Loading summary
Transcript29 lines
- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [00:06]
B
Well, welcome everyone to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Virtually. My name is Alex Weiser. I'm the Director of Public Programs of yivo and we're really pleased to have Professor Shaul Stampfer tuning in from Jerusalem to give today's lecture, My Heart is in the How Yiddish Speakers Move to the East. This is a part of our Yiddish Civilization lecture series which is 10 lectures that are both a part of our Yiddish summer program and also open to the broad public. Half the lectures have been in Yiddish and half in English. So it's both a great way to practice your Yiddish, but also to immerse yourself in the wonderful cultural world of Yiddish speaking Jewry. For those that don't know about Yivo, I'll just say a very brief word. Yivo is a very special place for the celebration and contemplation of Jewish history and Jewish culture. We have an archive and library of over 23 million documents and over 400,000 books which researchers from around the world use for their work. In addition to making that material available, we do a variety of public programs like this, of education initiatives, of exhibitions to bring to life the world celebrated in our collections. So without further ado, I'm very pleased to welcome Shaul Stampfer, Professor Emeritus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. SH well, thank you so much for joining us today.
- [01:26]
A
I'm very glad to be with you. When I'm in New York, which doesn't happen often, I almost always come into yivo and it's a special place for me. It's a very special place. So I want to talk tonight about something which in the past I didn't talk about so much. Working in history. Sometimes you deal with a person, an event, a school, a certain custom or practice, political development. But today or tonight I want to talk about a big, big question. I want to talk about how it was that it large Jewish community came into being in the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, in Poland, Lita, Ukraine, afterwards Russia. And on the way to doing this, it's really going to be necessary to take a look at the big picture of the European economy because for better or for worse, I see economics as the root of many, many developments in history at all times, certainly in modern history. And I don't think it can be ignored. So I'm going to start in the middle to discuss how Jews came to Eastern Europe. And then I'm going to go back and look a little bit at economic developments in general, then see some of the impact of economic developments on the Jews, and then we will run out of time. But hopefully before we run out of time, I'll be able to come to some, at least interim conclusions. So the question of origins and population developments is often tricky to study because we don't have censuses for most of the period that interests us. There aren't so many documents and there are few things we can read about. We often need to look at indirect evidence that will tell us about the basic developments that were taking place. So let's take a look at the Jews who were the core or the basis for the Jewish population in Eastern Europe. Sometimes people have said that the Jews who came to Eastern Europe fled from persecutions in Germany. However, there are good reasons to be pretty doubtful about this. I don't want to go into too much in detail. I. If somebody wants to, I've written about it. You can see what I've written and decide whether it convinces you or not. But if we take a look at the Jews who lived in eastern Europe in 16th, 17th century, their customs, their prayer books, their language, type of Yiddish they spoke was very different from the customs, traditions, language, even the names that were current among the Jews in the Rhineland, in the core areas in the center of traditional West German Jewry. The obvious example that people throw around when looking at this is what's the bread that is eaten on Friday night and on Saturday. Among Eastern European Jews, it's challah. Among the Rhineland in West Yiddish, it's Berhas. It's a different population in many respects. And it's a little difficult to explain how so much changed. And without evidence for it, you have to look elsewhere. And another explanation which is given is that the Jews of Eastern Europe were descended from the Khazars. Now, we know very little about the Khazars, even though we know that they were a very important nation. They played a major role in European history. It was the Khazars who stopped the expansion of the Muslim population moving up, northward. When they hit the Khazars, that was as far as they got, which is why we have Islam in Turkey, we have Islam in Iraq, but it didn't make it up to Russia or to Ukraine. So the Khazars existed, but they certainly did not speak German. And they probably spoke some kind of a Turkish dialect which left no traces of significance among Ashkenazi Jews. And more significant, and this also I discussed elsewhere, it's very difficult to believe that they ever converted. As a matter of fact, there's almost no solid evidence, in my opinion, for that some of the sources are unreliable. The best sources are apparently forgeries. And we have to leave this as a fantastic story, but one that doesn't quite stand up to careful scrutiny. The Khazars had better things to do than davening in synagogues three times a day, observing the Sabbath, observing the other traditions of Jewry. They had wars to fight. So that it's not very likely that the Khazars had any significant impact on East European Jewry. So we're left with the problem. We have a Jews in Eastern Europe, where did they come