Touro Talks: Jewish Life in Poland and Lithuania

[DESCRIPTION] Drs. Alan Kadish, Henry Abramson, and Shnayer Leiman's video displays appear in a grid-like format with the Touro University logo at the bottom right of the screen.

[HENRY ABRAMSON] The joke goes, it's 1930s America. A father sends his son back to Poland to experience a little bit of life in the [HEBREW] in the old country. And after he spends [HEBREW] there, he comes back, and they're at the Pesach table. And the father says, so what did you see?

He says, oh, dad, you wouldn't believe it. I met a Hasidic Jew. I met a Misnagdic Jew. I met a Zionist. I met a Poale Zion Zionist. I met a socialist Zionist. I met a revisionist. I met-- and he goes on and on and on. And his father says, well, yeah, I told you, Poland's very diverse. He says, no, you don't understand, Dad. They're all the same Jew.

[LAUGHS]

[HENRY ABRAMSON] So it was-- it's such a fascinating society. And we'll really get a sense of, in many ways, how even New York Jewry pales in comparison to the vibrancy of Jewish life of all flavors that existed in Poland between the two World Wars.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[DESCRIPTION] Touro Talks intro displaying photos of students and faculty across the university, fading into the Touro University logo.

[TEXT] TOURO TALKS TOURO UNIVERSITY, Jewish History & Life in Poland and Lithuania, Touro Talks is sponsored by Robert and Arlene Rosenberg

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Alan Kadish speaks to the camera in a library setting. Touro University logo is at the bottom right.

[ALAN KADISH] Hello, I'm Dr. Alan Kadish, President of Touro University and your host for Touro Talks. Welcome. Today, we will discuss an upcoming trip that Touro University is sponsoring to Poland and Lithuania with two history professors at Touro who are world famous experts on the history of this region, Dr. Sidney Leiman and Dr. Henry Abramson.

This summer, in the first week in July, we plan to lead a group of community members, along with our two professors, to Poland and Lithuania to better understand on the ground the history of the Jewish communities in those areas.

[TEXT] Dr. Alan Kadish, President, Touro University

[ALAN KADISH] What happened during the Holocaust, and what's happening with Jewish life in Eastern Europe in the current time. We're really thrilled to have both of our professors with us,

[DESCRIPTION] Drs. Henry Abramson and Shnayer Leiman join, both with their videos on in an office setting.

[ALAN KADISH] and both of them have extensive experience leading talks and leading trips to Europe to give people a chance to actually see and live the rich Jewish history in Eastern Europe.

Dr. Leiman is a professor of Jewish history at Touro. And perhaps, Dr. Leiman, you can tell us a little bit about your background and what you've done in your extraordinary career.

[SHNAYER LEIMAN] Well, Thank you, Dr. Kadish. Very briefly, I've devoted my career to Jewish studies. I teach primarily Jewish history.

[TEXT] Dr. Shnayer Leiman, Distinguished Professor, Touro University Graduate School of Jewish Studies

[SHNAYER LEIMAN] Starting about 1996, I was invited by several tour companies to join them and develop tours for Eastern Europe. And I've been doing that since 1996.

It's something wonderful to do, and I'll try to describe in a few words why I think it's important for people to be on this trip. So my training is in history, in Jewish Studies. I've taught at many, many different universities. I have difficulty holding on to a job. But I enjoy traveling.

There's a-- one of the places I travel to is Hamburg, Germany. We're not going there now. And there, there are the graves of Rabbi Jacob Emden and Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschutz. And in the case of Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschutz, he did something that's very clever. He wrote the epitaph for his own tombstone. And he insisted that this is what he wants on the tombstone.

He knew and understood that people from all over the world will come to visit his tombstone. He wanted to send a message to them. It's a wonderful message, but I'm only interested in the final line.

The final line of the message is, "I ask everyone who comes here and visits my tombstone to pray on my behalf." And why? And these are the final words-- [SPEAKING HEBREW] "All Jewish souls are one soul."

That's what I take with me when I travel to wherever I go. We relive our history. If we're going to go to Poland and Lithuania, The Rema, who wrote half of the Shulchan Aruch, our code of law, is buried in Krakow, in Poland. If we go to Vilna, the Vilna Gaon and endless famous halachic authorities lived there, died there.

When we walk the streets, when we visit where their homes were, where their institutions were, we relive Jewish history, And we become one with all those souls that make up the Jewish people. It's something that's incredible. That's how I feel about it. And if I could-- and I'm telling this to Dr. Kadish now-- I would bring every Jewish high school student in the United States. I would provide fellowships for them, take them on this trip. We could do nothing better than that to educate them.

[ALAN KADISH] Thank you very much. We'll take it into consideration and see what we can do. Our other fellow traveler is Henry Abramson, who's the Dean of the Lander College for Men and also a longtime professor of Jewish history at Touro. Perhaps you could tell us a little bit about what you're doing, Dr. Abramson, and how you feel about this trip.

