Nadene Goldfoot
In the beginning of Russia's history in the year of 988, Duke Vladimir converted to Christianity. Jews participated in a disputation (debate) on this occasion.
We've had disputations throughout history. We've even debated with G-d himself in Genesis.
"The story of a disputation on the question, Which is the best religion? is, however, very old. One is said to have taken place about 740, before Bulan, the king of the Khazars, who, uncertain whether to exchange his heathen religion, which he had come to abhor, for Mohammedanism or Christianity, summoned representatives of these two creeds, as well as of Judaism, for a disputation. None could convince him of the superiority of his faith, and Bulan resolved to espouse the Jewish, since both Christian and Mohammedan referred to it as the basis of their own, and each recognized it as superior to the others . Upon this story the religious disputations in Judah ha-Levi's "Cuzari" are based. The story of a disputation occurs in Russian legends regarding Vladimir's conversion, but with a different result."
The once extensive power of the Khazarians was broken on the Volga by the Russian archduke Yaroslav in 1083.
"Christianity spread to Russia through the Byzantine Empire. A churchman in Constantinople sent two monks to convert the Slavs to Christianity and the two monks (Cyril and Methodius) spoke the Slavonic language and used it to conduct mass rather than the traditional Greek. Use of the native language led to many conversions to Christianity. ... Within 100 years Christianity was established and claimed an important convert, Grand Duke Vladimir the 1st of Kiev. Some say his conversion was spurred by political and economic gains from the Byzantine Empire, but he did make Christianity the state religion of Kievan Russia. Christianity spread gradually and became popular in the cities long before it did in the countryside." This was the start of Christianity in Russia.
This relationship has a long history: the rulers of the Turkic Khazars, powerful in southern Russia, converted to Judaism in the 8th century. They had chosen Judaism after having a debate or contest after listening to representatives of Judaism, Christianity and Islam because they were sitting in the middle of the Silk Road crossroads and had to deal with people of all 3 faiths.
According to the Russian chronicles, Jewish missionaries sought to convert the pagan Grand Prince Vladimir of Kiev as early as 987. Ultimately, however, Vladimir chose to accept baptism and become a Christian, adopting the Eastern Orthodox rite that his ambassadors had found to be so beautiful when they visited Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.
By the 12th Century, a Jewish gate is mentioned in Kiev. This would restrict Jews from other gates, evidently. The Jewish quarter (restriction of Jews as to where they could live) in Kiev was looted in 1113, so such anti-Semitism was a part of the culture of Ukraine even then.
However, in this period, Russian Jews were attending western yeshivot and were able to asked questions of German rabbis.
In the late 15th Century, some Lithuanian traders found a Judaizing sect in Novgorod and Moscow which ticked off the Christians. Christians could spread Christianity but Jews were not allowed to spread Judaism, and that was the end of Jewish learning to Christians. The attitude of Christians toward Jews became more violent.
In 1563, Jews in Polotsk and Vitebsk, Russia, 300 Jews were drowned upon refusing to accept baptism. This would have meant they were refusing to let go of Judaism and become Catholics.
Russia didn't want Jews to enter their country. They had clauses that prohibited Jews from even visiting Russia that were inserted in treaties in 1550 and 1678. Any Jews that managed to stay were expulsed from Russia in 1727, 1738, 1742.
By 1753, 35,000 Jews were driven out of Russia. Then Catherine II came along in 1762 who permitted all aliens to live in Russia except the Jews.
Poland was partitioned in 1772, 1793, and 1795. That's when the great Jewish masses of White Russia, (Ukraine), Lithuania and Courland became Russian subjects. For over a century these Jews, including my maternal grandmother's family of Jermulowski, , were under the reactionary rule of the Czars.
In 1786, Jews were restricted to towns, which was laying the foundation of the PALE OF SETTLEMENT. By 1795, only the Karaites ( Jewish sect refusing the Oral Law from Moses) had equality of rights with the Christians. Finally in 1802, There was created a Council for Jewish Affairs. Two years later, it defined the Pale, restricted Jews in the villages and in 1807-1808 limited the activities of the KAHAL (Jewish leadership) in the areas of religion and charity, and prohibited the traditional Jewish costume.
On the other hand, it took measures to promote agriculture, which for Jews, was a new endeavor for they hadn't been allowed to own land and had been urban people with trades. The trades were limited as well, and mostly the only one available to Jews was money-lending, a trade that was unseemly to Christians.
