[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Yosef Mendelevich speaks to the camera. Touro University logo is at the bottom right.

[YOSEF MENDELEVICH] You know, even under the uniform of a Soviet soldier, you can find a human being. Not necessarily, but we are looking for that. And I was many times glad and privileged to find that it is not a simple soldier, an officer. It's a human being. You can talk to him. And this kind of experience I translate to my book as well, for my main aim in this book to find human beings.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[DESCRIPTION] Touro Talks intro displaying photos of students and faculty across the university, fading into the Touro University logo.

[TEXT] TOURO TALKS TOURO UNIVERSITY, Finding the Humanity: A Conversation with Former Refusenik and Author Yosef Mendelevich, Touro Talks is sponsored by Robert and Arlene Rosenberg

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Alan Kadish speaks to the camera in a library setting. Touro University logo is at the bottom right.

[ALAN KADISH] Hi, I'm Dr. Alan Kadish, President of Touro University. Welcome to Touro Talks. We live in a complicated time when it's hard sometimes to define people who have really stepped up and made a difference in the world. Today, we have the pleasure of having a true hero joining us on Touro Talks.

Refusenik Yosef Mendelevich will reflect on his own historic struggle under the oppression of the Soviet Union, along with a discussion of his new book, The Cantonists, which describes the persecution of Jewish children more than a century ago under tsarist Russia. Mendelevich was born in Riga and started his Jewish activities in the 1960s.

He formed a student group of underground Jewish education in 1966, and became an editor of an underground newsletter, Iton, on Jewish issues in 1969. Being repeatedly refused the right to immigration, he became one of the leaders of a hijacking affair, which is recounted in his 2012 memoir, Unbroken Spirit. Not surprisingly, as punishment for his activities, he was imprisoned for 11 years.

But during his imprisonment, he continued pushing for keeping Jewish precepts and advocating for the Jewish people. In 1981, as a result of a worldwide struggle, he was released and emigrated to Israel. His book The Cantonists doesn't describe his era in Russia, but rather a period in tsarist Russia when, before 1917, the Russian tsar wielded what he thought was absolute power over a vast empire where more than 5 million Jews lived in persecution and segregation.

Under the rule of Tsar Nicholas I, from 1825 to 1855, policies towards the Jews became especially oppressive. He sought to erase Jewish identity by converting Jews to Christianity and promoting assimilation. But one of his most ruthless strategies was the implementation of the cantonist system, which conscripted Jewish boys under the age of 13 into military service. Over three decades, 75,000 Jewish boys were conscripted.

Despite the immense hardships, most of those boys remained Jewish, with only 25% converting. This powerful account, along with his personal experience, speaks a lot about great human spirit and about the personal factors which have made Rabbi Dr. Yosef Mendelevich a true hero. Joining me today, along with Yosef Mendelevich, is Dr. Henry Abramson, Dean of the Lander College for Men and a world-renowned Jewish historian.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Henry Abramson and Dr. Yosef Mendelevich join. Dr. Henry Abramson in an office setting and Dr. Yosef Mendelevich with a plain background.

[ALAN KADISH] Since I'm a cardiologist and not a historian, I'm going to leave it to Dr. Abramson and Rabbi Dr. Yosef Mendelevich to speak about both Yosef's personal heroism experience as well as his new book, The Cantonists. Welcome, Dean Abramson, and it's my absolute pleasure to welcome Yosef Mendelevich. Dean Abramson.

[HENRY ABRAMSON] Thank you very much, Dr. Kadish. It is really a privilege to speak with Dr. Mendelevich, who's really had such a phenomenal impact, not only on the late 20th century history of Jews writ large but also on the discipline of history with this remarkable new work, The Cantonists, which I read with great fascination, and I'm really looking forward to getting into some details about your analysis. I hope I don't get a little bit too geeky, because I have some more really specific questions.

