History of Jews in Kraków and Kazimierz, 1304–1868

In 1867, starting in Austria, the idea of equality made its way into normal constitutional life in Galicia. This wasn’t an easy thing to accomplish, due to prejudices that had been cultivated over long centuries and that had been upheld both by groups and individuals. It was immediately decided that total assimilation of the Jews would dissolve these prejudices and that the Jewish question would be resolved. In fact, assimilation in Galicia had two angles: Polish and German. One had to work for many years before being able to scrape off one’s Germanic patina, which had been applied by Joseph II. The road to assimilation was education, which the youth eagerly embraced and the older generation strongly supported. Already within the years 1869 to 1879, Dr. Samelsohn, together with Prince Sapieha, financed a democratic newspaper entitled Nation, wishing to fill it with tools to fight the clerical times. The editor of Nation was a young Jewish scholar, Dr. Ludwik Gumplowicz, who in 1867 published one of the first scholarly works in Poland based on a kabbalistic archival source, and a work in the field of the history of Jews in Poland entitled Polish Legislation Regarding Jews. On the basis of this work and others, Dr. Gumplow-icz believed that these young scholars should receive habilitation [post-doctoral degrees] at the Jagiellonian University; however, the university’s veniam legendi did not acknowledge his wishes. He himself also had trouble achieving a habilitation in the department of medicine. Another Jewish activist, Dr. Jozef Oettinger, also had difficulty receiving habilitation; however, he managed to overcome this difficulty and became the first Jew to present lectures at Jagiellonian University.

Jewish intellectuals didn’t understand that with the total assimilation of the Jews certain valuable aspects of Jewish culture would be lost, aspects that had been cultivated over hundreds and thousands of years. Instead, they believed that these values had been acquired in the ghetto, therefore, and with their destruction a new Jewishness that would be clear as crystal and free of all ethnic and nationalistic inclusions would remain. Krakovian Orthodoxy, which was brought in by [Rabbi Shimon] Schreiber, had another opinion, as did Galician Orthodoxy, which had been divided into Hasidim and Misnagdim. Hasidim themselves were divided, as they followed various courts (Sacz [Sanz], Sadagora, Belz, etc.). In fact, in the year 1868 they even fought among themselves (Sacz vs. Sadagora). Soon, however, the intellectuals became organized and the Hasidim reconciled among themselves, even reconciling with the Misnagdim (anti-Hasidim). From 1880 to 1890, two organizations of opposing camps were formed: the intellectuals and the “enlightened” Orthodox in political association with Shomer Israel in Lwów, and Orthodoxy of all kinds in association with Maḥzikei Hadas, who had their offices in Belz and their headquarters in Kraków. Rabbi Schreiber was the head of all Galician Orthodoxy. The power struggle was, as it had been previously, about dominance in Jewish communities, and therefore was also concerned with the upbringing and education of youth, and the preservation of traditional forms of Jewishness. At first it appeared that Orthodoxy would dominate, and that the government would acknowledge the “model statute” of the Jewish communities, established by the Congress of Lwów (1882). However, with the death of Schreiber (1883), the progressives took the lead, forming around the Shomer in 1890. The government decided on a literal statute for the Jewish communities, which was in effect in Galicia until 1927. The introduction of democratic electoral regulations by the Polish authorities put the community back into the hands of the strengthened Orthodoxy.

Simultaneously with the dispute between the progressives and the Orthodox, another dispute was being played out among the intellectuals, likely in 1848. After a period of dominance of centralism and Germanization, a period of Polonization took hold. This period saw the art of fraternization between Jews and Poles peak. Jews had equal rights throughout this time. With pogroms in southern Russia after the death of Alexander II, ideological antisemitism came into being in Germany. [ . . . ] The excessively slow progress in acquiring equal rights for the Jews of Galicia, as well as slow progress on all economic fronts (the salt monopoly, the union of farmers, etc.) undermined the belief that assimilation was the solution to the Jewish Question while also creating an environment that alienated and discouraged young Jewish intellectuals. As a result, at the end of the nineteenth century the majority of Jews opposed assimilation and strove with all their might to realize their own agenda. The workers’ sector broke off from the national movement, and with time adopted a socialist agenda and began to dispute authority figures from the overall socialist movement in the Jewish streets, as though the Polish Socialist Party were fighting their Jewish combatants.

This was the situation of Galician Jews and therefore also in Kraków in the post-constitution period.