Евреи в царской России. Сыны или пасынки? - [4]

To achieve success in any sphere of Russian life and prove that they could identify themselves as «true sons of Russia», Jews often had to make a very difficult step – to accept baptism. As the historian Simon Dubnov formulated this difficulty: «for Jews the only way to win the favor of the government was to bow before a Greek cross». Because of the laws limiting Jews to the Pale of Settlement and severe restrictions against living in large cities, getting a university education, taking part in professional activities, and so on, a baptismal certificate served as a ticket to the larger world and a better life.

Changing faith is always a very difficult and delicate process. It was especially difficult for Russian Jews because after conversion they almost invariably found themselves between a rock and a hard place. Their former coreligionists accused them of the greatest possible sin for a Jew, betraying their people; converts were considered dead and ritually mourned. Christians, on the other hand, looked on them with suspicion, considering their conversion fictitious and possibly even as a satanic way of destroying Eastern Orthodoxy from within. To prove their loyally baptized Jews sometimes endeavored to be «holier than the pope», trying to demonstrate their hatred for their former compatriots; such were branded with the contemptuous label «vykresty» (cf. «conversos» or «Marranos» in Spain). Some of these, like Johann Pfeferkorn and Jacob Brahman, and others who lived in different periods, played very sad role in Jewish life, e.g., slandering their fellow Jews and claiming the anti-Christian nature of the Talmud and other Jewish writings. And there were those like Paul Veinberg who mocked his fellow tribesmen in vicious caricatures, fueling Judeophobia in Russia.

But even if Jews sincerely wished to join the new community, they were often mistrusted. The historian of Spanish Jewry Benzion Netanyahu has claimed that the Spanish Jews were not baptized under compulsion, but willingly and consciously, wanting to assimilate into Spanish Christian culture. Nevertheless, Christians still hated the «Marranos» and suspected them of a variety of sins.

And baptism did not save them from the hatred of anti-Semites, or sometimes even from death. This applies to some of the Jews described in this book as well as to many others. Since their school years the prominent economist Mikhail Gertsenshtein and the journalist Grigory Yollos had been friends. The former was baptized while the latter preserved his Jewish faith. Both were Russian patriots, its true sons, and both became members of the first state Duma in 1906; in questionnaires they described themselves, respectively, as «Jew of the Orthodox Confession» and of the «Russian Jewish faith», And both were murdered by killed by the Black Hundreds as Russia's despised stepchildren.

Lev Berdnikov carefully analyzes the biographies of Russian Jews who became famous and made significant contributions to the life of prerevolutionary Russia. Naturally, many of them adopted Christianity. But there is a common myth, particularly characteristic of the Orthodox Jewish community, that Russian Jews' change of faith was always a cynical move in order to improve their siuation, as echoed in the statement attributed to the outstanding Orientalist Daniel Khvol'son: «Better to be a professor in St. Petersburg than a melamed in Eyshishke». To the contrary, many Jews consciously accepted Eastern Orthodoxy, identifying it with Russian culture, and there were those who genuinely converted to Christianity without harboring any bad feelings toward their people.

The author explores the internal struggles, painful reflections, and complex life paths of Jews who converted to Orthodoxy but did not forget about their Jewishness. And he has created a truly unique work. There are scholars of Russian history who pay special attention to Orthodox-Jewish relations, but usually they are focused on very specific, narrowly scholarly issues. These studies are important, but only Lev Berdnikov raises broader questions of the nature of those relations, based on the lives of those who experienced them, and, furthermore, he presents his arguments for the consideration of a broad, socially-conscious public. To do this he aims to combine, as far as possible, the thoroughness of biographical research with a popular and entertaining style – something in which he certainly succeeds.

A notice in the newspaper «Veche» on the death of Gregory Yollos ended with the words «One less zhid». This represents one extreme and tragic model of the life of Russian Jews. But even if a violent death is not necessarily universal Jewish destiny, any Jew in Russia felt her or himself a stepchild to one degree or another. Berdnikov writes about this a lot, but the main focus of his biographies is on something else – on Jews as «children of Russia», on their tremendous, remarkable contributions – often putting their lives on the line – that Jews made to the life of Russia in various fields. Knowledge of this history reinforces mutual understanding between Russians and Jews, strengthening and celebrating the «Russian-Jewish» cultural atmosphere, which hardly has an analogue elsewhere in the world. And this, in addition to its educational function, represents the great humanistic power of Berdnikov's book.