And I also have some really big global questions, because one of the subtexts of the book is the discussion of the scar that this experience left on the Russian Jewish psyche. And I believe that we can make a strong argument to say that, as Faulkner once said, the history isn't dead. It isn't even past. Right?

We're still dealing with it, and we see implications of what happened in the 1830s and 1840s, even in contemporary Brooklyn and, of course, in contemporary Jerusalem. But I think it would be appropriate-- Dr. Kadish gave us a very, very brief account of your experience as a Refusenik. Perhaps you could share with the audience a little bit more of your story. Selfishly, I want to reserve most of our time to discussion of your book, but it can't be separated from your personal experience.

[YOSEF MENDELEVICH] Thank you. See, the underground movement by itself is one part of my history. And then it's the arrest, the attempt to hijack and run away.

[TEXT] Rabbi Dr. Yosef Mendelevich "Prisoner of Zion" and Author of the Cantonists

[YOSEF MENDELEVICH] But I would underline that the major experience was being in prison. I stayed there almost 11 years. And I always remember what my lawyer, Soviet lawyer, but a Jewish one, told me before I left to gulag.

Gulag is a common name for all the prisons and concentration camps. So he told me, you know what? There is life too. You understand what's there. And it is true. Yeah. When I came to better to tell, I was brought to this prison camp. I found different kind of prisoners. Some of them counted days and years to be released. It was not a life at all.

No. Some of them, to take their time, studied languages. It was almost no life as well. And third, a smaller part, was really living. For being in a prison as a prisoner you have to fight for your rights as a political prisoner, as a Jewish prisoner. You have your Jewish community. You have your Jewish holidays, Purim and Pesach, et cetera.

You're always busy with doing it. So you almost forget being in a prison for its life. It's human contact with people, and not specifically only with Jewish people. Even under the uniform of a Soviet soldier, you can find a human being. Not necessary, but we are looking for that. And I was many times glad and privileged to find that it's not a simple soldier, an officer. It's a human being. You can talk to him. And this kind of experience, I translate to my book as well for my main aim in this book to find human beings.

And the first question I asked there, who was the tsar? What kind of education did he got? What kind of education got his ministers? What people they were? And then the main part was the interaction between the boys that were brought to the cantonist schools, how they behave. Do they help each other?

There were some maybe sources from outside that helped how the Russian people reacted to whatever happened with them. And I opened the whole world. So when people will start reading my book, normally, as people say, OK, we remember the persecution, the Russian tsar, nebach [pity] the Jews forget about it. It's a different story. It's a story of, as I call my book, unbroken spirit.

It's a story of an unbroken spirit, not specifically of Yosef Mendelevich. I'm a part of Am Israel. We, all of us, are Am Segulah, which means-- segulah, we are unbroken. We can to adjust to every situation, and it's our-- it's our gift. It's what the Ribbono Shel Olam [the Master of the Universe] gave us on Mount Sinai. Tehiyu Am Segula. Segula, you will tell it better, “l’histagel”, to get adjusted to every situation but to remain yourself.

[HENRY ABRAMSON] That's interesting. That's like our superpower, one might say, in colloquial English. So you dipped a little bit into the book, but let me just give our audience a tiny bit of a background, because many people may not be as familiar with 19th-century Russian history as you or I are.

[TEXT] Dr. Henry Abramson, Dean, Lander College for Men, Touro University

[HENRY ABRAMSON] Your book focuses on an extended period of several decades in the early to mid 19th century, where the Russian government, under Tsar Nicholas I, enacted a very cruel and somewhat bizarre policy of forcible conscription of Jewish children into the Russian army. And I think it bears noting that one of the most severe aspects of that conscription was the length of service, which was-- although it depended on when they were taken in and whether they were taken into a boarding military school first or straight into the army.

But it's basically 25 years plus, an incredibly long conscription. Please tell us just briefly what this was all about. And then I'd like to dive into specific aspects of this.

[YOSEF MENDELEVICH] Permit me to be an advocate of Russian tsar. When occupying Poland, a part of Poland in the end of the end of 19th century, like in 1979, 1975, he found that there are no Polish citizens. There are Jewish citizens on there. And it is a very--

[HENRY ABRAMSON] 1772 through 1795.

