Article:1.4.3
"Communal and Social Life - Rural Life" is not in the list (Communal and Social Life, Communal and Social Life - Urban Life, Communal and Social Life - Rural Life, Communal and Social Life - Social Margins, Communal and Social Life - Philanthropy, Culture, Culture - Art, Culture - Enlightenment, Culture - Literature, Culture - Music, ...) of allowed values for the "BelongsToTopic" property.
Galician Jews in the Propination: Production and Sale of Alcohol, 1496-1918
Judith Kalik
Jews began to dominate in the production and sale of alcohol in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth including the territory of future Galicia (southern Lesser Poland and Red Ruthenia) in the early modern age soon after the introduction of commercial vodka in this country. These processes were connected, on the one hand, to the termination of the Black Sea grain trade in the late 15th century, and to the change in the occupational structure of Polish Jews in the 16th century, on the other.
Crown Poland (1496-1569)
We do not know where and when commercial vodka was invented, since the evidence is inconclusive: commercial vodka appeared simultaneously in Poland and Russia in the early 16th century.[1] The invention of vodka was connected to the surplus of grain and logistic challenges surrounding its export, which created favorable conditions for marketing it locally in the form of alcohol. There is a common assumption that grain was not exported from Poland before the introduction of the so-called folwark system – the economy based on large agricultural estates oriented around grain exports – in the 16th century. However, there is some evidence that Polish grain was shipped via Dniester to Constantinople and the island of Cyprus in the first half of the 15th century.[2] In the 14th century, Poles called the Black Sea mare Leoninum – “Sea of Lviv” – because of the close connections of this city with the Black Sea maritime trade.[3] The Northern Pontic grain trade came to an abrupt end in 1475 when the Ottoman forces stormed Caffa and conquered the other Genoese colonies in the Crimean Peninsula. In 1484, Moncastro (modern Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi) also came under Ottoman control. However, at the end of the 15th century, the demand for grain in Western Europe began to increase because of accelerated pre-industrial urbanization, which triggered an increase of grain production in Poland and especially in fertile Red Ruthenia and Podolia. Though the transportation of grain via the Bug to the Baltic ports was possible from Red Ruthenia and Lesser Poland, the closure of the Dniester route to the Black Sea produced a grain surplus for alcohol production.
The propination system, that is the landlords’ monopoly on production and sale of alcoholic beverages, was introduced in Poland by the Diet’s resolution of 1496. Vodka was not explicitly mentioned in this resolution, only beer and "other liquors" (liquores alios), but it is possible that vodka was already introduced at this early stage in order to compensate the landlords of the fertile plains of Red Ruthenia and Podolia for the loss of the Black Sea markets.
The Jewish involvement in the propination system was a complicated process. On the one hand, some Jews became tavern-keepers in Red Ruthenia even before the 1496 introduction of the propination system; on the other hand, their taking over of this sector of economy proceeded slowly.
The earliest reference to a Jewish tavern in Red Ruthenia comes from 1427, when the king Władysław II Jagiełło appointed his Jewish banker (factor) and tax-farmer (celnik), Wołczko of Drohobych,[4] as an administrator (sołtys) of the village Werbeż (later Ustia) at the confluence of the Dniester and Szczerzec (Shchyrets) rivers. The king granted him two hides (240 acres) of field and meadow, a mill, a tavern, and a fishery as his personal hereditary possessions, in return for which Wołczko had to provide one horse for the army.[5] During this period, commercially produced vodka was not yet available, so such taverns served mead and beer. However, Wołczko was not a leaseholder of his tavern, as was the widespread practice later, but rather its owner. This was possible before the Polish Diet prohibited Jews from owning real estate in 1496.
Before the profitability of propinacja leases became apparent in the sixteenth century, the majority of inn- and tavern-keepers had been hereditary peasant tenants and Orthodox priests. The Jews' success in ousting them was a result of several factors: modest drinking habits, relatively advanced literacy, and mathematical knowledge, but above all their ability to pay in advance and to bear the constant rise in the cost of leases caused by growing profits and inflation. Initially, Jews sometimes entered this business in partnership with the traditional peasant tenants. Thus, in 1564 there were three innkeepers in one inn in the village of Batyatychi in a royal estate of Kamianka-Buzka: Uhrin (the Hungarian), Mosko the Jew, and Stepan Czechowicz.[6] In other cases, the "old" traditional innkeepers coexisted for some time with the "new" Jewish leaseholder. Thus, in the same year (1564) in the village of Siedliszcze in the royal estate of Chełm ,there were five "old" inn-keepers who paid altogether five złoty and 20 groszy annually, and one "new" Jewish leaseholder paying alone 51 złoty and 16 groszy.[7] As this example shows, Jewish lease holdings were so profitable that they were also enacted on royal and ecclesiastic estates. The difference between the two systems of rural tavern-keeping was that the traditional hereditary tenants paid annual rent (czynsz) to the landlord for the use of the tavern, while the new Jewish leaseholders paid the entire estimated annual income from the tavern in advance, leaving for themselves only the marginal profit.
