There were other places that were inhabited early by Jews.  There are traditions to the effect that Jews lived in Poland as early as the ninth century, and under the Boreslavs (992-1278) they are said to have enjoyed considerable privileges, carried on a lively trade, and spread as far as Kiev.  Chernigov in Little Russia (the Ukraine), Baku in South Russia (Transcaucasia), Kalisz and Warsaw, Brest and Grodno, in West Russia (Russian Poland), all possess Jewish communities of considerable antiquity.  In the townlet Eishishki, near Vilna, a tombstone set in 1171 was still in existence at the end of the last century, and Khelm, Government Kovno, has a synagogue to which tradition ascribes an age of eight hundred years.[5]

The Jewish population in all these communities was prosperous and respected.  Jews were in favor with the Government, enjoyed equal rights with their Gentile neighbors, and were especially prominent as traders and farmers of taxes.  Their monoxyla, or one-oared canoes, loaded with silks, furs, and precious metals, issued from the Borysthanes, traversed the Baltic and the Euxine, the Oder and the Bosphorus, the Danube and the Black Sea, and carried on the commerce between the Turks and the Slavonians.  They were granted the honorable and lucrative privilege of directing and controlling the mints, and that of putting Hebrew as well as Slavonic inscriptions on their coins.[6] In the Lithuanian Magna Charta, granted by Vitold in 1388, the Jews of Brest were given many rights, and about a year later those of Grodno were permitted to engage in all pursuits and occupations, and exempted from paying taxes on synagogues and cemeteries.  They possessed full jurisdiction in their own affairs.  Some were raised to the nobility, notably the Josephovich brothers, Abraham and Michael.  Under King Alexander Jagellon, Abraham was assessor of Kovno, alderman of Smolensk, and prefect of Minsk; he was called “sir” (jastrzhembets), was presented with the estates of Voidung, Grinkov, and Troki (1509), and appointed Secretary of the Treasury in Lithuania (1510).  The other brother, Michael, was made “fiscal agent to the king.”  In the eighteenth century, Andrey Abramovich, of the same family but not of the Jewish faith, was senator and castellan of Brest-Litovsk.[7] They were not unique exceptions.  Abraham Shmoilovich of Turisk is spoken of as “honorable sir” in leases of large estates.  Affras Rachmailovich and Judah Bogdanovich figure among the merchant princes of Livonia and Lithuania; and Francisco Molo, who settled later in Amsterdam, was financial agent of John iii of Poland in 1679.  The influence of the last-named was so great with the Dutch States-General that the Treaty of Ryswick was concluded with Louis XIV, in 1697, through his mediation.[8]