Kitabı oku: «History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume 1 of 3. From the Beginning until the Death of Alexander I (1825)», sayfa 8
In the middle of the seventeenth century the authority of the Shulhan Arukh, as edited by Isserles, had been so firmly established in Poland that this code was studied and expounded with even greater zeal than the Talmud. Joel Sirkis (died 1640) delivered lectures on Jewish Law on the basis of the Turim and the Shulhan Arukh. He wrote a commentary to the former under the name of Beth Hadash ("New House," abbreviated to BaH), and published a large number of opinions on questions of religious law. He held the Cabala in esteem, while condemning philosophy violently. His younger contemporaries devoted themselves exclusively to the exposition of the Shulhan Arukh, particularly to the section called Yore De`a,102 dealing with the Jewish ritual, such as the religious customs of the home, the dietary laws, etc. Two elaborate commentaries to the Yore De`a appeared in 1646, the one composed by David Halevi, rabbi in Lemberg and Ostrog, under the title Ture Zahab,103 and the other written by the famous Vilna scholar Sabbatai Kohen, under the name Sifthe Kohen ("Lips of the Priest").104 These two commentaries, known by their abbreviated titles of TaZ and ShaK, have since that time been published together with the text of the Shulhan Arukh.
This literary productivity was largely stimulated by the rapid growth of Jewish typography in Poland. The first Jewish book printed in that country is the Pentateuch (Cracow, 1530). In the second half of the sixteenth century two large printing-presses, those of Cracow and Lublin, were active in publishing a vast number of old and new books from the domain of Talmudic, Rabbinic, and popular-didactic literature. In 1566 King Sigismund Augustus granted Benedict Levita, of Cracow, the monopoly of importing into Poland Jewish books from abroad. Again, in 1578, Stephen Batory bestowed on a certain Kalman the right of printing Jewish books in Lublin, owing to the difficulty of importing them from abroad. One of the causes of this intensified typographic activity in Poland was the papal censorship of the Talmud, which was established in Italy in 1564. From that time the printing-offices of Cracow and Lublin competed successfully with the technically perfected printing-presses of Venice and Prague, and the Polish book-market, as a result, was more and more dominated by local editions.
4. Secular Sciences, Philosophy, Cabala, and Apologetics
The Talmudic and Rabbinic science of law, absorbing as it did the best mental energies of Polish Jewry, left but little room for the other branches of literary endeavor. Among the daring "swimmers in the Talmudic ocean," contending for mastery in erudition and dialectic skill, there were but few with deeper spiritual longings who evinced an interest in questions of philosophy and natural science. The only exceptions were the physicians, who, on account of their profession, received a secular education at the universities of that period.
Originally the Jewish physicians of Poland were natives either of Spain, whence they had been expelled in 1492, or of Italy, being in the latter case graduates of the Catholic University of Padua. Several of these foreign medical men became the body-physicians of Polish kings, such as Isaac Hispanus under John Albrecht and Alexander; Solomon Ashkenazi (who subsequently was physician and diplomat at the court of the Turkish Sultan Selim II.) under King Sigismund Augustus; Solomon Calahora under Stephen Batory, and others. But as early as the first part of the sixteenth century these foreigners were rivaled by native Jewish physicians, who traveled from Poland to Padua for the special purpose of receiving a medical training. Such was, for example, the case in 1530 with Moses Fishel, of Cracow, who was at once rabbi and physician. These trips to Italy became very frequent in the second part of the sixteenth century, and the number of Polish Jewish students in Padua was on the increase down to the eighteenth century. It is characteristic that the Christian Poles studying in Padua refused to enter their Jewish compatriots upon their "national register," in order, as is stated in their statutes, "not to mar the memory of so many celebrated men by the name of an infidel" (1654). In the university registers the Jewish students appeared as Hebraei Poloni.
