Great Britain, British Jews, and the international protection of Romanian Jews, 1900-1914: a study of Jewish diplomacy and minority rights

 
44 
were partly descendants of Jews who had been expelled from Spain in 1492 and 
who had, consequently, immigrated to the Ottoman Empire. The well-off 
Sephardic Jews were, to a great extent, integrated into the Romanian culture, 
although they did not adopt a Romanian national identity.
63
  
 
Moldavian Jews, nearly all of them Ashkenazi, were relative newcomers. 
However, the East/West-division does not fully apply to the case of Romania. 
The Wallachian Jews were different from the typical Western European Jewry; 
for example, the religious reform movement did not quite spread to Wallachia. 
The Moldavian Jews also differed somewhat from the typical Eastern European 
model. Their cultural identity was alleged to be weaker than their neighbours’ 
in Russia and in the Eastern parts of Austria-Hungary. Moldavia was 
considered to be the Jewish hinterland: there were neither important Jewish 
intellectual centres nor famous Jewish religious scholars situated there. 
64
 
 
Most Romanian Jews (80%) lived in towns at the turn of the century. They 
constituted 19% of the urban population in Romania. The rest of the Jewish 
population (20%) resided in rural communes, but this was only one per cent of 
the rural population in Romania as a whole, since the great majority of 
Romanians (84%) lived in the countryside. In Moldavia, Jews formed the 
majority population in some northern towns, such as Botoşani and Dorohoi. 
Iaşi, the Moldavian capital, was one of the Jewish strongholds, with half of the 
population being Jewish. The biggest Jewish centre in Wallachia was the state 
capital, Bucharest.
65
 
 
 
TABLE 2   The occupational distribution of Jews in Romania, 1904.
66
 
 
Agriculture 
  2.5% 
Industry and crafts 
 42.5% 
Commerce and banking 
 37.9% 
Liberal professions 
  3.2% 
Others  
13.9% 
Total 100% 
 
 
Industry and crafts were the most common Jewish vocational groups, but 
commerce and banking were also very significant. The share of liberal 
professions was surprisingly small, but the explanation for this was that, in 
principle, medicine was the only profession in Romania in which the Jews were 
permitted to engage. The Jews in agriculture were estate managers, 
leaseholders, and middlemen. 
 
                                                           
63
  
Mendelsohn 1983, 173-174. Mendelsohn’s study discusses the interwar period. 
64
  
Mendelsohn 1983, 173-174. 
65
  
RG 1899, xlvi-xlviii; Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 14, 397. 
66
  
Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 14, 398.  

---

 
45
TABLE 3   The percentage of Jews in some occupations in Romania, 1904.
67
  
 
Merchants 21% 
Merchants in the town of Iaşi 75% 
Artisans (all) 
20% 
Engravers 81% 
Watchmakers 76% 
Bookbinders 75% 
Industrial workers 
 5% 
Factory owners 
20% 
Doctors 38% 
 
 
Engravers, watchmakers, and bookbinders are especially mentioned in Table 3, 
along with the other examples, because these particular crafts had an especially 
large proportion of Jewish artisans. The Jewish proportion of industrial workers 
was small; in fact, it was about the same as the Jewish percentage of the whole 
population. The numbers were not as simple as shown in the table, though, 
because Jewish influence varied considerably between different parts of the 
country. For instance, in the Botoşani and Dorohoi districts in Northern 
Moldavia, the percentage of Jewish artisans was 70% and 68% respectively. In 
the Botoşani district, Jews had a monopoly in a host of trades, including 
goldsmiths, silversmiths, bookbinders, soap makers, and dyers.
68
  
 
Moses Mendelsohn has argued that the more backward the region in 
Eastern Europe, the more dominant the Jews were in non-agricultural 
occupations. He also states, however, that ‘predominance in certain economic 
sectors did not imply wealth’.
69
 This was also true in Romania. The Jewish 
communities were, in fact, quite poor, both in Moldavia as well as across the 
border in Austrian-ruled Galicia and the territories under Russian rule, 
Bessarabia and Poland. Naturally, problems emerged when a large number of 
persons in one locality were engaged in certain typically Jewish trades. The 
heavy concentration of Jewish craftsmen in Moldavian towns was also given as 
a factor behind Jewish emigration, which will be discussed in detail below.   
 
