Debunking the Myth that Medieval Poland ‘Banned Jews from Baking Bread’

I was quite amused when I found – while writing my article debunking the claim that jews invented the bagel – (1) Rabbi Rachel Barenblat screeching on her personal blog/website ‘The Velveteen Rabbi’ about her ‘horror’ over alleged historic anti-Semitism and how jews were ‘prohibited from baking bread’ in medieval Poland.

She writes how:

‘On Shabbat I was reading up on the history of the bagel, and I ran across this:

In that era it was quite common in Poland for Jews to be prohibited from baking bread. This stemmed from the commonly held belief that Jews, viewed as enemies of the Church, should be denied any bread at all...

The shift started to take place in the late 13th century [with] the breakthrough code that came from the Polish Prince Boleslaw the Pious in 1264 that said, "Jews may freely buy and sell and touch bread like Christians."

(Source: The Secret History of Bagels in The Atlantic. Bagels: A Surprising Jewish History at Aish is also good.) I'm always a little bit horrified to discover yet another way in which the Christian world has mistreated Jews. Even when I think I have a handle on antisemitism, there's always more.

My first reaction to this cropping up in the bagel article was disbelieving laughter: seriously, not allowed to buy, sell, or touch bread at a bakery? I'm not surprised that we weren't allowed to bake commercially. I know we were banned from most trades in Europe. But not even allowed to pick up a roll?’ (2)

The problem with Barenblat’s ‘interpretation’ of the history of medieval Poland is that it – as usual for jews – completely backwards since she is citing Ari Weinzweig’s article ‘The Secret History of Bagels’ in ‘The Atlantic’ (3) and Yvette Alt Miller’s article ‘The Origins and Jewish History of Bagels’ for ‘Aish’. (4)

Both Weinzweig’s and Alt Miller’s articles are based off of Maria Balinska’s 2008 eponymous academic history of the bagel but this claim doesn’t appear in Weinzweig’s article but does in Alt Miller’s article where she writes that:

‘In 1264, the Polish Prince Boleslaw the Pious declared that “Jews may freely buy and sell and touch bread just like Christians.” It was a momentous announcement, but Church officials quickly moved to limit the Jews’ new right, forbidding Christians from buying “Jewish” bread, and telling congregants that Jewish-made bread was poisoned.

Eventually, Jews in Poland won the right to make and sell bread – not ordinary bread, which was still viewed with suspicion by Christian customers, but bread that was boiled, and thus distinctive and different from bread supplied by Christian bakers.’ (5)

Alt Miller’s comments are typically without context and make it appear like the Poles had previously banned jews from baking and selling bread, but she does also bring up the Polish Catholic bishops’ response of 1267 forbidding Christians from buying bread from the jews while the ‘hint that it was poisoned’ is also severely overdone as in fact this was just a representation of the conflict between the Catholic Church and the Polish monarchy at this time where Prince Boleslaw the Pious supported the jews and the Catholic Church opposed them. (6)

That Prince Boleslaw the Pious’ edict of 1264 was actually a powerplay against the authority of the Catholic church and – in essence – trying to put the jews directly under his authority rather than leaving them for the church to rule, while also challenging the sources of the churches revenues – donations from the pious and their estates of which bakers were a major resource of revenue – and maximizing his own – since the jews would pay taxes directly to him not the church – (7) is evident from Balinska’s original commentary on it.

To wit:

‘In Poland, the ruling princes were certainly not against Jewish bakers offering their wares to all buyers. The privileges drawn up by Prince Boleslaw the Pious in 1264 to establish the Jews’ legal status in their new home seem to make a special dispensation for bakers: ‘we resolve,’ says article 36, ‘that Jews may freely buy and sell everything and touch bread like Christians’. This was a radical step, so radical that in 1267 a group of Polish bishops forbade Christians to buy any foodstuffs from Jews, darkly hinting that they contained poison for the unsuspecting gentile. The proclamation of such a ban itself indicates that the products of Jewish artisans were indeed finding favour among Christian consumers.’ (8)

So, in other words; the jews hadn’t been prevented from baking bread at all in Poland before 1264 but rather – more than likely – had in some cases been stopped from selling that bread to Christians by the local church authorities because of this competition between the church and the secular state over who should be able to collect revenues from the jews (9) and in part because jews refused - and still refuse - to eat bread baked by non-jewish bakers because it wasn’t considered kosher (10) so this would be simple tit-for-tat on the part of the church authorities.

In addition historians of jewish food ways are similarly silent on this alleged mass prohibition of jewish bread by medieval Polish authorities (11) further giving credence to the idea that this is all nonsense made up in Barenblat and Alt Miller’s heads!

Thus, when we re-read Rabbi Barenblat’s claims that:

‘In that era it was quite common in Poland for Jews to be prohibited from baking bread. This stemmed from the commonly held belief that Jews, viewed as enemies of the Church, should be denied any bread at all...

The shift started to take place in the late 13th century [with] the breakthrough code that came from the Polish Prince Boleslaw the Pious in 1264 that said, "Jews may freely buy and sell and touch bread like Christians."’ (12)

‘My first reaction to this cropping up in the bagel article was disbelieving laughter: seriously, not allowed to buy, sell, or touch bread at a bakery? I'm not surprised that we weren't allowed to bake commercially. I know we were banned from most trades in Europe. But not even allowed to pick up a roll?’ (13)

We can see that they are unmitigated made-up nonsense based of her own bad interpretation of Yvette Alt Miller’s bad interpretation of Maria Balinska’s innocent and largely correct – if lacking some context that would have been helpful - summary of the Prince Boleslaw the Pious’ edict of 1264 and the Catholic bishops’ response to it in 1267.

Of such outright lies are ‘anti-Semitism’ claims made!

References

(1) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-invention-myths-the-bagel

(2) https://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2022/03/the-history-of-the-bagel-and-the-antisemitism-of-now.html

(3) https://web.archive.org/web/20210207210232/https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2009/03/the-secret-history-of-bagels/6928/

(4) https://aish.com/bagels-a-surprising-jewish-history/

(5) Ibid.

(6) See for example Oscar Halecki, A. Polonsky, 1983, ‘A History of Poland’, 3rd Edition, Routledge & Kegan Paul: London, pp. 42-51

(7) This rivalry between authorities over jews and access to the money they could generate in taxation/revenue was a fairly common problem and wasn’t an issue limited to food production/baking either (see David Kraemer, 2009, ‘Jewish Eating and Identity Through the Ages’, 2nd Edition Routledge: New York, p. 135)

(8) Maria Balinska, 2008, ‘The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread’, 1st Edition, Yale University Press: New Haven, pp. 17-18

(9) Kraemer, Op. Cit., p. 135

(10) Ibid., pp. 133-135

(11) For example, cf. John Cooper, 1993, ‘Eat and Be Satisfied: A Social History of Jewish Food’, 1st Edition, Jason Aaronson: Northvale; should appear on pp. 145-151 but does not nor anywhere else.

(12) https://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2022/03/the-history-of-the-bagel-and-the-antisemitism-of-now.html

(13) Ibid.