As for religious philosophy, which was then on the wane in Western Europe, it formed in Poland merely the object of amateurish exercises on the part of several representatives of Rabbinic learning. Moses Isserles and Mordecai Jaffe commented, as was pointed out above, on the "Guide" of Maimonides in a superficial manner, fighting shy of its inconvenient rationalistic deductions. The favorite book of the theologians of that period was Ikkarim ("Principles"), the system of dogmatic Judaism formulated by the conservative Sephardic thinker Joseph Albo. Commentaries to this book were written by Jacob Koppelman, of Brest-Kuyavsk105 (Ohel Ya`kob, "Tent of Jacob,"106 Cracow, 1599), and Gedaliah Lifshitz, of Lublin (Etz Shathul, "Planted Tree,"107 1618). The former, a lover of mathematics, loaded his commentary with geometrical and astronomical arguments, being of the opinion that it was possible in this way to prove scientifically the existence of God and the correlation of all phenomena. The latter was more inclined towards metaphysics and morals. How far this commentator was from grasping the true meaning of the original may be seen from his annotations to the introductory theses of the book. Commenting on the passage in which Albo states that "the happiness of man depends on the perfection of his thought and conduct," Lifshitz makes the following observation: "By human happiness is understood the life beyond the grave, for the goal of man in this world consists only in the attainment of eternal bliss after death."
In this way the Polish rabbis fashioned philosophy after their own pattern, and thereby rendered it "harmless." Free research was impossible, and perhaps not unattended by danger in an environment where tradition reigned supreme. The Chief Rabbi of Cracow, the above-mentioned Joel Sirkis, expressed the view that philosophy was the mother of all heresies, and that it was the "harlot" of which the wise king had said, "None that go unto her return again" (Proverbs ii. 19). He who becomes infatuated with philosophy and neglects the secret wisdom of the Cabala is liable, in Sirkis' opinion, to excommunication, and has no place among the faithful. The well-known mathematician and philosopher Joseph Solomon Delmedigo (called in abbreviated form "YaSHaR of Candia"108) who spent nearly four years in Poland and Lithuania (1620-1624), arraigns the Polish Jews for their opposition to the secular sciences:
Behold – he says in Biblical phraseology109– darkness covereth the earth, and the ignorant are numerous. For the breadth of thy land is full of yeshibahs and houses of Talmud study… [The Jews of Poland] are opposed to the sciences… saying, The Lord hath no delight in the sharpened arrows of the grammarians, poets, and logicians, nor in the measurements of the mathematicians and the calculations of the astronomers.
The Cabala, which might be designated as an Orthodox counter-philosophy, made constant progress in Poland. The founder of the Polish Cabala was Mattathiah Delacruta, a native of Italy, who lived in Cracow. In 1594 he published in that city the system of Theoretic Cabala, entitled "Gates of Light" (Sha`are Ora), by a Sephardic writer of the fourteenth century, Joseph Gicatilla, accompanying it by an elaborate commentary of his own. Delacruta was, as far as the subject of the "hidden science" was concerned, the teacher of the versatile Rabbi Mordecai Jaffe, who, in turn, wrote a supercommentary to the mystical Bible commentary by the Italian Menahem Recanati.
Beginning with the seventeenth century, the old Theoretic Cabala is gradually superseded in Poland by the Practical Cabala,110 taught by the new school of ARI111 and Vital.112 The Cabalist Isaiah Horowitz, author of the famous work on ascetic morals called SHeLoH,113 had been trained in the yeshibahs of Cracow and Lemberg, and for several years (1600-1606) occupied the post of rabbi in Volhynia. His son, Sheftel Horowitz, who was rabbi in Posen (1641-1658), published the mystical work of his father, adding from his own pen a moralist treatise under the title Vave ha-`Amudim.114 Nathan Spira, preacher and rector of the Talmudic academy in Cracow (1585-1633), made a specialty of the Practical Cabala. His more ingenious than thoughtful book, "Discovering Deep Things"115 (Megalle `Amukoth, Cracow, 1637), contains an exposition in two hundred and fifty-two different ways of Moses' plea before God for permission to enter the Promised Land (Deuteronomy iii. 23). It consists of an endless chain of Cabalistic word-combinations and obscure symbolic allusions, yielding some inconceivable deductions, such as that Moses prayed to God concerning the appearance of the two Messiahs of the house of Joseph and David, or that Moses endeavored to eliminate the power of evil and to expiate in advance all the sins that would ever be committed by the Jewish people. Nathan Spira applied to the Cabala the method of the Rabbinical pilpul, and created a new variety of dialectic mysticism, which was just as far removed from sound theology as the scholastic speculations of the pilpulists were from scientific thinking.
