The Inquisition

The basic accusation of the Inquisition was that Jews who converted to Christianity were still secretly Jewish.

In Part 45, when we discussed the Crusades, we covered the war of the Church against the Muslims in the Middle East. Now we turn to the war of the Church against Muslims in Europe. This war went on for quite some time in fits and starts—from the time the Muslim Moors arrived in Spain in 711. It took a long time for the Christians to vanquish them. The first Muslim stronghold to fall was Toledo in 1085; the last was Granada in 1492.

As the Christian re-conquest gained momentum, Jews in these newly re-conquered Christians territories began to suffer from increasingly harsher persecutions.

In their blood-thirsty vengeance against the Muslims, the Spanish Christians included the Jews, whom they put in the category of infidels.

In 14th century Barcelona, for example, the whole Jewish community was murdered by a rioting mob. First given shelter by some Christians, these Jews were pressured to convert. Those who did not were refused protection.

Writes Professor B. Netanyahu in his 1,400-page work, The Origins of the Inquisition, quoting an eyewitness account of the time:

“Those of them who refused to accept baptism were immediately slain, and their corpses, stretched in the streets and the squares, offered a horrendous spectacle.” (p. 159)

Just how many Jews converted in these forced mass conversions that accompanied the Christian conquest of Spain? Estimates rage between tens of thousands to as many as 600,000. (See The Origins of the Inquisition, p. 1095.)

Many of those who converted did so only outwardly, continuing to practice Judaism in secret. In due time, the Christians caught on to these phony conversions and decided to root out the heretics.

THE SPANISH INQUISITION

The Inquisition we are going to cover now is the Spanish Inquisition, which began officially by papal bull issued by Pope Sixtus IV on November 1, 1478.

(We should note, however, that the very first Inquisition actually took place in 1233 under orders from Pope Gregory IX to combat a group of French-Christian heretics called “Albigenses.” This first Inquisition was relatively mild and did not as a rule sentence people to death. Not so the Spanish Inquisition which was directed against Jewish heretics.)

Unlike its earlier version, the Spanish Inquisition sought to punish Jews who had converted to Christianity but were not really “sincere” in their conversions.

There is a great deal of irony in this. First you tell people they have to convert or die, then, when they do convert, you decide to kill them anyway because their conversions are not “sincere.”

There was another reason for the Inquisition, which had little to do with the sincerity of conversions. Once Jews converted to Christianity they had an open access to the playing field, economically and politically. And, of course, they prospered mightily. That engendered a lot of hostility from the Christians - a pattern we have seen in Jewish history ever since the enslavement of the Israelites by the Egyptians.

The Christians began to call converted Jews “New Christians” to distinguish them from the “Old Christians” i.e. themselves. Derogatorily, Jewish converts to Christianity were called converses meaning “converts,” or worse yet marranos, meaning “pigs.”

The basic accusation was that these Jews were not real converts to Christianity - they were secretly practicing Judaism. That was certainly often the case. There were large numbers of Jews who would be outwardly Christian but who would continue to practice Judaism secretly.

Until this day, there exist Christian communities with clear Jewish roots dating back to this time. There are people in the United States (in New Mexico and Arizona) as well as in South and Central America, who are descended from Spanish or Portuguese settlers, and who have strange customs they cannot explain. For example, even though they are Catholics, on Friday night they go down to the cellar to light candles. They don’t know the origins of the custom, but they do it. These people are clearly descended from Jews who pretended to be Christians and yet were practicing Jewish rituals in secret.

The job of the Inquisition was to find such people, torture them until they admitted their “crime,” and then kill them.

FERDINAND AND ISABELLA

Every American child knows about King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella - they are the monarchs who backed Christopher Columbus in his discovery of America. However, here are a few things that most people don’t know about them.

The marriage of Ferdinand V, and Isabella I, in 1469 unified Spain, in some measure making the final victory over the Muslims possible. Prior to their reign, Spain was a collection of provinces - the two primary being Aragon and Castile. When Ferdinand of Aragon married Isabella of Castile, these two provinces were united by marriage into a mighty kingdom.

Isabella was a “fervent” Christian and, in 1478, she asked the Pope for permission to set up an Inquisition to weed out heresy in the Christian world. The Pope obliged, issuing on November 1, 1478, a papal bull calledExigit Sincere Devotionis. Ferdinand and Isabella followed that up with a royal decree on September 27, 1480.

One might think that ridding Christianity of heretics should involve targeting other groups, not just false Jewish converts. However, the royal decree mentioned no one else. Writes Professor B. Netanyahu (p.3):

“The royal decree explicitly stated that the Inquisition was instituted to search out and punish converts from Judaism who transgressed against Christianity by secretly adhering to Jewish beliefs and performing rites and ceremonies of the Jews. No other group was mentioned, no other purpose indicated - a fact that in itself suggest a close relationship between the creation of the Inquisition and Jewish life in Spain. Other facts, too, attest to that relationship.”

