Bessarabian Jews

The history of the Jews in Bessarabia.

Jews are mentioned from very early in the Principality of Moldavia, but they did not represent a significant number. Their main activity in Moldavia was commerce, but they could not compete with Greeks and Armenians, who had knowledge of Levantine commerce and relationships. Several times, when Jewish merchants created monopolies in some places in north Moldavia, Moldavian rulers sent them back to Galicia and Podolia. One such example was during the reign of Petru Şchiopul (1583–1591), who favored the English merchants led by William Harborne.

In the 18th century, more Jews started to settle in Moldavia. Some of them were in charge of the Dniester crossings, replacing Moldavians and Greeks, until the captain of Soroca demanded their expulsion. Others traded with spirits (horilka), first brought in from Ukraine, afterward building local velniţas (pre-industrial distilleries) on boyar manors. The number of Jews increased significantly during the Russo-Turkish War (1806–1812), when the Podolia-Moldavia border was open.

When this war ended, in 1812, Bessarabia (eastern half of the Principality of Moldavia) was annexed by the Russian Empire.

The 1818 Statutory Law (Aşezământul) of the Governorate of Bessarabia mentions Jews as a separate state (social class), which was further divided into merchants, tradesmen, and land-workers. Unlike the other states, Jews were not allowed to own agricultural land, with the exception of "empty lots only from the property of the state, for cultivation and for building factories". Jews were allowed to keep and control the sale of spirits on government and private manors, to hold "mills, velniţas, breweries, and similar holdings", but were explicitly disallowed to "rule over Christians". During the 1817 census, there were 3,826 Jewish families in Bessarabia (estimated at 19,000 people, or 4.2% of the total population).

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