system, I’ve taught in China. When I would get into the class, they always wanted to start at nine in the morning in the universities, they wanted to go through to six or seven at night just taking very short breaks. They were waiting for the teacher with pencils poised. They would take down every word we uttered. And this is the kind of system, this is autocracy in action, I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Over the years, when I was teaching, I had many students who came to class who had been taught under the Russian system, the communist system. It’s the same kind of thing. You need to know what’s going on. You teach rigidly, but you teach excellence. Excellent methodology, but there’s no freedom of thought. In fact, I remember a fascinating seminar where one of my colleagues, he came out of the lecture hall and he said, “My God”, ‘cause we were teaching Holocaust studies in China. And he said, “My God, I’ve told them all to think for themselves.”

Now in those days, and I think China’s tightened up since then, you could actually say anything you wanted. You couldn’t write it down. So here you have your Uvarov, who is trying to improve the standard of education of his people. Look, communism did the same. Hitler did the same. Hitler wanted the perfectly obedient mind in the physically fit body. This is autocracy, this is totalitarianism. And now he’s going to turn to the Jews. He basically assumes the leadership of Russian nationalism intellectually. You know, ironically, he himself only really used German and French in his writings. He hardly ever read a Russian book. And he did believe, also, that students should not study beyond their social origins. He wanted the hierarchical society, because he had a distrust of the ideas of the West. He saw what an educated middle class had done, that led to revolutions. This isn’t what you want in Russia. And when he turned to, he’s now asked by the czar, what can you do with the Jews? And he realised that the way to do it, is to attempt to wean Jews away from Talmudic studies, which he believed were the citadel, quote unquote, of Jewish separatism. He wanted really, his aim was, to expose Jews to Christian principles. In 1840, he sent a memo to the czar suggesting that the conversionist element of Jewish reeducation be disguised. Now, he wants to do it through seduction. We’ve had the brutality of cantonism, and all those terrible measures against the community. Let’s seduce them. We won’t get them to come into Russian schools. What if we set up an entirely separate Jewish school system?

Where we would teach them the Russian language, secular sciences, Hebrew, the teachers in the primary schools will be recruited from Hebrew teachers already. But in the secondary schools, we would choose modern teachers. And the Kiselyov committee completely backed the idea. The czar liked it, he thought it would make a difference. and they decided, remember the secret ingredient is conversion. And they decided that what they would do is advertise the notion they were going to set up separatist Jewish schools, and they needed to put a Jewish educator in charge of it all. And so that they would see, quote unquote, “A Jewish educator should be placed in charge to a”, I’m quoting now from Uvarov, “this obstreperous nation with the benevolent intentions of the government.” And the man they chose was a man called Max Lilienthal. And can we see his picture please? Now Max Lilienthal to was a fascinating man. He needs to find a competent Jewish educator ready to implement the government’s programme. He needs a modern Jew who wouldn’t scrutinise too closely the Russian government’s purpose. And he was actually informed that such a man was in Riga. So who was Max Lilienthal? Now he was a young German Jew. Think what’s going on in Germany at this stage. Germany is not united until 1871. But think of the enlightenment in Germany. Think of the slow period of emancipation. Think also of the work of Moses Mendelssohn, be a Jew at home and a man in society. You have a great number of Jews in Germany now who have turned to the enlightenment.

They’ve fallen in love with European culture, and they are trying to walk the tightrope between being Jewish and being parts of German society. Of course, the irony was that between 1815 and 1871, about a third of German Jews converted. But here we have Dr. Max Lilienthal, he was a young German Jew. He’d been educated at the University of Munich. He was doctor of philosophy, and he was a rabbi. And he’s going to move towards reform Judaism, which we haven’t touched yet. We’ll be dealing with that later in the course. Lilienthal was the son of a wealthy wholesale merchant, a man called Seligmann Louis Lilienthal, the traditional path to emancipation and assimilation. The father, under more tolerant rules, becomes a useful citizen of Germany, is a useful subject of Germany, I should say. He’s useful in a country that is expanding trade. And so, Lilienthal is the youngest son. After graduating from Munich, he attended the yeshiva of Wolf Hamburg in Munich, which is a modern yeshiva. It’s known as the first yeshiva. He was actually a brilliant brain. He was actually offered a position in the diplomatic service in Munich, in conservative Munich. But, the price was conversion to Catholicism. He turned it down. Ludwig Philippson, who was a leading exponent of the enlightenment, had actually recommended him for the post in Riga. And, he’d gone to Riga to set up a modern secular school for the more prosperous Jews of Riga, many of whom spoke German.

