The Jews of Slavia Graeca: The Northern Frontier of Byzantine Jewry

THE JEWS OF SLAVIA GRAECA: THE NORTHERN FRONTIER OF BYZANTINE JEWRY?

Alexander Kulik

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Most of the evidence indicating the existence of Jewish settlement in Eastern Europe1 prior to the mass migration from Ashkenaz2 origi-nates from territories that were annexed to the Grand Duchy of Lith-uania during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, i.e., from the southwestern principalities of Rus’,3 which since then had become an integral part of Lithuania and subsequently of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.4 !ese territories included the oldest and the most important centers of pre-Mongolian Kievan Rus’, in which a Jewish presence was attested from the tenth century, on the one hand, and which were for an extended period part of the Byzantine Kulturbereich, on the other hand.

With the Mongolian conquest in the "rst half of the thirteenth cen-tury, evidence of the presence of Jews in Rus’ is reduced to the ter-ritory of Galicia-Volhynia, which su#ered less from the Mongolian invasion due to its western location.5 From the end of the Lithuanian

1 According to the traditional narrow de"nition of the latter: the territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Confederation in its prime.

2 A term of medieval Jewish geography applied to Germany, normally to its south-ern and western lands.

3 Known in Hebrew sources as !�'<#:/�'<#:/�'2#:, the term equivalent to “Rus’ ” and referring to the lands of the Eastern Slavs in the Middle Ages.

4 Only single reports come from the adjacent lands: northeastern Rus’ (Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisej, St. Petersburg, 1841–1885, 2.114–115; 5.164–165) and Polish trade routes between Germany and Rus’ (B. D. Weinryb, “!e Beginnings of East European Jewry in Legend and Historiography,” Studies and Essays in Honor of Abra-ham A. Neuman (Leiden, 1962), 445–502; I. M. Ta-Shma, “On the History of Polish Jewry in the 12th–13th Centuries,” Zion 53 (1988): 347–69 (Hebrew); idem, “New Material for the History of the Jews in Poland,” Zion 54 (1989): 205–8 (Hebrew); idem, “On the History of the Jews in Twel$h- and !irteenth-Century Poland,” Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry 10 (1997): 287–317.

5 With an exception of the short notice on a Jewish moneylender visiting Kashin in 1321 (see below; Polnoe sobranie, 15.414). For the Jews in Volhynia see below.

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conquest in Rus’ and the partition of Galicia-Volhynia between Poland and Lithuania, which occurred in the mid-fourteenth century, there are no extant references to a local Jewish population in north-eastern Rus’—what would come to be Muscovite Rus’ in the future. Sources from Rus’ refer at that time only to Jewish visitors coming to the area from elsewhere,6 as opposed to the relatively plentiful evidence of a Jewish presence in Lithuania and Poland from the same period of time.7 References to !�'<#:/�''<#:/�'2#: in Jewish sources from Ashkenaz from this period also must refer to “Lithuanian Rus’,” which was still de"ned as “Rus’’ in numerous foreign sources, as well.

In recent decades, several studies have investigated the ever-increas-ing amount of evidence on cultural contacts between Jews and Chris-tians, as re/ected in Eastern Slavic literary documents from the Middle Ages.8 Based on this disparate evidence, we can identify a unique cul-

6 See East Slavic Chronicles: 1445—foreign Jewish merchants buy slaves in Novgorod (Polnoe sobranie, 3.240; 4.124; 17.187); 1471—Kievan Jews visit Novgorod in the retinue of the Prince Michailo Olelkovich (Polnoe sobranie, p. 4.235); 1490—a Jewish physician from Venice at the court of Ivan III. Jews from Lithuania and the Crimea are mentioned also in the diplomatic correspondence of Ivan III (G. O. Karpov, Pamiatniki diplomaticheskikh snoshenij Drevenj Rossii s derzhavami inostrannymi. Vol. 1 (RIO 41). St. Petersburg, 1884.

7 S. A. Bershadskij, Dokumenty i materialy dlja istorii evreev v Rossii I: Dokumenty i regesty k istorii litovskikh evreev (1388–1550), (St. Petersburg, 1882); Regesty i nadpisi. Svod materialov dlja istorii evreev v Rossii (80 g.—1800 g.), (St. Petersburg, 1899), Vol. 1, p. 68#; A. Ja. Harkavi, New and Old: Sources and Studies in the History of Israel and its Literature ( Jerusalem, 1970), 6–17 (Hebrew).

8 See A. A. Alexeev, Tekstologija slavjanskoj Biblii (Bausteine zur slavischen Philolo-gie und Kulturgeschichte: Slavistische Forschungen XXIV), (St. Petersburg, 1999); idem, “Perevody s drevneevrejskikh originalov v drevnej Rusi,” Russian Linguistics 11 (1987): 1–20; idem, “Russko-evrejskie literaturnye svjazi do 15 veka,” Jews and Slavs 1 (1993): 44–75; M. Altbauer, M. Taube, “!e Slavonic Book of Esther: When, Where, and from What Language was it Translated?,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 8 (1984): 304–20; A. Arkhipov, Po tu storonu Sambationa (Oakland, 1995); H. G. Lunt, M. Taube, “Early East Slavic Translations from Hebrew,” Russian Linguistics 11 (1988): 147–87; idem, “!e Slavonic Book of Esther: Translation from Hebrew or Evidence for a Lost Greek Text?,” Harvard !eological Review 87/3 (1994): 347–62; idem, !e Slavonic Book of Esther: Text, Lexicon, Linguistic Analysis, Problems of Translation (Cambridge, 1998); M. Taube, “O genezise odnogo rasskaza v sostave Ellinskogo letopisca vtoroj redakcii (o vzjatii Ierusalima Titom),” in Russian Literature and History: In Honor of Professor I. Serman, eds. Wolf Moskovich et al. ( Jerusalem, 1989), 146–51; idem, “On some Unidenti"ed and Misidenti"ed Sources of the Academy Chronograph,” in Russian Philology and Literature presented to Prof. Victor D. Levin on his 75th birthday, eds. Wolf Moskovich et al. ( Jerusalem, 1992), 365–75; idem, “On the Slavic Life of Moses and its Hebrew Sources,” in Jews and Slavs 1, eds. Wolf Moskovich et al. ( Jerusalem, 1993), 84–119; ibid. “!e Fi$eenth-Century Ruthenian Translations from Hebrew and the Heresy of the Judaizers: Is !ere a Connection?” in Speculum Slaviae Ori-entalis: Muscovy, Ruthenia and Lithuania in the Late Middle Ages (= UCLA Slavic

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tural reality that is not attested in other regions during this period. However, every researcher analyzing this material comes up against a problem: the detection of traces of cultural activity of the Jews in Rus’ is at odds with the direct accounts referring to their presence there. !e mere fact of a permanent settlement of Jews in Rus’ is cast in doubt by some researchers, and the scant evidence that does exist is at times viewed as lacking historic value. !us, the research of any and every issue pertaining to the Jewry of Rus’ must "rst clarify the funda-mental question: was there a permanent Jewish settlement in Rus’?

