INTSTITUTE FOR THE STUDIES OF GALICIA
EASTERN GALICIA: OVERVIEW OF UKRAINIAN, JEWISH AND POLISH HISTORICAL NARRATIVES
In historical retrospect Ukrainians and Poles claimed East Galicia as correspondently their indigenous land from the 10th century. For corroboration of historic rights for the region, the medieval chronicles, written, compiled or edited several centuries later, largely served as the only common source. The territory known as Chervona Rus was conquered in the late 10th century by the Kyivan Prince Volodymyr. Initially this land was only vaguely connected with Kyivan State. By the 12thcentury it became a political entity of its own right referred as Galician-Volhynian Kingdom or Principality. The latter was ruled by the House of Romanovychy, a regal branch of the Kyivan dynasty. The Romanovychys, although being pro-Latin oriented, remained in the orbit of Kyivan-Byzantium cultural tradition. However, the last Galician-Volhynian King Yuriy II (George II) was much closer to Latin Christian culture than his predecessors. In 1340 he was assassinated by the boyars (land-owned nobility) allegedly because of his Latin –Christianity orientation. With the death of Yuriy II, the Romanovychys dynasty ceased to exist.
Patrimonial system of lands inheritance and close inter-dynastic relations allowed the neighboring kingdoms, namely Poland and Hungary, claimed hereditary rights on the Galician Crown. The local nobility (boyars) overall did not resist to the rule of foreign kings despite they were Roman-Catholics. In political sense of the time, the ethnic designation of the population was not a determining criterion for medieval state order, but the religion was. The actual status of the territorial nobility was defined by religious denomination and in significant extent by cultural affinities with dominating elites, in our case it was Polonization. Allegiance to a state or a reginal feudal entity correlated with the matter of personal loyalty and common cultural values and the religion among those was not the last one. As for the common people a historically adopted rite (Latin, Greek-Orthodox and later the Greek-Catholic) largely served as a principal ethno-cultural denominator. Although for nobility, a Romano-Catholic or original Greek-Orthodoxy religious rite was of not a binding condition as long as their rights and privileges remained intact and confirmed by their overlord.
The institute of Greek-Orthodox Church in its Kyivan edition had not been banned in Galician lands after its incorporation into Polish kingdom and the same was true with regard to Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth since 1569. However a trend of religious and cultural Latinization (Polonization) would soon become typical for the Galician-Ruthenian high nobility and gentry.
In the early 1340s, after a short rule of a local palatine, the Principality of Halych fell under the rule of Polish Crown (1349), then for a brief period, owning to the dynastic hereditary order, the Principality went under the rule of Hungarian Crown. And again, submitting to the order of inter-dynastic marriages, by the late 14th century the Principality of Halych (East Galicia) had become an integral part of Polish Crown. The Volhynian part of the former Kingdom (principality) owing to its geographical situation was integrated into Grand Lithuanian Principality. During Polish-Lithuanian unifications known as Unija (there were several legislative Councils for this matter in the 15th and 16th centuries), Volhynia was integrated into the influential European political entity, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Political, cultural, and national Polonization of Ukrainian (Ruthenian) gentry began in the late Middle Ages and continued through early modern times. The actual Polonization did not necessarily required conversion to Roman-Catholicism, especially with the introduction of the religious Union of Brest in 1595 (Brestska Unija), an amalgamation of Greek Orthodox Rite under Catholic hierarchical rule in Chervona Rus (East Galicia) and partially in West Volhynia. The religious rites largely remained not altered but the Vatican took the auspices over the church hierarchy. In practical terms, if Ruthenian (Ukrainian) landed gentry was concerned it reflected their allegiance and loyalty to the Polish or Lithuanian sovereigns and the duty of military and public service for them. Oppositely, Ukrainian (Ruthenian) peasantry, townspeople and largely petty clergy remained largely non-pollinized and stayed adherent to Greek-Orthodox rite.
In 1848, the Spring of Peoples, the Revolution that began in France in February, rocked the Austrian Empire for much longer period than France. The new imperial crownland Galicia and Lodomeria experienced the revolutionary events in its Polish version in the course of almost all 1948. The events in Lviv largely replicated the revolution in Vienna, ending with the restoration of imperial power and curtailed constitutional order. The upheavals began in Lemberg (Lviv), the capital city of East and West Galicia. Along with the earlier established Polish Revolutionary Council and National Guard came into being a Ukrainian (Ruthenian) representation, namely Holovna Ruśka Rada (Supreme Ruthenian Council). The Council comprised largely Ukrainian clergy of a higher hierarchical standing and a small number of lay men. The establishment of a moderate and not anti-Austrian Ruthenian representation caused unanimously negative reaction of the part of Polish national-democrats of all political spectrum. They saw the Ruthenian ethno-religious claims as collaboration with the authorities and a compromise with the Austrian government. Their demands of the Ruthenian Council were pragmatic, not revolutionary per se and concentrated around acknowledgement of the distinct Ruthenian nation. The notion of nation largely implies to the language (a combination of Old Russian and church Slavonic) and development of distinct schooling and cultural-religious institutions. Primarily the Ruthenian Council petitioned for religious and cultural autonomy. It is indicative that after Austrian General Hammerstein bombarded Lviv on November 1, 1848, he closed all Polish newspapers while the publication of the Supreme Ruthenian Council, Zoria Halytśka continued circulation.
