It was reported with some fanfare a few days ago, August 24, 2026, that The Altalena (whatever is left of it) has been discovered. It’s seems an exaggeration to say “discovered,” after all the ship was apparently already found in 2012. Moreover, we know where it sank, in the sea not far from Tel Aviv. The noise around this now, it’s becoming clear, is to create a “memorial” and thereby politicize the Affair. Of course, some might object because, if there is a discovery to make, it is this: why focus attention on The Altalena in the middle of a political campaign when the political right, the Likud party, appears to be losing?

To make sense of this mush, we need to unpack. The Altalena refers to the boat that brought Irgun fighters (900 + people) and weapons to Israel in June 1948. The name comes from the nom de plume of Vladimir Jabotinsky, who was a writer, journalist, and the father of Israel’s political right. Altalena apparently means see-saw in Italian; the young Jabotinsky spent three years in Rome.

In 1948, under the command of Menachem Begin, Irgun (Etzel) representatives in Paris, organized the transportation of weapons and Irgun fighters to Israel during the War of Independence. The ship was supposed to arrive on May 15, one day after independence, but was held up for technical reasons. The French government donated the weapons and negotiated in secret. Nonetheless, Irgun officials shared information with Ben-Gurion and coordinated the ship’s arrival with the government.

None of what occurred will make sense without knowing the situation of the army at the time of Israeli statehood. Before the establishment of Israel, independent militias, Hagana, Irgun, Lekhi, Palmach, coordinated their actions, but were not fully integrated into a single institution, the IDF (Israeli Defense Force). While the ship was being prepared for debarkation, the state was established (May 14, 1948), and the Irgun signed an agreement (June 1) that it would no longer act independently but was submitting to the authority of the IDF. However, when the Altalena arrived on the shores of Kfar Vitkin (north of Tel Aviv) on June 20, Ben-Gurion and other government officials became alarmed when Begin wanted to keep some of the weapons rather than turn them all over; apparently for former Irgun fighters still battling in Jerusalem.

Ben-Gurion passed a message to Begin to surrender the contents of the ship because all resources were the property of the government. To enforce his demand, Ben-Gurion threatened to sink the ship, giving Begin and the crew a few hours to comply.

At the beach in Kfar Vitkin, Irgun representatives with the help of locals started to unload. It must have appeared to Irgun members as a big success; this was the time of a weapons embargo on the fledgling state. Menachem Begin came and boarded the ship. Most of the weapons were already unloaded when a final warning came. Then in the afternoon of June 20, shots broke out. Begin with others still on the ship ordered the captain to drive to Tel Aviv, where he had greater numbers of Irgun supporters. Additionally, he presumed that Ben-Gurion would hesitate to fire on the ship with the public watching from the city’s boardwalk and balconies.

The next day in Tel Aviv, IDF officials on site produced artillery and, despite the refusal of several soldiers to fire on fellow Jews, managed to shoot off six charges; one hit the ship which caught fire. Begin and others managed to save themselves and the ship went down (or rather half the ship went down. A year later it was towed further out and submerged.

What a story! The newly fashioned Jewish state with its small population engaged in an existential fight for its life against five Arab armies, had the will and the resources to start a micro-war among its own people, people who themselves were fighting for the state’s survival.

***

For many decades now the Altalena Affair became a legend with a solid meaning. Ben-Gurion had set a principle--one country, one army, one government—and was ready to start a civil war in its defense. His position was this: having established a state, Israelis of every political stripe were obligated to join together and integrate into state institutions. The days of independent militias were over. Any attempt to import weapons outside state control or retain separate military force was tantamount to rebellion.

In this version, the story of Altalena tells of an attempted insurrection by Jewish radicals on the political right and the principled response of the Israeli government. Ben-Gurion ordered an attack on the ship that left sixteen dead (thirteen Irgunists and three IDF soldiers) and the ship destroyed.

But Ben-Gurion is not the only hero in the story. As shooting occurred, Menachem Begin, the Irgun leader, told his men not to fire back. Civil war was in the air, but it was smothered by Begin. Thus, in a strange psychological turn, the man responsible for the unforgivable transgression was also responsible for avoiding a civil war and in a sense, saved Israel from an even greater tragedy.

However, the legend was not too solid because some people have taken a different perspective on the Altalena Affair. Some adherents of the political right maintain that the sinking of the ship was unnecessary, the sixteen men who died need not have, and that no civil war was brewing. An agreement was in place, the ship was successfully brought into the country that desperately needed arms and fighters. Thus, the Affair was caused by Ben-Gurion’s overreaction. Rather than heroism or defense of an important principle, it was merely another senseless salvo in a long war waged by the Zionist left on its enemies on the right.