It is not uncommon to "nd radical evaluations in the research on the “pre-Ashkenazi” Jewish population in Kievan Rus’, from hyper-critical attempts to deny the fact of its existence,9 to an unjusti"ed exaggeration of its size and of its role in the ensuing formation of Eastern European Jewry.10 !ere are various reasons for the extrem-ist nature of these two opinions: (a) a need to adapt the conclusions to research perspectives that relate to broader themes (for example, Weinryb advocating the Ashkenazi homogeneousness of Polish Jewry,11 or on the other pole, the scholars of Khazaria attempting to "nd traces of a Khazarian legacy in the region);12 (b) ideological reasons (for instance, among Russian-Jewish scholars of the nineteenth and twen-tieth centuries, who keenly sought legitimization in Russian society by

Studies, 4), eds. V. Vyacheslav Ivanov and J. Verkholantsev (Moscow, 2005), 185–208; idem, “Which Hebrew Text of Algazel’s Intentions Served for the Translation of the Slavic Logika?” in Quadrivium I: Festschri+ in Honour of Professor Wolf Moskovich, eds. Moshe Taube et al. ( Jerusalem, 2006), 47–52; J. Raba, !e Contribution and the Recompense: !e Land and the People of Israel in Medieval Russian !ought (Tel-Aviv, 2003) (Hebrew).

9 See Weinryb, “!e Beginnings of East European Jewry”; idem, “!e Myth of Samuel of Russia, the 12th Century Author of a Bible Commentary,” Jewish Quarterly Review. Special edition for the 75th Anniversary (Philadelphia, 1967): 529–43:19–22; L. S. Chekin, “!e Role of Jews in Early Russian Civilization in the Light of a New Discovery and New Controversies,” Russian History/Histoire Russe 17/4 (1990): 379–94.; ibid., “K analizu upominanij o evrejakh v drevnerusskoj literature XI-XII vekov,” Slavjanovedenie 3 (1994): 34–42.

10 See A. Ja. Garkavi, Ob jazyke evreev zhivshikh v drevnee vremja na Rusi i slav-janskikh slovakh vstrechaemykh u evrejskikh pisatelej (St. Petersburg, 1865), 99; H. Kuchera, Die Chasaren, eine Historische Studie (Wien, 1909); M. Baratz, Sobranie tru-dov po voprosu o evrejskom elemente v russkoj pis’mennosti (Paris, 1924–1927); A. N. Poliak, Khazaria: A History of the Jewish Kingdom in Europe (Tel-Aviv, 1953), 255–75 (Hebrew).

11 See Weinryb, “!e Beginnings of East European Jewry”; idem, “!e Myth,” 19–22.

12 See Poliak, Khazaria, 255–75.

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proving Jewish “authenticity” in the territory of the Russian empire);13 (c) and partial familiarity with the sources (for example, in contem-porary studies that rely exclusively on Slavic material,14 or in studies carried out prior to the release of important sources, such as the "nd-ings of the Cairo Geniza).

None of these radical opinions is corroborated by the sources in our possession. In this article, I will present the major phenomena that enable us to infer the existence of this settlement: (a) Mutual corrobo-ration of the sources: the evidence in our possession is not suspected of being the product of a uniform tradition emanating from a com-mon source.15 On the contrary, it is possible to cite documents that belong to diverse and independent traditions, which corroborate one another even in their references to speci"c phenomena. (b) ‘Histori-cal continuity’: the presence of the Jews in a speci"c territory is well documented before and a$er the period in question; (c) High ‘repre-sentativity’ of the evidence: on the basis of the limited sources in our possession, it is possible to relate to nearly all aspects of Jewish life. !e presence of Jews in Rus’ is re/ected in accounts of wide-ranging and balanced distribution, diverse occupations that are characteristic of the period, citations of communal structure and communal func-tions, certain cultural activity, and close contacts with the local gentile environment.

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A. Nature of the SourcesHistorical evidence of a Jewish presence in Rus’ prior to the “Lithu-anian period” is scant, but may be found in diverse sources and inde-pendent traditions, as well as in various cultures. !is is the case for internal sources (all of which are in Hebrew) that shed light on the history of the Jews of Rus’ from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries, including diplomatic and commercial correspondence from Khazaria

13 !is model has been turned out in modern Russian scholarship, when Russian non-Jewish scholars consider Russian-Jewish contacts as an evidence of the high cul-tural level of pre-Mongolian Rus.’ See, e.g., V. N. Toporov, Svjatost’ i svjatye v russkoj dukhovnoj kulture, V. 1 (Moskva, 1995), 340–57.

14 Chekin, “!e Role of Jews”; idem, “K analizu.”15 Despite Weinryb, “!e Beginnings of East European Jewry”; Chekin, “K analizu.”

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and Byzantium, and halakhic ( Jewish legal) texts from Ashkenaz.16 !e Slavic sources are richer, and they too include diverse genres, such as: (a) historiography, (b) civil and ecclesiastic legislation, (c) hagiogra-phy, (d) excerpts of di#erent types of ecclesiastical literature related to the anti-Jewish polemic,17 (e) translations from Hebrew into Slavic (and possibly other textual relicts of cultural dialogue between Jews and Eastern Slavs, as well).18 Division of the sources into groups and sub-groups became an impediment toward progress in the subject, because most scholars were not fully adept in use of the tools neces-sary for study of the complete body of the material. !us, they failed to notice the fact that the internal ( Jewish) and external (non-Jewish) sources at times corroborate one another independently.