Although the first inquisitors got to work a few months after the decree, it was not until 1483—when Tomas de Torquemada, a Spanish Dominican monk, was appointed Grand Inquisitor—that the Inquisition got its bloody reputation. Torquemada - who was descended from Jewish converts to Christianity some time back - outdid the worst anti-Semites with his brutality.

(One of the most fascinating and depressing sub-plots of this drama is how many of the major Christian personalities in this story had either Jewish ancestry or were actually Jewish according to Jewish law. In addition to Torquemada-Jewish blood also flowed through the veins of:

- King Ferdinand V—
- Queen Isabella I
- Diego de Raza-Grand Inquisitor after Torquemada
- Hernando de Talavera-Isabella’s personal confessor (mother wasconverse) - Pedro de la Caballeria and Alanso de Cabrera-(bothconverses)who helped arrange the wedding of Ferdinand and Isabella
- Gabriel Sanchez (converse)-chief treasurer or Aragon
- Luis de Santangel (converse)-Ferdinand’s budget Minister. (Sanchez and Santangel were responsible for financing the voyage of Christopher Columbus-also of Jewish ancestry-more on this later!))(1)

How did the Inquisition work?

Jewish converses would be arrested and accused of not being true Christians. They wouldn’t even know who was accusing them; evidence would be presented against them in secret. Then they would be tortured until they confessed to being heretics. Then, once they confessed, they would be killed. The usual form was burning at the stake, though if they were willing to kiss the cross, they would be spared the horrible pain of burning and would be strangled instead.

The key point is that it really didn’t matter if they repented - they died either way.

What if some people refused to confess even under torture? Or worse, what if some people admitted right away to practicing Judaism secretly, but even when tortured refused to concede the truth of Christianity? If they survived the horrendous tortures, they would be burned at the stake in a ceremony called auto-da-fe meaning “act of faith.”

This went on until 1834 when the Inquisition was finally abolished, by which time every Spaniard came to fear its power. By then the Inquisition’s field of operations had spread to Christian heretics, Protestants sects, witches, and even people who read the wrong books. The Inquisition was even able to reach into territories outside of the Spanish Empire. If Jewishconverses fled to other more friendly countries, the Inquisition could have followed them, even as far as Brazil, where the last person was burned at the stake in the 19th century.

EXPULSION

The year 1492 marked the fall of Granada, the last Muslim stronghold on the Iberian Peninsula, bringing to an end the Muslim domination of Spain which had lasted nearly 800 years. Spain returned to being a completely Christian country.

Shortly thereafter, Ferdinand and Isabella, decided to throw all the Jews out of Spain. This time, in the expulsion edict, the monarchs were not targeting Jewish converts to Christianity, rather they were targeting Jews who had never converted. Why? The main reason stated in the Edict of Expulsion, signed on March 31st 1492, was to keep Jews from re-Judaizing the converses. Another factor that certainly played a big role (besides anti-Semitism) was that Jewish money was now needed to rebuild the kingdom after the costly war against the Muslims. Rather than slowly squeezing the money out of the Jews through taxation, it was easier to expel them all at once and confiscate the wealth and property they would leave behind.

The Edict of Expulsion declared:

“Whereas, having been informed that in these kingdoms, there were some bad Christians who Judaized and apostatized from our holy Catholic faith, the chief cause of which was the communication of Jews with Christians…we ordered the said Jews in all cities, towns, and places in our kingdoms and dominions to separate into Jewries [ghettos] and place apart…hoping by their separation alone to remedy this evil….But we are informed that neither that, not the execution of some of the said Jews…has been sufficient for a complete remedy….Therefore we…resolve to order all the said Jews and Jewesses to quit our kingdoms and never return…by the end of the month of July next, of the present year 1492…if they do not perform and execute the same, and are found to reside in out kingdoms…they incur the penalty of death….We likewise grant permission and authority to said Jews…to export their wealth and property…provided they do not take away gold, silver, money, or other articles prohibited by the laws of kingdom.”

The Jews tried to get the edict reversed, of course. The key player in the drama was Don Isaac Abravanel—who was a great Torah scholar and rabbi. He was one of the great Jewish personalities of this period of time, and had served as the treasurer of Spain, thus being the most powerful Jew in Spain. He tried very hard to rescind the expulsion order, at one point offering the monarchs 300,000 ducats for a reprieve.

He actually almost succeeded in getting the monarchs to rescind the edict, but his near-success only ignited the ire of the Grand Inquisitor Tomas de Torquemada.

