The answer is "migration," and there were many.   When the Romans expelled the Jews from Judea in 117 A.D., they migrated to Europe, and they flourished mainly in Spain, and in the Rhineland, until the Middle Ages.   Then, as a result of persecution and expulsion from one country after another, they found their way to Poland, which became known as the New Canaan.  The Crusades, the plague of 1348, and the Inquisition, as well as expulsions and hate incidents, caused Jews to stay on the move for a place where they could lead better lives. 

Polish hospitality

Jews had that opportunity for most of the period from 1264 until 1795 under Poland's constitutional monarchy.   As early as 965, a Jewish merchant traveling from Spain wrote of visiting Krakow and mentioned Mieszko I, Duke of Poland. 

While Jews were an unprotected minority in England, France, Portugal, Spain, France and Italy, in Poland they were a protected "estate."   A document known as "The General Charter of Jewish Liberties" was issued in 1264 in the town of Kalisz by Boleslaw Pobozny.  He was also known as Boleslau the Pius (1221-1279),  according to I.C. Pogonowski's engaging documentary history, Jews in Poland.  

Boleslaw's Charter

The Charter, also called the Statute of Kalisz,   created the climate that enabled the Jews to set up their own autonomous nation, which existed until Poland's dissolution in 1795.  Jews were regarded as different but not as inferiors, and their rights were spelled out in great detail in the Charter of 1264, reprinted in Pogonowski's book. Accompanying the  Charter are excerpts from later editions and confirmations.  A provision of the original charter, which I particularly liked -- number 36 -- reflects the high esteem in which the Jewish people were held:

According to Pogonowski, the 1264 Charter was ratified by King Casimir the Great three times:  in 1334, in 1354 and in 1367.  King Casimir Jagiellon ratified it again,  186 years later, in 1453.   Eighty-six years after that, in 1539,  King Sigismund I the Elder ratified it.   

Spelling out trust

The first right concerns the acceptance of a Jew's word, and the matter of the proper oath is considered in detail.  The proper oath is:  "May God, who illumninates and observes, and the books of Moses help us," and it is carried out  "according to the practice of the Jews."  On great matters, the oath is taken on the scroll of the Ten Commandments, and on lesser matters, the oath is taken on the mezuzah "hanging in the door of the synagogue...". 

The language is wonderful.  In the reaffirmation of 1334, King Casimir the Great decreed:

The Crusades, the Inquisition, and in 1348, the bubonic plague decimated western Europe, and where Jews were blamed for the plague, this spurred their migration eastward.   Some 119 years after King Casimir reaffirmed the 1264 Charter, a fire destroyed the city of Poznan, where the original copy was kept, and was destroyed in the fire.  And so it was that in 1453,  King Casimir Jagiellon reaffirmed the Charter, noting that "the rights" in the Charter "had also been reduced to ashes at the time when our city of Poznan was consumed by engulfing fire...."  Having been asked if he would "deign graciously to restore, ratify and confirm the same rights after a copy...", King Casimir Jagiellon did so:

Why focus on the middle ages?

Why all this history of the middle ages?   First, because it answers the question posed above:  How did our people get there?  Second, because it is neither widely known nor appreciated that Jewish rights were acknowledged and protected for a period of some 528 years.  From the Charter of 1264 until the first partition of Poland in 1772 is a huge segment of history compared with the comparatively short history of the United States: from 1776 to 1998.  That is only 222 years, while Jewish life in Poland was nurtured for a period over twice that long. 

Charter in Fortress of Poznan

The final reaffirmation of the 1264 Charter reported  in Pogonowski's history took place in 1539, and he claims that version of the Charter is preserved to this day in the Fortress of Poznan.  The 1539 ratification took place under the reign of King Sigismund I The Elder.

"Certain duly appointed elder Jews..." says the preface Pogonowski quotes, presented a letter, which was "... written on parchment under the seal of his sacred royal majesty [King Casimir Jagiellon] granted to them and other Jews...."  These  "elder Jews" had petitioned that their parchment copy of the letter under King Casimir Jagiellon's seal "be entered there in the book of the acts of the town of Poznan...." After the letter had been "diligently examined" and found "intact throughout," it was ordered 

That certainly brings to mind our present-day expression: "the letter of the law."  

The borders of Poland-Lithuania at its largest (in map
below) extended from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.

The end of Poland's Golden Age

The "golden age" of Jewish life in Poland came to an end in 1795 with the Third Partition of Poland by Russia, which meant its obliteration as a country. Russia found itself with an enormous population of Jews, so it created the "Pale of Settlement." The Pale was designed to restrict Jews to its western portion, which consisted largely of the lands of Poland and Lithuania that it had annexed.  In the 1800's in Russia-Poland and the Pale, restrictions and deteriorating conditions made the century profoundly miserable for Jews.  The period of intensive pogroms beginning in 1881 began a wave of emigration to the United States and elsewhere. 

Language changes

From the Partition of Poland and the creation of the Pale, Russian was the official language and is still in use.  However, in 1989, the official language of Belarus became Byelorussian. That is the language used on the Mapquest Internet site, according to Laris Belskaya, secretary to the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Permanent Belarus Mission at the United Nations.

Ancestral towns of some family spouses