Austrian imperial authorities saw almost no threat to the integrity of the Empire in much lesser than Polish politically developed Ruthenian ethno-national and cultural movement and would agree to satisfy its cultural and religious aspirations.
Since the Revolution of 1848 Polish press in Galicia often referred to the rising Ruthenian proto-national movement as an Austrian invention created as a counterbalancing opposition to the Polish revolutionary movement. However, since the Revolution of 1848, the Ruthenian strife for cultural emancipation, has emerged as a new political force. Until the 1880s, the Ruthenian movement was largely carrying cultural and religious agendas. During the first half of the 19thCentury, the ideology of national liberation and reunification of Poland in its old border remained a dominant trend in Polish political movement. Officially and by-and large the Polish society in Galicia, especially at crucial for the monarchy times (defeat in the war against Prussia on July 3, 1866) unconditionally pledge allegiance to the throne, namely to the Emperor Franz-Joseph I: Przy Tobie Najjaśniejszy Panie, stoimy i stać chcemy! (We stand by You, Most Serene Lord, we continue to stand and want to stand).[i]Galician Sejm adopted this address to Franz – Joseoph I in December of 1866. The new status for Galician autonomy in Polish fashion was already in work.
For the Polish nobility it a strife for independence and unification at least until the constitutional autonomous era (since 1867). For the Ruthenian intelligentsia that until 1880s was largely of clerical composition, cultural and religious autonomy was a primary ideation. For Old Ruthenians, Russophiles, the St. George Party the self- identification largely translated to adherence to “Holy Rus,” that is not to be meant in political sense as a positioning in favor of the Russian Empire. Although by the gravity of cultural and linguistic affinities all these groupings sooner or later in political sense would become moscophiles. Orientation on the Russian Empire became especially undisguised after the defeat in the Austo-Prussian war in 1866. The Austrian government, which since the 1848 Revolution patronized the Old Ruthenian socio-cultural trend, largely did not attend to the political orientation of various groups of Russophiles in Eastern Galicia. The situation has changed after the Astro-Russian relations took a confrontational course in the 1880s.
From the beginning at least from the 1860s another trend of Galician-Ruthenian civic life could be traced. In the beginning it was rather a literary awakening born out of discovering Shevchenko and through his works opening a historic Ukraine. Ruthenian (Ukrainian) youth, largely Gymnasium and university students romanticized Cossackdom and the fight for freedom, imagining themselves to be the heirs of legendary Ukrainian Cossacks. It became fashionable to imitate dressing like cossacks, although as Ivan Franko wrote it was a rather theatrical imitation. “A so-called cossack costume was discovered. In fact people who never saw cossacks blueprinted a dress of the lackeys of Polish lords who adopted this style for their service men. A pseudo cossack fashion started in Lviv and spread out in all Galicia.”[ii] This was not yet a political movement. The latter had to be formed through the confrontation with the St. George Party (Old Ruthenians) and by shaping its identity by specific political tenets, which later in the 1880s would be defined as Populist (Narodnyi) and eventually in the 1890s as national-democratic.
The evolution of Ukrainian (Galician-Ruthenian) political thought was neither simple or linear. On the surface it could be seen as a departure from romantic endeavors of sporting cossack costumes, devotion to historical Rus-Ukraine and denunciation of the Muscovite (Russian) and Liakhi (Polish) oppression. In other words, the new movement was progressing from Ukrainophilism toward Galician-Ukrainian national direction. Its political premises crystalized in the course of the 1880s with the beginning of publication of the periodical Dilo (the Deed) in 1880. It became daily in 1888. The development of Galician-Ukrainian national-democratic thought is directly connected to the contacts and interactions with Ukrainian intellectuals from the under-Russia Dnipro Ukraine. In this regard Ivan L. Rudnytsky wrote:
Relation between “Dnieper” (east-central) Ukraine and Galicia, whose educated classes
were bred in different intellectual traditions, were fraught with psychological difficulties.
In spite of this, collaboration was a vital necessity for both regions of Ukraine. For Galicia,
it was necessary because the Habsburgs’ Ukrainians derived formative ideas from Dnieper
Ukraine, for the Dnieper Ukrainians, because Galicia was a sanctuary from tsarist persecutions.
