The Russo-Turkish War formally ended on 13 July 1878 with the last session of the Berlin Congress. The diplomats of the Great Powers gathered there proclaimed the foundation of a new state, the Principality of Bulgaria. It was not very large: just what is now northern Bulgaria plus the Sofia Plain. After centuries of life under the Ottoman sultan, the Jews now found themselves living in a new country where, at least in theory, they had equal rights to the Bulgarian majority and the Turkish, Armenian, Greek and Gypsy minorities.
The Berlin Congress required the Principality of Bulgaria not to discriminate against any ethnic or religious minority. That principle was ingrained in the first Bulgarian Constitution, adopted on 16 April 1879, in Veliko Tarnovo. The MPs who voted for it included a Jew, Sofia's Chief Rabbi Gabriel Almosino. Two years later, the local elections in Sofia produced three Jewish city councillors.
It is impossible to ascertain the exact number of Jews who lived in Bulgaria prior to the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War. The Ottoman statistics listed the Jews in the same category as other minorities, usually Armenians and Gypsies. The first census conducted by the interim Russian imperial governor in 1878-1879 indicated that 10,000 Jews lived in the Principality of Bulgaria, 5,700 of whom were in the Sofia area. At the same time about 4,200 Jews lived in Eastern Rumelia, which would later become southern Bulgaria, but was now an autonomous province under the sultan, with its capital in Plovdiv.
In 1880 the Jews in the Principality of Bulgaria were granted the rights of a religious community, in contrast to the centuries under the Ottomans when they had had no centralised organisation and each individual community was responsible for its own affairs. The new status enabled them to found a national organisation whose chairman would act as their official representative to the state. That chairman had the rank of a civil servant and was paid from the state's coffers. Representatives of the Jewish communities in the principality convened their first national organisation, the Central Council. When the Principality of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia de facto united in 1885, Presiaduco Bakish became the chief rabbi of the new state. The Jews had the right to make their own decisions in religious affairs and there were three religious courts in the country, as well as a Supreme Clerical Court.
Some Jews favoured a more traditional approach to Jewish life. Having been brought up with the Ottoman idea of dividing up the peoples in the empire according to their religion, the so-called Notabily – richer Jews who used to make the important decisions in the Jewish communities under the Ottomans – insisted the man to represent them to the authorities should be the rabbi.
On the other side were the Zionists. They wanted the chief rabbi to be subordinate to the Consistory and to have no administrative functions. The Zionists gained the upper hand and the first national assembly of the Jewish communities took place in 1920. It decided that every Bulgarian city with a population of over 300 Jews would have an official Jewish community. Sofia, Varna and Ruse would each have two: one Sephardi and one Ashkenazi.
In the early 1920s the Central Council was replaced by the Consistory, a secular organisation modelled on the French Alliance Israélite Universelle.
In the first years after Bulgaria regained its independence its Jews had to cope with increasing economic turmoil, as did everyone else in the new state. The creation of Bulgaria meant political freedom, but also the disappearance of the huge and liberal Ottoman marketplace, with its lucrative government contracts. Duties and tariffs imposed along the new borders created additional strains on the economy.
The process of the urbanisation and modernisation of Bulgaria, which was essentially a peasant state, affected the Jews significantly. Few Jews owned agricultural land or were involved in farming. The majority lived in towns and cities, but as the smaller towns began to experience increasing economic difficulties, many Jews left and settled in Sofia. Those who had been small-time merchants and artisans left places like Provadiya, Karnobat and Shumen to become industrial workers in Sofia. A Jewish working class was being born.
After the Great War, the rights of all minorities, including the Jews, were reconfirmed. Theoretically, all ethnicities were entitled to the same civil privileges, but Jews were severely underrepresented in the army, the civil service and the police. As late as the 1930s the majority of Jews continued to be small traders, artisans and workers, with rich bankers and industrialists being the exception.
The first Jewish secular schools appeared as early as the sunset days of the Ottoman Empire. In independent Bulgaria the school network evolved. Having a Jewish school in every Jewish community became the standard. The curriculum was endorsed by the Bulgarian Education Ministry, and Jewish children also studied Hebrew, Jewish history and religion.
Jewish newspapers were also being published, with Yosif Herbst (1875-1925), an Austrian Jew, emerging as one of the best known journalists in the country. Owing to his fearless reporting, Herbst was "disappeared" during the terror reign of Aleksandar Tsankov in 1925.
Jews were an integral part of Bulgarian intellectual life. The poetess Dora Gabe (1888-1983) is now seen as one of the greatest Bulgarian authors of children's verses, while Pancho Vladigerov (1899-1978), the composer of the Vardar Rhapsody and the opera King Kaloyan, is regarded as one of the greatest Bulgarian musicians of all times.
In the first decades of the 20th century Jewish life intensified on all levels. Salomon Rosanes (1862-1938) wrote a Hebrew history of the Balkan Jewry, and Avram Tadjer (1858-1937) compiled a history of the Jews in Sofia.
Saul Mezan (1893-1944) published in French an ethnographical survey of the Sephardis in Bulgaria, while Chief Rabbi David Pipano (1851-1925) was recognised as an international authority on the Halacha. The Sofia synagogue choir, founded in 1909 and directed by Moshe Tsadikov (1885-1947), became very popular with its classical music performances. It would go down in history as the Tsadikov Choir. In 1949, the Tzadikov Choir emigrated en masse to Israel, where it exists to this day. For many years it was managed by Ziko Grasiyani, perhaps the best-known Bulgarian-Israeli musician.