B. Historical Continuity Evidence of the existence of Jewish settlement in the cities of western Khazaria (such as Kiev and Tmutorokan’), i.e., in the territory of Rus’ prior to its political formation, is not contested.19 !e same holds true for accounts of Jewish settlement in these territories following their

16 All Ashkenazi halakhic collections cited below date in the range between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries. Most Hebrew sources were assembled by Kupfer and Lewicki (,ródla).

17 For attempts to assemble or to summarize Slavic sources, see I. Malyshevskij, Evrei v juzhnoj Rusi i Kieve v X-XII vekakh (Trudy Kievskoj dukhovnoj Akademii VI, IX) (Kiev, 1878); Regesty i nadpisi, 54–65; Ju. Gessen, Istorija evrejskogo naroda v Rossii (Petrograd, 1916); I. Z. Berlin, Istoricheskie sud’by evrejskogo naroda na territorii russkogo gosudarstva (Petrograd, 1919); idem, “Evrei v Juzhnoj Rusi do obrazovanija Russkogo gosudarstva, Evrei v Juzhnoj Rusi v epokhu Kievskogo i Galitsko-Volynskogo gosudarstva,” Istorija evreev v Rossii II/1 (Istorija evrejskogo naroda XII/1) (Moskva, 1921), 1–84, 113–54; Weinryb, “!e Beginnings of East European Jewry”; S. Ettinger, “!e Kievan Rus,” History of the Jewish People: !e Dark Ages (Tel-Aviv, 1973), 187–9 (Hebrew); H. Birnbaum, “On Some Evidence of Jewish Life and Anti-Jewish Senti-ments in Medieval Russia,” Viator 4 (1973): 225–55; O. Pritsak, “!e Pre-Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe in Relation to the Khazars, the Rus’ and the Lithuanians,” Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical Perspective (Edmonton, 1988), 3–21; Chekin, “!e Role of Jews.”

18 See Alekseev, “Perevody”; ibid., “Russko-evrejskie literaturnye svjazi do 15 veka,” Jews and Slavs 1 (1993): 44–75; Altbauer, Taube, !e Slavonic Book; Arkhipov, Po tu storonu; Lunt, Taube, “Early East Slavic Translations”; idem, !e Slavonic; Taube, “O genezise”; Taube, “On some unidenti"ed”; idem, “On the Slavic;” idem, “!e Fi$eenth-Century Ruthenian Translations;” idem, “Which Hebrew Text;” Toporov, “Svjatost.”

19 !ere were even attempts to count the Jewish population of Khazaria, although the data is far from being su9cient for such an exercise (see Pritsak, “!e Pre-Ashkenazic”).

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annexation to Lithuania.20 !e continuity of evidence of Jewish life in this territory, over which the sovereignty was changing, and the lack of data on persecution or economic distress, may be indicative of Jewish settlement continuity in the region. !is is the case for the entire region at least until the Mongolian conquest, and a$er the con-quest as well, in those places that did not su#er from it, and which might even have served as places of refuge (like Galicia-Volhynia and Novgorod).

C. DisseminationOur very scant sources nevertheless re/ect the wide dissemination of Jews, including Kiev and Chernigov in the center of our region, Vol-hynia in the west, Tmutorokan in the south, and probably Suzdal in the northeast.21 !e Jewish presence in Kiev is well documented as early as the tenth century, when the Kievan Letter was written.22 Slavic sources are relatively abundant: “Khazarian Jews” came to Prince Vladimir according to a legend included in the Primary Chronicle (986–988); according to his Vita (46), !eodosius of the Cave Monastery of Kiev held disputes with Jews.23 A Jewish quarter and Jewish gates are men-tioned in the Chronicles under the years 1124, 1146, and 1151, and, also, in the context of the riots of 1113.24 As for Jewish sources in the same twel$h century, “Moses of Kiev,” a pupil of Rabenu Tam, is known through a responsum sent to him by R. Samuel ben Ali of Baghdad and is mentioned in Western Jewish works: Sefer ha-Yashar and Responsa by R. Meir of Rothenburg, and possibly also as “Moses

20 See Bershadskij, Dokumenty i materialy; Regesty i nadpisi: 68#. 21 Polnoe sobranie 2.114–115; 5.164–165; see A. Kulik, “!e Earliest Evidence on

the Jewish Presence in Western Rus’,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 27/1–4 (2004–05 [2009]): 13–24.

22 A recommendation letter signed by heads of the Kievan community, found in Cairo Geniza (Cambridge, ms T-S 12.122) and published by N. Golb and O. Pritsak, Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century (Ithaca, 1982).!e question of Jewish/Khazarian presence in Kiev is connected also with a discussion on the rela-tive Khazarian-Rusian chronology and the nature of political relations between these nations; see, e.g., V. Ja. Petruckin, “O russkom kaganate, nachalnom letopisanii, poiskakh i nedoRazumenijakh v noveishei istoriogra"i,” Slavjanovedenie 4 (2001): 78–82; and C. Zuckerman, “On the Date of the Khazars’ Conversion to Judaism and the Chronology of the Kings of the Rus Oleg and Igor,” Revue des études byzantines 53 (1995): 237–70.

23 D. Abramovi: and D. Tsci;ewskij (eds.), Das Paterikon des Kiever Hoehlenk-losters (Slavische Propylaen 2) (München, 1964), 65.

