JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

would not ask about religion and race, only the place of birth,”
and that the Jews would be granted “all civic rights without
restrictions” (see Dov Berush *Meisels).
The Sejm in Galicia ratified on Dec. 21, 1867, the abolition
of restrictions on Jews’ participation in municipal elections.
The recognition of Jewish emancipation in principle was
widespread among Polish progressives in the 1860s and 1870s.
The belief was based on the assumption that after emancipation
the Jews were bound to identify themselves nationally
and politically with Poland and assimilate its culture. However,
the increase in Jewish population and its social and cultural
cohesiveness convinced the Poles that this assumption
was illusory. The Poles argued that although the Jews fulfilled
their civic obligations and were loyal to the state, they did not
accept assimilation. Opposition to the Jews grew continually
in intensity. It was encouraged by the Russian government’s
policy of “divide and rule,” and by the Christian urban classes’
enmity toward the Jews as rivals in commerce and in the liberal
professions.
At the beginning of the 20th century Jewish participation
in revolutionary activity (1905), the development of their
own press, public schools, and economic institutions, the rise
of modern Jewish nationalism (*Zionism, the *Bund, etc.),
and the weight of their increasing numbers in municipal
and *Duma elections sharpened Polish opposition to emancipation
for the Jews. Only the Polish socialist movements
demanded Jewish civic and political equality. During the
German conquest of Poland in World War I, many laws and
regulations directed against the Jews were actually abolished,
and the organization of the communities received a more
democratic character. Between the two World Wars the Jewish
fight for equality in independent Poland was influenced
by these developments. Emancipation of the Jews in Poland
had been guaranteed by the Treaty of Versailles (arts. 86 and
93), and, in particular, by the “additional Treaty of Versailles”
(June 28, 1919) signed by Poland, which provided for *minority
rights in Poland. After numerous delays, the Polish government
was compelled to sign the treaty. Although the Polish
constitution of March 17, 1921, included the “additional
Treaty of Versailles” and promised “complete equality in civic
rights” (art. 9), there was also included an article stating that
“in order to execute the constitution, the preparation of suitable
legislation would be required.” In other words, until the
publication of new laws, it was possible – perhaps even necessary
– to apply the ancient laws and restrictions. It was only in
1931 that several of these laws and restrictions were abrogated.
In the new Polish constitution of April 23, 1935, the principle
of equality was outlined in article 7 according to which “the
rights of a citizen would not be restricted because of his origin,
religion, sex, or nationality,” and that “the right of the citizen
to determine the course of public affairs would be considered
in respect to the value of his efforts in the service of
public welfare.” Yet the violent opposition of Polish authorities
and society to Jewish emancipation did not cease. The law of
equality and the law concerning the rights of minorities were
emancipation
successfully emptied of their contents, remaining merely a political
and judicial framework for Jewish complaints against
the oppressive injustice and perverted laws under which they
were compelled to live.
RUSSIA. The beginnings of the struggle for emancipation
in Russia took place after the first partition of Poland (1772),
when Russia annexed Polish provinces which contained large
Jewish populations (Belorussia). On May 7, 1780, Catherine
II accepted the “requests of the Jews living in the districts
of *Mogilev and *Polotsk to register among the merchants.”
She ratified the rights of the Jews who had registered with the
merchant class and who had been elected to public positions
in the self-governing institutions of the burghers, ordering officials
not to prevent the Jews from exercising this right (May
13, 1733). This episode is the beginning of the difficult fight for
Jewish emancipation in Russia. Emancipation conflicted with
the ideology of the czarist regime, which was built on a system
of special privileges in all areas of life, and on rigid social
classes legally separated. Under such a regime, every attempt
to attain Jewish civic equality was doomed to failure from the
start. The promptings of theory and pretensions toward principle
often resulted in decrees which were supposedly intended
to “reform” the Jews in order to render them suitable “for admission
into civil society.” On Dec. 23, 1791, the *Pale of Settlement
was set up for the Jews, with further discriminations
and impositions following suit. The Commission for the Reform
of the Jews, at first inclined toward the liberal opinion
that “prohibitions should be reduced and liberties increased”
(Sept. 20, 1803), in the end issued the “Jewish Statute” of 1804
which determined the limits of the Pale of Settlement and
imposed further domiciliary and economic disabilities. The
commission, however, encouraged Jews to enter agriculture
by recommending that the government allocate land and subsidies
for their agricultural settlements. Also, Jews were to be
permitted to attend general schools of all standards. In 1847
Czar Nicholas I replied to Moses Montefiore’s plea for Jewish
emancipation by saying that “such a thing is inconceivable,
and as long as I live, such a thing shall not take place.” Yet Nicholas
supposedly believed in the principle of “betterment of
the Jews,” which meant that “if the experiment to direct the
Jews toward useful work should succeed, time will gradually
bring about automatically the abolition of those restrictions,
which in the meantime are still indispensable.” The czar’s
*Cantonist decree was occasionally “explained” by reasons of
“reform in order to achieve citizenship.”
During the reign of Alexander II, the situation remained
basically unchanged. He ordered the appointment of a special
commission to “examine all the existing regulations concerning
the Jews in order to adapt them toward the general
objective of the integration of this nation within the country,
as far as the moral condition of the Jews renders them suitable
for this” (March 31, 1856). The czar, however, shared with
some members of the commission their opposition to Minister
of the Interior Lanskoy’s belief that the civic equality of
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