More wholesome and more closely related to life was the trend of the Jewish apologetic literature which sprang up in Poland in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. The religious unrest which had been engendered by the Reformation gave rise to several rationalistic sects with radical, anti-ecclesiastic tendencies. Nearest of all to the tenets of Judaism was the sect of the Anti-Trinitarians (called Unitarians, Arians, or Socinians116), who denied the dogma of the Trinity and the divine nature of Jesus, but recognized the religious and moral teachings of the Gospels. Among the Anti-Trinitarian leaders were the theologian Simon Budny, of Vilna, and Martin Chekhovich, of Lublin. Stung by the fact that the Catholic clergy applied to them the contemptuous appellation of "Judaizers," or semi-Jews, the sectarians were anxious to demonstrate to the world that their doctrine had nothing in common with Judaism. For this purpose they carried on oral disputes with the rabbis, and tried to expose the "Jewish falsehoods" in their works.
Martin Chekhovich was particularly zealous in holding theological disputations, both in Lublin and in other cities, "with genuine as well as pseudo-Jews." The results of these disputations are embodied in several chapters of his books entitled "Christian Dialogues" (1575) and "Catechism" (1580). One of his Jewish opponents, Jacob (Nahman) of Belzhytz,117 found it necessary to answer him in public in a little book written in the Polish language (Odpis na dyalogi Czechowicza, "Retort to the Dialogues of Chekhovich," 1581). Jacob of Belzhytz defends the simple dogmas of Judaism, and accuses his antagonists of desiring to arouse hostility to the Jewish people. The following observation of Jacob is interesting as showing the methods of disputation then in vogue:
It often happens that a Christian puts a question to me from Holy Writ, to which I reply also from Holy Writ, and I try to argue it properly. But suddenly he will pick out another passage [from the Bible], saying: "How do you understand this?" and thus he does not finish the first question, on which it would be necessary to dwell longer. This is exactly what happens when the hunter's dogs are hounding the rabbit which flees from the road into a by-path, and, while the dogs are trying to catch it, slips away into the bushes. For this reason the Jew too has to interrupt the Christian in the midst of his speech, lest the latter escape like the rabbit as soon as he has finished speaking.
Chekhovich replied to Jacob's pamphlet in print in the same year. While defending his "Dialogues," he criticized the errors of the Talmud, and made sport of several Jewish customs, such as the use of tefillin, mezuza, and tzitzith.
A serious retort to the Christian theologians came from Isaac Troki, a cultured Karaite,118 who died in 1594. He argued with Catholics, Lutherans, and Arians in Poland, not as a dilettante, but as a profound student of the Gospels and of Christian theology. About 1593 he wrote his remarkable apologetic treatise under the title Hizzuk Emuna ("Fortification of the Faith"). In the first part of his book, the author defends Judaism against the attacks of the Christian theologians, while in the second he takes the offensive and criticizes the teachings of the Church. He detects a whole series of contradictions in the texts of the Synoptic Gospels, pointing out the radical deviations of the New Testament from the Old and the departure of the later dogmatism of the Church from the New Testament itself. With calmness and assurance he proves the logical and historical impossibility of the interpretations of the well-known Biblical prophecies which serve as the substructure of the Christian dogma.
For a long time no one was bold enough to print this "dreadful treatise," and it was circulated in manuscript both in the Hebrew original and in a Spanish and German version. The Hebrew original, accompanied by a Latin translation, was printed for the first time from a defective copy by the German scholar Wagenseil, Professor of Law in Bavaria. Wagenseil published the treatise Hizzuk Emuna in his collection of anti-Christian writings, to which he gave the awe-inspiring title "The Fiery Arrows of Satan" (Tela Ignea Satanae, 1681), and which were published for missionary purposes, "in order that the Christians may refute this book, which may otherwise fortify the Jews in their errors." The pious German professor could not foresee that his edition would he subsequently employed by men of the type of Voltaire and the French encyclopedists of the eighteenth century as a weapon to attack the doctrine of the Church. Voltaire commented on the book of Isaac Troki in these words: "Not even the most decided opponents of religion have brought forward any arguments which could not be found in the 'Fortification of the Faith' by Rabbi Isaac." In modern times the Hizzuk Emuna has been reprinted from more accurate copies, and has been translated into several European languages.119
CHAPTER V
THE AUTONOMOUS CENTER IN POLAND DURING ITS DECLINE (1648-1772)
1. Economic and National Antagonism in the Ukraina
The Jewish center in Poland, marked by compactness of numbers and a widespread autonomous organization, seemed, down to the end of the seventeenth century, to be the only secure nest of the Jewish people and the legitimate seat of its national hegemony, which was slipping out of the hands of German Jewry. But in 1648 this comparatively peaceful nest was visited by a storm, which made the Jews of Eastern Europe speedily realize that they would have to tread the same sorrowful path, strewn with the bodies of martyrs, that had been traversed by their Western European brethren in the Middle Ages. The factors underlying this crisis were three: an acute economic class struggle, racial and religious antagonism, and the appearance upon the horizon of Jewish history of a new power of darkness – the semi-barbarous masses of Southern Russia.