People usually are benevolent towards Jews at first and then turn on them because they have refused to convert. Luther was like that. Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812 and was kind at first. Later, he turned reactionary and about 20,000 Jews were expelled from the provinces of Vitebsk and Mohilev in 1824, and those remaining were forbidden to live near the frontier.
About 600 oppressive enactments regarding Jews were published during the reign of Nicholas I who regarded Jews as an injurious element. Military service was brutally imposed on young male Jews from age 12 on up by 1827. Jewish boys were taken by force to serve in their army for 25 years. They were put on the front lines. " These boys were known as cantonists; derived from the term 'canton' referring to the word 'military camps' to which they were sent. Conscripts under the age of 18 were assigned to live in preparatory institutions until they were old enough to formally join the army. The 25 years of service required that these recruits be counted from age 18, even if they had already spent many years in military institutions before reaching that age."
Czar Nicholas strengthened the cantonist system and used it to single out Jewish children for persecution, their baptism being a high priority to him. No other group in Russia was expected to serve at such a young age, nor were other groups of recruits tormented in the same way. Nicholas wrote in a confidential memorandum, "The chief benefit to be derived from the drafting of the Jews is the certainty that it will move them most effectively to change their religion." Historian Simon Dubnov wrote, "The barrack was to serve as a school, or rather as a factory, for producing a new generation of de-Judaized Jews, who were completely Russified, and if possible Christianized." I've heard of stories where mothers injured their son's fingers or feet to keep them from being taken. My paternal grandfather was born in 1871. Perhaps he had just missed this horrid ordeal somehow, living in Telsiai, Lithuania.
Jews then could not live near the frontiers of the PALE OF SETTLEMENT in 1835, effective until 1915. Jewish books were censored in 1836. Their Kahal was abolished by 1844. This was the organized Jewish community having autonomous rights and it was their responsibility for taxation.
The PALE OF SETTLEMENT was the world's great center of talmudic study and Odessa was the center of Hebrew literary revival. It's also where Zionists and contemporary Jewish history began. In 1914, at the outbreak of WWI, 5,600,000 Jews lived in the Russian Empire, including almost 2 million in Poland. Those Jews near war zones were deported en masse, and their community was made the scapegoat for the Russian defeats, even though 300,000 Jews were in the Russian army.
65,000 Jews became engaged in agriculture in Russia in 1864 when the judicial law contained no anti-Jewish discrimination. Jews became prominent in such areas as economics, culture and left-wing politics. That was the spark to start anti-Semitism which reinforced the former religious prejudices.
While 1st generation Russian born Jewry were abandoning their traditional Jewish way of life, the Soviet government would not recognize the Jews as a nationality, so discouraged Hebrew and persecuted Zionism. Not many Jews were involved in agriculture. The government worked to discourage Jewish practices in the 1930s. The annexation early in WWI of western White Russia, western Volhynia, eastern Glaicia, Northern Bkovina, Bessarabia, Lithuania and Latvia led to the mass-deportation of Jews, especially the intelligentsia, from these places. The Nazis invaded Russia in 1941 and aimed at exterminating the Jewish population. That meant that of the 500,000 Jews in white Russia, only half escaped to the interior and up to 200,000 were slaughtered.
When Alexander II in 1881 was assassinated, anti-Semitism grew much worse. Jews were the chief victims. In the early 1880s many pogroms made people think of Jews as a foreign element to be kept apart from the village populations, so out came the MAY LAWS against Jews.
In 1891 Jews were expelled from Moscow and a NUMERUS CLAUSUS was introduced in high schools which caused Jews to turn to Zionism and Socialism. This is when Jews really started immigrating to the USA.
That immigration flow was ended in 1924 with new rules in the USA. Russia's census of 1959 showed 2,268,000. After Israel's 1967 War, many Russian Jews demanded the right to emigrate to Israel, and some did emigrate by 1970. Then, 250,000 Jews were able to leave Russia with 150,000 of them going to Israel, and later, to the USA. In the 1980s the doors of emigration were almost virtually closed but the Jewish ferment continued inside the county.