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569-1772)
The leasing of inns and taverns, where alcohol was sold to the local population, became a typical Jewish occupation from the second half of the 16th century. Jews initially entered the practice of leaseholding by way of their traditional involvement in moneylending. When the Jews were formally denied rights to own land by legislation in 1496,[8] they found it increasingly difficult to take out mortgages because they could not assume ownership of land in case of default. As a result, raising money from income on real estate in advance from Jews could only be achieved by leasing it to them, since in that case ownership could not change hands. Leasing rural estates to Jews was increasingly widespread until the mid-seventeenth century. However, as this form of leasing became more profitable with the development of the folwark system, it began to attract the lower and middle nobility. With the expansion of the economic and political power of Polish-Lithuanian magnates from the mid-seventeenth century, leases of large estates began to serve political rather than economic ends. Magnates preferred to lease estates to their noble clients in order to secure the latter's loyalty in local (and national) political arenas. As a result, Jews were effectively excluded from leasing large estates, though they continued to lease the smaller estates of lower and middle nobility. The politicization of leaseholds on estates gave the lease of monopoly rights greater economic significance. These included milling, fishing, use of forest produce, and the sale of salt and tobacco. By far the most important item was the so-called propinacja, the estate owner's monopoly on the production and sale of alcohol. The importance of leasing taverns and inns for the revenues of Polish magnates in Ukraine can be apprehended from an inventory of the town of Tuchyn and the village Pohryłowka in Volhynia, which belonged to Franciszek Salezy Potocki. The income from leasing inns to the Jews in 1742 amounted to 7,500 złoty out of a general income of 10,026 złoty and 10 groszy, or 74.8%.[9]
The costs of leases, which were much higher in towns than in villages, rose constantly. Penalties for leaseholders who failed to pay could be heavy, including the confiscation of property. This confiscation often forced less fortunate leaseholders to flee. This situation gave an added edge to the already stiff economic competition for leaseholds among Jews. In an attempt to check this situation and to keep the cost of leases low, Jewish communal authorities tried to enforce the tenure (ḥazakah), which granted an existing leaseholder the right to renew a contract annually without competitive interference from other Jewish businessmen.
In order to increase their incomes from propinacja in both urban and rural areas, landlords strictly enforced their monopolies with heavy fines for infringements. Fines were imposed for not buying alcohol exclusively from the lord's tavern, for not filling obligatory minimal quotas for alcohol consumption, and for producing alcohol for self-consumption.
According to the Jewish census of 1764-65 in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, more than one-third of employed Jews were leaseholders of various kinds. The fierce competition with burghers for propinacja leaseholds in town shifted the Jewish population into rural areas.
The relations of rural Jewish innkeepers with local peasants were rather complicated. On the one hand, the Jewish innkeeper was an important figure in a village, and the rural inn served as a focal point of social life, often providing the only place for interactions between different social strata 1.4.3-Tavern-2.[10] The inn frequently served also as a shop, and both innkeepers and shop-keepers often lent money to peasants against a pledge. On the other hand, the Jewish leaseholder was seen by the peasants as a representative, often the sole one, of their lord. Leaseholding contracts usually included a clause which provided the innkeeper with the corvée labor of local serfs.[11]
Rural court records at the village of Chukva in the Sambir royal estate, which date from the 17th-18th centuries, provide a unique and vivid picture of everyday life in this village in all its complexity.[12] Rural Jews were involved in numerous judicial cases, which involved customers in their taverns, their Christian servants and other employees, as well as their other neighbors.
