Shalom Boguslavsky's new book boasts probably the longest book title you have ever read: "The Unlikely and Oft-Overlooked Story of the Rise and Fall of Jewish Eastern Europe." The first sentence in this highly popular history book, written by the tour guide, lecturer and blogger, who has a strong passion for Eastern Europe, proudly tells us that, "It is a ridiculous feat to recount five hundred years of history in one book." But Boguslavsky was forced to tell this story in one book as it is precisely this 500-year period from the 15th century to the Holocaust that creates a clear narrative arc: at the start of the 16th century (the period of the Expulsion of the Jews of Spain, the growing strength of the Ottoman Empire and the conquest of America by the Europeans) there were only a few tens of thousands of Jews in Eastern Europe; by the mid-18th century (prior to the American War of Independence and the French Revolution) this number had already grown to 750 thousand; and by the end of the 19th century (the birth of Zionism, the eve of the First World War, against the backdrop of a tremendous wave of emigration to America), there were some 6.5 million Jews there.
But Boguslavsky's book does not necessarily deal with these relatively well-known global events, which accompanied the rise of Judaism in Eastern Europe, but actually focuses on the no less interesting but much less remembered (or "oft-overlooked" in his words) developments of that particular area. Who are the people and the cultures who shared the Eastern-European domain with the Jews? What is the connection between the Jewish mythology of that period – the shtetl, the incessant battles between the Hasidim and the Litvaks (the Misnagedim or "opponents" who later took on the term Litvaks as they came from Lithuania) and so on – and the reality of the other surrounding nations and states? Our inability to perceive the conditions leading to the development of such a major force in world Jewry, does to a large extent underscore the importance of one of the maps presented at the beginning of the book: that large land of two kingdoms Poland-Lithuania, which at the time encompassed Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, and Kaliningrad. This is an immense swathe of land that has changed over the years, it expanded and was later downsized, it was partitioned and then reunited, and for the duration of those hundreds of years it was plagued by revolutions no less than those occurring in Western Europe. This certainly had an impact on the Jewish population.
Boguslavsky's interest in the Jews of Eastern Europe began as a necessary part of his profession. "I began to travel to Eastern Europe, mainly to Ukraine, due to personal circumstances, and also as I was extremely interested by it," recounts Boguslavsky. "The more I traveled the more I became captivated with it, and I thought: I travel in any event and deal with guiding and tourism, so why shouldn't they pay me for those trips? So, I began to take groups of tourists with me. I obviously needed to engage in an orderly effort to learn the relevant material so as not to talk garbage when providing commentary on the sites in question. When I learned the general history of those places, it cast Jewish history in a completely different light, and gave me the broader context that I had been missing until then, and that people usually are not aware of. The second thing that happened is that I was overly critical of certain images that had been traditionally associated with the Jews of Eastern Europe. They still remained firmly implanted in my head, but then, gradually I began to see things that did not really fit in with those images."
The first thing that Boguslavsky noticed, which contradicted those preconceptions that had "been implanted in his head," he claims was the number of Jews spread across the lands of Eastern Europe. "There were simply masses of Jews there," he says. "At some point, more than three-quarters of world Jewry were concentrated in that region. This was information that was already available, but it became much more present and tangible when I was there and saw the little that remained of it with my own eyes. It is still possible to feel the prominent presence of the Jews in that region to this day. The first example that caused me to understand this was one of the remains of the synagogues that I saw. Even the little that remained of it was extremely grand and majestic. I thought to myself that it is from the literature written about that period, rather than the academic research, that we always tend to gain the impression of the small, shabby and pitiful shtetl with the non-Jews on one side of the river and the Jews on the other side, and everything is so small and abjectly impoverished. And then, all of a sudden, you see a synagogue hewn from stone in the center of the town, a magnificent edifice built by the King of Poland's own personal architect. Thus, a number of factors began to accumulate that did not correspond with the image that I had entertained, and so I began to delve into this subject a little more.