So he’s already within the Russian Empire because of Riga, which was the capital of Latvia. This is part of the Russian Empire. He was a very charismatic, very handsome man. And in 1841, Uvarov summons him to St. Petersburg. He’s only 25 years old, and he was asked to create a school system for the whole of the Pale. He was very suspicious. Why on earth should you bother to educate a more literate people? Uvarov explained that if the Jews could become more educated into Russia, this would be a prerequisite for emancipation. Now, he gets in touch with leading Jews of the time. He contacts Sir Moses Montefiore in England, of course, Sir Moses Montefiore, that extraordinary individual who was born in 1784. He dies in 1885. He lives to be 101. He was a favourite of Queen Victoria’s, he had an estate in Ramsgate, which had neighbored her estate when she was a child. She had ennobled him. And he was the Jew that Jews in trouble throughout the world turned to. He was sort of the shtadlan of the Jewish world. He was an extraordinary individual. So, he turns to advice from him. He also turns to a man called Adolphe Crémieux, who created the Alliance in Paris. These are the two leading Jews of Western Europe. They are seen as, if you like, the shtadlans, they would give him advice. And he also turns to Abraham Geiger, who is a reforming rabbi. So, he asks for time, and all of them reply favourably. They said that secular education could only be a blessing. So consequently, Lilienthal accepts the challenge, and he goes to Riga to discuss the plan with communal leaders. He then travels to Minsk, discuss the ideas with the Hasids. He actually goes to over 16, 19 different towns in the pale, and what I am looking for is, if I can find it, sorry, my notes are in a mess. Yes, this is a meeting. He later wrote his autobiography.

And this is how he described a meeting with elders in Vilma. So he’s going from town to town, In the Pale, meeting up with leading members of the community. “The elders sat there absorbed in deep contemplation, some of them leaning on their silver dawn staffs, or smoothing their long beards, agitated, by earnest thoughts and justifiable suspicion. They asked, 'Doctor, are you fully acquainted with the leading principles of our government? The course pursued against all dominations, but the Greek Orthodox provides clearly that the government intends only to have one church in the empire. We are in a sorry state. We have no confidence in the new measures, and we look with gloomy foreboding on our future.’” So it’s at this stage that Uvarov decides to bring in four important elders. And they are Isaac Volozhiner, who of course is the leader of the Misnagdim. He was a disciple of the Vilna Gaon, can we can we turn to, Ludwig Philippson was the man who, I’ve mentioned him already. Ludwig Philippson was the man who recommended, he was an important enlightenment figure, very famous. He’s later going to set up the most important German Jewish newspaper. And he was the one who represented, who actually, he was the one who decided that Lilienthal was the most suitable for the role. And he backed him all the way. You see, they naively believe that this time perhaps, the czar is going to emulate what’s happening in the West. So the czar, Uvarov chooses very, very carefully. He chooses Isaac of Volozhin. Can we see the great yeshiva? There is no portrait, of course, if we go to, there you have the famous Volozhin yeshiva. And it’s interesting, because he set it up at the behest, of course, money had been left to the Baal Shem Tov, and the Baal Shem Tov had died, and he sets up this yeshiva, and it had incredibly modern methods.