[HENRY ABRAMSON] Thank you very much for inviting me to this conversation, Dr. Kadish.

[TEXT] Dr. Henry, Abramson, Dean, Lander College for Men, Touro University

[HENRY ABRAMSON] And I'm especially excited about going on this trip, particularly because I'll be able to listen to Dr. Leiman for an extended period of time. He's a senior scholar with a tremendous reputation. His personality shows through in everything he writes. And in the many interactions we've had planning this trip, it's really delightful to see someone with such a great grasp of this complex and fascinating history, and yet expressed with a sense of humor that I really appreciate.

My background is deeply connected to Eastern Europe, although a little bit further south from the area that we'll be exploring. Basically, when I was a graduate student, I had the good fortune of just going into a field when the Soviet Union was beginning to collapse. And at that time, in 1989, the former Soviet Union was trying to-- this was the era of perestroika and glasnost and so on. They were trying to build bridges with the Western world.

And so they invited a group of graduate students to come and actually study in Kyiv at that time. And so I spent some time in a diploma at the Kyiv State University. And unfortunately, the bridges only went so far. I wasn't able to get into the secret archives that I wanted to look at for my dissertation.

But fortunately for my dissertation, the Soviet Union fell apart the next year, and they invited me back. And I was able to spend a lot of time in a really amazing dungeon of documents in Kyiv. And my dissertation was eventually published by Harvard about the Jews of Ukraine during the revolutionary period.

I've since gone back many times, and that's an area where I retain some specialization. Ukraine, of course, was part of both Poland and Russia in terms of governmental structures for much of its history. So there's a huge amount of overlap.

And I have to say that I have a personal connection with Lithuania because I'm sure most of the people who are going to be watching this talk are aware that there is a unique subcategory of Jews, a subethnicity of Lithuanian Jews, that are known especially for their acerbic wit, high intelligence, superior fashion sense. And my family all comes from this region, and I'm really looking forward to seeing where my grandparents walked. So this is going to be a trip of personal significance for me, as well.

I've been with Touro University since 2006. And in two words-- and I'm not saying this because the president is on the line-- but I am deliriously happy working here. It's tremendously fulfilling to have my entire day surrounded with bright, inquisitive students, with dedicated faculty, with extremely committed and energetic staff. So I literally wake up happy in the morning to come to work six days a week. And I guess that's about it.

[ALAN KADISH] Thank you so much. So let's start with Dr. Abramson now. Tell us a little bit about when Jews first arrived in Poland and Lithuania and what was the early history.

[HENRY ABRAMSON] So it's a fascinating-- we do have evidence from the Greek period, meaning way back in before the Common Era, of Jews setting up a little trading sites on the Black Sea Coast, which have been more Ukraine at that time than Poland. And then we begin to see much more significant Jewish settlement through the development of the Khazar Empire, which is an entirely bizarre chapter in Jewish history.

I don't think we want to get too sidetracked, but basically, in the eighth century, this Central Asian kingdom claimed to have converted to Judaism. There's a lot of historical debate over how extensive that conversion was, what kind of Judaism they may have adopted. But what we do know for sure is that Khazarian Jews were in places like Kyiv, which was really the capital of what would later become Poland, Lithuania at the time, already from the eighth century. And in fact, they are very, very central to the main foundation event of the entire region. The conversion of King Volodymyr to Christianity in the year 988 was-- it had actually a Khazari-like debate with these Khazarian Jews.

But the real bulk of Jewish settlement in Poland begins really with the 11th and 12th century, as we begin to have a trickle of Jews coming in and involved in all kinds of fascinating activities, like, for example, they were mintners. Some of the earliest Polish coins that we have Hebrew letters on them because only Jews had the skill to work with precious metals and to mint them into coins.

And over the course of the next few hundred years, there's both a negative pressure with growing anti-Semitism, in France and Germany in particular, pushing Jews towards the east and, at the same time, a recognition in Poland and Lithuania, which at this time were united in a big dynasty, to invite Jews in because their tremendous skills in developing the economy were highly valued.

Jews were very literate and especially very numerate, and so their participation in the economy was highly valued. And so you have Poland-Lithuania literally inviting Jews in, giving them privileges to live in certain places and so on. And they occupied an extremely crucial part of the-- they had an extremely crucial role in the Polish-Lithuanian community at that time.

[ALAN KADISH] Dr. Leiman, why did Jews come to Poland-Lithuania? What was going on in the world that led to this migration, beginning then and perhaps continuing through the Middle Ages?

[SHNAYER LEIMAN] Very briefly-- and I'm sure that Dr. Abramson can add a lot to what I will say. But very briefly, if you remember our history well, we were expelled from France. We were expelled from England. We were expelled from many, many different countries. But the largest reason why Jews came to Poland in particular was how we were treated in the German states at that time.

