Episode 138: The Priests' Plot and the Departure of the Jews of Poznan

00:01 We are in the middle of the story of how relations between the priests and the Jews of Poznań deteriorated. We heard about the young priest who made a false accusation against the Jews, only for it to emerge that he himself had thrown their statue into the garbage. After that, he was supposedly expelled from Poznań and went to Rome. Now he has returned to Poznań as a bishop—not a priest, but a bishop—and is promoting a new approach: Jews and gentiles should be like one people. Reb Moishe, the head of the Poznań community, is racking his brains over the plot behind this new direction. Let’s continue the story. Some time later, Reb Moishe had occasion to travel abroad on business, as he often did. On this trip he needed to visit Germany, France, and Italy. While in Italy, he also visited Rome and, as was his custom, met with scientists and intellectuals. Among other things, he happened to visit the Vatican, where he spoke with senior scholars about matters of faith and other general subjects. This gave Moishe an opportunity to investigate the reason for the bishop of Poznań’s new tactic of seeking friendship with the Jews. Moishe did not hide the fact that the Jews of Poznań were uneasy about this strange development. To his great astonishment, he discovered that the policy had not actually originated with the bishop of Poznań, who had previously incited people against the Jews, but with the Vatican itself. For many years, the Catholic Church had tried to force Jews to convert by force of arms. Eventually, it saw that this approach would achieve nothing: the more harshly the Jews were treated and harassed, the more stubborn they became. Even the harshest decrees imposed by the priests had not brought a single Jew closer to Christianity. They had therefore concluded that the Jews should be treated generously, as equals, and that no ill should be spoken of the Jewish religion. This also included allowing Christians to become Jews if they wished. But the calculation

02:39 was that even if a Christian here or there converted to Judaism, this openness would, in return, lead dozens of Jews to convert to Christianity. The overall aim, then, was to draw Jews in by gentler means, with greater success than by harsh ones. Reb Moishe was shaken. At last he knew of the Church’s dark plot. What could he do? Meanwhile, while Reb Moishe was away from Poznań, the bishop continued delivering speeches supposedly full of friendship toward the Jews. He stated explicitly that people should draw close to the Jews and mingle with them, even if that meant converting to Judaism. After the young Christian man whose request to convert had been rejected, a young Christian woman appeared with a similar request. Her request, too, was turned down with various explanations. Then an incident occurred that stirred up the Jews of Poznań and the surrounding area. In a village near Poznań where several Jewish families lived, a young Jewish man inherited a tavern after his parents died. He was completely ignorant of Jewish learning. His father, himself a coarse, unrefined villager, had never sent him to a teacher, so he did not even know what a letter looked like. When he took over the tavern, he thought it would be good to have a wife to help him. A young gentile woman worked there, and she seemed to him capable of helping run the business. He proposed marriage to her, and she agreed. They agreed that each would remain in the religion into which they had been born. When the Jews of the village heard about it, they began admonishing the young man and rebuking him for what he had done. “What are you talking about?” he said to them. “I heard the priest say with my own ears that Jews and gentiles may marry each other, and the rabbis declared it too.” When they explained that only the priests had given such permission, he initially refused to believe them. After thinking it over, however, he said, “If it really is true that only the priests said so, that means they are the only sensible people. And

05:11 what is wrong with intermarriage?” This was a serious breach in the wall separating Jews from gentiles—the first result of the Christian Church’s influence, thanks to its supposedly favorable treatment of the Jews. When Moishe returned from his trip and found the entire Poznań community in an uproar, he understood that the Church had laid a bold trap for Jews who were weak in character. The rabbis, dayanim, and community leaders held meeting after meeting until they concluded that firm steps were needed to block the path of Jews who might slide into assimilation. Notices on the subject were distributed to the Jewish public, followed by the announcement of a severe ban on any attempt to breach that wall. Jews were absolutely forbidden to have contact with gentiles except for business purposes. At the same time, the Poznań community lodged a strong protest with the priests over their efforts to win over Jews. These measures had an immediate effect. The Jews began to distance themselves from the priests and from Christians generally, except in business matters. The bishop of Poznań then saw that all his efforts [?] to win the Jews’ hearts by pleasant means had come to nothing. He now had no reason to conceal his true face. He immediately went to the city’s governor with a plain, direct accusation against the Jews. What was the accusation? That the Jews had insulted the Christian religion. To support his claim, the priest—the bishop—gave the governor a translation of the notice the Poznań community had distributed against assimilation and mingling with gentiles. Of course, the bishop’s translation was full of distortions designed to prove what he wanted to prove. The bishop firmly demanded that the governor treat the Jews with great severity and a heavy hand, and impose a very large financial penalty on them. He said that they had been treated leniently for quite long enough; the time had come to teach them a lesson. A series of decrees and persecutions began. Trouble after trouble struck the Jews of Poznań. Those who hated the Jews worked tirelessly and energetically, in various ways,

