Abramovich, Rafail
described at: Abramovich Rafail
has abstract: (1880–1963), revolutionary and publicist. Born in Dünaburg (Dvinsk; mod. Daugavpils, Latvia), Rafail Abramovich (originally surnamed Rein) studied in a modern (nonclassical) secondary school and later at Riga Polytechnic University. He was involved in the student revolutionary movement and in 1901 joined the Bund. He then began publishing in the revolutionary press in Yiddish.
title: Abramovich, Rafail
related: Bund
related: Daugavpils
related: Kishinev
related: Latvia
related: Riga
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Tsukunft
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: World War I

Aczél, György
described at: Aczel Gyorgy
has abstract: (1917–1991), Communist ideologue, cultural tsar of Hungary in the post-1956 Kádár era. György Aczél grew up in an orphanage, worked in construction, and performed as an actor. He participated in the Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir youth movement and later joined the underground Communist Party in 1935. Arrested in 1942, he worked as a forced laborer. During the German occupation, he participated in the resistance movement and in rescuing Jews.
title: Aczél, György
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Ha-

Agurskii, Samuil Khaimovich
described at: Agurskii Samuil Khaimovich
has abstract: (1884–1947), Communist Party figure and historian. Born in Grodno, where he had a traditional elementary education, Samuil (also Shmuel or Sam) Agurskii joined the Bund during the revolution of 1905. From 1906 to May 1917 he lived in England and then America, where he was involved with the anarchist movement and wrote for the Yiddish press. Between July 1918 and March 1919 he was Jewish commissar in Vitebsk, where he published the Yiddish Communist newspaper Der frayer arbeter. Viewing EVKOM (the Commissariat for Jewish National Affairs) as an alternative to Jewish community organizations, he brought Vitebsk’s Jewish schools, Jewish charities, and burial society under its jurisdiction. In 1918 he joined the Russian Communist Party. In April 1919, after moving to Moscow, he and Stalin, then People’s Commissar for Nationality Affairs, signed the decree “About the Closure of the Central Bureau of Jewish Communities.” Between 1919 and 1923 he twice visited America, where he helped establish the Communist Party of the USA.
title: Agurskii, Samuil Khaimovich
related: Bund
related: Commissariat for Jewish National Affairs
related: Communist Party of the Soviet Union
related: Evsektsiia
related: Hrodna
related: Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Vitsyebsk

Aharon ben Mosheh ha-Levi Horowitz
described at: Aharon Ben Mosheh ha-Levi Horowitz
has abstract: (1766–1828), Talmudist, kabbalist, and Hasidic master in Staroselye (Starosselje) in the province of Mohilev. In his youth, Aharon ha-Levi became a follower of Shneur Zalman of Liady, founder of Ḥabad (Lubavitch) Hasidism. Horowitz studied under the guidance of Shneur Zalman with Dov Ber, who was Shneur Zalman’s son and successor. The two were close companions until they had a serious quarrel; although this rift was of a personal nature, it was also over matters of Ḥabad philosophy: Dov Ber frowned on all but completely authentic ecstasy in prayer but Aharon was tolerant of even sham ecstasy.
title: Aharon ben Mosheh ha-Levi Horowitz
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Shneur Zalman of Liady

Aronsohn, Zalman Yitsḥak
described at: Aronsohn Zalman Yitshak
has abstract: (1878–1947), Hebrew and Yiddish writer. Zalman Aronsohn, known by the pseudonym Anokhi (“I Am”), was born in Liady, Belorussia, where his father served as rabbi and head of a yeshiva. Anokhi studied at the Telz yeshiva and with a circle of Musar scholars in Minsk; he then lived for a period of time in Gomel, dedicating himself to secular studies and associating with Hillel Zeitlin, Uri Nisan Gnessin, and Yosef Ḥayim Brenner. Anokhi then moved to Odessa, where he was arrested and jailed for six months because of his involvement with a group of anarchists. Following his release, he left for Vilna before traveling around Europe, and even spent a year in Palestine (1910–1911).
title: Aronsohn, Zalman Yitsḥak
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Feierberg, Mordekhai Ze’ev
related: Gnessin, Uri Nisan
related: Homel’
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Musar Movement
related: Odessa
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Shofman, Gershom
related: Telz, Yeshiva of
related: Vilnius
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zeitlin Family

