I recently discovered this channel, and it has really shined a light on a huge gap in my knowledge on actual jewish history. It seems like most of history's stories about jews stop at "lots of people in europe didn't like them." Still a lot to learn.

@SamAronow

Жыл бұрын

It's not much better if you _are_ Jewish, because unless you are specifically studying Jewish history as a university course, everything between the Bar Kochba Revolt and the May Laws is brushed over in the _very_ broadest of strokes at best. Today I have closed that gap.

@LightSourceTemple

Жыл бұрын

@@SamAronow "lots of people in Europe didn't like Jews" is a pretty good summation

@amirkatz9047

Жыл бұрын

Right! This channel is amazing 🎉

@Headhunter_212

10 ай бұрын

@@SamAronowyou’re doing a great job and so much service esp to this sheygets. I watch your channel and Henry Abramson’s channel and it’s regally lifted me. Keep going !!

Got straight up goosebumps when you mentioned Starodub AND Mglin! My 3rd great-grandfather, Faybish Faibisovich was born in Kolodezki, Starodub in 1857. His paternal grandfather, and for that matter, the entire Faibisovich family came from Mglin. I'm completely blown away with how closely our families lived to each other!

@pas-giaw6055

5 ай бұрын

High chance you are related

I must say, this might be your finest episode of the year. I absolutely loved that you tied your own family history into the larger narrative. Also, you picked some great music for this video. Well done sir!

@robert9016

Жыл бұрын

What is this, a crossover episode?!

@AncientAmericas

Жыл бұрын

@@robert9016 Nope, just learning all the Jewish history I wished I learned long ago.

@joaoribeiro5938

Жыл бұрын

@@robert9016 how would be ? Jews arrived in America's in 1492

@maxkaufmann833

Жыл бұрын

Gotta say man, love your videos. Really nice surprise seeing you here!

I was surprised and pleased by your mention of Hesya Helfman. She was my great-great-great-grandfather's cousin.

Great video as always. The portion on Alexander II's latter reign really puts paid to the odd myth that he was some kind of western liberal, that would have completely transformed Russia had he survived. Although I see Alexander III as an effective Tsar in terms of high politics , this video really helps to elucidate the human cost of his reign, and the impact of Russification. The point on how foreign competitors could have exploited the treatment of Jews is particularly interesting. In Britain St Petersburg's treatment of its minorities was a major part of the Russophobia that occurred before 1907. Yet once Britain was at war with Germany in 1914, it was somewhat comically described as a war for civilisation and the rights of oppressed peoples, despite Britain now being allied with the Russians.

@nathanseper8738

8 ай бұрын

Let's not forget that Alexander II presided over the brutal suppression of Circassian rebels. And yeah, Britain's "civilizing" mission was always an excuse for self-interest.

Even before the January Uprising of 1863-1864 (the one very briefly mentioned at 3:40), there was a wave of protests and general unrest in Poland in 1861, in which Polish Jews took part and were among the victims - most famously among them was the young Jewish student Michał Landy, killed during a demonstration in Warsaw on April 8, 1861. Warsaw's rabbis Dow Ber Meisels and Izaak Kramsztyk took part in the joint funerals of the victims alongside the Catholic and Protestant clergy. You can see them depicted in the painting _Funeral of the Five Fallen_ by Aleksander Lesser. These events were also the inspiration for the great Polish poet Cyprian Kamil Norwid (1821-1883) to write a very philosemitic poem entitled simply "Polish Jews (1861)". Edit: It bares some similarities to the speech of Cardinal Manning, quoted in the video. The death of Michał Landy was also later depicted by the Polish-Jewish artist Arthur (Artur) Szyk.

Great video, Happy to have contributed.

