5 - The Changes in the Attitude of Polish Society toward the Jews in the Eighteenth Century

Summary

The transformations in the social structure, politics and culture of 18thcentury Poland had their impact upon the evolution of the predominant attitudes of Polish society towards the Jews. The large numbers of the latter constituted in the second half of the century the largest concentration of Jews in the world. They amounted to about 1,000,000 or 10 per cent of the country's population, which means that their numbers roughly equalled those of the szlachta. This is why in the last century of the Commonwealth's existence, the demographic factor determined Polish attitudes towards the Jews far more than ever before. However, the growth in the demographic potential of the Jewish population coincided with the impact of the ideas of the Enlightenment, with the result that the two factors compounded one another in rendering all problems concerning the Jews highly visible and in considerably influencing the designs for social and political reforms at the time of the Four-Year Diet. I wish to call attention here to those aspects of the process which have been overlooked or neglected in the rather scanty and mostly obsolete literature on the subject. Furthermore, in my own study, Poles and Jews in the 17th and 18th Centuries: Rejection or Acceptance, I failed to address some pertinent issues, which are dealt with here.

The fact that Polish attitudes towards the Jews were subject to an evolution over time can best be assessed through a comparison between the realities of the first and second halves of the century. The comparison would have to be carried out in terms of (1) the growth or decline of extreme forms of anti-Jewish repression; (2) fiscal burdens; (3) the degree to which the enlightened part of the szlachta and the magnates sympathized with the economic hardships of the Jews; (4) the attitude of the Catholic clergy; (5) the differences in the respective standpoints of the advocates of the early and advanced forms of the Enlightenment; (6) hostility between the Jews and the burghers; (7) factors conditioning the peasant attitudes towards the Jews; and (8) the remedial measures for improvement of mutual relationships advocated by various figures within Polish society.