History of the Jews in Russia and Poland (Vol. 1-3). Dubnow SimonЧитать онлайн книгу.
of intolerance in relation to the Jews. The Abbot of the famous Pechera monastery, Theodosius (1057–1074), taught the Kiovians to live at peace with friends and foes, "but with their own foes, not with those of God." God's foes, however, are Jews and heretics, "who hold a crooked religion." In the Life of Theodosius written by the celebrated Russian chronicler Nestor we are told that this austere monk was in the habit of getting up in the night and secretly going to the Jews to argue with them about Christ. He would scold them, branding them as wicked and godless, and would purposely irritate them, in the hope of being killed "for the profession of Christ" and thus attaining to martyrdom, though it would seem that the Jews consistently refused to grant him this pleasure. Hatred against Jews and Judaism was equally preached by Theodosius' contemporaries Illarion and John, Metropolitans of Kiev (about 1050 and 1080).
This propaganda of religious intolerance did not remain without effect. In the beginning of the twelfth century the Jewish colony of Kiev experienced the first pogrom. Under Grand Duke Svyatopolk II. (1093–1113) the Jews of Kiev had enjoyed complete liberty of trade and commerce. The Prince had protected his Jewish subjects, and had intrusted some of them with the collection of the customs and other ducal imposts. But during the interregnum following the death of Svyatopolk (1113) they had to pay dearly for the liberty enjoyed by them. The Kiovians had offered the throne of the principality to Vladimir Monomakh, but he was slow about entering the capital. As a result, riots broke out. The Kiev mob revolted, and, after looting the residences of several high officials, threw itself upon the Jews and plundered their property. The well-intentioned among the inhabitants of Kiev dispatched a second delegation to Monomakh, warning him that, if he tarried longer, the riots would assume formidable dimensions. Thereupon Monomakh arrived and restored order in the capital.
Nevertheless the Jews continued to reside in Kiev. In 1124 they suffered severely from a fire which destroyed a considerable portion of the city. In the chronicles of that period (1146–1151) mention is frequently made of the "Jewish gate" in Kiev. Jewish merchants were attracted towards this city, a growing commercial center serving as the connecting link between Western Europe on the one hand and the Black Sea provinces and the Asiatic continent on the other. Reference to Kiev is made by the Jewish travelers of the time, Benjamin of Tudela and Pethahiah of Ratisbon (1160–1190). The former speaks of "the kingdom of Russia, stretching from the gates of Prague to the gates of Kiev, a large city on the border of the kingdom." The latter, Pethahiah, informs us that, on leaving his home in Ratisbon, he proceeded to Prague, the capital of Bohemia; from Prague he went to Poland, and from there "to Kiev, which is in Russia," whereupon he traveled for six days, until he reached the Dnieper, and, having crossed it, finally arrived on the coast of the Black Sea and in the Crimea.
After the Crusades, when considerable settlements of Jewish immigrants from Germany began to spring up in Poland, part of these immigrants found their way into the Principality of Kiev. The German rabbis of the twelfth century occasionally refer in their writings to the journeys of German Jews traveling with their merchandise to "Russ" and "Sclavonia" (= Slavonia, Slav countries). The Jews of Russia, who lacked rabbinical authorities of their own, addressed their inquiries to the Jewish scholars of Germany, or sent their studious young men to the West to obtain a Talmudic education. Hebrew sources of the twelfth century make mention of the names of Rabbi Isaac of Chernigov and Rabbi Moses of Kiev. The latter is quoted as having addressed an inquiry to the well-known Gaon of Bagdad, Samuel ben Ali.