It's interesting, seeing this series reach the point where it's just beginning intersecting with my own knowledge of my family history. It's not quite there _yet,_ (my grandparents began leaving Russia later than this vid's timeframe) but these videos are starting to fill in context & build-up for the family stories I've been told. For example, my maternal great-grandparents left Ukraine around 1920. My great-grandmother's family chartered passage to the UK, before continuing to the USA by boat. My great-grandfather instead had to walk all the way from Ukraine, through Romania & Hungary, to Italy, where he boarded a ship to New York. (They both started from the same place, Pohrebyshche, but my great-grandpa couldn't follow with great-grandma's family). Before now, I'd never really considered _why_ the UK & Italy specifically were the countries my great-grandparents originally fled to, before heading to the US. But now I'm able to recognize the context (16:45 , 20:29) behind it. I could already mention more examples, but I think I'll save more of that family story for if/when this series reaches the Russian Revolution.

Gotta hand it to Harrison. If not for the loosening of immigration to the US during his administration, given that both my grandmothers' fathers were sons of Jewish immigrants, I might not even exist.

Interesting to see your own family history intertwined with the usual Jewish history and geopolitics! Shabbat Shalom from New Zealand. Any plans on making a video at some point about Jews in Oceania? (Australia, NZ, and the many Pacific Island countries)

@Plasticcaz

Жыл бұрын

I remember I came across an Australian-Jewish gentleman on youtube who did a series on Jewish history in Australia. I found out there were Jewish people on the First fleet, as well as other notable events in Australian history. Australian General Sir John Monash is one such notable Australian Jew, but not the only one. If you're interested look up "Dinkum Diaspora" by David Solomon, but I too hope that Sam does some research into Jews of Australia, because it's quite interesting.

@bennruda11

Жыл бұрын

Transplant american jew here in new zealand, kia ora and agreed, i hope he will do an oceania jewish history at some point 😀

@jodij2366

Жыл бұрын

Indeed - such an episode would need to cover the role of Sir Julius Vogel, who I believe was the first practicing Jewish Prime Minister of an Empire country.

Very well done, having married a Jewish wife with Russian ancestry, this was highly informational on what her great grandparents went through to get from Odessa to Brighton Beach.

Hello Sam, Baron Hirsch’s JCA also established, after his death, two colonies in south Brazil (my family came to Brazil in 1904 to one of those colonies). In a recent biography of the Baron that was also overlooked…

Sam never disappoints! Shabbat Shalom!

That quote from Cardinal Manning was surprisingly touching

Love how usefulcharts is in here lol

Great stuff Sam. Absolutely great. Your presentation style is superb, and your information compelling. Thanks for all your hard work!

A small (possible) correction. Russian "Народная воля" most probably means "People's freedom" not "Popopular will", despite what wikipedia says. "воля" can mean both "freedom" and "will", but "Народная воля" was a successor organization to "Земля и воля" (Land and liberty). I don't have a citation with the explanation of the name, but "freedom" seems to me much more probable.

Thank you for your posts. They are of superb quality

Gut Shabbos Sam! Always happy to see a new video from you in my feed!

@Rickyrab

Жыл бұрын

Shabbat Shalom!

Another banger, Sam!

Part of my family is from Rostov, and I always wondered how they managed to get there and live there in the very early 20th century when the laws had restricted Jews from living outside the Pale for so long. But I know my great-great-granddather owned a small seltzer bottling plant, and all his children went to university. So this explains a lot - Alexander's reforms may have enabled my family to move to Rostov. I do wonder where they came from before, though.

15:28 One very minor point…in the lower middle of the map, Waterloo in the late 1800’s was still connected to the Charing Cross lines, and was not even the permanent terminus it is now.

From the family history we've been able to uncover, this is the period that the vast majority of my family came to the United States escaping pogroms. Technically my great grand father arrived shortly after this period (circa 1904, he was born circa 1900, died 1992 as the USSR was falling apart), and my grandmother on the other side has some ancestors who arrived in the 1850s.

Sorry that I keep repeating myself: excellent presentation, Sam.

The king delivers once more, you are a real inspiration man.

where would I find the music you used from 18:03-20:00 during the American part. nice job with the video, your work has been great for giving me some leads into some parallel but estranged historical traditions. the formatting method & stylization is superb as well.

Not Jewish, but these are some interesting videos and I really do appreciate the historical perspective here. Keep it up!

