Samuel and Althea Stroum Books

Brian J. Horowitz

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780295997919
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire du peuple juif

The Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment among the Jews of Russia (OPE) was a philanthropic organization, the oldest Jewish organization in Russia. Founded by a few wealthy Jews in St. Petersburg who wanted to improve opportunities for Jewish people in Russia by increasing their access to education and modern values, OPE was secular and nonprofit. The group emphasized the importance of the unity of Jewish culture to help Jews integrate themselves into Russian society by opening, supporting, and subsidizing schools throughout the country. While reaching out to Jews across Russia, OPE encountered opposition on all fronts. It was hobbled by the bureaucracy and sometimes outright hostility of the Russian government, which imposed strict regulations on all aspects of Jewish lives. The OPE was also limited by the many disparate voices within the Jewish community itself. Debates about the best type of schools (secular or religious, co-educational or single-sex, traditional or "modern") were constant. Even the choice of language for the schools was hotly debated. Jewish Philanthropy and Enlightenment in Late-Tsarist Russia offers a model of individuals and institutions struggling with the concern so central to contemporary Jews in America and around the world: how to retain a strong Jewish identity, while fully integrating into modern society.

1Integration Schemes

1The Gintsburg Family and the Emergence of a Jewish Enlightenment Society

The prehistory of the OPE reflects the emergence of the “Jewish notables” as the center of power in Jewish politics in Russia. Coming to the forefront during the reign of Nicholas I, the notables took a leadership role in large part because the government and the Jewish people perceived them as leaders. The close relations of Evzel (Yossel) Gintsburg, Russia’s wealthiest Jew, with the government signified a unique phenomenon.¹ Never before in Russian history had an unbaptized Jew stood so close to the corridors of power, never before had a Jewish leader thought of himself as an equal to government officials, noblemen, and “educated society.”²

Although such individuals as Evzel and Horace Gintsburg, A. M. Brodsky, and S. Poliakov are known as shtadlonim, “they and their associates developed a role which went beyond the shtadlanut of legend.”³ John Klier writes, “If theoretically Russia was an autocracy, in reality it was a bureaucracy. Fully as important as access to the sovereign’s ear was the ability to navigate the world of cabinets and committees. This was a skill the Gintsburgs and their associates mastered.”⁴

The notables’ personal wealth elicited respect among ordinary Jews who perceived these men as favored by the government (how else could they gain their wealth except with the government’s connivance?). Although selected undemocratically, the notables proved effective in the struggle for legal rights. The historian Shaul Ginzburg describes the efforts of Evzel Gintsburg: “One can say without exaggerating that the well-known laws of 1859, 1861, 1865 and 1867, that gave residence rights throughout all of Russia to Jewish merchants, graduates of institutions of higher learning, craftsmen, and army veterans from the time of Nicholas I, were established through the influence of Evzel Gintsburg and thanks to his energetic efforts.”⁵ In the early 1860s, optimism about the intercessor’s ability to attain greater rights spread widely.⁶

Fabulously wealthy Jews emerged in Russia during the de facto privatization of the liquor trade in the reign of Nicholas I. According to the law of August 15, 1845, merchants of the first guild were entitled to distill and sell liquor anywhere, including those areas where Jews were forbidden to live permanently by law. In effect, the government farmed out its monopoly over the production and sale of alcohol, employing middlemen to perform the many tasks involved in the trade. These individuals paid a yearly fee or “tax” to the government for the right to sell liquor, and the difference between what they spent for the fee and the money they collected from liquor sales was their profit.⁷ The economic success of these tax-farmers led to the formation of a class of Jewish parvenus.

Evzel Gintsburg, the founder of the Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment, was by far the most successful Jew involved in the government’s liquor franchise. His life demonstrates how wealthy Jewish merchants gained power, prestige, and influence in Russian society.⁸ Coming from a family of learned rabbis, Evzel’s father Gavriel had been a rabbi in Vitebsk and a successful entrepreneur, a merchant of the elite first guild.⁹ In 1849, Gavriel and his children were given the title of Honored Citizens for their service to the government.