And basically, even if we weren't expelled from a particular state, the discrimination, going back to the Crusades and so on, it became-- life became impossible, really. In Ashkenaz, we had to move eastward. And Jews made their way to a safer country at that time, which was Poland.

And Jews-- if we get a chance, I'll say something later-- felt very at home in Poland. And I'll give you some samples of that. But we lived in Poland for 1,000 years. And we thrived there. As I mentioned, half the Shulchan Aruch is written in Poland. Not to mention almost all the commentaries on the official code of Jewish law-- the Shach, the Taz, and so on-- were written either in Poland or in Lithuania, as the case may be. So the answer to the question is, we largely moved to Eastern Europe because we were no longer welcome in Western Europe.

[ALAN KADISH] So one of the great divides that occurred a little later in Jewish history was the Hasidic movement and perhaps the opposition to the Hasidic movement, referred to as Misnagdim. What role did Poland play in that, Dr. Leiman? And how did that controversy play out in Poland and Lithuania?

[SHNAYER LEIMAN] We will learn a great deal about that from Dr. Abramson when we get to Poland. But to attempt a short answer, Poland became the great haven of Chassidus. Chassidus was founded in the 18th century by the Baal Shem Tov.

By the way, when we use the term "Poland," we should always be aware that the size of Poland changes from day to day, almost, in this period. So it could be that the Baal Shem Tov was born in Poland, but it was deep, deep into Ukraine, what is today the Ukraine. The same is true, by the way, for the borders of Lithuania. So when we speak about Poland and Lithuania, we're speaking about Lithuania today and Poland today.

But depending on the century, both places were much larger in the early part of the medieval period and began to shrink through the ages, especially Poland, which almost disappeared actually as a country. Anyway, so we have to be careful whenever we say Poland and Lithuania which Poland and which Lithuania we're talking about. Large portions of Lithuania are today in Belarus, and portions of Lithuania are actually in Ukraine, as well.

So in terms of Chassidus-- that was your specific question-- it's founded in what is today Ukraine. But it spreads very quickly and comes to Poland largely at the end of the 18th century and at the beginning of the 19th century, and then forever until the Holocaust. The two famous names are going to be Elimelech of Lizhensk-- we're not going to visit lizhensk-- and the Chozeh of Lublin. We will visit Lublin, and we will see the grave of the Chozeh.

These are two of the great founders of Chassidus in Poland, what we recognize today as Poland. We could also say Galicia and specifically Western Galicia, at this point. But in any event, they bring Chassidus to Poland. It catches on in Poland. And Poland, by the end of the 19th century, is basically Hasidic, entirely Hasidic.

And we know the famous Ger, Bobow, Sanz. We can go on and on with names of Hasidic dynasties. All of them are in the heart of Poland, and virtually every Jew in Poland is a member of a Hasidic sect. And the great yeshiva, Yeshiva Chachmei Lublin, of Rav Meir Shapiro was a Hasidic yeshiva catering to Hasidic students primarily. So that's a crucial contribution of Poland to Jewry.

And all of us who are influenced, to this day, in any way by Chassidus in one way or another-- and I've read some books by Dr. Abramson. It's very clear that he's come under the influence of the Piasetzna Rebbe, among others, and I'm sure we'll hear about that on the trip. So Dr. Kadish, it's had an incredible-- made an incredible impression on Touro University as well. So that's while standing on one foot.

[ALAN KADISH] So Dr. Abramson, tell us a little bit about Chassidus and what-- since you've already been outed as a devotee, tell us a little bit about Chassidus. And what led the movement to spread so rapidly in the way that Dr. Leiman described?

[HENRY ABRAMSON] Yeah, "outed," I think, is the right word. The derogatory term for Misnagdim in some Hasidic circles is a "snag." And I'm a snag through and through. But I have a deep love for Chassidus. I used to think I was Chabad-friendly, but now I think-- well, anyways.

If I can go back to the original question, which I'm deeply appreciative to Dr. Leiman's answer, which is really fascinating, but I want to add one more point. We should bear in mind that boundaries are crucial to understand the history. But we must understand that Jewish boundaries do not correspond to geographic or political boundaries. Lithuania is an idea. Lithuania is a place in the mind or a place in time for Jews that does not conform to any specific river or valley or mountain that may have distinguished one country from another.

And so in that context, it's important for us to understand that Chassidus largely emerged from the southern part of what would have been the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the western part of Ukraine, in many ways, as a reaction against the Lithuanians, who were very active in the north. Again, this is an oversimplification for the purposes of this short conversation. There are a lot of fascinating economic bases to this conflict, as well.