[YOSEF MENDELEVICH] Yeah, right. And it's like it's a strange people. Like, you discover people in Africa speak different languages, behave differently from all you can imagine in Western Europe. Altogether tribe, like an Indian tribe, discovered what advocating the Russian side would say. What were you going to do with them to integrate in your empire to be a part of your citizen?

It's not only a question, it's a task. It is a very hard task to accomplish. So obviously each of us would suggest education, give the people try-- give good education to at least to the new generation. And more or less, they got integrated in a time and then they will serve as a vanguard inside Russian, in the Russian majority, in the 5 million of people.

This group of Jewish youngsters that will get a modern education will help us to integrate and to become them equal to everybody. You are against it. I think it is a very, very kind and thoughtful approach. It's what every government has to do. Right? As we say, [“Mah Loh” in HEBREW], what doesn't fit?

[HENRY ABRAMSON] Yeah.

[YOSEF MENDELEVICH] By way, for the Russian children to be mobilized, drafted to schools, it was a privilege.

[HENRY ABRAMSON] Absolutely.

[YOSEF MENDELEVICH] You have a family of 7, 10 children. You have to give them food and to train for all seven, the tsar is taking one or two boys, feeding them, dressing them, educating them. It's excellent. It's a dream.

Up to now, I don't know whether in America, in the United States does it exist, but in Russia still there are schools for cadets. They're getting education from beginning from age, some 13, 14. And when they finish, then they can only serve in a regular army, they are much more educated and they make a better career -- immediately becoming an officers, lieutenants, et cetera, et cetera.

So from the side of the Russian tsar, it would look not like a discrimination, something harmful. We are giving privilege other Russian children would dream about that. We are giving the Jews (for) free. The problem is that the non-Russian children wouldn't understand the language and they couldn't fit the culture. For them, it was miserable.

And obviously, if not the tsar, but his officers were aware of the problem. It is why, by the way, the Tsar Nicholas had a senate, a parliament, and the parliament was against drafting Jewish children. They told it is not the time. So finally, the tsar became angry and he made his personal law against the senate. You understand? It's not that easy.

[HENRY ABRAMSON] Yeah, absolutely. Executive power.

[YOSEF MENDELEVICH] Yeah. Yeah. They were clever people. So a part of my book is to study who were the members of senate, governors. They were educated people. Some of them not at all Russian. German, Dutch. Most of them studied in Europe. Got beautiful education in Sorbonne, in Oxford. You know. Unbelievable.

[HENRY ABRAMSON] And then, education society had some prominent Jews as well. Lilienthal and others. So let me just paraphrase this a little bit for our audience because, once again, this is something that most American viewers have very little familiarity with. What you're pointing at is one of the crucial debates in the origins of the cantonist movement. Stanislavski explored this. Petrovsky-Shtern explored it as well.

Is that, what was the fundamental motivation of the Russian government in imposing this really cumbersome, difficult, expensive, inconvenient, and unarguably cruel decree? There's a strong argument to be made. Stanislavski makes it.

And you also follow, I think, along in his tracks, that the motivation of Tsar Nicholas I, while not excluding simple anti-Semitism, was really much more of a reformist mindset, saying he has, since Catherine the Great conquered Poland, as you mentioned, massively included this sudden new influx of Jews, millions of Jews that they had never had in Russia, because they had been banned from the country since 1479. And what do you do with these people who are not Russian Orthodox, who do not speak Russian?

They speak Yiddish. It's not even a Slavic language. They observe a different faith altogether. The autocracy, nationalism, and the orthodoxy of the Russian triad is not there. What do you do with them? And so Nicholas I's thinking was, let's use conscription as a means of assimilating them. Not necessarily in a negative sense, but let's bring them into the society.