This minority opinion is important now because with the electoral campaign burning through the land, Bibi Netanyahu, among others, will likely try to dredge the Altalena to score points against an apparition-enemy, the legacy of Ben-Gurion and the political left (which ultimately wasn’t so far left). More significantly, they will connect this tale of abuse by the left to other political cruelties that occurred in the Mandate period: fist-fights over independent worker unions, accusations against the right for the murder of Haim Arlosorov, and the Hunting Season (Saison) (1944-1945), in which the left felt justified in arresting and torturing members of the political right ostensibly for acts of terrorism against the British and the delegitimization of the Yishuv in the eyes of (some of) its members and the world. If you see things their way, the political right has a list of persecutions that incites anger among their supporters. Attacks on the global left—that actually deserves opprobrium—joined to these long-standing resentments can produce an effective potion. In other words, this is precisely the moment for Likud officials to exhume the Altalena and exploit the contra-legend.

Rather than dive into that rabbit hole, I think interest in the “discovery” of the Altalena offers us an opportunity to reconsider the Affair and especially contemplate issues of state control (centripetal force) versus a weak state (centrifugal force) in the history of Israel.

**

The Altalena legend no doubt contains various lessons. In fact, interpretations of the Altalena Affair multiply and complicate the history. One view has it that Begin’s actions can be explained by the fact that he came under the spell of radical underlings who convinced him that Ben-Gurion was attempting to destroy the Irgun and therefore he should not compromise.

Still another view of Altalena is that the object of the attack was not the Irgun, but the Palmach, the shock fighters, many of whom had origins in Mapam, the radical left. In this interpretation, Ben-Gurion’s attack was a form of communication that he and the government would not accept insubordination either from the right or the left. The days of independent action were over, no exceptions allowed.

Still another interpretation that I have heard has nothing to do with Jews, but concerns the Palestinians and their numerous and undisciplined militias. Here people argue that the Palestinian Authority must have their own Altalena Affair because the leaders will never succeed to make a deal with Israel while independent militias roam freely. A sine qua non for peace is the destruction of the militias, including Hamas, and an ability and desire to act as one government, one army, and one source of power. In short, the Palestinians need their own Ben-Gurion and Altalena.

**

I mentioned earlier that the Altalena Affair gives us an opportunity to consider the strong state in Israeli history. Ben-Gurion was a believer in Mamlachtiut, state control, including over areas beyond politics, such as aspects of the economy. He helped engineer the Histadrut, the labor exchange and institution that funneled the population into state-run organizations. It’s well known that he admired Vladimir Lenin and he had dictatorial leanings. He liked power from above and imposed it upon the population below.

A different person, Menachem Begin also believed in a strong state, although modified by respect for democratic liberalism. After the Altalena fiasco (and the debate over German reparations), he devoted himself to upholding rule-of-law, seeking compromise, and changing his reputation from the extremist who fought the British (the architect of the King-George-Hotel bombing) to a responsible right-center politician. During his stint as Prime Minister (1977-1983), Begin was an effective leader (he made peace with Egypt, destroyed the Iraqi nuclear plant, and, when his war on the PLO in Lebanon went badly, he resigned), who fostered the prerogatives of the strong state. Look at the actions mentioned above. Additionally, he also trusted society and corrected state overreach. For example, he maintained that in a democratic society the public has the right to protest in front of his house. He was also instrumental in ending martial law for Arab citizens of Israel and for outlawing torture in Israeli prisons. While his relationship with the Settler movement was complicated, his peace with Egypt and removal of settlements in the Sinai reflect an attitude of state-interests first.

**

All this brings me to the present, to today’s Likud, for which, as you expect, I have criticisms. But I am not critical like others. Rather, I have nostalgia for a strong state that had (at a minimum) a monopoly over the use of force. The same cannot be said about Bibi’s Israel today. Although Bibi Netanyahu followed the hallowed respect for Mamlachtiut in his first terms, in recent years with the help of members of his government, he has reversed principled attitudes toward state control (although admittedly paradoxes abound). Additionally, as I will show, opposition leaders and the public too have lost interest in a strong state and are inclined toward fracture, fissure, and multiple sources of power.

Regarding Bibi’s government, one can point to evidence such as the independent activity of armed settlers in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). Simultaneously, we recall that Itamar Ben Gvir provided arms to civilians who represent at least potentially a source of power at odds with the (next) government. This goes beyond mere disagreement within the government, but is closer to Altalena-style independent activity (some call it insubordination). The situation in Judea and Samaria is not helped by the government’s apparent indifference or assent for these alternative power sources.

The breakdown of the strong state has occurred on the left side of the fence too. In recent years political opponents of the government used protests and civil as well as criminal courts as political weapons to change unappealing government policies. Some of these actions also might appear as ad hominem attacks on Bibi in connection with his corruption investigations. In this way the opposition, albeit in less critical ways, have undermined the monopoly power of the state and diminished respect for the principle of state control.

