The Question of the Assimilation of Jews in the Polish Kingdom (1864-1897): An Interpretive Essay

Summary

At the end of the nineteenth century Polish publicists started to taik with increasing frequency about the bankruptcy of assimilation. Although vigorously denied by lzraelita, many of its sympathisers shared the opinion. They intensified their criticism of their previous activity, they acknowledged numerous mistakes and attempted to formulate a new programme. They blamed the Orthodox, the Zionists and the anti-semites for their own lack of widespread influence. They complained of Polish society's indifference to the problems that they were forced to face. The final words of the Lwów paper Ojczyzna were:

Tired and exhausted we yield. We once believed and still believe that the Jews could only be granted citizenship with the cooperation of native Polish society. We thought that the Polish community would extend its hand to this joint work toward our common advantage. We have been disappointed. What has the country contributed towards the moral and economic elevation of the Jewish masses during the quarter century of autonomous govemments?

It is worth looking closer at this question of the bankruptcy of assimilation. Did this bankruptcy really occur and why did assimilation decline, a movement which had seemed so dynamic immediately after the January Uprising? Are the assimilationists themselves more to blame for its failure than the Poles? Were ‘mistakes’ made by both sides?

First, however, I would like to draw attention to a problem of terminology. Various terms were used in the second half of the nineteenth century to describe this and related phenomena: assimilation, the attainment of citizenship (uobywatelnienie), emancipation, civilizing and progressiveness. These were often used interchangeably. No research was done at the time into the phenomenon of assimilation, neither was a theory developed that could adequately describe this process. Approaches to it were, on the whole, intuitive. Assimilation, many publicists assumed, meant the same as the attainment of citizenship, emancipation or, for that matter, progress. Polonized Jews were called ‘postfępowy’ (progressives) or civilized. These words were used by all groups, Jews and Poles alike, although they understood them somewhat differently. The Ha-Tsefirah group for instance saw emancipation as interconnected with acculturation; Poles of the Mosaic persuasion, on the other hand, understood emancipation as linked to assimilation. The latter group saw assimilation as a natural outcome of possession of equal rights. That was what in fact happened, on the whole, in Poland in the first half of the nineteenth century as well.