Ilko Lemko: Life in the Jewish quarter of historic Lviv.

Among all the cities of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 16th and 17th centuries, only the royal capital of Kraków had a larger Jewish population than Lviv, with Lublin also being able to rival Lviv in this regard. The Jews referred to Lviv as the "Mother of Israel," as it was a place where they could find a comfortable life; exiles from Europe arrived here, and Jewish immigrants from Turkey and Wallachia sought their fortunes. However, the history of the two Jewish communities in Lviv indicates that the phrase "the most united nation in the world" is somewhat of an exaggeration. Clearly, Jews from various countries developed quite entrenched political, mental, and economic traits that hindered them from consolidating in Lviv in the strict sense of the word.

Since the calling of Jews from Central Europe to the Polish kingdom by Casimir III in 1349, their animosity towards the ancient Jews of Lviv, mostly hailing from Byzantium and having settled in the Kraków suburbs at least a century earlier, is well-documented. The hostility between representatives of both Jewish communities continued in Lviv for centuries to come.

Wealthier Jewish families sought to move from the Kraków suburbs into the city walls at any cost, as it was safer there, with broader trading rights and greater self-governance. Once they moved, they quickly integrated into the urban environment and forgot their suburban origins. By the end of the 16th century, the two Lviv communities had separated so deeply that each had its own rabbis and spiritual courts. Only the threat of mortal danger united the Jews of Lviv, as during sieges by Cossacks, Tatars, and Turks, the residents of the suburban ghetto consistently found refuge with their brethren within the city walls.

The Jews of Lviv also faced significant problems with their brethren who arrived from various European and Asian countries in later times. After the expulsion of Sephardim from Spain in the mid-16th century, wealthy Jewish merchants emigrated to Italy and Turkey, and from there, thanks to the already established policy of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to shelter expelled Jews from Europe, some found their way to Lviv. The difference between the "Franks," as they were called by the residents of Lviv, representing Sephardic (Spanish) culture, and Ashkenazim (Jews mostly from Germany) was striking.

The culturally advanced Spanish Jews differed from the Polish-Ruthenian Jews in attire, language, customs, and even religious rituals, and their ambitious trading plans were clearly unappealing to the local Jewish population. In 1587, Abraham Mosso, an envoy of the influential Turkish minister, the Spanish exile Don Joseph Nasi, wrote to his brother from Lviv about the local Jews: "All those we previously considered friends have now become our enemies, who would be glad to rob us, if not destroy us."

While among the Italian community in the city, all these Bandinelli, Massari, Vevelli, Duchy found their place and were warmly welcomed by their fellow tribesmen, and among the Ukrainian community, foreigners but co-religionists such as the Greeks Koryak, Katakalli, Alvizi, and Langhi coexisted well, among the Jewish community in Lviv there was no place for brothers in nation and faith. More civilized Sephardim, unable to withstand the competition from local Jews, left Lviv, and by the early 17th century, they were no longer found in legal documents, with only two epitaphs of Sephardim who "fled from Spanish captivity" remaining in the Lviv cemetery.

The differences between urban and suburban Jews and their distinctive local patriotism were so pronounced that even in the early 20th century, when there had been no walls for over a hundred years and a prohibition on living outside the Jewish quarter was lifted in 1867, a Jew from the Kraków suburbs never ventured into the city throughout his life, as the suburban Jew, having his synagogues, ritual baths, and marketplaces, felt no need to go into the city, and vice versa. The urban Jew looked down on the suburban one, and the suburban Jews considered the urban ones foolish, while the urban Jews viewed the suburban as slovenly. The least contact between the Jews of the city and the suburbs was observed among the lowest strata of the Orthodox, and marriages between representatives of both communities were extremely rare. Taking into account these circumstances, which persisted until the early 20th century, historian Mayer Balaban speculated on how much stronger this antagonism must have been three centuries earlier.

The internal Jewish antagonism was most sharply manifested in Lviv during the Soviet era. The Soviet authorities, which were attributed pro-Jewish sympathies, immediately banned the activities of all Jewish organizations, effectively stalling all Jewish cultural and religious life. Jewish NKVD officers from an extremely despotic atheistic Asian country naturally viewed Jews from the European cultural sphere as their enemies, for whom faith in God and universal human values were fundamental principles. The Soviet regime repressed and exiled thousands of Lviv Jews to the East.

In this regard, an interesting fact is that during the independent Ukraine in the early 2000s, the few Lviv Jews, so-called "Polish Jews," who were then in their late nineties, preferred to attend the Polish Cultural Society at a time when powerful cultural societies revived by Jews from the post-Soviet space already existed in Lviv. This fact was explained by the "Polish Jews" as having no particular sympathy for Soviet Jews and preferring to remain politically Polish.

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By the end of the 16th century, relations between the two Jewish communities of Lviv and the city authorities were quite calm. In 1556, the magistrate brought water supply to the Jewish quarter within the city walls, and the residents paid 20 gold coins annually for water usage and 4 grivnas for the maintenance of city roads and bridges. In the first half of the 1570s, the Jews contributed to raising funds for mercenaries to ensure peace in the city. The magistrate granted lifelong leases and even gifted empty plots to wealthy Jews in their quarter. However, the city did not mistakenly allocate a quarter to the Jews right next to the southern defensive wall, as in cases of emergencies, such as war or siege, the magistrate had the right to reclaim these plots without any compensation for constructed properties, or even to destroy them if they hindered the city's defense. During the sieges of Lviv, many buildings were demolished in the suburbs, but within the city walls, particularly in the Jewish quarter, not a single building was demolished for military needs throughout the time.

The Jews even managed to arrange their residences within the city's defensive walls by breaking windows in them. In 1634, the city complained to the king about this and demanded that the windows be bricked up, as their existence could pose a danger during enemy attacks. However, the Jews managed to convince the king that the windows were barred and had existed in that form from time immemorial, and they were left undisturbed.

The fact that non-Jews, including Greeks and Ukrainians, lived in the city ghetto is evidenced by the name of the Oleska tenement, built by a certain Ivan from Olesk. There were several houses and plots belonging to Christians. Jewish houses often adjoined Christian ones, leading to neighborhood disputes. For instance, in 1584, a Jew named Aaron complained to the city council about his neighbor, the Scotsman Martin, who had broken through the wall to his toilet, occupied it, and bricked up access for the former owner. Surgeon Christoph Gilytsiy complained that on Easter 1612, his Jewish neighbor Mark Isakovich "let water" into his cellar, which had previously flooded his dwelling, thereby damaging the foundation. Many disputes arose regarding the boundary wall between the two tenements, but they usually ended in peace.

In one of the towers adjacent to the city arsenal and on the other side to the Jewish quarter, lived the city executioner with his servants. This "master of public justice," and especially his servants, were noted for their overly arbitrary nature, so the city commission, at the request of the Jews, relocated the executioner in 1616, considering that "such troubles often lead to tumults (pogroms) and bloodshed." In another tower, the executioner conducted torture and executions of criminals. The executioner's duties also included cleaning the city, so carts for removing garbage and carts for transporting the condemned stood between the two towers. However, despite the presence of a city official responsible for cleanliness (the executioner), this part of the city was the dirtiest. A document from 1600 mentions that the Jewish street was very "filthy."

The main researcher of the history of Lviv Jews, Mayer Balaban, asserts that the poet Sebastian Klonovich, in his poem "Roxolana," written in 1584, does not exaggerate at all when he writes