In the central provinces of Poland the position of the Jews, as was pointed out previously, was determined by the interaction of class and economic forces on the one hand, and religious and political interests on the other, changing in accordance with the different combinations of the opposing factions. While the kings and the great nobles, prompted by fiscal and agrarian considerations, in most cases encouraged the commercial activities of the Jews, the urban estates, the trade and merchant guilds, from motives of competition, tried to hinder them. As for the Catholic clergy, it was on general principles ever on the alert to oppress the "infidels."
As far as economic rivalry and social oppression are concerned, the Jews were able to resist them, either by influencing the Polish governing circles, or by combining their own forces and uniting them in a firmly-organized scheme of self-government, which had been conceded to them in so large a measure. At any rate, it was a cultural struggle between two elements: the Polish and the Jewish population, the Christian and the Jewish estates, or the Church and the Synagogue. This struggle was vastly complicated in the southeastern border provinces of Poland, the so-called Ukraina,120 by the presence of a third element, which was foreign to the Poles no less than to the Jews – the local native population which was Russian by race and Greek Orthodox in religion, and was engaged principally in agriculture.
The vast region around the southern basin of the Dnieper, the whole territory comprising the provinces of Kiev, Poltava, and Chernigov, and including parts of Podolia and Volhynia, was subject to the political power of the Polish kings and the economic dominion of the Polish magnates. Enormous estates, comprising a large number of villages populated by Russian peasants, were here in the hands of wealthy Polish landlords, who enjoyed all the rights of feudal owners. The enthralled peasants, or khlops, as they were contemptuously nicknamed by the Polish nobles, were strange to their masters in point of religion and nationality. In the eyes of the Catholics, particularly in those of the clergy, the Greek Orthodox faith was a "religion of khlops," and they endeavored to eradicate it by forcing upon it compulsory church unions121 or by persecuting the "dissidents." The Poles looked upon the Russian populace as an inferior race, which belonged more to Asia than to Europe. In these circumstances, the economic struggle between the feudal landlord and his serfs, unmitigated by the feeling of common nationality and religion, was bound to assume acute forms. Apart from the oppressive agricultural labor, which the peasants had to give regularly and gratuitously to the landlord, they were burdened with a multitude of minor imposts and taxes, levied on pastures, mills, hives, etc. The Polish magnates lived, as a rule, far away from their Ukrainian possessions, leaving the management of the latter in the hands of stewards and arendars.
Among these rural arendars there were many Jews, who principally leased from the pans the right of "propination," or the sale of spirituous liquors. These leases had the effect of transferring to the Jews some of the powers over the Russian serfs which were wielded by the noble landowners. The Jewish arendar endeavored to derive as much profit from the nobleman's estate as the owner himself would have derived had he lived there. But under the prevailing conditions of serfdom these profits could be extracted only by a relentless exploitation of the peasants. Moreover, the contemptuous attitude of the Shlakhta and the Catholic clergy towards the "religion of khlops," and their endeavors to force the Greek Orthodox serfs into Catholicism, by imposing upon them an ecclesiastic union, gave a sharp religious coloring to this economic antagonism. The oppressed peasantry reacted to this treatment with ominous murmurings and agrarian disturbances in several places. The enslaved South Russian muzhik hated the Polish pan in his capacity as landlord, Catholic, and Lakh.122 No less intensely did he hate the Jewish arendar, with whom he came in daily contact, and whom he regarded both as a steward of the pan and an "infidel," entirely foreign to him on account of his religious customs and habits of life. Thus the Ukrainian Jew found himself between hammer and anvil: between the pan and the khlop, between the Catholic and the Greek Orthodox, between the Pole and the Russian. Three classes, three religions, and three nationalities, clashed on a soil which contained in its bowels terrible volcanic forces – and a catastrophe was bound to follow.