According to the legend, Torquemada - who had an enormous amount of influence over the Queen Isabella, being her confessor - walked in while Abravanel was pleading his cause. Incensed, he threw the cross at the Queen, hitting her in the head and yelled: “Judas sold his master (Jesus) for 30 pieces of silver. Now you would sell him anew!”

And so Don Isaac Abravanel lost. But he was so important to the monarchs that they gave him a special dispensation to stay; they even agreed that another nine Jews could stay with him so he could pray with aminyan. He refused. In fact, he became the leader of the Jews of Spain as they went into exile.

The six months between the issuing of the edict and the actual expulsion were catastrophic for the Jewish community. Having lived in Spain for centuries they were now being told that they all had leave! Where would they go? To add insult to injury, they had to liquidate all their assets but could not take most of their wealth with them. They were forced to sell a massive amount of real state, personal goods and other valuables at a fraction of their actual worth. In short, most of the Jews lost virtually everything.

Now, on what day was the Jewish community sent into exile? August 2, 1492. (the original date was July 31st, but Torquemada extended it by a few days.)This day just happened to be the 9th of Av, the same date as the destruction of the first and second Temple in Jerusalem (and many other disasters as we have already seen). On that day the Jews of Spain (some 150,000 - 200,000 people) were forced to abandon their vast possessions and leave. The remainder (around 60,000 though it’s unknown exactly how many) stayed, agreeing to convert.

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

The day after the expulsion, August 3, 1492, Christopher Columbus left on his famed voyage of discovery. His diary begins:

“In the same month in which their Majesties issued the edit that all Jews should be driven out of the kingdom and its territories, in the same month, they gave me the order to undertake with sufficient men my expedition of discovery of the Indies.”

Many people like to speculate that Columbus was of Jewish ancestry, and there is a good case for it. (For those interested, there are a lot of fascinating tidbits about Columbus collected in a book called Christopher Columbus’s Jewish Connection by Jane Francis Amler.) (2) Here are some examples:

Although he was born in Genoa, Italy, his first language was Castilian Spanish. Many Jews had been forced to leave Castile about hundred years before his birth and some went to Genoa. (Incidentally, 14th century Castilian Spanish is the “Yiddish” of Spanish Jewry known as “Ladino.”)

When he wrote, Columbus made funny little marks on the page that resembled the markings that religious Jews put on top of the written page even to this day - an abbreviation of besiyata d’ishmaya, which means “with God’s help” in Aramaic.

He talked a great deal about Zion in his writings.

In his crew, he had five known Jews, including his doctor, navigator, and translator.

Columbus hired the translator, Louis de Torres, (who had converted to Christianity the day before he set sail) because he spoke twelve languages including Hebrew. And Columbus was sure he was not going to bump into Hebrew-speakers. He thought he was going to go to the Far East and he expected to find at least one of the ten lost tribes there and needed a Hebrew speaker.

Furthermore, there’s no question that Columbus’s voyage to America was spiritually linked to the expulsion. Just as one of the greatest Jewish communities of Medieval Europe is being destroyed, God was opening up the doors of what is going to eventually become the greatest Diaspora refuge for Jews in history—America. This is another tremendous pattern we see in history: God making the cure before the disease.

Incidentally, Columbus’s voyage was not financed by Isabella selling her jewels as is often stated. The major financiers were two court officials - both Jewish converses - Louis de Santangel, chancellor of the royal household, and Gabriel Sanchez, treasurer of Aragon.

The first letter Columbus sent back from the New World was not to Ferdinand and Isabella, but to Santangel and Sanchez thanking them for their support and telling them what he found.

The voyage of Columbus is a landmark in the Age of Exploration when numerous discoverers opened up the New World. While no other is believed to be Jewish, their discoveries were, to a significant extent, made possible by Jewish inventions or Jewish improvements to existing inventions.

For example, the key tools of navigators—the quadrant and the astral lobe used during this period- were of Jewish manufacture. In fact, the type of quadrant then in use was called “Jacob’s Staff”; it had been invented by Rabbi Levi ben Gershon also known as Gershonides.

The famous atlas that Columbus and the other explorers used was known as the Catalon Atlas. It was the creation of the Cresca Family, Jews from Majorca, Spain. Not only was the Catalon Atlas considered the greatest and most significant collection of maps at the time, it had no competition to speak of. Jews had a virtual monopoly at map making then, culling information from Jewish merchants from all over the known world.

A BLESSING

While Columbus was off discovering America, what was happening to the Jews newly thrown out of Spain?

Most made their way across the border to Portugal, but their stay there was short-lived. Five years later, Portugal offered them the same choice as Spain: “convert, leave or die.” (Although rather than actually expel them-which would have caused him a massive loss of valuable Jews- the King of Portugal first abducted and forcibly baptized all Jewish children and then orchestrated a mass, forced conversion of virtually the entire Jewish population. He then forbade these “New Christians” from emigrating.)

