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]