from? And what I would like to claim is that they came from a nearby area. They came from what is now the Czech Republic, Slovakia, parts of Austria. The area closest to the Slavic speaking lands to Eastern Europe was the area that supplied the Jewish population. But then the obvious question is, so how many people could have come? This is not an area with huge Jewish, that had huge Jewish populations. And if so, we need to understand what happened that would the population that did migrate that would produce such a large Jewish population? If indeed we take a look at the early Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, they were very small. They were, we're talking about thousands of people, maybe a few tens of thousands. But in the 5th, in the year 1500, but soon after, we get much larger populations. The explanation that we could offer for this is that the population grew. There were conditions that made it possible for the population to grow quickly. We have seen populations that did grow very quickly. The population of the French speaking Quebec, which is today in the millions, is descended from a few thousand, very few thousand settlers who came across the Atlantic from France. But under the positive conditions of Quebec for population growth, the population exploded. The same was with this is true for the Afrikaans speaking population of South Africa. There are many other populations which have been documented as growing very quickly within a small period of time. Populations that grow quickly. Can double themselves in a period of 30, 40 years. And if you start up with 10,000, then double and double and double, you end up with a large population. However, this is just an explanation on paper. The question is what would be the basis to convince anyone that there were conditions that were conducive to such growth. So to do this we have to take a look at the economic conditions in Poland. And what was it that pulled or attracted Jews to move to Poland? Were Jews needed in Poland in the year 1500? What did Jews have to offer? What skills could they bring that would make them needed and attract them to settle in an area which was developing rapidly? And the Answer is there was little need for the Jews. There was a need for population among the Polish nobility, among the rulers, there was a recognition that it was necessary to stimulate the development of Polish agriculture. And indeed, until the Black Plague, which was much earlier, mid 14th century 1340, there was a large scale movement of peasants from German speaking lands to Poland. They came in groups, they settled on the land, they developed technologies that would be appropriate to Poland and they were very welcome. They were brought by organizers who brought these entire groups and settled them together on the land. This was called Ost. Now, the Jews who lived in the areas near Poland, Poland, Lithuania were not farmers. They couldn't come and say that we know how to develop forest lands and to turn the forests into fields of wheat. They didn't know how to develop marshlands, to drain swamps. Where they lived in Slovakia, in what is now Slovakia or the Czech Republic or Austria, they were an urban or quasi urban population who had some trade skills, had commercial skills, but not. But they were not known as farmers. And we don't find any evidence of Jews settling in large numbers. There were exceptions, but large numbers didn't exist of Jewish farmers at any time in the early modern period in the Polish Lithuanian lands. So that is not a reason for Jews to move to the East. Now. What about the cities? The cities in Poland did offer, in theory, some potential developments. There were growing cities. The population of Poland grew non stop from the 13th century on. The cities offered certain possibilities. Trade. They offered possibilities for craft skills, whether it be as butchers or bakers, or even better, as shoemakers, as tailors. There was a lot that could be done. But the cities in Poland were not empty. They were already populated either with local populations or. Or they were also populated with migrants who had come largely from German speaking lands and. Or from Italy to the south. And this population was quite aware of the potential of Jewish competition and they did not want it. And the urban population was quite adamant that Jews should not break into the urban economic environment. The tradesmen, the craftsmen in these cities were organized in guilds or in urban city organizations. And they did their best to make sure that their already established commercial activities would not be undercut by migrants. So that the concern of an established urban population for potential competitors is something that always has to be dealt with here. I'll just mention in passing that the massive Jewish migration from Eastern Europe to America in the late 19th century, the population that filled New York's Lower east side, as we know, was a population that was largely involved in the textile industry. Luckily, for those Jews in the 1880s and the 1890s, the textile industry and the in New York City was a new industry that was developing very quickly. It was a combination of industrialization, the Singer sewing machine, the new factories that were built in New York, and the brand new routes of railroads which made it possible to market the production of New York factories all over America and to undercut local tailors that were in every city in America. However, there was no established population of textile workers in New York. There were new factories that desperately needed workers. And this is what made it possible for so many Jews to migrate to New York. Had there been veteran