The most colorful case involving a Jewish tavern’s customers was a shooting incident reported in 1685.[13] A noble, Andzej Strzelecki, and his son Stefan had visited the tavern of the Jew Abraham Moszkowić, which was overcrowded at the time. Stefan, who carried a pistol in his belt, suddenly shot and accidentally wounded a peasant to whom he then had to pay a large sum in compensation for an injury. Andrzej claimed that it was a Jewish boy who served in the tavern who drew the pistol from Stefan’s holder and shot the peasant. Therefore, he demanded that the Jewish leaseholder be held responsible for the incident and be compelled to reimburse his expenses. Since the first witness was ill and could not attend court, two members of the jury were sent to his home to interrogate him. He testified under oath that Stefan was the shooter, while the Jewish boy was standing near the door at the time of the shooting. The second witness was a furrier selling hats in the tavern. He testified that the Jewish boy was holding a hat in his hands at the time of the shooting. The third witness said that the boy was, at the time, helping his grandmother, who was buying a hat from the furrier, the second witness. The fourth witness was a serf from another village, who was staying at the Jewish inn in Chukva. He confirmed the testimony of the third witness, adding that the furrier was sitting on a bench at the other end of the table. The court cleared the boy of all charges and dismissed Andzej Strzelecki’s claim.
This case paints a picture of the everyday life of a rural tavern: poor nobles, short of money, drinking with peasants, a furrier selling hats to the tavern’s customers, a peasant from another village staying at the inn, and the three generations of the Jewish leaseholder’s family, including both his mother and his son, all present in his tavern.
The role of women and girls in the Jewish tavern should not be overlooked. They often served customers in taverns, and were employed by Jewish leaseholders as servants in defiance of the church’s strict prohibition of this practice.[14] Both practices created a favorable condition for sexual relations between Jewish girls and their non-Jewish customers, on the one hand, and between Jewish leaseholders and their non-Jewish female servants, on the other. Both types of cases appear frequently in the court records. 1.4.3-Tavern-1
In Ukraine and Belarus many Orthodox and Greek Catholic married priests had served as hereditary tavern-keepers before the Jewish takeover of this sector of economy. The Orthodox Church was involved in the consumption of alcohol long before the introduction of vodka, since the Church-controlled drinking fraternities (bratshchiny) organized public drinking on the occasion of Christian feasts in Russia, as well as in the Orthodox parts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.[15]
Catholic monasteries and parish churches often kept their own taverns, but the problem was much more acute for married Orthodox and Greek Catholic priests, who did not receive a regular salary and had to support their large families tilling plots of land provided to them by the landlords for their livelihood. Leasing taverns and inns gave them a very important opportunity to secure an additional reliable source of income.
The displacement of such priests by the Jews caused a serious problem. Many churches, convents, and other ecclesiastic institutions were situated on noble estates, and were usually partly exempt from the landlord's monopoly on production of alcohol; they produced it for their own consumption but had no right to sell it. However, the Orthodox and Greek Catholic married priests, who were earlier ousted by the Jews from the leasing of the lord's propination, often transgressed this prohibition in order to support their large families. These constant violations of the lord's propination monopoly that was leased to Jews often created favorable conditions for violence. Thus, the Jewish leaseholder of the royal estate of Dolina, Szaja imprisoned the Orthodox priest Iliasz in the village of Nadziejów for violation of propination rights and allowed him to visit sick peasants for confession in foot shackles.[16]
The legend about the Jews leasing the Orthodox churches arose from the widespread practice of sealing churches as a sanction against violation of monopolies by priests. Sealing the church itself or imprisonment of a priest by a Jewish leaseholder occurred because of conflicts between the landlord (whose interests the leaseholder served) and the church, against the background of the violation of the lord's propination rights by a priest.[17]
The propination rights included not only vodka and beer, but all kinds of alcoholic beverages. Wine and brandy, however, unlike vodka and beer, were not produced locally, but were imported from abroad, mainly from Hungary. The geographical location of future Galicia (southern Little Poland and Red Ruthenia) on the border with Hungary (today Slovakia and Trans-Carpathian Ukraine) made it a natural gateway for this Hungarian wine to enter Poland, and local Jewish wine-merchants dominated this trade in the 18th century (see Extension 1)
Jews of Eastern Galicia were also involved in the trade of a purely local alcoholic beverage produced from cherries, the so-called vishniak. Thus, we learn from taxation records in the communal minute-book (pinkas) of Drohobych for 1753 that the Jews of this town sold vishniak in clay vessels.[18]
Austrian Galicia (1772-1918)
The attitudes of the Habsburg authorities towards leasing propination rights to Jews in Galicia were heavily influenced by Enlightenment ideology. Until the death of Maria Theresa, who adhered to more conservative views, there were no drastic changes in the living conditions of Galician rural Jews. It was only when Maria Theresa’s son, Joseph II, assumed full imperial power in 1780, that he began to implement a program of reforms inspired by the French Enlightenment. These reforms were influenced by the 1777 public discussion on Polish Jews in France, when the Physiocrats, in line with their general economic theory that agriculture is the only source of national wealth, claimed that Polish Jews’ involvement in leaseholding of propination rights was parasitic and unproductive, and that they should be diverted to agriculture.[19] In 1783, the Austrian court official Johann Wenzel von Margelik was dispatched to Galicia for a fact-finding mission to clarify the social and economic conditions in the province. According to his report, the majority of the district governors expressed the same opinion.[20] Subsequently, in 1784 Joseph II issued a decree that prohibited the lease of propination rights to Jews in villages. In 1785, this prohibition was extended to shtetls.[21]
Since the leasing of rural taverns and inns to the Jews provided the largest part of income from the rural estates to the Polish landlords, the order of 1784 could not be implemented in full, and it was constantly violated by the noble landowners. Austrian judicial records provide plenty of evidence of such violations in Galicia during the first half of the 19th century.