Gym and sports organisations were particularly popular, with the Maccabee emerging as the top club. Hospital and women's charity associations operated in Sofia, Ruse, Varna, Shumen and Plovdiv. In Sofia there was a Jewish orphanage, as well as an association which provided free summer holidays for poor Jewish children. Jewish students at the universities had their own organisation.
A co-op and a bank, Geula, were founded as early as 1911 to assist Jews in starting up a business. In 1921 that organisation donated the money to construct the Jewish Community House in Sofia, now the seat of Shalom Organisation of Jews in Bulgaria.
Even though there were not many Jewish officers in the Bulgarian Army, Jews fought next to their Bulgarian compatriots in all the wars Bulgaria was involved in from 1878 to 1918. The War Ministry allowed Jewish servicemen to take days off on Jewish holidays and the Justice Ministry ordered the courts not to consider cases involving Jews on the Sabbath or other holy days. The military Oath of Allegiance was adapted for Jews (and Muslims), and so were the prayers said ahead of battle.
Bulgarian Jews, especially those living near the Danube, sent large volunteer units to the 1885-1886 war against Serbia, which was meant to protect the newly unified Principality of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia. Two combat units with a total of 800 Jewish volunteers took part in the campaigns. In the course of a month, the Jewish community of Ruse supported 600 Bulgarian soldiers with its own money, providing them with horses, weapons and munitions.
A total of 211 Jews died fighting on the Bulgarian side in the two Balkan wars. In the Great War of 1914-1918 a total of 715 Jews perished. Between 7,000 and 8,000 Jews took part in these wars. When peace came, many of the Jewish war dead were commemorated with plaques in their hometowns. In 1930 a life-size effigy of a Jewish soldier was erected near the Jewish hospital in Sofia. Unfortunately, nothing remains of it.
Nothing remains of the Queen Eleonora Jewish Orphanage either. It was founded in 1915 by King Ferdinand's second wife for Jewish children whose fathers were killed or incapacitated during the wars. It was closed in 1942 as part of the anti-Jewish measures under the Defence of the Nation Act.
Between 1885 and 1918 Bulgaria fought four wars with the sole aim of asserting its national integrity. To the Bulgarians, this meant unification with the Bulgarian-populated territories of Dobrudzha, Aegean Thrace and Macedonia. The Jews took part in all of these wars alongside the Bulgarians, and held the Bulgarian national ideal as their own. The Bulgarian national aspiration, however, led to Bulgaria backing the wrong horse in the war that was yet to come: the Second World War. Ironically, the ideal that many Jews had died for nearly annihilated all of Bulgaria's Jewry in the following years.
Zionism in Bulgaria
Many Bulgarian Jews were quick to grasp the ideas of Theodor Herzl, and the first club to support his theories was founded in Ruse as early as 1895. In the same year Bulgarian Jews had already founded the Har Tuv settlement in Eretz Israel.
Herzl's Der Judenstaat was translated into Bulgarian as soon as the original was published, and Herzl himself came on a visit in 1896, his popularity causing traffic jams along what is now Maria Louisa Boulevard in Sofia.
The first national Zionist organisation in Bulgaria was founded in 1897 and three of its members attended the first Zionist congress in Basel. The first celebration of Yom HaShekel dates back to 1900 and a Bulgarian colony, Beit Hanan, was set up in 1929. A Bulgarian kibbutz was started in Haifa.
Three years later a group of Bulgarian Jews departed for Palestine to take part in the First Maccabiah Games. A Bulgarian-Palestine chamber of commerce was established in 1932, and two years later Bulgarian merchants and manufacturers attended the trade show in Tel Aviv.
In total, over 7,000 Bulgarian Jews had settled in Eretz Israel before the mass exodus of the late 1940s.
Communist Bulgaria disbanded the Zionists in the 1950s.
The Zionist Federation of Bulgaria was reestablished as late as 1997.
Jews and Communism
Well before the Second World War a significant number of Jews assumed leftist and Communist ideas. Jewish subscription to clandestine pro-Communist organisations, including armed resistance group post 1941, was disproportionate. One instance is the Anton Ivanov guerrilla unit, which operated in the Rhodope mountains. Of a total of 200 fighters, 28 were Jewish. Twenty-one died in action.
Two events where Jews participated merit special mention. The first was the Communist-organised terrorist attack at St Nedelya Church in Sofia, an act that cost the lives of 213 people and left 500 injured, in 1925. One of the perpetrators was a Jew who was subsequently caught and hanged. And in 1943 a Jewish woman shot Gen Hristo Lukov, a former minister of war and leader of the Union of Bulgarian Legions, a voluntary Nazi organisation run along military lines.
After the collapse of Communism and especially in the 2000s and 2010s both events are taken by Bulgaria's modern anti-Communists as "emblematic" of the evils of Communism. Extremist organisations bearing names such as Bulgarian National Union and National Resistance Movement, among others, claim to "honour" the death of Gen Lukov by organising annual parades through the streets of Sofia, carrying lit torches and demanding "justice." Calls by Jewish organisations and the Embassy of Israel to ban what is an open display of antisemitism have only recently been heeded by the Bulgarian authorities.
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