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Charles Landau, a member of HGSS, lectures regularly on Jewish History.
He prepared the following note:
Lvov has always been the chief centre of Galicia, its strategic position (180 miles east of Cracow) has given it a stormy history. Captured by Poland in the 14th century c.e., given to Austria in the 18th century, seized by the USSR in 1939 and finally ceded by Poland in 1945, it is today a centre of Ukrainian culture.
Lvov had a substantial Jewish population as well as a number of Karaites. The history of the Jews reflects the stormy history of the city they called Lemberg.
The history of Lvov's Jewry was typical of the Jewish experience in Christian Europe during the middle ages and the early modern period. Seen as "infidels and dangerous competitors of Christian merchants" the Jews often suffered restriction in business. They were also on the receiving end of religious persecution, especially accusations of ritual murder and blood libels. These defamations spread from German speaking lands and reached their peak in the 16th century.
The 17th century saw an expansion of Jewish guilds and fraternities. Furriers, butchers, tailors, goldsmiths, barber-surgeons and trimmers (those engaged in the trimming of meat according to Jewish Law) increased in number. However, in the fifth decade of that century the Jews were caught up in the passionate virulence that exploded between the Ukrainian Orthodox and Polish Catholic traditions. Thus, in 1648 (the very year that the Jews expected their Messiah), Bogdan Chmielnicki burst upon the Polish lands. His Cossacks enacted upon the Jewish population the greatest slaughter since the Bar Kochba revolt.
Lvov was not spared starvation and deprivation. However, due to the payment of a large ransom the town Jews were not slaughtered.
If Messianic expectation in 1648 had resulted in a crushing disappointment, then about 20 years later the same community (like much of the Jewish world) became consumed by Shabbateanism. To prove that Shabbatai Zvi was the Messiah, Lvov sent out emissaries, who returned convinced of the truth of his claims. All followers of Shabbatai Zvi in Lvov were excommunicated in 1722.
In the wake of the Shabbateans emerged Jacob Frank, another pseudo-Messiah. Lvov's Jews became involved in the Frankist dispute as well. Supporters of Frank came to Lvov in 1754 to spread his message. A famous disputation took place in the cathedral between the Frankists and the Rabbinic authorities (Talmudists). The Frankist affair ended in similar fashion to the Shabbatean, with the conversion of the founder and many of his followers. Jacob Frank, following the manner of many of Lvov's Jews, became a Catholic in 1771.
As Lvov is seen as a microcosm of Eastern European Jewry over the past thousand years, so its Rabbis were examples of the glory and fate of Lvov and Poland.
David ben Samuel Ha-Levy (also known as the Taz, from the initials of his famous work "Turei Zahav") was born in 1586. He soon became recognised as a talmudic genius and he studied under Rabbi Yoel Sirkes (the "Bach"), later he married the Bach's daughter. The Taz was a product of the glorious period of Polish talmudic learning and codification. He wrote his halachic work as a commentary on the Shulchan Aruch; it was published after his death.
The Taz became one of the highest authorities amongst the scholars of his age. Many considered his decisions to be of greater importance than those of Joseph Caro, the author of the Shulchan Aruch; or than those of Moses Isserles, the author of the Mapa. However, if he was a recipient of the glory of Polish learning, and in turn he graced Polish Jewry, he also suffered the fate of the Jews of that period. He understood the experiences of exile, persecution, disappointment and disillusionment. He and his family fled from the Chmielnicki hordes. Unhappy in his exile he returned to Lvov where he remained for the rest of his life. Fate dealt him an evil blow for, having survived the Cossacks, two of his sons were murdered in a pogrom in Lvov in 1664.
During the period of Shabbatai Zvi, in 1666, it was the Taz who sent his son and step-son as the emissaries to the "Messiah" to verify his claims. They returned with gifts for their father from Shabbatai Zvi and a promise that he would avenge the blood of Polish Jewry. His sons were full of enthusiasm for the new "Messiah" and some claim that the Taz accepted the opinion of his sons that Shabbatai was indeed the Messiah.