But one of the basic arguments was that the Lithuanians were cloistered in their tiny bet ha-midrash, studying their Talmudic texts, a tremendous intellectual meritocracy. That meant, if you could not navigate the byways of a Tosafot, you really didn't have a lot of status in the Jewish world. And a lot of the Ukrainians in the deep south, the Ukrainian Jews, felt largely disenfranchised. And they said, is this the only way that we can reach out to our god? Is this the only way that we can fulfill our ourselves as Jews?

And Chassidus emerged as an ecstatic movement, emphasizing the value of communal singing, of dance, of communal drinking, all kinds of things that Lithuanians generally look down on. And Poland was the battleground, right? Poland is right between Lithuania to the north and Ukraine to the south. And so those battles were hard fought.

Chabad, that I mentioned earlier, actually is ironically, a Lithuanian Hasidic movement. The Maggid of Mezeritch had five students, and one of them was Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, who made his way up north in particular and established Chassidus in Lithuania. But the fighting was bitter and rancorous.

And it got to the point, towards the end of the 19th century, that both Lithuanians and Hasidim-- or Misnagdim and Hasidim, to be more precise-- were literally denouncing each other to the tsarist authorities, who were more than pleased to throw the denounced individuals into jail. That's why-- I don't know why Lithuanians don't have so many holidays celebrating when people get out of jail, but the Hasidim have a whole panoply of them. Much of the calendar is made up with no tachanun today, because so and so got out of jail.

It was a real deal. It was bitter, bitter fighting. And the only reason that came to a conclusion was because the winds of change were blowing in from Germany. The Maskilic movement was beginning to suggest that the debates that Lithuanians and Hasidim were having over how to shecht an animal properly or what time to daven Shacharis paled in comparison with some of the suggestions, like baptism, that were coming out of Jews from Germany. And they began to affect something of a compromise. So that's the short version of the story. Was there something else you asked, Dr. Kadish, about--

[ALAN KADISH] No. So Rabbi Leiman-- Dr. Leiman, so when we talk about fighting between the Hasidim and Misnagdim, Professor Abramson mentioned one thing, suggesting that they were actually using the tsarist authorities to try to intervene. Was it physical fighting ever? Or was this an intellectual disagreement that was rancorous?

[SHNAYER LEIMAN] That's a difficult question to answer, because I'd have to know what happened in every little village and in every little shtiebel in Poland and in Lithuania. So I can't answer with great authority. But I would suggest and suspect that it was largely-- it was very serious fighting, literary, maybe vocal in many, many places. But I don't think there was much personal wrestling between Hasidim and Misnagdim.

And ultimately, the world has learned, as we will all find out, that we get along very nicely, that this enhanced Litvaks in a certain way. And the Litvaks enhanced Chassidus. The Chassidus of the 18th century is not the Chassidus that we have today, and I'm sure we'll learn about that on the trip.

[ALAN KADISH] Give me just one hint about what you mean when you say the Chassidus of the 18th century is not the Chassidus of today. Just tell us one little bit about what you mean by that.

[SHNAYER LEIMAN] About the influence of Lita on Chassidus? Is that--

[ALAN KADISH] What's different about Chassidus in the 18th century relative to today?

[SHNAYER LEIMAN] The 18th century-- well, let's understand the following. Everything happens in a historical context. The 18th century followed the 17th century. And in the 17th century, there was a major messianic movement, the Sabbatean movement, Shabbetei Tzvi, who ultimately converted to Islam and died. He still had followers who believed that he was the messiah in one form or another. So in terms of Lithuania, and if you read the original documents that are written against Chassidus, they had great fears that the Hasidim were just a subsect of the Sabbatean movement.

And they looked a lot like members of the Sabbatean movement. They all had beards. They grew peyots. They didn't observe all the rules and regulations of the Shulchan Aruch. One wonderful way of not following Halakhah is making sure to daven at a very late hour, which Hasidim did. And it didn't go over big with the Vilna Gaon and others.

So there were some very important discrepancies between the ways Hasidim lived and the way Litvaks lived in the 18th century. Ultimately, through the centuries, Hasidism toned down some of its practices. And today, as far as I can tell, Hasidim get along very, very nicely with Misnagdim, with the possible exception of some radical Hasidic sects, which sometimes create problematic issues.

But by and large, we're going to be in Poland and Lithuania, hopefully. And we will see that, in every town in Poland and Lithuania, every major city, Chabad is present. And if not for the shliach of Chabad, in some places, you wouldn't have kosher food. There in Vilna, in fact, they run the mikvah in Vilna. And [HEBREW] really is done by Chabad in Vilna today. So we'll probably get a glimpse of that also.

So again, in a line, things have changed between the 21st century and the 18th. And I think we get along very nicely. Anyone who lives in Far Rockaway or the Five Towns will know that you have Hasidic shtiebels, and you have young Israels and other types of shuls, and they get along-- as far as I know, they get along very nicely.