Great video as usual. If anything u could u please do a video on jamaican jewish history please. Not allot of people know about it

With upcoming sections on Zionism and the Jewish return to Palestine, have you considered further collaboration with Beace Brocess? I recognize you guys probably have differing perspectives, but especially with the similarities in your style I would love to see more of that.

Whoah, where is Sam's voice narrating? He's got the penmanship for authorship as he does the photogenic hair and the timber to his voice of an engrossing narrator. Tell us a Jewish story, Sam!

Wow the use of the Nutcracker suite is really messing with my head. I know Russian, public domain, well known but also (I'm a conversion student) explicitly tied to Christmas in my head in a way that hearing it in a video on Jewish history just causes a short circuit.

criminally unknown channel. Truly

Now I get the parash reference!

I have just discovered this channel, and it is fascinating. I have no connection with Jewishness, and indeed barely any with Europeanness, but this channel has been a fantastic look into a culture and history of which I knew little.

Were Chabad dresses banned?

Hi, what is the music on the Alexander II part please

Just curious, are you going to do a 2022 election parties recap?

one of the main Jewish immigration destinations was Argentina, with it's very free and flurishing economy

Will there be an episode on Austria-Hungary and the Schism in Hungarian Jewry?

Is that Matt Baker from Useful chats

no matter how many times i block this channel it still pops up in my recommended lmfao

I forgot to ask when this came out, but what’s the name of the song in the America section? It’s such a jaunty toon

@SamAronow

Жыл бұрын

It's all in listed in the end credits, friend.

@persona3448

Жыл бұрын

@@SamAronow thanks

Was ignateff the man that was called the black czar?

I wish I could research for my family origin so far back like you did! May I ask how you did that and what was your process? Also, another question; the main options for Jewish immigration (and honestly, I would call that refugees) - where ad you said, Ottoman Palestine, the British empire and the US. But what about Austria? Not only the emancipation was going way better than in other places like Germany, and it is right across the border; but also Galicia specifically already had thriving and big Jewish society and it essentially had the same familiar culture and languages as in the Russian empire (Polish and Ukrainian which also was intelligible with the rest of the Eastern Slavic languages).

@SamAronow

Жыл бұрын

It's difficult to research because the Austrian Empire doesn't exist anymore, while Britain and the US still exist as continuous institutions with roughly the same borders as they did in the 1890s. They speak the same language as me and have Jewish institutions that have kept track of those numbers. But I'll try to look into it.

00:24 thank you for that Borodin!

Hey, this is about when most of my family was coming over!

What’s the song at the end?

Amazing video as always, though I do wish you'd said more about the growing industrial Jewish working class that was appearing at this time in early Russian industrialisation.

Why Poland's name is shown on the map? It was completely partition by Russia, Prussia and Austria by the time of May Laws.

Guess who’s grandmother just told them that her grandfather was drafted into the Russian army at age twelve? (And who also married his half sister/half cousin but that’s another story)

11:49 was that a Japanese minister?

Your image of Ignatieff misses out his distinctive eye colour!

11:13 Oh... The shame... (I'm from Portugal)

I like the personal touch, by focusing on a couple I assume are your paternal great-grandparents. Am I right? Did I get the generation right? My grandfather a"h only once in my memory complemented the local Poles. He and his brother were sent ahead to the US (Brooklyn) to raise money, as they couldn't get any of their own money out of the country. He was very traumatized by childhood memories; to the extent that he avoided Yiddish or anything else specifically of the Old World. (Although he stayed staunchly Orthodox.) Anyway, grandpas so-called-compliment? "Thank God for the Poles. If we didn't flee after that second pogrom, we never would have gotten out in time!" (Apologies to the Gen-Xers. I can forgive my Grandpa Berger for generalizing from the troublemakers to a whole ethnic group. I hope you can also understand that he was a product of his quite harsh times.)

@SamAronow

Жыл бұрын

Great-great-grandparents.

@Rickyrab

Жыл бұрын

Ok, so one generation off. Still pretty good.

This is what made my family leave Russia...

Was the reason why Portugal never emancipated its Jews until 1910 because of its minuscule number of Jews at that point?

