Simptomatologia Holocaustului în România. Un text inedit privind Transnistria

Perioada interbelică ne este în mare parte necunoscută. Privitor la ea, suntem prizonierii a nenumărate clişee. Istoricii vorbesc despre un „război glorios” şi o „mare unire”, care a succedat păcii de la Buftea… Iar intelectualii în genere ne povestesc despre o „epocă privilegiată” ce a adus contribuţii culturale remarcabile, uitînd că majoritatea acestor producţii au apărut mai tîrziu şi în alte spaţii culturale. Totuşi, unii au simţit nevoia să-şi proiecteze iluziile (şi frustrările) într-o ipotetică epocă de aur care ar fi fost spulberată de comunism si care, dacă ar fi continuat, cine ştie ce-ar fi oferit… Trebuie totuşi menţionate cîteva din „realizările” acelei epoci: autoritarism, sucombarea democraţiei, ralierea cu Germania nazistă, Holocaustul. Multă vreme această ultimă chestiune a fost fie negată, fie ignorată, fiind ulterior admisă cu jenă, dar întotdeauna a fost justificată, explicată. Din vasta arie a „explicaţiilor” – care se întinde de la negaţie, comparaţie şi minimalizare pînă la conspiraţie – mă voi opri doar asupra acelora care încearcă să justifice prezenţa trupelor române în Transnistria.
De curînd am avut norocul/ghinionul să descopăr un text. Este vorba despre volumul Crez nou al lui Ştefan Tătărescu. A fost editat în 1932, iar subtitlul (şi subtextul) său este reprezentat de „ideea naţional-socialistă”. Enunţurile formulate în acest volum-broşură sunt adesea surprinzătoare, dacă nu şocante, aproape cioraniene… Singura scuză a lucrării este că (probabil) nu a avut o circulaţie destul de largă, că nu a fost, aşadar, reprezentativă pentru epoca apariţiei sale. Vorbim de începutul anilor ’30. Acest argument al nereprezentativităţii poate fi invocat cu uşurinţă de oricine. Însă, privită din unghiul istoriei intelectuale, chestiunea devine secundară. Rămîne relevant faptul că aceste idei au existat, au fost tipărite şi au circulat în România de atunci. Şi ele ne pot oferi un context pentru o serie de evenimente pe care, dacă nu le-au generat (fiind presupuse nereprezentative), cel puțin le-au fost un simptom. Iar această „teorie” a textului simptom este acceptată, dacă nu de la Casandra, fiica regelui Priam, cel puţin de la începutul secolului XX.
Argumentarea curentă asupra Transnistriei se bazează pe un raţionament justificativ folosit deseori în disciplina istorică. El poate fi spectaculos, terapeutic chiar, însă are un viciu fundamental: este invalid din punct de vedere logic. Acest tip de argument operează o inversare a raportului dintre cauză şi efect. Într-o exprimare plastică şi minimală, un raţionament justificativ ia forma acestuia: „Păsările au aripi pentru că zboară”. Genul acesta de paralogism are o anumită respectabilitate, oferită de aparenţa unei argumentări. Pentru unii un astfel de „raţionament” are prestanţă, în măsura în care nu reprezintă totuşi o adunătură de lozinci comprimate sub forma unui text (cum se mai întîmplă), ci este perceput ca o argumentare. Însă argumentarea trebuie să mai fie şi validă, nu doar să existe.
Chestiunea Transnistriei este privită printr-o asemenea grilă consolativă, ignorîndu-se, pe de o parte, crimele făcute acolo, care ne clasează pe un dezonorant loc doi în „topul” Holocaustului, pe de alta, actul nejustificat de agresiune împotriva unei ţări. Se va spune că agresiunea împotriva URSS a fost justificată, întrucît ne-a fost luată Basarabia. Da, însă a fost justificată doar pînă la Nistru, limita războiului legitim. Şi dacă ar fi să ne luăm după argumentaţia conform căreia războiul trebuia continuat pînă cînd URSS ar fi fost înfrînt şi ar fi acceptat condiţiile păcii, Transnistria nu ar fi trebuit să fie anexată. Anexînd Transnistria, România s-a situat pe o poziţie mai puţin legitimă decît cea a Bulgariei, URSS-ului sau Ungariei, care revendicau de la România teritorii care le aparţinuseră în trecut. Aşadar, România a folosit ca justificare pentru anexarea unui teritoriu care nu i-a aparţinut niciodată a) nevoia înfrîngerii URSS (nu este clar cum anexarea ar fi putut justifica o asemenea nevoie), b) compensarea pentru injusta anexare a Ardealului de Nord de către Ungaria, respectiv a Cadrilaterului de către Bulgaria.
Textul lui Tătărescu are calitatea de a dinamita acest clişeu consolativ. El exprimă în mod neechivoc ideea anexării Transnistriei într-o perioadă în care acţiunile URSS-ului, Bulgariei şi Ungariei nu ar fi putut justifica nicidecum o asemenea dorinţă. Iar această idee – a atacării şi anexării de teritorii de la URSS – apare negru pe alb în lucrarea lui Ştefan Tătărescu. În acest context, devine relevant faptul că teoria lui Tătărescu este calchiată după modelul german. El invocă, de exemplu, nevoia unui „Hinterland”, a unui „Lebensraum” în care energiile naţionale să se dezvolte. Acest amănunt este important, deoarece stabileşte termenii unei analogii, asupra căreia vom reveni.
În 1932 – şi chiar mai tîrziu – în Germania nu existau percepţii radicale legate de exterminarea evreilor. Totuşi, acest lucru s-a întîmplat şi s-a asociat, în cadrul nazismului, cu ideea lebensraumului, a unui teritoriu anexat în est, unde au avut loc masacrele. În România, însă, asemenea idei făcuseră tradiţie. Să ne amintim de Soll şi Haben. Chestiunea Ovreilor din România a lui Ioan Slavici. Vorbind de evrei, acesta susţinea nici mai mult nici mai puţin că „ne rămîne doar ca, la un semn, să închidem graniţele, să-i sugrumăm, să-i aruncăm în Dunăre pînă la cel din urmă ca să nu mai rămînă nici sămînţă din ei!” N.C. Paulescu, de asemenea, s-a pronunţat la modul literal asupra exterminării evreilor ca pe păduchi sau ploşniţe.
Astfel, avem bazele unei analogii puternice între situaţia României şi cea a Germaniei. În ambele cazuri masacrele se asociază cu anexarea unor teritorii în est. Şi dacă multă vreme s-a crezut că în România a lipsit „suportul teoretic” necesar explicării unor asemenea fapte – masacrele şi anexarea Transnistriei fiind explicate mai degrabă prin cauze conjuncturale – trebuie totuşi să admitem că a existat şi un suport teoretic destul de coerent şi că e posibil ca acţiunile politice ale statului român să fi fost motivate şi ideologic. Această concluzie este de bun simţ. Nimeni nu neagă că în România a existat antisemitism şi că s-a dorit (de către unii) exterminarea evreilor. Antisemiţii şi-au justificat în fel şi chip această dorinţă. Însă noutatea este dată de faptul că a existat o premeditare şi în ceea ce priveşte agresiunea împotriva URSS-ului şi anexarea de la acesta a unor teritorii care nu aparţinuseră niciodată vreunei entităţi statale româneşti. Dacă statul român a recunoscut (tardiv) crimele împotriva evreilor, chestiunea Transnistriei a rămas prizonieră în orizontul retoricii „conjuncturii fatale”, al „situaţiei fără ieşire” şi al „compensaţiei” pentru nişte pierderi teritoriale fără îndoială tragice. Dar, cum spuneam, lucrarea lui Tătărescu are calitatea de a demonta cu uşurinţă acest clişeu.
Autorul tratează problema republicii moldoveneşti din Transnistria interbelică în relaţia României cu Rusia în eventualitatea unui război germano-japonezo-rus. Pentru el soluţiile sunt fie crearea unui stat tampon în Transnistria, care să includă inclusiv Odessa, fie – în eventualitatea victoriei coaliţiei germano-japoneze – încorporarea Transnistriei în România. El calchiază practic modelul german al Drang nach Ost-ului şi al Ucrainei ca spaţiu vital, punînd ochii pe recent creata republică moldovenească transnistreană.
Der Drang nach Osten rămîne cheia politicii germane de astăzi. Întreaga acţiune de expansiune a Germaniei este îndreptată spre răsărit. (p. 28)
Întinsa şi acum depopulata Ucraină totdeauna fusese considerată în cercurile naţionaliste din Berlin ca un admirabil Hinterland pentru colonizarea surplusului populaţiei germane (s.n.)
(p. 29)

Aşadar Tătărescu era la curent cu teoria Hinterlandului care preconiza să transforme Ucraina într-un fel de colonie germană, un teritoriu care să asigure „spaţiul vital” (Lebensraum) pentru dezvoltarea naţiunii germane. Şi, bineînţeles, proiectează acest lucru cu privire la naţiunea română. De altfel, relativ la dimensiunile lucrării, chestiunea Transnistriei ocupă un spaţiu extrem de redus.
Dacă vom fi tîrîţi în acest nou războiu, aceasta rămîne totuşi în cadrul probabilităţilor. Privind spre răsărit, România va avea de rezolvit două importante probleme: a) o problemă morală, recunoaşterea de jure din partea statului rus (sovietic sau ţarist, nu importă) a înglobării definitive a Basarabiei în graniţele României întregite; b) problema republicii moldoveneşti, problemă care va putea fi soluţionată în două moduri: sau se va putea crea un stat tampon între România şi Rusia cu teritoriul acestei republici moldoveneşti pînă la Odessa inclusiv, sau în caz de biruinţă a oştilor româneşti, întreg acest teritoriu să fie înglobat României. (p. 29)

Este frapant faptul că pentru el Ucraina nu există, fiind mai degrabă „un teritoriu depopulat”. El vorbeşte – să nu uităm că suntem în 1932 – de o „înglobare” a unui teritoriu şi de o biruinţă a oştilor româneşti într-o conflagraţie a titanilor. Este o pretenţie deloc modestă. Dacă ar fi să analizăm limbajul, termeni ca „biruinţă” şi „oştire” duc mai degrabă la imaginarul de tip medieval – la arcaşii lui Ştefan cel Mare sau la oştenii care ar trebui să crească „ca brazii în pădure” (C.Z. Codreanu) – decît la ideea unei armate organizate pe baze moderne, capabile să participe la o asemenea conflagraţie. Să nu uităm totuşi că „biruinţa” trebuia să aibă loc asupra Uniunii Sovietice.
După cum am precizat anterior, cartea alocă un spaţiu mult mai larg unor meditaţii de tip „naţional-socialist”, decît chestiunii Transnistriei. Limbajul lui Tătărescu seamănă frapant cu cel folosit de Cioran în anii 1935-1936 în Schimbarea la faţă a României. Termeni ca „revoluţie”, „elan”, „vitalitate” şi expresii ca „depăşirea nivelului istoric”, „om nou” apar literal în ambele lucrări. La nivelul ideilor, ambii autori împărtăşesc o perspectivă vitalistă, organicistă, punînd colectivitatea înaintea individului şi dorind un „elan” care să ne scoată din minoratul istoric, economic şi cultural. Ambii dau dovadă de luciditate cu privire la situaţia reală a României, pe care alţi naţionalişti nu o împărtăşesc. Aşadar, şi acest lucru este foarte important, aceste texte diferă de filonul „neaoş”, ruralist şi sămănătorist al naţionalismului exploatat de autori ca A.C. Cuza sau C.Z. Codreanu. Aşadar, se poate susţine fie că au făcut parte din acelaşi cerc intelectual (ceea ce este posibil), fie că acest tip de idei a cunoscut o oarecare circulaţie în epocă.
În cele ce urmează vom pune cîteva fragmente în oglindă. De pildă Tătărescu afirmă că:
idealul „naţie” nu poate fi despărţit de idealul „muncă”. Truda organizată a tuturor asigură (…) un prezent de „forţă” şi un viitor de „strălucire” (…) Naţionalismul nu mai este azi, ca în veacul trecut, o simplă dispoziţie sufletească; acest sentiment vital pentru existenţa şi afirmarea popoarelor cere azi un solidarism concret exprimat, un efort organizat şi unitar al energiei naţionale. (p. 30-31)

Cioran exprimă această idee în capitolul „Colectivism naţional” din Schimbarea la faţă a României mult mai succint, ca şi cum ar fi rezultatul unui conspect:
Un naţionalism care crede că poate să rezolve problemele unei naţiuni fără să soluţioneze conflictele şi inegalităţile sociale, este nu numai reacţionar, ci şi imposibil. (127)

Ambii autori sunt fascinaţi de evoluţiile din URSS. Pentru Tătărescu:
ideologia bolşevică (...) a prilejuit rasei slave o disciplină, un steag de raliere şi o hipertrofiere a egoismului naţional. Bolşevismul e cea mai virulentă şi mai îngrijorătoare formă a naţionalismului slavo-asiatic, acesta e adevărul. (p. 6)

Cioran, la rîndul său, „admiră punerea la teasc” a naţiunii din cadrul regimului sovietic. El considera că Lenin a salvat naţionalismul, reprezentînd prototipul omului politic al vremurilor viitoare
De n-ar fi fost revoluţia rusă, naţionalismul era atît de reacţionar, încît s-ar fi împărţit în numele lui averea săracilor la bogaţi. (…) Lenin a creat tuturor mişcărilor ideologice un interes pentru problemele sociale. (p. 127)

Iată şi „răspunsul” lui Tătărescu în ce priveşte problema socială:
a dispărut exploatarea muncii în favoarea categoriei privilegiate. Patriotismul romantic al veacului trecut alunecă fără voia noastră pe linia nouă de întrecerea a popoarelor prin randamentul organizat al producţiilor naţionale (p. 31)

Legat de circulaţia unor astfel de „idei noi”, vom prezenta un răspuns a lui Eliade – care se revendica de la Eminescu, Vasile Conta şi Haşdeu – publicat în 1934 în „Credinţa”, perioadă în care cartea lui Tătărescu era deja pe piaţă, iar Cioran probabil că-şi redacta propriile meditaţii privind schimbarea la faţă a României. În articolul „Împotriva dreptei şi a stîngii” Eliade se ridică împotriva spiritului imitativ al românilor, care pînă acum se exersase în „maimuţărirea” ideologiilor de stînga socialiste şi comuniste. Însă, consideră el,
de vreun an încoace se încearcă introducerea altei ideologii străine, poate mai primejdioasă ca cea dintîi: ideologia fascisto-hitleristă, bazată pe lupta de rasă şi de religie, pe şovinism fără omenie şi pe un patriotism ridicol. Ce a încercat ea si cum a rătăcit ea minţile cu maimuţăreala hitleristă, nu mai e nevoie să repetăm; o ştie toată lumea, şi în gazeta aceasta s-a vorbit adesea de ea. (…) Românii au avut acest destin funest al împrumuturilor străine cu orice preţ (…) Mă gîndesc la împrumuturile de doctrină politică, la copia ideologiei politice a altor ţări. Doctrina noastră politică trebuie să iasă din chiar realităţile noastre româneşti.

După cum dovedeşte şi fragmentul de mai sus, inserţia acestui tip de idei ale căror exponenţi se fac autori ca Cioran sau Tătărescu a fost sesizată şi a primit chiar răspunsul ideologilor unui alt tip de naţionalism, pe care îl voi caracteriza succint ca „ruralist”, reprezentat atunci de Eliade, A.C. Cuza, C.Z. Codreanu sau chiar N. Ionescu. A existat o dezbatere publică, aceste idei au fost cunoscute şi combătute, iar exponenţii lor, odată cu dispariţia lui Codreanu şi apropierea României de Germania nazistă, au avut, probabil, posibilitatea să influenţeze inclusiv decizia politică. Astfel, faptele istorice îşi capătă un „suport teoretic”, care este analog celui german, şi astfel, nici Transnistria şi nici Holocaustul nu mai reprezintă fenomene pure, apărute din senin sau rezultatul unor reacţii dictate doar de conjuncturi.