The present political polarization reflects the anarchy or weak state that Ben-Gurion and Begin wanted to avoid.

**

Although these might appear the cries of a patriot nostalgic for a different Israel, nonetheless, it’s impossible not to notice the crystallization of a weaker state. Therefore, the legend of Altalena comes to us at an auspicious time as a warning against anarchy, delegitimization of the state, and unraveling of authority that undergirds the government. This warning, however, reflects a different understanding of state than that conceived by members of Bibi’s present governing coalition. Nonetheless, I am not so naive as to think it is possible to return to the strong, legitimate, and morally just (more or less) state that once was. But that does not stop me from yearning nostalgically for the past.

Some claim that Ben-Gurion acted rashly and could have de-escalated the situation without bloodshed. Perhaps. In any case he decided to stick to the principle of one government, one military, one state, with the ballot box as the fundamental means of attaining power. Nonetheless, he undermined his cause by the use of military power. Begin, who refused to fire back to avoid civil war, is also a hero, but not entirely. It looks from the side that indeed he acted independently and against the will of the newly established state. Whether you think Ben-Gurion smells of roses or conversely that Begin should be lifted on our shoulders, depends on your politics. In any case it might be best to leave Altalena on the bottom of the sea at least until after November.

On Haredim and Military Non-Participation: Can Robotics Save Israel?

I have to come clean, I am not a military engineer or even a strategist or a professional. But I think it is easy to predict that Israel will develop an army of robots to replace the thousands, tens of thousands, of Haredi men who refuse army service and battle with society and the state to retain present-day exemptions.

It seems obvious because it stands to reason: it will come (if it hasn’t already) to the consciousness of Israeli leaders that the Haredim are not going to change, not going to relent or surrender. However, the projected shortages of future manpower can be partially, even largely, assuaged by robots. These are machines that don’t have to take on the figure of a person, but can appear in microform, can fly, crawl, shoot, and explode.

The use of robots and robotics in war catches in its tailwind all sorts of ethical and philosophical issues. Israel already uses predominantly and whenever possible air power, so to avoid ground operations and the greater loss of life.

It seems obvious that robots are the sole hope for Israel’s defense in the light of Haredi politics.

Of course, robotics won’t solve the welfare crisis, the absence of Haredim from the work force, the need to pay increasing sums for Haredi schools, which at times appear as political payoffs.

I may be repeating what is known in certain circles about military participation, but since I didn’t read it anywhere, I thought it might be novel to some people.

2)

The Board of Peace and Struggles Over Sovereignty in Gaza.

Israel as a country has known interference with its full sovereignty. The Oslo Accords created a kind of autonomy and in certain areas, Israel’s government turned over political and military control to the Palestinian Authority (Area A ). However, there are times when Israel has rejected compromises on its sovereignty, such as demands for an internationalized Jerusalem.

In peace-making Israel has accepted help from foreign states, such as the “Quartet” (established in 2002), with the US, Russia, Europe, and the United Nations.

The idea then, and with the Board of Peace now, is to enlist the Gulf-States, Europe, America, and others to become partners to own responsibility for success. Israel desires to acquire a long-term commitment from other states to draw them into responsibility for Gaza’s future. This ensures that Gaza will cease to present a military threat to Israel.

However, Israel will not sacrifice its sovereignty easily. The government will continuously guard against encroachment.

However, the idea is sound: donor states must have some skin in the game; giving money alone will not provide enough incentive for the kind of engagement that success demands.

But how much engagement will bang up against the question of sovereignty. How much will Israel permit other countries to define its fate?

These are hypothetical statements, since Hamas might not agree and will probably manage to annul an agreement and thus gain de facto veto power. In such a case the Board of Peace won’t last and compromises on sovereignty won’t occur.

Has anyone noticed that, despite all the effort to make America an equal society, the country is more unequal than the Gilded Age? Has anyone noticed that, with all the emphasis on political correctness at the universities, the educational level has plummeted? Does anyone care that with all the hate spewed about Zionism and Jews dismissed as understandable, antisemitism is real and growing rapidly?

All of this—untruths and inversions of truth-- reminds me of a small volume written in 1909, entitled in its Russian original, Vekhi (Landmarks), which in its day shocked the Russian intelligentsia and ignited a controversy. Hundreds of articles were written against it; the authors were vilified; everyone was angry. What was it all about?

Landmarks appeared in Russia four years after the failed Revolution of 1905. The overall point was that the revolutionaries had tried, but had not managed to overthrow the tsar. However, Russian society had devoted the previous fifty years in preparation for revolution, subordinating every personal interest, private objective, everything to the political goal. Where had this exhortation (“What Is To Be Done”) led them?