populations, they would have fought tooth and nail to avoid competitors moving in and undercutting, working for lower wages and taking the place of the veterans. So the same thing existed hundreds of years ago in Eastern Europe, except that the veterans were already in place. And that's why you find in so many Polish cities that steps were taken to exclude Jews from living in the cities, to force them to live either in the suburbs or even further away, and to preserve the monopoly of the veteran populations so that Jews who moved to Poland did not necessarily have such an easy time breaking in and entering the urban commercial world. There were exceptions, There are always exceptions. Jews who made it already in the 15th or 16th centuries. But this was not the golden in Medina, and there was no reason for masses of Jews to move to Poland. So what happened? What happened to change the environment for Jews and to make massive population growth possible? And if we don't find any evidence for this, then we have to revise our picture of what took place. So here it is probably a good idea to take a look at the economic breakdown of what Jews were doing in Poland and Lithuania a little bit later and try and trace the roots. So if we take a very fascinating book, Yankel's Tavern by Glenn Ditter, or other works describing jews in the 18th century and later, what was the main or one of the main Jewish occupations? Jews ran taverns. They were a massive presence in the liquor business. This was a big, big business. Jews lived to some degree in cities, very often private cities, because the large urban centers, which had some degree of autonomy, were still in the before the partition of Poland in the mid 17th century, were still mid 18th century, were still trying to avoid letting Jews move in. But the Jews who found a large population, who found occupations, found it running taverns or running tax services for the nobility. And this is where we find truly large, large numbers of dudes. And as we will see, I hope some of the other Jews who appeared to be urban populations were really living off of some of the network of Jewish innkeepers or tavern owners. So what led this population to come to being? Where did this come from? And here we can also ask a reverse question. Jews in Poland were known in the 18th century as tavern keepers, innkeepers, retailers of alcoholic beverages. What about in what would be Germany? Is this a Jewish business? It's not there. There were cases, but this was not an area in which Jews had a massive presence or monopolized or almost monopolized this branch of business. If we take a look at a city with a huge Jewish population in Western Europe, what would that be? Amsterdam in the 18th century. Jews are not known as retailers of genever, which is the Dutch version of what would afterwards be in England. Gin. Jews are not there. That's not a Jewish business. If we look at England, Great Britain, there are fewer Jews, but Jews were not imported to run the gin business. The British managed to develop a huge business of retailing, marketing gin, and the Jews are not there. So this is kind of an interesting phenomena that we don't have. We have a business which in Poland was a classic Jewish business, whereas in Bohemia, Moravia, certainly to the west, is an area in which Jews did not play a major role. Now, this is a question that requires some attention. And here we have to take a look at some of the broader questions of the European economy, Because what happened to the Jews was actually a byproduct of some major developments in the European economy. Now, there's been. There's kind of an obvious statement. I got it from an author named De Vries, but it's not. He's not the only one who noticed it. And he's pointed out that in the Middle Ages, in the very early modern period, what people ate was more or less what they grew. The agricultural production was barely enough to sustain the population. There wasn't very much extra production. And this meant that most of the massive populations were farmers, peasants. You didn't have very many large cities in the early Middle Ages because there wasn't enough food, extra food being produced that could sustain an urban population. But in the course of the Middle Ages and even more in the early modern period, more and more food was being produced, more that was needed to feed the farmers or the peasants. With this extra food, things could be done. Now, in some cases, the extra food that was produced went to local markets, and when it went to local markets, it ended up in various locations. If we take a look at England in the early modern period, there was a massive reorganization of the English economy. The economy, in some respects, became freer. It became much more what we would call capitalistic or proto capitalistic. The cities developed. Private property encouraged farmers to produce not for their own use, but to produce for the market, to sell. And you have the massive growth of the population of London. With the surplus produce that is present, that reaches the market. And the same took place in the continental Europe. This is a period when Holland is developing rapidly. Amsterdam becomes a major, major city. And this is all because of important developments leading to greater production of grain and foodstuffs in Europe. Now, this made it possible, the rise of textile industries. Because textile workers in the Dutch cities had food that were grown by farmers in other places in the region. This is what they ate. They produced textiles. The textiles were sold, some to farmers, some exported. And there was a significant growth in the sea trade in the Baltic Sea and the North Sea. What about Poland in