The Piedmont complex – the conviction that their small homeland was called to take the forefront
of the whole nation’s struggle for liberation – occupied a large place in the thinking of the Galician
Ukrainians on the eve of the Great War.[iii]
Independence and unification of all Ukrainian lands became a programmatic postulate in the newly emerged National Democrats in 1899. In that year the Narodovtsi (Populists) established Ukrainian National Democratic Party. Ivan Franko, the man of many outstanding qualities, but first and foremost a true Galician – Ukrainian patriot, independent scholar, political journalist, philologist and historian, and above all a genuine advocate for the oppressed people, joined the new party. Ivan Franko could not be suspected of seeking political dividends because since he entered social and political life in 1875, he always associated himself with unpopular political minority. His socialist, radical and passionate anticlericalism views gained him a reputation largely incompatible with teaching job despite of doctoral habilitation, neither was he welcome to moderated and well-protected milieu of Narodovtsi (Populists). As a result he could not establish himself as most of his colleagues from the Shevchenko Scientific Society had, notably securing a stable social and financial standing. With no exaggeration we can regard Ivan Franko as highest authority in the matters of truth and fairness. He associated himself with the Ukrainian National Democrats and contributed to programmatic documents of the new party. Ivan Franko was not listed among the party leadership, largely lawyers, university professors, and also some priests. He as before remained marginalized by the now official Ukrainian society despite of being worshiped by many as a creator of Galician – Ukrainian nation. Ivan Franko, who can serve as a truthful indicator of state of national development wrote about the last two decades of the 19th century as follows:
Nothing could give more pleasure to a doctor than to observe a gradual recovery of a patient…
Likewise it is a great pleasure for a historian to trace the process of regeneration of a nation,
that from the state of spiritual and political stagnation slowly but continuously advances toward
a normal life. In the last 20 years of the 19th century we experienced this process.[iv]
A relatively small segment of the Jewish population in Galicia comprising the proponents of Jewish assimilation and acculturation to German Culture also stepped forward in the 1860s carrying overall moderate but ardent for the Jews postulates. The Jewish demands coming from relatively small groups of progressive Jewish intelligentsia focused on the normalization in public life vis-à-vis the Christian population, in particular the cancelation of specifically Jewish taxes (on candles and kosher meat). The Sejm of the Austrian estates convened in revolutionary Viena abolished the Jewish taxation. Additionally, the Jewish normalization foresaw of the cancelation of the other restrictions, namely on the housing (the ghetto or restricted Jewish quarter) formally still existed, on the right to pursue liberal professions, to be admitted to the public service and overall, on the equality of Jews as citizens. Since 1880s, progressive Jews started longing for unification with Polish national movement, although remained perfectly loyal to the esteem Emperor Franz – Joseph. In 1848, some Jews also joined Polish National Gourd and Polish National Guard at the peak of the revolutionary movement in Lviv.
If the Poles were striving for independence, the Ruthenians were so far seeking religious and cultural autonomy, then the Jews could not move further in social and political spheres without attaining full civil emancipation. They were striving to achieve the abolition of the still active medieval prohibitions and limitations, in other words, for the acknowledgement to Jews the same political and civil rights as to the other subjects of the Empire. In the late 1860s, a series of imperial Patents (Decrees) equated Jews in political and social rights with the other imperial subjects. However, to the very end of Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the Jews were denied the status of ethno-national entity and officially regarded a religious community.
The last decades of the 19th century saw intensive growth of politically organized Polish, Ukrainian and Jewish societal strata in all Galicia. After defeat of two Polish Uprising in the Russian partition (Congress Poland) and one (1846) in Cracow and Austrian West Galicia, Polish national movement largely, although for the time being, retired to “organic work” and developed a socialist movement of its own. The Ukrainian movement manifesting largely religious and cultural connotation by the beginning of the 1870s has developed a rising political component. Until the 1870s Ukrainian cultural paradigms were largely of the Russophile content (or Russia’s oriented cultural and religious trend). The new Ukrainian national narrative reified itself in a broader modern political spectrum: as radical, socialist, and nationally-oriented divisions, all comprising the new Ukrainian intelligentsia, often referred as the Ukrainophiles (Narodovtsi) and the emerging working grouping.
The Russophiles, largely oriented on cultural unification with Russia, were adhered to pan-Slavism. The nationally-oriented or pro-Ukrainian intelligentsia and a small segment of the Ukrainian working forces (craftsmen and laborers) favored national autonomy, notably a dissociation from the Polish ruling elite. The latter in the result of the Austrian administrative reforms of the 1860s and 1870s enjoyed domineering in governance of East Galicia.
In the 1880s, Jewish reformers shifted from the pro-German to a pro-Polish trend of assimilation and acculturation. By the end of the 19th century the Jewish social-democracy (BUND) took its definitive agenda in line with European social democracy, however, shaped by the dual political realities, supporting Polish strive for independence and following the Russian radical social democratic narrative. Jewish social democracy connotes a dual discourse, working together with its Polish-Lithuanian and Russian counterparts.