As the authors explain, a twisted society had emerged; it was shameful to concern oneself with quotidian things when the new world beckoned and justice, honor, and equality were within our grasp. People were embarrassed to worry about petty things--their material life, the education of their children, even the cleanliness of their homes. And yet, the authors wrote, neither did the world change, nor were their houses clean. In fact, every personal flaw could be justified by…-- “when the revolution comes…”

Few recognize them now, but in their time and place they were well known: Pyotr Struve, the economist, Nikolai Berdiaev-religious philosopher, Sergei Bulgakov-priest, the Ukrainian legal expert, Bogdan Kistiakovsky, the journalist Aleksandr Izgoev, and religious thinker, Semyon Frank. The introduction and one of the key articles was written by Mikhail Gershenzon, a historian and writer and a prominent Jew in the Russian elite. While they had little in common politically, they were united by a shared route; each had travelled from the political left to the right. In fact their knowledge of the left prepared them for the critique they delivered.

It was Gershenzon, who wrote the inflammatory sentence that upset nearly everyone: “We should thank the government’s bayonets for protecting us from the people’s wrath.” In other words, liberals had erred in thinking of the radicals as allies; the revolutionaries were not going to save them from the guillotine when it came to that.

What these guys wanted to convey in 1909 was a classic liberal lesson: we need to return to simple truths. If we don’t respect ourselves or listen to one another, everything we do will undermine our goals. Only a temperate atmosphere of trust, respect, and patience will produce the kind of politics that we yearn to have: one of greater tranquility, measured competition, and, above all, joy in the achievements of every single individual and in our collective triumphs.

The issue for our day is the same as they emphasized: politics needs to return to its place among other values--art, love, friendship, education, even hygiene. Enough thinking eschatologically about the end of the world, the ultimate goals of justice, equality, an environment without cars, oil, and discrimination of any kind—all great goals—and start by improving oneself. The path to solving the world’s problems will not succeed by decree, but by everyone pitching in, giving her/his contribution. But the task begins within oneself. Not “end inequality today now and forever,” but try to be a better person, understand the other who has less than you do; don’t harass a Jewish person. Try to incorporate morality into your own life; forgive others and give charity.

I understand that Landmark’s homeopathic imperatives won’t solve global warming today and forever. But how about giving Landmarks-style incremental improvement a chance? We need to acknowledge that the apocalyptic discourse and hysterical behavior are not working. I am not surprised that revolution failed Russia in so many ways, and predict similar results for us. The fact that these writers left Russia after 1917 (with the exception of Gershenzon) should caution us to revise our dreams and the methods we use to attain them. Our future will be guaranteed only when, not if, we condemn the radicals on both sides in favor of a center defined by humanism first and foremost.

Photos, special thanks to the NATIONAL LIBRARY OF ISRAEL

Ilya Galant was an important (but little known) Jewish-Russian-Ukrainian historian and political liberal, who wanted to legitimize the rights of Jews in Russia and “normalize” their presence in Ukraine. In order to do this, he interpreted history creatively, showing Jewish-Ukrainian friendship as well as Jewish contributions to Ukraine. He also appealed to the Russian intelligentsia to foster a liberal coalition of forces in favor of Jewish rights.

Galant depicted a Ukrainian-Jewish synthesis, giving a portrait of mutual friendship, codependency, and binational unity. For Galant, the myths of eternal hatred between Ukrainians and Jews were just that, myths.

A fresh examination of historical documents showed him that the two nations actually had much in common, including their love for the land and shared struggles against oppressors.

Almost nothing has been written about Galant’s historical work. He was born in Nezhin, Ukraine in 1867 and likely died at the Babi Yar Massacre in 1941. As a boy, he received a religious education. In Nezhin, he became close with history professors at the local university and spent several years studying in the university library. In 1890, he moved to Kyiv and taught history in high schools. As a historian, he published a number of important documents and studies regarding accusations of ritual murder, violence in 1648, and Russian-Jewish relations in the 19th century.

Synagogue in Nezhin, built around 1900. (credit: Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; part of the National Library of Israel )

Galant would perhaps have become a familiar name in Eastern-European Jewish historiography if Jewish autonomy had succeeded in Ukraine and throughout Eastern Europe. But things did not work out that way. While the loosening of central power at the end of World War I led to the fall of tsarism and the rise of an independent Ukraine, by 1921 most of the former Russian Empire, including Eastern Ukraine, had reconstituted itself as the Soviet Union.

Characterized by a Communist ideology and a strong central government, the state coopted Ukrainian nationalism and forcefully oppressed Jewish religious and national identity (with a few exceptions). In East-Central Europe, in Poland, Romania, and the Baltic states, Jewish nationalism was shown as politically powerless.

Galant’s politics and his readiness to link Jews with other subalterns against the central power had lost, and instead of serving as a model for a new type of historiography focused on united minorities, his version defined him as a hold-over, a bourgeois, and expendable.

For us today, he represents one of those “paths not taken,” a Jewish historian who ran aground on the shoals of the history that he himself had tried to shape differently.