Thousands of Jews who fled Spain went to Turkey, which historically has been very nice to the Jews. Opening his doors to them, the Sultan of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, Bayezid II, declared: “They tell me that Ferdinand of Spain is a wise man but he is a fool. For he takes his treasure and sends it all to me.”

How did the movement of the Jews affect these countries? Spain, which having discovered and colonized the new World should have been the wealthiest of countries, was bankrupt within one hundred years of the expulsion. Turkey, on the other hand, prospered. The Ottoman Empire became one of the greatest powers in the world. The next two sultans, Selim I and Suleiman I, expanded the empire as far as Vienna, Austria.

(Incidentally, it was Suleiman—known as “Suleiman the Magnificent” - who, in 1536, re-built the walls of Jerusalem - the same walls that stand today and define the Old City.)

If we recall the lesson of Part 4, God had given Abraham and his descendants a special blessing:

“I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you, and through you, will be blessed all the families of the earth.” (Genesis 12:3)

God said to Abraham that he and his descendants—the Jews—would be under God’s protection. The nations and peoples who would be good to the Jews will do well. Empires and peoples that would be bad to the Jews will do poorly. To quote Thomas Newton-The Bishop of Bristol (1704-1782):

“The preservation of the Jews is really one of the most signal and illustrious acts of Divine Providence…and what but a supernatural power could have preserved them in such a manner as none other nation upon earth hath been preserved. Nor is the providence of God less remarkable in the destruction of their enemies, than in their preservation….We see that the great empires, which in their turn subdued and oppressed the people of God, are all come to ruin…And if such hath been the fatal end of the enemies and oppressors of the Jews, let it serve as a warning to all those, who at any time or upon any occasion are for raising a clamor and persecution against them.”

That is one of the great patterns of history that we have seen and that we will continue to see in future installments. You can literally chart the rise and fall of many of the countries and empires of the Middle East and the West by how they treated the Jews.

One such country, surprisingly, was Poland.

1) For a more detailed description of the Jewish ancestry of these personalities see: James Reston Jr., The Dogs of God-Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors,(Doubleday, 2005), p. 17, p. 30. Jane Frances Amler, Christopher Columbus’s Jewish Roots, (Aronson Inc., 1993), pp.78-83.
So many Jews lived in Spain for so long and so many were conversos that it is most probable that virtually everyone in Spain today (who can trace their ancestry back to Spain of 500 years ago or more) has some Jewish blood in their veins.
2) See also: M. Hirsh Goldberg. The Jewish Connection. ( Scarborough House, 1993), pp110-113.

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The Jews of Poland

King Boleslav of Poland invited the Jews, granting them unprecedented rights and privileges.

The period of history we are looking at is known as the Renaissance which historians generally date from about 1350 to about 1650. Renaissance means “rebirth.” Rebirth of what? Of knowledge.

We have now left the Dark Ages dominated by the repressive policies of the Church in Rome and are beginning a time period associated with individual expression, self-consciousness, and worldly experience, and accomplishments in scholarship, literature, science, and the arts.

In the Renaissance, we see some powerful kings emerging in England and in France, while the power of the Church begins to wane. The famous personalities of this period of time are Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Petrarch, Rabelais, Descartes, Copernicus, just to name a few.

This is also a time when Jews made their way into Poland. Today we tend to think of Jewish life in Poland as being confined to the shtetl, but that did not happen until the 18th century. We also tend to think of Poland as synonymous with anti-Semitism, pogroms, etc. But during the time of the Renaissance the picture was quite different.

Before we begin the fascinating story of the Jews of Poland, we have to keep in mind the historical pattern that we see constantly in Jewish history. The places where the Jews will do the best are almost always the places where the Jews will suffer the worst in the end. You’d expect there’d be places that would be good for the Jews and other places where Jews would have a rough time. But that’s not what happens.

The best of times and the worst of times tend to happen in the same place. We just saw it in Spain, we’re going to see it now in Poland, we’ll see it later in Germany. It’s one of the great patterns in Jewish history ever since the Jews were invited into Egypt and then enslaved there.

So how did the Jews come to Poland?

A POLISH INVITATION

Poland became Christian very late, only at the turn of the 11th century, and only then did it join the European community of nations (so to speak). After that, it took a couple of hundred years before Poland started to emerge as a nation-state with strong development potential.

If you want to develop your country economically and culturally, who do you need?

You need Jews.

Why were the Jews so necessary? First, they could read and write. Jews were always highly educated as they had to be literate to read and obey the Torah, and general education came along as part of the parcel. Second, Jews were excellent bankers, accountants, and administrators who knew how to keep the economy healthy.