I immigrated to Israel from the USA in September 1980. I had many Russians in my Hebrew class. They were used to learning new language and my husband and I were not. We went against the Russians who had a shvee-ta, a strike over the cost of our dinners in the program we were in. It was our 1st disagreement with our fellow Russian Jews. Our Hebrew teacher, Sarah, was a pen pal of Sharansky, who was in the Russian prison. He was later able to get out and became involved in Israel's government. He was there for trying to learn Hebrew. His wife, somewhere safe in Israel, was a major power in getting him out, as I remember. While I lived in Israel from 1980 to the end of 1985, I saw more Russians under President Gorbachev again being allowed widespread emigration. Where anti-Semitism up to then was being suppressed, now this freed up such activity.
Israel's doors are open to Jews of the world under suppression; that's what it's for. Israel took in almost 200,000 Soviet immigrants in 1990 alone after I had left, with the stream continuing into 1991.
Diplomatic relations with Israel was re-established in 1991, shortly before the liquidation of the USSR.
Resource:
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/5226-disputations
https://quizlet.com/8651225/kingdoms-and-christianity-questions-flash-cards/
The Jews of Khazaria 2nd edition by Kevin Alan Brook
https://asu.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/judaism-and-jewish-influences-in-russian-spiritual-christianity-t
https://www.aish.com/jl/h/h/48929772.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_I_of_Russia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_I_of_Russia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_the_Great
My Life, by Golda Meir
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2014/07/russia-ukraine-and-pale-of-settlement.html
https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2019/03/russian-jews-their-background-and.html
https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2018/01/when-600000-jews-were-exiled-by-russia.html
https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2019/04/europes-pale-of-settlement-1914-and-jews.html
https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2018/02/russia-and-jews.html
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| The Great Grand Duke of Kiev St. Vladimir 1st 1st Czar of Russia Originally a follower of Slavic paganism, Vladimir converted to Christianity in 988 and Christianized the Kievan Rus'.He is thus also known as Saint Vladimir. |
In the beginning of Russia's history in the year of 988, Duke Vladimir converted to Christianity. Jews participated in a disputation (debate) on this occasion.
 |
| By 8th to 10th centuries, Khazaria was a powerful state. It was started by a Turkish or Finnish tribe that settled in the lower Volga region. Russian chronicles called them White Ugrians as Hungarians were called the Black Ugrians. Khazaria was so large that it extended into Kiev and its royal house intermarried with the Byzantium. In the 8th century it had a powerful judaizing movement when King Bulan and 4,000 of his nobles accepted Judaism, helped by prince Obaiah. |
The once extensive power of the Khazarians was broken on the Volga by the Russian archduke Yaroslav in 1083.
"Christianity spread to Russia through the Byzantine Empire. A churchman in Constantinople sent two monks to convert the Slavs to Christianity and the two monks (Cyril and Methodius) spoke the Slavonic language and used it to conduct mass rather than the traditional Greek. Use of the native language led to many conversions to Christianity. ... Within 100 years Christianity was established and claimed an important convert, Grand Duke Vladimir the 1st of Kiev. Some say his conversion was spurred by political and economic gains from the Byzantine Empire, but he did make Christianity the state religion of Kievan Russia. Christianity spread gradually and became popular in the cities long before it did in the countryside." This was the start of Christianity in Russia.
This relationship has a long history: the rulers of the Turkic Khazars, powerful in southern Russia, converted to Judaism in the 8th century. They had chosen Judaism after having a debate or contest after listening to representatives of Judaism, Christianity and Islam because they were sitting in the middle of the Silk Road crossroads and had to deal with people of all 3 faiths.
According to the Russian chronicles, Jewish missionaries sought to convert the pagan Grand Prince Vladimir of Kiev as early as 987. Ultimately, however, Vladimir chose to accept baptism and become a Christian, adopting the Eastern Orthodox rite that his ambassadors had found to be so beautiful when they visited Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.
By the 12th Century, a Jewish gate is mentioned in Kiev. This would restrict Jews from other gates, evidently. The Jewish quarter (restriction of Jews as to where they could live) in Kiev was looted in 1113, so such anti-Semitism was a part of the culture of Ukraine even then.
However, in this period, Russian Jews were attending western yeshivot and were able to asked questions of German rabbis.
In the late 15th Century, some Lithuanian traders found a Judaizing sect in Novgorod and Moscow which ticked off the Christians. Christians could spread Christianity but Jews were not allowed to spread Judaism, and that was the end of Jewish learning to Christians. The attitude of Christians toward Jews became more violent.