Educating them. Education was a major part of it, because, of course, they were first brought in. So with that in mind, maybe I'll go to-- well, I'd like to go, I think, to one of the most powerful aspects of your book, which I found the most meaningful and valuable and one of the greatest contributions that went far beyond what Stanislavski and Petrovsky-Shtern and others have discussed, which is the extremely problematic involvement of the kahal, the Jewish community, in the literal kidnapping of Jewish children to turn them over for this 25 to 36 year consignment to the army.

And you discuss this at great length. I wonder if you could meditate a little bit about what does it mean that the Jewish community was actually involved in this process?

[YOSEF MENDELEVICH] See, the community-- I mentioned at the beginning, by the way, they were made tremendous efforts to prevent this decree. In Jewish community, you can believe in the end of the 18th, beginning of the 19th century in Russia, had international connections and reached kings. And they protested and they wrote. It was not specifically outcries. Help us. There were clever diplomatic steps. And the European non-Jewish power reacted and they wrote letters. There was a High Commissioner in England that wrote a letter to Nicholas telling that it is against Christianity to forcibly baptize people. Unbelievable. So you could expect that when finally this decree was passed, the community would continue to fight against it.

Nothing like that. The moment the decree was passed, they obeyed. We obeyed. And I can understand the bitter situation of the community. The community, kahal, means a certain klaynshtetl, a certain village has to pay tax to the tsar. And the majority are poor people, poor Jews who will pay? The wealthy people, the wealthy Jews.

So paying for other people. And it's like real chesed [kindness] to help other Jews. It's a community. We have to take care. But then they have a privilege. Making chesed, it is not a pure chesed. But I don't believe that it was even a figuring out to make something good for somebody else and then deserve privilege. It was obvious you know. I help you. Don't send my son to the army. Find somebody else instead.

And if it wouldn't happen, the wealthy men would leave the village, would leave the klaynshtetl and they move to another place. For in Russia, wealthy people having a certain amount of money, were permitted, they got more freedom of movement as well.

So understand the problem of the heads of a kehilla [community]. There's conscription. This village have to bring some maybe 20 boys. Some of them belong to wealthy people, wealthy families. What to do? We have to grab poor people and send them instead of wealthy children. It is not unjustice. It's terrible. But it's final in the long run. It serves the interest of the whole kehilla. You understand?

[HENRY ABRAMSON] Absolutely.

[YOSEF MENDELEVICH] Yeah.

[HENRY ABRAMSON] On one level, I understand. I can understand it mechanically, but as a parent, as a grandparent, it's incomprehensible. Let me just restate your words so that people understand the impact of what you have researched here. The very, very onerous tax placed on-- the poll tax on the Jewish community was divided up in each municipality according to the ability of the people to pay. Wealthy people paid more.

[YOSEF MENDELEVICH] Demands of the tsar. He needed more and more money. You know?

[HENRY ABRAMSON] Yeah, that's the way taxes usually work. And in return, not necessarily an explicit quid pro quo, but a very much understood quid pro quo that for those wealthy members who are paying more than their share in order to cover the poll tax of other members of the community, their children and grandchildren were to be exempted from the military conscription that happened once a year after Sukkos.

And literally, it's hard to even believe this. In some cases, especially during the intense period you describe in the 1840s, the community employed kidnappers, who they called khappers, the Yiddish form of the same [Hebrew] term, chatufim, that's used to describe the hostages held in Israel today, in Gaza today. They employed Jewish khappers to steal the children of the poor, widows, the destitute, and hand those over to meet the infernal quota of the tsar. Just absolutely incredible.

And so on one level, we can understand that it has to happen one way or the other. And also, when the Jewish community failed to turn over conscripts, then there was an additional penalty. And when they failed to pay the taxes, the number of conscripts went up as well as you describe in your book. So just pushing on this point once more.

Well, actually, there's nothing to say about it. It's absolutely incredible. But I want to ask you a question that I disagree with your conclusions in the book. I've always followed that trend of historical research that argues that this period of time was a massive break, kind of a Turgenev kind of moment, where fathers and sons separated because the poorer classes, the younger people saw that their traditional leadership had completely sold them out, had failed them.

