Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

The Jews, by Chaim Bermant. 1977. Times Books, New York

Jews Were Not Forced Into Usury. Intolerance Flowed Both Ways. Jewish Disloyalty to Poland Because They Identified With the Stronger

This book provides much detail, of which one review can only cover a little. Particularly interesting are items about Jewish successes in such things as medicine, science, Hollywood, banking, capitalism, and Communism.

NOT ONLY CHRISTIANS WERE “INTOLERANT” TO DISSENTERS. SO WERE JEWS

The blood libel directed against Jews preceded Christianity, and accusations of ritual murder were sometimes directed at the early Christians. (p. 31). In the Middle Ages, Jews enjoyed almost near universal literacy, owing to religious reasons. (p. 133). During this time, Maimonides taught that the human-like attributes of God, including forgiveness, were merely human ideas about what God is like and how God acts. Other rabbis declared his works heretical and burned them. (p. 10).

JEWS WERE NOT FORCED INTO USURY

Bermant points out that it is incorrect to suggest that Jews were ever forced to become usurers, but financial circumstances encouraged this trend. (p. 23).  For more on the myth that Jews were forced into commerce, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/jews-forced-into-commerce-a-myth-botticini/

JEWISH ETHNIC SOLIDARITY FACILITATED INDIVIDUAL JEWS GETTING RICH

Jews later became bankers in part because their contacts with fellow Jews facilitated the taking of financial risks. (p. 41). Obviously, there was a collective aspect to the Jewish acquisition of wealth.

JEWISH PRIVILEGE. ANTIGOYISM. THE JEWISH MIDDLEMAN: CANDID ALLUSION TO THE EXPLOITATION OF THE POLES

When they entered Poland in large numbers, Jews became situated between the nobility and the peasantry. Bermant comments, (quote) In Poland, the Jews became so numerous, prosperous, and entrenched, that they began to lose something of their caution…Rabbis warned that Jews were sowing a terrible harvest of hatred, but while the revenues rolled in the warnings were ignored. Moreover, the Rabbis themselves were beneficiaries of the system. (unquote)(p. 26) To the Jews, (quote) The Pole was almost the reincarnation of Esau, `a cunning hunter, a man of the field’, cheerful, bucolic, feckless, licentious and improvident. (unquote) (p. 26).

THE RECIPROCITY OF JEWISH-CHRISTIAN PREJUDICES

The Jews had their share of prejudices against goys. Bermant writes that, (quote) The medieval Jew had but slight contact with Christians or Christianity, and everything he knew of them both he abhorred. (unquote)(p. 22). In addition, (quote) The Jew, in ancient times at least, also had an extravagant idea of the sexual tastes and aptitudes of the gentile. The Talmud, for example, decreed that one shouldn’t stable one’s ass with a non-Jew in case it should be buggered. (unquote)(. 29). Bermant adds, (quote) It is further true that Rabbis were at pains to explain that the contemptuous references to gentiles in the Talmud were not concerned with gentiles as such, but with idol worshippers, and that the Russians and Poles were not idol worshippers. (unquote)(p. 35) [This is an old and dishonest fig leaf.]

SOME JEWS, TOO, DOUBTED THE VALUE OF JEWS AS SOLDIERS

Although this would change later, Poles as of the early 20th century were accused of having a low opinion of the capabilities of Jews as soldiers. Interestingly, none other than David Ben Gurion shared the same assessment of Jews. In his description of Jewish settlers in Palestine during the same time (the early part of the 20th century), Ben Gurion commented, “`Jews did not readily take to bearing arms. As a people we have an ingrained abhorrence to violence.'” (p. 207).

Note the irony of the fact that Poles were berated for sometimes questioning the military aptitude of Jewish soldiers:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/jewish-soul-is-not-polish-soul-admitted-by-tuwim/

JEWS DIDN’T IDENTIFY WITH POLAND BECAUSE THEY WERE PRONE TO IDENTIFY WITH THE STRONGER ENEMIES OF POLAND

Bermant touches on Polish-Jewish relations leading up to the period of Poland’s re-acquisition of independence in 1918, “They bring to mind the complaints of Polish nationalists in Hapsburg Galicia that Galician Jews were rather more interested in being Austrians than Poles…Jews may not be rootless cosmopolitans but they have generally felt happier within the larger nationalism than the smaller.” (p. 241).

JEWISH GERMANOPHILIA: JEWS HAD IT WELL UNDER THE GERMANS, SO WHY SUPPORT POLAND?

The author mentions aspects of the German-Jewish symbiosis and, although he does not develop this theme, makes it obvious why erstwhile Polish Jews living in German-occupied Poland were generally unwilling to challenge the status quo by supporting the resurrection of the Polish state. Jews, at perhaps about 1% of Prussia’s population, assumed, by 1925, the status of 15% of Prussia’s dentists, 18% of her doctors, and 25% of her lawyers. (p. 128). [Later, the Nazis became alarmed by this huge imbalance.]

THE ZYDOKOMUNA: THE MYTH OF THE OPPRESSED JEW

Bermant quotes von Plehve, the Tsarist Minister of the Interior, who estimated that Jews, at less than 5% of Russia’s population, constituted over 50% of her revolutionaries. (p. 160). Most Jewish revolutionaries came from prosperous families. (p. 160). The author cites the canned exculpation, for Jewish over-involvement in Communism, as a reaction against anti-Semitism. However, he quotes Karl Marx’s virulent anti-Semitic statements (p. 161), but fails to explain why Jews generally overlooked this form of anti-Semitism. Was it an act of selective indignation?

Now consider the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. Bermant identifies fourteen prominent members of the Communist government who were Jewish. He adds that four of the seven members of the first Politburo were Jews. (p. 169).