24 Polnoe sobranie pp. 2.10; 7.25.

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of Rus’ ” in Sefer ha-Shoham by R. Moshe ben Yitzhak.25 Chernigov is explicitly mentioned in the same Sefer ha-Shoham, where “R. Yitzhak of Sernigov” is quoted as an authority in the Slavic language.26 In the region of Tmutorokan’, when it was governed by East Slavic princes, there is no evidence for Jewish settlement, although in the periods of Khazarian and Byzantine rule Jews de"nitely lived there, according to Hebrew, Arabic, and Byzantian sources.27 A Jewish presence in Vol-hynia is mentioned in Slavic sources only once28 but is well corrobo-rated by several Jewish sources.29 However, there is no mention of Jews in Novgorod, not even as visitors, until the "$eenth century.30

D. OccupationsAs far as vocational occupations are concerned, it is possible to de"ne the referred-to individuals as: (a) merchants: “and also from the place of Rus’ from the elders [of the community], merchants came [here]”31 (b) moneylenders: “In the spring, Gachna the Tatar with the Jew the moneylender came to the [town of ] Kashin and caused many troubles to Kashin,”32 (c) probably “court Jews,”33 (d) teachers and paid cantors: “In most places in Poland and Rus’ and Hungary in which, due to their

25 See S. Ettinger, “Moses of Kiev,” Encyclopedia Judaica 12 ( Jerusalem, 1971–1992), 433.

26 B. Klar (ed.) Sefer ha-Shoham (!e Onix Book) Vol. I (London, 1947), 142; C. Roth, “Moses ben Isacc Nessiah and his Work, the Sefer of Shoham” in Sefer ha-Shoham (!e Onix Book) Vol. I, ed. B. Klar (London, 1947), 5–16: 11. For attempts to identify R. Yitzhak with other Jews with the same name, see A. Drabkin, “Itse (Isaak) iz Chernigova,” Evrejskaja Entsiklopedija 8 (1904): 523; J. Jackobs, !e Jews of Angeuin England: Documents and Records (New York, 1893), 73; Ta-Shma, “On the History of Polish Jewry,” 363.

27 See below; !eophanes, Chronography, in !eophanis Chronographia, ed. C. de Boor (Leipzig, 1883–1885), 357; Ibn alFakih, Kitab albuldan, in Ibn alFakih, Kitab albuldan (BGA V), ed. M. J. de Goeje (Leiden, 1885), 271.

28 Hypatian Chronicle, under the year 1288 (Polnoe sobranie, 2.220).29 For details see Kulik, “Earliest Evidence.” For Jews of Volhynia in the period

see Ms Paris 380, A. Grossman, !e Early Sages of France ( Jerusalem, 1995), 135 (Hebrew); Sefer ha-Zekhira by R. Efraim of Bonn, A. M. Habermann, !e Persecutions in Germany and France ( Jerusalem, 1945), 128 (Hebrew); Or Zarua by R. Hayim ben Yitzhak, 157; Ta-Shma, “On the History of Polish Jewry,” 361–2).

30 Jews visiting Novgorod are mentioned for the "rst time in the First Novgorodian Chronicle, year 1445 (Polnoe sobranie, 3.240; 4.124; 17.187).

31 J. Mann, Texts and Studies in Jewish History and Literature (Cincinnati, 1931–1935), 1.50, ll. 44–5. !e fragment dealing with the dispute between the Rabbanites and the Karaites is dated to the eleventh century.

32 Polnoe sobranie, 15.414.33 !is anachronistic de"nition refers here to Anbal Jasin, a controversial courtier

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di9cult situations, there are no Torah scholars, they hire as knowl-edgeable a man as they can "nd, and he becomes their cantor and teacher of righteousness, and he teaches their sons.”34

E. Community One might have assumed that the above-mentioned sources are descriptive only of isolated individuals, were it not for the fact that several sources cite the existence of a communal structure, at least in Kiev and in Volhynia. See use of the terms parnas,35 “elders of the community,”36 “community of Rus’ ” (�'2#: +!9).37

Hints to the existence of communal institutions in Vladimir can also be found in the responsum in Or Zarua by R. Hayim ben Yitzhak of the thirteenth century (where both Vladimir and Kholm of Vohlynia are mentioned):

!e husband gave the divorce letter to Shemuel ha-Kohen and said: “I appoint you messenger to bring the divorce letter to my wife wherever she may be until she receives the letter from you.” And "nally, we have sent to Vladimir for the woman and the messenger, so that she could be divorced here, and we insisted that he [her husband] shall give her divorce by himself. However, he did not want to do so. !erefore, we also ordained that he be sent for from the town Kholm.38

F. Cultural ActivityWe know of the activity of several emigrants from Rus’ in Germany, France, England, and Spain.39 Evidence of cultural endeavors in Rus’ per se is limited to two facts: (a) !e composing of a commentary on the Pentateuch, the Sefer Ruseina (known also as ‘Rushaina’—�1''<#: :62)’ by Rabbi Samuel ‘of Rus’ ’ (�'<#:/) which is dated to the year 1124. Facts regarding the origin of the book and its author are the subject

of Andrej Bogolubskij of Vladimir in Suzdal (Polnoe sobranie 2.114–115; 5.164–165); see Kulik, “!e Earliest Evidence.”

34 Or Zarua by Isaac ben Moses of Vienna (1, 113).35 “Kievan Letter,” l. 25, 30 (Golb, Pritsak, Khazarian, 14).36 Mann, Texts, 1.50, ll. 44–5.37 A. Marmorstein, “Nouveaux renseignements sur Tobiya ben Eliézer,” Revue des

études juives 73 (1921): 92–7; J. Mann, !e Jews in Egypt and in Palestine under the Fatimid Caliphs, (London, 1920–1922), 2.192.

38 Or Zarua by R. Hayim ben Yitzhak, 157; also Ta-Shma, “On the History of Pol-ish Jewry,” 361–2.

39 Berlin, “Evrei,” 149–54.

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of controversy. !e book preserved the Italian tradition with a lot of Italian glosses, and Weinryb not too convincingly suggests that its author must have also been Italian,40 (b) Jewish involvement in transla-tions in the period preceding the activity of the Judaisers, the "$eenth century, and in later translations from Lithuania.41 !is involvement was re/ected in translations from Hebrew (and possibly also from Judeo-Greek).42 !e transmission of some of these compositions sup-posedly translated from Hebrew is the subject of debate. Among those phenomena in which persons with a knowledge of Hebrew are clearly involved are the insertion of excerpts of the Hebrew Book of Yosippon into an early East Slavic chronography and Hebrew-based glosses to Slavic translations of the Septuagint.43