[ALAN KADISH] So just to reemphasize the point you're making, there's actually a synagogue in Teaneck a few blocks from where I live, which has two rabbis. One is a Hasid and one is a Misnagdim. And they alternate weeks.

[SHNAYER LEIMAN] And they're on speaking terms?

[ALAN KADISH] Well, they not only speak to each other, but they speak in shul on alternate weeks, and sometimes in the same week. So it's an attempt to create the fusion that you described.

[SHNAYER LEIMAN] Absolutely.

[ALAN KADISH] So let's move forward a century or two to the Holocaust. Professor Abramson, can you tell us a little bit about the Jewish communities in Poland and Lithuania before the Holocaust?

[HENRY ABRAMSON] If I can take a line from Dr. Leiman, everything occurs within context. And one of the things that we can certainly say about the Jewish community in both Poland and Lithuania, especially coming up to the World War I and completely between the two World Wars, is this was a dynamic and changing society. We may have this frozen-in-time image taken from Fiddler on the Roof and things like that. Nothing can be further from the truth.

Poland had a massive concentration of Jews. It would be under the Russian Empire up until World War I, Lithuania, as well. And then-- but they were expressing their political viewpoints in a wide variety of venues, some of which were religious, like the Hasidic-Misnagdic controversy. I'm not quite as sanguine as Dr. Leiman about the analysis of the reduction of controversy and even heated physical violence between the groups.

Don't forget, my favorite is that we actually came to blows-- when I say "we," I mean the Jewish people as a whole-- in medieval Spain specifically over how to punctuate Hebrew poetry. The followers of Menachem ben Saruq and Dunash ben Labrat literally were rioting in the streets with each other over Jewish poetry. So it's not surprising to me that we should be arguing about very weighty issues as raised by the Hasidic context.

So in Poland, you have Hasidic Jews, Misnagdic Jews who are quite often at odds with each other. You have socialist Jews of various stripes, communist, more moderate forms of socialism. You have a wide variety of Zionist Jews who are admixing into their Zionism various degrees of socialist philosophy or religious philosophy.

And then, of course, you have what are sometimes called liberal Jews who were openly assimilationist, who were saying, you know, we should just put all this aside and just assimilate into Polish culture, either as Jews or maybe not as Jews. And all of these movements were engaged in a very vibrant cultural strife, a kulturkampf that existed within the Jewish world that was ultimately overshadowed by the threat that integral nationalism and fascism would bring to the region.

It reminds me of a short joke. Perhaps I could tell you this very quickly. The joke goes, it's 1930s America. A father sends his son back to Poland to experience a little bit of life in the [HEBREW], in the old country. And after he spends [HEBREW] there, he comes back, and they're at the Pesach table. And the father says, so what did you see?

He says, oh, Dad, you wouldn't believe it. I met a Hasidic Jew. I met a Misnagdic Jew, I met a Zionist, I met a Poale Zion Zionist. I met a socialist Zionist. I met a revisionist. I met-- and he goes on and on and on.

And his father says, well, yeah, I told you, Poland's very diverse. He says, no, you don't understand, Dad. They're all the same Jew.

[LAUGHS]

So it was-- it's such a fascinating society. And we'll really get a sense of, in many ways, how even New York Jewry pales in comparison to the vibrancy of Jewish life of all flavors that existed in Poland between the two World Wars.

[ALAN KADISH] Dr. Leiman, how many Jews, approximately, were in Poland and Lithuania in this vibrant community that Dr. Abramson described?

[SHNAYER LEIMAN] Well, we know the Nazis destroyed 3.3 million Jews in Poland. So that's in Poland alone. So that gives you a sense of what the population of-- the Jewish population of Poland before the Holocaust.

I want to bring to your attention one passage that I love. And more importantly, I want to make sure that you read the book. So you should know that one of the finest books that scholars have written on the Holocaust period and specifically on the discovery of what's known as the Ringelblum Archives.

So Samuel Kassow, K-A-S-S-O-W, wrote a book called Who Will Write Our History? It's an incredible book which which will answer many of the questions you're raising about what was life like before the Holocaust, during the Holocaust, and so on. It's an incredible book. And God bless Kassow for publishing this book.

But one passage which was striking to me when I read it-- he discusses some interesting characters that lived in the 20th century in Poland before the Holocaust. This was-- it was a Jew by the name of Shie Perle. Shie Perle was a novelist, poet, and he was typical of what was just being described by Dr. Abramson. On the one hand, he was genuinely Jewish, very proud of his Jewishness. At the same time, he was a member of the Communist Party and very proud to be a member of the Communist Party in Poland.

So he wrote a novel in this period just before the Holocaust. He was a great writer. And in this novel, it's described by Kassow as follows. The novel was called Yidn fun a gants yor, an every-- every yearly Jew, OK? [LAUGHS] Yidn fun a gants yor, where a Jew who was a Jew, the entire year, he was Jewish.

