Is it permissible to work on the Sabbath? Can you eat animals or poultry that have been knocked down rather than deliberately slain? Should women cover their hair when they are in a temple of prayer? What are you supposed to do if you are praying and suddenly a war starts – finish your prayers, or interrupt them and head straight into battle? Significantly, how can you tell a genuine Jew from one who has converted to Christianity?
Some of these questions, posed by the Bulgarian Prince Boris I (852-889) to Pope Nicholas I now look slightly inapposite. Boris had adopted Christianity in 864 and enforced it as the official state religion. However, in the following years some practical aspects of the new religion continued to cause confusion. Therefore the prince, whose main aim was to win confidence and support for his rule – to which end he would flirt with both the Western Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches – sent the Pope in Rome 115 written questions, including the ones above. The very essence of these questions indicated that Jews were a significant factor in the new state and that their religion held a prominent place not only in the lives of ordinary citizens but also in many sectors of the ruling establishment.
Founded in 681, Bulgaria was a land of many faiths. The main ethnic groups that it consisted of – Proto-Bulgarians, Slavs and Thracians – practiced their own pagan religions. Some early Bulgarian rulers actively opposed Christianity but their reasons were political rather than doctrinal: Christianity was seen as the main propaganda tool of Bulgaria’s arch rival, Byzantium.
When Prince Boris officially proclaimed Bulgaria Christian, the Jews inevitably came under the spotlight. A few years after his famous inquiry to the Pope, a Jewish trait appeared in what Bulgarians throughout the centuries up to this day would consider the greatest symbol of their national identity: the Slavic alphabet.
The Glagolitic, as the first Slavic alphabet was called, was created by two Byzantine monks, Cyril and Methodius, acting on orders from the emperor in Constantinople. The main purpose was to spread a new alphabet to the Slav peoples outside Byzantium proper and thus increase the empire's influence over them with words rather than weapons.
The original Glagolitic was based on already existing letters borrowed from Greek, Latin, Phoenician, Coptic and... Hebrew. Cyril must have known Hebrew, as indicated by his mission to Herson in 860, when the Byzantine emperor wanted to dissuade the Khazars from adopting Judaism and settle for Christianity instead.
In 862 Cyril and Methodius travelled to the Slavic Kingdom of Moravia, where they set up a school disseminating their alphabet as well as The Bible, which had just been translated into the new letters. Catholic propaganda in the region proved stronger, however. In 886, the Glagolitic was banned, and the disciples of Cyril and Methodius were expelled.
Some of them were welcomed by the Bulgarian Prince Boris I. The Glagolitic alphabet would be used in Bulgaria for about a century, when it was replaced by the Cyrillic, which was deemed better suited to the Slavic sounds. Even to this day Cyrillic continues to have two direct borrowings from Hebrew: צ, tsade, had become the ц; and Shin, or ש, was now the ш.
In the 10th century, Bulgaria had a fair number of stable Jewish communities. One of them was in Nikopol, on the River Danube. Another was in the western and southwestern reaches of the Bulgarian state. The four Bulgarian brothers, the sons of the governor of Sofia, who spear-headed the struggle against Byzantium all bore the names of Talmudic prophets: Moses, David, Aaron, and Samuel. The latter rose to become one of the great Bulgarian kings.
As Bulgaria fell under Byzantine rule in 1018, Ohrid, the old Bulgarian capital now in North Macedonia, and its environs became a focal point for Jewish studies. In present-day Kastoria, now in Greece, Rabbi Tobiah Ben Eliezer wrote his famous grammatical and commentary Lekah Tov. His disciple Leo Mung, however, converted to Christianity and even became the archbishop of Ohrid.
Bulgaria recovered its independence from Byzantium in 1185. In the following century Jewish immigration into this country gained momentum. The Romaniotes were joined by Italian Jews, called Frankos. Some of them came to find refuge from an increasingly antisemitic Europe, others wanted to do business, encouraged by the privileges dispersed by the Bulgarian King Ivan Asen II (1218-1241). At that time there were large Jewish communities in most Bulgarian cities, from Vidin to Tarnovo, and distinct Jewish neighbourhoods flourished. Some Jews were even given state jobs. Not all of them would prosper, however. In 1230, King Ivan Asen II defeated Theodore Komnenos Doukas, the despot of Epirus. Theodore was captured and brought to Tarnovo, where the king demanded he be tortured. Two Jews in the king's pay were ordered to do the job, but they refused. Enraged, the king had them thrown down from the Tarnovo fortress walls.
About 100 years later, a Jewish woman sat on the Bulgarian throne as queen. Sarah was so beautiful that King Ivan Aleksandar (1330-1370) had divorced his first wife to marry her. The Jewess converted to Christianity and adopted the name Theodora. Sarah-Theodora donated a lot of money for monasteries and church construction, and even took part in a religious council against the "Jewish Heresy" – a doctrine denouncing the New Testament as a lie.
This episode in medieval Bulgarian history had a profound impact on the whole country for centuries to come. Sarah's influence on the king was so strong that he chose the son he had with her, Ivan Shishman (1371-1393), as his heir. Shishman's elder half-brother, Ivan Sratsimir, who should have inherited the throne, was given a separate kingdom in Vidin to rule. Thus, when the Ottomans invaded in 1393, they found a divided and easy-to-conquer Bulgaria.
One of the most persistent antisemitic rumours dates back to those times. When the capital of Tarnovo fell under the Ottomans, a rumour was put into circulation that a local Jew had secretly opened the gates of the fortress and let the Turks in. Centuries later people would tell that when the traitor died, he was buried outside the city walls and the Bulgarians covered his grave with stones – a popular practice for denouncing somebody as a "treacherous villain."
Still, Jews in the Second Bulgarian Kingdom seemed to enjoy a quieter life than their peers in Europe. Jewish communities just before the
Ottoman conquest existed in Vidin, Nikopol, Silistra, Pleven, Sofia, Yambol and Stara Zagora. Ohrid, which had been invaded by Serbs, became the birthplace of one of the important Talmudic scholars of the times, Judah Ben Moses Moskoni. On the mountain of Trapezitsa opposite the royal place in Tarnovo, where the nobility lived, the remnants of a synagogue were discovered. It dates back to the 1240s-1250s, and its relatively large size, 22x14.5 metres, indicates a large Jewish presence. So do some artefacts unearthed near it, including a ceramic Star of David and some presumably Jewish graves.
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