More sophisticated were two genres of texts that were written for women
to recite in the synagogue or at home. The Tzeena urenawas a collection of
brief summaries of and commentaries on the weekly Torah portion read on
Saturday morning in the synagogue. The other was Tehinos, an Ashkenazic
corruption of the Hebrew Tehinot(meditations or supplications). These were
special prayers written for women, some as an alternative to the regular
liturgy, others for occasions that were unique to the experience of a women:
pregnancy, childbirth, nursing, menstruation. Initially these texts were writ-
ten with the presumption that women lacked the intellectual capacity to
comprehend or appreciate fully the prayers and Torah reading recited by men.
By the seventeenth century, however, this genre had developed into a sophis-
ticated body of religious literature, comparable to the normative liturgy, and
even used in some cases by men in addition to women. In any case, it marked
the sophistication, richness, and comprehensiveness of Polish Jewish culture.
The events of 1648
After a century and a half of expansion and development, Polish Jewry suf-
fered a major setback in 1648 with a series of anti-Jewish massacres known as
the Chmielnicki uprising. This event, a turning point in Polish, Ukrainian,
and Polish-Jewish history, is remembered differently by Jews, Poles, and
Ukrainians. Jews remember the uprising as Gezerot Tach ve-Tat, the massacres
of 1648–9. For Poles, this event marks the beginning of the decline of the
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. For Ukrainians, this was a failed attempt
at national liberation, led by Bogdan Chmielnicki; to this day, Ukrainians
continue to commemorate Chmielnicki, a Ukrainian version of Simón
Bolívar, with a huge statue in the central square of Kiev.
The setting for this event was the flat lands of Ukraine. Like other flat
areas this terrain was easy to invade but hard to defend. As a result, every
country that attempted to rule in Ukraine – Russia, Sweden, the Ottoman
Empire, Poland – had to make an alliance with the Ukrainian Cossacks,
skilled horsemen who were the most able to defend this region. Since the end
of the sixteenth century, Ukraine had been part of Poland. As the landowning
class became predominantly Polish, the region was increasingly plagued with
social, economic, ethnic, and political tensions between the Polish Catholic
nobility and the Ukrainian Orthodox peasantry. Between these two groups
was a caste of merchants, moneylenders, and estate managers that was pre-
dominantly Jewish. During the sixteenth century, Ukrainians increasingly
regarded their Polish landowners as illegitimate foreign rulers, and Jews as
their agents of foreign oppression. As many of the Polish landowners ruled in
absentia, their Jewish estate managers often bore the brunt of Ukrainian
discontent. These social and ethnic tensions were superimposed on a political
struggle between Poland and Russia for control of Ukraine. In 1637, tensions
124 World Jewry in flux, 1492–1750