Avraham Trebitsch of Mikulov
described at: Avraham Trebitsch of Mikulov
has abstract: (ca. 1759–1837), scholar and chronicler. Born in Třebíč (Ger., Trebitsch), Moravia, Avraham Trebitsch was the son of Re’uven Ḥayat and his wife, Fradl. He studied at yeshivas in Mikulov (ca. 1771) and Prague (ca. 1775). Later that decade, he was based in Mikulov, where he held the post of secretary to the Moravian Land Rabbinate and became a close associate of Mordekhai Banet and Neḥemyah Trebitsch. Trebitsch gained “familiant” status (i.e., the right to reside [and marry]) in Mikulov, started a family, and in 1799 purchased part of a house. He was, however, dependent on charitable donations from the Jewish community, and his daughters lived in poverty following his death.
title: Avraham Trebitsch of Mikulov
related: Banet, Mordekhai ben Avraham
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Familiants Laws
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Historiography)
related: Mikulov
related: Prague
related: Trebitsch, Neḥemyah Naḥum

Avraham Yehoshu‘a ben Ya‘akov Heshel
described at: Avraham Yehoshua ben Yaakov Heshel
has abstract: (1596–1663), rabbi and halakhic authority in Poland–Lithuania. Born in Brest Litovsk, Avraham Yehoshu‘a Heshel moved with his father to Lublin when the latter was appointed rabbi of the community and head of the yeshiva. With the death in 1650 of Naftali ben Yitsḥak Kats, his father’s heir from 1644, Avraham Yehoshu‘a was appointed head of the Lublin yeshiva. In 1654, he became rabbi and head of the yeshiva of Kraków, succeeding Yom Tov Lipmann Heller.
title: Avraham Yehoshu‘a ben Ya‘akov Heshel
related: Brest
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: Heller, Yom Tov Lipmann
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Shabetai ben Me’ir ha-Kohen
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Bachmann, Jacob
described at: Bachmann Jacob
has abstract: (1846–1905), cantor and synagogue composer. Jacob Bachmann was born in the town of Berdichev, Volhynia province (present-day Ukraine). His early music education came as a meshoyrer (Heb., meshorer), an apprentice choir singer, for Moyshe Pasternak, a noted Berdichev cantor.
title: Bachmann, Jacob
related: Berdychiv
related: Budapest
related: Cantors
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Ukraine

Barbash, Shemu’el
described at: Barbash Shemuel
has abstract: (1850?–1922?), banker, Zionist activist, and philanthropist. Nothing is known of Shemu’el Barbash’s childhood beyond the fact that he was given a traditional Jewish education. He also was familiar with modern Hebrew literature, had acquired some secular knowledge, and excelled in mathematics.
title: Barbash, Shemu’el
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Crown Rabbi
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Odessa
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Wissotzky, Kalonymus Ze’ev
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Beck, Moritz
described at: Beck Moritz
has abstract: (1845–1923), rabbi, biblical scholar, and educator. Moritz (Me’ir) Beck was born in Pápa, Hungary, where he attended Jewish elementary school, Catholic secondary school, and Protestant high school. At the same time, he studied Hebrew, Torah, and the Talmud with a private tutor, Salomon Iosef Goldberg. In 1865, Beck left for Breslau to attend the Jewish Theological Seminary established by Zacharias Frankel, as well as the faculty of philosophy at the University of Breslau. In 1868, he earned his Ph.D. with a dissertation in biblical studies and in 1872 became a rabbi.
title: Beck, Moritz
related: Bucharest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Iaşi
related: Orthodoxy
related: Pápa
related: Romania
related: Seminary
related: Wrocław

Beregi, Ármin
described at: Beregi Armin
has abstract: (1879–1953), engineer and Zionist leader. Growing up in the house on Dob Street in Budapest where Theodore Herzl’s uncle lived, Ármin Beregi knew Herzl personally. Beregi studied at the Technical University of Budapest and went on to work at the Ganz-Danubius factory as an engineer. While a student, he met Mózes Bisselisches, who later became a well-known Zionist leader. The two of them—with the help of several others—founded a group of Zionist organizations: Makkabea for university students (Beregi was its vice president in 1905), Ivria for high school students, Júdea for clerks, and Debóra for women.
title: Beregi, Ármin
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Mizraḥi
related: Múlt és Jövő
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Berger, Lili
described at: Berger Lili
has abstract: (1916–1996), Yiddish novelist and critic; resistance fighter. Lili Berger (née List; “Lili Berger” is a pseudonym) was born in Malkin, in the Białystok region of Poland. Brought up in an Orthodox Jewish family, she attended Hebrew school for three years and also received a secular education at the Polish Jewish secondary school in Warsaw. In 1933, Berger moved to Brussels and studied pedagogy. Three years later she joined the growing number of Polish Jewish refugees in Paris and soon married Louis Gronowski, a leading figure in the Jewish section of the Communist Party.
title: Berger, Lili
related: Białystok
related: Korczak, Janusz
related: Lifshits, Khaye Malke
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Warsaw