In 1563, Jews in Polotsk and Vitebsk, Russia, 300 Jews were drowned upon refusing to accept baptism. This would have meant they were refusing to let go of Judaism and become Catholics.
Russia didn't want Jews to enter their country. They had clauses that prohibited Jews from even visiting Russia that were inserted in treaties in 1550 and 1678. Any Jews that managed to stay were expulsed from Russia in 1727, 1738, 1742.
 |
| As it was, in May 1727, the 2nd wife of Peter I, Catherine I from Poland, the first empress born as Marta Helena Skowrofiska, later known as Marta Samuilovna, b: April 5, 1684, who ruled from 1725 to 1727, expelled all Jews living in LITTLE RUSSIA. This was ended after her death on May 6, 1727. Had her family ties in Poland caused her to be so against Jews? |
 |
| Catherine the Great ruled from 1762 to 1796 and her Jewish policy was marked by a combination of liberalim and coercion. Only White Russians were allowe to register in the merhant and urban classes-with permission. This act marked the beginning of the PALE OF SETTLEMENT. During her last years, she prevented the extension of Jewish settlement and in 1795, prohibited Jewish residence in rural areas.
Born Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, this Catherine II was Empress of Russia from 1762 until 1796, the country's longest-ruling female leader. She came to power following a coup d'état that she organised—resulting in her husband, Peter III, being overthrown. Under her reign, Russia was revitalized; it grew larger and stronger and was recognized as one of the great powers of Europe. Of course she's a hateful ruler in the eyes of Jewish historians today.
|
By 1753, 35,000 Jews were driven out of Russia. Then Catherine II came along in 1762 who permitted all aliens to live in Russia except the Jews.
Poland was partitioned in 1772, 1793, and 1795. That's when the great Jewish masses of White Russia, (Ukraine), Lithuania and Courland became Russian subjects. For over a century these Jews, including my maternal grandmother's family of Jermulowski, , were under the reactionary rule of the Czars.
In 1786, Jews were restricted to towns, which was laying the foundation of the PALE OF SETTLEMENT. By 1795, only the Karaites ( Jewish sect refusing the Oral Law from Moses) had equality of rights with the Christians. Finally in 1802, There was created a Council for Jewish Affairs. Two years later, it defined the Pale, restricted Jews in the villages and in 1807-1808 limited the activities of the KAHAL (Jewish leadership) in the areas of religion and charity, and prohibited the traditional Jewish costume.
On the other hand, it took measures to promote agriculture, which for Jews, was a new endeavor for they hadn't been allowed to own land and had been urban people with trades. The trades were limited as well, and mostly the only one available to Jews was money-lending, a trade that was unseemly to Christians.
People usually are benevolent towards Jews at first and then turn on them because they have refused to convert. Luther was like that. Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812 and was kind at first. Later, he turned reactionary and about 20,000 Jews were expelled from the provinces of Vitebsk and Mohilev in 1824, and those remaining were forbidden to live near the frontier.
 |
| Nicholas I, Emperor of Russia, grandson of Catherine the Great II. b: 1796 d: 1855 His reign was from December 1, 1825 to March 2, 1855. |
About 600 oppressive enactments regarding Jews were published during the reign of Nicholas I who regarded Jews as an injurious element. Military service was brutally imposed on young male Jews from age 12 on up by 1827. Jewish boys were taken by force to serve in their army for 25 years. They were put on the front lines. " These boys were known as cantonists; derived from the term 'canton' referring to the word 'military camps' to which they were sent. Conscripts under the age of 18 were assigned to live in preparatory institutions until they were old enough to formally join the army. The 25 years of service required that these recruits be counted from age 18, even if they had already spent many years in military institutions before reaching that age."
Czar Nicholas strengthened the cantonist system and used it to single out Jewish children for persecution, their baptism being a high priority to him. No other group in Russia was expected to serve at such a young age, nor were other groups of recruits tormented in the same way. Nicholas wrote in a confidential memorandum, "The chief benefit to be derived from the drafting of the Jews is the certainty that it will move them most effectively to change their religion." Historian Simon Dubnov wrote, "The barrack was to serve as a school, or rather as a factory, for producing a new generation of de-Judaized Jews, who were completely Russified, and if possible Christianized." I've heard of stories where mothers injured their son's fingers or feet to keep them from being taken. My paternal grandfather was born in 1871. Perhaps he had just missed this horrid ordeal somehow, living in Telsiai, Lithuania.