@kenshin891

Жыл бұрын

Maybe had to do with the Royals and emancipation was after Portugal became a republic? I believe that was also 1910ish

@Thecognoscenti_1

Жыл бұрын

@@kenshin891 If the Miguelites were in charge perhaps, but the Liberal branch of the House of Braganza ruled Portugal, and to my knowledge, they weren't antisemitic in any way. I guess it was just a lack of demand for such change.

11:44 who is that?

@harveydixon7705

Жыл бұрын

I think he’s talking about the Japanese so maybe that’s the emperor

No prizes for guessing what next video is about…

Why does it say רע (evil?) over "People's Will / Narodnaya Volya"?

@Hircine0

Жыл бұрын

Just an unfortunate abbreviation for רצון העם Although רע could also be interpreted from the word רעות, more optimistic :)

@MichaBerger

Жыл бұрын

@@Hircine0 I would have thought רצון העם would end up רה"ע. Or if rabbinic norms are broader than their community, רצה"ע.

@Hircine0

Жыл бұрын

@@MichaBerger from my understanding sam is referring to the abbreviation norms used by political parties in israel on their ballots

Can you make one about Jewish history in the Ottoman Empire 😊 thank you.

@SamAronow

Жыл бұрын

I've made several. In fact, my most recent video is about Jews in the Ottoman Empire. I have a whole playlist on West Asia; try starting here: kzread.info/dash/bejne/maptksuSeK3RiJs.html

@koksalceylan9032

Жыл бұрын

@@SamAronow oh, Thank you Sam,now i going to Watch it.

Wait Matt Baker?

I am so ready and hyped for the Zionism videos

What is a "maskulim" Jew?

@varana

Жыл бұрын

"Maskilim" were the activists, or proponents, of the Haskalah, i.e. the Jewish Enlightenment.

@urplereen

Жыл бұрын

@@varana Thanks :)

Oh boy, I'd love to hear more about the Jewish Labour Bund. I heard a bit about it during the history of Russia but never great detail. It's a fascinating thing though

Thanks a lot for these incredible videos, Sam. And some people do wonder why so many Jews despised the Russian Empire and sided with anyone trying to bring it down. With all those absurd laws any sane person would rise against such a humiliation.

@warcrimeconnoisseur5238

Жыл бұрын

Changing a system that is shitty for a few to a system that sucks for everyone isnt really good and doesn't look good

I'm curious, would you ever consider profiling someone like Sholem Aleichem in a video?

To say the United States had generous immigration laws misstates the point. The United States government didn't enforce any immigration restrictions until the passage of the Page Act of 1875 and, notably, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Prior to this, the only federal immigration law I could find was An Act to Encourage Immigration, enacted July 4, 1864. It was intended to allow the president to create a bureaucracy to solicit immigrants from across Europe. This policy was repealed in 1868, so as long as you weren't Chinese or East Asian, there were no federal policies regarding immigration during the covered period.

@SamAronow

Жыл бұрын

The Naturalization Act of 1870 was in place and preserved much of the stuff in the 1864 act. And only Chinese were blocked- there was quite a wave of Japanese immigration that will become relevant in a future video.

@aheroicdose

Жыл бұрын

@@SamAronow The Naturalization Act behaved as a skeleton for the later explicitly anti-Chinese and anti-East Asian (perhaps I should have said explicitly, immigrants from countries historically within China's suzerainty) policies I mentioned, though you get the point on primacy. The United States did not enforce restrictions against western and near eastern immigrants until much later. So, Jews didn't face federal restrictions on immigration to the US at this time. Hence, misstating the point. The Naturalization Act of 1870 is textually concerned with mitigating people immigrating to the US under a false identity. That it is related to immigration is incidental to its clear anti-fraud motive. Just out of curiosity, what do you think carried over from the 1864 law to the 1870 law, after the 1868 repeal? I read the statute, and I'd be more than happy to try to explain it to you.

@SamAronow

Жыл бұрын

I didn't claim that there were any restrictions against Jews at this time; only that there were barriers to entry- but they were practical barriers. Anyway, the fact remains that the Office of Immigration continued after the repeal of the 1864 act, and that's what's relevant here.