 
2.4 Anti-Jewish legislation 
 
 
The demographic features of the Romanian Jewish community, described 
above, were to some extent shaped by the system of anti-Jewish legislation. On 
the other hand, the particular social and economic characteristics of the Jewish 
                                                           
67
  
Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 14, 398. The numbers for the year 1901 are nearly identical. 
They are printed in Iancu 1978, 242. 
68
  
Schuster 1939, 27. Unfortunately, there are no statistics available on the areas of the 
weakest Jewish influence in Wallachia.  
69
  
Mendelsohn 1983, 180. 

---

 
46 
community pointed in a direction to where legislation was ‘needed’. Romanian 
anti-Jewish legislation was extensive, and it dealt with all spheres of life, 
focusing on economic matters, the political system, and education.
70
 Most 
pieces of legislation were passed in the 1880s and 1890s, although many 
restrictions had already been in force earlier. Therefore, by 1900, the set of laws 
was almost complete, and only a few major laws  — such as the infamous 
Trades Law of 1902  — and some amendments were introduced in the 
beginning of the twentieth century. 
 
The Anglo-Jewish Association presented a typical Jewish interpretation of 
Romanian legislation: 
 
 
‘Hardly a loophole is left in the tightly-woven meshes of regulations and 
prescriptions, so as to allow the Jew to earn an honest and peaceful livelihood... It 
must  be  remembered  that  each  year  always  brings  additional  restrictions.  It  is  the 
cumulative effect of this continual growth of laws and regulations which reduces the 
position of the Jews in Roumania to one of intolerable misery, unparalleled in the 
modern and medieval history  of the Jewish race.’
71
 
 
The Romanian parliament was very keen on passing laws; this was the case not 
only with anti-Jewish laws, but with legislation in general. Whole series of laws 
dealing with one single issue were passed and amendments were made to 
them.
72
 In anti-Jewish legislation, it was not directly ruled that ‘Jews’ were 
excluded from enjoying certain rights. The legislative expression for ‘Jews’ 
(evrei) was ‘aliens’ or ‘foreigners’ (străini). Other ways of expressing anti-Jewish 
legislation involved the use of wordings such as ‘only Romanians or naturalised 
Romanians’, ‘those eligible to vote’, and ‘Christians’.   
 
The Jews were practically free to profess their religion and to maintain 
their religious and communal institutions, although Jewish communities were 
not recognised as legal entities by the state. There had been special taxes on 
Jews in the early nineteenth century, and some local — but not state-imposed — 
Jewish taxes were still collected in the late nineteenth century.
73
 It is interesting 
to note that the religious rights of Romanian Jews did not cause major 
complaints, which implies that religious life was at least reasonably free. 
Religion did matter though, of course, since, in a way, all the discrimination 
occurred on the basis of the religious affiliation of the Jews. 
 
The basic political issue for the Romanian Jews was the non-existence of 
Jewish political rights and the consequent exclusion of Jews from Romanian 
                                                           
70
  
See Wolf 1912 for a comparison to Russian anti-Jewish legislation. As in Romania, 
Russian legislation dealt with the army, residency rights, public service, education, 
liberal professions, and property ownership. These six categories are put forward by 
Wolf. 
71
  
AJA Annual Report 1910-1911, 15, 17. 
72
  
The practice occasionally invited derisive comments from outside observers. For 
example, in 1908, British representatives in Romania pointed out that ‘a large batch’ 
of laws was being ‘hurriedly passed’. FO 371/511/22162, Assistant Under Secretary 
Louis Mallet to Board of Deputies President David Alexander and Anglo-Jewish 
Association President Claude Montefiore (i.e. the Conjoint Committee), 14 July 1908 
73
  
Sincerus 1901, 201. 

---