"If there was any implicit political message in this autobiographical novel, it was subtly embedded in Perle's description of Polish Jews as being totally at home in their surroundings. The characters in the novel, struggling to make ends meet, do not see themselves as a people in exile. Poland is their home. Its streets, villages, and landscapes are their own. They differ from their Polish neighbors, but they are neighbors all the same."

That's an attitude that could be more or less documented for almost the entire period of Jewish history in Poland, of Jewish presence in Poland, until the Holocaust. So that's something we should remember. We shouldn't dismiss Poland and Lithuania, as many do. And why? I wouldn't walk back to that country no matter what. That's where we lived. That was our history. We were very comfortable, and we thrived in those countries.

[ALAN KADISH] So just a quick follow-up question, Professor Leiman-- how-- you described how Jews thrived there. Were Jews involved in the political structure in Poland.

[SHNAYER LEIMAN] They certainly-- that depends on the century. They certainly were involved politically in the earlier periods. We were talking about wealthy Jews who brought some monies to Poland, and especially to Lithuania, who were welcomed by kings. The Jews first settled in Vilna and came to Vilna in the 14th century or so because they were invited to come.

And many Kings understood that the Jews had capital. We could collect taxes from them. It was worth our while to bring Jews to our country. And they helped us develop the offices that we need in order to run this country, and so on, and produce coins, among other things.

So yes, they were involved politically. But in the early years, Jews didn't have rights. They weren't citizens. We're talking about early in the medieval period. Jews had nothing. They were farmers. They were retailers, by and large, grocers, tailors. This would be throughout their stay in Lithuania and Poland.

But as we reach the 18th, 19th century, post-Enlightenment, Jews demand citizenship rights. And they get it in a variety of places. If they didn't have it, they got various rights known as Magdeburg rights, which-- so that also involved political activity on the part of Jews. But it's not the kind of political activity I think you're talking about today. That would first come in the 19th and 20th centuries.

[ALAN KADISH] So Professor Abramson, a lot, of course, has been written about both the collaboration of Poles and Lithuanians in the Holocaust, as well as some notable exceptions of people who actually helped and saved Jews. So what was the role of the-- and obviously, this is a question which is complex. But if you had to describe what the role of the majority of Poles and Lithuanian non-Jews, their relationship with Jews during the Holocaust, were they active participants?

Was it a minority? How complex was this? And was it a surprise, given what Professor Leiman said about how integrated the Jews were in Poland?

[HENRY ABRAMSON] Wow, that's really the whole question. We could certainly spend a lot of time beyond the scope of this brief discussion looking at this crucial question. If I could just back up a little bit and amplify something that you raised earlier, Dr. Kadish, and Dr. Leiman took us through the medieval period, 19th century, and so on. One of the things that we should bear in mind is that there's a sea change in Jewish political attitudes after 1881.

Remember that both pole and Lithuania are under the Russian Empire at this point. And in 1881, in the wake of an assassination of its tsar, there was a massive wave of pogroms that took about three years to subside. And Jews up until this point-- and I can think we can say this about Europe in general, but especially Eastern Europe.

Jews are willing to live with a certain degree of discrimination in society as long as the society remains a rechtsstaat, meaning a society that is governed by law, and that Jews know that, OK, perhaps they won't be allowed to join this country club, or attend this university or this kind of job. They'll accept it as long as they know that if someone throws a brick through their window, they'll be able to go to the police, and the police will arrest the culprit and send them to jail, that there are rules that are in place that are reliable.

The pogrom waves demonstrated to Jews across the entire pale of settlement, which included Poland, Lithuania, the region where Jews were allowed to live, that Russia was no longer a rechtsstaat. It could not enforce its own laws. And so that's when Jews begin to say, wait, we should get political. Zionism explodes. Socialism explodes.

And after the Russian Empire collapses, then Jews get into democratic politics. And you've got political parties of various stripes who are actively involved in the now-independent Polish Sejm and advocating for Jewish causes and actually trying to promote things, which Poland granted, such as, for example, elections were not held on Shabbat or Jewish holidays, things like that, and much larger things than that, more than we have time to talk about.

And so in this context, to go to your question, Jews are beginning to feel in the 20th century that, finally, they have a say in the government. Finally, they have a way to express themselves and to shape governmental policies for the benefit of this minority population, which was a very significant minority, by the way. About 30% of Warsaw was Jewish before World War II. And that proportion is pretty similar through all of the middle-sized towns throughout Poland. They're very urbanized people and very visible in that regard.

So to get to the question of Polish collaboration, Polish resistance, Polish rescue of Jews during the Holocaust, we should recall that Poland was a victim of both the communists and the Nazis. In 1939, the Soviets and the Nazis effected a secret codicil, a secret non-aggression pact, in which the eastern section of Poland, also Lithuania and parts of Ukraine were sent to the Russian to the Soviet Empire, and the Nazis took the western part.

