Eastern European Jewry
This feature deals with the second meaning of the concept of Eastern European Jewry—the Jewish groups that lived in Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Russia, Romania, Hungary and modern-day Moldova in collective settlement (from Hebrew: Kibbutz- קיבוץ), many of whom spoke Yiddish.
[1] As early as the beginning of the 17th century, it was known that there were Jews living in cities of Lithuania who spoke "Russiany" (from Hebrew: רוסיתא) and did not know the "Ashkenaz tongue", i.e. German-Yiddish.
[2][3] However, according to more recent research, mass migrations of Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews occurred to Eastern Europe from the west who increased due to high birth rates and absorbed and/or largely replaced the preceding non-Ashkenazi Jewish groups of Eastern Europe (the latter groups' numbers are estimated by demographer Sergio DellaPergola to have been small).
Until the mid-17th century with the 1648 Cossack riots on Jewish population, eastern European Jews lived in a relatively comfortable environment that enabled them to thrive.
Thus, for example, deportations, foreclosure of Jewish property, and the removal of financial debts of non-Jews to Jews, which were common in Western Europe, hardly existed in the East.
As a result, many halakhic (from Hebrew: הלכתיות) questions and problems were addressed to rabbis and Torah scholars in Germany and Bohemia which were close to them.
From the 16th century, luxurious study centers were established in Eastern Europe, where the Hassidic movement also began to develop.
In addition, the committee had judicial authority over internal laws and Halachot (from Hebrew: הלכות) within the Jewish communities.
In 1791 Czarina Yekaterina the Great established the region of the Settlement (the 'Moshav') in the western fringes of the empire, where only Jews were allowed to live.
Limiting those boundaries led to the uprooting and deportation of Moscow and St. Petersburg Jews to the eastern border of the country, which was one of the main goals of the authorities.
Towards the end of the 19th century, Emperor Franz Joseph intended to "acculturate" the Jews by establishing a network of schools for general studies.
A large number of books and poems were published there, many Torah sages were engaged in it and Zionism and Yiddish culture also emerged.
[citation needed] Antisemitism in Switzerland in the years between the First and Second World Wars was mostly directed towards the so-called Ostjuden who were perceived as having a foreign dress and culture.
In fact, Ostjuden were explicitly mentioned by Heinrich Rothmund, the head of the Swiss federal Alien Police: "...we are not such horrible monsters after all.
The Austrian novelist Joseph Roth depicted the misfortunes of Eastern European Jewry in the aftermath of the First World War in his novel The Wandering Jews.
