Article:1.1.1

The Beginnings of Jewish Settlement in Galicia and Bukovina

     The Beginnings of Jewish Settlement in Galicia and Bukovina

Judith Kalik

       Topics
       Migration and DiasporaCommunal and Social LifeJews and Their SurroundingEconomicsKaraite

       Period
       Before 1772

       Region
       GaliciaBukovina

       NLI Code
       997013604474005171

Extensions

• Esterka

Related Entries

• Article:1.1.2
• Article:1.2.1
• Article:1.2.2
• Article:1.4.4

Map

• Directions of the Jewish Migrations into the Territory of Future Galicia in the 11-14th Centuries

The Beginnings of Jewish Settlement in Galicia and Bukovina

Judith Kalik

Jews began to settle the territory that would become Galicia as early as the 11^th century. Ibrahim ibn Jakub, the Jewish itinerant merchant from Spain, who visited Eastern Europe in the second half of the 10^th century, mentions the Jews of Prague when describing his journey through Bohemia, but makes no mention of the Jews of Kraków, which during the period in question was also under Bohemian rule. However, Rabbi Yehudah ben Meir of Mainz (Germany) does mention a Jewish presence in Kraków in the first half of the 11^th century, when the city was already under Polish rule, and also in Przemyśl, which was under the rule of Kievan Rus’ – in both cases, the context for these mentions is the slave trade. The first case concerned a Jewish youth who had been abducted from some village near Przemyśl (called in the manuscripts Promut or Primut) in the course of warfare (most likely the Polish invasion of 1018), was brought to Prague as a slave and sold there to a Jewish slave trader from Byzantium. In the second case, a Jew had brought his female slave, also said to be his mistress, from Kyiv to Kraków, but there she was kidnapped from him and sold into Moravia. This case was brought before the Jewish court in Kraków, indicating that this city already had an existing Jewish community. The Jews mentioned were, in all probability, 'Canaanite,' Slavic-speaking Jews, who came from Kyiv, where they had been living since at least the beginning of the 10^th century.

Ashkenazi Jews, speakers of the German dialect later to be called Yiddish, appeared in Poland during the First Crusade in 1096, as recounted in the contemporary chronicle written by Cosmas of Prague. Due to the crusaders’ imposition of forced conversions on the Jews of Bohemia, many fled to Poland and Hungary. These Ashkenazi Jews, who settled mainly in Kraków, are increasingly mentioned in various sources beginning in the late 12^th century. Thus, Rabbi Yo’el ben Yitsḥak Halevy of Bonn (Germany) describes a Jewish native of Kraków who visited his brother in Magdeburg, where he married and settled. In his description of events that took place in Kraków in 1173, Polish chronicler Wincenty Kadłubek mentions that a Jew was beaten and injured by Christian students. In the early 13^th century, a Jewish scholar named Ya‘aḳov Savra lived in Kraków. During this period, Jewish minters from Kraków minted coins with Hebrew inscriptions for the Supreme Duke Władysław III. The coins were decorated with a figure of a Jew wearing the triangular hat that represented Ashkenazi Jews 1.1.1-Settlement-2.

In 1241, the cities of Halych and Kraków were destroyed during the Mongolian invasion of Europe. Kraków was rebuilt and resettled in 1257, chiefly by German settlers arriving from Bavaria, Saxony, and Bohemia. Jews played a major role in this migratory movement. The number of Jews that arrived during this new wave of immigration was much greater than in previous ones. Kraków’s Jewish Street, named today Saint Anne’s Street, was first mentioned in documentary sources in 1304. This does not mean that Jews lived only on this street, or that its residents were exclusively Jewish. Many Christians were also involved in property deals on this street and Jews also lived on streets with the names Wisła, St. Stefan, Slawkowska, St. Florian, Kraków, and Salt Street. The Jews’ Street probably earned its name due to the location of the synagogue. The city’s Jewish cemetery was first mentioned in 1311.

During the post-Mongolian era, Jews began also to settle in other locations in the southern part of the Lesser Poland region – an area that would later be known as East Galicia. The Jews of Jasło are mentioned in the immunity rights granted in 1262 by Bolesław the Fifth, the Duke of Kraków and Sandomierz, to the monastery in the town of Koprzywnica. The Jews of Nowy Sącz are mentioned in 1327 in the rights to establish a fair granted to this town by Polish king Władysław I Łokietek. Since these two documents are concerned either with prohibitions (in Koprzywnica), or permissions (in Nowy Sącz), against or for the Jews’s participation in the fairs, they indicate that Jews there were mainly occupied in commerce.

The rule of Polish king Casimir III the Great (1333-1370), signifies a new era for Polish Jewry, whose life conditions improved under his patronage. This change should probably be credited to the influence of Lewko son of Jordan, the king’s Jewish banker, rather than to Esterka, his Jewish mistress, known from legend, but about whom no contemporary evidence has survived. Lewko’s activity, on the other hand, is attested by at least 28 documents from the period of Casimir III and from those of the two successive Polish kings, the Hungarian Louis I, from the Anjou dynasty, and Władysław II, the first incumbent from the Jagiellonian dynasty.