In his lifetime the Taz also experienced the pain of blood libels and he made halachic decisions based upon historic reality. In the halachic work of Rav Zevin "HaMoadim B'Halacha' ("the Festivals in Halacha") is a section concerning Pesach and seder night. Rav Zevin discusses the reason for the use of red wine at the seder. One opinion is that it is in order to remember the blood of the Children of Israel slaughtered by Pharaoh. While the Taz agrees with the general use of red wine and the reasoning, he goes on to state:
"Nowadays we refrain from using red wine because of the blood libels to which we are subject".
The Taz died leaving a Synagogue named after him and the legacy of a halachic masterpiece. His memory was not erased, nor was the memory of the famous Lvov community, when the city was declared "Judenrein" nearly 300 years after his death.
An extract from an essay published in the 1902 edition of The Jewish Encyclopedia published by Funk and Wagnalls Company.
LEMBERG (Polish, Lwow): Capital of Galicia, Austria; 180 miles east of Cracow and 60 miles from the Russian frontier. Its population in 1869 was 87,109, of whom 26,694 were Jews; in 1890 it was 127,943, including 36,130 Jews; in 1900 there were 44,801 Jews in a total population of 159,618.
The history of the Jews of Lemberg dates from its foundation in the middle of the 13th century. The Jews were among the first settlers, with Ruthenians, Armenians, Tatars, and "Saracens"; they even preceded the German and Polish immigration. These "Saracens", were Karaites, a remnant of the Byzantine Chazars, who migrated from Asia Minor to Rutliena and Lemberg. The city's records of 1356 distinguished the Karaites as "Saracens" and other Jews as "Judaei" (Comp. Sokolow, "Sin'at 'Olam," p. 82, Warsaw, 1882).
German Jews expelled from their fatherland settled in Lemberg after its capture by Casimir the Great (1340), who gave the Jews equal rights with the Christians. The Jews of Lemberg enjoyed the same rights under Casimir's successor, Ludwig of Anjou.
Originally, the Jewish quarter was located within the city walls, on the southwest side. The Jews that came later took up their abode outside the walls, in the environs. For a long time the congregation in the city had its own rabbinate, independently of that of the Jews outside; but about the beginning of the seventeenth century they were united under a Chief Rabbi, with a special Bet Din for each congregation.
Under Casimir IV (1447-91) the Jews of Lemberg obtained certain privileges on payment of an exorbitant tax to the king. A general conflagration which visited Lemberg on 5 August 1494, destroyed most of the Jewish dwellings. The Jews were permitted to rebuild on easy terms and, as an inducement to stay, were released from part of their taxes.
Under Sigismund 1, the Jews of Lemberg engaged in many commercial enterprises, but the German merchants, fearing Jewish competition, induced the Polish noblemen to check the Jewish expansion of trade. In 1521 the magistrate of Lemberg joined the magistrates of the neighbouring cities in a petition to the king to abrogate all commercial privileges enjoyed by the Jews. In a letter from the magistrate of Lemberg to that of Posen the Jews are referred to as "infidels and dangerous competitors of Christian merchants". The king, however, refused to sanction them. In his veto he maintained that the Jewish commercial activity was essential to the welfare of the. community at large. It was shown that out of a total of 3,700 merchants in Lemberg only 500 were Christians; that the Jews lived economically and were satisfied with small gains, while the Christians were spendthrifts and extorted large profits from purchasers. Furthermore, the Jews promoted a large export trade with Wallachai and Asia Minor, which exceeded the imports and thereby drew money into the country.
Jewish business privileges then extended only to the sale of wax, leather and cattle. The sale of cloth was not permitted them, except at regular fairs. Yet the Jewish merchant was indispensable to the inhabitants of Lemberg; even after the fire in 1527 it was necessary to promise the Jews twenty years' immunity from taxes and to extend their cattle-dealing privileges from 500 to 2,500 head per annum to each dealer as an inducement to them to stay in Lemberg.
Moses Niemiec was made a citizen in return for his conveying a piece of ground to the city authorities for the erection of a public building. Certain privileges and restrictions of trade passed by the Diet in 1581 were renewed in 1592 (see Caro, "Gesch. der juden in Lemberg," p.37).