After the First Zionist Congress (1897) held in Basel, the Jewish national movement (Zionism) had taken political forms. It will later have broadened its own political spectrum by comprising Socialist Zionism, Religious Zionism, and radical Revisionist Zionism. The Jewish Orthodoxy formed a political party of its own right. It was Agudath Yisroel, a political party, claiming to be a guardian of Jewish canon (Jewish Law) and always holding a pro-government position (regardless of a government). They pledged unequivocal allegiance to the emperor and his government. After the fall of Austria-Hungary, the Jewish Orthodoxy demonstrated ubiquitous support to the Second Polish Republic and its government. Fragmentation of Jewish societal and political structure began much earlier, under the Austrian, administration, in the wake of the Spring of Peoples Revolution (1848). During the two decades of the Second Polish Republic, Jewish societal paradigms took modern political forms especially regarding parliamentary representations and in relation to political alliances with non-Jewish political parties.
[i]See Ivan Franko, “Davni Akty do Novoho Sporu” (“The Old Documents for the New Contention”) in Ivan Franko, Historical Papers, Collection of Works in 50 Volumes, Vol. 46, Book 1. (Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, 1985), p. 347; Larry Wolff, The Idea of Galicia. History and Fantasy in Habsburg Political Culture (Standford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), pp. 221 – 217.
[ii]See Ivan Franko, “Ukrainski ‘Narodovtsi I Radykaly’,” (Ukrainian ‘Populists and Radicals) in Ivan Franko, Collection of Works in 50 Volumes, Vol. 28 (Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, 1980), pp. 198-206.
[iii]Ivan L. Rudnytsky, edited by Peter L. Rudnytsky, “The Ukrainians in Galicia under Austrian Rule,” in Ivan L. Rudnytsky, Essays in Modern Ukrainian History, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press for Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1987, p. 335.
[iv]Ivan Franko, Moloda Ukraina. Providni Idei I Epizody (Young Ukraine. Leading Ideas and Episodes), Lviv, 1910, p. 17.
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The Cultural Impact of Galicia through a Jewish Lens
The Cultural Impact of Galicia through a Jewish Lens
by Dr. Norbert Weinberg
The Creativity of Galicia
One may best think of Galicia, as an entity dating back to the middle ages, as a Grand Central Station wherein peoples, philosophies, religions, and empires crisscrossed, and, to complete the metaphor, the train of ideas headed to the Empires capital, Vienna, and out to the world.
This was especially true, for the Jews of the region. While we are cognizant of the tragedies, as far back as the Chmielnicki uprising of 1648 to the mass killing of Jews during the Holocaust, this was also a region of creativity as well as intellectual and spiritual ferment. What passed through Galicia impacted, directly or indirectly, Polish literature, the French Revolution, modern psychology and philosophy.
While seemingly small geographically, Galicia was at one time part of the widespread Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in its day, the powerful kingdom that saved Vienna from the Ottomans in 1683. The kingdoms territory included what would today be parts of Belarus, the Baltic States, Ukraine, Germany, and more. Yet, within in less than a century, Poland lost its independence and the same Austrians who had been saved by the Poles now became the rulers of the territory called “ The Kingdom of Galicia and Ludomeria”.
As a result, while this region shared a common culture with Poland to the north and Ukraine to the east, it now was exposed to the cultural and intellectual currents of western Europe. In turn, as it was now part of a polyglot civilization, the people of Galicia influenced the west. Shortly before WWI, the demographics of Galicia were about 45.4% Polish, 42.9% Ruthenians ( also Rusyn, a Ukrainian people of the region) with Jews at about 10.9%.The Jewish presence was most heavily felt in the cities.
The treaties that ended World War I also put an end to the formal entity of Galicia, which was now reabsorbed into the reborn Poland.
There is terrible irony in the fact that the Austrian regime introduced liberal policies that benefitted the varied people of the Empire, especially for Jews who were granted the Toleranzpatent ( Rights of Tolerance) and then full rights ( Emancipation) in 1867.By being part of the greater Empire, Jews could engage in commerce and industry across the broad region.[ The author’s family, for example, were engaged in lumber shipping across the region, owned property in Trieste, and some had begun to settle in Vienna at the time].However,as Jews gained in rights and improved their lots, politicians seized on long seated hatreds to gain power. The first one to do so successfully was the mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger, at the turn of the 20thcentury, and who inspired another Austrian, who was shocked by the influx of Jews into Vienna , a failed painter by the name of Adolph Hitler!
Map of Poland on the eve of World War II
After WWII, that region would be divided between Poland on the West and Ukraine to the east, so that the major city, Krakow, stayed in Poland, and the major city, Lemberg, then Lwow, became Lviv, in Ukraine.
However, the cultural impact of Galicia continued beyond it’s official demise.
Jewish Galicia as a crucible of Orthodoxy and heresy, Mystic rebellion, Enlightened Rationalism and Religious and Cultural Renewal.
Here is summary of the account of the Jews of Galicia in the YIVO Encyclopedia of the Jews of Eastern Europe,( https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/article/8) by Rachel Manekin.