So in 1264, King Boleslav of Poland granted a charter inviting the Jews there. The charter was an amazing document, granting Jews unprecedented rights and privileges. For example, it stated that:

“The testimony of the Christian alone may not be admitted in a matter which concerns the money or property of a Jew. In every such incidence there must be the testimony of both a Christian and a Jew. If a Christian injures a Jew in any which way, the accused shall pay a fine to the royal treasury.”
“If a Christian desecrates or defiles a Jewish cemetery in any which way, it is our wish that he be punished severely as demanded by law.”
“If a Christian should attack a Jew, the Christian shall be punished as required by the laws of this land. We absolutely forbid anyone to accuse the Jews in our domain of using the blood of human beings.”
“We affirm that if any Jew cry out in the night as a result of violence done to him, and if his Christian neighbors fail to respond to his cries and do not bring the necessary help, they shall be fined.”
“We also affirm that Jews are free to buy and sell all manner of things just as Christians, and if anyone hampers them, he shall pay a fine.”(1)

This was an amazing document. We saw previously that Jews (see Part 46) would be brought in as money-lenders (being excluded from other professions), then when a bishop or nobleman wanted his debt annulled, he brought a “blood libel” against the Jews and had them expelled or killed. King Boleslav boldly promised the Jews that this would not happen in Poland.

Jews did not immediately flock into Poland, though some did settle there to test the waters. But when other countries started expelling Jews—England being the first in 13th century, Germany in the 14th and Italy and Portugal being the more recent in the 15th century (as we saw in Parts 46 and 48)—Poland became an attractive destination point.

Then in 1569, Poland unified with Lithuania, and as a result expanded its borders to the east. What we know as the Ukraine today and some of Belorussia became vassal lands of Poland which was still a semi-feudal country. These lands needed to be managed and job openings in administration (at which Jews excelled) sprung up everywhere. Quite often Jews would lease tracks of land from the Polish nobility thus making them the middle men in the feudal economic structure of Eastern Europe.

Another Polish king, Sigismund II Augustus, issued another invitation. Here is an excerpt from his edict, granting the Jews permission to open a yeshiva at Lublin, dated August 23, 1567:

“As a result of the efforts of our advisors and in keeping with the request of the Jews of Lublin we do hereby grant permission to erect a yeshiva and to outfit said yeshiva with all that is required to advance learning. All the learned men and rabbis of Lublin shall come together for among their number they shall choose one to serve as the head of the yeshiva. Let their choice be a man who will magnify Torah and bring it glory.”(2)

GOLDEN AGE OF POLISH JEWRY

In Poland, in the early 16th century, the Jews were allowed to have their own governing body called the Va’ad Arba Artzot-The Council of the Four Lands, which was composed of various rabbis from the four major Polish provinces (Great Poland, Little Poland, Volhynia and Polodia) who oversaw the affairs of the Jews in Eastern Europe. The Poles did not interfere with Jewish life and scholarship flourished.

Some important personalities of this period, which a student of Jewish history should remember, were:

Rabbi Moshe Isserles (1525-1572), from Krakow, also known as the Rema. After the Sephardi rabbi Joseph Karo wrote the Shulchan Aruch, the code of Jewish Law, Rabbi Isserles annotated it to fill in the rabbinic decisions from Eastern Europe. His commentary was, and continues to be, critically important in daily Jewish life.
Rabbi Ya’akov Pollack (1455-1530), from Krakow. He opened the first yeshivah in Poland and was later named the chief rabbi of Poland. He developed a method of learning Talmud called pilpul, meaning “fine distinctions.” This was a type of dialectical reasoning that became very popular, whereby contradictory facts or ideas were systematically weighed with a view to the resolution of their real or apparent contradictions.
Rabbi Yehudah Loewe, (1526-1609), not from Poland but important to Eastern European Jewry. He was known as the Maharal of Prague and was one of the great mystical scholars of his time. His name has also been associated with the famous Golem of Prague legend (The Golem was a Frankenstein-like being created by the Maharal to protect the Jews of Prague) although the legend has been shown to be a later fabrication.

POPULATION BOOM

Along with the growth in Torah scholarship there was growth in population. In 1500 there were about 50,000 Jews living in Poland. By 1650 there were 500,000 Jews. This means that by the mid 17th at least 30% or more of the Jewish population of the world was living in Poland!

Where did these Jews settle within Poland?

Jews of the Diaspora were generally urban people as they were historically not allowed to own land in most of the places they lived. However, they also created their own farm communities called shtetls(Yiddish for “small town). Although we tend to think of the shtetl today as a poor farming village (like in Fiddler on the Roof), during the Golden Age of Polish Jewry, many of these communities were actually quite prosperous. And there were thousands of them.

The Jews in these independent communities spoke their own language called Yiddish. Original Yiddish was written in Hebrew letters and was a mixture of Hebrew, Slavic, and German. (Note that Yiddish underwent constant development and “modern” Yiddish is not like the “old” Yiddish which first appeared in the 13th century, nor “middle” Yiddish of this period of time.)