Ştefãneşti – a source of tradition and a memorial

The town of Ştefãneşti is located in the eastern part of the present-day Botoşani County, in the Prut and Başeu river valleys. The history of the place has been marked by a considerable number of invasions, destroyed and rebuilt time and again. The last such destruction, preceded by the evacuation of the Jewish population by the Romanian authorities, happened during World War II. It seems that history couldn’t have provided a better place for a Jewish community. This community from Ştefãneşti has come to symbolize, in a paradigmatic manner, the Jewish condition.
It is not yet very clear when Ştefãneşti became a town. What we know for sure is the fact that is the Pole Jan Dlugosz (1415 – 1480), one of the first to testify to the existence of the town in his chronicle Annales seu cronicae incliti regni Polnia , writes about the ‘villa Stepanowcze’/the village of Ştefãneşti, as being somewhere next to the source of the river Başeu, in the valley crossed by an important commercial route that led to his country.
Another author mentioning this town is Balthasar de Piscia. While in Suceava, he wrote on September 16th 1476 about the Tartars who ‘fell upon the town of Ştefaneşti’ . Between Dlugosz’ chronicle and Balthasar de Piscia’s, Ştefãneşti seems to have evolved to the rank of market town. During this same period of urbanization Ştefãneşti is targeted by its first invasions. The market town underwent a strong economic development, favoured by its special geographical position.
 

Commercial roads crossing Ştefãneşti

We shall present some of the historical names of the roads that intersected at Ştefãneşti. The first is the ‘Thieves’ Road’ , attested in 1492, beginning in southern Iaşi, and going along the Başeu Valley up to Lipscani. Today the name of Lipscani doesn’t say much, but in the past the town had great significance. The merchants of Lipsca (Leipzig) had sent their envoys here – they were known as ‘lipscani’, whereby the name of the place. On the one hand, the term fur(-i) is the medieval equivalent of the contemporary term ‘thief (ves)’. The roads from the Romanian Principalities in the 16th and 17th centuries were very unsafe, as rabbinical texts (response) and foreign travellers' testimonies on the Principalities abounded in stories of crimes committed by robbers and, very often, by the ‘people in the service of the ruler’ themselves. Many of these rabbinical texts with regard to the principalities referred to problems of agunot, that is to the situations when Jewish women asked rabbinical courts to free them of any marital obligations, after their husband’s death or long disappearance (who was thus supposed to be dead), in order to be able to get married again. The frequency with which agunot situations happened in the Romanian principalities as well as the presence of some terms connected to thieving methods, present even in the name of some commercial roads, certify that the respective routes were totally unsafe. On the other hand, the fact that these texts were requested by some rabbinical courts from Poland, confirms that there weren’t any strong Jewish communities in Moldavia to support rabbis and well-known rabbinical courts.
The second commercial route was ‘Soroca road’, crossing the area from the eastern to the western part. On this route there took place a majority of the invasions hitting Moldavia from the East in the 16th and 17th centuries, generally having as protagonists the Tartars and the Cossacks. Details regarding these invasions will be dealt with in the part about the military history of Ştefãneşti.
The third important commercial route was ‘Hotin Road’, sometimes called ‘Drumul Camenitei’, linking Lemberg, Camenita, Hotin, Iaşi and Galaţi. This road was located on the North-South axis, along the larger one from The Black Sea to the The Baltic Sea. It seems the road had been ‘opened to traffic’ by a treaty between Alexandru cel Bun and the merchants of Lemberg on October 8th 1408.
Consequently, the fact that these commercial routes were called ‘şleahuri’ (a Polish word in origin) is not without relevance. They certify an important influx of Polish merchants. It is worth remembering that Ashkenazi Jews also traveled with the Poles. This reality certainly results from the corroboration of a couple of documents. The first belongs to the Electorate from Branderburg. Accordingly, in the summer of 1546 the king of Poland complained to sovereign Petru Rareş about ‘merchants not being able to trade in Moldavia anymore and the latter’s standing in the way to Turkey, since they were robbed, thrown into prison or even killed at your highness’ order.’ We know that this is about Jewish merchants, not (necessarily) Christians, from a Jewish source (responsa) dated a year earlier. In Rabi Ioel Sirkis’s work Responsae Bait Hadas, on the 83rd answer from the 23rd of Tevet 5305 (1545), there is a testimony (in Yiddish) sent to the rabbinic court in Mezibuj, regarding the murder of a number of Jews, at the order of the ‘ruler of Moldavia’.
The existence of such practices is strengthened by a document issued by the Cancelary of Sigismund August in 1545, Lithuania. In it he complained to Moldavian envoys about ‘the Turkish, Armenian and Jewish traders who came to His Royal Highness in Lithuania with their goods, complaining that every time they brought with them fine horses from Turkey to sell in Poland and His Highness took those horses from them and didn’t let them to be taken to Poland’. It seems that the second reign of Petru Rareş (1541-1546) abounded in incidents associated with trading caravans crossing Moldavia.
These external trading routes going through Ştefãneşti were not only subject to plunder and abuse from the authorities. There is a document referring to the beginning of the 17th century, issued by Ştefan Tomsa’s Cancelary in Iaşi, on December 10th, 1613, in Polish, which allowed the ‘Polish people, be they ethnic Poles, Armenians or Jews, to carry their goods on the roads to Cernauti, Hotin and Soroca but not elsewhere, to avoid losing their merchandise’. This record issued by ruler Ştefan Tomşa not only mentioned the Jews as traders but also the guaranteeing of free travel and protection of the trading caravans crossing Moldavia from the North to the East.

The last medieval commercial road going through Ştefãneşti is ‘Botoşani Road’. Moreover, associated with this route’s name, there is one of the first attestations of Jewish merchants present in Ştefãneşti in the first years of the Cossacks rebellion. At this time, a group of Jews chose to leave Ştefãneşti to go to Botoşani, under the pressure of an imminent arrival of Bogdan Hmelnitski’s armies.
It is important to mention that the ‘Thieves’ Road’ as well as the ‘Botoşani Road’ were internal routes, the former being the route of dissemination of goods from Central Europe (Leipzig) to Moldavia, while the later represented a route used to collect Moldavian goods (grain, livestock, skins) for export.

The development of the town gained a lot especially when Iaşi became the capital of Moldavia, Ştefãneşti rising as an important stop on the route Lemberg-Cameniţa-Hotin-Iaşi-Galaţi, one that was part of the commercial road linking The Black Sea and The Baltic Sea, as we have pointed out. In 1520, 1598 and 1620 we are told about some floating bridges, lying on the property of some boyars. In 1630 we have the first attestation of a bridge made of stone, in the vicinity of the sovereign, linking the ‘Soroca Road’ with the ‘Botoşani Road’.
We know that in Petru Şchiopu’s time, in 1591, there could be found in Ştefãneşti a princely mill as well as a few other mills located south of the place. As to the religious life of the town, the deacon Trifan Korobeinicov from Moscow attests the existence of three churches in 1593. The presence of craftsmen is mentioned in a document dated on March 15th, about a person called ‘Avram Meserciul’. This name, as well as the presence in the proximity of a village called Avrãmeni (the toponym meaning ‘those of Avram, his descendants’) represents a testimony to the Jews in the area, as well as the fact, that they might have lived segregated. Nowadays we cannot find any town near Ştefãneşti called Avrãmeni, a fact which supports the hypothesis that that place was more of a ghetto within the town or, at most, a town situated in the immediate proximity, mainly populated by Jews, who was then swallowed up by the town’s expansion. The toponym ‘Braharie’ as well as the existence of a deed in the second half of the 17th century mentioning a certain ‘Alecsi the brewer, from Ştefãneşti’ indicates the presence of some breweries.
Ştefãneşti also appears on a series of maps dated from that period, a fact which confirms its importance. Thus, in the year 1550, the market town is represented on the map conceived by G. Reichersdorff by means of three turrets - ‘a privilege’ only few localities benefited from. Also, it is being mentioned on a map of Europe from 1579, and on the map belonging to Domenicos Custos from 1596, there appears bearing the name of Stepanutze. In the year 1600 it is noted among those ‘oppida notabiliora’ from Moldavia, altogether with Botoşani, Roman, Bacău, Bîrlad, Tecuci and Hîrlău.
As to a possible first Jewish habitation in the central area of Moldavia, on Hotin Road, which comprised Iaşi and Ştefãneşti, M.A. Halevy suggests as a possible date, the year 1540, taking into account Martin Bielski’s Kronika Polska, where the later mentioned a number of ‘Proselyte Jews from Poland’, that is Poles converted to Judaism, who sought refuge from persecutions in Moldavia. Apart from the responsae and other random texts, unfortunately there are not many documents referring to the existence of Jews and their activities in Moldavia. In the 16th and 17th centuries there were no censuses. The first official demographic statistics appeared later on, in 1774 and they only referred to the number tax-payers.


Details regarding the military history of the area

Nevertheless, we can conclude that Ştefãneşti went through a certain commercial and craftsmanship development, between the 16th and the 17th centuries, even though it’s geographically favorable position to commerce was at the same time the source of the majority of the misfortunes befalling the town. According to the chronicles, Ştefãneşti is one of the most invaded localities in Moldavia. Almost all the invasions from the East had Ştefãneşti as central point when crossing the river Prut while the fast incursions of the Tartars used mostly Şleahul Sorocei, also called the Tartar’s Road.
In June 1476, when the ruler Ştefan Cel Mare/Stephen the Great had his armies in southern Moldavia, trying to stop the invasion of Mohamed II, ‘the Tartars invaded the town of Ştefãneşti and seized many notabilities of the town.’ In September and October 1506 and in June 1509 the town was plundered by the Poles. A year later, in April-May 1510 the Tartars come again only to return in 1513, when the armies lead by Beti Ghirai, the Khan’s son, burned out Iaşi, Ştefãneşti and Dorohoi. In 1518, the Tartars lead by the Khan Albu attacked again ‘Soroca Road’ in Ştefãneşti, where they were taken by surprise and defeated by the army of Ştefan cel Tanar/Stephen the Young, on August 9th. Twenty years later, in 1538, the Tartars tried to cross the river Prut again, at Ştefãneşti, but they were defeated by Petru Rareş’s forces. In 1572 there was a fight between Bogdan Lăpuşneanu’s armies, supported by the Poles and ruler Ion Vodă’s forces. On September 1st 1595, the Polish army of the Cossacks’ leader, Zamoyski, proclaimed Ieremia Movilă ruler at Ştefăneşti, not before burning down the town. Between December 16th and December 19th 1607 a great battle took place between Constantin Movilă, supported by the Poles, and his cousin, ruler Mihai Movilă. In 1616, Ştefan Tomşa, with the help of the Turks and of the Tartars, destroyed there an army of Polish and French mercenaries. In 1650 a Tartar-Cossack raid burned down the town again. In three years’ time Gheorghe Ştefan’s army mobilized to help the Poles against Timus Hmelniţki’s Cossacks. The latter surrendered in Suceava even before anything was set against them. We also know that in 1686 and 1691 Jan Sobieski’s armies made a halt in Ştefăneşti, during their anti-Ottomans campaigns.


The Town’s Condition during the 17th Century

The 17th century brought great changes into this town, due especially to the turmoil from Ukraine. If in 1612 Tomasso Alberti depicted Ştefăneşti as a large town with 2000 houses, a fact which made Romanian historian Constantin C. Giurescu state that the place had a population of 10000 inhabitants, in 1657 the Swede Conrad Iacob Hiltebrandt notes that ‘the town was ruined to a great extent’ and that ‘it was crammed with Jewish refugees’. In 1684, in Poema polona Miron Costin calls the place town (miasto), a sign that Ştefãneşti had been rebuilt after its previous demolitions. The Jews’ migration towards Moldavia – cited also by Hiltebrandt – can be explained by the annexation of the Eastern part of Ukraine by Russia as well as by the persecution lead by Bogdan Hmelniţki’s Cossaks (1595-1657), during that time.
Hmelniţki was the leader of the Cossacks and of the Ukrainian peasants’ uprising against the Poles in 1648. A year before, he had fled from the Polish area (where he had been imprisoned) to find refuge at the Cossacks on the Nipru river (in Zaporozhye). He formed an alliance with the Tartars in Crimea, obtaining a series of military successes against Poland. In 1654 he subdued the territories he had taken over to Russia, after he had considered Ottoman and Swedish sovereignty. The rebellions east of the river Nistru had a great impact on Moldavia at the time, due to the Cossack-Tartar invasions as well as to the Jews’ migration.
A testimony to Moldova’s condition at that moment, in the second half of the 17th century, is given by Paul de Alep. He succeeds in drawing the picture of an interesting fresco of the age, referring to Jews, Cossacks, Moldavians, Greeks and Turks. ‘Meanwhile a great misfortune had fallen upon the Turks and the Jews, and so the Cossacks tortured and plundered them (…); and maybe the Moldavians themselves went through a lot more. As for the Jews, they were put in prison and tortured night after night, as we are told, to bring their wealth to light.’
In conclusion, one of the reasons behind the Cossacks’ actions against the Jews (and not only) was simply plunder and swindle. As to the Moldavians’ attitude regarding other minorities, we consider the relevance of the next excerpt: ‘Muslims and Jews appeared in public fearlessly, while Greeks didn’t have the courage to leave their houses, because of the great resentment between them and the inhabitants.’ This text is somehow unquestionably characteristic to the Phanariot epoch.
Paul de Alep tells that almost the entire Moldavian trade was in the hands of the Jews in the middle of the 17th century, who had expanded their commercial relations as far as Germany. They exported mainly agricultural products and imported fabrics and silks. The Jews also initiated the jewellery trade, and remained the only ones in it. Paul de Alep also mentions that the Jews were bankers, money changers and sellers of alcoholic liquors, and their number wasn’t higher than 12000 souls.


Jewish sources regarding Ştefãneşti

As to the Jewish sources explicitly referring to Ştefãneşti in the 17th century, there is a attestation by Rabi Meir Ghedalia from Lublin which appeared in Venice in 1618. The work contains a few testimonies from the rabbinic court in Bar, in 1613, sent to the court in Lublin. The witness Ithac ben Mordechai states: ‘I have been to Wallachia (Moldavia) in the town of Ştefãneşti and there was a Jew from Bar who pointed out to me the murderer who drowned two Jews from Priluk, one of them being the official Zalman (…)’. This testimony, corroborated with the deed from 1614, which certified the presence of a character called ‘Avram Meserciul’ in Ştefãneşti, as well as with the existence of toponyms like Avrãmeni, confirms without doubt that there was a Jewish presence in this town, at least at the beginning of the 17th century. We can thus speak of four centuries of uninterrupted Jewish presence in Ştefăneşti.
A second attestation of Ştefãneşti from Jewish sources is found in a work by Rabi Ioel Serkis who, in his work Bait Hadas (Questions and answers), comprising documents from 1600-1640, presents the story of Iosef bar Semuel regarding Bogdan Hmelnitski’s offensive in Moldova. ‘I went to Wallachia (Moldova) with Haim Ithak bar Selomo’s son-in-low from Crasni to an inn in Ştefãneşti at the moment of Hmil (Bogdan Hmelnitski)’s terror. Here we got very scared and went to the Hospodar (the ruler) and his Wallachian and Polish people, who were in the field half a mile away from Botoşani (…)’.
We can conclude from this fragment that a number of Jewish traders had been taken by surprise by Bogdan Hmelnitski’s army while they were on the ‘internal’ route Tg. Frumos (Crasna) – Ştefãneşti – Botoşani. At the same time we find out that in 1640 (most probably, as it is the superior limit of book’s chronology) there lived in Tg. Frumos at least one Jewish family involved in trade.