Berkowicz, Yosef
described at: Berkowicz Yosef
has abstract: (1789–1846), lieutenant colonel in the Polish armed forces at the time of the Duchy of Warsaw and during the January uprising of 1830–1831. Yosef Berkowicz was born in the Warsaw suburb of Praga, the only son of Berek Joselewicz. After attending Jewish schools, Berkowicz volunteered for military service in 1809 and served as a sergeant in the Napoleonic campaigns against Russia. In the course of these campaigns, he was wounded numerous times and received two medals for bravery. After the final defeat of the French Army, Berkowicz joined the army of the Kingdom of Poland; however, he was soon discharged (in March 1815) at his own request due to his previous injuries.
title: Berkowicz, Yosef
related: Joselewicz, Berek
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Warsaw

Bernshtein, Sergei Natanovich
described at: Bernshtein Sergei Natanovich
has abstract: (1880–1968), mathematician. Born in Odessa, Sergei Bernshtein studied mathematics at both the Sorbonne and Göttingen, receiving his doctorate from the former in 1904. His dissertation presented the solution to Hilbert’s Nineteenth Problem, which dealt with analytic solutions of elliptic differential equations. Three famous mathematicians—Jacques Hadamard, Émile Picard, and Henri Poincaré—accepted his thesis. Upon arriving in Russia in 1905, however, Bernshtein learned that he would need to take general examinations and submit new dissertations for both master’s and doctoral degrees in order for his credentials to be recognized; he completed this work at Kharkov University.
title: Bernshtein, Sergei Natanovich
related: Kantorovich, Leonid Vital’evich
related: Khar’kiv
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Biegeleisen, Henryk
described at: Biegeleisen Henryk
has abstract: (1855–1934), literary historian, ethnographer, critic, publisher, journalist, and educator. Henryk Biegeleisen was born in Touste (in the Skłatat region in eastern Galicia; a town with a population of 2,139 in 1880, of whom 40% percent were Jews). His father Wilhelm, a physician, had been a member of the National Guard in Lemberg (Lwów) during the Revolution of 1848 and belonged to a small circle of acculturated Jews in Galicia. On his mother’s side, Biegeleisen was a grandson of Naḥman Krochmal.
title: Biegeleisen, Henryk
related: Berezhany
related: Galicia
related: Krochmal, Naḥman
related: L’viv
related: Ternopil’

Bikhowsky, Elisheva
described at: Bikhowsky Elisheva
has abstract: (1888–1949), poet and novelist. Elisheva Bikhowsky was born Elisabeta Zhirkova to a Christian family in Riazan, Russia. Her father, Ivan Zhirkov, taught at a rural elementary school and published schoolbooks and texts for general readers. Her mother, the daughter of an English family living in Moscow, died when Bikhowsky was three years old. Following her mother’s death, she was raised at the home of her English aunt in Moscow. There she studied at a girls’ high school and attended courses in pedagogy at a local teachers’ training institute, completing her program in 1910.
title: Bikhowsky, Elisheva
related: Blood Libels and Host Desecration Accusations
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Gnessin, Uri Nisan
related: Kishinev
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Bocian, Volf
described at: Bocian Volf
has abstract: (d. 1625), merchant and banker. Although the Bocian family (also known as Poper or Popper) probably originated in Chęciny, its members were living in Kraków from the end of the fifteenth century. Volf (Ze’ev) Bocian, son of Yisra’el Gershon, was a merchant who became a supplier to the royal court of Sigismund III Waza.
title: Bocian, Volf
related: Gdańsk
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Trade
related: Wrocław

Bondy, Bohumil
described at: Bondy Bohumil
has abstract: (1832–1907), Czech industrialist, political leader, and historian. As the son of one of the most prominent Jewish families in nineteenth-century Prague, Bohumil Bondy himself became a major figure in the economic life of Bohemia and one of the leading entrepreneurs in the metal industry in the Czech lands. He demonstrated his unusual talents in this field during the economic crisis of 1873, when the factory he owned (located in Bubeneč, an industrial suburb of Prague) was the only one in Prague to survive the crisis without dismissing a single employee.
title: Bondy, Bohumil
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Economic Life
related: About this Article (Historiography)
related: Prague
related: Silesia