And so Poland felt like it was, as it had been in the 19th century, just taken off the map by these two massive powers. And in those early years of the war, as Emanuel Ringelblum, who so beautifully described it in his multiple works on this topic, Jews felt that they were allies with Poles. And they actually fought side to side, shoulder to shoulder, trying to hold off the advances, especially of the Nazis.

Unfortunately, that didn't last very long, and that kind of honeymoon period deteriorated as the burden of Nazi occupation weighed so heavily on the Poles, as it did somewhat more so on the Jews. It was a very, very violent and brutal kind of occupation, far worse than anything that Western Europeans experienced. And at that point, any sense of cooperation between Jews and Poles largely broke down. Obviously, there's much more nuance that we can bring to this, but Jews began to see Poles as their enemy, and vice versa.

When we get to the end of the Holocaust, and we kind of take stock of what happened, we do see some facts and elements which tend to challenge the narrative. There's no question that, in some places, more than 90% of the Jewish populations were wiped out. And it could not have happened without the so-called hilfswillige, the willing volunteers that would associate with the Germans to carry out these mass executions, which killed, among others, my own family in Lithuania.

At the same time, the proportionate number of rescuers-- that is, Poles and Lithuanians who actually hid Jews and tried to shelter them from the Nazis-- was off the charts compared to what you have in Western Europe. Again, there are so many factors to consider here. The concentration of Jews was so much higher. There were so many more opportunities for this kind of altruistic behavior.

But if you go to Yad Vashem, and you look at the Avenue of the Righteous, you'll see that the majority of the names there are Slavic. They're not French and Russian or French and German and so on. They're Slavic because there's so many Poles who were willing to save Jews.

It's funny. When I visit-- I visit France quite frequently in my Jewish history travels. And I have yet to meet any French person who was not part of the resistance or descended from part of the resistance. It's amazing that the Germans were able to take over all of France like that. But that's an aside.

But I want to end on a more sobering note to answer your question. One of the most difficult chapters in Jewish history during the Holocaust in Poland is something which was exposed by my colleague Jan Gross, a phenomenal scholar who studied this small town called Jedwabne. And in a series of books, starting out with a book called Neighbors, he pointed out that, in the period of time when the Nazis advanced and drove the Soviets out of Jedwabne, there was a period of about three or four days where they were not present.

And for a long-- and there was a massacre of Jews. For a long time, it was believed that it was the Nazis who came in and massacred the Jews. But testimony has made amply evident that, in fact, it was the local Polish population of Jedwabne who murdered their own neighbors.

It's a small-scale pogrom. We're not talking about more than a couple thousand people, in the scope of the 6 million of the Holocaust, or 3.2 million of Polish Jews. But still, the idea that, in that brief interregnum of a few days, people who lived side by side for literally centuries could rise up and massacre their neighbors, the title of this book that is a very, very problematic lens through which to view this history.

Jan Gross is a political figure in Poland. He's a persona non grata. And actually, some of Polish legislation reflects a pushback against this one thin volume that says a lot about the nature of Polish Jewish relations during the war. And I'm sure we'll have time to delve into these issues with much more ample room for discussion when we're on this trip.

[ALAN KADISH] Thank you so much. Professor Leiman, you answered much of this question earlier. You talked about how we can connect to Jewish souls by visiting Poland and Lithuania in a very powerful way. Does the Holocaust and the collaboration that Professor Abramson talked about lead you to understand the hesitation that you described that some people have about visiting? And what are your feelings about that?

[SHNAYER LEIMAN] Very briefly, I'm going to answer with the Baal Shem Tov is buried in Ukraine, Medzhybizh, as a sample. The Korban Nesanael, one of the great commentators on the Talmud, is buried in Karlsruhe, in Germany. Now, there are Jews who will never return to Germany. And they say, I will never return to Ukraine.

But why is the Baal Shem Tov guilty? I'm not going to visit the Baal Shem Tov because of-- it's true there was a Holocaust. And Ukrainians didn't treat Jews very well in the 20th century and during the Holocaust. The answer is it doesn't change our history in terms of here's where we lived, here's where we wrote, here's where we published.

Vilna-- The Vilna Shas was published in Vilna. Every Talmud that every Jew uses was printed-- The. Basic edition was printed in Vilna. And we can go and see that. You're not going to keep me away because of the Holocaust.

And by the way, so many Jews died in the Holocaust. And we know where they were killed-- Auschwitz, Treblinka and so on. Why abandon them? Why should I not go on this trip just to be able to be there in Auschwitz or in Treblinka, say a Kaddish, and remember all these Jewish martyrs? So for those reasons, I think it's very important that, despite the Holocaust, we need to remember how we benefited from Jews who lived in Poland and Lithuania.