And as a result, in the next 20 years or so, that's when you get the birth of real Jewish revolutionary movements, leading to ultimately the 1905 revolution and the 1917 revolution, one might say. Now, you indicated you don't think there's such a straight line between the failure of the kahal to protect the children of the poor and those later revolutionary movements. Could you expand on that a little bit?

[YOSEF MENDELEVICH] See, it is a much more wider development, not only of a Jewish community, but the population of a tsar. People moved. They start industrialization. People moved to factories, start working together. So, I will bring you another example. My grandfather went from Latvia, Dvinsk, to America, to the United States. That time, it was the beginning of the 19th century. The Jews had mostly to violate Shabbos.

For you, work in a factory, it is not like you are as a aysek. You have to go to mechalel [violate] Shabbos. So my father came back to Latvia saying, telling you cannot be a Jew in America. So as well in Russia, in the Soviet-- in the Russian Empire, when you go and meet crowds and mix with the goyim [non-Jews] to get educated, to get a salary or whatever, it's no way that you are living your tradition.

The moment you are leaving the klaynshtetl for any reason, you leave the kehilla, you are out from the influence of the Rebbeim, and it's how you get assimilated. Not specifically because the father couldn't protect the child. The father sent his child to look for parnosseh [livelihood], and where he can find the parnosseh? In a city, in a big place, in a bigger village. And then assimilation started.

All the time the Jews could stay in their klaynshtetl, they were protected from assimilation. The moment they had to move outside, it started. It's like it doesn't depend not on the children and on the parents. Simply, there is no way out. When you are part of a big population, you had to assimilate, to adjust yourself to their tradition, to their way of life, and that's it. Maybe I'm not explaining it.

[HENRY ABRAMSON] No, no, I understand. I understand well. What you're essentially saying is that this may be one of the factors that led to the radicalization of a significant, still a minority, but a significant portion of the Jewish community. But much more significant would be industrialization, the urbanization of the Jews in the 1870s and 1880s, and much more commercial contact with Jews. I'm going to get a little more contemporary relevance here for--

[YOSEF MENDELEVICH] Just a--

[HENRY ABRAMSON] Sure, please.

[YOSEF MENDELEVICH] Bund. Bund movement, where the members-- it was the first socialist movement in Soviet, in Russian Empire. Bund, Jewish movement.

[HENRY ABRAMSON] Yeah, yeah.

[YOSEF MENDELEVICH] Who were they? People that worked in industry.

[HENRY ABRAMSON] Yeah. Yeah. It was definitely-- industrialization is huge, especially in the northern part of the Pale of Settlement. So you mentioned your grandfather. My grandfather also has a connection to this to a certain degree. Some of my great grandparents chose not to come to Canada, where they ended up. My family ended up before coming to this great country.

But my great great grandparents also didn't want to leave because they heard, for example, that there were streetcars that ran in the streets on Shabbos and they said no. But my own zaidy, alav hashalom [of blessed memory], he was concerned about being conscripted into the war with Japan in 1904, and so he fled Lithuania and made his way to Canada. But here's the thing I really want to push on.

It's relevant to our contemporary situation. And if you don't want to answer this, I'll understand, but it's something that I wonder about a lot. I would argue that the experience of these 30 odd years of forced conscription under Tsar Nicholas I left a lasting mark, a damaging mark, a traumatic mark on the Jewish psyche. Even if Jews don't necessarily know the details of it, it's still things that's in the background.

And it's kind of things that Bubby talks about, Zaidy talks about. And I'm wondering, if this experience under Tsar Nicholas I is coloring the attitude of populations in Israel that are very hesitant to join the IDF and to participate in the National Military struggles there. Would you think there is a through line from the 1830s and '40s to the 2020s?

