Romanian Jews - Russo-Turkish Wars

Russo-Turkish Wars

During the Russo-Turkish War, 1768-1774 the Jews in the Danubian Principalities had to endure great hardships. Massacres and pillages were perpetrated in almost every town and village in the country. When peace was restored, both princes, Alexander Mavrocordatos of Moldavia and Nicholas Mavrogheni of Wallachia, pledged their special protection to the Jews, whose condition remained favorable until 1787, when both Janissaries and the Imperial Russian Army engaged in pogroms.

The community was also subject to persecutions by the locals. Jewish children were seized and forcibly baptized. The ritual-murder accusation became widespread; one made at Galați in 1797 led to exceptionally severe results - the Jews were attacked by a large mob, driven from their homes, robbed, waylaid on the streets, and many killed on the spot, while some were forced into the Danube and drowned; others who took refuge in the synagogue were burned to death in the building; a few escaped after being given protection and refuge by a priest. In 1803, shortly before his death, the Wallachian Metropolitan Iacob Stamati instigated attacks on the Bucharest community by publishing his Înfruntarea jidovilor ("Facing the Jews"), which pretended to be the confession of a former rabbi; however, Jews were offered refuge by Stamati's replacement, Veniamin Costachi. A seminal event occurred in 1804, when ruler Constantine Ypsilanti dismissed accusations of ritual murder as "the unfounded opinion" of "stupid people", and ordered that their condemnation be read in churches throughout Wallachia; the allegations no longer surfaced during the following period.

During the Russo-Turkish War of 1806-1812, the Russian invasion was again accompanied by massacres of the Jews. Kalmyk irregular soldiers in Ottoman service, who appeared in Bucharest at the close of the Russo-Turkish War of 1806-1812, exercised terror on the city's Jewish population. At around the same time, a conflict emerged in Wallachia between Jews under foreign protection (sudiți) and local ones (hrisovoliți), after the latter tried to impose a single administration for the community, a matter which was finally settled in favor of the hrisovoliți by Prince Jean Georges Caradja (1813).

In Habsburg-ruled Transylvania, the reforms carried out by Joseph II allowed Jews to settle in towns directly subject to the Hungarian Crown. However, pressured placed on the community remained stringent for the following decades.