The turbulent events of 1846 in Galicia – the so-called “Galician Slaughter” – the mass murder of Polish noblemen suspected of rebellious aspirations at the hand of their serfs, who were loyal subjects of the emperor, and the subsequent “pacification” of the province by Count Franz Stadion – led to the gradual relaxation of the prohibition against leasing propination rights to Jews in villages. On September 9, 1846, the provincial government issued an order regarding the conditions for granting Jews permission to reside and sell liquor in the countryside. Jews were still prohibited from selling liquor, but they could be granted permission if they had never engaged in illegal activity, were not suspected of doing so, had attended elementary school, and ceased to wear Jewish traditional clothing. Those Jews who wanted to be granted this right had until June 1847 to prove that they fulfilled these conditions.[22]
New regulations did not lead to the end of the persecution of the Jewish rural inn- and tavern keepers who continued in their occupation without a license. This was the case of Nuchim Haber, who resided on Simon Andykowski’s grounds in the village of Podmichale near Stryj and illegally sold alcohol there. Moreover, he was earning money by charging the residents for crossing the river. He was sentenced in 1847 to fifteen days of imprisonment and Andykowski was fined 40 Gulden. Both of them appealed their sentences, but the Court Chancellery upheld them. In the end, the sentences were reduced to eight days and 20 Gulden.[23]
Only after the adoption of a relatively liberal constitution in 1860 were all restrictions on the occupations of the rural Jews, including their involvement in the propination system, lifted.[24]
Technological and economic changes, which occurred during the first half of the 19th century, directly or indirectly caused considerable changes in the propination system. The most important innovation was the invention of the so-called column still for distillation of pure alcohol, which replaced the traditional pot still. In 1817, the German engineer Heinrich Pistorius improved the distillation process:[25] if the traditional pot still could produce alcohol of 40-50°, the Pistorius’s machine produced alcohol of 60-80°. Moreover, Pistorius’s machine enabled production of cheaper vodka from potatoes and sugar syrup extracted from sugar beet. The cultivation of the potato began in the second half of the 18th century in the Habsburg Monarchy, and the cultivation of sugar beet greatly accelerated in Galicia after the proclamation of the Continental Blockade by Napoleon in 1806. As result, the production of alcohol moved from taverns and inns to industrial distilleries. Thus, the production of alcohol became detached from tavern-keeping during the first half of the 19th century. In 1834, the landlord of the village of Troitsa near Kolomyia leased his inn separately to Itzig Zwischer, and his alcohol distillery to another Jew, Moses Brenner.[26] Most alcohol distilleries were leased to the Jews. 1.4.3-Tavern-8-1
The numbers of distilleries in Galicia in 1836-1896 are shown in tables 1 and 2. Table 2 also shows their production of alcohol in 1875-1896.