Boymvol, Rokhl
described at: Boymvol Rokhl
has abstract: (1914–2000), Yiddish writer. Rokhl Boymvol was born in Odessa. Her father, Yehude Leyb (1892–1920), a Yiddish playwright and theater director, was murdered by Polish soldiers. A precocious child, Rokhl began rhyming even before she learned to read and write. Her first poetry collection, Kinderlider (Children’s Poems), appeared in Moscow in 1930. The literary critic Moyshe Katz wrote in his introduction, “Rokhl Boymvol is not a wunderkind who surprises by showing that a child can write exactly like a grown-up, seasoned master. She does it even better: in her writings we find what a grown-up master could not have done so honestly and naturally; she shows us the emotions of a maturing child.”
title: Boymvol, Rokhl
related: About this Article (Children’s Literature)
related: Driz, Shike
related: Kvitko, Leyb
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Sovetish Heymland
related: Vergelis, Arn

Brańsk
described at: Bransk
has abstract: A small town in eastern Poland, south of Białystok. Brańsk was a royal town that was granted city rights under Magdeburg law in the fifteenth century. The privilege de non tolerandis Judaeis barred Jews from settling there, but in 1560 two Jews obtained permission from King Sigismund August to lease mills in the district. The town council granted them permission to reside in Brańsk on a temporary basis. Until the late eighteenth century, the number of Jews never reached more than a dozen. Many, however, lived on local estates belonging to the aristocracy and gentry who leased inns and mills to them. Larger Jewish settlements thus arose in the vicinity of Brańsk in private towns such as Tykocin, Orla, Boćki, Siemiatycze, and Ciechanowiec.
title: Brańsk
related: Białystok
related: Crafts
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Trade
related: Tykocin

Brucăr, Isac
described at: Brucar Isac
has abstract: (1888–1960), philosopher, editor, and journalist. Born in Bosancea, Bucovina, Isac Brucăr studied philosophy in Bucharest, Jena, and Leipzig, receiving his doctoral degree in 1930 with a thesis on the philosophy of Spinoza, a recurrent topic of his later research. Brucăr combined an academic career, teaching at the department of psychology at the University of Bucharest, in different high schools, and, after World War II, at the Institute of Philosophy of the Romanian Academy. He also was a journalist who wrote for leading publications.
title: Brucăr, Isac
related: Bucharest
related: Bucovina
related: Maimon, Salomon
related: Romania

Calmanson, Jacques
described at: Calmanson Jacques
has abstract: (1722–1811), medical doctor and early proponent of the Enlightenment among Polish Jews. Jacques Calmanson was born in Hrubieszów, Poland, where his father was probably a rabbi. Calmanson studied medicine in France and was fluent in French, German, and Polish as well as Yiddish and Hebrew. In addition to Germany and France, his travels took him to the Ottoman Empire and Russia. Calmanson eventually settled in Warsaw, serving as physician to the last Polish king, Stanisław August Poniatowski.
title: Calmanson, Jacques
related: Dress
related: East Prussia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Warsaw

Celmajster, Dovid
described at: Celmajster Dovid
has abstract: (1878–194?), impresario and theater director in Warsaw and Łódź. Dovid Celmajster was born in Warsaw into a merchant family. He received a thorough traditional education and a rudimentary secular education, and began working in theater in 1910, eventually with both popular and dramatic companies. In 1917, Celmajster produced the operetta Di dolar-printsesin (The Dollar Princess) at Kaminski’s Theater in Warsaw; in 1920 in Łódź he produced An-ski’s Der dibek (The Dybbuk), directed by Dovid Herman, with scenic design by Yitskhok Brauner (Broyner).
title: Celmajster, Dovid
related: Łódź
related: Dybbuk, The
related: Kaminski Family
related: Operetta
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Turkow Family
related: Warsaw