The socio-economic context of the Jewish colonisations in Moldavia during the 16th and the 17th centuries

The Jewish sources referring to the 16th and 17th centuries consist in their majority of rabbinical texts with regards to the cases of disappearance of Jewish merchants while on journey along Moldavia’s roads. This fact proves the extent to which these trading routes were unsafe in this country. Foreign tradesmen were either plundered by brigands or by the authorities themselves. The economic difficulty of the principalities was, sometimes, the one that pushed the rulers into taking such measures. As in the former case of the western countries (England, France, Spain, etc.), the rulers who had borrowed money from Jewish usurers preferred to have them killed than pay their debts. The most known case in this direction is Mihai Viteazu’s deed in 1593. This is what Marco Vinieri, the envoy of the Dodge of Venice to the Romanian ruler’s court, states on 29th November 1593: ‘The ruler gathered up all his creditors, Turks, Greeks, Jews and others, asked for their deeds and had them killed by his guards’ swords, who had prepared themselves on time for this purpose.’ The same event is mentioned by Baltazar Walter from Silezia, who placed the event on November 13th 1593: ‘ac more sidi propria dedetis simper Hebraeis omnibus’ , mentioning the fact that the Jews behaved with dignity, as they were accustomed to. This action was emulated in Moldavia by Aron Vodă, who killed 19 Sephardic Jews, altogether with the rest of the Turks from Iaşi in 1594. It seems that the ruler had accumulated debts having a total value of one million ducats, a sum which could not be an exaggeration, if we take into account the debts accumulated by the ruler.
But there had never been mass evictions of the Jews or any anti-Semitic rhetoric supported by the church or any other groups having interests in it, which should exert any political pressure on the political authority with regards to the Jews. It seems that Petru Şchiopu, by means of a letter he sent on the 8th of January 1579, had announced ‘the eviction of the Jews’ from Moldavia, but the document actually refers only to the Jewish-Galitian cattle sellers who avoided the Moldavian fairs which took place in the bordering areas in order to enter the country, where they were buying their stuff directly from peasants and boyars, thus avoiding the taxes imposed by the rulers. This was not a discriminating sanction, as it only aimed at a category of Jews, hence being rather a protective one, according to the meaning that we have nowadays for the term. Instigations and murders on a religious background do not appear until the 18th century, especially in the Galaţi harbour, mainly in the period of the Christian Orthodox Easter, when the majority of sources agree when it comes to attributing these manifestations to the envy of the Greek town sellers against their Jewish competitors.
There had never been a situation in which the oppressed masses revolted against the ‘oppressive’ Jews or the oppressors’ representatives, as in the case of the uprising of the Ukrainian bondmen led by Hmelniţki against the Polish landowners and the Jewish leaseholders who represented them. This fact was due to the relatively low number of Jews present in Moldavia, in the 16th century.
In the 17th and 18th centuries there are, on the contrary, many documents stating that either the ruler (the state) or some boyars are to give remissions to the Galitian Jews, who wanted to establish new market towns or to settle down in towns already existing, in order to encourage commerce and craftsmanship.
Although the 16th century was marked by a critical political instability which generated a certain uncertainty on commercial routes, the plunder – committed by rascals or the authorities – didn’t represent the main characteristic of the Moldavian trade system. We know that there were many villages that disappeared, the villagers seeking refuge, as a consequence to crimes against the Jews, committed by either the inhabitants or the rascals. The identification of a dead Jew on the property of a village was punished very harshly, so the peasants usually tried to hide any incriminatory objects. They either moved the body or buried it. Such situations and investigations lead by the authorities are mentioned in the rabbinical texts, in the excerpts dealing with the agunot.
In cases where villagers were found guilty of killing a Jew (if the inhabitants had killed him, with the purpose of taking his goods, or he had been found on the village’s land), the people received an important fine, called dasegubină which usually consisted in confiscating the people’s livestock. If they refused to give them away, the inhabitants were banished and their houses demolished. We know that such a fine was given to the village of Băguleşti in 1654, leading to many disputes between the peasants. Nowadays this village doesn’t exist anymore. Another case is to be found in Muntenia, where Mircea Ciobanul asked the village of Vianul a fee of 40000 aşpri. In the 17th century and mostly during the reign of Vasile Lupu, the internal social and political situation becomes more stabilized. This period partially coincides with the rebellions in Ukraine and the Jewish emigration. The Jews who arrived during this period were socially assimilated (not religiously though), having an important contribution to the development of trade and craftsmanship in the area.
In conclusion, we can state that in the 16th century Moldavia was mainly a transit territory. We also know that at the end of the century, the Jewish bankers from Constantinople had important commercial interests in Moldavia, getting involved even in politics. Thus, Alexandru Lăpuşneanu became ruler again, after the removal of Despot Vodă through the intervention of Iosef Nassi. The later held a monopoly over Moldavian wine, Polish wax and honey for the Ottoman Empire. Archives in Galaţi mention other important Jewish merchants who owned businesses in Moldavia: Haim Cohen and Abraham Mosso (in 1570-1571), Nahman Tor (in 1573-1575), Abraham Gambais (in 1585-1586).
In the 17th century Moldavia became more of a transit territory, a place where Jewish traders had permanent storehouses, with marketplaces and safe sources for export goods, especially with the help of their compatriots already settled in this area. Gradually, the Ashkenazi Jews came to impose themselves upon the Sephardic, the Armenians (whose trading activities were older in Moldavia) and the Greeks (which had come recently in these markets). As we have already mentioned, the Ashkenazi’s industrious character had made them favoured by the representatives of the court as well as by those of the great landowners class.


Ştefăneşti in the 18th and 19th centuries

The vague testimonies referring to the presence of Jews in Moldavia begin to abound in the 17th century. This period is the most favourable one for the Jewish immigration in Moldavia. Many boyars, willing to develop commerce or crafts on their domains, founded market towns where Jews received fiscal facilities. However, this attitude changed in the second half of the 19th century, when the policy of national development of the new modern state begins to find itself in conflict with national minorities, including the Jews. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Jews start to become the main political issue in Romania, their emancipation, asked by the Congress of Berlin, being postponed in 1879, thus to be solved later on, in the second decade of the 20th century.
The Jewish population has increased in the 18th century, as we even have a president of the Moldavian Rabi Law Court originated from Ştefăneşti, in the person of Rabi Todris, father of the rabi Matatiahlu Calman. As we have said before, a very first census has taken place in Moldavia in 1774, although it only recorded the ones paying the taxes. On this occasion, three Jews are being registered in Ştefăneşti at the craftsman (in Romanian ‘rufeturi’) heading. A second argument would be The Book of the Incomes Belonging to the Inhabitants of Ştefăneşti (1793-1819) – in Romanian Catastihul de venitul Ştefăneştilor (1793-1819) – which certifies the presence in the year 1798 of 198 ‘Christian, Armenian and Jewish small shops’, out of which 71 were Jewish (according to the data resulted from the corroboration with the 1801 document, as it is presented below). This document shows us that the Jewish people held the monopoly when it came to beer (the custom of the ale house), for which they were paying a tax of 32 kilos of sugar to the hatman C. Paladi. They also had the right to sell spirits, but not wine. Yet, there was an exception for the kosher wine.
The beginning of the 19th century provides us with two extremely important inventories (catagrafii) regarding the Jewish population from Ştefăneşti. The former is dated the 6th of October 1801, thus having a significant relevance for the century that had just ended. It completes in a very inspired manner The Book of the Incomes Belonging to the Inhabitants of Ştefăneşti (Catastihul de venitul Ştefăneştilor) from 1798. We find out the fact that the Jews who lived in Ştefăneşti were included in ‘the guild of Jews’, being divided, due to reasons concerning the revenue, into three categories: families owning a booth (71), families that did not own a booth (49) and Jewish people who granted inns on lease in the neighbouring villages (11). Therefore, in Ştefăneşti there were 131 Jewish families who paid the taxes, let us call them bourgeois, altogether with whom there certainly existed numerous ‘proletarian’ families, few of them being also mentioned in the inventory – out of which some were living with wealthier families, thus not having their own residence.
If each of the bourgeois families was made up of five persons on an average, it results a number of 655 persons. To these we can add a number equal at least of persons who did not held industrial or commercial enterprises. Consequently, without any exaggeration, we can assert that in the year 1801 there were at least 1300 Jewish people in Ştefăneşti. From the corroboration of the 1801 census with that Book of the Incomes from 1798, there follows a pretty balanced depiction of the town. Therefore, the Jewish owned approximately 71 booths, while the rest of 120 belonging to the Moldavians and the Armenians. The Jews weren’t by far in the situation of ‘suffocating’ the town’s economy, nor were they in the disagreeable posture of alcoholically poisoning the population, since the only monopoly they held concerned the beer, as they were even kept under restraint when it came to wine. Hence, the vision of the Moldavian towns full of Moldavian peasants drunk because of the evil Jewish publicans who monopolized the alcohol commerce for occult purposes, a vision ‘disseminated’ by Romanian authors such as Slavici or Alecsandri, is not accurate in the case of the Ştefăneşti town and, we daresay, in any other case. But the pre-eminence of the alcohol commerce in that period’s Moldavia offers important information to us regarding that time’s social situation.
The 1801 inventory provides us with an image accurate enough when speaking about the occupations of the Jewish paying taxes. Approximately half of the 71 Jewish commercial and industrial enterprises of the place – concisely characterised in that period as being ‘booths’ – were busy with producing and selling horilcă (an alcoholic refined drink), the other workshops and shops producing and/ or selling hats, linen, cloth, ‘Bruges goods’, clothes manufactured by the local tailors, food products, beer, salt, tobacco, glass, candles, spindles, etc. The fact that a feredauş is also mentioned also indicates the presence of a public bath in the locality. There are also enumerated two bookbinders. Thus, we must assume the fact that there were enough private libraries, which could justify the existence not only of a single, but of two bookbinders in the town. In 1801 there also existed a dohtor (doctor) named Marcu, two ‘ceauşi’ , two hahams and a Rabi called Aaron. Based upon this (last) information, I.Caproşu and Gh.Pungă conclude the fact that there were two synagogues at the beginning of the 19th century.
As for the names of the Jews from the census, they are mainly specific to the Ashkenazi Jews. There are also situations of Romanian names, in which case the inventory explicitly mentions the appellative jidov (Jew) after the name, in order to avoid any misunderstanding. Here are some examples: ‘11. Iancul jîdov’ (Iancu the Jew); ‘69. Ilie jîdov’ (Ilie the Jew). The long-standing co-habitation with the Romanians is being also confirmed by a series of Romanian appellatives added to the first name of some of the Jews: Iosop Mititelu (the 6th position), Moşcu Mărgineanul (the 19th position), Cerbu Hurtojini (the 32nd position), Leiba Bobulescu (the 33rd position), Herşcu Todireanu (the 42nd position), Herşcu Săpoteanu (the 44th position), Leiba Roşu (the 46th position). We also note the fact that in that time, in Moldavia, there didn’t exist a modern state, having a coherent administrative politic when it came to the population. Hence, in most cases, the name of a certain person designated what nowadays would be the first name, the forename or the „Christian name”. What now represents the surname was at that time either a nickname, or an occupation, or an individualising characteristic.
In the 1820 census entitled in Romanian Jidovii hrisovuiţi ai tîrgului Ştefăneşti (The Recorded Jews of the Ştefăneşti Town), there are mentioned on the whole 70 families paying taxes. But their occupational area is larger than the one existent in the anterior inventory. Altogether with the activities indexed in the 1801 census, there also appear professions such as silk weavers, stone masons, the ones selling manufactured goods, check weighers, tax collectors, porters, undertakers and silver smiths. The Rabi is now called Şulim, and there are three hahams: Iancu, Iosep and Zelman.
The market town has undergone a powerful economic crash in 1812, when Basarabia has been annexed by the Tzarist Empire. On this occasion, a series of Jews from Ştefăneşti have crossed the river Prut and established in Basarabia. This is how we can explain the diminishing in number of the Jews recorded in the interval between the 1801 and the 1820 census. There is also a relevant document emitted in 1832 when speaking about the town’s economic decline. It refers to an address sent from Costachi Conachi to Teodorachi Grecinsky, the tenant of the Ştefăneşti estate and town. The simple reading of the name Teodor(achi) Grecinsky offers an indication regarding the Phanariot period – which had recently ended – and the practices typical for its representatives. Here’s the text belonging to Costachi Conachi: ‘The merchant Jews from there have come to me with petition, complaining for the fact that you have closed their trades for three weeks now and that you have asked for a tax that they cannot pay, when after the situation that the market town is facing at the moment, what it should be done is cutting from what has been paid before, not rising the payment and also because there isn’t anything that have in that market town but these alcohol business (the right of selling spirits) and if these are taken from them, then they will also be forced to leave the place and abandon the town and so on and so forth.’
On the one hand, this excerpt reveals the lame condition of the market town lacking the economic contribution of the neighbouring Basarabia region, and, on the other hand, the Phanariot-like practices performed by some of the estate tenants. The Greeks, who have migrated extensively to Moldavia in the time of the Phanariot regime, sharing the same religious beliefs with the Moldavians, have been assimilated relatively fast into the native society, unlike the Jews, who have preserved their specific difference. Grecinski is representative for the Greek origin of an individual, the same as Botezatu (The Converted), for example, indicates a Jewish origin.
Vidomostia (the list of taxes) dated in 1834 offers to us little information regarding the Jewish tax-payers who lived in the town of Ştefăneşti. There were 21 tailors, one gardener, one haham, two carters, three fur caps’ manufacturers, one horse-dealer, one glassmaker, one bookbinder, two apple-sellers, one baker, one water-carrier, one shoe-maker, one carver, one innkeeper, 40 merchants.
From a 1845 census we find out that the Jewish Ştefăneşti comprised 52 merchants, 47 craftsmen, 7 ‘other professions’, 8 without having a job, 20 needy aged people and 26 widows. The market town’s decline in the interval following the loss of Basarabia is evidently present. In 1801 there have been in Ştefăneşti more Jewish merchants and businessmen than 44 years afterwards.


The 20th century

The beginning of the 20th century provides us with somehow more detailed data regarding this locality. Marele Dicţionar Geografic al Romîniei (The Romania’s Great Dictionary), published in 1902, was mentioning the existence in the commune of Ştefăneşti of 55 ponds and 12 pools, six steam mills, 21 water mills, a mill drawn by horses, three wind mills, a factory of leather tanning, a factory producing candles, one producing soap and two limestone quarries. The town’s industry also comprised tailoring, shoe-making, carpentry, wheel-making and forge workshops. Cereals, cattle and wine were sold just the same. Also, in 1920, there had been a chemist’s, a hospital, a telegraph office and a factory which produced brandy made out of grapes.
More detailed data regarding the Jewish population residing in Ştefăneşti is being offered to us by a Jewish author. According to this source, in 1910, the town had 2883 Jews. In 1930, the number of the Jewish population reached a value of 2361, in 1941 it was 1462, and in 1947 870 , whereas at the present time there isn’t any Jew left in Ştefăneşti. The last burial performed in the town’s graveyard is dated 1984. The constant decrease of this town’s/ ştetl (in Yiddish) can be explained as being a cause of migration. Ştefăneşti has been one of the important Zionist Moldavian centres, this activity being also encouraged by the religious personalities from the town, such as the Rabi M.A. Friedman.