Table 1: Alcohol Distilleries in Galicia in 1836-1874[27]
| Year | Number of distilleries |
|---|---|
| 1836 | 3,926 |
| 1837 | 3,712 |
| 1838 | 2,774 |
| 1839 | 2,964 |
| 1840 | 2,431 |
| 1841 | 2,034 |
| 1842 | 1,862 |
| 1843 | 1,713 |
| 1844 | 1,691 |
| 1845 | 1,517 |
| 1846 | 1,359 |
| 1847 | 1,186 |
| 1848 | 1,198 |
| 1849 | 1,113 |
| 1850 | 989 |
| 1851 | 952 |
| 1852 | 789 |
| 1853 | 786 |
| 1854 | 732 |
| 1855 | 664 |
| 1856 | 631 |
| 1857 | 630 |
| 1858 | 623 |
| 1859 | 659 |
| 1861 | 633 |
| 1863 | 634 |
| 1864 | 695 |
| 1865 | 579 |
| 1866 | 418 |
| 1867 | 581 |
| 1868 | 535 |
| 1869 | 702 |
| 1870 | 691 |
| 1871 | 646 |
| 1872 | 555 |
| 1873 | 598 |
| 1874 | 598 |
Table 2: Alcohol Distilleries in Galicia and their Production in 1875-1896[28]
| Year | Number of distilleries | Production of alcohol in hectolitres |
|---|---|---|
| 1875/76 | 605 | |
| 1876/77 | 528 | |
| 1877/78 | 518 | 17,274,696 |
| 1878/79 | 560 | 25,818,694 |
| 1879/80 | 452 | 17,986,265 |
| 1880/81 | 549 | 21,778,755 |
| 1881/82 | 567 | |
| 1882/83 | 556 | |
| 1883/84 | 525 | |
| 1884/85 | 516 | |
| 1885/86 | 588 | 27,942,079 |
| 1886/87 | 589 | |
| 1887/88 | 599 | |
| 1888/89 | 606 | 44,751,569 |
| 1889/90 | 572 | 38,378,170 |
| 1890/91 | 585 | 49,589,947 |
| 1891/92 | 556 | 42,516,604 |
| 1892/93 | 598 | 48,523,913 |
| 1893/94 | 558 | 39,569,677 |
| 1984/95 | 608 | 74,004,654 |
| 1895/96 | 589 | 51,390,374 |
The gradual decline in the number of distilleries, especially during the second half of the 19th century, reflects the replacement of small rural distilleries by large industrial plants in urban centers. Further improvement of distillation technology in 1864 by Pierre Désiré Armand Savalle, which produced 96° alcohol, enabled fewer distilleries to produce greater amounts of alcohol.
Breweries for production of beer were also leased to the Jews, but less frequently than alcohol distilleries. The Hebrew-Israeli writer Asher Barash, originating from Galicia, wrote a novel in 1929, about a brewery in a small town in Eastern Galicia that was leased to a Jewish woman in the late 19th century, in which he admits that this was not a typical Jewish occupation:
“What is more, they [two Jewish merchants] had no idea at all that Jews worked in the beer industry. They were sure that this was a Gentile occupation only. Vodka – yes, but not beer.”[29]
The composition of the workforce of Jewish innkeepers in Galicia in 1900 is shown in the following table:
Table 3: Jewish Innkeepers in Galicia in 1900[30]
| Workforce’s composition | Male | Female | Total | % of total Jewish labor | % of total labor in inns |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Self-employed | 10,624 | 1,511 | 12,135 | 10.3 | 88.4 |
| Managers | 698 | 13 | 711 | 6.2 | 63.3 |
| Hired workers | 2,590 | 533 | 3,123 | 4.4 | 30.9 |
| Helping family members | 2,118 | 4,894 | 7,012 | 15.3 | 93.3 |
| Total | 16,030 | 6,951 | 22,981 | 9.4 | 70.8 |
As can be seen from Table 3, in 1900 Jewish innkeepers constituted a small minority of the entire Jewish workforce. However, the absolute majority of innkeepers was Jewish. Only among hired workers employed in inns were Jews in the minority. Most of the helping family members working in inns were Jewish women. These figures show that Jewish innkeeping was in decline by the end of the 19th century due to a variety of reasons. Many Jews abandoned this centuries-long occupation for more attractive businesses such as the timber and grain trade, and the oil industry, which had developed rapidly in Galicia in the second half of the 19th century. Construction of the railway in the second half of the 19th century was the most important factor contributing to a gradual decline of the propination system. Swift and uninterrupted transportation by rail changed the economic priorities of local landlords considerably, since, for the first time, the export of grain made the grain trade more profitable than its marketing to local population in the form of alcohol. Rural inns became obsolete with the disappearance of horse-driven carriages and were replaced by the railway stations’ hotels. The emergence of a new class of Jewish landlords in the second half of the 19th century in Galicia reflected a gradual reorientation of many Jews from the production and sale of alcohol to production of grain in the Galicia lowland and to the timber trade in the Sub-Carpathian region. However, Jews continued to dominate the production and sale of alcohol in Galicia also into the early 20th century (1.4.3-Tavern-8).