the early modern period? There was also a growth in the Polish peasant population. As I mentioned, there was migration, organized migration, migration that brought new peasants with skills that were new. The local peasant population grew rapidly. Most of Poland in, say, the year 1300, was forests. In the early modern period, 14th, 15th century, 16th century. Year by year, forests were cut. And land, which had not been farmland was converted to farmland. And wheat, rye, other grains were grown. Now, what was done with the surplus produce of the Polish peasantry? There was a lot of production. Because these were lands that had not been worked before. They were relatively rich in the soil. The land had not been drained yet by year after year of growth of grain. So there was a lot of production. The surplus production went to the hands, not of the. Directly to the markets, but to the nobility who owned. Who owned most of the lands in Poland, Lithuania. At a time when in Western Europe there was. There was a rise in capitalistic development of farming. Private property, limits on the authority and powers of the nobility as vis a vis the peasants. In Poland, the nobility was extremely strong. And it maintained its authority on peasants. And at the same time, the technological developments in seafaring, in the construction of boats developed. There was a structural organization in what is known as the Hanza League, organization of German port cities that organized transport in the Baltic and Northern Sea. And a new opportunity developed, which had not existed in the medieval period. And that was to export grain. Grain could be shipped up the Vistula to the ports on the North Sea. There were ships that were available. And as soon as there was grain to ship, there were more ships. That were built and this produce could be exported to the growing markets in the West. And indeed we find in the 16th century, early 17th century, in other words, from 1500, on a growing mark, a growing development of export of Polish grain from the ports which were run by German populations on the Baltic to the west. And the major major market for the import and the subsequent reselling of grain was Amsterdam. Now, most of the Polish grain went for local consumption. We're not. We're talking about 10%, 15% of the grain grown in Polish Lithuania. It was a small percentage, but it was important. It was something new. And it brought in cash for the exporters, and the exporters were nobles. Now, what happened to the grain when it came to Amsterdam? Much of this grain was not wheat, but it was rye. The Dutch themselves grew a fair amount of grain that was needed for consumption, but the grain that came from Poland was low cost. And a fair amount of this grain, which was low cost and not needed for food, went for something else that was very popular. In the Dutch lands in the Netherlands, that is for the manufacture of what I mentioned before, Jennifer, which was a gin and a predecessor of gin, an alcoholic beverage. It's still produced. It's described as a combination of gin and gin and whiskey. I suppose as a researcher, I really should get a hold of a bottle of this and to try it out, but I haven't managed yet. But it was definitely a popular drink. And in England, the surplus produce went to. Much of it went to London, where it was converted into gin, as we know, from gin and tonic, so that the soup grain that was not needed for eating was converted to a new product that was enjoyable and that could be sold and could be made into a money maker. Now, in the course of time, the English government, which was a strong central government which could have very long term economic policies, wanted to increase the income of the government in the long term by boosting exports, developed a program of subsidizing the export of grain from England to the continent, so that by building up exports, it would increase the cash flow into England, which in the long term would be good for the English economy. What was the method that was used to encourage exports? A subsidy. For every ton of an export, the exporter would receive money from the British treasury as a subsidy, a payoff for successful export in the long term. The British treasury gained by this. It was worth paying out to the exporters to multiply the amount of ships taking English grain to the continent. So English grain, surplus English grain did not rot. Some was turned into local alcoholic beverages. Some was exported to the continent. Now, in the long term, who would suffer from English exports? We will see. But until that happened, the Polish wheat export and rye exports found a ready market in Holland. And more and more was exported from the German ports, Gdansk torn and other ports on the northern seas. Now we have to consider a very basic issue. What happened with the boats that brought the grain from Poland Lithuania to Amsterdam? They unloaded the grain and they came back. Now what does it make sense to come back empty? You got a big boat going in the reverse direction. Take something. I mean, it's a waste of manpower and energy. All of the energy was wind. They used sails and they didn't have engines. But it was a waste of manpower to ship an empty boat from Amsterdam to the East. And indeed, you can't ship an empty boat. It'll capsize. If a boat is empty, they put stones in. But there are better things. So what was taken? Herring was shipped to the east, salt was shipped to the east, and textiles were shipped to the East. What about the shipping costs? They were low for the exports because it's better to take a low shipping charge than to ship stones from one country to another country. So basically there was an implicit subsidy