Overall, the Jews did well, but working alongside Polish and Ukrainian Christians (who thought Jews killed Jesus) had its downside.

There were several instances of Christian rioting against Jews. For example, in 1399 in Poznan, a rabbi and 13 elders were accused of stealing Church property and they were tortured and burnt at the stake. (The Poles must have forgot the king’s edict.)

Another problem was that Jews worked as administrators and tax collectors for Polish feudal lords. This did not make them popular among the local folk, who needed little encouragement to unleash their anti-Semitic rage.

This was especially true in places like the Ukraine, where the Catholic Poles were viewed as an occupying power in an Eastern Orthodox land, and the Jews—being representatives of the occupation forces—were the easiest to resent.

And while the Polish nobility might have needed the Jews, the common Poles didn’t. There were instances when the Polish soldiers would purposely leave town, abandoning the Jews to the mercy (or lack thereof) of the Ukrainians. This happened, for example, in 1648 in the city of Tulchin. The Polish soldiers made a deal with the Cossacks and left town. The Jews defended the city by themselves until it fell and they were all slaughtered.

POGROMS

When the Ukrainians decided to throw the Poles out of their land, a full-scale massacres of Jews began.

The year 1635 saw the first big explosion of violence in Ukraine against Poles and Jews. But this attempt at the revolution was crushed. It returned with new vigor thirteen years later.

This second rebellion, in 1648, which succeeded in freeing a large part of the Ukraine from Polish rule, was led by a Ukrainian Cossack named Bogdan Chmielnicki. In large measure it was directed at the Jews.

Chmielnicki was one of the biggest anti-Semites in human history, on par with Hitler. His aim was genocide and his forces murdered an estimated 100,000 Jews in the most horrendous ways:

Here is one description (from Yeven Mezulah, pp. 31-32):

“Some of them [the Jews] had their skins flayed off them and their flesh was flung to the dogs. The hands and feet of others were cut off and they [their bodies] were flung onto the roadway where carts ran over them and they were trodden underfoot by horse ... And many were buried alive. Children were slaughtered at their mother’s bosoms and many children were torn apart like fish. They ripped up the bellies of pregnant women, took out the unborn children, and flung them in their faces. They tore open the bellies of some of them and placed a living cat within the belly and they left them alive thus, first cutting off their hands so that they should not be able to take the living cat out of the belly ... and there was never an unnatural death in the world that they did not inflict upon them.”

Here is another account from a Luthuanian Rabbi Shabbetai ben Meir HaCohen (1621-1662) also known as the Shach, who survived this time:

“On the same day 1,500 people were killed in the city of Human in Russia on the Sabbath. The nobles [Cossacks] with whom the wicked mob had again made an alliance chased all the Jews from the city into the fields and vineyards where the villains surrounded them in a circle, stripped them to their skin and ordered them to lie on the ground. The villains spoke to the Jews with friendly and consoling words: ‘Why do you want to be killed, strangled and slaughtered like an offering to your God Who poured out His anger upon you without mercy? Would it not be safer for you to worship our gods, our images and crosses and we would form one people which would unite together.’ “But the holy and faithful people who so often allowed themselves to be murdered for the sake of the Lord, raised their voices together in almighty in Heaven and cried: ‘Hear of Israel the Lord our God, the Holy One and the King of the Universe, we have been murdered for Thy sake so often already. O Lord God of Israel let us remain faithful to Thee.’ Afterward they recited the confession of sins and said: ‘We are guilty and thus recognize the Divine judgment.’ Now the villains turned upon them and there was not one of them who did not fall victim.”

It’s no wonder when Jews hear the word Cossack they break out in a sweat. These people killed 100,000 Jews and destroyed 300 Jewish communities in the most brutal way one could imagine.

Yet to this day Chmielnicki is considered a nationalist hero in the Ukraine, where they regard him as a kind of “George Washington.” In Kiev there is a big statue in the square erected in his honor.

So this is how, in 1648-1649, the Golden Age of Polish Jewry came crashing down.

These pogroms took place in Eastern Poland, and the Jews in other parts remained there. Poland continued for many years to be the center of the Ashkenazi Jewish world as we shall see in future installments.

However, before we cover that period of time, we will backtrack a bit to talk about the Protestant Reformation which also took place during the Renaissance.

1)Alexis P. Rubin ed., Scattered Among the Nations-Documents Affecting Jewish History 49 to 1975. (Jason Aronson, 1993), pp 87-8.
2) Alexis P. Rubin ed., Scattered Among the Nations-Documents Affecting Jewish History 49 to 1975. (Jason Aronson, 1993), pp 89-90.