"In the beginning, I thought to myself, 'Wow, how smart I am, I have unearthed completely new ground here,' but as soon as I began to read I immediately grasped that I had not uncovered anything at all. Everything that I thought I understood – the world of academic research already knew. Prof. Majer Bałaban, Prof. Israel Heilperin and all the leading lights in this field have already written everything there is to write much more eloquently than I could write. But it transpires that there is a gap between what is known to the world of academic study and the popular perception of things. And I, in my profession, am supposed to give this out to people who do not hail from an academic background or who have been dealing with such issues for their entire lives. And so, this is how I decided to take the leap and try and bridge that gap."
Where did the Cossacks come from?
The book weaves the general history of the region with the local Jewish history and the Jewish memory, or the Jewish mythology of Eastern Europe. Familiarity with the broader view of the story, says Boguslavsky, sheds a different light on our story, that of the Jews. "If you ask historians dealing with Jewish history what was the greatest event that occurred in the last third of the 18th century, the rise of the Hasidic movement will always stand out together with the bitter split between the Hasidim and the Misnagedim, Boguslavsky points out. "Ostensibly, this is an internal Jewish theological-ideological dispute, a fight for the spiritual leadership of the Jews, and similar issues. However, when you study the wider picture, you come to understand that all this took place in parallel to the Civil War, revolutions, invasions, and severe internal political strife in the Polish-Lithuanian kingdom. The Jews were involved in all these affairs. At that time, the historic Four-Year Sejm (Parliament) discussions were well underway, which were intended to determine the fate of the kingdom, and the Jews sent their emissaries to it, took part in the rebellions, and played an important role in the wars – both as victims but also as fighters, here and there. So, to what extent did the Jews who lived at that time really regard the halakhic disputes, such as the question of whether it is permitted to stand on your head during prayers, as a central issue? I don't know and there is no way of checking this. But we really should not be telling our story without the broader context."
How does that context have a specific impact?
"The issue of the denunciatory letters sent by opponents of Hasidism to the Russian government is a central pillar in the conflict between the Hasidim and the Misnagedim. I have heard this story more times than I care to remember, and I have never come across anybody who mentions that there is a wider context to the use of such a tool: the Russian government in those areas, which were given over to Russia following the partition of the Polish-Lithuanian kingdom, was completely new, it had just materialized there. So, everybody was trying hard to prove to the new administration that they were loyal to it and that the other side was full of treachery and plans to undermine it. This is also a government, and once again it is important to mention here the wider context, which until that point had not come across any Jews at all. Until that time, there had been no Jews in Russia so that its government had absolutely no idea who these people were and what was happening among the Jews. So now, each side was convinced that it had been presented with a golden opportunity to go to the new administration and present to it the reality of the situation as it saw it, and in a manner that would support its own cause.
"This is not the only context. This dispute is also connected to the processes of modernization that were just beginning to take shape at that time. The leadership crisis in the Jewish world that led to the rise of Hasidism is a direct outcome of the crisis of modernity. The Enlightenment is not the only thing that was born out of that crisis. Hasidism too, as well as the Misnagedim movement, along with the Enlightenment, are modern phenomena. These are three distinct movements that appear at the same time, against the same background, and under the same circumstances. I believe that this puts the whole story in a much more interesting context than the purely internal Jewish theological and sociological aspect that it has been customary to talk about."
Another example is that of the Khmelnytsky Uprising in the mid-17th century, clearly one of the more severe traumas that is indelibly etched in Jewish historical memory – but without any context. "The story usually goes something like this: people called Cossacks, known by and familiar to only a handful of people, suddenly appeared from nowhere, and they slaughtered us because they are antisemites with a deep-rooted hatred of anything Jewish," says Boguslavsky. "The truth is that this is correct, as who did not hate Jews during that period? Having said that, when you zoom out from what was clearly a horrific series of pogroms, you see a historical event in dimensions that are reminiscent of the Thirty Years' War, one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in Western European history, which was just coming to an end when the Khmelnytsky Uprising began. We are talking about several decades of wars resulting in millions of dead and wounded, with a whole spectrum of factors involved. An epic drama of which we remember an episode that lasted for a year and a half and which was not necessarily the most fatal event for the Jews at that time, but regarding which the most eloquent text was written, which also survived, the book "Yeven Mezulah" or the "Abyss of Despair", written by Rabbi Nathan Nata ben Moses Hannover. What would have happened had this book not been written or had it not survived? We might have completely forgotten about this event or not even known about it."