Jews then could not live near the frontiers of the PALE OF SETTLEMENT in 1835, effective until 1915. Jewish books were censored in 1836. Their Kahal was abolished by 1844. This was the organized Jewish community having autonomous rights and it was their responsibility for taxation.
 |
| Golda Meir (1898-1978) born in Russia, was caught in a pogrom when a child. She lived in the USA after that experience, then settled in Palestine in 1921. In 1969 she became Israel's Prime Minister and served during Israel's Yom Kippur War. She retired in 1974. |
 |
| A Pogrom in the Ukraine Pogrom in Russian means "DESTRUCTION." It's an organized massacre for the annihilation of any body or class or people, especially with governmental collusion; more specially one directed against Jews. The term was first used in 1905 at the time of the anti-Jewish outbreaks by the Black Hundreds in Russia. It is often applied to earlier Russian outbreaks from 1881 onward. Some pogroms killed thousands. |
While 1st generation Russian born Jewry were abandoning their traditional Jewish way of life, the Soviet government would not recognize the Jews as a nationality, so discouraged Hebrew and persecuted Zionism. Not many Jews were involved in agriculture. The government worked to discourage Jewish practices in the 1930s. The annexation early in WWI of western White Russia, western Volhynia, eastern Glaicia, Northern Bkovina, Bessarabia, Lithuania and Latvia led to the mass-deportation of Jews, especially the intelligentsia, from these places. The Nazis invaded Russia in 1941 and aimed at exterminating the Jewish population. That meant that of the 500,000 Jews in white Russia, only half escaped to the interior and up to 200,000 were slaughtered.
When Alexander II in 1881 was assassinated, anti-Semitism grew much worse. Jews were the chief victims. In the early 1880s many pogroms made people think of Jews as a foreign element to be kept apart from the village populations, so out came the MAY LAWS against Jews.
 |
| New York Russian Jewish immigration said to be the drivers of American culture |
 |
| Two little waifs who were born in 1906 an 1908 in the USA with parents from Lithuania and Poland who came over just before. Our Zada married Babba in Idaho in November 1905. My father is on the right with his brother Charlie. Dad became a kosher butcher and that led to owning Silver Falls Meat Packing Co and owning a string of cattle trucks. Under freedom sprinkled with some Jewish anti-Semitism, Jews did pretty well in the USA. |
That immigration flow was ended in 1924 with new rules in the USA. Russia's census of 1959 showed 2,268,000. After Israel's 1967 War, many Russian Jews demanded the right to emigrate to Israel, and some did emigrate by 1970. Then, 250,000 Jews were able to leave Russia with 150,000 of them going to Israel, and later, to the USA. In the 1980s the doors of emigration were almost virtually closed but the Jewish ferment continued inside the county.
 |
| We're learning Hebrew in an Ulpan in Israel, Mostly all are Russian students. For starters, I was in a class of 40 of us. Russians were much faster learners, so I was placed in a gimel class and had more individual attention sprinkled with some English. Even my husband, who taught boys Hebrew for bar-mitzva, was struggling. It's not easy when you are older. |
Israel's doors are open to Jews of the world under suppression; that's what it's for. Israel took in almost 200,000 Soviet immigrants in 1990 alone after I had left, with the stream continuing into 1991.
Diplomatic relations with Israel was re-established in 1991, shortly before the liquidation of the USSR.
Resource:
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/5226-disputations
https://quizlet.com/8651225/kingdoms-and-christianity-questions-flash-cards/
The Jews of Khazaria 2nd edition by Kevin Alan Brook
https://asu.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/judaism-and-jewish-influences-in-russian-spiritual-christianity-t
https://www.aish.com/jl/h/h/48929772.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_I_of_Russia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_I_of_Russia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_the_Great
My Life, by Golda Meir
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2014/07/russia-ukraine-and-pale-of-settlement.html
https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2019/03/russian-jews-their-background-and.html
https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2018/01/when-600000-jews-were-exiled-by-russia.html
https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2019/04/europes-pale-of-settlement-1914-and-jews.html
https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2018/02/russia-and-jews.html
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