Evzel apparently increased the family fortune many times over. Serving as an overseer on a large estate involved in the liquor trade in the 1840s, Evzel acquired government franchises to distill and sell alcohol in Bessarabia and the Kiev and Volynsk Districts.¹⁰ Evzel Gintsburg gained fame in government circles for his success in keeping the troops supplied with liquor during the Crimean War. According to A. N. Liders, adjutant to the commander of the tsar’s second army division: “Gintsburg made constant special efforts so that the supply of vodka for the troops was not interrupted, holding significant reserves at places indicated by the commissariat and in general without any hesitation satisfying all the demands of the troops who were placed in various areas and often moved from one place to another. Moreover, he sold his liquor at prices that were not only not higher than those set during peacetime, but even lower.”¹¹

For services rendered, including paying 3,777,440 rubles annually for the liquor concession between 1859 and 1863, Evzel was awarded several distinctions by the Russian government.¹² In 1854 and 1856, Evzel received gold medals from the tsar. In 1874, the German Prince Alexander of Hessen, brother of the Russian Empress Maria Aleksandrovna, bestowed upon Horace, Evzel’s son, and then on Evzel himself (apparently at his son’s request) the title of Baron, which was affirmed by Alexander II in 1875.¹³ Moreover, in 1878, the hereditary status of the title was confirmed.¹⁴

Ironically, at the same time that a small class of very wealthy Jews appeared, the average Jew in Russia actually became poorer. In 1845, a new provision was introduced that prohibited Jews from “living in any tavern, inn, or establishment where liquor was served outside of cities and towns, engaging in the sale of any alcoholic beverage directly to consumers, or distilling liquor on his own.” Here a clear distinction was drawn between “Jewish guild merchants who were permitted to engage in vodka sale anywhere they chose” and “Jewish city dwellers (meshchane) who were allowed to lease only enterprises that had no connection with liquor.”¹⁵ Although many individual Jews continued to distill and sell liquor in the countryside, either meeting the terms of the law or subverting it, the decree enhanced the wealth of those merchants of the first guild involved in the liquor trade by as much as a thousandfold while impoverishing ordinary Jews by forcing them out of the industry.

According to statistics of the time, at least 8,000 individuals were employed in the large-scale liquor trade, in which the minimum salary was 500 rubles, double or triple the average earnings of a shopkeeper (150–200 rubles).¹⁶ “By the middle of the [nineteenth] century, some 27,000 Jewish merchants constituted nearly three-quarters of the merchant class within the Pale, and in provinces such as Volhynia, Grodno, and Podolia their proportion was even higher. Even in the first merchant guild—the wealthiest and most prestigious—Jews made up the dominant presence in the empire’s western borderlands.”¹⁷

Clearly the tsarist government permitted some Jews to become extraordinarily wealthy. Centralizing the production and sale of alcohol brought in more income for the government than dealing with tens of thousands of small-scale suppliers. Nevertheless, it is also possible that the government’s motives reflected its perception that Jewish society was bereft of order. One essential feature of a moral society, as it was conceived in Europe at that time, was the existence of a “natural” hierarchy.¹⁸ Since the government could not perceive an aristocratic class among Jews, one had to be created.¹⁹ The fortunes of the Gintsburgs, Poliakovs, and Brodskys gave the Jews a noble class similar to that of the Russian aristocracy.

Jews were eager for increased rights and privileges. Conventional wisdom among the Jewish population said that full emancipation depended on the transformation of the Jews themselves, their striving for haskalah (Western enlightenment), and a rejection of Jewish “fanaticism.” It was significant that the call for integration now came from the rich and a second generation of acculturated Jews who were already preparing their children for integration into Russian society.