G. Relations with the Christian EnvironmentLocal Jews were apparently /uent in the language of their Eastern Slavic neighbors. One source even implies Slavic as the single spo-ken language: “M. anon. son of anon., who is from the community of Rus’ . . . knows neither the holy language nor the Greek language, and not Arabic, either, but only the “language of Canaan,”44 spoken by the people of his native land.”45 !is evidence is supported by the numer-ous Slavic names and nicknames (ranging from the Kievan Letter of the tenth century46 to Lithuanian documents of the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries)47 as well as the so-called “Slavic glosses,” i.e., Slavic words and expressions, which include East Slavic forms that are found in abundance in the contemporary Hebrew literature.48

40 Weinryb, “!e Myth.” For edition see M. Weiss, Sefer Rushaina ( Jerusalem, 1976–1997) (Hebrew).

41 Altbauer, Taube, !e Slavonic Book.42 See below.43 See Alekseev, “Perevody”; Ibid, “Russko-evrejskie”; Alexeev, Tekstologija; Lunt,

Taube, “Early East Slavic Translations.”44 On the term “language of Canaan” applied to di#erent Slavic dialects in the

Middle Ages, see M. Weinreich, “Yiddish, Knaanic, Slavic: !e Basic Relationships,” For Roman Jakobson, (!e Hague, 1956), 622–32; R. Jakobson, M. Halle, “!e Term Canaan in Medieval Hebrew,” For Max Weinreich on his Seventieth Birthday (!e Hague, 1964), 147–72.

45 Marmorstein, “Nouveaux renseignements,” 95; Mann, !e Jews, 2.192.46 A. L. Torpusman, “Antroponimija i etnicheskie kontakty narodov Vostochnoj

Evropy v srednie veka,” Imja – Etnos – Istorija (Moskva, 1989), 48–53.47 Bershadskij, Dokumenty i materialy; Regesty i nadpisi,1.68#.48 Garkavi, Ob jazyke; R. Jakobson, “Iz razyskanij nad starocheshskimi glossami v

srednevekovykh evrejskikh pamjatnikakh,” Slavica Hierosolimitana VII (1985): 45–6.

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!e anti-Jewish polemic assumed an important place in the emerg-ing East Slavic literature from the eleventh century onwards.49 Appar-ently, this was not merely a rhetorical exercise or an in/uence of the Byzantine tradition, because the existence of the polemic in reality is also re/ected in the contemporary hagiography.50 Clear conclusions on the nature of the polemic and its connection to reality may be reached only a$er publication of critical editions of at least such major com-positions of this polemic as Palaia Interpretata, and comprehensive study of their sources.51

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Clari"cation of the origin of the Jews of medieval Rus’ constitutes a key problem in the determination of the sources of Eastern European Jewry as a whole. It may be stated that in the mid-fourteenth century, the era of the separate existence of the Jews of Rus’ came to an end, at least politically, and possibly also culturally, and a process of their acculturation was initiated among the bearers of the Ashkenazi cul-ture who were arriving in Poland and Lithuania from the West. !us, long before the divisions of Poland in the eighteenth century and the beginning of the new era in the history of the descendents of the Jews of Rus’, we "nd in the region a Jewish population with a uniform Ashkenazi culture and, with barely any trace of the unique tradition of its ancestors.52

49 Beginning from the Sermon on Law and Grace by Illarion, considered to be the "rst original literary composition of Eastern Slavs.

50 See above; Life of !eodosius (Abramovi:, Tsci;ewskij, Paterikon, 65).51 Meanwhile only single versions have been published. See Paleja tolkovaja po

spisku sdelannomu v g. Kolomne v 1406 g. Trud uchenikov N. S. Tichonravova (Moskva, 1892–6); Tolkovaja paleja 1477 goda, Izdanija Obshchestva ljubitelej dRevneRusskoj pis’mennosti, V. 93 (St. Petersburg, 1893); A. M. Kamchatnov et alii (eds.), Paleja tolk-ovaja (Moskva, 2002); I. Evseev, “Slovesa svjatych prorok—protivoiudejskij pamjatnik po rukopisi XV vêka,” Drevnosti. Trudy Slavjanskoj Kommissii Imperatorskago Moskovskago Archeologicheskago Obshchestva 4/1 (Moskva, 1907), 153–200. Impor-tant recent research on the East Slavic anti-Jewish polemic was published by A. Peresweto#-Morath, A Grin Without a Cat: Adversus Judaeos Texts in the Literature of Medieval Russia (988–1504) (Lund, 2002).

52 For remainders of the evidence in late source originating most probably in oral tradition see Y. B. Levinson, Teuda be-Israel (Wilna, 1828), 35 (Hebrew); Garkavi, Ob jazyke evreev, 7–9.

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Was the tradition of the Jews of Kievan Rus’ very di#erent from that of the Jews of Ashkenaz? If so, what was it, and what was the origin of this community? What was its relative size among other components of Polish-Lithuanian Jewry? !ere are no unequivocal answers to these fundamental questions, as long as we are relying on the extant sources. Due to the paucity of evidence of Jewish population movements during the period and the region in question, we have to rely solely on cultural characteristics, which do not necessarily indicate the origin of the whole group under discussion.

!e numerous hypotheses about the origin of the Jews of Rus’ are characterized in detail by Berlin and Weinryb53 and we will not elabo-rate on these well-known facts and sources. Most of the hypotheses only o#er possible routes for the arrival of the Jews in territories of Rus’ before or a$er its political self-determination, without reliance on reliable sources. !ese are the cases of the “Caucasian theory,” based only on Jewish presence in the region near the territory in question,54 or the “Persian theory,” based on the sources from the sixteenth and even the eighteenth century, which purportedly provide evidence about the eighth century.55 !e “Khazarian” and “Canaanite” theories, which are based on an assumption of a mass conversion of Turkic or Slavic tribes in Khazaria, not only do not o#er adequate evidence of the phenomenon, but also fail to explain the origin of those performing the conversions.56 Turkic and Slavic names that appear in the Kievan Letter are not indicative of the ethnic origin of their bearers, espe-cially when some of them attribute themselves to dynasties descended from Levi and Aaron.57 !e same is true for evidence of the use of or familiarity with the Slavic language among the Jews. !e dating of this evidence and the clari"cation of the language re/ected in these sources (Czech, apparently, in the majority of them) require additional study.58

53 Berlin, Istoricheskie sud’by; Weinryb, “!e Beginnings of East European Jewry.”54 A. Ja. Harkavi, Jews and Slavonic Language (Wilna, 1867), 110 (Hebrew).55 Emek ha-Bakha: 19–20; Berlin, “Evrei,” 9, 31–2.56 K. F. Neuman, Die Volker der südlichen Russlands in ihrer geschichtlichen Ent-

wicklung, (Leipzig, 1855); E. Renan, Le Judaisme comme race et comme religion (Paris, 1883), 25#; M. Gumplovicz, Pocz-tki religii zydowskiej w Polsce (Warszawa, 1903); Kuchera, Die Chasaren; Poliak, Khazaria, 255–75.