[YOSEF MENDELEVICH] Some connection, and I will mention something else. You know that the tsar had a council of Jewish wise people to consult them. And who they were? Reb Itzikel (Yitzhak) Volozhin, the son of Rav Chaim Volozhin, and Tzemach Tzedek.

[HENRY ABRAMSON] Yeah. Huge Lubavitch rabbi. Huge Lithuanian rabbi. Very important people.

[YOSEF MENDELEVICH] Yeah. Meet together, misnagidm and chassidim, meet together in tsar. And tsar mentioned in his diary that they were educated, intellectual, and pleasant people. He enjoyed to talk to them. Unbelievable, right? Anyway, I never saw any document, but I heard a lot of that, that Tzemach Tzedek and Rabbi Yitzchok Volozhin arranged with the tsar that the boys that would study in yeshiva wouldn't be conscripted and drafted to the army. So a lot of Jewish boys went to yeshivas, and it was the time that yeshivas. So it is that connection, right? If you learn Torah, you are free from serving in the army. I can understand that. I wouldn't say it is very, very, very just.

By the way, I bring the psak halacha [ruling of Jewish law] of the Chasam Sofer, being asked in Austria, what kind of people, for that time in Austria as well, there was a law that every part of population has to serve in the army. So the Jews in Austria, Hungaria, whatever, had the same problem. Whom to send to serve. And there was a shayla [question], whether it's appropriate to send people there [who are] anyway far from yiddishkeit, assimilated, or the opposite. To send strong people [religiously]. So Chasam Sofer wrote, obviously, in no way send raykim, people that can easily convert, for it is like it is in-- according to “lifnei iver lo tee-ten michshol” [Before a blind person do not put a stumbling block]. It's forbidden altogether.

[HENRY ABRAMSON] Right. Do not place a stumbling block before the blind.[INTERPOSING VOICES]

[YOSEF MENDELEVICH]--educated people that we can believe that maybe they will withstand the attention and the influence of other soldiers and remain Jewish.

[HENRY ABRAMSON] That's fascinating.

[YOSEF MENDELEVICH] I looked for a lot of sheylas [questions to a rabbi] in shoot [rabbinic responsa literature], like a library of sheylas

[HENRY ABRAMSON] Rabbinic responses.

[YOSEF MENDELEVICH]in Russia. I didn't find any answer or any question. It was the time of Rabbi Levi of Berditchev, a time of big rebbeim. Nobody asked the question. Even having, not this problem, what to do with-- whom to send.

It was the decision of the kehilla, by the way. They could decide to send a strong person, boys, or just the opposite, raykim. By the way, the community, together with the practice that we mentioned of sending boys of poor families, looked for Jews that would go around with document, without passports, for it was legal to send them away.

[HENRY ABRAMSON] Yeah. No, it's absolutely terrifying. I do want to mention in this context, before we leave the conscription issue, just yesterday, by coincidence, the chairman of our board, Rabbi Dr. Zvi Ryzman, who's a huge Talmud Chacham [Torah Scholar]. He gave a shiur klali [group lecture] to our students here at Lander College for Men on the subject of milchemet mitzvah bachutz l'haaretz [obligatory war outside Israel].

Quite a fascinating shiur. Is there such a thing as a commanded war that may apply outside of the land of Israel? And I just want to quote one source for you from yesterday's class that I think is fascinating. This is written by the Mishnah Berurah, which is the Chofetz Chaim who would have written this probably in the-- probably the 1890s or maybe the early 19-- the first half of the 20th century.

And on this topic, he says-- where is it? Here. All right. I just happened to pick it up, and now I lost the actual space. I'm looking at-- probably at the wrong Mishnah Berurah. That's probably why. Oh, here it is. Yeah, sorry. For those of you who want to look it up on your own, it's in Hilchos Shabbos siman shin lamud se’if yud zayin [page number]

And he writes here, everyone has to go to the army if called, D’hayom K’she’ba’u m’umot she’chutz l’gvuleinu l’shlol shalal u’lvoz baz. When people come into our territory, which would be Poland, and they're going to be making a pogrom and taking booty. B’vaday mi’chuyav imanu la’tzet b’chlay zayin afilu iskei mammon. We Jews are required to go out armed and fight them, even for material reasons, not for, lifesaving endeavors. U’chi’dina d’malchuta, According to the law of the land.