There are abundant descriptions of Jewish taverns in Austrian Galicia, both in Polish and Jewish literature, which provide diverse images of this social institution, from a variety of perspectives. Jan Słomka, the mayor of the village of Dzików near Tarnobrzeg in Western Galicia, vividly described the local Jewish tavern in his memoirs (1912).[31] Especially important are the author’s description of the role played by the rural Jewish tavern in the peasants’ life cycle and their seasonal rural festivities (see Extension 2).
However, the Jewish occupation in the production and sale of alcohol through the propination system also contributed to a negative stereotype of the Jewish innkeeper as a promoter of drunkenness among the non-Jewish rural and urban population. This stereotype was given expression in correspondence appearing in the Ukrainian newspaper Batkivshchyna in 1884-1885.[32]
In the border regions of Galicia many Jewish innkeepers were also involved in smuggling. Polish [[1]] and [[2]] Józef Dzierzkowski (1807-1865) described in his novel, “On the Edge of the Abyss,” (1858) how the Galician Jewish innkeeper Mortko persuaded a poor peasant, Grześ, to join smugglers in order to obtain money to pay his drinking debts, and how Mortko himself was involved in smuggling.[33]
In Bukovina, in the 1880s, Jews ran some 95% almost 1,900 taverns and inns.[34]
The Jewish Taverns of the Late Austrian Period as Reflected in Literature
Literary depictions of the Jewish tavern in late Austrian Galicia can be found in two novels written by two Jewish writers who were natives of Galicia: Joseph Roth’s Weights and Measures (1937) and Julian Stryjkowski’s Austeria (1966). Both authors describe a Jewish tavern near the Russian border in the early 20th century, but their respective outlooks were very different. Roth depicts the Jewish tavern cynically as a place of lawlessness and as a safe haven for criminals, whereas in Styjkowski’s romantic vision it is presented as a kind of Noah’s Ark, an island of peace in the midst of madness and violence.
Roth’s tavern, located in the invented village of Szwaby in the fictional district of Zlotogrod, belongs to Leibusch Jadlowker, who is nicknamed “Leibusch the Lawless.” It is difficult to say to what extent accusations against him can be taken at face value, since the narrator is Anselm Eisenschütz, the Austrian inspector of weights and measures, who falls in love with Leibusch’s mistress, a beautiful Roma girl from Bessarabia named Euphemia Nikitsch. The story takes an ironic twist, when inspector Eisenschütz ‒ unable to accuse Leibusch of any wrongdoing ‒provokes him to curse the Emperor, the State, the Law, and God, and then arrests him for this.[35] It remains unclear who is the true “lawless” character in this story.
The plot of Stryjkowski’s Austeria takes place in the early days of the First World War: “The inn stood by the main road to Duliby, which also led to Skole and the Carpathian Mountains, in almost complete isolation on the edge of the town, far from the school and the synagogue…”[36] The inn-keeper Old Tag lives there with his daughter-in-law, his granddaughter, and a Ukrainian cowgirl Jewdocha, who is also his mistress. A medley of different people gather in the inn escaping the war: a Hungarian hussar who lost his unit, an Austrian baroness, a Catholic priest, and a group of Hasidim with their tsadik. Chaos reigns around the inn: first, a dead girl shot by Cossacks is brought in, then the town is looted and burned down. “Now this promises to be a real Noah’s ark” – says one of the guests,[37] and Old Tag himself says: “My inn is rocking on black waters like a small boat.”[38]
The two novels reflect the double image of the Jewish tavern in Galicia as a focal point of the encounter between different social strata existing precariously at the margins of the law. Ironically, the only thing common to both taverns is that both Jewish tavern keepers have non-Jewish mistresses: the Roma and Ukrainian girls in the stories of Leibusch and Old Tag respectively. With all its positive and negative aspects, the Jewish tavern preserved its central role in the Jewish experience in the rural countryside during the entire Austrian period of Galicia’s history.
The end of the Propination System in Galicia
The propination system was abolished in Galicia only in 1911, much later than in other parts of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In Prussia it was abolished in 1845, and in Russia in 1896-1897. Between 1905 and 1911, propination rights were taken over by the state from local landlords and were replaced with the state tavern concessions (koncesya szynkarska). Twelve thousand taverns out of 25,000 were closed, and 13,000 tavern-keepers obtained new concessions. The majority of these remaining tavern-keepers were Jews. Thus, in the district of Sanok, 172 tavern-keepers received concessions, 132 of them Jewish[39] (1.4.3-Tavern-10). In fact, Galicia remained the last part of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth where the Jewish tavern survived until the First World War, and in some places in Galicia even beyond, as late as interwar Poland.
