Jews and Judaism in Siberia

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Jews and Judaism in Siberia" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (April 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The region of Siberia has been home to Jews since the late 18th century, although Jewish communities did not exist in large part until after 1861, when Tsar Alexander II lifted the restrictions of his father, Tsar Nikolai I regarding Jews in the Pale of Settlement.

Background[edit]

After the Second Partition of Poland in 1793, and the subsequent rebellion by Tadeusz Kościuszko in 1794, and a final Third Partition of Poland in 1795,^[1] the Russian Empire had inherited a huge amount of Jews that had lived in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth due to its lax and limited restrictions on Jews. For example, Jews could serve in the Great Sejm, the Polish-Lithuanian parliament.^[2]

This freedom and autonomy would not be reinforced by the Russian Empire. Queen Catherine II had numerous requests from different parts of society about what to do with the Jews. The Orthodox Church wanted her to expel them, while Baltic merchants who had worked with Jews for centuries under Poland asked her to let them stay. Catherine II allowed Jews to remain in the Empire, but imposed numerous restrictions on them and forced them into cramped ghettos called shtetls.^[3] Under her heir, Alexander I, the Pale of Settlement was expanded to include the newly conquered areas from the Ottoman Empire, where Jews could act like colonialists and settle the nearly uninhabited Ukrainian east, including modern day Donetsk, Luhansk, and in general what was known as Novorossiya.^[4]

Tsar Nikolay I, who succeeded Alexander I, began a long campaign of Russification, which was the act of getting Non-Russians to become Russian, through religious conversion to Russian Orthodoxy and through the erasure of local culture and language. One way that he tried to do this was to enlist young Jewish boys, sometimes as young as 5–10 years old into the Cantonists. The Jews were forbidden from speaking Yiddish or Hebrew, and were forced to convert to Christianity, if they wanted to become officers.^[5] He also passed a law not allowing Jews to live 53 kilometers next to the Prussian and Austrian borders.^[6] This law was later amended and then scraped by Nikolay I. In reality, his policies of Russification were considered a failure. Sergey Uvarov, an imperial statesman, noted that the Jews were an ancient civilization, that had been brought down due to centuries of persecution. However, he realized that it was impossible to destroy Jews and Judaism, and the only way to "solve the Jewish Question" was to educate them, and to promote Jews getting higher education. Uvarov's reforms opened up a huge debate within the Jewish community between the more conservative Hassidim were against these reforms while the more Western Maskilim were for these reforms. In short, Nikolay's plans to russify Jews and destroy the Jewish culture and religion failed and his successor would understand.

Alexander II, Nikolay's son, turned out to be a reformer, as opposed to his father. He abolished the Cantonist system, thus ending conscription for Jewish boys. He allowed Jews to enter high schools and universities, reversing his father's ruling.

More importantly, on November 27, 1861, Alexander opened the rest of Russia for some specific groups of Jews. Jewish scholars, university graduates, merchants, artisans, and manufacturers, were all granted the ability to live in the interior parts of Russia, creating flourishing Jewish communities in Moscow, Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Volgograd, and even in Siberia.^[7][8]

Jewish convicts[edit]

Even prior to the 1861 decree, Jews had already been living in Siberia, mostly as convicts sent there among Russians. The first Jewish convicts sent there were those captured from the Third Partition of Poland. Omsk, Tomsk, Tobolsk, Kainsk, and Nizhneudinsk were recorded having Jewish convict populations.^[9]

The next Jews to arrive were Jewish soldiers who were fighting in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905.^[10] One of these Jews was Joseph Trumpeldor, who went on to fight in World War One, and in the Battle of Tel Hai, where he would ultimately perish.^[11]

The Jewish Autonomous Oblast[edit]

Established in 1928 by Joseph Stalin, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast was created, mostly as a place where Jews could be watched by Stalin and his advisors. Tens of thousands of poor Jews made this move in order to escape their extreme poverty. Furthermore, many were promised good opportunities to gain wealth and status like fishing on the Amur River, forestry, and logging.^[12]

However, the plan was not very successful. Jewish migration was limited as many had their eyes set on first Mandatory Palestine and then Israel. The region was also very boring, with people joking about how the most common cinema in the region was watching the pots boil.^[12]

Nowadays, the region is hardly Jewish. Roughly 0.6% of the region was Jewish in 2021. Most Jews have left to Israel, the United States of America, Britain, and France.

Current[edit]

The city in Siberia which has the largest number of Jews today is Tomsk, with a Jewish population of 4,000 people. Rabbi Levi Kaminetsky arrived in the town in 2004 and revived the almost ruined synagogue. He also helps revitalize the local Jewish community although he notes that most Jews here have a Jewish mother, but non-Jewish father. According to halacha, this makes them Jewish.^[13]

Only roughly 837 ethnic Jews reside in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast as of 2021. Most modern commentators note that Joseph Stalin's efforts to establish a second Jewish homeland failed.^[14]

References[edit]