I want to add one little piece to that, which probably every one of us can relate to in one form or another. We're going to visit Slabodka. Slabodka is a suburb of Kovno. That's where there was the famous Slabodka Yeshiva.

And in terms of influence on the United States and on everyone sitting in this room and in any other room where Jews may be in the United States, Rav Dovid Leibowitz, the founder of the Chofetz Chaim Yeshiva and the Chofetz Chaim movement, was a graduate of Slabodka. And you know about Chofetz Chaim. Rav Yitzchak Hutner, rosh yeshiva of Chaim Berlin, was a graduate of Slabodka.

Rav Aharon Kotler was a graduate of Slabodka who would later become rosh yeshiva in Kletsk and, ultimately, Lakewood, and the rest is history. Rav Yitschok Ruderman, rosh yeshiva of Ner Yisroel, was a graduate of Slabodka. My rebbe, Rav Avrohom Kalmanovich, rosh yeshiva of the Mir, was a graduate of Slabodka.

So one yeshiva, of many others-- we didn't mention Volozhin, and we didn't mention Telshe and so on and so forth, and Ponevezh. But look what one yeshiva, what an influence it had on American Jewish education. And that's something we can never forget.

[ALAN KADISH] Thank you. Dr. Abramson, we heard a little bit about some of the places that have been mentioned. Obviously, there was a lot of destruction during World War II and perhaps post-World War II during the Communist era. Are there still a lot of Jewish sites that are worth seeing in Poland and Lithuania apart from cemeteries?

[HENRY ABRAMSON] Absolutely. I would like to-- what exactly is a Jewish site? Going back in Jewish history is a mental and spiritual exercise in many ways. For example, I like to spend-- I've been to Portugal four times along the Douro River, where this is where so many crypto-Jews lived. And we only have a tiny smattering of a few buildings here and there, in places like Porto or Belmonte, where you had some Jewish activity.

But nevertheless, the history is so deep and rich that just walking the streets and feeling the breeze and seeing the sun and understanding what happened there is a deeply meaningful experience and helps place all of this into a context that makes so much more sense when you see just where things were located closer to each other than you may have imagined. And that's what it looks like in Portugal, where, for 500 years, Judaism was totally prohibited.

In Warsaw, in Vilnius, where Judaism was at the heart of the city's culture for 1,000 years, there are a tremendous number of archaeological digs, of existing buildings, of artifacts that are there for us to see. The only challenge, I think, we'll have in some places, as Dr. Leiman knows much more than I, is that many of these places were designed as small, intimate gathering spots, tiny synagogues where we're going to have to work hard to get all of us in.

We may have to take-- cycle through to get into a shtiebel that normally would only seat 20 people, which would be fine for the medieval period. May be difficult for 60 people or so on a trip like this, but we're going to do it because it's going to be tremendously worthwhile.

[ALAN KADISH] Dr. Leiman, you mentioned something about Chabad being present in a lot of these cities. What are the living Jewish communities like in Poland and Lithuania now?

What are these cities like, or these towns?

[ALAN KADISH] What are the Jewish communities like in Poland?

So in-- we'll take Warsaw and Vilna as models, because that's where we'll be spending most of our time. They have Jewish communities, actually thriving Jewish communities. Poland has a chief rabbi. I hope we'll be able to meet with him, Rabbi Michael Schudrich. He lives in Warsaw.

There are-- first of all, there are Jews who survived the war who came back after the Holocaust and back to Poland, back to Lithuania, back to their homes. There are now-- there were many, many people who were raised as non-Jews, were taken into homes and suddenly, one day, discovered that they're Jewish, and they've returned to Judaism.

So there's no official account of, as we will find out, either in Poland or in Lithuania, how many Jews there are living in the country or in a particular city. But without question, there are-- the synagogues are active. The Jewish communities are reconstructed.

They may not be Orthodox. They often will be a mixture of secular Jews, people who weren't even sure whether they're Jewish or not. They've created schools. There are day schools and high schools for these students. And the high schools exist only because there are lots of non-Jews who are very happy to go to a fine Jewish high school. [LAUGHS] And they make sure there are enough students in every class.

So all this exists. We will meet with some-- I take it we'll meet with some of the Jewish community officials. But it's an echo. It's just an echo of what once was. And that's the best I can tell you.

[ALAN KADISH] So I want to thank both of you for speaking with me today and setting the stage for what I hope will be an incredibly exciting trip. To learn more about the trip, visit touro.edu/journeys. Touro Talks, of which this is one, is sponsored by Dr. Robert and Arlene Rosenberg and produced by Nahum Twersky and Professor Sam Levine.

Thank all the listeners for joining the Touro Talks conversation. And we look forward to seeing you this summer in Poland and Lithuania and at our next Touro Talks presentation. Have a great day.

[TEXT] To learn more, go to touro.edu/journeys

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