As for the atmosphere from the first half of the 20th century in Ştefăneşti, we do have a priceless confession belonging to Iehuda Evron-Nachberg, a native who migrated to Israel, where he wrote a brilliant monograph of the town, especially valuable by means of its subjective commentaries, through its ‘inside’ knowledge of this Jewish ştetl’s realities.
The Yiddish, altogether with the massive presence of the Hassidic Jews, many of them disciples of the well-known Rabi Friedman, have given to the ştetl a powerful native colouring. The town was the destination of the Hassidic pilgrim groups on a regular basis. Being a sort of nexus on the North-South and the East-West routes and at the same time accommodating the court of a Hassidic Rabi who encouraged the Zionism, the town has become one of the crystallization points of the migration towards Palestine and the whole world. Here could be often met groups of haluţim (pioneers), came to be given the blessing on their way to Ereţ-Israel, young people most often accompanied by their tearful relatives. Since it was a Hassidic centre, bigotry was a commonplace practice there. The religious conflicts came one after another. The aged Jews, who were more traditional-like, were seldom clashing with the younger and enterprising ones, who were less interested in respecting or even approaching the religious precepts which laid ‘the foundation’ of the traditional Jewish lifestyle.
As a result of one of these disputes the intervention of the Rabi Friedman has been requested. Some bigot traditionalists have complained to the Rabi about the not-so-pious young men who made up the Hachsara organisation from Ştefăneşti. The Rabi analysed the thoroughness of both parts’ reasons (the ‘wise’ religious old men and the lay Zionist young men), offering to them, as a conclusion, the following parable: ‘In the Holy Temple from Jerusalem there was a spot, called the Saint of the Saints, where none was allowed to enter but the Great Priest, and even him was not allowed to enter but once in a year, on Yom Kippur. But when the Saint of the Saints was being under repair, the working plasterers were entering and coming out whenever they needed to. So does the country of the ancestors need to be rebuilt, and the masons do not have to be necessarily Great Priests.’ Here we find ourselves introduced to the realm of the Hassidic stories, written down beautifully by Martin Buber or Ellie Wiesel, but, this time, not on the magic land of the ancient Galitsia, but in our picturesque contemporary Moldavia. By means of a simple Hassidic ‘tale’, the Rabi manages to justify from a theological viewpoint the necessity of a ‘laic’ migration to the Holy Land, at the same time speaking ironically about the claims of the contemporary ‘Great Priests’.

Sundays and Thursdays were fair day, occasions for the ştetl to be full of peasants from the neighbouring villages, come in order to sell their agricultural products and buy various manufactured goods. The intense economic life has given to the town of Ştefăneşti, in the first half of the 20th century, the appellation of Moldavia’s ‘beehive’. This life dynamism, from all its aspects, is being attributed by some to the religion’s influence, and, especially, to the one belonging to the Rabi Avraam Matitiahu Friedman. The Rabi had inclusively become a commercial and financial warrant regarding the seriousness of his community’s members. After his death, in 1933, the town has become the destination of an intense Jewish and – amazingly – Christian pilgrimage, as they came to pray and place notes at his tomb. This mass phenomenon has a correspondent in the manifestations occasioned by the Saint Parascheva’s dedication day in Iaşi. Of course that such a Hassidic ‘holiday’ – or, better say, commemoration – was improving the town’s economic situation.
Ştefăneşti symbolised, as many other localities, the insertion of the modern lifestyle into a traditional community. Let us listen to Iehuda Evron-Nachberg when speaking about the encountering of the traditional with the modern in Ştefăneşti: ‘You were witnessing the transformations brought up by the modern era: the car and the lorry were replacing the cart; the bus was making the coach grow out of use, the electricity was throwing out the oil lamp, and instead of the Petromax placed at the top of the pillar, which came up and down by means of a handle, there appeared the electric bulb; the radio was then present in order to complete the information provided by the newspapers.’
There were at least four commercial branches in the town, which were making an export trade with three continents. The cattle trade was performed by the Weiner/ Vainer family. The animals were embarked from the Truşeşti railway terminal and brought from there to the Constanţa harbour, and further on embarked for the Western Europe or even Palestine, which at that moment was under British administration. Many of these caravans’ attendants were haluţims, who are Zionist pioneers, who – as Iehuda Evron-Nachberg said – used this cheap means of transportation, economising not only the tickets, but also the certificates imposed by the British authorized agents, which were difficult to be obtained.
The cereals trade destined to the Western Europe was being performed in the 30s by two firms, one belonging to Avraam Grisaru, Leon Goldstein and others, and the other one belonging to Ely Schapira , Moritz Rabinovici and others.
There were also two businesses that dealt with egg exportation towards Germany, led by Avraam Blumenfeld and Ştrul Schaechter. We also have in mind the fact that such a business has also existed in the Jewish community from Tg. Frumos (the mediaeval Crasna), a town which has made the subject of our previous research.
There were also exported skins of young lambs for the USA, by means of a firm from Cernăuţi, which had representations in Ştefăneşti.
As for the rectitude of the Jewish sellers from Ştefăneşti, we shall recount the following happening. During the eviction from the summer of the year 1941, when Ştefăneşti has been declared a ‘Judenrein’ area, and the inhabitants have been moved to Suliţa, a German soldier has pointed his gun towards Ioină Vainer, a cereal seller, wanting to shoot him. At that very moment, between the German and the victim interposed the priest of the village, Constantinescu, who thud saved the Jew’s life.
The perfume commerce represents an important indicator for the degree of sophistication of the urban life in Ştefăneşti. Such a firm belonged to the Goldenberg family, who was also the main support for the Hevrat Tehilim synagogue; another one belonged to the Ţiporăs family.
The town also had over 20 manufacturing shops, among which there was a biting competition. The clients were picked form the street by the boys selling in the shops, sometimes cunningly enough. There existed a true negotiations’ ritual, which included formulae such as: ‘Come off it, master, give me more, you Christian’ or ‘You have asked me such a price that I cannot even count’ with the retort: ‘My brother, in our business it is not the head that counts, but the bag’.
There were also approximately ten haberdasher’s, few flour deposits, which usually belonged to the mill-owners (Ely Schapira owned the Hăneşti mill, and Şaiche Schwartz had the Ciuciulea mill), ironmongers, two lime storages, glassware and pottery shops, tobacco, stamps and newspapers agencies, a factory producing candles (the Stern family), one producing salami and sausages (Izidor Bernişteanu), two brick factories (Şloimă Cunăs and Iosel Abramovici respectively), an edible oil factory, a power station, cow breeding farm and one for butter-processing (all belonging to Moritz Abramovici), a leather tanning workshop (Şmil Boldur), a wool dye works (Ely Meirovici) and a spinning mill (belonging to the Basarabian Jew Berman). Also, there were three siphon factories, one belonging to Iosăb Cohn, another to Lupu Herşcovici and Mendel Margulis, and the third to Ştrul Dămideanu – the founder of the Haoved the Zionist movement. This information is being offered to us by Iehuda Evron-Nachberg and they sometimes come as an extremely detailed completion to the information existent in the ‘Romania’s Geographic Dictionary’. The data offered by Evron Nachberg offers a division according to the criterion of nationality (which is not accomplished by the ‘Geographic Dictionary’ and covers a period of time which comprises the interwar period, the war with its adventures and few years from the beginning of Communism (until 1947, when the author moves to Israel). Evron-Nachberg comes back two times in the Communist Romania, in order to record the huge changes suffered by his locality as a consequence of Communism and the Jews’ massive migration.
The Jewish tailors from Ştefăneşti were famous, some of them remaining in the local memory until nowadays. The best-known has been Idel-Leib-Bercovici. It is told that once, a client had been unsatisfied, because he had to wait for three months in order to have a suit made. In order to embarrass the tailor, the client tells him: ‘How come you need three months to make a costume, when God only needed six days for creating the world?’ The tailor answers him: ‘My dear, look how this world looks and see also the beauty of the suit I had made. Is there any place for comparison?’ This incident reminds us of a story immortalized by Bruno Schulz, entitled ‘The Dummies’. In his childhood, the author had been fascinated by the tailors’ skill, by their ability of creating, as compared to the divinity’s attributes.
There should also be enumerated shoe-making, carpenter, and joiner’s shops, the hairdresser’s and barber’s shops, the cafes and the confectioner’s, the photo studios, etc. All these make up the picture of a Jewish town which was very dynamic from the economic standpoint.
The Jewish Ştefăneşti contained also a series of representatives of the liberal professions: approximately 20 physicians, 6 dentists, 7 engineers, 7 chemists, few teachers, painters and artists. On such a background there couldn’t develop a cultural life the same as intense. Due to the confluence with the Romanian rural world and with the Hassidic traditional Jewish element, the ştetl’s cultural life has had a special dynamics. And yet, before describing the cultural life, we’ll need to emphasize the religious life, which, altogether with the economic development, constitutes a second pillar upon which a genuine urban and cultural life could be built up in Ştefăneşti.

The town’s religious life has been decisively marked by the presence of the Rabi Avraam Matitiahu Friedman. He managed to change Ştefăneşti into one of the most important Hassidic centres from the South-East of Europe, as Baruch Teriscatin considers.
A.M. Friedman has been the grandson of the Rabi Israel from Rujin, who was the grand-grandson of DovMeir from Mezritis, the successor of Bal Shem Tov , the founder of Hassidism. Hence, the Friedman Rabis belong to an important Hassidic dynasty: the Rujin one. A.M. Friedman is born in 1848 or, according to other sources, in 1849, in the town of Otek from Russia. Due to the persecutions which were common to those days’ Russia, A.M. Friedman’s father, the Rabi Nuchăm Friedman migrates to Romania together with all his family. Avigdor Ben-zvi offers an extremely concrete reason for the coming of the Rabi Nuchăm to Moldavia. The Russian authorities ‘could not stand the fame that these Rabi was having among Christians (...)’. This detail regarding N. Friedman and the Christians’ respect towards him is difficult to be verified, but the assertion is entirely available when it comes to his son, A.M. Friedman.
Rabi Nuchăm, nicknamed ‘der Molech’ (The Angel) had three children: Mattesui (A.M. Friedman), Ghitla and Şeiva. He was an expert in the knowledge of Cabbala (the fundamentals of which he also taught to his son), being considered an authority in the sacred texts in general. Şeiva has become the wife of the Galaţi Rabi, and Ghitla the wife of the Sadagura one. Young Mattesui seems to have had a special propensity towards studying, becoming shortly enough initiated into the mysteries of Mişna, Talmud and Cabbala. Avigdor Ben-zvi narrates the fact that, after the Bar Mitzvah ceremony of his son, Rabi Nuchăm had the epiphany that his son will be a ‘barren tree’. Indeed, although he had been married twice, A.M. Friedman didn’t have any children, and at his death he didn’t let any heir for the throne of the Ţadik of Ştefăneşti, his designated successor – that is Menachem Nahum Friedman, the son of one of the Rabi sisters – dying a month before him, on the 21st Sivan 1933. N. Friedman, the father of A.M. Friedman, died on 14 Kislev 5623 and was buried at the old graveyard from Iaşi, situated in the Ciurchi neighbourhood, which does not exist anymore, being ‘relocated’ by the authorities in the time of the Antonescu regime. Nowadays the area of the former graveyard is being occupied by a park. There isn’t any memorial plaque in this place.
When he was 21 years old, in 1865 , A.M. Friedman arrives at Ştefăneşti, where he is appointed Admor – a Hassidic title given to those Rabi who got very close to God by means of their holiness. Here he dedicates all his life to the service of the spiritual interests (and not only) belonging to the community. During his leadership there hasn’t been any turmoil among the members of the local Hassidic community, nor between the Romanians and the Jews. Ştefăneşti seemed to be a sort of ‘blessed space’. We do not have any conflicts between Romanians and Jews not even during the uprising which took happened in 1907, let aside the absence of the ordinary chicaneries which were periodically organised by the Romanian authorities because of patriotism: expulsions, accusations regarding ritual murders or poisoning the peasants with alcohol, etc.
As for the unrest which troubled the Jewish community, setting in opposition the ultra-Orthodox and the Zionists, an interesting testimony for his mediator capacity has been presented above.
The Rabi was remarkable due to a special optimism when it came to the human condition, which was not very justified in a period overwhelmed with anti-Semitic conflicts. He used to say over and over again – especially with occasions which opposed the two parties (the rich and the poor or the Jews and the Romanians) that “all the people are brothers, but they are afraid to hug each other”. When a rich Jew – as a retort to the pressures that referred to the setting up of a numerus clausus in the Universities, as well as other chicanery – wanted to pay less the Christian employees than the Jewish ones, when asking for the Rabi piece of advice he got as an answer the request not to commit discrimination. The Rabi was also a great nature-admirer. Ever since childhood he used to spend every day few hours amid the landscape surrounding him. He used to ask from his disciples to love nature, since ‘God loves it too.’ Thus, we have a sui-generis ecologist in the person of this Rabi from Ştefăneşti.
His Ştefăneşti residence ‘had become a pilgrimage [place] for all the poor, the rich, the ill, the hopeless, all [the ones] suffering from bodily or soul illnesses (...). Jews or Christians, peasants or land owners, workers or proprietors, children or old people, sane or sick they came to the Rabi.’
A.M. Friedman came to Iaşi every year, with the occasion of Hanukkah, and he stayed there for about a month. He owned a (Hassidic) court in this town, which bore his name, situated somewhere in the area called Tg. Cucu. One of the reasons of this annual visits had to do with the commemoration of his father (at the Ciurchi graveyard), but his presence was also justified by the existence of a great number of followers in the Moldavian capital. We also know about him the fact that he had travelled twice abroad, once to Odessa and the other time to Otek (Russia).
The Rabi also had the fame of making wonders. There were also a lot of stories circulating about him. The putting an end to a pestilential epidemic is also attributed to him, when he performed a religious ceremony at the local graveyard. The Romanians were constantly appealing to him, making for his fame to continue for a long time after the last Jew left Ştefăneşti, and even after the digging up and the removal of the bones belonging to the Rabi from the local graveyard.
There are many confessions about the Romanians who came as pilgrims to the Rabi in order for him to solve their various problems. B. Tercatin and Iehuda Evron-Nachberg tell us about a character named Grigore Lupaşcu, whose children were all dying. Overstepped by the ineffectiveness of the ‘modern’ medicine and after he had uselessly made the tour of all the monasteries, he decides, following the insistence of a Jewish friend, to make a try with the Rabi. A.M. Friedman gives to him a very ordinary piece of advice: ‘Pull down your house, as it has been built upon an evil place and erect another one, far away, and everything will go well’. The advice proved to bear fruit, and our man had three children again, who also had a brilliant future, becoming professors at the University and others. The narrative is significant, as it exemplifies a practice which existed among the Romanians.
Rabi Friedman had died on a Saturday night, in the summer of 1933, on the 21st of Tamuz: July, according to the Julian calendar. It is told that at his burial there had been over 50, 000 people.
Every year, on his death date, the Rabi was commemorated at the graveyard, an occasion for thousands of people to meet. In the case which covered his tomb there were dozens of thousands of notes – grievances written in Hebrew or in Yiddish. He was exhumed and then inhumed again in the graveyard from Nahlat Iţhak, Tel Aviv. The ceremony was performed by the then Romanian chief-Rabi, Doctor Moses Rosen, in October 1968. The followers form Israel of the Rabi commemorate even today the Admor’s death day in this new graveyard. There are also many who come in other days of the year. But he is simultaneously worshipped in some other place, in some other country, by people having a different religion: in the locality where he was a Rabi. Here the Romanians continue to burn candles and place notes, asking for the Rabi to intercede with God in their favour. A. M. Friedman is the last Jew who persisited in not leaving Ştefăneşti, or, better said, who wasn’t let to leave. He is vivid in the memory and the hopes of a community which he properly led, beyond any ethnical-religious differences.
After the Rabi’s death, the communal Rabi Iosef Brayer had opened an Ieşiva bearing the name “Beit Avraam”, in his own yard even. This one had been closed after the loss of Basarabia. The next Hassidic Rabi was Eshel Hager. Thus, A.M. Friedman had been the last in his line. The Rujin dynasty also had representatives in Galitsia, Bucovina and Moldavia, the most important Moldavian centres being Sadagura, Ştefăneşti, Boian, Paşcani and Buhuşi.
The communal Rabi coexisted with the Hassidic Ţadic. We know that, between 1897 and 1905, the communal Rabi from Ştefăneşti had been Bezazel Zaev Şafran, born in 1867, in Pomaru, Galiţia. Alexandru Şafran, his son, was the Romanian chief – Rabi in the period of Shoah, and after the setting up of Communism in Romania, he was a Geneva Rabi. Al. Şafran, altogether with W. Filderman, the chief of the Jewish communities from Romania, have had an important role in saving a part of the Jewish Romanian community during the second World War. B.Z. Şafran becomes prime-Rabi of the Bacău community in 1905. At his recommendation, he is succeeded in Ştefăneşti by the Rabi Mordechai Dov Brayer, who was born in Rujin. After his death, his son, Iosef Brayer, who had been a loyal Zionist, becomes the Rabi of the community. He migrates in 1947 to the USA, where he becomes a Rabi in Bronx, New York, at the Tiferet Avraam Matitiahu synagogue, which was built in the memory of A. M. Friedman. Eventually, he arrives in Israel in 1964 and is the initiator of an unusual project: the one of transferring the bones of the Friedman Rabi and some of his disciples to Israel. This transfer had taken place in 1968, while the Communist regime was in bloom.
With a population of 3, 000 Jews, the town of Ştefăneşti had 10 synagogues. Three of them were situated in the very yard of the Rabi, the most important of them being Kloiz. In the centre of the town, next to the Law Court and opposite the Change Credit Bank and the Orthodox Church there was the Hevre-Gah Synagogue (Gmilat-Hasadim). The other six synagogues were in the Eastern part of the own, along the Başeu brook: The Great Synagogue (in the neighbourhood of the Christian cemetery), the tradesmen Synagogue, the psalms Synagogue, the Şloimă Wolf Synagogue (entitled this way after the name of its founder), the tailors Synagogue and the Şmuel Moşe Synagogue (entitled after the name of its founder). In 1979, during Iehuda Evron-Nachberg’s last visit in Ştefăneşti, there wasn’t any synagogue left.
One of the effects of the encounter between Hassidism and Zionism in Ştefăneşti has been the practicing on a large scale of the Hebrew language. The teacher Hana Eizenstain had created in Ştefăneşti the first kindergarten in the Herbrew language, teaching this language simultaneously at the Israelite-Romanian school called Narcise Leven. Moreover, she organized courses of Hebrew language for adults within the Zionist movements. She had adopted the Eliezer Ben-Iehuda system of teaching – “Hebrew as a sole language”, not using any other language. After her leaving, the Hebrew courses had been taken over by the Steinhaus teacher from Răşcani , a place which is now on the territory of the Moldavian Republic. Another promoter of the movement for learning Hebrew in Ştefăneşti was Sulim Rabinovici. This linguistic competence acquired in Ştefăneşti had become very useful altogether with the ‘aliaua’ (the migration) of the majority of authors to Israel.
At the beginning of the 20th century there had been two movements in the town: a Zionist one (Aurora) and a Communist one (Luceafărul). Each was endowed with a library, having book stocks in the Romanian, French, German and Russian languages. But the Communists’ movement also included intellectuals who were not Jewish. During wartime, the Communist Jews from Ştefăneşti had been deported to the concentration camp from Tg. Jiu. The activity and the cultural struggle have managed to unite the Jewish population from Ştefăneşti, transforming it into a powerful community, providing it with a powerful sense of identity, which other communities lacked.
Although it was a tiny little town, the theatre was one of the inhabitants’ constant preoccupations. The performances were taking place either in the Binder Hall, in the hall belonging to the school Narcise Leuven or in the town’s public garden. The shows were organized by companies of professional theatre who were on tour (Jewish or Romanian companies), or, more often than not, by the Zionist youth movements. The Jewish repertoire included plays by Shalom Aleichem, Itzik Manger, Avraam Goldfaden, M. Ronetti-Roman and others. The Zionist movements’ repertoire, among whom we could note authors such as Macabi, Gordonia and C.R.S, included plays having a patriotic range of themes. After the war, a lot of plays were presenting topics from the period of Shoah. The theatre which did not have a Jewish specific character comprised plays by Caragiale, Moliere, Racine and others.
In time, the seventh art, the cinema, had also imposed its presence. Usually, the cinema shows were being organised in the hall owned by the school Narcise Leuven, and then in the hall of Wolfsohn, placed on the road to Iaşi. The most appreciated productions from the film era had Charlie Chaplin as their protagonist. The one to whom the initiative of introducing the cinema in Ştefăneşti belonged was Idel Clecner.
The industry of the local entertainment also included few orchestras, the repertoire of whom included what we could call today “klezmer music”. The most important orchestra was Macabi. Also, for the pretentious ones, unsatisfied by the performances of the local orchestras, there were automatic and electric gramophones and, later on, radios.