57 On Turkic and Slavic names see Golb, Pritsak, Khazarian, 26–9: 35–40; Torpusman, “Antroponimija.”

58 Garkavi, Ob jazyke; Weinreich, “Yiddish”; Jakobson, “Iz razyskanij.”

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However, there are three possibilities for the origin of the Jews of Rus’ that are supported in some manner by credible documentary sources: (a) Ashkenaz, (b) Islamic lands, (c) and Byzantium.

!e “Western theory,” which is dominant among scholars, was evi-dently conditioned by the cultural situation at the time the research was being conducted, that is to say, a uniformly Ashkenazi image of Eastern European Jewry in the modern period. !is theory comprises two main assumptions: (a) migration from Germany and France dur-ing the Crusades, (b) settlement along trade routes or destinations.59 !e "rst hypothesis is not documented; nor does it cover the period prior to the Crusades. We have in our possession only evidence of Jewish trade between Rus’ and Ashkenaz (which speaks of �'2#: ')+#! ‘travelers to Rus’ ’ or �'2#: '):� ')+#! ‘travelers of the routes to Rus’ ’ among the other non-Jewish Ruzarii)60 and of visits or migration of the Jews of Rus’ to Western Europe, not only to Ashkenaz but also to England and Spain.61 None of this evidence predates the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, although the presence of Jews in the territories of Rus’ was already documented in the tenth century. !e only early evidence is the well-known report from the ninth century about the Rhodanites, whose route passed through Khazaria. However, ascribing the origin of the Rhodanites to Western Europe raises many doubts, and it is possible that their roots, in fact, lie in Islamic lands.62

Jewish migration from the Islamic lands to Khazaria in the ninth century was cited on two occasions (“from the lands of Islam” in al-Masudi’s Muruj al-Dahab,63 and “from Baghdad and Horasan” in the

59 I. M. Jost, Geschichte der Israeliten IX (Berlin, 1826); H. Graetz, Geschichte der Juden von den altesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1853–1876), 6.69; I. Schipper, Anfange des Kapitalismus bei den abendlandschen Juden um frühesten Mittelalter (Wien, 1907), 19; J. Brutzkus, “Pershi zvistki pro evreiv u Polshi ta na Rusi,” Istorichna sektsija AN URSR. Naukovyj sbornik na rik 1927 XXVI (Kiev, 1927), 3–11; cf. Y. Lebanon, !e Jewish Travelers in the Twel+h Century (Lanham, 1980), 342–3.

60 A common medieval term for European merchants trading with Rus’ ( J. Brutzkus “Trade with Eastern Europe, 800–1200,” !e Economic History Review XIII/1–2 (1943): 31–41, esp. 35).

61 Brutzkus, “Pershi”; “Der Handel der westeuropaeischen Juden mit dem Kiev,” Zeitschri+ für die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland III (1931): 97–110; idem, “Trade”; Berlin, “Evrei,” 149–54.

62 M. Gil, In the Kingdom of Ishmael during the Period of Geonim, 4 vols. (Tel-Aviv, 1997), 611–35 (Hebrew).

63 C. Pellat (ed.), Muruj alDahab (Beyruth, 1966), 212–3.

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Schechter Text),64 and always proximate to the mention of migration from Byzantium. !e distribution of these Jews in Khazaria is unclear, and it is possible that they were concentrated in eastern parts of the territories of Khazaria, adjacent to Islamic lands that were not subsequently included in Rus’. !e link between the communities of “Babylon” (Mesopotamia) and Rus’ was documented on two occasions: (a) Rabbi Moshe Taku in his book Ktav Tamim, refers to a Karaite book that “came from Babylon to Rus’, and from Rus’ it was brought to Regespurk [Regensburg]”,65 (b) and the responsum of Samuel ben Ali of Baghdad, directed to R. Moshe of Kiev, who was known to be a student of R. Jacob ben Meir Tam (Rabbenu Tam), and thus the response could be sent not to Rus’, but to Champagne.66

In contrast to these hypotheses, the “Byzantine theory” seems to stand alone in terms of its support in the sources, and it is my intent to supplement them.67 Whereas in relation to Ashkenaz as the place of origin of the Jews of Rus’ we can only o#er evidence on the commu-nication between scholars or commercial contacts (of the kinds found between diverse communities),68 and in the instance of “Babylon” only Jewish migration to the cities of Khazaria and a single piece of evidence on literary exchange are attested, the presence of Byzantine Jewry in Rus’ is expressed in more aspects. !e sources in our posses-sion refer to (a) an autochthonous Judeo-Greek population in Rus’, (b) migration of Byzantine Jews into territories of Rus’ prior to its political formation, (c) contacts between Jews of Rus’ and Byzantium and with Jewish communities there, (d) contacts between Byzantine Jews and Rus’, and (e) Judeo-Greek cultural activity in Rus’.

64 1 verso, line 14. “Shechter Text” or “Cambridge Document” are common titles for a fragment of a Hebrew excursus into Khazarian history dated to the tenth century, found in Cairo Geniza and published by S. Schechter, “An Unknown Khazar Docu-ment,” Jewish Quarterly Review 3 (1912): 181–219.

65 Ms Paris H711, f. 28 (for facsimile edition see J. Dan, Ktav Tamim, Jerusalem 1984 (Hebrew)).

66 Ettinger, “Moses.”67 !e “Byzantine theory” was introduced by Graetz, Geschichte, (5.166–167, 188–

189) and S. Kraus, Studien zur Byzantisch-Judischen Geschichte (Leipzig, 1914). 68 See, e.g., S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: !e Jewish communities of

the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza (Berkeley, 1967–1984), 42–59.