@aheroicdose

Жыл бұрын

@@SamAronow Lol that's the whole point, they passed out pamphlets. The US government didn't even assume these powers until it was opined by SCOTUS that immigration restrictions must come from the federal government, back when states tried to enact their own policies at their borders. The point is it was a misrepresentation of the administrative regime of the time period, whether you cop to it or not. I hope you can differentiate between personal attacks and criticisms of perceived deficiencies in your work.

There are a lot of descendants of these Russian Jews in Montreal as well!

@SamAronow

Жыл бұрын

Canada opened its doors a little later.

@yellowlightsyndrome9959

Жыл бұрын

@@SamAronow will you ever make a video on the Jews of Canada or Montreal?

Will you talk about the Israeli elections

I wonder if in the next videos author will be ideologically consistent and will praise Bolsheviks for elevating Jews to a standard never-before-seen, or Russia=bad Dogma is just too strong.

@joaoribeiro5938

Жыл бұрын

Russian empire is indeed bad. I think Sam could put the "elders of Zion" thing which inspired the far-right of Germany.

@johnpoole3871

Жыл бұрын

Right. If anybody has anything critical to say about the Russian Tsar and his policies it is because they have an anti-Russian dogma. No Russian ever had anything bad to say about the Tsars so some sort of anti-Russian dogma is the obvious conclusion here.

@user-nt8wh3cg8r

Жыл бұрын

@@johnpoole3871 You're just putting words in my mouth. I never said that.

@johnpoole3871

Жыл бұрын

@@user-nt8wh3cg8r Explain yourself then. He has been critical of many countries and institutions. But you have announced he has an anti-Russian dogman. You talk like this is a fact, that he is absolutely guilty of this, you only question how strong it is. And what is your basis for this? A video that was crtitical of the Tsars? Was he unfair to them in a way that contrasts to say the Romania video we just had?

@user-nt8wh3cg8r

Жыл бұрын

@@johnpoole3871 Yes, there is an anti-Russian bias in his videos. He calls Russian Empire totalitarian state - which is I bit ridiculous. At the same time United States is a shining Beacon of freedom. These states abolished slavery and serfdom almost at the same time. But I'm not saying that his criticism is not valid. I'm not making any conclusions before I see his opinion on Jews After the revolution.

Trotsky is coming...!!!

You edge closer and closer to the Bund, I hope you do the movement justice.

Your subliminal messages are funny!

finally a video on Zionism is coming up

@Tigershark_3082

Жыл бұрын

I am both looking forward to it and not-looking forward to it. The topic is EXTREMELY divisive within modern Judaism, and especially on the left in terms of politics. I'm hoping the video is well-recieved

The British World, and it's rebel child the US, are the least culturally brutal Europeans, especially regarding Jews but also in the matter of decolonization. The continental land Empires were and are brutal

Jeremiah 3:18 In those days, the house of Judah will go with the house of Israel, and they will come together from the north land to the land that I caused your forefathers to inherit.

This is how I ended up in America btw

Ah, Borodin.

AHHHH, ZIONISM VIDEO COMING SOON!

@LightSourceTemple

Жыл бұрын

Yep, Dreyfus is next

10:40 it’s this kind of bs that puts me on the borderline of anarco-libertarianism If government didn’t exist or was so small it couldn’t intrude on innocent people going about their daily lives minding their own business.

Is there any Emperor that hasn't been _'totalitarian'_ at any standard? Your Russophobia discredits your work.

@persona3448

Жыл бұрын

Napoleon, Victoria, Norton, the various emperors of Germany, various emperors of Japan etc. There’s a difference between authoritarian and totalitarian.

@baneofbanes

Жыл бұрын

“Russophobia” grow up dude.

@hanswust6972

Жыл бұрын

@@baneofbanes : 😂😂😂 You can't substantiate what you say and resort to a childish reply. 😂😂😂

@baneofbanes

Жыл бұрын

@@hanswust6972 emperors by definition are totalitarian.