For the inhabitants of Ştefăneşti, the subscription to the Zionist publications was almost a duty of honour. They had subscriptions to daily newspapers such as Renaşterea (The Resurrection), Mîntuirea (The Redemption), Unzer Zeit (Vremea noastră, in English “In Our Time”), and to the weekly papers such as Bar-Kohva, Copilul evreu (The Jewish Child), Deir Omăr (Ciocanul, in English “The Hammer”), Speranţa (The Hope), Haşmonaea, but also to the Romanian newspapers. In Romania from those days there was a Zionist publishing house, called Bicurim (in Romanian Trufandalele, translated in English as “The Masterpieces”), where there had been published authors such as Simon Dubnov, Hirsch Graetz, Theodor Loewenstein-Lavy, A.D. Gordon etc. The Bicurim books were automatically delivered in the libraries of the Zionist movements’ library from Ştefăneşti. Hence, culturally speaking, the members of this community were far from being isolated.
In 1930, Ştefăneşti had been visited by Nahum Socolov, the president of the World Zionist Organisation , who held a conference in the hall of the Great Synagogue. He remained deeply impressed by the level of knowledge when it came to the Hebrew language in Ştefăneşti, asserting that here “even the stones whisper in Hebrew”. The leader of the Romanian Zionist Movement, Drul Brezis, considered Ştefăneşti as being the “Romanian Tel-Aviv”. The Zionist movements were organizing conferences on a regular basis, where they used to invite personalities from various domains. These manifestations were not only aiming at the indoctrination, but also at the edification of a general knowledge among the inhabitants. All these activities had been forbidden by the Romanian authorities, who came more and more anti-Semite after the loss of Basarabia, in 1940.
The unusual Zionist fervour from Ştefăneşti is the consequence of several factors. Probably the most important had been the fact that Rabi A. M. Friedman, as well as his nephew, N. Friedman – the young Rabi, dead unfortunately before the one whom he was meant to be the successor of – has supported the Zionism. This was something unusual among the Hassidic followers. A.M. Friedman has contributed to the colonization of Israel not only indirectly, by supporting the migration, but also directly, buying at the beginning of the 20th century a terrain in the Ahuza neighbourhood from Haifa. At the same time, the Rabi Brayer has also been a promoter of Zionism, managing at an old age to remove even the mortal remains of the Rabi Friedman to Israel. This initiative of the Rabi Iosef Brayer is a unique fact in the history of Zionism.
Another factor which contributed to the crystallization of Zionism has been the anti-Semitism of the Romanian authorities. Until the beginning of the Communist regime, the Romanian authorities have been extremely “tolerant” when it came to Zionism. But the Communists have gradually changed their attitude towards Zionism, as they even sent to prison a series of the movements’ leading figures. A third factor of Zionism in Ştefăneşti – as Iehuda Evron-Nachberg considers – has been constituted of the activism performed by the Hebrew teacher Hana Eizenstein. Persuaded by her, many other leading intellectuals of the town have adopted a Zionist orientation. We should also add to this list the local Zionist organisations, which constituted an effect and a cause at the same time of the Zionism in Ştefăneşti.
The first Zionist organization from town, that is Gordonia, was founded in 1930 by Ruhăl Ghertz and Beny Timen. Gordonia was a far-reaching one, as it had over 100 branches on the Romanian territory, out of which 50 were in Basarabia and Bucovina. The Ştefăneşti subsidiary was one of the 15 which also functioned in the period situated between 1945-1949 and in this last interval the names of Moşe Grisaru, Haim Grisaru-Gherşony and Iosolă Hafner-Mîndru stand out.
Ştefăneşti also had a sportive Zionist movement, which is the Macabi. This organisation had been founded in Turkey, in 1894, expanding afterwards in the majority of the countries where the Jews lived. Macabi Ştefăneşti had been founded in 1923 and was known especially for its football team. At the Macabi competition which took place in 1935 at Tel Aviv, Ştefăneşti had two representatives, Mina Segall and Tuly Cotter.

Any shtetl had its picturesque characters, and Ştefăneşti was no exception to the rule. As an example, the prototype of the corrupt was embodied by a Romanian policeman, nicknamed Zwei lei, due to the daily tax he was asking from the Jewish sellers. The type of the skinflint was represented by a Romanian innkeeper, whose greediness was famous. She did not refrain from stealing from the Romanians and the Jews alike. ‘Should we have such a merchant from among the Jewish population, it would have been said that this is how the Jewish tradesmen are, but, since she’s not Jewish, it was told that this is how lady Petculeasa is like’, says Iehuda Evron-Nachberg.
Generally speaking, the relationships between the Romanian population and the Jewish one were pretty cordial and they were even helping each other frequently. There were even ‘business partnerships’, as the one existing between the Chiaburu family and the Shulim brothers and between Şmil Bodoagă and Petruţa Balan respectively. There were few Romanians in the village and, consequently, fewer anti-Semite. The most frantic ones were the brothers Tănasă and Niculaie Poduţă.
The Jews used to take part to the Romanian celebrations, such as Easter or Christmas. During the winter holidays, the Jewish population received Romanian carol singers, some of these carol singing choirs, conducted by psalm readers or teachers, being considered by Jews as ‘splendid’.
A picturesque character among Jews was also the doctor Terleţky, originally born in Basarabia, a very good diagnostician, but only in the first part of the day, when he could be found sober. He was a travelling physician. He used to book a room at the cheapest hotel from town, were he was expected each morning by the clients, with whose money he used to get drunk in the afternoon. He was always accompanied by a dog, and the children would gather in groups and shout behind him: ‘Tărleţky the crazy man!’ But this physician had an unusually kind heart. ‘There were even children who asked money from him; due to a painfully unconscious kindness, he used to get rid of his last penny until the next day, when he got again his payment from the patients who used to track him and wait for him at the hotel to wake up.’

Among the personalities born in Ştefăneşti, probably the most important one is the painter Ştefan Luchian. As for the Jewish population, the most famous names are the one of Solomon Regal, who translated into Yiddish the poetry of Mihai Eminescu (the Romanian national poet) and the poet from the Ardeal province George Coşbuc; Avraam Levenbarun, a deputy in the Israeli Parliament; the comedian Iacov Bodo; the poet Shaul Carmel, the nowadays leader of the Romanian Writers Organisation from Israel; the physician writer Dorel Şor; the painter Moritz Manes; Menachem Mendel Brayer, a teacher of Jewish sciences and a doctor in clinical physiology at the University Ieşiva from New York; Meir Iţhak Brayer, the director of the Har Etzion Ieşiva from Ierusalim; Iehuda Evron-Nachberg, the author of an excellent monograph about Ştefăneşti, and many others.

In 1941, the Jewish population of Ştefăneşti , which comprised approximately 750 families, is being evicted by the Romanian authorities to the locality called Suliţa, situated at a distance of approximately 40 kilometres. They were forbidden to carry anything but hand luggage. They arrive at the destination after two days when they only travelled at night, so as not to make inconvenient the reshuffle of Romanian and German military forces. In Suliţa they are being put up by the Jewish families from there. Later on, the Jews from Ştefăneşti ‘arrived in Botoşani, grieved, downhearted and oppressed. Ştefăneşti had been bombed and destroyed by the fights which took place, on the outbreak of the war, between the German and the Soviet armies.’
During the eviction from Suliţa, the Romanian authorities intended to exile to Tg. Jiu all the Jewish men aged 18 – 50, but this arrangement is being postponed due to the intervention of Iancu Boldur with the Police Chief from Botoşani, a mayor born in Ştefăneşti, who finds a compromise solution: taking hostages. Consequently, the Rabi Iosef Brayer, Gherşon Reines, Samy Lehrer and Iancu Facler are being kept by force indoors at synagogue on the Elisabeta street from Botoşani.
The Jewish men who were able to work have been mobilized, beginning with 1940, for the ‘compulsory work’, laying out and taking care of the roads (in winter time), digging ditches and generally doing any work imposed by the Romanian authorities. Afterwards, most of the men capable to work have been banished to the work camps from Dobrogea and Transnistria. Some have been taken out from the work camps from Transnistria and exiled to the Vapniarka concentration camp. Among these there were Moritz and Kivă Facler, Hana Nadler, Zeilig Dadi, Ihiel Schaechter, Iosef Croitoru, Herş Weintraub, Moşe Pantofaru, Rahmil and Şmil Ciuraru, Faviş Rabinovici, Grişa Noehovici, Herman Milştein, Moşe Papucaru, Aaron Weiner. Many of them didn’t come back anymore.
The dramas from the time of the Second World War are numerous. The first have taken place in 1940, simultaneously with the withdrawal of the Romanian army and administration from Basarabia. Max Pitaru-Leibovici dies stricken by the butt stock of the Romanian soldiers who were withdrawing. Iehuda Evron-Nachberg recounts how, in 1940, Olga Gafencu, the wife of the local tax collector was yelling that they were doing ‘a good job’ to the policeman Delescu, whom, along with two other policemen were abusing ‘the betrayer’ Ghisy Rosenberg, for the fault of ‘giving away’ Basarabia to the Russians.
The father of Shaul Carmel – the president of the association of the Israeli writers having a Romanian origin died after being pushed away from the train by which he was travelling to the regiment where he had been mobilised as an officer for the Romanian army. Moişe Friedman had died from the very first day of the eviction to Suliţa, due to the exhausting effort. On the occasion of the second banishment for Botoşani the one who dies is Iehudit Balan. The cereal-seller Leon Goldenstein is killed on the 29th of June 1941, on the occasion of the Massacre from Iaşi. Solomon Seagal is being killed on the 22nd of August 1944, a day before the collapse of the Antonescu regime. The physician Volody Zepelman had commited suicide altogether with his wife and daughters while being deported to Transnistria. Motăl Ghertz, one of the founders of the Grodonia Zionist organisation, was killed by the Romanian soldiers from Transnistria in front of Aviv, his son. Others who died in Transnistria have been Haim Calimbăr, Velvăl and Iancu Căruceru, Ely Ceauşu, Sendăr and Idel Ciobotaru, Dudolă Cojocaru, the Gorănstein family, Samy Dachas, Aaron Glauberg, Nută Grinberg, Herş Hascal, Leib Peretz, Leibola Schaechter, Bercu and Moină Suliţeanu, Iancu Ţăranu, Leon and Sabina Bregher.Also, Moină Donayevsky had died on the 9th of May 1945, the day when the Nazi Germany surrendered, as a soldier of the Red Army.
One of the Jews mobilised for the “patriotic” work by the Romanian authorities in the nearness of the front had been captured by the Soviet Army and were deported altogether with their ex Romanian and German butchers to the concentration camps from URSS. This is the case of Fredy Glűck and Iosel Lamfit, who have endured the conditions of the Russian gulag between 1944 and 1948.