Select Bibliography
Bałaban, Majer. "Wołczko nadworny faktor Jagiełły i celnik ruski." Kwartalnik historyczny 25 (1911), 228-239 (reprinted in his Z historji Żydów w Polsce. Szkice i studja. Warszawa, 1920).
Bobrzyński, Michał. [Prawo propinacyi w dawnej Polsce]. Kraków: Drukarnia Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 1888.
Kalik, Judith. “The Orthodox Church and the Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.” Jewish History 17 (2003), 229-237.
Kalik, Judith. “The Inn as a Focal Point for Jewish Relations with the Catholic Church in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.” Jews and Slavs 21 (2008), 381-390.
Kalik, Judith. “Jewish Tavern Here and There: Regional Differences in Forms of Rural Lease-Holdings Before and After Partitions.” In The Jewish Tavern: From Architecture to Phantasm, edited by Bożena Shallcross. Indiana University Press (forthcoming).
Kochmann, Norbert. “200 Years in Innovation of Continuous Distillation.” ChemBioEng Reviews 1 (2014), 40-49.
Simpson, Scott. “History and Mythology of Polish Vodka: 1270-2007.” Food & History 8 (2010), 121-148.
Smith, R. E. F. and David Christian, Bread & Salt: A social and economic history of food and drink in Russia, Cambridge 2008.
- ↑ Judith Kalik, Horilka and the Jews: Rise and Fall of the Jewish Tavern in Ukraine (1569-1897) (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming).
- ↑ Mikhail Vol’skii, Ocherk istorii khlebnoi torgovli Novorossiiskogo kraia s drevneishikh vremen do 1852 goda (Sankt-Peterburg, 1854), 42.
- ↑ Gheorghe Ioan Brătianu, La mer Noire: Des origines à la conquête ottoman (Munich: Societas Academica Dacoromana,1969), 44–45.
- ↑ Majer Bałaban, "Wołczko nadworny faktor Jagiełły i celnik ruski," Kwartalnik historyczny 25 (1911), 228-239 (reprinted in his Z historji Żydów w Polsce: Szkice i studja, Warszawa, 1920)
- ↑ Majer Bałaban, "Wołczko nadworny faktor Jagiełły i celnik ruski," Kwartalnik historyczny 25 (1911), 228-239 (reprinted in his Z historji Żydów w Polsce: Szkice i studja, Warszawa, 1920), 76-78.
- ↑ Mykhailo Hrushevskyi, ed., Zherela do istorii Ukrainy-Rusy, vol. 3 (Lviv: Arheohrafichna komisiia Shevchenkivskoho naukovoho tovarystva, 1900), 320.
- ↑ Mykhailo Hrushevskyi, ed., Zherela do istorii Ukrainy-Rusy, vol. 3 (Lviv: Arheohrafichna komisiia Shevchenkivskoho naukovoho tovarystva, 1900), 57.
- ↑ Mordechai Nadav, "Jewish Ownership of Land and Agricultural Activity in 16th Century Lithuania," in Studies in the History of the Jews in Old Poland in Honor of Jacob Goldberg (Scripta Hierosolymitana 38), ed. Adam Teller, Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1998), 161.
- ↑ Jacek Wijaczka, „Inwentarz Dóbr Tuczyńskich na Wołyniu z 1742 r.,” Czasy Nowożytne 1 (1996), 148-149.
- ↑ Judith Kalik, “The Inn as a Focal Point for Jewish Relations with the Catholic Church in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,” Jews and Slavs 21 (2008), 381-390.
- ↑ Jacob Goldberg, "Władza dominialna Żydów-arendarzy dóbr ziemskich nad chłopami w XVII-XVIII w.," Przegląd Historyczny 1-2 (1990), 189-198.
- ↑ Central State Historical Archives at Lviv (TsDIAL) F 142, op. 1.
- ↑ TsDIAL F 142, op. 1, spr. 4, 163.
- ↑ Judith Kalik, “Christian Servants Employed by Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” Polin 14 (2001), 259-270.
- ↑ R. E. F. Smith and David Christian, Bread and Salt: A Social and Economic History of Food and Drink in Russia, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008), 77-81.
