Discussions of inter-religious relations in prewar North Eastern Europe are somewhat predictable, at least in the religions discussed. They focus on Jews and Catholic or Orthodox Christians, occasionally also noting various small protestant groups, such as the Mennonite colonists. Seldom, however, is the existence of a small but notable non-Christian group mentioned: The Muslim Lithuanian (or Lipka) Tatars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Tatars are a small population, with roughly 13,000 of them currently living across the former territories of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, referred to in Yiddish as Lite. They trace their descent to a group of Turkic-speaking members of the Golden Horde, led by Khan Tokhtamysh. Following a 14th century defeat at the hands of Tamerlane, they were granted refuge to the west, in the Grand Duchy by Duke Vytautas the Great. They continue to dwell in the lands of that medieval polity until the present day, with populations in Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another group invited to the Grand Duchy by Vytautas was of course the Jews. Moving into the Grand Duchy from the west, they became the ancestors of the Litvak population. The Litvaks also existed upon its obsolete geography, just as the Lipka Tatars do. Litvaks also practice a non-Christian Abrahamic religion. Accordingly, the dominant Slavic population often grouped Jews and Tatars together in law and record, both populations being large non-Christian communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tatar views on Jews generally corresponded to general views of the non-Jewish population. Jews were seen as culturally duplicitous and untrustworthy, and as individuals to be defeated in fictional accounts of Jewish-Muslim debates. However, there was also a documented sense of religious community outside of literature. Tatars ate kosher meat and used Jewish moyls for their children\u2019s circumcisions. As a result of their reliance upon the Jewish community, Tatars were unable to circumcise their children for much of the post war period, only resuming the practice with immigration from Muslim countries later in the twentieth century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the pre-war period, Jewish literature viewed Tatars rather similarly to how Christians did, just as Tatar views of Jews corresponded to Christian ones. Oftentimes, Tatars were often considered just another gentile to be lumped in with Christianity. For example, Yiddish writer Daniel Charney speaks of his uncle getting lost in the \u201cgentile fields of the Tatar street,\u201d which is later paired with the \u201cVillage street\u201d as the two streets in his hometown of Dukor which \u201cdid not enter into Jewish reckoning.\u201d Tatars are also commonly tied to the image of the Toter-Gas, or Tatar Street, which sometimes also contained Jews. In Minsk, there was a synagogue and yeshiva on the Tatar Street. Accordingly, it was called the Totershe Shul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tatars appear in Jewish literature principally as performers of magical healing, a role they performed quite frequently for neighboring Jewish and Christian communities. A Tatar oral account gives an incident in which, through the use of (Muslim) prayer and the incantation: \u201c”Just as you swept her in, just as you left her trapped there\u2014now lift her out, bring her forth, and set her free!\u201d Sh. Ansky\u2019s famous ethnographic questionnaire had two separate questions relating to Tatar healers and magic-workers, indicating their prevalence among Jewish communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In literary descriptions of Tatars in healing roles, they are often paired with Roma, or Tsigayners. An episode in Charney\u2019s autobiography surrounds him falling ill as a child with no nearby doctors to heal him, left vulnerable to the \u201cspells of the Tatar and Roma.\u201d They are also paired in a fascinating children’s story published by Eliezer Shindler in his collection \u05e4\u05bf\u05e8\u05e2\u05de\u05d3\u05e2 \u05de\u05f2\u05b7\u05e1\u05e2\u05dc\u05e2\u05da \u05e4\u05bf\u05d0\u05b7\u05e8 \u05d9\u05d9\u05b4\u05d3\u05d9\u05e9\u05e2 \u05e7\u05d9\u05e0\u05d3\u05e2\u05e8(Foreign stories for Jewish children). The story, referred to as a \u201cTsigayner Mayse\u201d (Roma story), recounts a dream-contest between two friends, a Roma and a Tatar. In the Tatar\u2019s dream, he is taken up to heaven where he meets Muhammed and the angels, and is given a long stemmed Turkish pipe made of the same wood as Noah\u2019s ark, a great feast, and an axe with which to kill nonbelievers. Possible Roma origins of this story aside, the fact that it was chosen for a Yiddish language children\u2019s anthology shows a belief that it would be legible to a Jewish audience. The Shindler-composed Yiddish text is also fascinating for the use of Loshn-koydeshdike (Semitic origin) words in reference to Muslim religious concepts. Muhammad is referred to as a Novi (a word for the Jewish prophets) and appears bikhvoyde uveatsme, an idiom for \u201cin person\u201d that literally