During his career, Galant managed to gain access to rare documents in Russian archives: the Kyiv city archive, the archives of the state governor, and even police files. Clearly, he had connections in high places; he befriended the academic elite in Nezhin and Kyiv, and for a time in the 1890s, he served as the private secretary to Samuil Brodsky, the well-known Kyiv industrialist. In addition, with his knowledge of Hebrew, he had access to pinkasim (communal ledgers), rabbinic manuscripts, community metric books, and other Jewish documents.

He embraced a Ukrainian-Jewish identity that broke with other Jewish historians who spoke of Jews as a unified community throughout the empire. A unique figure, Galant focused exclusively on Jewish Ukraine and he sympathized with Ukrainian nationalism. An essential assumption through all his work is that, as a concept, “Ukraine” included the Jews who lived there. In this way, Galant was situated at a unique intersection, where the birth of the national struggles in the Russian Empire – Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Jewish – was announced and liberalism – the values of a multi-cultural democratic Russia – was growing in popularity.

Perhaps the most innovative dimension of Galant’s work is his portrayal of a Jewish-Ukrainian synthesis because it runs against the grain in Russian and Jewish historiography. In nineteenth-century Russian historiography generally, Jews, if they are depicted at all, are depicted overwhelmingly as profiteers who play a nefarious role exploiting the hard work of the peasant. Such was the case with the influential Ukrainian historian Mykola Kostomarov. Rarely did non-Jewish historians depict Jews positively, with the exception of Sergei Bershadsky, who in his studies of Jews of Russia’s Northwest showed the value of Jews for economic and cultural progress in Russia.

As one would expect, in Jewish history, tackling the subject of Ukraine is complicated. To be sure, many leading historians such as Heinrich Graetz and Simon Dubnov emphasized violence and antisemitism, focusing on the Khmelnitsky Uprising. In contrast, an unconventional line emerged that emphasized the propitious conditions that attracted Jews to Ukraine and had permitted a dynamic civilization to form and flourish despite intermittent violence. Historians such as Avram Harkavy, Mikhail Kulisher, and later Saul Borovoi belong to this group.

The Kreshchatik, the main thoroughfare in Kiev, ca. 1900. (credit: From the Joseph and Margit Hoffman Judaica Postcard Collection, part of the National Library of Isra)

Blaming others

As mentioned, Galant perceived a unity of Ukrainian-Jewish interests where others found discord. For example, he set the blame for anti-Jewish violence firmly at the door of the reigning powers; in one case the Poles and in the other the Russian government. In nearly every case he shielded Ukrainians from blame. This position is indefensible and contradicts the historical evidence, but Galant held firm, marking himself as a friend of the Ukrainian people in their quest for national self-consciousness.

Just as other Jewish leaders did in places where competition over Jewish loyalty had become contested between the central and local powers, Galant was torn. He had great sympathy for Ukrainians and their national goals, but also identified with Jewish political demands. He wondered whether Jewish progress should be yoked to Russian liberalism (multi-national Russia under Russian control), to Ukrainian autonomy, or to the Jewish national struggle.

A Jewish pharmacist with his wife and son, Berdychiv, Ukraine, ca. 1900. (credit: From the Joseph and Margit Hoffman Judaica Postcard Collection, part of the National Library of Isra)

Galant’s attempt to be all things to all people inevitably failed. It led to flawed historical writing in the sense that today, when one reads Galant, one must weed out fact from imagination. His ideological problem was that all the parties involved (Russian government, Russian people, Ukrainians, Jews) could not easily be placated and some interests were irreconcilable. For example, Galant did not reject the hope that historical study could contribute to the attainment of rights for Jews in the Russian Empire.

However, nothing Jews did could convince the Russian government to loosen control. At the same time, Ukrainians composed a rising nationality seeking to expand their national profile and right to self-administration, including the Ukrainian language in schools and cultural activities. Jews, themselves a persecuted people, also started to formulate separate demands. Desire for Jewish cultural autonomy was spreading and taking shape. For a short time just before 1905, Galant himself even trumpeted Zionism, believing that Jewish national identity would enhance Jewish self-respect and perhaps some part of the Jewish masses could attain gainful employment in Ottoman Palestine, though Ukraine remained the focus of most of his personal and professional attention.

Vasiliy Sternberg’s “Fair in Ukraine”, mid-19th century. (credit: PUBLIC DOMAIN)

In an early article entitled, “On the History of the Settlement of Jews in Poland and Ukraine in General and in Podoliya in Particular” (1897), Galant made a claim that he repeated throughout his life, that Ukraine offered excellent conditions for Jewish life because it “did not have that intensive and sharp character, as in Western Europe.” He meant that the persecution of Jews that was constant and unremitting in Western Europe was relatively absent in Ukraine. In Ukraine, there were isolated tragedies, but they were overwhelmingly rare and uncommon. On this point, Galant made sweeping generalizations:

“Only ancient Rus appears a happy exception (relatively speaking) in this regard. Despite arriving at the time of the first Rurik rulers, and perhaps even earlier, Jews were not subject to personal persecution and expulsions, did not experience those physical tortures and spiritual humiliations that their co-religionists in Western Europe had to endure endlessly. But, saying this, I do not believe that Jews were always blessed with total prosperity, but life passed peacefully and was not disrupted by the intrusion of the wild crowd.”