“The Jewish population of Galicia stood out in its traditional character, which made it a comfortable base for the absorption of the Hasidic movement, on the one hand, and the development of the Haskalah, on the other. Here Hasidic dynasties established their courts, including those of Belz, Sandz (Sącz), Ruzhin, and Chortkiv (Czortków). From this region also came maskilim, such as Yehudah Leib Mieses, Yosef Perl, Yitsḥak Erter, Me’ir Letteris, Naḥman Krochmal, and Shelomoh Yehudah Rapoport. During the second half of the nineteenth century, Jews of Galicia were noteworthy for their political participation in affairs of the state and for establishing modern institutions and societies that gave appropriate expression to this activism.”
Setting , or unsettling, the ground for the shaping of Galician Jewry
It is an added irony, that east European Jewry, known for its piety, would have just gone through a double wave of heretical rebellion against Judaism in the century before the dismemberment of Poland.
In the mid-1600s, shortly after the horrible massacres of Chmielnicki, there arose a charismatic figure, Shabtai Zvi ( Sabbatai Zevi) who was acclaimed widely as the Messiah across the Jewish world, but in 1666, as he attempted to confront the Sultan of the Ottomans, he had a change of heart and converted to Islam. Nevertheless, as had been the case with other failed “redeemers”, many of his followers continued to believe in him and continued as an underground movement in Judaism even till the 20th century ( The Donmeh were perhaps involved in some ways in the fall of the Ottoman Caliphate) . Jewish communities were often torn asunder by accusations of hidden Sabbateans, accusations that involved prominent Rabbis ( Emden- Eybeschutz dispute) .For further reference: https://www.jhi.pl/en/articles/the-false-messiah-who-was-sabbatai-zevi,4472
Less than a century later, in the heart of Galicia, in Lemberg ( Lwow) there would be an equally earthshaking event, led by the would-be reincarnation of Shabtai Zvi, Jacob Frank.
It was in the great capital of Eastern Galicia-Lemberg( Lwow), in 1759, that an event took place the shook both the Jewish and the Catholic world.
Jacob Frank, of a family of adherents to the Sabbatean cult, annulled all religious prohibitions, denounced traditional Judaism, adopted a veneer of Christianity, and encouraged free sex, with his daughter, Eva, serving as the Virgin Mary, while he played the role of redeemer. He caused turmoil and dissent in eastern Europe.
He succeeded in convincing Church leaders and the Polish nobility that he could bring the mass of Jews to Christianity. “The baptism of the Frankists was celebrated with great solemnity in the churches of Lemberg, members of the Polish nobility acting as godparents. The neophytes adopted the names of their godfathers and godmothers and ultimately joined the ranks of the Polish nobility. In the course of one year more than 500 persons were converted to Christianity in Lemberg, among them the intimates and the disciples of Frank. Frank himself was baptized in Warsaw, Augustus III. acting as godfather (1759).” (https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/6279-frank-jacob-and-the-frankists)
Frank had his followers, who continued to adore him long after his birth. One of those adherents was Junius Frey, a prominent leader of the French Revolution, and distinguished US Supreme Court Justice Brandeis was a descendant of Frankists. Franks impact reached even into the shaping of modern Polish culture. Thus, one Polish scholar asks,” Does Jacob Frank Hold the Key to Polish Culture?” and points out the connection between the great Polish author Adam Mickiewicz and the Frankists. ( Mikołaj Gliński, (https://culture.pl/en/article/does-jacob-frank-hold-the-key-to-polish-culture).
How did these earthquakes shape Galician Jewry?
The traditional Orthodox leadership of eastern European Jewry was based in the northern regions of east Europe. These communities were well established financially, and had suffered less from the turmoils of Chmielnicki; intellectually and spiritually, they focused on the study of the highly technical fine points of Rabbinic law, a method often described as “pilpul”( spicy pepper). However, to the south, in the regions that were Galicia, and adjacent Podolia and Volhynia, the Jews had suffered more and were poorer than their cousins to the north and felt themselves distanced from the Yeshivahs ( Academies) of the north. They felt that the “Litvaks” looked down upon them, the Galizianers. They were desperate for a leadership that could give them a renewed faith to move forward, especially after the double failures of Sabbateanism and Frankism.
The Hasidic Movement ( Chasidism/Hasidism) was a spiritual rebirth movement similar to the Great Awakening of the American colonies in the same period. It was founded by Israel Ben Eliezer, nicknamed Baal Shem Tov, Master of the Good Name, who led a rebellion in the early 1700’s against the dry scholasticism that had characterized east European Judaism and emphasized faith and emotion to elevate the soul. This movement started in the regions just to the east of what became Galicia but at the time were all part of Poland, so it quickly this movement quickly spread through Eastern Europe. One of the key founding figures, from Galicia was Rebbe Elimelech of Lizhensk, and some of the major Hasidic dynasties started here, such as Belz, or Rizhin. The Orthodox establishment, Misnagdim ( Opponents) based in the wealthier north, fought bitterly against this new threat to their authority ( even to the extent of criminal charges brought against the founder of Chabad by students of the “ Vilner Gaon” ,the brilliant leader from Vilna. ). For a background on Hasidism and its development, go to https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/article/9).
