The Khmelnytsky Uprising and the Jews

Abstract

This chapter discusses the Khmelnytsky uprising of 1648. The Khmelnytsky uprising was not a single experience for the Jews. This was mostly because there were at least five military forces at work, each of which had a different attitude toward them. For the Cossack armies under Bogdan Khmelnytsky's leadership, the Jews, though a problem, were by no means always high on their list of priorities. The Cossacks' basic grievances were aimed at the Polish authorities—particularly the nobility in the Sejm—and concerned issues of money and status. The second force with which Ukrainian Jewry had to deal was the mass of Ukrainian peasants who joined the uprising once it began to prove successful. The other forces include the Polish nobility, the townspeople, and the Tatar army. In all the chaos of the uprising, the Jews of Ukraine seem to have understood that the different groups they faced threatened their lives in two major ways: through violent attack and through capture.