While the Jews in -Lemberg suffered restrictions in business, they were not subjected to religious persecutions. Indeed. the Ruthenians suffered just as severely from trade restrictions. It is to the credit of the magistrate of Lemberg that he protected the Jews against the force sent by Pope Pius II, in 1463, under one Szezesny, to aid Hungary in her struggle against the Turks. Szezesny's soldiers would have slain the Jews, but the magistrate of Lemberg shut the gates against them until the Jews had secured themselves by the payment of a ransom. The persecution of the Jews in Lemberg did not commence before lst September 1592, when the archbishop, Solikowski, invited the Jesuits to build a church in Lemberg; the date of that event is marked in black letters in the Jewish calendar. It was the beginning of the anti-Jewish movement in Lemberg, and blood accusations and desultory attacks soon culminated in murder and plunder.
Jesuit machinations in 1603 resulted in the confiscation of the Jewish synagogue and grounds for a Jesuit church and school, on the pretext that the Jewish title to the property was invalid. The Jews protested, but the courts decided against them, and they were compelled to deliver the keys of the synagogue to the Jesuits. Fortunately for the Jews, their opponents were divided; Rabbi Kalman of Worms appealed to Archbishop Zamoyski, and finally succeeded in reclaiming the property, after a lapse of four and a half years, by paying a ransom of 4,000 guilders. On Purim, 1609, the synagogue was rededicated with great rejoicing, and a special hymn by Isaac haLevi was sung. The hymn was afterwards inserted in the liturgy for the Sabbath following Purim and was recited annually.
In September 1648, the Cossacks under Chmielnicki besieged Lemberg and reduced the town to the verge of starvation, withdrawing upon receiving an enormous ransom a considerable part of which was paid by the Jews.
The Jesuits concocted another blood accusation in 1728, and incited the followers of Shabbetai Zvi, the false messiah, against the Jews in Lemberg. The Frankists had been solemnly excommunicated by the Rabbis of Lemberg in 1725; the Jesuits, therefore, induced the Frankists to revenge themselves by embracing Christianity and accusing the Jews of using Christian blood for the Passover service. The canon Domikulski later arranged for a disputation in Lemberg in June 1759, between the rabbis and the Frankists, which resulted in renewed persecution of the Jews of Lemberg.
Lemberg was, also, a centre of modern Hasidism; but such men as Joseph Perl (1773-1839) and Solomon Leib Rapoport (1790-1807) opposed the movement, the former by the establishment of a model high school for Jewish and secular instruction. Rapoport founded a literary circle with a library supported by Judah Leib Mises (d. 1831) thus providing ambitious young men with a liberal education.
Lemberg is well provided with Jewish institutions. The first synagogue was built by the Karaites in 1582. The Ashkenazic synagogue, the title to which was contested by the Jesuits, followed in 1632. The ancient building has capacious vestry rooms that are now used as separate synagogues. Since the Karaites removed from Lemberg their synagogue has been occupied by Rabbinite Jews. Altogether, Lemberg has three large synagogues and nine smaller synagogues, two batei hamidrashot, the "Chorschule," or "Temple" (dedicated in 1846), a commodious Jewish hospital, an orphan asylum, a technical school, regular Talmud Torah schools, and several yeshivot. A new Jewish hospital costing 800,000 crowns ($160,000) was founded lst October 1902, to commemorate the seventieth birthday of Prof. Moritz Lazarus.
Title to the old Jewish cemetery was granted by the city authorities in 1414, when several burials had already been made, as indicated by a tombstone of a youth named Jacob, dated 1348, and by another tombstone, of Miriam, or Marysia, daughter of Samuel, dated 1380 (Tammuz 2nd). This cemetery is surrounded by a stone wall, with Karaite graves close to the wall. The second cemetery was opened in 1856. Lemberg has seven Jewish printing establishments, the first dating from 1611. During the eighteenth century Lemberg was the principal Austrian centre for Hebrew publications. Since the removal of censorship in 1848 the printing of Jewish works has greatly increased. As a commercial and industrial centre Lemberg is even more important than Cracow. Next to the Germans the Jews control the greatest amount of business.
Rabbis of Lemberg from 1500 to 1900 CE
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