However, winds of change from the west also affected Galician Jewry.
Haskalah ( Enlightement) and Maskilim ( Enlightened Ones) presented a challenge to the Orthodox Jewish leadership by bringing in to eastern Europe the ideas of the French and German Enlightenment, as exemplified by tits most prestigious exemplar, Moses Mendelssohn. This movement was also a revival of Judaism but from the perspective of rationalist philosophers, a religion of “Vernunft”, Critical Reason, and this led to a revival of critical inquiry into Judaism and a “ modernization”, not rejection, of Jewish practices and beliefs. Modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature and Jewish nationalism, either as regional autonomy, or return to historic Zion, are all an outcome of this development. From this, there ensued major conflicts between the established leadership, the Hasidim, and the Maskilim. Thus, the author’s grandfather, a member of the established Orthodox leadership in his town, sent his father to the secular “gymnasia”, and the local Hasidim would attack him, in his uniform, as a traitor. Here is a link to an essay on the Haskalah: https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/article/10]
Exemplars of the Impact of Galician Jews
Sigmund Freud—the most influential intellectual legislator of his age
Sigmund Freud, although born in Moravia, his parents were from Galicia. The umbrella of Empire enabled a free flow of people from the disparate regions in to the capital, Vienna. Possibly one of the greatest factors shaping Freud’s theory was his reaction to the Galician milieu of his father and the father’s humiliation at the hands of a Jew-hater.
https://www.commentary.org/articles/david-aberbach/freuds-jewish-problem/
“Freud may justly be called the most influential intellectual legislator of his age. His creation of psychoanalysis was at once a theory of the human psyche, a therapy for the relief of its ills, and an optic for the interpretation of culture and society. Despite repeated criticisms, attempted refutations, and qualifications of Freud’s work, its spell remained powerful well after his death and in fields far removed from psychology as it is narrowly defined. If, as American sociologist Philip Rieff once contended, “psychological man” replaced such earlier notions as political, religious, or economic man as the 20th century’s dominant self-image, it is in no small measure due to the power of Freud’s vision and the seeming inexhaustibility of the intellectual legacy he left behind.” https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sigmund-Freud
Martin Buber—the philosopher of I-Thou in human relations and psychotherapy
When the author was pursuing graduate course work in psychology, he was surprised to see frequent references to Martin Buber in resource texts for counselling psychology.
While Buber was born in Vienna, he was raised by his grandfather, noted Judaica scholar, in Lwow and his experience there shaped his later inquiry into the legacy of Hasidism. Buber would later be significant in the intellectual reaction against the idea of a “Religion of Pure Reason”, so that Hasidism, and with it, Jewish mysticism, reentered contemporary Jews thought.
“Martin Buber was a prominent twentieth century philosopher, religious thinker, political activist and educator. Born in Austria, he spent most of his life in Germany and Israel, writing in German and Hebrew. He is best known for his 1923 book, Ich und Du (I and Thou), which distinguishes between “I-Thou”[ European languages use the 2ndperson “tutoyer” for “you” in a sense of close personal relationship; “Thou” is the outmoded English term] and “I-It”[ relating to an object, not a person] modes of existence. Often characterized as an existentialist philosopher, Buber rejected the label, contrasting his emphasis on the whole person and “dialogic” intersubjectivity with existentialist emphasis on “monologic” self-consciousness. In his later essays, he defines man as the being who faces an “other” and constructs a world from the dual acts of distancing and relating. His writing challenges Kant, Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dilthey, Simmel and Heidegger, and he influenced Emmanuel Lévinas.
https://iep.utm.edu/martin-buber/
Buber “had a significant impact on various fields, including psychotherapy. Buber’s philosophy, particularly his concept of dialogue and the I-Thou relationship, has been influential in shaping the humanistic and existential approaches to psychotherapy.
https://gettherapybirmingham.com/martin-buber/[The author, who took courses in psychology, was surprised to see frequent references to Buber in counseling textbooks]
Buber brought a new appreciation of Hasidism, which had been disdained as primitive by the educated elites, and was also active in the revitalization of Judaism for the well-assimilated young Jews of Central Europe.[ He frequently spoke to the youth group to which this author’s father belonged] and worked with Jewish existentialist philosopher Franz Rosenzweig at the Freies Jüdisches Lehrhaus ( The Free Institute of Jewish Studies) in Frankfurt, Germany.
Buber’s thought can be best understood by his being raised in the house of his grandfather in Galicia, who was an exemplar of the drive to recover authentic ancient Jewish texts, making them accessible for scholars, in what would be called “ Wissenschaft des Judentums”, the Scientific( Academic) Study of Judaism.