It was a very, very important yeshiva. Also Mendel Schneerson, and Mendel Schneerson of course was the descendant of the chabad of Shneur Zalman of Liadi. He also contacted two other characters, a man called Isaac Stern, and a man called Halperin, they were both important merchants, and they all come together to meet with the czar, with the czarist authorities, with Uvarov. And the Commission on the Jewish question has been established. And they believe that perhaps the intentions of the czarist authorities are in fact good. So Lilienthal, as I said, he writes a pamphlet about it. He travels, travels, travels. The only school that he found within the Pale that impressed him was in fact the schools of Odessa. Now Stern, I should mention, had been, he was a wealthy man, but he was the superintendent of the schools in Odessa. And if you remember when we looked at that session on Odessa, I said that Odessa was the most forward thinking town within the Pale of Settlement. It was a third Jewish, it was a seaport, it was open to Western ideas. And he particularly liked, Lilienthal particularly liked the syllabus at the girls school. The curriculum was Russian, French, German, geography, world and Russian history, maths, bookkeeping, literary history. Now I ask you, again, I keep on asking you this, what may a Jew study? if you remember the great Vilna Gaon, the Shneur Zalman, they had no problems with mathematics, astronomy, languages. They had no problem whatsoever. In fact, if you remember the Vilna Gaon wanted a textbook on Euclid translated by one of his adherents. That is no problem.

The question is, can a Jew study the philosophy of the West? That famous statement: “Never forgets, there is wisdom amongst the Gentiles, but there is no Torah.” However, Lilienthal, the schools, the crown schools are established, after much discussions that the reforms would not be directed against Judaism itself. So Uvarov, with Max Lilienthal, they’ve been from town to town, in some of the towns, he met with terrible opposition, as I’ve already described, from the rabbinism, many people were very, very suspicious. Uvarov and the Kiselyov Commission say, we will not, let me reiterate this. Nothing will be directed against Judaism itself. And it took nearly two years before those four men actually gave their names to the report. And remember, they have great weight. This is the major representative of the Hasidic community, and the Misnagdim. And they are the two most populous groups within the Pale. By this period, 50% of the Jews of Eastern Europe are Hasidic, 50% Misnagdim, traditional, orthodox. So that is the story in the Pale. And they further gave encouragement, because, if Jews attended crown schools, they were given an exemption from conscription. So, Hebrew is still on the curriculum. However, gradually the government began to appoint Christians, Christian teachers, both in primary and secondary schools, and they had the right to appoint the teachers. Interesting, a memo leaked out, and was circulated in the Pale. And the memo stated, “The aim pursued in the training of Jews is that”, I’m quoting, “is that of bringing them nearer to the Christian population, and of eradicating the prejudices in them by the study of the Talmud.”

So, the attendance begins to trickle off. And by 1852, the numbers were incredibly low. And in fact, within 10 years, despite all the concessions, if you sent your children to crown schools, you also had tax concessions. The total number at crown schools was just over 3000. In 1848, Uvarov actually resigned. And by then Max Lilienthal had left the scene. What had happened, was back in 1844, he’d written to his fiance in Munich to make ready for marriage, and to bring furs to Russia, because Russia was so very cold. But then he left Russia, and he never went back. Now we don’t know why, there are conflicting reports. Was he suspicious of Uvarov’s intentions, and he felt that he had been taken in, because, and also, we know that he was confronted by a high official in the ministry who said to him, “Look, you are an intelligent man. Why don’t you convert to Christianity? Why don’t you embrace the church?” What happens is, he returns to Munich, he then, with his wife, he departs for America. And he writes an article for Philippson, in that article, in Philippson’s newspaper in Germany, he says, “Only when the Jews will bow down to the Greek cross will the czar be satisfied, irrespective whether the converts be good or bad people.” So, what happens was, he then flees to America, where he takes up a reform pulpit in New York, and later on in Philadelphia, in Cincinnati, beg your pardon. So, he realises he’s been duped. So, what have we got with Nicholas?

