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Two Proposed Articles on Jewish History
Bruno Loewenberg, in the centerpiece photo from the feature interview in The Clinton Street Quarterly, 1982. photo: D. Blair
I would like to propose two articles for readers interested in Jewish or European culture and history, subjects amplified by the Russo-Ukraine War and the current popularity of conspiracy theories:
The Jews of Ukraine: A Long, Complicated, Partially Hidden History
Jews and Moneylending: A Long, Complicated, Largely Hidden History
When I visited Ukraine in the fall of 2022, I was surprised by the amount of Jewish people, or their children and grandchildren, and culture. Striking examples of the latter are the “psychedelic synagogue” at Kyiv's Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial and emerging research on the Cossacks.
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“There existed Jewish Cossacks,” reported Russian historian Saul Borovoi (1903-1987), according to Brian Horowitz in The Librarians (6/23/2021). “In his view, two kinds of Jews lived among the Cossacks. One group consisted of Jews who converted to Russian Orthodoxy and joined as fighters… [O]ther Jews, as Borovoi documented, simply moved to the [Cossack lands] to serve as traders and commercial agents for Cossack landowners, as their coreligionists did for landowners in Poland.”
This cries out for investigation, given Ukrainians see their national origins in the Khmelnytsky Uprising, the 17th century Cossack rebellion, but some Jews consider it the first Holocaust. New population studies indicate it didn’t kill as many as once thought, however, and it was motivated more by political struggle than religious hatred, since Jews served the Polish empire as merchants, tavern operators and moneylenders.
I have long been fascinated by Jewish moneylending, simply because the subject was glossed over by historians and erased by society, both Jewish and gentile, except the conspiracy theorists. “Don’t ‘Jew’ me” shocked me, when I first heard it, on my first trip to the American West, as did the history of moneylending, when I first read about it, while studying the Holocaust in the 1980s (my mother was a Polish Holocaust survivor).
Raised among Jewish intellectuals and institutions, I found this lack of historical self-awareness scandalous. Indeed, I have almost 20 books on the history of the Jews, many with that title, mostly written by Jews, few with sections on moneylending and none with adequate ones, except for James Parkes's "The Jew in the Medieval Community” (1938). Moreover, moneylending is central to civilization, its first financial instrument.
With the recent increases in conspiracy theories and threats and violence against Jews, my curiosity has been eclipsed by desperation. We must finally and fully shine a spotlight on this long, convoluted and sometimes perverse history, starting with the Biblical prohibitions and the Christian workaround, making Jews their retail lenders. That no one did so in 19th century Ukraine or America in the 1950s is understandable. That the Jews-control-the-banks conspiracy theory remains rampant, however, is on us.
An important endeavor for journalism today, I believe, would be to rectify that millennia-long reportage failure by commissioning and publishing a number of editorials, introductory articles and well-researched longer pieces on Jewish moneylending, the Jews of Ukraine and related subjects.
Modesty aside, I'm a good candidate to write some of them.
In addition to my seven weeks in Ukraine, which produced "Meet the Kids of Maidan: My Journey into Ukraine’s Democratic Revolution” (2023), my resume features 40 years of Holocaust-related writing, starting with "Bruno Lowenberg: Artist and Survivor” (Clinton Street Quarterly, Portland, Oregon), which won a North-West Journalism Association Award in 1982. Other work includes "Holocaust Films/Books: What’s Been Achieved/Missed” (2015), "Soros, Jewish Bankers and Interest Explained” (2018) and "The Benefits of Commemoration” (2022).
I also did research at the Holocaust Center of Northern California, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York, and San Francisco State University, where I studied with Konnilyn Feig, and ad hoc investigating while co-directing the PBS-shown documentary, “Our Holocaust Vacation” (2007), shot mostly in Poland, editing my mother’s book, “Love at the End of the World: Stories of War, Romance and Redemption” (2021), and attending over a dozen Holocaust survivor conferences.
Thanks in advance for your timely attendance to or involvement with these proposals,