Class 8. Early Jews of Modern Ukraine (3)
and they start to develop
these extensive instruments of autonomy
to the point where
when there are disputes between communities,
they develop regional councils,
and then, a real game changer
is when the crown basically says,
"Okay, we just want a lump sum from you," you know?
"Forget about the individual communities collecting taxes.
"Give us one lump sum,"
and then the Grand Duchy of Lithuania says the same thing,
and that's when developing out of that
is the Council of Four Lands,
which is kind of like functioning
as not just a supreme IRS, a supreme tax collector,
but a supreme court
that's adjudicating disputes between communities,
that deals with, really, you call them national problems,
a blood libel accusation, a ritual murder accusation,
the accusation that Jews have killed a Christian child
and used their blood for their,
used the blood for their rituals,
which never happened, I should emphasize,
but it was kind of like the rumor that refused to go away
because it symbolically reenacts the crucifixion,
and it has a lot of resonance that way,
so, you know, this Council of Four Lands
would have somebody intervene
and try to prevent, you know,
this thing from getting out of control.
They would negotiate the taxes,
and they would serve as a supreme court in secular matters.
Now, each kahal also had a rabbinical court,
so the entire Jewish community is known as the kehila.
It's run by the kahal,
but they also have rabbis
who are sort of separate from everything.
That Council of Four Lands is mainly merchants,
is mainly wealthy merchants and leaseholders, okay?
The rabbis meet separately,
and they tend to judge religious matters,
which makes a lot of sense
until you try to figure out what a religious matter is.
It's not so clear.
Murder seems to be a religious matter.
Theft, kind of, but it's also a business matter,
so there's a lot of, like, jurisdictional disputes going on
between rabbinical courts and lay courts,
but by and large, you know,
when things are functioning smoothly,
they support each other,
and there's a actual power
to excommunicate members
that's never really used,
but the threat of excommunication, called the herem,
is enough to scare people
into obeying the authority of these various courts
because being excommunicated would really be truly horrible.
You know, you would really have no place to go
in Christian society, in Jewish society,
and it's like social death,
and a really devastating condition to be in.
It's never used
until the rise of the false messianic movement
of Shabbetai Tzvi, which happens later on.
We'll maybe touch upon at the very end.
Now, a shtadlan is a very important function.
The shtadlan is a lobbyist,
and every community would have one.
He speaks the language of the land.
He knows the laws really well.
He's charming
and has somewhat of a secular education,
so a lot of times doctors would serve this purpose,
and he basically is the go-between.
You know, he'll talk to the authorities
when something goes wrong,
and this is kind of like,
you know, Jewish foreign policy, you could call it.
You know, this is how they defend their communities,
through lobbying, yes, through giving of bribes.
I mean, this was actually totally on the books,
out in the open.
It was a normal way of doing business.
You bribed the secular officials to protect your community,
and no one seemed to see anything wrong with that.
Now, with this extensive autonomy,
really, the most extensive autonomy since antiquity,
you also have the development of vibrant religious life
and the wooden synagogues.
Here's one in Khodoriv in the Ukrainian territories.
They can develop very ornate, beautiful artwork
even though they're wooden synagogues,
which suggests less wealth.
Beautiful ceiling paintings.
Down in the corner there, I put an image of this guy,
who's chained to the synagogue wall outside
by his neck.
Any idea what he did wrong?
He broke the Sabbath,
so this is actually called the kuna,
and I put it there to remind us not to get too nostalgic
about this flourishing religious life
'cause there's a lot of religious compulsion involved too.
You know, keeping the Sabbath was not a choice,
at least not throughout this period of time,
and if you go to the town of Czestochowa in Poland,
you can actually see one of these on the synagogue wall.
It's pretty interesting.
Most people could pay a fine and get out of it, you know,
and they would prefer to pay the fine
than be publicly humiliated in this way,
but it was there.
Now, Jews are able to move into cities,
but again, you come into direct conflict
with the Christian townspeople,
and economics is something that's perceived
in an ethnic way, right?
There are groups against groups, Christians against Jews,
and the Christians manage to exact
a lot of money and payment from Jewish merchants,
so it becomes very expensive to do business in cities,
and that's where your leaseholding comes in,
and the official word for lease is arenda.
You may see it in your readings.
The arenda can be a lease on everything we've talked about
and some things we didn't talk about: tolls on roads, ponds.
You can lease the tax,
and then you get to keep anything
over the amount that you collect.
You can lease entire villages, taverns, and distilleries.
This is an absolute boon
to Jews, economically,
but let's just say it's not good to be a serf
in this situation,
and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth comes to be known,
as I don't know if you've heard this before,
heaven for the nobles, paradise for the Jews,
and hell for the serfs.
The reason is this is an arrangement
that is not only economically debilitating for the serfs
who have to continually work,
you know, the nobleman's land for free
along with whatever land they're able to work of their own,
which is very small.