A highly selective memory
The book is replete with figures we have heard of, but also brings to life from the 'abyss of despair' colorful characters, who might not have left a personal stamp on history but their stories are no less riveting. One of these figures, whose story to a large extent is the story of the entire period, is Fabus Abramovich of Kraków. "A rogue and a con artist who took over the community in Kraków at the end of the 18th century. This is an amazing story. He was the leader of the opposition in the community. In the Jewish communities of that period, an oligarchy comprising just a few families was able to rule all the community institutions for more than a hundred years on occasion, even though elections were actually held annually. In terms of the situation in those days, this was one of the most democratic forms of government that existed on Earth, but such an oligarchy also gives rise to opposition, which is usually composed of those people who were not given the jobs that they believed they ought to have been given. In the 18th century, when the initial buds of mass politics were just beginning to sprout, the opposition began to portray itself as ostensibly being the force that represents the 'simple people' against the 'arrogant elite'. Of course, had they succeeded and risen to power they would have acted precisely as those preceding them did. These struggles were always a sordid affair, but the events in the community of Kraków were especially sordid and violent.
"Our man, Abramovich, took advantage of the fact that Kraków was conquered time and again by various forces during the period of the partition of Poland-Lithuania. Against the background of this tumult, he succeeded in creating a devious bureaucratic manipulation that would appoint him as a dictator to rule over the community. Jewish communities in Europe were run for hundreds of years by a joint leadership of four 'parnasim' (heads of the community), each one running the community for one month at a time on a rotation. Underneath the parnasim were the 'tovei ha'ir', the good (elder) citizens, who themselves were above the rest of the community. This form of government, which has roots in the Hellenistic-Roman world, ensured decentralization of power, creating checks and balances. The community rabbi too had his own form of power. Abramovich left this entire structure in place in Kraków but then placed himself above it all as a sort of dictator. He managed to convince the community that the governor had appointed him to this position; while he persuaded the governor that the community had asked him to assume that position. He relied on the fact that both sides would fail to uncover the deception.
"In the end, it failed, and the deception was indeed exposed. This story, apart from the fact that it is extremely entertaining, reflects the fact that the leadership structure of the Jewish communities, which worked so well for hundreds of years, had ceased to function by the end of the 18th century. Due to its inherent weakness, all sorts of issues began to crop up, such as the Hasidic takeover and manipulations such as that of Abramovich.'"
One of the declared goals of the book is to change the image of Jewish Eastern Europe. "The image that we have is of a later period, the end of the 19th century and the turn of the 20th century. The period about which authors such as Sholem Aleichem and others wrote, the era of mass emigration to America, was one rife with crises. People tend to emigrate when bad things occur. The Jewish town was old and decrepit at that point, and the majority of the Jews were living under the rule of the Russian Empire, an extremely despotic and antisemitic form of government. This is the period addressed by the literature with which we are familiar and these are the memories that people carry with them.
One of the declared goals of the book is to change the image of Jewish Eastern Europe. "The image that we have is of a later period, the end of the 19th century and the turn of the 20th century. The period about which authors such as Sholem Aleichem and others wrote, the era of mass emigration to America, was one rife with crises. People tend to emigrate when bad things occur. The Jewish town was old and decrepit at that point, and the majority of the Jews were living under the rule of the Russian Empire, an extremely despotic and antisemitic form of government. This is the period addressed by the literature with which we are familiar and these are the memories that people carry with them. They are not historians, they do not have an overall perception of the periods from the 15th century onwards, in some of which life was better and in some it was much worse. They are familiar with what they remember, and the tendency is to assume that the reality with which we are familiar is the fixed, permanent situation. This picture is not completely baseless, although it is somewhat exaggerated, and this is the death knell. But we are interested in the entire period, not only the demise but also the ascendancy and the golden period of prosperity.