The South Russian population, though politically and agriculturally dependent upon the Poles, was far from being that patient "beast of burden" into which the rule of serfdom tried to transform it. Many circumstances combined to foster a warlike spirit in this population. The proximity of the New Russian steppes and the Khanate of the Crimea, whence hordes of Tatars often burst forth to swoop down like birds of prey upon the eastern provinces of Poland, compelled the inhabitants of the Ukraina to organize themselves into warlike companies, or Cossacks,123 to fight off the invaders. The Polish Government, acting through its local governors or starostas, encouraged the formation of these companies for the defense of the borders of the Empire. In this way Ukrainian Cossackdom, a semi-military, semi-agricultural caste, came into being, with an autonomous organization and its own hetman124 at the head.
Apart from the Ukrainian Cossacks, who were subject to the Polish Government, there were also the so-called Zaporozhian125 Cossacks, a completely independent military organization which lived beyond the Falls of the Dnieper, in the steppes of so-called New Russia, the present Governments of Yekaterinoslav and Kherson, and indulged in frequent raids upon the Turks and in constant warfare with the Tatars of the Crimea. This military camp, or syech,126 beyond the Falls of the Dnieper attracted many khlops from the Ukraina, who preferred a free, unrestricted military life to the dreary existence of laboring slaves. The syech represented a primitive military republic, where daring, pluck, and knightly exploits were valued above all. It was a semi-barbarous Tatar horde, except that it professed the Greek Orthodox faith, and was of Russian origin, though, by the way, with a considerable admixture of Mongolian blood. The Ukrainian and Zaporozhian Cossacks were in constant relations with each other. The peasants of the Ukraina looked up with pride and hope to this their national guard, which sooner or later was bound to free them from the rule of the Poles and Jews. The Polish Government failed to perceive that on the eastern borders of the Empire a mass of explosives was constantly accumulating, which threatened to wreck the whole Polish Republic.
Nor could the Jews foresee that this terrible force would be directed against them, and would stain with blood many pages of their history, serving as a terrible omen for the future. The first warning was sounded in 1637, when the Cossack leader Pavluk suddenly appeared from beyond the Falls in the province of Poltava, inciting the peasants to rise against the pans and the Jews. The rebels demolished several synagogues in the town of Lubny and in neighboring places, and killed about two hundred Jews. The real catastrophe, however, came ten years later. The mutiny of the Cossacks and the Ukrainian peasants in 1648 inaugurates in the history of the Jews of Eastern Europe the era of pogroms, which Southern Russia bequeathed to future generations down to the beginning of the twentieth century.
2. The Pogroms and Massacres of 1648-1649
In the spring of 1648, while King Vladislav IV. still sat on the throne of Poland, one of the popular Cossack leaders, Bogdan Khmelnitzki, from the town of Chigirin, in the province of Kiev, unfurled the banner of rebellion in the Ukraina and in the region beyond the Dnieper Falls. Infuriated by the conduct of the Polish authorities of his native place,127 Khmelnitzki began to incite the Ukrainian Cossacks to armed resistance. They elected him secretly their hetman, and empowered him to conduct negotiations with the Zaporozhians. Having arrived in the region beyond the Dnieper Falls, he organized military companies, and concluded an alliance with the Khan of the Crimea, who entered into a compact to send large troops of Tatars to the aid of the rebels.
In April, 1648, the combined hosts of the Cossacks and Tatars moved from beyond the Falls of the Dnieper to the borders of the Ukraina. In the neighborhood of the Yellow Waters and Korsun they inflicted a severe defeat on the Polish army under the command of Pototzki and Kalinovski (May 6-15), and this defeat served as a signal for the whole region on the eastern banks of the Dnieper to rise in rebellion. The Russian peasants and town dwellers left their homes, and, organizing themselves into bands, devastated the estates of the pans, slaying their owners as well as the stewards and Jewish arendars. In the towns of Pereyaslav, Piryatin, Lokhvitz, Lubny, and the surrounding country, thousands of Jews were barbarously killed, and their property was either destroyed or pillaged. The rebels allowed only those to survive who embraced the Greek Orthodox faith. The Jews of several cities of the Kiev region, in order to escape from the hands of the Cossacks, fled into the camp of the Tatars, and gave themselves up voluntarily as prisoners of war. They knew that the Tatars refrained as a rule from killing them, and transported them instead into Turkey, where they were sold as slaves, and had a chance of being ransomed by their Turkish coreligionists.