In 1945, the inhabitants of Ştefăneşti were allowed to return home. And yet, only approximately 300 of them chose to come back home. Here it is how Iehuda Evron-Nachberg describes this coming back: “When they returned to Ştefăneşti, they found the town bombed and even burnt, and what was left had been stolen. The houses which were still intact on the outside were empty on the inside, robbed in daylight by gangs of burglars, against whom you could not defend and because of whom you could not complain to anyone.”
And yet, the community had begun to recover: there have been resumed the commercial connections with the surrounding Romanian villages, there was even built a factory of edible oil, there have been restored two of the ten synagogues (Hevre Gah from the centre of the town and Kloiz from the yard of the Rabi Friedman), the butchery and the graveyard were reopen.
Also, the cultural life of Ştefăneşti had been taken back, as the reopening of the Gordonia Zionist organisation had been managed, in the house of Strul Butz. Along with this one, there has also been founded another group, called Buselia. Between 1945 and 1947 there were organised theatrical performances on topics that dealt with the Jews’ life from the period of Shoah, and, more often than not, on topics having to do with the life of the haluţimi from Ereţ, Israel. Eventually, due to the Jews’ migration, the locality begins to lose its population. Their place is being taken over by the Romanians and mostly by gypsies. The latter were sometimes residing in the Jewish houses only with the purpose of destroying them, selling their carpentry and the bricks they were made of. Thus, the Jewish identity of the ştetl begins to fade away, Ştefăneşti getting to resemble more and more to the typical Romanian village.
We shall now let one of the Jewish inhabitants from Ştefăneşti to recount his memories about his first visit to Romania, after the alia to Israel and about the impressions he got on this occasion. ‘After the first wave of emotions, there came the shocks: I’ve felt the first one when I stepped upon the streets from Ştefăneşti. The streets and the houses, which used to be once full of life, were now deserted and even in a very bad condition. Only few houses have remained intact, among which the Havri-gah synagogue. On the place of the durable houses there were now growing corn, sunflower and weeds. In some of the houses on our street there were living gypsies from Bădiuţi. All the houses which were sometimes placed on the portion beginning from Herman Goldenberg’s house and up to Goldman’s house have been demolished (...), in order to sell the carpentry, the bricks, the sheets and the window panes belonging to the demolished houses. (...)
The imposing buildings, which also included the Kloiz synagogue from the yard of the holy Rabi, were destroyed, as if they had never existed, and in their place there was maize growing now. The only place we have found intact was the Jewish cemetery. We got close with hesitating steps to the building which covers the tomb of the holy Rabi, whose bones had been transferred to Israel a year before (...).’
The confession above, belonging to Iehuda Evron-Nachberg, is being very touching. And yet it is not the last one; he will come back in ten years’ time, in order to record the awful condition of the town where he was born, to whose symbiosis between traditional and modern he assisted to in the 30s and had splendidly called to mind. The tone he uses to describe the market town on his last visit is totally gloomy. Let us listen to his recount from 1979: ‘On our street there were only few houses left standing upright... ramshackle (...). The Hevri-Gah synagogue did not exist anymore (...). On the main street the houses of Latzres, Şmil Stoleru, Feinstein and Schapira were untouched. But instead of the houses which belonged once to Burichovitz, Haiche Leib, Wexler, Hună Weiss, Leib Gherşăn Grisaru, Iosăl Oring and Surkă Cohn there was now a station with tractors and agricultural stock.’

When I first visited the town of Ştefăneşti, in the year 2005, as I was fascinated by the story of the Rabi Friedman, all that was left here was the Jewish cemetery, which was undergoing an advanced and continuous stage of degradation. Among the tombs, a local go-ahead had cultivated potatoes. The one I’m speaking about is Gheorghe Pop, the very person to whom it has been given the task of protecting the local cemetery, who was living on the premises and was using the agricultural terrain owned by the Romanian Federation of the Jewish Communities, offered in exchange of the protection he was supposed to offer to the last vestige of the Jewish identity that still existed in Ştefăneşti, that is the graveyard. His calf was laying itself out to pull down with the chain by means of which it was tied the few gravestones that were still standing around it. The guardian hadn’t welcomed me warmly, but by shouting and swearing. Deeply impressed by the experience I’ve underwent in Ştefăneşti, I’ve rapidly taken the first means of transportation for the civilized world. Then I began to draw the attention of the public opinion by means of the press. But, meanwhile, there appeared other titles which announced destructions in several other Jewish cemeteries form Romania. Not long ago, in the autumn of 2008, few hundred gravestones have even been vandalized in Bucharest, the capital city of our country. This is the framework within whom we are trying to save probably the last relic of the Jewish identity from a painful number of Romanian localities. It is all about cemeteries...
The graveyard from Ştefăneşti is remarkably beautiful, even in its damaged condition; it does have the charm of the ruins! Its head-stones are extraordinary artistic works, their symbolism is extremely rich, truly fascinating. Ştefăneşti has been a ştetl with a powerful Hassidic identity, which he had kept until the departure of the last Jew. Now this identity is only being reflected in the cemetery.
In the middle of the graveyard there is the ‘mausoleum’ of the Rabi Friedman. Actually, it is all about a modest empty room, built above the Rabi’s ex tomb, and we say ‘ex-tomb’, because his bones were exhumed in 1968 and moved to Israel. Therefore, what we have is an empty room above an empty tomb. Once, as the Romanian chief Rabi Moses Rosen (who is dead now) used to say, this empty room was filled with huge piles of notes on which there were written prayers in various languages: Ivrit, Yiddish and Romanian language. Now, the only ones who still place prayers at the empty tomb of the Rabi are the Orthodox Christian Romanians. We also dared to open some of these requests. Others were open by the chief Rabi Moses Rosen in 1968 and he wrote about them. Here’s a fragment from his testimony: ‘You are wrong if you think that «the house» of the Rabi was empty. On the contrary, it was filled up to the ceiling, full to the brim, but not with funeral wreaths, nor marble ornaments. It was breathtakingly full with a huge heap of small sheets of paper. There were yhousands, dozens of thousands. Who could even count these «Kwitlăh» pieces of paper, the letters addressed to the Ţadik who is not alive anymore? Who could decipher this manner of writing, these holy letters, drenched in blood and tears? Who has the strenghth to unearth each drama, each suffering, each tragic dilemma which is being hidden underneath the lines of these «small letters» addressed to the Rabi who doesn’t live anymore.’
Today we are trying to call your attention to this. We would like to save the cemetery belonging to one of the most important Hassidic community from the 16th – 20th centuries’ Europe, where there is the tomb of the most important Rabi from Romania. There isn’t anything left. It is our duty not to let the time and the people alter this unique legacy.

Laicizare şi modernizare în Europa

Despre două tipuri de sensibilitate condiţionate metafizic

Milan Kundera, într-un articol publicat în noiembrie 1983 la Paris, susţinea că după al doilea Război Mondial au existat trei Europe: una vestică, o alta estică şi încă una, situată geografic în centru, cultural în vest şi politic în est. Însă opinia publică internaţională a fost obişnuită, cel puţin în perioada Războiului Rece, cu ideea unei lumi bipolare, marcată de diferenţe ideologice si antagonism militar. In timpul acelor decenii, ideea unei a treia Europe reprezenta cel mult ficţiunea nostalgică a unor indivizi din est, incapabili să accepte realitatea lumii în care trăiau. Asemenea subtilităţi erau de neconceput pentru logica maniheistă a ideologiei, marcată de separaţii de genul bun-rău, adevărat-fals, noi-ei etc.
Izgonită din geografia reală, a treia Europă a supravieţuit ca spaţiu cultural şi simbolic, devenind resortul unei viziuni „reacţionare” a membrilor unor societăţi care nu îşi puteau găsi locul în noua ordine ideologică, geografică şi istorică de după Yalta. Popoarele acestui spaţiu au suferit în mod regulat înfrîngeri şi umilinţe din partea imperiilor mari din jur, fapt ce a condus la o construcţie identitară distinctă faţă de cea a apuseană.
Există cîteva mărci distinctive ale acestei identităţi. De pildă orientarea religioasă şi culturală. Cehii, polonezii şi maghiarii au reprezentat limita civilizaţiei occidentale si a catolicismului încă de la sfîrşitul mileniului întîi. Spre deosebire de popoarele est şi sud-est europene, aceste societăţi au fost conectate toată perioada medievală şi o mare parte a modernităţii la civilizaţia occidentală. Prin urmare, decalajul temporal şi structural al acestora faţă de modelul social occidental este mai mic.
Falia consecventă separării religioase dintre catolicism şi ortodoxie a dus în cele din urmă la dezvoltarea a două tipuri diferite de societate şi de instituţii[1]. În vest, Biserica a fost singura moştenitoare a tradiţiei culturale romane. Timp de secole, aceasta a încercat să menţină un echilibru (cu lumea barbară), bazat nu atît pe dreptul forţei, cît pe forţa dreptului. Dreptului forţei i s-a opus instanţa neutră şi obiectivă a Legii. În clipa în care sistemul feudal s-a impus, exista deja o ordine obiectivă a lumii, în care locul şi rolul fiecăruia era stabilit foarte clar.
In est, Imperiul Bizantin a rezistat încă un mileniu. Datorită faptului că nu a existat niciodată o carenţă a „puterii seculare”, Biserica nu a reuşit să se impună sau să devină un competitor important al statului. Dimpotrivă, acesta şi-a subordonat instituţia bisericească şi religia ca instrumente ale guvernării. Astfel, la nivelul mentalului colectiv al spaţiul european s-au creat două orizonturi foarte diferite. În vest, unde echilibrul social (între puterea seculară, cea spirituală şi societate) este asigurat prin instanţa legii, s-a dezvoltat o mentalitate legalistă, bazată pe drepturi şi obligaţii. În est, unde Biserica se subordonează total statului, s-a dezvoltat o mentalitate paternalistă, bazată pe abuz din partea statului şi supunere din partea societăţii.
Odată cu creştinarea Europei barbare, cele două modele sociale generate în emisferele fostului imperiu au fost exportate. Prima Cortină de Fier care s-a abătut asupra continentului este de inspiraţie teologică, nu politică[2], şi datează de la începutul Evului Mediu. Dacă modelul social bizantin avea o structură piramidală, în care Biserica şi societatea se supuneau strict Basileului, înţeles ca „uns” al lui Dumnezeu, în Occident piramida a suferit un puternic dezechilibru la vîrf, unde puterea seculară şi cea spirituală şi-au disputat mereu întîietatea. Această structură, în loc să tindă, ca cea bizantină, spre un model de ierarhie a puterii, a evoluat către un model de supremaţie a legii. Treptat, Legea a ajuns să înlocuiască Forţa ca principiu de reglementare a relaţiilor sociale. Acesta este un cîştig foarte important al lumii medievale occidentale, deoarece în clivajul dintre Biserică şi Stat va emerge societatea civilă.

Naşterea ideii de societate civilă

In Anglia „societatea civilă”[3] a apărut foarte devreme, pe fondul unei slăbiri atît a autorităţii papale, cît şi a celei seculare. Sub presiunea nobilimii nemulţumite de abuzurile constante ale regalităţii, regele John promulgă în 1215 Magna Carta Libertatum, „în onoarea lui Dumnezeu, în cinstea Bisericii şi pentru o mai bună organizare a regatului”. Acest document stabileşte foarte clar limitele fiecărui actor din harta simbolică a lumii de atunci. La aliniatul 1 sunt garantate libertăţile Bisericii, iar la al doilea drepturile tuturor oamenilor liberi (nobilii feudali) din interiorul regatului. În lumea medievală naţiunea era reprezentată de „oamenii liberi”, de seniorii feudali. Mai tîrziu apar celelalte sensuri ale sale: cel etnic şi cel civic. Pentru medievali natio reprezenta clasa nobililor feudali, iar „libertăţile” obţinute reprezentau privilegiile lor. Deşi complet încadrat în structura simbolică a lumii medievale, acest document reprezintă actul de naştere al societăţii de tip modern.
Pe continent chestiunea societăţii civile se impune începând cu Reforma, dar mai ales după Iluminism, cînd laicizarea elimină treptat Biserica din rolul tradiţional de contrapondere a statului. În lumea protestantă, un rol important în dezvoltarea sentimentului civic l-au jucat congregaţiile religioase. Prin înlocuirea cultului revelaţiei cu cel al raţiunii, Iluminismul trimite Biserica spre un rol din ce în ce mai marginal în noua realitate a lumii. Se schimbă totodată şi conceptul de ordine: ordinea cutumiară medievală este înlocuită de cea „raţională” modernă[4]. Dacă există un sens de dezvoltare al Iluminismului, acesta este de la vest la est, dinspre Britania, spre Franţa şi spre spaţiul german (Germania, Austria), urmînd ca apoi să primească cîteva replici întîrziate în restul continentului.
Interpretarea făcută aici asupra modernizării este una minimală, mergînd chiar spre clişeu, însă scopul acestui demers nu este microistoria unei epoci caracterizate de relaţii, fără îndoială, mai complicate şi mai profunde, ci o încercare de trasare a conturului general. Iar această tentativă implică suficiente clişee de reprezentare, indiferent dacă abordarea este de tip modern sau „post-modern”. Clişeele sunt legitime ca modalitate de lectură asupra unei epoci, în măsura în care suntem, cu siguranţă, prizonierii unora sau altora dintre ele. Reprezentarea în sine, iar reprezentarea istorică nu face excepţie, este o funcţie de reducere a realului la anumite dimensiuni „reprezentative” sau relevante pentru un scop anume.
În Franţa procesul de iluminare este caracterizat printr-o organizare mai raţională a statului şi a societăţii, centralizare, crearea unei birocraţii administrative subordonate statului, codificarea legilor, propagarea noilor tehnologii agricole şi industriale, prin garantarea toleranţei religioase şi îmbunătăţirea sistemului educaţional[5]. Iluminismul englez se caracterizează prin parlament reprezentativ, guvernămînt limitat (în timp), suveranitatea poporului, guvernarea prin consensul celor guvernaţi şi catalogurile de drepturi civile[6].
În Europa centrală şi estică modernizarea societăţii s-a realizat de sus în jos, la iniţiativa unor „monarhi luminaţi”. Ea nu a fost urmată de o „revoluţie din interior” (deşi în România anilor ’30 autori ca M. Eliade şi C.Z. Codreanu aveau să o invoce). Dimpotrivă, secularizarea şi centralizarea „de sus în jos” au generat rezistenţa violentă a tradiţionaliştilor. Republica poloneză a urmat o versiune falimentară a modelului parlamentar britanic, iar Rusia, Austria şi Prusia – modelul francez absolutist, însă cu nuanţe extrem de particularizate.