that subsidized export of various produce or industrial goods from Western Europe to the East. What would be the long term impact? This would have a very negative impact on local production. Why build a herring factory on the Baltic Sea if you can get cheap herring from the Netherlands? Why build a salt factory when you can import salt? Why build a factory for textiles which requires technology? You've got cheap textiles coming from the West. This was not very good for the Polish economy. But the nobles who ran Poland, they didn't care. And the central government was too weak to develop a long term economic policy and to set up a tariff wall to defend local factories. So all was good until it wasn't good. In the course of the 17th century, the increased production of agricultural goods in the west and the cost of shipping, which was always present, made Polish exports not really competitive and unable to stand up to competition that was developing in Western Europe. And the Polish agricultural market declined. It declined rapidly. And this created a big problem for whom? It didn't create a problem for the city population because they never had much to do with the export of wheat. If anything, it made it cheaper for them to buy local wheat for their bread. The population which suffered was the nobility. The nobility needed to find what to do with their surplus wheat because they were no longer Able to easily export it for the cash that was coming from Holland or from other markets in the west. So this noble population had to develop an alternative source of income. One of the things which they could do was to do what was done with their surplus wheat anyway. Instead of shipping it to Holland, then have it converted there to alcohol, they could make alcohol locally and sell it to a local market. Now, this is not the only thing that was made, but this was one of the most obvious developments. However, this required a network of marketers, distributors, to convert this abstract production into cash. And for the nobles, there was a major problem. In order to have beef up their production of wheat over the last century, they had turned a population which had been to a large extent free peasants, into Serbs, which is a semi enslaved peasant population who worked not only on their land, but work on the noble land. And this is a step backward in the development of a capitalistic economy. But this is what the nobles had done in all of the years when it was a booming export market. They had insurfed their peasant population and they now found themselves with a semi enslaved population. And they needed some population to market their alcoholic beverages. The population was not a natural population. To do this and to turn them into independent economic actors was complicated. The urban population had been beaten down by the nobles for generations. And they did not find leaving cities and going to villages to run a tavern as a very attractive option for a way to make a living. For Jews, this was a living. The cities were hostile to Jewish population. The farming was not an option. This was a way to make a living. It wasn't fun, it wasn't a way to get rich, but it was a way to survive. And this was a growing market as more and more nobles realized that the way to make some money now that the export market had collapsed was to go into the alcohol business. And now we're going. Getting near the end of this discussion. What was life like in an early modern city? All cities in the early modern period were noted for various opportunities you had in cities. Cultural opportunities, business opportunities, communication opportunities. People wanted to live in cities and a very high death rate. Until relatively recently, very recently, maybe two centuries ago, probably less. More people died in cities than were born. Cities survived because of constant immigration. People wanted to live in cities, but it was a death trap. Why? Because cities were not healthy. One can point to various reasons. It was diseases spread in cities much more quickly because populations were concentrated. What was the most important element of the that made cities bad from a health point of view? Water. Water in cities was usually polluted. Water was drawn from wells, the sewage seeped into wells. These cities were not a good place to live. Even though this was not recognized at the time, statistics were not kept. But now that we look in retrospect, this was a bad place for a population to live. So what happened to the Jews in Eastern Europe? They were expelled from cities by economic competitors who did not want additional competitors there. They found themselves forced to look for a living in all kinds of places. And all of a sudden, a new opportunity opened up to make a living. Were in the countryside and there was possible to make a living. It was possible for families to expand. Running a tavern offered opportunities for ancillary related activities for a couple of children to make a living along with the parents. The peasant population continued to grow, which meant more taverns opening all the time. And what would this do to Jewish population? You had job opportunities. When there's money to be made, people can get married. Young populations were mobile. And where was this population living? In places where there was low mortality. Clean air, clean water, clean food. If you wanted to pick an ideal framework for population growth, this was it. Add this to the fact that Jews had certain practices that were conducive to to low mortality. I'm not talking about mikveh or washing hands, because neither mikvah or washing hands before eating bread has such an impact on population group. However, Jewish