The conquest of the Crimea by the Tatar khans in the thirteenth century and the gradual extension of their sovereignty to the Principalities of Kiev and Moscow brought the old center of Judaism in the Tauris region in close contact with its offshoots in various parts of Russia. Kiev enters into regular commercial intercourse with Kaffa (Theodosia) on the Crimean sea-shore. Kaffa becomes during that period an international emporium, owing to the Genoese, who had obtained from the Tatar khans concessions for Kaffa and the surrounding country, and had founded there a commercial colony of the Genoese Republic. The Crimean Peninsula was joined to the world commerce of Italy, and merchantmen were constantly ploughing the seas between Genoa and Kaffa, passing through the Byzantine Dardanelles. Italians, Greeks, Jews, and Armenians flocked to Kaffa and the adjacent localities on the southern coast of the Crimea. The Government of the Genoese Republic time and again instructed its consuls who were charged with the administration of the Crimean colony to observe the principles of religious toleration in their attitude towards this heterogeneous population. If the testimony of the traveler Schiltberger, who visited the Crimea between 1394 and 1427, may be relied upon, there were in Kaffa Jews "of two kinds," evidently Rabbanites and Karaites, who had two synagogues and four thousand houses, an imposing population to judge by its numbers.
The great crisis in the history of Byzantium—the capture of Constantinople by the Turks—affected also the Genoese colony in the Crimea. The Turks began to hamper the Genoese in their navigation through the straits. In 1455 the Genoese Government ceded its Kaffa possessions to the Bank of St. George in Genoa. The new administration set out to restore order in the colony and establish normal relations between the various races inhabiting it; but the days of this cultural oasis on the Black Sea were numbered. In 1475 Kaffa was taken by the Turks, and the whole peninsula fell under Turco-Tataric dominion.
Important Jewish communities were to be found during that period also in the older Tataric possessions of the Crimea. Two Jewish communities, one consisting of Rabbanites and the other of Karaites, flourished, during the thirteenth century, in the ancient capital of the Tatar khans, named Solkhat (now Eski-Krym). Beginning with 1428, the old Karaite community of Chufut-Kale ("the Rock of the Jews"), situated near the new Tatar capital, Bakhchi-Sarai, grows in numbers and influence. The memory of this community is perpetuated by a huge number of tombstones, ranging from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century. Crimea, now peopled with Jews, sends forth settlers to Lithuania, where, at the end of the fourteenth century, Grand Duke Vitovt16 takes them under his protection. Crimean colonies spring up in the Lithuanian towns of Troki and Lutzk, which, as will be seen later, are granted extensive privileges by the ruler of the land.
The establishment of Turkish sovereignty over the Crimea (1475–1783) resulted in a closer commercial relationship between the Jewish center on the Peninsula and the Principality of Moscow, which at that time fenced herself off from the outside world by a Chinese wall, and, with few exceptions, barred from her dominions all foreigners and infidels, or "Basurmans."17 In the second half of the fifteenth century the Grand Duke of Muscovy, Ivan III., was constrained to seek the help of several Crimean Jews in his diplomatic negotiations with the Khan of the Crimea, Mengli-Guiray. One of the agents of the Muscovite Prince was an influential Jew of Kaffa, by the name of Khoza Kokos, who was instrumental in bringing about a military alliance between the Grand Duke and the Khan (1472–1475). It is curious to note that Kokos wrote his letters to Ivan III. in Hebrew, so that the Muscovite ruler, who evidently could find no one in Moscow familiar with that language, had to request his agent to correspond with him in Russian or "in the Basurman language" (Tataric or perhaps Italian). Another agent of Ivan III., Zechariah Guizolfi, was an Italian Jew, who had previously occupied an important post in the Genoese colony in the Crimea, and was the owner of the Taman Peninsula ("the Prince of Taman"). He stood in close relations to Khan Mengli-Guiray, and in this capacity carried on a diplomatic correspondence with the Prince of Muscovy (1484–1500). Later on Zechariah was on the point of taking up his abode in Moscow in order to participate more directly in the foreign affairs of Russia, but circumstances interfered with the execution of the plan.
During the same period there arose in Moscow, as the result of a secret propaganda of Judaism, a religious movement known under the name of the "Judaizing heresy." According to the Russian chroniclers, the originator of this heresy was the learned Jew Skharia (Zechariah), who had emigrated with a number of coreligionists from Kiev to the ancient Russian city of Novgorod. Profiting by the religious unrest rife at that time in Novgorod—a new sect, called the Strigolniki,18 had arisen in the city, which abrogated the Church rites, and went to the point of denying the divinity of Christ—Zechariah got in touch with several representatives of the Orthodox clergy, and succeeded