BUBER, SOLOMON:
“Galician scholar and editor of Hebrew works; born at Lemberg Feb. 2, 1827. His father, Isaiah Abraham Buber, was versed in Talmudic literature and Jewish philosophy, and was Solomon's teacher in the latter subject; but for his son's Biblical and Talmudic studies he carefully selected competent professional teachers. The desire was soon aroused in Solomon to make independent research and to put the result of his work into literary form—a disposition which proved of the utmost value to Jewish literature.”https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/3781-buber-solomon
Rabbi Nachman Krochmal – religious and philosophical renewal in response to modernity
“ Krochmal served as an example of a religious figure who could confront the disorienting perplexities of the modern age and emerge with his religious commitment and scholarly integrity intact.”( https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/article/552)
In the Middle Ages, the great polymath philosopher and Rabbinic scholar, wrote a major work of philosophy, “ Moreh Nebuchim” , A Guide to the Perplexed, to answer the intellectual challenges of the rediscovered rationalism of Aristotle that threatened to undermine the foundations of Jewish belief . Krochmal, looking at the impact of the European Enlightenment, felt the time had come to create a “Moreh Nebuchei Hazman”, “ A Guide to the Perplexed of This Day”. He addressed the idea of the rise and fall of civilizations, and the historical dialectics that the widely influential Hegel had used, but turned the issue on its head, to ask why the Jewish civilization had not disappeared, as was the case of all other ancient civilizations. He found it in the power of Jews to reexamine and revitalize themselves at critical junctures in history, and thereby step outside the cycle of history.
“The historical digressions in the book touch the profoundest problems of Jewish science; and it remains their indisputable merit to have paved the way for critical studies in Jewish history. The work really became, as intended by the author, a "guide" to students of Jewish science in the nineteenth century.” This the testimony of Oxford Professor, Solomon Schechetr, who would go on to establish the intellectual foundations of Conservative Judaism, the dominant stream of Judaism in 20th Century America.
https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/9524-krochmal-nachman-kohen
The Search for an authentic Jewish cultural revival
Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Nobel Prize Winner and a pioneer of modern Hebrew literature
Shmuel Yosef Agnon, a prominent figure in Hebrew literature and co-recipient of the 1966 Nobel Prize in Literature, is widely recognized as the leading modern writer in the Hebrew language. Born on July 17, 1888, in Buczacz, Galicia, he was raised in a family with a rich scholarly Orthodox background, which profoundly influenced his early education in Jewish folklore and religious texts. Emigrating to Palestine in 1907, Agnon engaged with Zionist ideals, while his writing increasingly reflected the contrasts between the nostalgia of the Eastern European shtetl and the complexities of life in modern Palestine.
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/shmuel-yosef-agnon
The revival of a modern Hebrew, adapted to Jewish renewal in the land of Israel, had begun at the turn of the 20th century. It then spread back to the Jewish diaspora. Thus, the author’s great- uncle, Jonah Gelernter, was active in Stryj, Galicia, in teaching Hebrew as a modern spoken and written language and edited one of the earliest Hebrew language journals in Europe, Devarenu.
Yiddish, too, as a language of culture, had its adherents in Galicia, although not as widely spread, as the usage of German began to dominate. However one of the notable figures of a Yiddish revival was the artists, Bruno Schulz. ( https://ingeveb.org/articles/bruno-schulz-and-galician-jewish-modernity) .He was a notable influence in Polish culture as well (https://culture.pl/en/article/bruno-schulz-the-immortal-artist) (Our colleague, Dr. Vladimir Melamed, was instrumental in translating documents in reference to Schulz.)
Hand in hand came the rise of movements for the return to Zion, such as Galicia based
“ Gordonia”, influenced by the teachings of A. D. Gordon and the concept of Jewish rebirth through a return to working the land.( https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/article/1686).
To the further left of Gordonia was the Hashomer Hatzair, The Young Guard, also originating in Galicia. ( https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/hashomer-hatzair#:~:text=Hashomer%20Hatzair%2C%20the%20initial%20Zionist,%22chalutzim%22%20(pioneers). Its orientation was more notably Marxist as well as Zionist .The author’s father was a member of the movements branch in Vienna, where he associated with Meir Yaari, who later become head of Israel’s Mapam, Mifleget Poalim Hameuchedet, United Worker’s Party.
Some of these young Zionist Marxists would go on to fully join the Communist movement. Such was the case of Manes Sperber, a friend in the youth movement years, a young Galician Jew of Hasidic background, who joined the Hashomer Hatzair, and who later became an associate of the “individualist “ psychologist, Alfred Adler ( known for the term” inferiority complex). Sperber then went on to become a full member of the Communist Party in Berlin and then in France, worked for the Comintern ( International Communist organization). When the truth emerged about Stalins’ murderous purges at the end of the 1930’s, Sperber quit the party, and later became a noted novelist in France.( https://www.nytimes.com/1984/02/07/obituaries/manes-sperber-78-novelist.html?smid=url-share)
One other notable of Galicia was the German-language novelist and journalist, Joseph Roth (https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/5/resources/6801).
“Roth has never gotten the attention he deserves, partly because he was no daring modernist but an old-fashioned fiction writer whose models were Tolstoy and Stendhal, and who is just as voraciously readable as these masters. His novels yearn after the stability enjoyed by earlier generations, but he knows that the old truths have crumbled to pieces. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was Roth’s half-imaginary fatherland, and The Radetzky March shows how it fell apart, only to be replaced by a new brutal world of ardent nationalism. The brutality reached its height with the Nazi menace, just as Roth ended his life.”