First he tries the stick, that big, big stick. And then he tries the carrot. He’s then going to get disastrously involved in the Crimean War. He dies in 1855, to be replaced by his son, Alexander II, who is known as the czar liberator. And ironically, was it the lessening of all the pressure off his minority groups, including the Jews, and the lure of Russia, an allure of a Russia that is opening its arms to the Jews, or is it, that’s going to lead to emancipation, is it assimilation? But that’s for another time. And ironically, he is going to be assassinated in 1881. The Jews are going to be blamed. And that, of course, is going to lead to the huge exodus of your families between 1881 and 1914 to the West. So Nicholas I, as far as the Jews were concerned, he was one of the greatest monsters in Jewish history.

Thank you. So let’s have a look.

Q&A and Comments

“I had a Russian professor at medical school who always told us in Russia, the czar was Nicholas, but the people were penniless.” Karen,

Q: “So Nicholas drowned the young Jewish boys in the guise of baptism?” A: Yes.

Q: Shelly: “Were those converted Jewish children discriminated against even after conversion?” A: No Shelly, because at this stage it is not racial. If a Jew converts to Christianity, they would in fact become good citizens of Russia. Yes, Jonathan, I should have mentioned this.

Jonathan is telling us “To avoid conscription, young Jews would amputate the trigger finger so they could not fire a rifle.” In fact, Jonathan, from what I gather, it wasn’t the parent, it wasn’t the children, it was the parents. The parents would mutilate their children so that they wouldn’t have to enter the army, because they really did say Kiddush. Can you imagine? We know that the first meal they were given was traif. You know, these tender young kids, and now they are in the rough atmosphere of the cantonist system, you can imagine what it was like for them, because the whole notion of Jewish life, who is the great in the Jewish world, the pale scholar, not the rough young man. So you can just imagine how horrific it was for them.

Adrian, she tells us, “My grandfather, one of my grandfather’s relatives did that.” This is from Marion: “I understand from my family’s story that if a Jewish family didn’t have a child, they would adopt a Jewish boy, and that way, he didn’t go into the army. Don’t know about that, Marion, I’ll have to check that for you and get back on that. This is from Elliot. "One agricultural settlement for the Jews that didn’t fail was the town of Trochenbrod. A hundred percent of the inhabitants were Jewish, and the economy was primary agricultural. The town flourished until the invasion of Cossacks in 1918, but it continued to flourish thereafter until it was destroyed in 1942.” Thank you Elliot. That’s very, very interesting. And of course later on, Stalin sets up a Jewish colony in Birobidjan. This fascinating notion of. “This is the climate in which ORT began the work of training Jews in various technologies in 1890.” Exactly, Linda, Lydia. And of course, it’s people like Baron Gunzburg, the Jewish railway king and banker of Russia, under Alexander II. You see, that’s the point, Alexander’s going, that was involved in the funding of ORT, and of course, ORT is very important to this day. Larry is recommending an excellent reference on the cantonist, it’s “the Cantonist: the Jewish children’s army of the czar” by Larry Domnitch. Thank you.

This is from Larry: “as a descendant of the cantonists, I feel truly glossed over how divisive this period was for Jewish communities, given what more affluent Jews did to ensure their children were exempted.” Well I showed you the poem, didn’t I? Rich Rockover. Yes, it did lead to terrible problems within the community, of course, because as I said to you, Larry, the one thing people will fight for is their children. Yes, and you already see the class division developing in the Pale. And of course, no, I’ll deal with this when I deal with Jewish socialism. Yes, Jonathan. “Also, to avoid conscription, a Jew would change their last name. So you have brothers with different names.” Yes, it was a terrible, terrible time, an absolutely awful time. Arlene: “Riga was never in the Pale. So interesting. They chose to set it all up.” No, they took, Lilienthal was already working there.