At that juncture, in the month of May, King Vladislav IV. died, and an interregnum ensued, which, marked by political unrest, lasted six months. The flame of rebellion seized the whole of the Ukraina, as well as Volhynia and Podolia. Bands composed of Cossacks and Russian peasants led by Khmelnitzki's accomplices, savage Zaporozhian Cossacks, dispersed in all directions, and began to exterminate Poles and Jews. To quote a Russian historian:
Killing was accompanied by barbarous tortures; the victims were flayed alive, split asunder, clubbed to death, roasted on coals, or scalded with boiling water. Even infants at the breast were not spared. The most terrible cruelty, however, was shown towards the Jews. They were destined to utter annihilation, and the slightest pity shown to them was looked upon as treason. Scrolls of the Law were taken out of the synagogues by the Cossacks, who danced on them while drinking whiskey. After this Jews were laid down upon them, and butchered without mercy. Thousands of Jewish infants were thrown into wells, or buried alive.
Contemporary Jewish chroniclers add that these human beasts purposely refrained from finishing their victims, so as to be able to torture them longer. They cut off their hands and feet, split the children asunder, "fish-like," or roasted them on fire. They opened the bowels of women, inserted live cats, and then sewed up the wounds. The unbridled bestiality of intoxicated savages found expression in these frightful tortures, of which even the Tatars were incapable.
Particularly tragic was the fate of those Jews who, in the hope of greater safety, had fled from the villages and townlets to the fortified cities. Having learned that several thousand Jews had taken refuge in the town of Niemirov in Podolia, Khmelnitzki dispatched thither a detachment of Cossacks under the command of the Zaporozhian Gania. Finding it difficult to take the city by storm, the Cossacks resorted to a trick. They drew nigh to Niemirov, carrying aloft the Polish banners and requesting admission into the city. The Jews, fooled into believing that it was a Polish army that had come to their rescue, opened the gates (Sivan 20 = June 10, 1648). The Cossacks, in conjunction with the local Russian inhabitants, fell upon the Jews and massacred them; the women and girls were violated. The Rabbi and Rosh-Yeshibah of Niemirov, Jehiel Michael ben Eliezer, hid himself in the cemetery with his mother, hoping in this wise at least to be buried after death. There he was seized by one of the rioters, a shoemaker, who began to club him. His aged mother begged the murderer to kill her instead of her son, but the inhuman shoemaker killed first the rabbi and then the aged woman.
The young Jewish women were frequently allowed to live, the Cossacks and peasants forcing them into baptism and taking them for wives. One beautiful Jewish girl who had been kidnaped for this purpose by a Cossack managed to convince him that she was able to throw a spell over bullets. She asked him to shoot at her, so as to prove to him that the bullet would glide off without causing her any injury. The Cossack discharged his gun, and the girl fell down, mortally wounded, yet happy in the knowledge that she was saved from a worse fate. Another Jewish girl, whom a Cossack was on the point of marrying, threw herself from the bridge into the water, while the wedding procession was marching to the church. Altogether about six thousand Jews perished in the city of Niemirov.
Those who escaped death fled to the fortified Podolian town of Tulchyn. Here an even more terrible tragedy was enacted. A large horde of Cossacks and peasants laid siege to the fortress, which contained several hundred Poles and some fifteen hundred Jews. The Poles and Jews took an oath not to betray one another and to defend the city to their last breath. The Jews, stationed on the walls of the fortress, shot at the besiegers, keeping them off from the city. After a long and unsuccessful siege the Cossacks conceived a treacherous plan. They informed the Poles of Tulchyn that they were aiming solely at the Jews, and, as soon as the latter were delivered into their hands, they would leave the Poles in peace. The Polish pans, headed by Count Chetvertinski, forgot their oath, and decided to sacrifice their Jewish allies to secure their own safety. When the Jews discovered this treacherous intention, they immediately resolved to dispose of the Poles, whom they excelled in numbers. But the Rosh-Yeshibah of Tulchyn, Rabbi Aaron, implored them not to touch the pans, on the ground that such action might draw upon the Jews all over the Empire the hatred of the Polish population. "Let us rather perish," he exclaimed, "as did our brethren in Niemirov, and let us not endanger the lives of our brethren in all the places of their dispersion." The Jews yielded. They turned over all their property to Chetvertinski, asking him to offer it to the Cossacks as a ransom for their lives.