means \u201cin his glory and his in his self\u201d in Hebrew. The non-believers for which the axe is given are referred to as kofrim, traditionally meaning one who does not believe in the divine origin of the Torah and a cognate to an Arabic word for heretic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The presence of a Turkish pipe brings up another common association of Tatars in Jewish literature: The orient. This often took on a religious form. Tatars are commonly referred to as Keydarim, a descendent clan of Ishmael. The writer (and briefly Turkish soldier!) Shloyme Levadi recounts that in his hometown of Slonim they referred to the Tatar street as Mitzrayim, the biblical term for Egypt. Borukh Vladek, writer and Bundist activist (and Daniel Charney\u2019s brother), specifically associates the Tatars with a somewhat savage (and explicitly non-Jewish) strength: \u201c\u05d3\u05d9 \u05d2\u05d0\u05b7\u05e1 \u05d4\u05d0\u05b8\u05d8 \u05d6\u05d9\u05da \u05d2\u05e2\u05e8\u05d5\u05e4\u05bf\u05df \u05d8\u05d0\u05b8\u05d8\u05e2\u05e8\u05d9\u05e9 \u05f0\u05f2\u05b7\u05dc \u05d0\u05b7 \u05d2\u05e8\u05d5\u05d9\u05e1\u05e2\u05e8 \u05e9\u05d8\u05d0\u05b7\u05e8\u05e7\u05e2\u05e8 \u05d8\u05d0\u05b8\u05d8\u05e2\u05e8 \u05d4\u05d0\u05b8\u05d8 \u05d3\u05d0\u05b8\u05e8\u05d8 \u05d2\u05e2\u05f0\u05d0\u05d5\u05d9\u05e0\u05d8 \u05d0\u05d5\u05df \u05d4\u05d0\u05b8\u05d8 \u05d2\u05e2\u05de\u05d0\u05b7\u05db\u05d8 \u05e6\u05d9\u05d8\u05e2\u05e8\u05df \u05d0\u05b7\u05dc\u05e2 \u05d0\u05d9\u05d3\u05e2\u05df \u05d0\u05b7\u05e8\u05d5\u05dd \u05e4\u05bf\u05d0\u05b7\u05e8 \u05d6\u05f2\u05df \u05d0\u05f2\u05e0\u05d6\u05e2\u05e8\u05e0\u05e2\u05dd \u05e4\u05d5\u05d9\u05e1\u05d8 \u05d0\u05d5\u05df \u05e2\u05db\u05d8\u05be\u05d8\u05d0\u05b8\u05d8\u05e2\u05e8\u05d9\u05e9 \u05d1\u05d5\u05d9\u05d0\u05e0\u05e1\u05d8\u05f0\u05e2\u201d (The street was called \u201cTatar [street]\u201d because a big and strong Tatar lived there and made every Jew tremble with fear around his iron fist and genuine Tatar wildness).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the war, however, the situation changed. Jewish depictions of Tatars diverge from their prewar themes. Instead, they focus on the idea of Tatars as especially kind to Jews. In the Lyankhovichi Yizkor book for example, it is recorded that a Tatar woman allowed Jews to nap under her trees on Shabbos as they digested their Cholent. Tatars are depicted as fellow sufferers of religious hatred. Instances of Tatar aid to Jews during the Holocaust and pre-War antisemitism are similarly noted in various texts. In Joseph Skakun\u2019s autobiography On Burning Soil, a detailed account is given of him hiding among Tatars during the war, disguised as one of them. Sometimes, depiction of the Tatars themselves is dispensed with, merely being listed alongside Jews and Slavs as a sort of proof text for the existence of a mythicised ancient tolerance: \u201cAll religions and nationalities have always been treated peacefully and with respect\u2026 Belorussians, Russians, Poles, Tatars, and Jews.\u201d This tolerance, according to the mythicized account, was then betrayed in the Holocaust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Post-war accounts of Tatars are all much more positive than their pre-war counterparts. This stems from a need to form some positive associations within the pre-war period. Tatars become imagined as a fundamentally friendly force of solidarity, not swarthy foreigners or mysterious sorcerers. They are instead a symbol that shared suffering is not meaningless, that it instead breeds a communal closeness. Tatars are Jews\u2019 brothers in suffering. They protect them in times of need. Their shared coexistence provides a reminder that togetherness across differences is possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A survey of Jewish attitudes towards Lithuanian Tatars (and vice versa) may seem to prove disheartening. Despite these groups’ imagined similarities, they seemed to view each other through the eyes of the majority population. Jews saw Tatars as mysterious and oriental, and Tatars saw Jews as religiously aberrant and scheming. I think that the postwar change in view is optimistic in its own way. After the great death of the Holocaust, some Jews were desperate to imagine a different past, one in which there was someone alongside them. Even after unimaginable cruelty, people still wanted to imagine that a harmonious world had at some point existed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This post is the outcome of my work as part of the Irene Kronhill Pletka Fellowship with YIVO. In addition to giving me the funding needed to pursue my project, I was also introduced to archival practice through my experiences as an intern at YIVO. At the internship, I was exposed to the actual process of archive creation through reorganizing and cataloguing files. It was very powerful to see how small decisions made behind the scenes (such as whether to organize a pamphlet collection by author or by year) changed what researchers were able to find out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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