mothers breastfed much more than did peasant mothers. This had to do with the fact that Jewish mothers lived in villages and could keep babies near them. Peasants peasant mothers who also lived in villages often worked in fields and could not feed their babies themselves. So you had Jewish populations with an advantage over the non Jewish population. And you had population conditions which could easily sustain the same kind of growth as existed in Quebec or existed in South Africa. This was a time when populations were growing quickly and Jewish populations could have easily grown very quickly. So if we want to make sense out of what was happening, the population that came in dribs and drabs, small numbers from nearby regions, could double over and over and over again. Due to the collapse of an export market for grain in the west and the creation of markets in which nobles had monopolies on the liquor sold on their land and they gave the administration of the monopoly to Jews. Why weren't Jews selling the liquor in England or Amsterdam? Because the governments there were smarter. They didn't have monopolies. They had free and open competition. Nobles were not involved in the distribution and the sale of alcoholic beverages, which is why The Industrial Revolution developed in Western Europe and not Eastern Europe. So Jews were, in a sense, the beneficiaries of a policy that in the short term was good for them, but in the long term, it was not beneficial for the local economies and took much more time before the noblemen were reined in and the possibilities for development of a modern economy kicked in. So this is a very complex development. And what happened to the Jews was really tied in to major developments in the economy of all of Europe. If you think this explains everything, you're wrong. You don't think so. You realize that it's really complex. There's a lot more that has to be said. You're right. But at least this gives us an opening to ask some new questions and to realize that what happened was not a population miracle or an economic miracle, but it was a pragmatic resolution to a real economic issue. And if you're still with me, I thank you very much for your attention.
- [51:39]
B
Sha', ul. Thank you so much. This has been fascinating. We've got lots of questions in the
- [51:44]
A
Q and A. I'm sorry, I have to turn on my speaker. Okay, can you hear me now? To hear you in a minute. And let's see. Alex, can you hear me?
- [52:05]
B
Can you hear me now? Shaul?
- [52:06]
A
No, I can hear you. I'm back.
- [52:07]
B
Okay, good.
- [52:08]
A
Very good. Okay, when I talk too long, my speaker turns off.
- [52:12]
B
Okay, so we've got a lot of great questions. Here's an easy one just to get started. I know you mentioned this earlier, but maybe you can just say again, just outline the time period. The early modern period. What years? The story that you're talking about, what years does that cover?
- [52:35]
A
Well, the growth of the Polish grain export. We're talking about, say, 1500 till 1650. The collapse is in the ear in the 1630s, 1640s, but it develops from, say, 1500 on. The bell didn't ring. And say from today on, it's the early modern period, but that's more or less what we're talking about.
- [53:11]
B
Okay, so to back up to the increased food production, can you speak maybe a moment about the technology that facilitated this and the degree to which forest clearing was a part of this?
- [53:24]
A
There are different technologies. When you're clearing forest land, the land is rich. It's had the advantage of centuries or millennia of leaves falling, mulch being created. So you have good land. As time goes on, the land gets leached, you need fertilizers, and then you have to shift to technologies like the three field system or the Four field system where. Where every third or fourth year you'll let the lamb sit fallow. Or even better, instead of sitting fallow, you plant plants that bring nitrogen into the soil, such as legumes, beans and peas, so that the soil gets a chance to rejuvenate. Or you use fertilizers. There's a huge market for manure. You have to realize that manure is valuable. It has to be spread. One of the most important developments is the development of better plows that can turn the ground over, give more exposure to let water seep in and air. So that there are all kinds of developments which make the agriculture more effective. You have new grains, you have the breeding of a logical breeding of stock that will make give a better production. Sometimes it's even growing a wheat, a winter wheat and a spring wheat. So you get two harvests a year. There are a lot of things you can do to build up grain, but the most important thing is the farmer. When the farmer makes money, and the more he grows, the more he profits, you're already in a good place. When you take good farmers and you turn them into semi slaves, that's not the way to really build up production. The Polish peasants were not stupid. They may not have had the political power to free themselves, but they weren't going to work themselves to the bone for a noble. They will work themselves to the bone for their children. And the political system in Poland did not encourage the development of a free, independent peasantry, which took initiatives, which looked for new methods. Precisely what was happening in Western Europe, if you sense, in my words, a call, a recognition of the economic value of liberty. You're reading me correctly,
- [56:42]
B
thank you. Another viewer asks, assuming the business opportunities of taverns in the countryside of Poland was the way that Jews initially earned their living there, how did the variegated world of the shtetl arise, do you think?