They have to, you know,
pay the Jewish tavernkeeper.
They have to pay the Jewish miller.
There are even rumors that Jews lease the churches
and held keys to the churches,
which would be really humiliating,
but some historians have said that's actually not the case,
but that is something
that made its way up through Ukrainian lore
is that you even had to beg to use your own church,
you know, so it's a really humiliating situation,
whether that last thing is true or not,
and that's the reason for the volatility,
but nobody's going to attack the Jewish leaseholder
for the simple reason
that he's under the protection of the nobleman.
Nobles own the vast majority of land.
They're increasingly more powerful than the king,
who becomes an elected monarch,
and they really, I would say,
they own their own towns,
and those are increasingly attractive to Jews to settle in.
It's a system of patronage, really.
Now, inside the tavern,
you have that integration that I was talking about,
but it's really more of an interaction,
and here you have Jewish musicians,
non-Jews who are dancing,
and you have the Jewish tavernkeepers over on that side,
and notice that the wife of the tavernkeeper
is pouring the liquor.
I'm not sure whose child that is in the corner there,
but children were very much present
in these taverns as well.
This was where people would spend their leisure time.
These were also, effectively, news venues,
entertainment venues, banks, country stores,
especially in the smaller,
you know, rural areas or small towns.
They were the hub of everything,
competing, really, with the church,
you know, because after the wedding,
you would, you know, proceed from the church to the tavern,
where you'd be met by the tavernkeeper,
who's kind of like the antipriest,
but what I want to emphasize is gender
because women worked in the society, in Jewish society,
and it was expected.
It wasn't something that women fought for as a right.
It was absolutely expected.
Your value on the marriage market was determined
by what business promise you could bring to the marriage.
That would often be linguistic,
like, how well you speak Polish or Ukrainian or whatever,
how well you know arithmetic,
and these marriages were really business partnerships.
Usually, the husband would be dealing with the suppliers.
He might drive a taxi,
you know, a horse and cart during the week.
The woman would be, the wife would be serving the customers,
and it's a pretty rough lifestyle,
but why that's important is
the Jewish familial unit
presents a kind of double-barrel threat economically
because both the husband and wife are working,
and this is absolutely the norm.
Occasionally, you have the situation
where an extremely learned and accomplished rabbi
would study all day long
and the wife would work in the marketplace
or in the tavern, whatever,
but that was a pretty rare occurrence, okay.
Now, one arenda dispute
that I went through pretty extensively
illustrates the problem with authority,
the way things stand,
and the importance of the development
of the Council of Four Lands, that supreme court.
I just wanna go through this really quickly
because what happens in this situation of leases,
and this is probably a tavern that's being leased,
is competition between Jews, okay?
In this case, Simeon leases a liquor arenda.
Reuben attempts to purchase it for the next three years
before his term is up, so he's the encroacher,
and then, Simeon goes and negotiates
with the local nobleman, successfully, who gives it to him.
Reuben, in this case, goes all the way to the queen
and gets her scribe to support his side,
and he tells the town council to award the lease to Reuben.
The towns council agree,
town council agrees, but for a bribe.
Reuben pays the bribe.
Simeon bribes the nobleman,
so lots of bribes going on here,
and offers an even higher price,
and the nobleman orders the town council
to withdraw it from Reuben,
and then the queen steps in and supports Reuben,
so you have, like,
these conflicting secular authorities that get involved,
which leads me to think it's much more than a tavern.
It could be, you know, an entire right to distill,
which is called (speaks in foreign language),
but it's something that is pretty lucrative,
so they actually don't stop with the authorities,
not even the queen.
They now go to the rabbis,
and the rabbis are extremely prominent in this society,
which is a, you know, community of believers.
Some of these rabbis have their own yeshivas,
these Talmudic academies,
where they teach the Talmud all day long,
but when disputes occur
that have to do with some aspect of Jewish law, halakha,
they will often send questions to the most prominent rabbis,
and this is what happens in this case,
so Rabbi Isaac Ben Bezalel of Volodymyr,
he argues in favor of Simeon,
and he quotes a medieval German source
to basically say, "Do not encroach," okay?
So he's basically anti-Reuben, anti-encroachment,
but then they go to a more prominent rabbi,
Isaac Luria, who's young, but he's kind of a rising star,
and he actually rules in favor of Reuben
and says that the laws of encroachment don't apply
'cause this is only a potential purchase, right?
The lease term hadn't begun yet, so it's a potential,
it's like the next three years of the term,
and he says, "It's known in the entire kingdom
"that we buy the right to farm taxes and liquor
"and other rights in the town with an arenda contract,"
and they're also accustomed to sell the arenda
before the term for the first holder of the arenda expires,
and they sell it to a second person, so Reuben's okay.
He's allowed to encroach, okay?
Now, Luria's young.
He may be brilliant and a rising star, but he's young,