Prusia – sursa unei noi interpretări asupra modernizării

În Prusia, Frederick Wilhelm, regele-soldat, a imitat cel mai bine modelul absolutist francez. A rezolvat problema aristocraţiei feudale, încorporînd-o în sistemul militar şi birocratic al statului[7]. A fost cel care a reuşit să sudeze virtuţile protestante cu valorile militare ale autorităţii, serviciului si datoriei. Zucht, Ordnung und Pflicht (Disciplină, Ordine şi Datorie) au devenit principiile fundamentale ale organizării militare, statale si sociale. Succesul statului prusac, pentru un autor ca L. Johnson[8], demonstrează cît de compatibile erau între ele protestantismul, absolutismul, militarismul şi raţionalismul iluminist.
Charles Taylor, pe de altă parte, vede în Iluminismul prusac veriga de legătură între Luther şi nazism. Pentru a sfîrşi războiul (der Bauernkrieg) ce cuprinsese teritoriile Sfîntului Imperiu Roman de Naţiune Germană, Luther a enunţat următorul principiu: „supunere exterioară şi libertate interioară”. În acest fel, consideră Taylor, a avut loc o sciziune între morala privată şi morala publică a individului german de religie protestantă. Acesta a ajuns să se supună orbeşte autorităţii statale (şi să considere această activitate ca o virtute), avînd însă garanţia unei libertăţi nelimitate în cadrul vieţii private.
Argumentul este valid, dincolo de contrafactualitatea lui, dacă ne gîndim la influenţa spiritului protestant, mai ales a celui de factură prusacă, în comportamentul multor persoane care au avut funcţii de răspundere în cadrul celui de Al Treilea Reich. Pe de altă parte, pactizarea cu regimul (şi dedublarea aferentă) a germanilor de religie catolică sau a iehoviştilor a fost sensibil mai scăzută decît cea a luteranilor.
Adepţii teoriei unui sonderweg[9] (drum specific) al Germaniei în a doua parte a modernităţii au, alături de regele-soldat Frederick Wilhelm, un al doilea exponent politic în persoana lui Otto von Bismarck. Pe măsură ce Prusia protestantă a asimilat tot mai multe teritorii catolice de la Casa de Austria, a apărut nevoia unei reeducări a populaţiei în spiritul supunerii necondiţionate faţă de autoritatea politică. Între 1871 şi 1878 cancelarul de fier promovează aşa-numitul Kulturkampf (război cultural) în teritoriile „reunificate”. Este vorba de o puternică ofensivă a luteranismului şi a cultului statului. Germania a fost, aşadar, unificată sub o ideologie ce subordona sentimentul religios datoriei faţă de stat şi identifica, pe filieră romantică, ideea de etnie cu cea de stat, stimulînd ataşamentul puternic al cetăţenilor faţă de autoritatea statului.
În toate societăţile coeziunea socială se bazează pe o formă de autoritate, însă dacă supunerea are statutul de primă obligaţie morală, presiunea psihologică asupra individului către conformism este cu atît mai mare. Iar în Prusia protestantă, supunerea faţă de stat avea calitatea de virtute morală maximală. Această subordonare completă a individului faţă de autoritate are beneficiul de a elibera conştiinţa individuală de problema deciziilor morale, prin transferul responsabilităţii asupra autorităţii. Astfel se explică aderenţa germanilor protestanţi la fascism şi, mai tîrziu, chiar la comunism.
Atitudinea de proiectare a responsabilităţii asupra unei entităţi abstracte, de tip „stat”, şi-a găsit un ecou în interpretarea structuralistă asupra Holocaustului, care tindea să plaseze vina ororii asupra sistemului. Sistemul prin logica sa internă a dus la consecinţe nefaste, iar germanii, ca indivizi, n-au avut nimic de făcut, ar fi fost oricum victime. Acestei tentaţii i-a răspuns generaţia anilor ’60, care a profesat un discurs foarte critic la adresa părinţilor şi bunicilor. Neavînd o culpă directă, care să îi atenueze „analiza”, această generaţie lansează interpretarea intenţionalistă, conform căreia nu există o vină a sistemului, a stării de lucruri, ci ea este foarte precis individualizată, aparţinînd în mod concret şi irevocabil, dincolo de orice logică şi constrîngere inerentă a structurii, oamenilor care au pus oroarea în mişcare. Conform acestei interpretări, Hitler nu este un produs al protestantismului sau al logicii instituţionale, ci este produsul propriei sale voinţe; este eventual un individ care a exploatat sistemul, dar nu unul care a fost folosit de acesta.

Individualism, civism, organicism multiculturalism şi paternalism

Spre deosebire de indivizii din aria statului prusac, cei din imperiul Rus, Habsburgic sau Otoman nu s-au identificat într-o asemenea măsură cu autoritatea statului lor multinaţional. Supunerea nu a fost privită ca o virtute, ci ca o servitute. Tipul uman dezvoltat în această parte a lumii, în loc să înveţe să respecte regulile, a învăţat să le eludeze.
Astfel, există mai multe efecte ale ideilor iluministe, consecvente stadiului dezvoltării sociale şi instituţionale a diverselor arii europene la momentul de contact cu aceste idei. În perioada respectivă are loc o mare ruptură, o tranziţie bruscă şi dureroasă de la medievalitate spre modernitate. Europa se desprinde de construcţiile moştenite din epoca romană, carolingiană sau din creştinătatea medievală. E vorba de o nouă fundamentare a ideii de stat şi a administraţiei politice, care începe cu discursurile filosofice ale lui John Locke (Eseu asupra intelectului omenesc şi Scrisoare despre toleranţă) şi cu Revoluţia Glorioasă din 1688. Putem vorbi de un prim model axat pe individualism, care pleacă din spaţiul englez la sfîrşitul secolului al XVII-lea.
Al doilea, care pune accent pe civism, pleacă dinspre Franţa şi, în varianta prusacă, dă naştere statului etnicist, care are o istorie mai mult sau mai puţin fericită în spaţiul Est şi Sud-Est european. În Franţa avantajele modernizării, învăţămîntul şi administraţia, sunt folosite pentru a unifica un stat care altfel era destul de neomogen. Acest model centralist este preluat de Prusia şi, într-o măsură mai mare sau mai mică, de Austria şi Rusia.
Victor Neumann atrage atenţia asupra unui viciu de percepţie ce vizează spaţiul german. În general, în cultura română Iluminismul este perceput ca venind fie pe filieră franceză, sub forma statului civic (model reprezentat cel mai bine de generaţia tinerilor paşoptişti, ce aveau cel mai adesea studii în Franţa), fie pe filieră prusacă, sub forma statului etnic (organicist).
Sursa acestei influenţe prusace, care ar constitui al treilea model în grila noastră, se originează în Şcoala Ardeleană. În mod curios, deşi Transilvania era parte a Imperiului Habsburgic, exponenţii Şcolii Ardelene se alimentează de cele mai multe ori de la izvoarele prusace. Motivul este simplu. Teoriile organiciste şi etniciste rezonau mult mai bine cu aspiraţiile românilor. Însă a existat şi un al patrulea model al Iluminismului în cadrul monarhiei habsburgice, unul de tip multicultural, reprezentînd adaptarea acelor idei emancipatoare la contextul social şi politic al imperiului.
Un ultim exemplu de „despotism luminat” este cel al Rusiei din timpul lui Petru cel Mare şi al Ecaterinei a II-a. Însă acest model poate fi invocat mai degrabă ca un eşec al Iluminismului decît ca o încununare sau măcar adaptare a sa la contextul ortodox. Se pare că Iluminismul – şi aceasta este o afirmaţie tare, de ordin metafizic, deci oarecum condamnabilă – este specific mai degrabă spaţiului catolic şi protestant, decît celui ortodox.

Ar putea fi confesiunea creştin-ortodoxă o piedică în calea modernizării?

Fiecare model din cele de mai sus reprezintă expresia echilibrului la care s-a ajuns în urma negocierii, adesea dureroase, între specificul local (dat de tradiţie, de structura socială şi confesională) şi noile idei „universale” ale raţiunii de tip modern. Dar există o diferenţă între vestul şi (r)estul continentului în ce priveşte modul de raportare al individului faţă de autoritate. Dacă în Anglia şi în Franţa individul este pus în situaţia de a se supune Legii ca instanţă supremă, ajungîndu-se la prevalenţa acesteia în faţa statului şi a administraţiei sale, iar dacă în Germania autoritatea statului se impune în mod constrîngător, individului nerămînîndu-i decît spaţiul limitat al libertăţii private (nicidecum civice), în partea continentului supusă dominaţiei imperiilor multinaţionale indivizii nu dezvoltă un cult al supunerii faţă de autoritatea Legii sau a Statului care o ipostaziază, ci mai degrabă se orientează către un cult al nesupunerii. Pentru ei, legea este o impunere din afară, de obicei în numele unui străin, nicidecum o expresie a voinţei organismului etnic sau a unor drepturi generale în virtutea calităţii de om. Acest tip de mentalitate, consecvent celei de-a treia Europe de care vorbeam, este propriu popoarelor asuprite din aceste imperii (polonezilor, cehilor, slovacilor, ungurilor, românilor şi popoarelor balcanice), avînd o influenţă nefastă asupra procesului de luminare şi de impunere ulterioară a statelor naţionale în acest areal.
Dincolo de dialectica raportului stăpîn-sclav, care predetermină într-o mare măsură mentalul colectiv, există un alt factor cel puţin la fel de important ce influenţează felul în care o comunitate se raportează la sine şi la lume. Este vorba de religie. L.R. Johnson spunea că prima Cortină de Fier care a căzut asupra Europei nu a fost de natură politică sau economică, ci religioasă, aşezîndu-se asupra continentului odată cu Marea Schismă.
Acest fenomen a dus cu timpul la dezvoltarea a două tipuri de atitudini cu privire la lege. În cazul Vestului, aceasta a ajuns să se impună ca o instanţă neutră care să arbitreze între actorii sociali (la început Biserica şi Statul, la care s-a adaugă ulterior, într-un lung proces, societatea civilă). În Est, statul bizantin a reuşit să-şi subordoneze intereselor de guvernare atît Biserica, cît şi societatea.
Legea este, în principiu, o manifestare a raţionalităţii. În măsura în care suportul transcendent al ordinii mundane se estompează, sarcina instituirii acesteia este preluată de puterea seculară, prin mecanismele administraţie, nu ale metafizicii. Lumea încetează să fie o ierarhie instituită şi garantată de divinitate, iar locul privilegiat al preotului ca oficiant al liturghiei menite a menţine necoruptă ordinea firii este luat de contabil şi de administrator. Raţiunea, al cărui principiu „universal” este fundamentat în imanenţa „naturii umane”[10], ia locul revelaţiei, ce se întemeia pe transcendenţa divinităţii, manifestată în politică de cele mai multe ori prin voinţa nu lipsită de capricii a suveranului.
Acest proces de fundare a lumii în imanenţă nu are replică în estul continentului. Aici religia face parte dintr-o ecuaţie a puterii în care relaţia privilegiată a basileului cu transcendenţa, legitimitatea lui şi a acţiunilor sale nu este pusă la îndoială. Într-un asemenea cadru, circumstanţele care au dus la naşterea (respectiv la favorizarea) Iluminismului apusean sunt absente. Adoptarea lui duce în mod neechivoc la imitaţie, la forme fără fond şi la un recul în numele unei tradiţii de data aceasta legitime. Narodnicismul rus, respectiv poporanismul şi sămănătorismul din România au fost mai mult decît întemeiate, deşi timpul le-a făcut în cele din urmă ridicole.
Guvernămîntul Rusiei ţariste a îmbinat absolutismul iluminist cu tradiţia ortodoxă a supunerii complete faţă de stat. Astfel s-au creat premisele celui mai autocratic sistem politic european pînă la apariţia URSS. Unul din elementele caracteristice ale tradiţiei bizantine este, cum spuneam, absenţa conceptului de lege, de domnie a legii[11]. Tensiunea dintre biserică şi stat, urmată de cea dintre societatea tot mai laicizată şi stat, care a dus în cele din urmă în vestul Europei la modelul social modern bazat pe separarea dintre stat şi societate, nu a existat în est. O caracteristică definitorie a modelului estic este absenţa societăţii civile ca actor în configuraţia simbolică a puterii şi a legalităţii ca normă autonomă distinctă de bunul plac şi de abuz.
Relaţia dintre un stat modern si cetăţenii săi are la bază fie o solidaritate „de sînge”, fie o perspectivă contractualistă ce se întemeiază pe un fel de negociere în care statul oferă bunăstarea, securitatea internă si externă etc., iar cetăţenii (dacă sunt mulţumiţi) se identifică cu valorile şi simbolurile promovate de acesta. Un stat care eşuează în satisfacerea nevoilor fundamentale ale cetăţenilor nu va fi capabil să guverneze pe baza reprezentativităţii şi va sucomba sau va fi nevoit să apeleze la o formă de autoritarism. Acesta a fost cazul imperiului sovietic, care a cedat ca urmare a eşecului economic şi a crizei de autoritate generată de schimbările cu caracter democratic care au avut loc în anii ’90.
Se pune întrebarea dacă nu cumva, în cele din urmă, categoriile democraţiilor liberale vestice sunt improprii tipurilor de societate care s-au dezvoltat în est pe baza moştenirii bizantine. De exemplu, cetăţenii bulgari, români sau ruşi asociază îmbunătăţirea situaţiei lor nu atît cu propriile lor eforturi, cît cu suportul şi sprijinul statului şi a „mîntuitorului neamului”, a liderului providenţial din fruntea lui. Conducătorul statului însumează în acelaşi timp virtuţile Papei şi ale Împăratului din modelul medieval apusean[12].
Această atitudine subliniază inaderenţa mentală a popoarelor ortodoxe la democraţie şi adecvarea lor la modelul bizantin, în care legitimitatea liderului nu presupune un acord cu societatea – mediat de instanţa neutră a „legii” –, ci o relaţie directă cu divinitatea. Poporul refuză să-şi ia destinul în mîini, aşteptînd totodată apariţia mântuitorului, a „alesului neamului”, capabil să rezolve toate problemele. Experienţa repetată a tiraniei nu pare a eroda acest model, mai ales datorită implicării religiei în ecuaţia puterii. Mecanismul legitimator nu este unul „de jos în sus”, dinspre societate spre stat, ci „de sus în jos”, legitimitatea autorităţii venind dinspre divinitate către „unsul” său pe pămînt, regele. Prin urmare, o guvernare, atît timp cît este consacrată religios, oricît de tiranică ar fi, este legitimă. Poporul trebuie să suporte, deoarece nu vremea este „supt” om, ci omul „supt” vremi, iar vremurile sunt date de la Dumnezeu. Există multe fragmente în literatura română mai nouă sau mai veche, care atestă acest gen de atitudine. De asemenea, multe sondaje sociologice confirmă aşa-numitul „model paternalist al statului” în aşteptările românilor, bulgarilor şi ruşilor, mai puţin însă în cele ale ungurilor cehilor sau polonezilor.
Acest gen de atitudine prezentă astăzi în estul şi sud-estul Europei atestă cît de mult au eşuat aici tentativele de modernizare. Iluminismul din Rusia (ca să luăm exemplul cel mai ilustru) a eşuat, deoarece a încercat copierea sistemului administrativ şi politic al unui stat modern, fără a adopta şi modelul social corespunzător. Iar modelul vestic se revendică de la o tradiţie complet diferită de cea bizantină. Vestul a avut o tradiţie legalistă, bazată pe tensiunea dintre religie şi stat, tensiune care în modelul bizantin a fost de timpuriu rezolvată în favoarea statului. În apus Reforma a dus la o mărire semnificativă a numărului de „moştenitori” ai Bisericii Catolice ca actori în relaţiile cu statul, creînd astfel premisele dezvoltării unei societăţi civile. Iluminismul, prin cultul Raţiunii (universale) opuse Revelaţiei (particulare, aflată în posesia exclusivă a Bisericii), dă lovitura de graţie religiei, excluzînd-o definitiv din rolul de principiu legitimator al relaţiilor sociale. În această epocă se impun teoriile contractualiste, bazate pe reprezentativitate şi nu pe elecţiunea divină.
În Europa estică un asemenea proces istoric nu a existat. Laicizarea s-a identificat de cele mai multe ori cu „secularizarea” averilor Bisericii, iar raţionalizarea cu birocratizarea structurilor statului. Corpul social a ratat aproape în întregime iluminarea. Mecanisme generate de Iluminism, cum ar fi învăţămîntul public, au devenit instrumente puternice ale reacţiunii antimoderne. Bazele unui stat modern: domnia legii, societatea civilă, parlamentarismul şi alegerile reprezentative au rămas întotdeauna chestionabile în Europa răsăriteană.
Cauzele se pot explica prin ceea ce s-a numit „întîrzierea istorică” a ţărilor estice comparativ cu cele vestice şi central europene. Acestea din urmă au intrat în modernitate în chip organic, urmînd de cele mai multe ori un proces de maturizare dinspre interior spre exterior. Modernizarea acestui spaţiu a avut loc fie prin dezvoltare internă directă, fie prin altoire. Spaţiul est-european a fost privat însă de această posibilitate. Prizoniere ale unui feudalism întîrziat pînă în secolul al XIX-lea, ţările române au trebuit să asimileze rapid modernitatea europeană în special ca formă, deoarece o creştere organică a propriilor conţinuturi ar fi însemnat probabil o perioadă de timp comparabilă cu cea a dezvoltării modernităţii europene.
Modernizarea forţată a României a dus în cele din urmă la o fractură în sînul societăţii, între elite şi mase. Dacă în rîndul elitelor s-a impus modernizarea prin altoi, restul societăţii s-a modernizat „de formă”, prin preluarea anumitor comportamente „evropeneşti”, în timp ce fondul tradiţional s-a păstrat aproape intact. Ruralitatea majorităţii populaţiei, lipsa dezvoltării urbane şi a mentalităţii burgheze a reprezentat un impediment serios în dezvoltarea unei societăţi formată din cetăţeni responsabili, capabili să recunoască şi să comunice cu elitele. În felul acesta comunismul, distrugînd rudimentele societăţii civile, adică elita intelectuală şi burghezia în formare, şi-a asigurat obedienţa completă şi pe termen lung a restului populaţiei. Minorităţile burgheze, evreii şi germanii, au fost mai întîi marginalizate, apoi vîndute peste hotare, iar ţărănimea şi burghezia autohtonă au fost înlocuite cu proletariatul rural, respectiv, urban – o clasă socială anacronică, rezultată în urma unui experiment ideologic şi sensibilă exact la limbajul acestei ideologii. Astfel s-ar putea explica absenţa în comunism a comunicării între elitele autentice şi restul corpului social, precum şi succesul fulminant al populismului de sorginte roşie în democraţia românească postdecembristă.