#49 of 70 in the Aish.com Jewish History Series
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The Reformation and the Jews

The Reformation exposed the corruption of the Church and brought about the advent of Protestantism. For the Jews it just meant more bad news.

Jewish history did not happen in a vacuum, and we have to always keep in mind the events going on in the world at large that impacted the Jews in a major way. One of those huge events that shook up Europe was the Protestant Reformation.

What brought it about?

Simply put, the corruption of the Church in Rome.

As we saw in
Part 45, with the decline of the Roman Empire, the Church became the great feudal player in the economic system of Europe. This was a system that, while virtually enslaving huge masses of people, made the Church very rich and very powerful - both politically and militarily.

“Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” said Lord Acton, and this was certainly true of the Church at this time.

Rolling in wealth, the Church built great edifices and fielded its own armies and sank deeper and deeper into immorality, materialism, and decadence.

The list of papal affairs and political intrigues is extensive. For example, Pope Alexander VI bribed some members of the College of Cardinals to insure his election in 1492, the year the Jews were thrown out of Spain. [History of Christianity, Paul Johnson, p. 280, 363] Once in office, he brought the papacy to new heights of spiritual laxity.

A number of popes before him had abandoned celibacy, but Alexander VI openly flaunted his reputation as a great lover. He had a portrait of his mistress - dressed up like Mary, the mother of Jesus - painted over the door in his bedroom, and he publicly acknowledged his illegitimate children, who became famous in their own right, Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia. [Chronicle of the World, Derrik Mercer ed., DK Publishing, p.391]

Giovanni Boccaccio, the great 14th century Italian humanist writer offers us a humorous insight into the corruption and decadence of the Church of his day. In his classic work, Decameron, a Jew by the name of Abraham is pressured by a Christian friend to visit Rome in the hope that he will be so impressed that he will convert to Christianity. Abraham returns disgusted and reports:

“I say this for that, if I was able to observe aright, no piety, no devoutness, no good work or example of life or other what did I see there in any who was Churchman: nay lust, covetise, gluttony and the like and worse ... And as far as I judge, meseemeth your chief pastor and consequently all others endeavor with all diligence and all their wit and every art to bring to nought and to banish from the world the [values of the] Christian religion ...”

DANGEROUS BOOK

Those wanting to reform the moral stature of the Church were powerless. Even as the hypocrisy of the situation was becoming intolerable, the Church used its power to stifle any signs of defiance.

The defiance began in the 14th century with challenges to Church doctrine and attempts at translating the Bible into languages other than Latin (the language of the Roman Empire which few spoke). These attempts were brutally put down.

Why didn’t the Church want the common people to read the Bible? Just imagine what might happen if the serfs should get a hold of a Bible and find out what it actually said about the obligations of every person (even “his lordship” and “his eminence”) of loving his neighbor and of treating him with equality since all human beings were created in the image of God.

It is precisely for this reason that the Church refrained from translating the Bible into the vernacular. Writes Henry Phelps-Brown in Egalitarianism and the Generation of Inequality (p. 68):

“Despite its anxiety to save man’s souls from the perdition of earthly pursuits in order to preserve it for the salvation of the life after death, the medieval Church insulated pupils from the dangerous contamination of Scriptures. Only those entering holy orders were allowed to study theology and delve into Holy Writ. Unsupervised, independent exploration of the Bible was tantamount to heresy and only clerics in good standing were permitted to expound Scripture from a Latin text incomprehensible to the Christian masses.”

MARTIN LUTHER

In 1506, the Church of Rome undertook one of its grandest and most expensive projects - the building of a new St. Peter’s Basilica as the centerpiece of the Vatican. The Church was to be so lavish and so huge that, when completed 150 years later, it was the largest Church ever built and it remained so until 1989.

Such an astronomical project would take an astronomical sum of money, and, as a source of fund-raising, the Church turned to the sale of indulgences.

The practice of granting indulgences - remission of punishment for sins through the intercession of the Church - already had a long history. But early on, indulgences were granted when a sinner performed some hazardous duty for the Church - like going on a crusade. (A crusade to the Holy Land got you forgiveness for all sins ever committed.) Later, it became possible to buy indulgences on your deathbed. (Thus, you insured that you would enter heaven immediately, bypassing purgatory.)

With the Church engaged in a major fund-raising effort, the sale on indulgences took on new significance.

Pope Sixtus IV’s fund-raising campaign touted indulgences which would free your deceased loved ones suffering in purgatory. Church envoys resorted to imitating the anguished wailing of parents who, in the throes of holy purification fires, pleaded with their children to buy an indulgence and ease their torment.

One creative envoy, a Dominican monk by the name of Johann Tetzel, made up a little ditty: “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.”

At the height of the indulgence sale, Martin Luther, an Augustinian friar from Germany, traveled to Rome and was shocked by what he saw. How could the Church sell God’s gifts to the highest bidder? And how could the bishops and cardinals behave with such moral laxity and worldliness?

