Exodus - Leon Uris [114]
In trying desperately to divert the people’s attention from the real issue of tyranny, the masterminds behind the Czar found a new and convenient use for the old scapegoats, the Jews. Hatred for the Jew in Russia had been based on religious bias, ignorance, and superstition, coupled with the peasants’ blind hostility due to their inferior status. The Russian government decided to make anti-Semitism a deliberate political weapon. They launched a campaign in which the number of Jewish members in the Bread and Land movements was exaggerated and they claimed it was all a plot of Jewish anarchists out to seize the government for their own profit.
It was furthered as the Russian government secretly drummed up, sponsored, fostered, and condoned bloody pogroms in which ghettos of the Pale were sacked, the women raped, and blood flowed freely. As the mobs tore through the ghettos the Russian police either turned their backs or actively engaged in the affairs.
On March 13, 1881, an awesome catastrophe befell the Jews. Czar Alexander II was assassinated by a rebel’s bomb, and one of the convicted revolutionaries was a Jewish girl!
This paved the way for years of horror.
The power behind the new Czar Alexander III was the sinister Pobiedonostsev. He handled the weak-minded new ruler like an infant. Pobiedonostsev regarded the principles of equality, bread, and democracy as extremely vulgar and set out to crush them ruthlessly.
As for the Jews, Pobiedonostsev had special plans. As procurator of the Holy Synod he received a silent nod from the Greek Church for his scheme which called for the elimination of the Jewish population. One third would go through government-sponsored pogroms, starvation, and other forms of murder. One third would go through expulsion and exile. One third would be converted.
Easter week, 1881. The coronation of Czar Alexander III was the signal to begin. Pobiedonostsev’s pogroms erupted and spread to every city of the Pale.
After the first outbursts, Pobiedonostsev quickly had a dozen laws enacted that either eradicated any previous gains made by the Jews or aimed to destroy the rest of the Jewish population.
In the wake of the awful happenings of 1881 the Jews of the Pale groped desperately for an answer to their problems. A thousand ideas were advanced—each more impractical than the last. In many corners of many ghettos a new voice was heard by a group who called themselves Hovevey Zion—the Lovers of Zion.
Along with the Lovers of Zion came a document from the pen of Leo Pinsker which seemed to pinpoint the causes and solution of the Jewish plight. Pinsker’s document called for auto-emancipation as the only way out for the Jews of the Pale.
Late in the year 1881 a group of Jewish students from Romny bolted from the Pale and made for Palestine with the motto on their lips, “Beth Yakov Leku Venelkha—House of Jacob, let us go up!” This daring band of adventurers, forty in number, became known far and wide by the initials of their motto, which in transliteration became the “Bilu.”
The Bilus started a small farming village in the Sharon Valley of Palestine. They named it Rishon le Zion: First to Zion.
The pogroms in the Pale increased in fury, reaching new heights of bloody destruction on Easter morning 1882 in the town of Balta.
As a result new groups of Bilus struck out for the Promised Land and the Lovers of Zion grew by leaps and bounds.
In the Sharon the Bilus founded Petah Tikva: the Gate of Hope.
In the Galilee they founded Rosh Pinna: the Cornerstone.
In Samaria they founded Zichron Yakov: the Memory of Jacob.
By the year 1884 a half dozen small, weak, and struggling Bilu settlements had been begun in the Holy Land.
Each night in Zhitomir and in every other city of the Pale there were secret meetings. Youths began to rebel and