In specific professions, knowledge of Russian was necessary for success. For example, in the liquor trade and tax farming, Jewish businessmen spoke Russian, wore European clothing, and embraced a less rigorous attitude toward the Jewish religion. Jacob Teitel, the last Jewish judge in tsarist Russia, describes his grandfather this way: “Considered a local aristocrat, he would meet with Polish landowners; he gave his children a decent education for the time. My father knew Polish and Russian and even wrote verses in Hebrew; he was known as a free thinker. He wore a European suit. When the liquor concessions were introduced, my father served the concessions as a tax farmer [lessee]. Tax farmers were considered liberals and even atheists, since they broke just about all 613 commandments obligatory for an Orthodox Jew.”²⁰ Knowledge of Russian as well as Polish, and the use of Hebrew for activities other than prayer, marked Teitel’s grandfather as different from a “traditional” Jew. According to A. Paperna, “The opening of a new branch of work and earning a living in liquor tax farming propelled the spread of education and knowledge of the Russian language among the Jews more rapidly than all the oppressive and expensive measures of the government of Nicholas I’s time.”²¹

The 1860s seemed particularly auspicious for Jewish emancipation because, as opposed to Nicholas I, who promoted Jewish schools at the same time he imposed hardship on the Jewish people, Alexander II not only abrogated the worst abuses of Nicholas I’s reign, but also extended new rights, such as the right for “privileged” Jews to live outside the Pale of Settlement.²² Among them were merchants of the first guild who had been guild members for more than ten years, graduates of Russian universities, veterans of the Russian army, and later, artisans registered in Russian professional associations.²³ By conferring these rights, as difficult as it remained to obtain them, the government revealed its new vision for Jews.²⁴

During the early days of Alexander II’s reign, the country experienced a frenzy of excitement. Plans to end serfdom were prepared and expectations of political changes were in the air. We can grasp how Jewish intellectuals felt by looking at the memoirs of one of its most influential representatives. According to Menashe Morgulis, the legal reforms led to feelings of intense patriotism for Russia:

Young people rejoiced. They found a foundation for their self-consciousness. Downtrodden and oppressed more by people within their own milieu than outside it, they threw themselves into the open arms of those outside [Judaism]. Young people felt a ground under their feet, they all started to consider themselves citizens of a homeland, they received a new fatherland. Every young man was full of optimistic hopes and prepared himself selflessly to serve the homeland, which had extended its hands so maternally to her stepchildren. Everyone threw himself into the study of Russian language and literature, everyone thought only about how he could quickly emulate and entirely integrate with the surrounding milieu.²⁵

There was also the perception that the reforms of Alexander II reflected an understanding of true justice and not just pragmatic calculations about the need to modernize Russia’s military after its loss in the Crimean War. Many people believed that, by liberating the serfs, the tsar was imbued with moral sentiments that were formulated in the Enlightenment concepts of “natural rights” or “inalienable freedoms.”²⁶ It was only a matter of time before Jews in Russia acquired the rights that Jews in most of Western Europe had already received by 1848.

For Jews and Russians, Evzel’s son Horace represented the ideal of a Jew in Russia. When he moved to Paris in 1866, Evzel Gintsburg left his banking interests in Russia in the hands of his youngest son, Horace Osipovich, known as Baron Gintsburg.²⁷ Horace was prepared to take over the leadership position in the OPE, having served on the OPE board since the society’s inception. As opposed to his father, who could not escape identification as a Jewish parvenu, Horace was distinguished by the superior education he received in Europe. He was carefully designed to embody the ideal of a modern Jew, one who was fully European, modern, and Jewish.

In Kamenets-Podol’sk, Ukraine, where he grew up, Horace studied with private tutors, in particular receiving instruction from the Hebrew poet Mordechai Suchostaver, who was a disciple of Nahman Krochmal and later a teacher at the Zhitomir Rabbinical Seminary. Similarly, the maskil poet and teacher in the Zhitomir Rabbinical Seminary, Jacob Eikhenbaum, gave lessons and “was a major influence.”²⁸ Horace was fluent in Hebrew, using it in correspondence with his family. In Paris, where he spent part of every year, Horace continued lessons, studying with Matheus Mapu, the brother of the famous Hebrew writer, and Adolph Neibauer, a specialist on the Karaites and ancient Jewish history. Because of his education, Horace became a major benefactor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• A Note on Transliteration
• Introduction
• Part 1 Integration Schemes
• Part 2 Confrontations with Reality
• Part 3 An Ope School Network
• Part 4 Nationalism
• Postscript
• Appendixes
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index