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A. Autochthonous Judeo-Greek Population One of the most likely places of the origin of the Greek-speaking Jews in the principalities of Rus’ could be the city and principality of Tmu-torokan’, which is located on the coast of the Taman Strait between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, and included Phanagoria and Tamatarcha of Greek sources, ‘Samkerc’ (7:9/2) in the King Joseph letter from the “Jewish-Khazar correspondence,” #':9/2/'':9/2 in the Schechter Text, “Jewish Samkresh” in Ibn al-Faqih. Tmutorokan’ became one of the most important centers in Kievan Rus’, close in importance to Kiev and at times even competing with it. !e city and the region (we are referring to two coastlines of the Taman Strait that were in the past part of the Bosphor kingdom) are known for their ancient Hellenistic Jewish tradition. !e continued presence of Jews there was also documented a$er the Hellenistic era and until the period under discussion. Even without taking into account material from the inscriptions from the Crimea that were recognized by Chwolson as original,69 the Jews in this region are also mentioned by !eophanes in Chronography under the year 678/9/6170, who speaks of “Phanagoria and the Jews who live there,”70 and by Ibn al-Faqih in Kitab al-Buldan, who calls one of the towns there “Jewish Samkersh.”71 Nor is there any reason to doubt the identi"cation of the Jews of Tmutorokan’ with Byzantine-Greek culture, since regardless of the relatively brief peri-ods when Tmutorokan’ was ruled by Khazars or East Slavic princes, the region was situated within the political and cultural boundaries of Byzantium.72

B. Migration of the Jews of Byzantium to Territories of KhazariaIt may be assumed that aside from the Byzantine Jews of Tmutoro-kan’, Rus’ also inherited the Jewish population that had occupied the territories of former Khazaria. In various sources, the origin of the Jews of Khazaria was de"ned as Byzantine. Al-Masudi attributes the migration of the Jews of Byzantium to Khazaria to the persecutions of

69 A. Ja. Garkavi, “Evreiskie nadgrobnye pamjatniki, najdennye na Tamanskom poluostrove,” Evreiskie Zapiski 5 (1881): 313–8; B. D. Chwolson, Corpus Inscriptionum Hebraicarum (St. Petersburg, 1882).

70 de Boor (ed.), !eophanis, 357.71 de Goeje (ed.), Ibn alFakih, 271.72 M. I. Artamonov, Istorija khazar (Leningrad, 1962), 438–56; O. Pritsak, !e Origins

of Rus’ (Cambridge, 1981), 68; Pritsak, “!e Pre-Ashkenazic,” 10.

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Romanos I.73 !e Schechter Text also refers to “persecutions in the days of Romanos the Evil”74 separately from the report on Jewish migra-tion: “And the Jews began to come from Baghdad and from Horasan and from the land of Greece.”75 !e location de"ned as �'1'/:�—the initial place of origin of the Jews of Khazaria,76 which is identi"ed by Golb and Pritsak as ‘Armenia’—may also refer to Byzantium (meta-thetic �'1/#: ‘Romania’).77 !e banishing of the Jews of Byzantium to Khazaria “in the days of Haroun al-Rashid” is also referred to by al-Dimashqi in Cosmography.78

!e Schechter Text, which is attributed to a Jew from Khazaria, also preserves some signs of Greek ethnographic and geographical tradi-tions.79 And there are those who assume that its original was even written in Greek.80

C. Byzantium and Rus’ Uni.ed in Jewish SourcesFollowing the Christianization of Rus’ in 988, its political, economic, and cultural connections with Byzantium grew stronger. !e new situ-ation, as well as the links between Jews of the two states, was re/ected in Jewish sources from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries. And it may be assumed that this situation might have secured a certain role to those Jews who subscribed to the Greek culture and who were already in Rus’, or might have created conditions for an additional wave of migration.

!e Hebrew term 0##' 031) literally “Greek Canaan” meaning “Greek-Slavic lands,” Slavia Graeca, is attested in the response given by R. Judah ben Meir ha-Kohen in Sefer ha-Dinim that is quoted in Or Zarua by R. Isaac ben Moses of Vienna (1, 196). It evidently refers to Rus’, in order to di#erentiate it from “Canaan”—the western Slavic lands.81 Byzantium and Rus’ are mentioned together in Eben ha-Ezer

73 Muruj al-Dahab (Pellat (ed.), Muruj, 212–3).74 2 recto, line 16.75 1 verso, line 14.76 1 recto, line 1.77 Berlin, “Evrei,” 23–34, note 4; 30.78 A. F. Mehren (ed.), Cosmographie de Dimichqui (St. Petersburg, 1866), 263.79 P. B. Golden, “A New Discovery: Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth

Century,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 8 (1984): 474–86.80 P. Kokovtsov, Evrejsko-khazarskaja perepiska v X veke (Leningrad, 1932), xxvii.81 For the Hebrew term “Canaan” regularly referring to di#erent Slavic lands in the

Middle Ages, see H. Jackobson, “!e Term Canaan.” For alternative interpretations of

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by R. Eliezer ben Natan: “In Rus’ and in the land of Greece, there are devout individuals on whose gates and on the doors of their homes and in the walls of their homes they put idolatry [signs],” “0':+'�3 [kind of shoes] that are not cross-bred, as they do in the land of Greece and in Kias [= Kiev], I have seen in which they do not have leather on top.”82

D. Jews of Rus’ in Byzantine Communities!e Jews of Rus’ as guests of Byzantine communities are mentioned twice in sources that have already been quoted. In the "rst instance, they appear as merchants: “and also from the place of Rus’, from elders [of the community], merchants [came] and heard what was written in the letter.”83 In the second document, the initial objective of the visit is not clari"ed, but it apparently refers to a familial relationship between the Jews of Rus’ and Salonica (cited above): “M. Anon. son of Anon., who is from the community of Rus’ and was a visitor among us, the community of Salonica, ‘the young in the /ock,’ and found his rela-tive Rabbi Anon. coming from Jerusalem.” However, as mentioned in continuation, this visitor “does not know the holy language or the Greek language or Arabic.”84

E. !e Jews of Byzantium and the Slave Trade from Rus’Participation of the Byzantine Jews in slave trade from Rus’ is referred to in both a Jewish source and a Slavic source, both of which relate to the eleventh century.85

F. Jews of Byzantium and East Slavic Literature!e combination of the evidence cited above enables us to assume the physical presence and economic activity of Jews of Byzantine ori-

0##' 031) in this responsum, see J. Starr, !e Jews in the Byzantine Empire (691–1204) (Athens, 1939), 192–3; F. Kupfer and T. Lewicki, ,ródla hebrajskie do dziejów S/owian i niekotórych innych ludów 0rodkowej i wschodniej Europy (Wroclaw-Warszawa, 1956), 40–9.