Weber şi explicaţia confesională

Primul autor care oferă o explicaţie religioasă a dezvoltării istorice diferite a popoarelor europene este Max Weber. În Etica protestantă şi spiritul capitalist, el constată că deşi au avut condiţii istorice asemănătoare, ţările din apusul Europei s-au dezvoltat inegal sub aspect social şi economic. Weber considera că rădăcinile capitalismului trebuiesc căutate in perioada Reformei lui Luther si Calvin. După acesta, tendinţa de a acumula capital si de a-l reinvesti apoi (nu de a-l cheltui) a apărut ca urmare a schimbării modului de raportare la lume a individului protestant. Această atitudine are o origine aproape dogmatică. Calvin – atunci când vorbea despre mîntuire, respectiv damnare (stabilite de Dumnezeu din eternitate) – le spunea discipolilor săi că semnul elecţiunii divine va fi prosperitatea materială, pe cînd cel al damnării va fi opusul acesteia: ghinionul şi sărăcia. Astfel, primii protestanţi au început să acumuleze capital, pe care nu l-au consumat pe luxuri deoarece, fiind vorba de mântuire, ascetismul era obligatoriu. După ce strîngeau o sumă, trebuiau s-o reinvestească s.a.m.dp. Acesta este, pe scurt, mecanismul religios al capitalismului. Urmaşii primilor protestanţi au pierdut cu timpul semnificaţia religioasă iniţială (destul de apăsătoare) rămînînd doar cu reflexul acumulării capitalului şi cu etica aferentă. Individul de religie catolică nu valoriza astfel existenţa. Acesta nu avea motive pentru care să strîngă si să reinvestească, mai degrabă decît sa risipească.
Pornind de la cîteva amănunte legate de modul de raportare a individului la Dumnezeu şi la lume, Weber a explicat decalajul care a avut loc la începuturile modernităţii între ţările protestante şi cele catolice. Analiza sa are ca axiomă principală prevalenţa individului asupra grupului în colectivităţile protestante, generată printr-o morală a responsabilităţii absolute în faţa divinităţii, în primă fază, transformată apoi într-o etică a datoriei, care excludea divinitatea din sfera motivaţiilor morale.
În sistemele totalitare, în care societatea civilă (în forma sa organizată) este fie desfiinţată, fie confiscată de către regim, acest amănunt devine semnificativ. Individul va trebui să se orienteze şi să reacţioneze după propriile sale valori, legate în primă instanţă de o etică personală. Într-o societate atomizată, unde etica vieţii civile este cvasi-desfiinţată, individul va căuta refugiu într-o etică a responsabilităţii personale, urmînd ca pe baza acesteia – lipsindu-i deocamdată încrederea sau posibilitatea de a se insera în spaţiul social distrus sau viciat de totalitarism – să încerce o tentativă de reconstrucţie a încrederii mai întîi inter-individuale şi apoi sociale.
Societatea, o dată decapitată, trebuie reconstruită pornind de la indivizi. Relaţiile interumane în cadrul protestantismului nu sunt subordonate unei organizaţii sociale, ci, dimpotrivă, individul este responsabil în mod direct şi total faţă de acţiunile sale. Asemenea oameni sînt obişnuiţi să îşi rezolve singuri problemele, iar toate organismele constituite sînt rezultatul iniţiativei libere a celor care le formează. Va fi dificil să încadrezi astfel de oameni într-un sistem contrar voinţei lor. Totodată, ei se vor putea reorganiza rapid şi vor putea reacţiona oricînd împotriva opresiunii, deoarece reacţia lor individuală este într-o foarte mică măsură dependentă de un organism social, cum ar fi de pildă biserica la ortodocşi sau catolici (care, o dată decapitată, i-ar lăsă pe enoriaşi lipsiţi de conducători). Pentru cehi şi maghiari, popoare cu importante comunităţi protestante, comunismul a fost tratat ca un organism străin, fără ca ei să simtă nevoia integrării în acesta, structura lor mentală făcîndu-i oarecum imuni. De asemenea, la prima ocazie care li s-a oferit, au putut să strîngă rîndurile şi să organizeze o opoziţie eficientă, înfrîntă în ambele cazuri de tancurile Moscovei. Pentru germanii din est, unde luteranismul a impus ca veritabil principiu autonomia lăuntrică şi supunerea oarbă faţă de stat, totalitarismul (de tip nazist, respectiv comunist) s-a menţinut pe baza unei etici a sacrificiului, reuşind să se menţină chiar şi în circumstanţele unui eşec militar[13] sau economic[14] major.
Ţărilor ortodoxe le-a lipsit acest atu al individualismului protestant. În cazul catolicismului rezistenţa la comunism era, măcar simbolic, favorizată de un puternic sentiment comunitarist[15] şi de faptul că biserica naţională nu era subordonată autorităţii statului, ci Vaticanului. Beneficiind şi de avantajul unui papă provenit din sînul ei, biserica poloneză a putut face faţă mai uşor tiraniei şi a putut oferi societăţii organizarea de care avea nevoie pentru a rezista totalitarismului, cînd toate celelalte forme de organizare ale societăţii civile au fost dărîmate de tăvălugul istoriei întruchipat succesiv de nazişti şi de comunişti.
Privitor la ortodoxie putem afirma, în principiu, contrariul celor prezentate. Individul ortodox este dependent de Biserică într-un grad atît de mare, încît s-ar putea crede că pînă şi mîntuirea este o chestiune administrată prin cult. Astfel, unii vor avea tendinţa să facă o interpretare cantitativă a vieţii religioase, nu una calitativă – bazată pe o morală a responsabilităţii şi a ireversibilităţii. Prin interpretare cantitativă înţeleg credinţa unora că sînt mai aproape de Dumnezeu dacă vin de mai multe ori la biserică, dacă sărută mai multe icoane, dacă frecventează mai multe biserici în aceeaşi zi etc. Prin urmare, pentru aceştia ritualul administrat de Biserică este o garanţie a mîntuirii, care este astfel condiţionată mai mult ritual, decît moral. Spunînd că nu există mîntuire în afara Bisericii, reprezentanţii acestei instituţii creează unora impresia că nu există mîntuire decît în proximitatea edificiului de cult. Asemenea oameni îşi fac o datorie religioasă mai curînd din a frecventa clădiri, decît din a avea o viaţa virtuoasă.
Ceea ce am vrut să subliniez prin această digresiune este dependenţa în ortodoxie a individului faţă de Biserică, de ritualurile ei. Faptul nu este atît de rău în sine (exceptînd bigotismul caricatural al unora), dar poate deveni foarte pernicios într-un regim totalitar care încearcă să-şi subordoneze societatea, pentru că îi este suficient să înlăture vîrfurile Bisericii, ca aceasta să devină la fel de neajutorată ca restul societăţii. Mai mult, dacă ierarhia superioară a acesteia este controlată, prin însăşi organizarea sa, Biserica poate deveni un instrument docil în mîinile manipulatorilor. S-a întîmplat în Rusia, s-a întîmplat şi în România, arhivele o dovedesc.
Biserica ortodoxă nu a putut opune comunismului decît cazuri izolate, care nu au reuşit să creeze forme organizate de opoziţie în rîndul societăţii. Din păcate, acest lucru nu s-a întîmplat nici măcar în propriile sale rînduri. La acestea se adaugă un alt factor. În mod tradiţional, biserica bizantină este subordonată în stat puterii politice. Astfel este anulată din start însăşi posibilitatea rezistenţei acestei structuri esenţiale în societatea de tip estic, prin faptul că pentru ea orice conducere, oricît de absurdă, este legitimă, fiind rezultatul voinţei divine. În felul acesta avem o reprezentare clară a falimentului societăţii civile în România comunistă, în care pilonii pe care ar fi trebuit să se sprijine rezistenţa s-au năruit pe rînd: fie nu au fost suficient de consolidaţi (este vorba de modernitatea eşuată prin absenţa unei burghezii, a unei mentalităţi urbane şi a unei intelectualităţi legate organic de societate); fie au existat şi au fost deturnaţi (cazul Bisericii). Individul ortodox – prin datele sale naturale şi prin absenţa acestor două mari repere: o societate civilă matură şi o biserică puternică şi combativă – nu a putut rezista agresiunii organizate reprezentate de comunism, căzînd fie în conformism, fie în nevroză.

[1] Jenö Szücs, The three Historical regions of Europe, în Acta Historica Academiae Scientarium Hungaricae, Budapesta, nr. 2-4, 1983, pp. 131-184.
[2] Lonnie R. Johnson, Central Europe: Enemies, Neighbors, Friends, Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 24.
[3] Înţeleasă ca natio în sens medieval. Natio, ca şi gens trimite la ideea de naştere şi de familie, de origine socială prin urmare.
[4] Asupra procesul de modernizare, în sensul de „raţionalizare” a tot mai multor aspecte ale vieţii umane urmez într-o oarecare măsură interpretarea din lucrarea lui James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State. How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1998.
[5] Lonnie R. Johnson, op. cit., p. 104.
[6] Ibidem p. 108.
[7] Ştefan Antim, în Chestia evreiască. Studiu social, avea să identifice în mod explicit România cu o „caricatură de stat capitalisto-modern” (8), definind-o ca pe un „stat agrar”, supus intereselor unei aristocraţii latifundiare. Diferenţa faţă de Prusia constă în faptul că procesul are loc mult mai tîrziu, iar clasa latifundiarilor nu este supusă interesului statului, ci, dimpotrivă, statul este supus intereselor ei. Mai tîrziu, România, neavînd nici o burghezie industrială şi comercială puternică, însă dotată cu un sistem de învăţămînt public de tip modern, generează ceea ce unii au denumit o „burghezie administrativă”, integrată statului şi nevoilor sale birocratice. Această castă supusă intereselor „de stat” ajunge să intre în conflict atît cu noua burghezie românească (prin intermediul excesivei birocratizări a apparatusului administrativ şi a competiţiei pentru control şi reprezentativitate), cît şi cu burghezia alogenă (de obicei de origine maghiară, germană sau evreiască), condamnată pentru imoralitatea instinctului capitalist străin sentimentului românesc al fiinţei (sic!). Acestei acuze i se circumscrie şi burghezia autohtonă, percepută ca „dezrădăcinată” şi „vîndută unor interese obscure”, pe măsură ce ea se consolidează şi începe să lupte pentru emanciparea socială. Problema este că acest model de stat creşte ca un parazit administrativ peste o clasă rurală excesiv impozitată, condamnînd în acelaşi timp, prin reprezentanţii săi, capitalismul şi etosul său, care ar fi reprezentat singura cale de rezolvare reală a problemelor societăţii româneşti. Acest model original de administraţie statală (noi am excelat şi la capitolul „democraţie originală” în perioada de după 1989) a dus la grave tulburări sociale în două rînduri – în 1898 şi 1907 –, cînd „talpa ţării” şi, totodată, baza de impozitare s-a revoltat împotriva status quo-ului existent.
[8] Lonnie R. Johnson, op. cit., p. 111.
[9] Teoria sonderweg-ului este contestată de unii adepţi ai viziunilor generale şi unificatoare. Noi ne situăm alături de încercarea lui Foucault din Arheologia cunoaşterii, unde autorul renunţă sau, cel puţin, încearcă să renunţe la reprezentarea tradiţională a istoriei ca un continuum temporal, ca un puzzle deja-dat, căruia nu trebuie decît să i se găsească părţile componente care, în mod neechivoc, se încadrează în viziunea de ansamblu. Pentru Foucault o astfel de istorie devine imposibilă; obiectul istoriei fiind asemănător mai degrabă arheologiei, fiind alcătuit din mai multe layere, straturi succesive, de multe ori fără legătură între ele. Pentru Foucault, istoria trebuie să admită atît iraţionalul, cît şi contingenţa.
[10] Idee absolut necesară deplasării fundamentului metafizic al lumii dinspre Revelaţie spre Raţiune. Structural vorbind, ideile de „natură umană” şi de „universalitate a raţiunii” răspund la aceiaşi sarcină la care răspundea ideea de „revelaţie divină” – asigurarea fundamentului metafizic al ordinii lumii.
[11] Domnie a legii.
[12] Richard Rose, Neil Munro, Elections without Order. Russia’s challenge to Vladimir Putin, Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 17
[13] În timpul celui de-al Treilea Reich.
[14] În ultimii ani ai comunismului.
[15] Conflictul între valorile de tip comunitarist şi cele de tip individualist este foarte bine pus în evidenţă prin răspunsul dat din perspectiva acestei teorii la adresa individualismului promovat de Rawls în A Theory of Justice. Interesant este că un filosof ortodox, cum este Christos Yannaras, fondează un răspuns comunitarist dintr-o perspectivă explicit religioasă.