Jewish Perceptions of lnsecurity and Powerlessness in 16th-18th Century Poland

Summary

In assessing the likelihood that the Polish kings would drive the Jews out of Poland-Lithuania in the 17th century, Israel Halpern concluded that, despite factors favouring expulsion, the Jews were safe. Their wealth, economic role and political influence secured their position. This theme has been taken up over the last fifteen years or so by historians living in the United States. These writers, intimately familiar with the strength and achievements of a Jewish community in a pluralist society, have tended to emphasize the fundamental security and the real economic and political power which the Jews possessed in 16th-18th century Poland.

B. D. Weinryb insisted that the word ‘precarious’ could not be applied to Jewish political status in Poland and that the Jews’ ability to work to secure their own interests was at least as great as that of any other group. S. W. Baron emphasized how the Jews held their own politically and were able to manipulate Polish social forces so as to maintain their own upward mobility. G. D. Hundert entitled his dissertation ‘Security and Dependence’ and pointed out how the Jews parlayed their economic links with the various elements of 17th-century Polish society into occupational, legal and physical security. In my own work I have tried to demonstrate that the marriage of convenience between the Jews and the Polish nobility was a marriage nonetheless, securing the rights of the Jews as residents of privately-owned towns and granting them the power to pursue their ·economic and political interests.

These authors find detailed proof for their assertions mainly in Polish sources of a non-legislative nature. It is, however, not difficult to find Jewish sources which, in a general way, confirm the conclusion that Jews in 16th-18th century Poland were relatively safe and to a great extent masters of their own fate.

In the 16th century the great light of rabbinic scholarship, Rabbi Moses Isserles, was impressed by the status of Jews in Poland. In a much-quoted letter to a student who decided to forego a lucrative rabbinic career in Germany and return to Poland, Isserles remarked: ‘It is perhaps preferable to partake of dry bread crust, but in security, in this country.'