Galant was aware that the most difficult question for a Jewish historian of Ukraine is how to treat the uprisings, the Khmelnitsky Revolt in the seventeenth century, and Haidamaky – the actions of bands of Ukrainian warriors in the eighteenth century. The conundrum is this: Ukrainian historians have lauded the violence against Polish rule as an original expression of Ukrainian national identity, yet for Jews, these events were tragedies. Jews were widely victimized, murdered, raped, enslaved, and their property pillaged. Although Galant acknowledged that Jews owed their livelihood to collaboration, or better, subordination to Polish economic and political needs, he maintained that Jews were collateral victims and not the focus of Ukrainian hate.

According to Galant, sources from the time agreed with him:

“One can only assert that Jews innocently suffered during the Haidamaky, since even in the literature hostile to Jews, there is, it seems, no mention of Jewish antagonistic acts toward the Haidamaks. Even the Archimandrite of Montrenin, Melchisedek Znachko-Yavorskij, whom many consider the leading villain in Haidamak crimes, in his lamentations and complaints against persecutions toward Russian Orthodox Christians and the Russian Orthodox church by Poles hardly speaks at all about Jews.”

In contrast to anti-Jewish sources, Galant explained the strife as a result of a triangular conflict of interests: Russian, Polish, and Jewish. He gave weight to religious, ideological, and ethnic motives:

“However, there can be no doubt that the Russian element in Poland is guilty of the two massive catastrophes in Jewish history, the Khmelnitsky Revolt and the Haidamaky. These catastrophes were rooted in a national, spiritual and economic antagonism between the tragedy’s three participants, the Polish nobility, Jews, and the Russian peasantry.

It is significant that Galant does not mention Ukrainians or Ruthenians, but calls them “Russians.” Whether Galant wanted to say anything special by using this terminology is difficult to say. In any case one can interpret it as an attempt to portray Ukraine as naturally part of Russia, thereby underscoring Galant’s liberal position in favor of the multi-ethnic Russian empire. However, this position leads Galant into self-contradiction, since, by implicating Russians and saying that Ukrainians are Russians, he inevitably blamed Ukrainians for violence against Jews.

Young Jewish boys in Carpathian Ruthenia (part of modern-day Ukraine), 1918. From The Joseph and Margit Hoffman Judaica Postcard Collection. (credit: NATIONAL LIBRARY OF ISRAEL)

Galant consciously pointed out the Jews’ vulnerabilities, their precarious position as the landlords’ agents, as well as the suffering Ukrainians:

“Jews in the socio-economic life of this region worked in a very dangerous and risky position. They found themselves between… a despotic nobility, ignorant and without borders in passions and caprice, and plebians, who are persecuted, forgotten, tortured and left to the whims of chance.”

In contrast to myths regarding the extensive violence against Jews during the Khmelnitsky Revolt, Galant argued that violence was not widespread nor were the consequences long-lived. One way he emphasized this was through his writings on the successful rebuilding of Jewish communities following such disruptions.

Dispelling falsehoods

Galant was not afraid to deal directly with Jewish suffering in Ukraine because he viewed it as minor compared to other countries. Yet, he still did not make an effort to incriminate Ukrainians. He nearly always found a different persecutor. Galant’s research shows that the Catholic Church extorted onerous sums from Jews. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Jewish communities fell on hard times and were unable to pay their tax obligations. In such cases, they were forced to borrow at impossibly high rates of interest and put up their most valued objects as collateral – sometimes even their synagogues. In many cases, the Polish Catholic Church fleeced Jews mercilessly, as Jews had little choice but to borrow from this exclusive source of liquidity.

The St. Joseph Church in Pidhirtsi, Ukraine, built by Polish nobleman Wacław Rzewuski, was consecrated in 1766. (credit: Сергій Венцеславський / CC BY-SA 4.0)

Galant’s use of documents helped to dispel falsehoods and legends that had gained the status of truth. For example, he explained that many people had come to believe that Ukrainians were indebted to Jews to such a degree that Jews owned Uniate churches and rented them to the congregants. Galant explained:

“Accusations exist, false, unverified, scientifically or documentarily unproved, that however implicate not only those against whom these were originally brandished, but also their distant descendants. These accusations, having been born and come to life in some unknown way, are legends that, having completed their trip through many generations, acquire thereafter the consistency of a true fact, an inconvertible truth not only in the eyes of the ignorant simple people, but also scholarly authorities.”