Meaning Jews in Poland in the 1890s, 1900s, the Mishnah Berurah says, are required to report for the draft. It's a war that's going on. They're coming in. They're going to hurt the population. You have to go out and fight. And this is Poland, not Israel.

And he continues, v’chen mivaor b’rokeach b’avodat d’hacha d’haycha d’ika chashash shema yechasu yoshvei ha’aretz aleinu michalelim - and it even applies, he says, that if the Jews are concerned that maybe non-Jews living in Poland will be upset that the Jews are not doing their share. Right? It's like an amazing statement in Poland in the 1890s, 1900s and one wonders, like, why is this not a more accepted view in certain circles in Jerusalem? I believe it has a lot to do with the experience under Nicholas I.

[YOSEF MENDELEVICH] So to answer the general issue here in Israel, it is a process. In the long run, people got-- even in Haredish community-- adjusted to the idea that they have to serve. No. But you can't do it forcibly and not by law. It's a development.

[HENRY ABRAMSON] Interesting.

[YOSEF MENDELEVICH] It will go by itself. I served in IDF and my seven children-- mean, my children and my son-in-law, all of them serving in different ways right now in Lebanon, in Gaza. But I understand the hardship. I consider myself Haredish, but I am different. I am not from Israel. I am from far away. Anyway, it's a process.

[HENRY ABRAMSON] So let me ask--

[YOSEF MENDELEVICH] It's about people. It's against any moral. OK.

[HENRY ABRAMSON] I want to ask you--

[YOSEF MENDELEVICH] By the way, in Israel, my book of Cantonist was very, very popular with the yeshivish-layt [yeshiva people].

[HENRY ABRAMSON] Sure. Yeah. It should be read by everyone, I think. I'm so glad that Touro University is publishing an English translation. Let me ask you one more controversial contemporary question, which we only have a few minutes left, really, so this is the last big question I have. What you only touch on briefly in your book is that the Nicholas I did offer a carrot instead of a stick as well.

He offered them the option of the crown schools, right? Which we mentioned them in our discussion a little bit briefly. Just for the members of our audience to understand, Nicholas I, his overall goal-- although we're not totally discounting anti-Semitism as we typically understand it. But his overall goal was to modernize this essentially pre-modern Jewish community. His thinking was the military will do it.

Another thought he had was education. And so using the support of the Maskilim, Jewish enlightenment thinkers primarily borrowed from Germany-- Lilienthal was one of the most important among them. He said, let's set up a school system and we'll enroll Jews in it and we'll force them to read and to understand a certain amount of what we value as our Russian curriculum-- Russian language, history, things like that.

And the carrot was that if you enrolled your child in one of these schools, you were exempt from the draft. Now, of course, it's expensive to enroll a child in a school. Even if the school is subsidized, you're counting on that child to be an income earner at a very young age by American standards. Probably 12, 14, they're already apprenticed and they're making money in one way or another.

And so you'd essentially be giving up income for your home to enroll your child in a school. And also, more significantly, it's very clear that there was a clear conversionist intent to the entire school system, that it was a sort of a fig leaf to the tsar's goal to eventually have them ultimately convert to Russian Orthodoxy, and as a result, Max Lilienthal, who was in charge, he left in disgust and he eventually moved to Cincinnati.

So I see in this another example of a psychic scar on the Ashkenazic mind, a distrust of school systems that have an element of secular curriculum, which I think you can also see even in many neighborhoods that we serve here in New York City. And to a certain degree, this is also true, I believe, in Israel as well. Would you feel that there is a follow through with regards to the hesitancy to admit any secular curriculum into traditional yeshivas that's related to this period of history?