"To all of this, we need to add the existing image that we have regarding Poland, Ukraine, Belarus and the rest of the places that make up the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. We regard these as being extremely antisemitic areas, where the local inhabitants are breastfed on antisemitism. This has always been a matter of concern for me. Could the Jews be such complete idiots who specifically went to those places where they were so hated? That is simply not logical. If so many Jews chose to live there of all places, this must mean one of two things. Either the fact that there were so many Jews there led to the hatred of our people, and this is not very flattering for us as Jews, or that the situation there was not as bad as in other places.
"And lo and behold, just as it was clear to anybody living throughout those eras, it was indeed not as bad there. In other places, where we do not regard the local inhabitants to be antisemites from birth, they simply did not allow the Jews to settle among them. The best method of not being attributed the current image of an antisemite was prevalent already back in the Middle Ages, by expelling all the Jews, and in this manner, nobody would accuse you of antisemitism. This is the reason why nobody accuses the English of being antisemitic. They threw out all the Jews back in the 12th century and since then, everything there has been just 'peachy keen'. The Jews lived in Eastern European countries and thus they were subject there to the best things and the worst things too. And it is from here too that we have the most historical sources and memories."
The fact that masses of Jews lived in this region distorts the perception as to the actual scope of persecution of the Jews. "If a war is being waged – and wars at the time were without intervention from the High Court of Justice or human rights groups such as B'Tselem, with armies massacring civilian populations without any remorse, just for the fun of it – then in a place that was home to tens of thousands of Jews, then it is a predictable consequence that hundreds and thousands of Jews would be killed. If the same type of war occurs elsewhere, where only a few thousand Jews were living, then a few dozen or perhaps a few hundred Jews would be killed. Clearly, thousands of Jews being killed leaves a much more lasting impression, but this does not necessarily mean that the warlords and the soldiers in those places with a much denser Jewish population were more antisemitic. We remember one event, and the other, smaller event, we have never heard of – and this is what shapes the story."
Their rise and fall
The book paints the rise of Jewish Eastern Europe in bold colors along with the years of its glory and grandeur, but it also focuses equally on the long and hard years of its demise. Boguslavsky succeeds in persuading the reader of the existence of a strong bond between the overall geopolitical processes and the severe crisis experienced by the Jewish population. "In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Jews developed into a status of their own within the feudal order, just like the classic classes of the nobility, the peasants and the bourgeois," he explains. "In Poland-Lithuania there were two parallel urban classes: A Christian urban class and a Jewish urban class, more or less equal in size. One of the issues that set the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth apart from Western Europe was that it was engaged in the conquest and settlement of non-developed lands, mainly in Ukraine and Belarus. In the process of the settlement and regulatory organization of these territories, the government and the nobility encouraged different types of people to settle there: urban dwellers, peasants, and Cossacks. The Jews had good reason to take an interest in settling down there, as they had been pushed aside and removed from other locations, and this led to a situation whereby they developed into an extremely important factor in these areas.
"Therefore, the entire system in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth became dependent on the Jews in relation to a number of matters – for example, in the mediation efforts between the nobility and the peasants, or in the field of public administration. Somebody had to manage the estates, postal services, fishponds, and forests. The concept of a 'leaseholder', which is very familiar to us from Jewish literature, comes from here. Leaseholding is the accepted method of management in the feudal regime – a type of privatization: the government or the noblemen who own the estate do not manage the day-to-day running of the lands on their own. They issue a 'tender' and then check to see who is ready to run everything and pass on the profits to them. This is privatization in its pre-modern form. The Jews were also responsible for the transportation of goods. The peasants would grow agricultural produce and the Jews would then export this. The local Jewish merchant purchased the goods from the peasants and then sold them wholesale at a regional fair, and from here the produce was then transferred to the next fair, and it would proceed from one fair to another until it was eventually shipped abroad. The imported goods would also be passed on via the Jews. The result is that large parts of the largest country in Europe were simply unable to function without the Jews.
"In other places, the Jews were not involved in leaseholding. In Medieval times, the Jews were traditionally involved in commerce, but here the commerce actually moved aside somewhat in favor of the leaseholding. This is based on the fact that the Polish nobility took control of the Jews in the 16th century: the Parliament of Nobles was much more powerful than the king, and the nobles simply succeeded in taking control of the asset that was called the Jews. They took it from the king for themselves, just as they took other assets, and in essence, they used the Jews for whatever they deemed to be important to them."