- [57:00]
A
Very often. I mean, here I'll just. I'll assume the very gated shtetl of the world, Jewish world, existed, although it's at all stages. The most Jews did not live in the kind of a shtetl that we read about in life is with people or in some memoirs. The reality was much more complex. However, there was something similar to a shtetl. And what we find is that the small taverns over the course of time developed into nuclei for communities. First off, the peasant population was constantly growing. There were more children being born than peasants, people dying. Towns expanded and the Jews around the tavern had children. Some of them moved away, some stayed Locally. So there was a, there was a growing population. Some of the Jews were mobile and moved to new areas that were being settled, such as Ukraine, the Ukrainian lands, afterwards America. Some moved more to the east, but the tavern or the inn was very often a nucleus for the growth of that kind of a population.
- [58:42]
B
Wonderful. So we have so many questions, we won't have time to get to all of them. So I'm going to try to maybe give three more questions at touch on a lot of the areas that people are touching on. One question is about the breadth of the land that you're talking about. Maybe you could just explain what is the area of the Polish Lithuania Commonwealth that this picture is depicting? And also, are there other areas in the east where Jews had already been or went? Is this the whole picture or is it a part of the picture?
- [59:21]
A
Okay, I really should know by heart how many square miles I'm talking about. But I'm sorry, guys, I wasn't prepared for this question. So a lot of things I don't know. It's one more. But we're dealing with a big area. You can check on a map or check in Wikipedia. We're talking on what is today the Baltic countries, which are not so huge. Poland, which is very large. We're dealing with what is now Ukraine, much part of Romania, Moldova. So we're dealing with a very big stripe of, of Europe. It's, it's, it's, it's easily the same as a good part of Western Europe. It's a very, very large area. Up until tsarist Russia. Tsarist Russia had a pretty consistent policy of imitating, I mean, pretending a Polish city. No Jews were allowed in tsarist Russia until the 18th century. And even there, very grudgingly. So Jews spread everywhere else. But there was a lot of land that was fallow, especially to the south in the Ukrainian lands. And as more and more became settled, even though it was a wild area, there was room for Jews to earn a living and a framework that needed Jews.
- [61:13]
B
Okay, another very big question. We were talking about this a little bit before the lecture and a lot of people have asked about it. Maybe afainfus, can you tell us how this story relates to the Yiddish language?
- [61:30]
A
Jews spoke Yiddish. The Jews that came to the Jews who came to the Slavic lands brought with them the Yiddish that was spoken, as I said, the Eastern Yiddish there was proto Eastern Yiddish that was spoken in Bohemia, Moravia, the Austrian lands, and it was spoken by much of the urban population in those lands. So, for example, in what is now the Czech Republic, the peasantry spoke a Slavic language, the Czech language or proto Czech. But in the cities the population spoke mainly German. This was a German migrant population. We are used to looking at maps of countries where you say, well, this is one country and they speak this language as another country, they speak another language. In much of Europe the map is not stripes which define a language and a population, but you have islands, urban populations speak one language and peasants populations speak another language. So you find this in a lot of places, especially as you get to the east. So you had in early modern Poland, 1500, if you would like, or 1400. The cities had a lot of populations that spoke non Slavic languages, German, as I mentioned, Scottish. There were cities which had, in Poland which had large Scottish populations. And these people spoke Scottish or English. You, you had Italian as well, other languages, but German was the most substantial. Now the Jews who spoke, who lived at the time of Rashi in the area of Rashi, spoke French. So if you look at Rashi's commentary or commentaries, he very often explains things, difficult words in Hebrew or Aramaic by translating them into French. Rashi's grandchildren or great grandchildren probably would have been unable to talk to him because by then the Jews had been expelled from France. His descendants moved eastward into German speaking lands. His descendants, if they survived, spoke German or proto German. What became developed into western Yiddish. Jews tended to adopt the language of their environment and then convert it into a Jewish language. The ancestors of Rashi probably came from Italy. And when they were in Italy, they spoke an Italian Jewish dialect. What happened to the Jews in Eastern Europe? They froze the Jews. They came to Eastern Europe, to a place with a Slavic speaking population, maintained the German language. They brought the western Yiddish in the cities which had large non Jewish German speaking populations. And the Jews continued even when they moved out of the cities to maintain this language. When they went to cities, they spoke the German language. In the community, they maintained this language. And like a habit, it stayed a habit. There were certain advantages that the surrounding population didn't quite understand what the Jews were saying. It made it convenient. The Jews moving from one place to another place were able to converse relatively freely with other Jews. And Jews were mobile all the time. So that when the time to adapt had changed, Jews had moved to the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth and kept speaking Yiddish for another century. And then they stayed with it. Somehow something is missing. It's still not clear why, even after a delay, the Jews didn't switch and create a Slavic dialect. Saying that there was already a habit is half an answer. But a half answer is not a full answer. There's more to look for here and maybe some of you would like to help join in the search.
