On this day in 1971, Empress Catherine of Russia issued the second of three ukases (decrees) restricting the right of Jewish commerce in Russia outside of annexed territories from Poland and other Eastern European lands, effectively creating what would later be known as the Pale of Settlement. Over the next seventy-five years, restrictions would tighten, prohibiting Jews from even settling outside the Pale. By 1900, despite a burgeoning wave of emigration, mostly to the United States, nearly five million Jews lived inside the Pale.
After the communist revolution in 1917, the provisional government of Russia ended restrictions for Jewish settlement. However, most Jews still lacked the means to take advantage of the government’s reform, and those who did almost uniformly chose emigration over resettlement within Russia. Meanwhile, most Jews who could not—or would not—emigrate continued to call the Pale home until its Jewish communities were eradicated during the Holocaust.
The Jewish experience of life in the Pale, as well as countless Western European ghettos and Middle Eastern mellahs, continues to serve as an enduring lesson for American Jews, many of whom helped overturn discriminatory housing policies in the United States, such as redlining. However, as the tragic fate of those who lived in the Pale illustrates, thwarting legal discrimination is only part of the solution to the oppression caused by discriminatory settlement policies. Conquering the economic and social influences that reinforce the barriers once enacted by law represents the next chapter in the war against ethnic and racial segregation, a struggle that continues today in Los Angeles and across America.
— Rabbi Josh
Rabbi Josh Knobel can be reached via email at [email protected].