All this was turned on its head once modernity appeared at the doorway and the social order was undermined. "The nobility began to decline and the state became more centralized. During this modern era, the king was not made any weaker and actually gained power: suddenly there was no such thing as every nobleman doing whatever took his fancy. And so, the status of the Jews was undermined. Their unique role was eroded. And as soon as the Jews become like everybody else, then those selfsame 'everybody elses' no longer wished for the Jews to be part of them. And this is what leads to their demise. Prior to the rise of nationalism, society was divided up into groups – there were nobles and peasants, there were Catholics and Protestants, and there were also Jews. But, then when all of a sudden there is a collective identity, the question inevitably arises: Are the Jews really part of it? These questions arise and this is also the trigger for the revival of Jewish nationalism, which did not occur in a vacuum, disconnected from what was happening in the greater environment surrounding the Jews at that time."
Jewish Eastern Europe has become a genuine magnet for young Israelis these days. Do you understand why this is happening at this specific juncture?
"The truth is that I have no clear answer to this. I can however hazard a guess: This is a reaction to the dismissal of the Diaspora, which was an extremely acceptable approach in Israel until not so long ago. People who made aliyah from Eastern Europe preferred to leave behind what was there, but after a few generations there is no longer any sense of urgency to escape from this, and now, all of a sudden, they are beginning to show interest and they really wish to learn. This is part of a natural process of searching for your roots, even among today's youngsters. The discourse surrounding identities picked apart the liberal 'Israeli' identity, and so young people whose families came from Eastern Europe are now asking themselves why everybody has an identity apart from me. Suddenly everybody is looking for their own personal identity."
Boguslavsky (47), a resident of Jerusalem ever since he made aliyah at the age of five, is married with two children. Until a number of years ago, he was known to the followers of the blog entitled "Drop the Scissors and Let's Talk about it". Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he became a social media influencer and even almost a media star. The strongly opinionated and well-reasoned analyses he published on social media regarding the war attracted considerable attention, turning him into one of the leading commentators in that field for some time, even though he is neither a journalist nor an academic researcher of the conflict.
"It became a part of my routine," he says. "I used to travel to Ukraine several times a year, I have friends there, colleagues, acquaintances, and relatives, and so when the war broke out, it naturally preoccupied me and is still doing so. Writing on that topic provided me with a form of escapism. This is a war that I felt was 'close to home' so that by writing about it on a more intellectual level, I was able to stand back and distance myself from it to some extent. Apart from that, I also saw that many people were writing nonsense about what was going on there and that really annoyed me.
"Truth be told, this is often the trigger that gives me the impetus to start writing: I see that someone else is writing absolute baloney and I feel a need to correct them. That's the reason that people write on the internet, no? And indeed, the knowledge that people in the West and in Israel have about Ukraine is sorely lacking, to put it delicately. I don't claim to be an expert on that country, but in view of the overall paucity in that field I am a genuine 'lily in a field of thorns'. The professional experts, almost all of them, are experts on Russia – and based on their expertise on Russia they tend to extrapolate and project their knowledge onto other post-Soviet states, usually looking at issues via a Russian prism. This is why what they said was hot air, and somebody had to portray a different picture of things and write less nonsense. I'm sure that there are those who will beg to differ but this is how I saw things."
You have recently ceased to write about this topic.
"I don't like repeating myself. If I have written something a number of times, then I get fed up. In addition, during the initial months of the war I spent long hours, often close to 12 hours a day, just going over all sorts of Telegram channels and other sources of information in a variety of languages in order to get my hands on the rawest of information available. It is not possible to go on living in that fashion for a long time. So today, I still try and keep up to date but not with the same intensity.
"And also – I wore myself out. There is a limit to the number of atrocities to which you can become exposed. When October 7 came round, I had already developed the ability, even before you actually see what is in the photo, to scroll down the feed as you know that this will be a trigger. Your finger knows to skip over it before your eye identifies what is in the image, because you really need to maintain your sanity."