Q: “Was Slonim in the Pale or was it in Belarus or in Poland?” A: Now it’s a good question. Slonim was in the Pale, so was Belarus, and so was much of Poland. That’s where your mother came from in 1925 to 1930. What happened, Barry, is that after the end of the first World War, remember the Russian empire collapses. There is revolution. The Poles go for independence. The Lithuanians go for independence. The Ukrainians go for independence. And Lithuania, I believe Slonim, or I’ll have to check that, was Slonim in, where was Slonim? Was Slonim in Lithuania? And violent anti-Semitism breaks out in this period. So, it certainly wasn’t in Russia proper, because Russia proper was now under communism. I can’t remember if Slonim is in Belarus or in Lithuania. I have a hunch it was in, I can’t answer that. Can someone help me? Thank you Rose.

Q: Brenda asked, “Please will you give details of the author?” A: Howard Morley Sachar. And the name of the book is “The Course of Modern Jewish History”. We will be sending you bibliographies. I’ve been discussing that with Wendy.

This is from Lynn. Thank you Lynn. “With regards to your question, what makes the Jews study? I was reminded of something my late mother used to say. My grandfather came to South Africa from Lithuania in the early 1900s. He had, sorry, I’ve lost my place. Beg your pardon. Sorry, let me go. Sorry. Oh, by the way, Slonim’s in Belarus, thank you. Let me get to Lynn, yeah. "I was reminded of something my late mother used to say. My grandfather came to South Africa from Lithuania in the early 1900s. He had five children, who got university education in the times just after the Depression, just before World War II. He was not a particularly wealthy man, and was asked why he bothered educating his children. His reply, ‘I’m giving them something that no one could ever take away from them.’ He now lives in Canada. I now live in Canada.” Yes, this is the whole Jewish story, isn’t it? That’s all we ever had. You know, it’s fascinating. The first generation of immigrants, the second generation make the money, the third generation go into the liberal arts. It’s a fascinating story.

In fact, I’m going to tell you a personal story. I had people for Shabbat lunch, and one of my friends actually said to Ash, my grandson, my eldest grandson, “Are you put under pressure Asher?” And Asher said, “No, I put myself under pressure.” I think it’s also, if you think about it, we are a landless people. If you believe in historic memory, until Israel, we were a landless people. If you believe in historic memory, what on earth could we take from country to country to country? Education. The dream of education. Is it Talmudic? You know, we’re into a very, very complicated area now. We know the latest Israeli research, is that trauma is actually from generation to generation. It’s inherited within one generation, according to the latest breakthrough in Israel. Is this something within us all? Is this something that we pass on to our children? That, if we have education, somehow we have a kind of safety? I don’t know, but it’s a fascinating debate, and unfortunately, we don’t yet know the answers to these questions.

Abigail: “Nicholas sounded like a reincarnation of the Egyptian Pharaoh.” You’ve got to remember these men were autocrats. The world was his. And you know, if you’re interested in power and the psychology of power, what does power do to people? He believed he was God on earth. He could walk the world. There is no compass to correct him. You know, the Russian Orthodox church, the smells and bells and bowing down. This is from Harriet, “‘The Fixer’ by Bernard Malamud speaks to the topic of disfigurement by a disincentive to military conscription. Also, I believe that some Jewish families adopted new names to create two families instead of one.” Yes, you had to do anything. Look, over 50,000 Jewish children were taken into the cantonist system. It was a terrible, terrible thing. Can you imagine? You have to, the family said Kiddush. They never saw their children again. They never believed they’d ever see them again. One of them, a man called Jacob Rothman, he did convert, and he became incredibly anti-Semitic. Well thank you Jennifer. Thank you. “Slonim is in Belarus.” Okay, I’m going to check that out for you.

This is from Anita. “My paternal grandfather was forced into the military. Somehow he was able to leave after years of service for a brief respite. He knew that he would have to return to the military. Somehow, he moved to Proskurov in the Ukraine, and went to a Jewish cemetery and took the surname Chait. He married my grandfather, four sons and two children, Over time the eldest son moved to Canada, sponsored by my grandmother’s sister. My mother moved to Canada. She also went alone. The rest of the family followed some years later.” Goodness, I hope you write all these stories down. It’s so important. If you don’t write them down for any other reason, write them down for your children and your grandchildren. Lockdown university. One of the things that I’m so proud of, Wendy and I are both so proud of it, is the student responses, and the stories that are coming out. You see, so many of these stories aren’t in the textbooks.