Galant maintained that there was no evidence for such a claim in all the documentation regarding Jews in Ukraine. Only Cossack chronicles assert Jewish control of churches, and, he remarked, these sources had come under considerable criticism. Acknowledging folksongs, he nonetheless noted that:

“It is highly risky to draw serious conclusions on the basis of folk songs exclusively.”

Galant gave an explanation for such specious claims, speculating that the sale of alcohol by Jews became associated with churches because Ukrainians held their parties and life-cycle events in churches. Thus, it would have seemed that if they could not afford liquor, then they could not hold their parties. From this, one could conclude that Jews controlled the churches. Galant maintained that these accusations were likely used to agitate the population and motivate the Khmelnitsky Revolt. However, what was first used as propaganda was later interpreted as truth by even the most highly respected Ukrainian historians.

Galant’s attempt to exonerate Ukrainians cannot be left unnoticed. His assertions collide with other treatments of the same events both in his time and today. Of course his reasons are transparent: he wanted to accuse a few individuals or blame later historians for antisemitism in order to preserve in his own mind the legitimacy of a Jewish-Ukrainian political alliance. Although it is impossible to fully agree with Galant, it is possible to sympathize with his desire to break free of stereotypes and revisit anti-Jewish events to check how much of the myth of Ukrainian hatred was true and how much was a subsequent construction. For Galant, most is a construction, yet just because Ukrainians were themselves victimized by others does not exonerate them from also persecuting Jews.

Blood libels

In his studies, Galant treated blood-libel accusations in detail. Examples included his articles, “Victims of a Ritual Accusation in Zaslav in 1747 (According to Documents of the Kyiv Central Archive)” and “The Ritual Murder Trial in the City of Dunai in 1748.” It makes sense that he would take an interest in ritual murder, as the phenomenon had reemerged under Tsars Alexander II and Nicholas II, as well as in Europe (the Tisza Eslar case is an example). In Russia in 1879, the government orchestrated a blood-libel trial in Kutais, while in 1898, the Blondes trial was held in Vilna. The notorious Beilis Trial took place in Kyiv from 1911 to 1913. Galant’s general contribution in the context of blood libels was to show the patent falsity of such charges, as early as in the fifteenth century.

Images appearing in a rare 1913 Russian-Yiddish publication depicting key figures and events surrounding the Beilis Trial. (credit: NATIONAL LIBRARY OF ISRAEL)

In his article about Zaslav, Galant portrayed that trial as one of a large number of such actions by Poles against Jews:

“The middle of the eighteenth century was characterized in the history of Polish Jewry by the extreme numbers of ritual trials that would end in the majority of cases with cruel executions.”

However, these accusations hardly began as late as the eighteenth century. Relying on the work of Sergei Bershadsky, Galant lists incidents through the centuries: “…it was precisely the Cracow pogrom of 1407 that was caused by a false rumor of a ritual murder.” Then there were cases in 1564, 1576, 1617, 1619, 1636, 1639, and 1690—“all these were brought against Jews with venom and included a transgression of existing laws and legal rules.”

Again Galant showed Poles as the source of Jewish pain. With Jews, the Poles took advantage of their power to construct a convenient scapegoat for the failures of Polish rule, Polish economic problems, and the religious infidelities of the Catholic Church. Galant’s point regarding the Jewish-Ukrainian conflict was that both nations were victims, poor, defenseless, and suffering. Each nation thought the other guilty for its pain. Poles, who in Galant’s view actually bore responsibility for the difficult conditions of life in Ukraine, unleashed Jews and Ukrainians on one another.

Soviet rule and the Galant Commission

Galant’s work in the Soviet period did not differ much from his pre-revolutionary oeuvre. Despite publishing in Ukrainian and with other Ukrainian scholars, Galant took as his subjects the Russian state and Jews, violence against Jews in the nineteenth century as well as the first decade of the twentieth century. He relied on archival materials he had gathered earlier and was unable or unwilling to draw on the new proletarian sources and approaches to Jewish history. Therefore, he resembled the “bourgeois” historians of the pre-revolutionary era. During the 1920s, Galant published a number of articles in Ukrainian, while also leading the Jewish Historical Archeological Commission, which became known as the “Galant Commission”, which produced two well-known historical volumes. Galant was the commission’s only paid employee, and it is worthwhile looking at his role carefully.

