of Jews that would eventually culminate in the migration of more than 2 mil-
lion Jews from eastern Europe to America at the end of the nineteenth century.
Other Jews headed north to Belorussia and Lithuania, which had not been
afflicted with massacres. The center of Jewish life in Poland shifted northward
to Lithuania, leading to the emergence of Vilna (today Vilnius) as the center of
rabbinic scholarship in Poland during the eighteenth century.
This northward migration would create a cultural and demographic gap
between Jews in northern and southern Poland. The former would continue
to live in fully functioning Jewish communities; the latter often without the
basic institutional infrastructure of Jewish communal life: schools, rabbis,
and a full array of voluntary societies. The decline of education and scholar-
ship in southern Poland would encourage Jews in a more superstitious
direction – an important element in the rise of Hasidism a century later.
The massacres also left in their wake a certain psychological devastation. In
1650, for example, a Polish Jew named Nathan of Hanover wrote Yeven Mezula
(Abyss of Despair) as a sort of eulogy of Polish Jewry. In retrospect, such senti-
ments were premature. Polish Jewry recovered quickly. The Council of Four
Lands was still intact, and in 1650 met to restore order in Jewish life. Aside
from a few new regulations warning against overly high rates of interest, life
went on. In 1661, the king of Poland granted a new charter to the Jews of
Kraków bestowing on them the right of free commerce, symbolically reaffirm-
ing the privileges of all Polish Jews. A few new restrictions were eventually
added, such as a limit of 20 percent on interest rates.
Other developments were no less indicative of Polish Jewry’s return to nor-
mality. The commercial and managerial role of Jews in eastern Poland
continued. According to some historians, it peaked at the end of the seven-
teenth century, a half-century after the massacres. The commercial and
cultural relationship between Polish Jews and Jews in the Ottoman Empire,
moreover, continued largely unaffected after 1648.
Shabbetai Zvi
Twenty years after the Chemielnicki massacres, Jews across the Jewish world
were shaken by another major episode: the appearance of the messianic pre-
tender Shabbetai Zvi. In 1666, he was proclaimed the Messiah. His was no
ordinary messianic movement. Earlier such movements had been localized and
short-lived. In 1666, Shabbetai Zvi had a massive following across the Jewish
world: rich and poor Jews from the Land of Israel to England; rabbis and laity,
educated and ignorant, and even crypto-Jews and conversos. Christians, too,
were watching to see whether Shabbetai Zvi was Christ returning for the
Second Coming.
Historians have adduced three explanations for the unprecedented nature
of his following. Some suggested that the Chmielnicki massacres were seen by
126 World Jewry in flux, 1492–1750