Let me tell you a funny story which makes you realise how important this kind of knowledge is. I was teaching a class on Trotsky. This was the days of face-to-face teaching, and it was a long, long time ago. Now what do I know about Trotsky? I mean, I never met him. He died in 1940. But certainly I’ve read many, many books. Anyway, one of my students who was incredibly, incredibly credible, her name was Vera Brainus, and she actually ran Youth Aliyah after the war. And she was an elderly lady by then, I mean that was one, wonderful things. When I was in my thirties, I was teaching people in their seventies and eighties. So you can imagine the kind of knowledge they passed on. And she said “Trudy he was my father’s Hebrew teacher in Odessa.” Now Trotsky always pretended he didn’t have much Jewish knowledge. I went back to the books and I found out that in Odessa he lived with his mother’s brother. No, his, beg your pardon. Was it his mother’s? No, his father’s sister. I beg your pardon. One way round, a family member, who was a head of a Jewish school, and he was a brilliant linguist. So you know, I’m pretty sure she was right. So tell your stories.

“We are not landless anymore.” I said that, now we have a country. But up until Israel, up until 1948, no. And don’t forget, the majority of Jews right up until 1933 were not Zionists. Right up until 1945, you could actually make the case. They were not Zionists. It’s an interesting, much to say. This is from Rose. Hi, lovely Rose. “My father, a refugee from Egypt and then Congo, always said ‘education is what they cannot take from you’, As did my mother. And that’s why I became a medical doctor. And yes, the trauma is passed to the next generation.” It’s fascinating, isn’t it? What a background you’ve got, Rose. Egypt, Congo. Wow. “Slonim is in the Grodno region of Belarus.” Thank you. Have you, I dunno how many of you have been to Belarus? I have taught there, and, quite a place. And the great Jack Kagan, who came from Novogródek, he survived the Shoah, and after the war, he came to England, and he was an amazing, amazing man. And he went back to Novogródek, and he was responsible for actually setting up a Jewish wing in the museum in Novogródek. Very, very important. And we went with him and he took us to Mir, which was of course the home of the great Mir Yeshiva. Yeah, Arlene Blair. Thank you Arlene, thank you. Thank goodness we’ve got we’ve got our genealogists here.

“Slonim was in Poland at one time, then Lithuania, and then in Grodno.” Okay, and then Grono. I believe a member of Lockdown said 1925. Arlene, where was it in 1925? Do you know, ‘cause that would help. This is Michelle Press, “Big trauma can leave mark on a person’s genes, which can then be passed on to future generation.” Isn’t this a fascinating field of study? For a long time, I suppose people didn’t want to touch it. This is from Susan Akar: “Intergenerational transmission of trauma. I’m sure this exists.” “Trotsky was educated in the Hebrew school in Mykolaiv.” I don’t think, he always said he went to cheder and he learned nothing. That’s what he said in his biography. Now of course he was the great internationalist. Jonathan: “The residential schools in Canada treated the First Nation children in a similar manner.” Yes, I can believe that. Yes, Jonathan. “My parents came from Grodno Gubernia, they lived in villages not far apart. They met in Toronto and were married in 1934.” Wow. This is from Ellie Vitten: “A socialist song I learned at summer camp made such an impression. Yes, my thoughts are free.” Oh, that’s lovely to hear. “As did the US residential schools.” Yes.

Anyway, Judy, I think we’ve come to an end. So I think those of you who came online today were very, very brave, 'cause I dunno what it’s like where you are, but I’m melting. So anyway, I will see you all next Tuesday, and we have another presentation at 7:30, and it is the brilliant Julian Barnett. So hopefully it’s cooled down by then. And thank you for all your comments, it really does add to my knowledge, because I see this place as a great sharer of knowledge.

So thank you all very much. God bless.