07:45 to harm them. For two full years, from 5478—that is, 1618—to 5479, 1619, the Jewish community leaders struggled hard against their enemies. Every avenue was used to protect the members of the community, but as soon as one trouble ended, another followed. All of Reb Moishe’s efforts—all his efforts and strategies—failed to thwart the plots of the bishop and his associates, especially in the economic sphere. Moishe could clearly see that the priests had a consistent plan to impoverish the Jews of Poznań and strip the community’s wealthy members of their possessions until they were utterly helpless. As more time passed, the situation grew worse. Reb Moishe called a meeting of all the leaders and expressed his view that there was no choice: only one course remained, to leave the city of Poznań. To avoid attracting the attention of those who hated the Jews, Moishe proposed that the entire community and its property be moved with great care and in complete secrecy, since their enemies lay in wait at every step. At the meeting, they worked out a thorough, detailed plan for an orderly departure from Poznań. They decided to draw lots to determine who would leave first. Under Reb Moishe’s leadership, the Poznań community was organized remarkably well. The principle that all Jews are responsible for one another was the foundation of every regulation the community leader established. In good times and in bad times, G-d forbid, they strictly upheld the principle that the needs of the community came before the private interests of any individual, and maintained strict discipline to that end. Now that hard times had come upon the Jews of Poznań and it had become clear that their best course was to leave the city and find another place to live, it was essential to prevent a disorderly, panicked flight that would cause great harm. The plan had to be kept secret from the authorities and from the non-Jewish population, and therefore

10:25 The departure had to take place gradually and without attracting attention. Had the enemies of the Jews learned of the decision, they would have tried to seize property and possessions on various pretexts. It was therefore decided that small, scattered groups would leave in stages, according to a lottery. Whoever won the lottery had the right to leave the city at once, provided his departure went unnoticed. He had to find an explanation the townspeople would accept, such as business, a livelihood, or family matters. At the same time, provision was made for the poor of the community: every family with means was to set aside a quarter of its property for the community and its poor. When Rabbi Moshe’s turn came, he decided to move to Minsk, after setting aside a quarter of his considerable wealth. Minsk was a center of Torah and learning, as well as a commercial center. This was in the year 5480, that is, 1620. Rabbi Moshe’s children were married, and not all of them joined him. His son Rabbi Schneur Zalman, who, as we recall, had refused to go into business, decided to settle in Vitebsk with his learned wife, Rachel. Schneur Zalman was physically frail, but he was a great Torah scholar and worked as a teacher. He neither paid tuition nor accepted tuition fees, and he took no support from his father. He lived on the money his father had given him after his marriage. From that money he set aside a quarter for the needs of the community in Pozna. To avoid even a remote concern about interest, he did not use his money, as others did, to make business loans. He therefore had to live frugally off the principal. Kadish, Schneur Zalman’s brother-in-law, joined him and traveled with him to Vitebsk. Kadish was very close to Schneur Zalman. As we recall, Kadish had suffered a serious illness that caused him to forget what he had learned. Years passed before he acquired new Torah knowledge, though he never regained his former level of sharpness

13:04 and breadth of knowledge. Schneur Zalman kept him close and studied with him, so Kadish was deeply attached to him, heart and soul. On the other hand, although the illness had also affected Kadish’s physical condition, he was able to devote himself to business, and his financial situation was better than his brother-in-law’s. Baruch, Schneur Zalman’s son, learned all these details about his family from Yitzchak Shaul, his friend from Dobromysl. He thus gained a clearer picture of his grandfather, Reb Moshe, his uncles and aunts, and his father. He also began to understand his sister Devorah Leah better. As we recall, she was engaged to the outstanding scholar, the gaon Yosef Yitzchak. Back when Baruch had left Vitebsk, after his bar mitzvah and after losing his parents, he had felt no emotional bond with his older sister. He had never listened to her or understood her. He preferred to face hardship and seek his own path in serving Hashem. Baruch remembered that after their mother’s passing, his sister had handed him a manuscript she herself had written. She told him, “Read what I’ve written here in the spoken language, based on what I heard from our mother, a”h. She was a great scholar and knew our family’s entire lineage. I wrote down everything she told me. Read it, and you’ll learn a great deal.” Had Baruch been wise enough to listen to his sister, he would have learned right away things that became known to him only many years later. Perhaps he would then have developed a different attitude toward his sister, and through her, toward his entire family. He might even have stayed in Vitebsk and spared himself years of wandering. But Baruch felt a certain reserve toward his sister. For one thing, he assumed she understood very little, since she was a woman. And whatever bond there had been between them no longer existed after their parents died. What’s more,

15:24 the pages his sister wanted to give him were written in Yiddish. So Baruch returned the manuscript to her and said that stories written in Yiddish were meant for women alone. Men studied Gemara and other holy books. In this way, Baruch cut himself off from a wellspring of living water that could have opened his eyes. He would have come to know a succession of great people—grandfathers and forefathers across several generations, going back hundreds of years. He would have learned not only about their lives but also about their ideas and thoughts, and he would surely have found answers to many questions that troubled him. Instead, all these circumstances led Baruch to wander through mountains and forests and, in Dobromysl, to hear from Yitzchak Shaul—the chassidic young man who was the blacksmith’s son-in-law—things that would lead him to his grandfather, Reb Moshe, who was still living in Minsk. Baruch therefore began to think about visiting Minsk to meet his grandfather. The sense of estrangement he felt toward his relatives began to fade. In its place grew a feeling of closeness and a desire to know his family better.