One of Galant’s articles in Ukrainian relating to the Jewish history of Kyiv, which he donated to the Jewish National and University Library (today’s National Library of Israel) in 1928. (credit: NATIONAL LIBRARY OF ISRAEL)

While many scholars left Russia as soon as they could after 1917, Galant stayed. In fact, he succeeded in winning the confidence of the new powers that be. In 1919, in Kyiv, a group of historians that included Galant and Benzion Dinaberg (Dinur), A. Kagan, and Jacob Izrailson asked permission to organize a Jewish Historical Archeological Commission within the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. The group made an appeal:

“Jews in Ukraine have a history many centuries long. The fate of Jews was closely linked with the fate of the Ukrainian people. Jews played a significant role in the economic and cultural life of Ukraine. And despite all that, there still does not exist a systematic history of Jewish history in Ukraine. The absence of such a history has sparked a great deal of confusion and created many false ideas about Jewish activity in Ukraine and interaction between the Ukrainian and Jewish nations.”

According to Victoria Khiterer, Galant was the initiator, and the project won the sympathy of respected scholars including the secretary of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. A program was formulated to collect, describe and publish relevant historical materials, yet the main goal of the academic authorities was to impose the use of Ukrainian as the language of scholarship.

The language issue emerged as a crucial problem for the Jewish Historical Archeological Commission. The two volumes that the Commission published in 1929 and 1930 were replete with the word, “zhid” (kike), which in Ukrainian as well as in Russian had negative connotations. Galant expressed a preference for “evrei,” a Russian word that came from the ancient word for Jew, “ivri,” but he was rebuffed. Saul Borovoi explains the language context:

“A great deal was shocking in the collection; above all, the title, ‘Zhidovsky’ [Kike]. Throughout the entire collection the word ‘evrei’ [Jew] was not used, everywhere one read ‘zhid,’ ‘zhidovsky.’ Galant told me that one of the patriots of the Ukrainian language declared that there is no word ‘evrei’, but only ‘zhid’; that this word, he maintained, does not contain any insulting nuance. ‘To ruin Ukrainain through the introduction of the ‘foreign’ word ‘evrei’ is not allowed.’ (I will note, turning aside for a moment that in the Central Rada [parliament] that the representatives of Jewish parties joined—Zionists, Poale-Tsion, Bundists and others—the Jewish deputies announced that the word ‘zhid’, used by several orators, was unpleasant for them. The head of the Rada, Grushevsky therefore announced that, although the word ‘zhid’ does not contain anything insulting in Ukrainian, he asks the Rada’s orators not to use this word, but say ‘evrei,’ ‘evreiskii’…).”

Since many of the documents deal with Russian matters, the use of “zhid” conveyed disrespect and disdain.

More lethal were objections from Communists on ideological matters. In the mid-1920s, the Commission came under severe criticism as a bastion of anti-Soviet activity. Its critics were orthodox Marxists, especially Nahum Shtif, the linguist who had played an instrumental role in organizing The Jewish Scientific Institute (YIVO) in Berlin in the early 1920s. Shtif secretly posted denunciations with party apparatchiks. While Shtif’s motives are uncertain, it is known that he was unable to find steady gainful employment in Berlin and encountered a difficult situation. As did many émigrés, he was offered good conditions for scholarly work if he agreed to return to Soviet Russia. It is entirely possible that, when he arrived in Kyiv, he realized that Galant was an obstacle to the leadership and that it was necessary to remove him.

Poster printed in Kiev celebrating the third anniversary of the victory of communism over capitalism, November 1920. (credit: Courtesy)

The attacks on Galant proved successful and he was fired from his position in the Jewish Historical Archeological Commission. By the early 1930s, he was also banned from working in archives. His life as a historian was over. According to Saul Borovoi, Galant died as a victim of Nazi murder at Babi Yar, September 29–30, 1941. Little is known about Galant between the years 1930 and 1941.

Legacy of a historian

At least one person wrote caustically about Galant during his glory days in tsarist decadence. Saul Borovoi provided this devastating portrait:

“Ilya Vladimirovich was full of self-respect. He did not walk, but carried himself like a full wineglass which should not spill. The old members of Kyiv said that in the pre-revolutionary years he sauntered along the Kreshchatik every day in a top head, finishing his walk in the cafe ‘Samodeni’, where he would drink a cup of coffee and where his admirers waited for him and to whom he would tell his ideas and political prognoses.”

This description of a vain man, who yearned for status and used historical study as a means to attain it, possesses a sense of truth, yet Galant produced serious works of history, and his production appears more than merely a means to satisfy his ego.

It should also be noted that Galant reflected his own time, which was eclectic, unstable, characterized by a rise in national feeling and shifting cultural politics. He tried to hold firm to liberalism, but he swayed with the winds of nationalism, and was ultimately cut down, another victim of Soviet academic life. At the same time, he published important materials and offered his own conception of Ukrainian-Jewish history as an example of harmony, the good life, and, despite all, a rare refuge for Jews in difficult times.

Although the majority of Ukrainian Jews have now left, there is still a chance today that Galant’s reputation will rise in an independent Ukraine, and he will find his place among other “unclassifiables”. It is a place, I think, he would have liked to be.