- ↑ R. E. F. Smith and David Christian, Bread and Salt: A Social and Economic History of Food and Drink in Russia, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008), 366.
- ↑ Judith Kalik, “The Orthodox Church and the Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,” Jewish History 17 (2003), 229-237.
- ↑ Nathan Michael Gelber, “Toledot ha-yehudim be-Drohobych,” in Sefer Zikaron le-kehilat kodesh Drohobych-Boryslav ve-ha- sevivah, ed. N. M. Gelber (Tel Aviv, Irgun yotsei Drohobich, Borislav ve-ha-sevivah, 1959), 21.
- ↑ Arthur Herzberg, The French Enlightenment and the Jews: The Origins of Modern Anti-Semitism, New York: Columbia University Press; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1968), 76-77.
- ↑ Wacław Tokarz, Galicya w początkach ery józefińskiej w świetle amkiety urzędowej z roku 1783, Kraków: Akademia Umiejętności, 1909), 353-369.
- ↑ Stanisław Grodziski, “The Jewish Question in Galicia: The Reforms of Maria Teresa and Joseph II, 1772-1790,” Polin 12 (1999), 61-72.
- ↑ TsDIAL F. 146, op. 85, spr. 2326, 57-72.
- ↑ TsDIAL F. 146, op. 85, spr. 2326. 74-82.
- ↑ Verordnung des Ministeriums des Innern vom 13. Jänner 1860, giltig für sämmtliche Kronländer, mit Ausnahme der Militärgränze, betreffend die Aufhebung der Beschränkungen, wodurch die Israeliten von gewissen Gewerben und von dem Aufenthalte auf dem flachen Lande in Galizien, im Großherzogthume Krakau und in der Bukowina ausgeschlossen sind (https://alex.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/alex?aid=rgb&datum=18600004&seite=00000044)
- ↑ Norbert Kochmann, “200 Years in Innovation of Continuous Distillation,” ChemBioEng Reviews 1 (2014), pp. 40-49.
- ↑ TsDIAL F 146, op. 85, spr. 2324, pp. 32-34.
- ↑ Tadeusz Klemens Rutowski, Rocznik statystyki Galicji 1 (Lwów: Krajowe Biuro Statystyczne, 1886), 186-190 (tables 5, 6, 8, 11), In 1836-1849 in Galicia and Bukovina, in 1850-1874 in Galicia only.
- ↑ Tadeusz Klemens Rutowski, Rocznik statystyki Galicji 2 (Lwów: Krajowe Biuro Statystyczne, 1889), p. 200 (table 5), 3, 1891, 209-210 (tables 2, 4, 5), 4, 1893, 274-277 (tables 2, 4, 5, 6), 5, 1898, 244-247 (tables 2, 4, 5, 6). In 1875-1896 for the fiscal years starting on September 1.
- ↑ Asher Barash, Pictures from a Brewery (Indianapolis – New York. 1971), 187.
- ↑ Józef Buzek, „Stosunki zawodowe i socjalne ludności w Galicji wg wyznania i języka na podstawie spisu ludnogci z 1900 r. ,” Wiadomości statystyczne o Stosunkach krajowych 20/2, (1905), Tablice [with separate pagination] 6 (table 1).
- ↑ Jan Słomka, From Serfdom to Self-Government: Memoirs of a Polish Village Mayor 1842-1927 (London: Minerva Publishing,1941).
- ↑ John-Paul Himka, “Ukrainian-Jewish Antagonism in the Galician Countryside During the Late Nineteenth Century,” in Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical Perspective, eds. Peter J. Potichnyj and Howard Aster (Edmonton-Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, University of Alberta, 2010), 135-138.
- ↑ Józef Dzierzkowski, “Śliska do przepaści droga,” in Idem, Powieści Józefa Dziezkowskiego (Lwów: A. J. O. Rogosz, 1876), 289-330; also discussed in Magdalena Opalski, The Jewish Tavern-Keeper and his Tavern in Nineteenth-Century Polish Literature (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1986), 16-20.
- ↑ David Rechter, “Bukovina Jewry: 1849-1914”.
- ↑ Julian Stryjkowski, The Inn (London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), 10.
- ↑ Julian Stryjkowski, The Inn (London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), 61
- ↑ Julian Stryjkowski, The Inn (London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), 91.
- ↑ Julian Stryjkowski, The Inn (London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), 194.
- ↑ “Zniesienie propinacyi,” Tygodnik ziemi sanockiej 24 (9.10.1910), 2-3.