Luther returned home and was plunged into a crisis of faith. He resolved his dilemma by coming up with the theory of grace, which would later become part of the Protestant theology. This theory holds that salvation comes by God’s grace—or God’s indulgence, so to speak. A gift from God could clearly not be sold by the Church.

Full of youthful idealistic zeal (he was only 34 at the time), Luther posted his protest - the now famous “Ninety-Five Theses” - on the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg, on October 31, 1517.

The long and short of it was that his protest reached Rome and he was asked, in no uncertain terms, to recant. He refused, proclaiming his famous defense, “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.” He was excommunicated four years later. (Luther went into hiding in 1521 in Wartburg Castle where he translated the Bible from Greek to German. His translation appeared in 1522 and had a tremendous political impact on the church and on German culture and language.)

But it was too late to silence him, thanks in part to a remarkable technological advance which would change history forever - the Gutenberg press.

A mere fifty years before Luther’s protest, Johann Gutenberg had perfected a system of making metal letters in moulds, setting them in rows, and using the templates thus formed to print multiple copies of a document in minutes, which previously would have had to be copied tediously by hand over many hours.

When this incredible printing machine was applied to Luther’s “Ninety Five Theses”—which, in effect, represented an indictment of the Church—all hell broke loose. What might have been a local dispute, with the protestant muzzled by his excommunication, became a public controversy that spread far and wide.

Martin Luther’s new religion, called Protestantism, got a lot of backing across northern Europe from the nobles who were more than happy to throw the Church out of their land and seize the Church’s wealth.

The Church had its allies as well, and Europe was thrown into the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). This war, which was primarily between Protestants and Catholics, meant a lot of bloodshed and loss of life and destruction.(1) And it had a big impact on the Jews.

LUTHER AND THE JEWS

Luther had seen how shamefully the Church had treated the Jews, and he had a plan to change that(2). He was sure that the reason that Jews did not convert to Christianity was that they couldn’t stomach the corruption of the Church. Now the Jews would see that the Protestants were different and that they would be nice to the Jews. And then, the Jews would all become Christians.

He wrote in his work entitled, That Jesus Christ Was A Jew:

“For they [Church clergy] have dealt with the Jews as if they were dogs and not human beings. They have done nothing for them but curse them and seize their wealth ... I hope that if the Jews are treated friendly and instructed kindly enough through the Bible, many of them will become real Christians and come back to the ancestral faith of the prophets and patriarchs…”(3)

Naturally, the Jews didn’t go for Protestantism either. Their allegiance to Judaism and the Torah had nothing to do with the Christians being nasty to them. To Jews, Christianity was a false religion from the start, and the behavior of the Christians over the years only proved it.

Now Martin Luther would further add to that proof. As soon as the Jews rejected his overtures and didn’t start converting en masse, Luther, who took this rejection personally, turned into one of the most virulent anti-Semites in history.

A few years later, he wrote in his Concerning The Jews And Their Lies:

“What shall we do with this damned rejected race of Jews since they live among us and we know about their lying and blasphemy and cursing. We cannot tolerate them even if we do not wish to share their lives, curses and blasphemy. Perhaps we can spare a few of them from the fire and flames. Let me give you my honest advice…”(4)

Luther’s “honest advice” outlined a plan for dealing with the Jews. It included:

1. burn all synagogues
2. destroy Jewish holy books
3. forbid rabbis to teach
4. destroy Jewish homes
5. ban Jews from roads and markets
6. forbid Jews to make loans
7. seize Jewish property
8. force Jews to do hard labor
9. expel Jews from Christian towns

(For more on Luther’s plan see A History of the Jews by Paul Johnson, p. 242. See also Why the Jews? by Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, p. 107.)

Four hundred years later, Hitler and the Nazis, using Luther’s anti-Jewish writings in their anti-Jewish propaganda, would put that plan into action.

1) Although it was ostensibly a religious conflict between Protestant and Catholics, the rivalry between the Austrian Habsburg dynasty and other powers was a more central motive, as shown by the fact that Catholic France supported the Protestant side in order to weaken the Habsburgs, thereby furthering France’s position as the pre-eminent European power. This increased the France-Habsburg rivalry which led later to direct war between France and Spain.
2) Luther actually lived in a part of Germany from where the Jews had long-since been expelled. It may well be that he, like William Shakespeare, never actually met a Jew.
3) Alexis P. Rubin ed., Scattered Among the Nations-Documents Affecting Jewish History 49 to 1975. (Jason Aronson, 1993), pp 94-96.
4) Ibid., 89-90.

#50 of 70 in the Aish.com Jewish History Series
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Monday, November 23, 2015

The Inquisition - The Jews of Poland - The Reformation and the Jews