82 Kupfer, Lewicki ,ródla, 129–36.83 Mann, Texts, 1.50, lines 44–45. Cf. evidence on East Slavic merchants in Byzan-

tium in A. Vasiliev, “Economic Relations between Byzantium and Old Russia,” Jour-nal of Economic and Business History 4 (1931–1932).

84 Marmorstein, “Nouveaux renseignements,” p. 95; Mann, !e Jews, 2.192.85 Sefer ha-Dinim by R. Judah ben Meir ha-Kohen quoted in Or Zarua by R. Isaac

ben Moses of Vienna (1, 196; cf. above); Abramovi:, Tsci;ewskij, Paterikon, 106–8.

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gin in Rus’. Until now, the missing link has been the expression of their presence in cultural activity.86 We cannot expect much progress in research in this "eld without the addition of new sources, such as occurred with the publication of the Schechter Text in 1912, or the Kievan Letter by Norman Golb and Omeljan Pritsak in 1982.87 Never-theless, there are other sources that are well-known in other research areas but which have not found their way into the accepted corpus of historical evidence for our subjects. !is derives from the fact that these texts do not include direct evidence; rather, they conceal within them data about their creators, which must be drawn out by means of precise interpretation that necessitates data and tools from diverse "elds of research. It happens that focusing the scholarly debate on cer-tain texts that have been available to researchers for many years can in fact lead to upheavals in the "eld, to the same extent as archaeological or paleographic discoveries. I refer to certain East Slavic versions of the biblical books from the period in question that are characterized by two seemingly contradictory features. On the one hand, it could be stated with certainty that they were translated from Greek, but on the other hand, the translations possess a decidedly Jewish character. At least two such texts may be named: the early Slavic Book of Esther and the Pentateuch.88 !ere is no doubt that the sources of these transla-tions are Jewish-Greek texts, and it is very reasonable to assume that they were directly conveyed to Slavic translators by Greek-speaking Jews,89 as it is di9cult to explain this unique phenomenon through Christian Greek mediation, because: (a) these sources were not found among Christian Greek books, (b) they also had a common and accepted substitute in the Christian tradition. !us, there is a very low probability of the existence of all the conditions required for this sort of mediation—from the transfer of texts of Jewish character to

86 For possible remainders of Judeo-Greek legacy in Eastern Yiddish, see M. Weinreich, History of Yiddish Language, 1–4 (New York, 1973), 86–7 (Yiddish); P. Wexler, Explo-rations in Judeo-Slavic Linguistics (Leiden, 1987), 13–58.

87 Schechter, “An Unknown”; Golb, Pritsak, Khazarian.88 Philological arguments in favor of a unique destiny of these documents may be

found in A. Kulik, “O nesokhranivshejsja grecheskoj knige Es"ri,” Slavjanovedenie 2 (1995): 76–9; and “Judeo-Greek Legacy in Medieval Rus’,” Viator 39.1 (2008): 51–64. Neither numerous Jewish pseudepigrapha preserved in Slavic translations, nor Slavic Josephus, containing unique and important traditions can be reckoned in this group, at least at this stage of research.

89 Most probably Jews just transmitted the manuscripts. It is less probable that the Jews translated the texts by themselves.

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Christian Byzantine libraries, to the transfer of the same texts to Rus’.90 It is di9cult now to reconstruct the exact circumstances that led to the transmission of the Judeo-Greek Vorlagen of these two texts to Slavic scribes. It may be assumed that contact with the Jews—the local representatives of Byzantine culture—and access to their book collec-tions, was at a certain stage more readily available than was contact with distant Constantinople. !is assumption would enable us to raise the question about the existence of a “Jewish channel” in the cultural interference in the framework of the Byzantine Kulturbereich, and spe-ci"cally of Byzantine in/uence in Rus’ in the earliest stage of its cul-tural development. It should also be considered that traces of evidence of cooperation of this sort along the margins of the Byzantine cultural realm, can, in certain contexts, shed light on the reality at its center. Similar instances of Jewish-Christian cultural partnership, as re/ected also in translation activity (from Hebrew), have been documented in Rus’ from at least the "$eenth to the sixteenth centuries.91 It is now clear that some of these instances were carried out by proponents of the movement of Judaizers in the State of Moscow, who apparently maintained ideological and cultural contacts with the Jews of Lithu-anian Rus’.92 !e question of whether the material introduced above may be linked to the scant evidence on Jewish-Christian groups in Byzantium, on the one hand, and/or with Jewish-Christian contacts in Rus’ at a later period, on the other hand, requires additional study.

90 We have to presume that the Byzantine in/uence in Rus’ normally occurred though o9cial routes. We also do not know much about the Judeo-Christian groups in Byzantium (see, e.g., S. Pines, S. Shaked, “Fragment of a Jewish-Christian Composi-tion from the Cairo Geniza,” in Studies of Islamic History and Civilization in Honour of Prof. D. Ayalon, ed. Moshe Sharon ( Jerusalem, 1968), 307–18).

91 Alekseev, “Perevody”; “Russko-evrejskie literaturnye svjazi”; Lunt, Taube, “Early East Slavic Translations”; Taube, “O genezise”; idem, “On some unidenti"ed”; idem, “On the Slavic”; idem, “!e Fi$eenth-Century Ruthenian Translation”; idem, “Which Hebrew Text.”

92 See idem, “!e Fi$eenth-Century Ruthenian Translations.” Some of them might also have had Byzantine connections, most probably through the Crimean communi-ties; see S. Cinberg, “Avraam Krymskij i Moisej Kievskij,” Evrejskaia starina 11 (1924): 93–109; Taube, “Which Hebrew Text,” 48–50.