[YOSEF MENDELEVICH] Well, I bring there the letter of Max Lilienthal that was invited by the tsar to help educate Jews. And he described his meeting with Minsker chachamim [sages of Minsk]. And he asked him, why you are against education? It's that important. And the wise people answered, we are not against education. We admit it's very important to educate our Jewish children, maths, physics, whatever.

But there is one problem. Our boys are very clever and very smart. The moment they will get some kind of education they would like to get more. And get more education means to go to the universities, to convert and to assimilate. So we are not against education. We are against the further process that necessarily will happen with our children.

To protect them, we feel bad and bitter that we have to prevent them from education, but to save them as Jewish souls, there is no other way. And I think it is true here, as well in Israel, one of my sons studied in yeshiva eight years before he went to the army. And he told me, in Israel we have yeshivat hesder. And he studied in a regular yeshiva.

[HENRY ABRAMSON] Yeshivat hesder, for our audience, is rather than going and serving three years in the army, you serve basically two years in the army and two years in traditional yeshiva studies. So it's kind of a mixture of both. Please continue.

[YOSEF MENDELEVICH] So he told-- I noticed that the boys who studied in a yeshivat hesder even two, three years. It is not enough. It doesn't protect them. It doesn't protect them from taking off the kippah and becoming secular. So when my son was-- after he finished his serving, was suggested to stay, he was told you are very capable man, you will become a commander and officer. He told them, thank you very much. I'm going back to my yeshiva. But how much children could tell this? For it is-- you are a young man and you are seduced with a military career. Soon you will become a colonel, you know? You will be very important. Instead of being a regular yeshiva boy with a hard living. So a lot of people, even, I would say a majority, got broken.

It's a bitter-- still, it's a very bitter experience here in Israel as well. I am all for serving the army. Why we are against the forcible drafting? For we know that who is pushing it? Like, politicians are not going for pure interest. They are trying to break the government, to take religious parties out from the coalition. So we have to be all together against this process.

[HENRY ABRAMSON] Very interesting. And it's amazing, I think you will agree, that history never goes away. Your study of the cantonists illuminates in so many ways the debates that Jews are still engaged in to this very day here in New York and in Jerusalem and elsewhere. Maybe it's a way of thinking of it as a machloket l’shem shamayim [a disagreement for the sake of Heaven].

[YOSEF MENDELEVICH] Jews, Goyim, and other people. No, we are a very complex nation and the life is very different. My issue was to show the life as itself, not painting in different colors. I bring there a lot of stories that the Russian people helped the Jews to remain Jewish. Unbelievable. You know?

[HENRY ABRAMSON] Yeah. It's amazing stories. Support for the cantonists, knowing that they're there. And I also thought it was amazing, your analysis when you got into the very fine details of how many of them actually retain Jewish identity. And it is surprising to me, the majority, about 3/4 of them retain their Jewish identity after being completely submerged in a very foreign environment for decades.

That's a testament to what we began with the discussion of being an am segulah, a people uniquely situated to be resilient. That seems to be demonstrated in your book. Let me give a plug for it. The title is The Cantonist. Jewish boys in the Russian military, 1827 to 1856, published most recently by the Touro University Press. So really proud to have our imprint on this remarkable work of scholarship.

Really, a tremendous privilege to speak with you, both on a scholarly level and on a personal level, in recognition of everything that you have done for Klal Yisrael, the Jewish people, with your paradigm of resistance and resilience. It's so important to all of us, particularly in the trying times, that we find ourselves in now.

I also want to thank Dr. Kadish for inviting me to participate in another episode of Touro Talks, and thank you to our audience for joining us in this Touro Talks conversation and to our sponsors, Robert and Arlene Rosenberg. So until we have another opportunity to speak, my name is Henry Abramson, and I'm very grateful to have had this conversation with the incomparable Dr. Yosef Mendelevich.

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[HENRY ABRAMSON] Thank you very much for watching.

[TEXT] Touro Talks, Touro University, touro.edu/tourotalks

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