- [67:02]
B
I know it's getting late. Maybe one last question, which is just some people are curious. What brought you to this topic? You've researched a lot of different topics in your life. What brought you to this?
- [67:18]
A
Well, I got interested in the question of beginnings. It's. I guess there's something here which is, I guess, almost autobiographical. So for me it's late at night, you know, some of my usual defenses, you know, kind of dissipated. So I'll be three minutes autobiographical. I was at Hebrew University. I was there for many years. I wrote a doctorate on the history of Yeshivot. And I have a yarmulke, I have a beard like yours. But I was kind of. I had a feeling that I was being regarded as that guy with the yarmulke who's interested about Jews with yarmulkes. And I didn't feel like getting locked into a. A field. So I began got interested in demography and then even more interested in economics. And this was about as far as I could get from yarmulkes and Talmud in the area of Jewish history. And I could get away with having some kind of views which might appear similar to Marxism because I didn't quite fit into one category or another. But I really felt that just looking at rabbis or just looking at high rabbinical culture or yeshivas is missing something really big. Because most people decide what they decide on the basis of economic motives. Can I make a living? Can I find a job? Is there a potential here in the long run? And it seemed to me that to answer the question of how demography works, you need to look at the economy. And the minute I looked at the economy, I realized nothing made sense. This requires a little bit of thought. The more I look, the less made sense. And now I'm trying to find my way back now that I have a little more of a knowledge of the big picture of the European economy. Everything I know I learned from other people. If I have any contribution, it's putting them, putting things together. But I do want to say one more thing for those of you who stuck it out with me. You're the people who are interested. Speaking about economy, I want to talk about evil. I care about evil. Evil for me is a really important institution. It does things that nobody else does. There are a lot of universities and different universities do different things. But what one university does, to a large extent, other universities Do. There's only one gulf. There's nothing like it anywhere. I was offered an honoraria to give this talk, and I said to myself, you know, you've got a lot from evil. It's time to give. So I told the good people, evil, this is my donation. Keep it. And I'm telling you, we need evil, if you can. It's a time to give. There's a time to take, there's a time to get, but there's also a time to give. My grandmother, Lava Shalom, used to say, the joy of living is the joy of giving. When you give, you have the good feeling that you're taking part in something you're building. It's a part of you, and you're a part of it. So I didn't plan this. I don't have a button for you to press to make a donation. There's no flashing screen, you know, sign in here, send your credit card number, do it your way. But evil needs help. It always needs help, and we owe it to evil. If we give, evil will be for us. And it's not enough to give. It's also important to tell friends who can give more than we can give. Tell them, maybe you should give a little bit to evil. Some of us have connections with federations. Federations are important. They need to know what people think is important. And there are a lot of important goals for federations, but one is to maintain and strengthen what keeps us going. And part of that is Yivo, so you're not off the hokies of me. It's important for us to give. It's important for us to encourage others to give. And it's important for us to put in a good word with structures. You know, economy is the basis. So it's important for us to participate in the economy of Jewish culture. That's it.
- [73:38]
B
Joel, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for giving us this lecture and for all of your kind words about Yivo and the words and the work that we do here. We're very grateful.
- [73:51]
A
So I'm going to tell you something that you can't say here in Jerusalem. It's a quarter to one.
- [73:59]
B
Good morning.
- [74:03]
A
It was good to be with you.
- [74:04]
B
Thank you so much. I'll get some rest. And thank you so much for staying up late for us.
- [74:09]
A
Look, we're dealing with the Jewish family. I promise my lights were. When she gets up in the morning, the kitchen will be clean. It will be very good.
- [74:20]
B
Very good. Thank you so much.
- [74:23]
A
Okay. Nice to be with you.