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/curse-joseph-roth
The fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire becomes a symbol of what was eventually lost in Galicia, forever, during the Holocaust.
Poland-Lithuania at its Peak
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Polish-Lithuanian_Commonwealth
A Backgrounder on the History of Jews in GALICIA - VOLHYNIA
Here is a source for further background on the history of Jews in eastern Europe.
Simon Dubnow's classic, The History of the Jews of Russia and Poland, is available for free download:
A Prelude to the story of the jews in galicia
Here only to Rest
Conscious Jewish historic memory begins with Abraham, specifically with God’s first words to him: “Lech Lecha”—or, “Go,” an emphatic “Go”—as in “Get yourself out of your country, away from your kindred, and away from your father’s home.” Movement, whether by act of God or by human brute force, has been a hallmark of Jewish existence.
Two millennia ago, some Jews made their way into the Italian peninsula, some as merchants, and some as captives taken by the Roman Empire in the aftermath of two great failed rebellions by the Jews. Others made their way to the Iberian Peninsula. Among these were the progenitors of my family.
Gradually, these Jews made their way from Italy into the realms of Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire. This became the heartland of Ashkenazi, Central and Eastern European Jewry, and here we have the first flowering of the great European school of rabbinic study, as embodied in the figures of Rashi and his eineklach (grandchildren).
It has been estimated that no more than three thousand families comprised the core of this dynamic Jewish community that settled in regions bordering what would become France and Germany. “Lech Lecha”—this is what they were told, again, this time by rioting Crusaders or rapacious kings eager to seize hold of Jewish properties.
Fleeing the turmoil of persecution and expulsion in the Rhineland, they headed east and came to the lands of the Polish Kingdom. They were welcomed with open arms by the rulers who saw in them a great resource for the development of their realm. They joined a small number of Jews who had settled there in the preceding centuries, as well as some Jews who may have come from the Land of the Khazars around the Black Sea. Later, they were joined by Jews who fled the Spanish Inquisition and came in from Italy up to central Europe or through the Ottoman Empire, which at one time extended to the gates of Vienna.
Here, the Jews of Ashkenaz (the term used for Germany in old sources) hoped they had found a home of a thousand years. Yet as they settled, they knew that this too would pass someday. They called their new land Po-lin, a play on Polen in German and Poyln in Yiddish, but Po-lin in Hebrew has a significant meaning: Rest here, never settle, as my father explained to me.
This proved devastatingly true, once in the seventeenth century, and again, brutally and fatally, in the twentieth century.
By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Jews made Poland the beacon of progress in Europe in its day. It was the demographic, cultural, and spiritual heartland of world Jewry. Yet, even at the height of its greatness, the Jews recognized that it was only Po-lin: Rest here, before the next expulsion.
By the mid sixteen hundreds, the Jewish communities of Central and Eastern Europe had faced one disaster after another—the Thirty Years War, the Chmielnicki uprisings, the messianic expectations and disappointments of Sabbatai Zevi, and the invasion of Poland by Sweden. Poland, as a major player in Europe, had one last great field day when the Polish armies saved Vienna from conquest by the Ottoman Turks.
Within another century, Poland was partitioned three times, by Prussia, Russia, and Austria. Poland ceased to exist, and each of the conquerors was faced with its own “Jewish Problem”—what to do with the multitude of Jews it had now inherited from the vanished Polish crown.
The western section, which now linked Prussian territories in the east along the Baltic Sea with territories in German lands to the west, became known as Silesia. The eastern section was absorbed by Tsarist Russia and was called the Kingdom of Poland for a while, but in name only, and then it was reduced to a guberniya—a province.
The southern sector, under Austrian domination, included Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews in a region known as Galicia.
The devout, intense popular mystic movement of Chasidism had its first roots in the former Ukrainian territories of Poland. Polish Jewry was now riven, spiritually, between Chasidim and Misnagdim (the Opponents, the traditional Orthodox leadership of the great rabbinical academies). It suffered its great scandal in the orgiastic sectarian movement of Jacob Frank, and then it was challenged intellectually and socially by the Enlightenment, nationalist reaction, Marxism, and Zionism.
While Jews in the territories under the Prussians and Austrians fared relatively well, the Jews under the tsars faced harsh repression. The most grievous expression of tsarist hostility to Jews was attributed to Count Pobedonostsev who declared a policy of one-third: a third of Jews would be converted, a third would emigrate, and the rest would die of hunger. It was carried out, in effect, over the course of the following decades, as one-third of East European Jewry fled to the United States, one-third was exterminated, and one-third was “baptized” in the spirit of communism.
Then, in the middle of the twentieth century, Po-lin, which had been the largest Jewish enclave in the world, vanished.
[from Courage of the Spirit by Dr Norbert Weinberg]