A guild of Jewish ritual slaughterers was approved by Casimir in Kraków already during the first year of his rule, in 1333. The Jewish quarter and the Kraków synagogue are first mentioned in 1347. The first evidence of a Jewish mikveh (ritual bath) is from 1358. “The Jewish Gate,” mentioned in 1366, was designated thus apparently due to the proximity of the Jewish cemetery, which was located between that gate and the nearby Cobbler’s Gate. In 1355, Casimir made Kraków’s two western suburbs into the eponymous new city of Kazimierz, and Jews began to settle there as well.

In 1340, Casimir annexed the Halych principality into his kingdom. This opened the door to the migration of Ashkenazi Jews into Red Ruthenia – which would later become East Galicia. The Jews of Lviv are first mentioned in the Law that was granted the city by Casimir in 1356. In the Magdeburg Law, which was granted also to other Polish cities, it is generally only the Jews who are mentioned as a separate national-religious minority. However, the Magdeburg rights granted to the multinational and multi-faith city of Lviv, also mention the Armenian Monophysites, the Muslim Tatars and the Greek Orthodox Ruthenians (Ukrainians), alongside the Jews. The Street of the Jews in Lviv is first mentioned in 1386.

Casimir the Great granted a privilege to the Jews of Lesser Poland, which also extended to all Jews in the Polish kingdom. That year, a similar, but not identical privilege was granted to the Jews of Rus’, or Red Ruthenia. These two privileges were based on the earliest privileges that was granted by Prince Bolesław the Pious to the Jews of Greater Poland in 1264, and this latter document was itself based on the privileges granted in 1254 to the Jews of Moravia by Ottokar II, the King of Bohemia. The Jews mentioned in these privileges were for the most part moneylenders by occupation.

During the 15^th century, Jews continued to settle other towns in southern Lesser Poland and Red Ruthenia. Their numbers increased especially within the territory of Red Ruthenia, where Jewish settlement was an inseparable part of the Polish colonization of the region from the 14^th century. The Polish colonization of the other parts of Ukraine began only at a later stage, after the Union of Lublin in 1569, which brought all of Ukraine under the rule of the Polish Crown. Therefore, during the 15^th century, Jews are documented in eighteen new settlements in Red Ruthenia, compared to only four new settlements in Lesser Poland.

The Karaites also began to settle in Lviv in the early 15^th century. A document from 1414, attesting to the existence of a common cemetery for Rabbinic Jews and Karaites in this city is the earliest evidence of Karaite settlement in the territory of Lithuania and Poland. This document even predates the first original document concerning the most famous Karaite settlement in Trakai (Troki), Lithuania, which is dated to 1493 (previously published documents of a supposedly earlier date have been shown by recent studies to be forgeries).

In 1495, the Polish king Jan I Olbracht expelled the Jews from Kraków and resettled them in nearby Kazimierz, which since that time essentially became a Jewish suburb of Kraków. [IMG: 1.1.1-Settlement-4|]]

Early testimonies of the Jewish presence in the region that would eventually be known as Bukovina describe Jewish merchants passing through it en route from Poland to Constantinople. The merchants in question, mostly from Lviv, were engaged as early as the 14^th century in the international pepper trade. The first Jew known to have settled permanently in the local city Suceava, which at the time served as the capital of the Moldavian principality, was Yitsḥak Beg – a Jew of Persian descent – the personal physician of Stephen the Great, Prince of Moldavia (1447-1504). Substantial Jewish settlement only began in this region in the 16^th century, with the migration of Polish Jews, as mentioned in Marcin Bielski’s Polish chronicle. 1.1.1-Settlement-5

During the Middle Ages, the territories of the future Galicia and Bukovina were unique arenas of encounter between Slavic speaking 'Canaanite Jews' and Yiddish speaking Ashkenazi Jews, and as well as between Rabbinic Jews and Karaites, who were speakers of Turkic Qıpçaq. Central trade routes that passed through these territories were also the meeting ground of the aforementioned Jews with Jews from other linguistic and cultural diaspora, among them the Greek-speaking Romaniotes, the Persian and Arabic speaking Jews from the Middle East, and Italian speaking Jews from the Genoese colonies on the shores of the Black Sea.1.1.1-Settlement-4-1

(Translated from Hebrew by Ilana Goldberg)

Select Bibliography

Grodecki, Roman. “Dzieje Żydów w Polsce do końca XIV w.” In Polska Piastowska, edited by Jerzy Wyrozumski. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1969, 595–702

Kulik, Alexander, and Kalik, Judith. “The Beginnings of Polish Jewry: Reevaluating the Evidence for the Eleventh to Fourteenth Centuries.” Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung 70 (2021), 139-185

Kulik, Alexander, and Kalik, Judith. Jews in Medieval Poland: A Documentary History. Bloomington IN: Slavica (forthcoming)

Ta-Shma, Israel Moshe. “On the History of the Jews in Twelfth and Thirteenth Century Poland.” Polin 10 (1997), 287-317.

Zaremska, Hanna. Żydzi w średniowiecznej Polsce: Gmina krakowska. Warszawa: Instytut Historii PAN, 2011.