Chajes, Yitsḥak ben Avraham
described at: Chajes Yitshak ben Avraham
has abstract: (1538–ca. 1615), rabbi. The family of Yitsḥak ben Avraham Chajes probably had its origins in Provence. He was active as a rabbi in Prostějov (Prossnitz, Moravia) and in Prague, where in the 1580s he became chief rabbi and head of the yeshiva. According to David Gans (Tsemaḥ David; 1592), Chajes remained in Prague until 1584, later moving to Poland.
title: Chajes, Yitsḥak ben Avraham
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Gans, David ben Shelomoh
related: Passover
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: Prague
related: Prostějov
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Chorin, Ferenc
described at: Chorin Ferenc
has abstract: Name of both a father and son who were Hungarian politicians and industrialists. Ferenc Chorin Sr. (1842–1925) was a leader in the mining industry; his son Ferenc Chorin Jr. (1879–1964) was a lawyer and industrial leader. Both served in the Hungarian parliament.
title: Chorin, Ferenc
related: Arad
related: Budapest
related: Chorin, Aharon
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Reform, Religious
related: Weiss, Manfréd

Debts, Communal
described at: Debts Communal
has abstract: Jewish public bodies (communal and supracommunal councils) accumulated enormous debts running into hundreds of thousands of Polish zlotys in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and were unique to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Though members of the aristocracy were sometimes lenders, the main creditors were overwhelmingly institutions of the Roman Catholic church, and some Greek Catholic and Greek Orthodox bodies lent money to Jewish institutions as well. Jewish public bodies were also among the church’s most important debtors; the numerous account books specifically for Jewish debts that many monastic orders held testify to this.
title: Debts, Communal
related: Charity
related: Councils
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)

Dogs
described at: Dogs
has abstract: The word dog is used as a derogatory term in numerous biblical texts (Ps. 22: 17; 59:7, 15). The Talmud poses numerous restrictions on owning dogs, including “keeping them on a chain” (Bava kama 7:7), and also not owning angry dogs (15:2). While the Talmud, Shulḥan ‘arukh, and other Jewish sources disagree on what counts as an “angry dog” (one that bites, attacks, or barks), it is generally agreed that Jews are not supposed to own dogs that intimidate other people.
title: Dogs
related: Agnon, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Demons
related: Dybbuk, The
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Shtetl
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Dolgopolski, Tsadok
described at: Dolgopolski Tsadok
has abstract: (1879–1959), Yiddish writer. Born into a poor family in Horodok, near Vitebsk, Tsadok Dolgopolski began working at a factory in Nevel while still young. In the late 1890s, he became an active member of the Bund and was imprisoned in Białystok. Self-taught, he passed the qualifying examinations for teachers and organized a school for Jewish children in his hometown. By 1898, he was writing short articles on labor issues for illegal and legal Yiddish periodicals.
title: Dolgopolski, Tsadok
related: Białystok
related: Bund
related: Kletskin, Boris Arkadevich
related: Lissitzky, El
related: Minsk
related: Orshanski, Ber
related: Pigs
related: Shtetl
related: Soviet State Yiddish Theaters
related: Vitsyebsk

Donath, Adolph
described at: Donath Adolph
has abstract: (1876–1937), poet, journalist, art historian, and critic. Adolph Donath was born in Kromĕříž (Kremsier) in the Habsburg province of Moravia. After graduating from the German gymnasium in Kromĕříž in 1895, he moved to Vienna, where he studied law and philosophy (without taking a degree) and wrote for several newspapers, including the Neue Freie Presse, which was Vienna’s leading German-language daily, and Die Gesellschaft, a modernist cultural journal published in Leipzig (and later Munich).
title: Donath, Adolph
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brno
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Prague
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Dragunskii, David Abramovich
described at: Dragunskii David Abramovich
has abstract: (1910–1992), army general and public figure. After finishing the Frunze Military Academy in 1941, David Dragunskii commanded a tank battalion and then a brigade during World War II and was twice named Hero of the Soviet Union (in 1944 and 1945) for combat exploits in the crossing of the Vistula and the capture of Berlin. Altogether, he won 13 awards during his military career. He was one of a very few high-ranking Jewish officers who were retained in the armed forces after the late 1940s.
title: Dragunskii, David Abramovich
related: Anti-Zionist Committee of The Soviet Public
related: Central Committee of Jews in Poland
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Moscow
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw

Drobner, Bolesław
described at: Drobner Bolesław
has abstract: (1883–1968), Polish socialist politician. Bolesław Drobner (who used the pseudonym Jan Okoński) was born in Kraków to a well-known assimilated family. His grandfather had participated in the uprising of 1830 and his parents in that of 1863. In 1898, Drobner joined the Polish Social Democratic Party of Galicia and Silesia and between 1902 and 1906 was a member of the reformed Proletariat organization that took up the terrorist tradition of its predecessors and also organized strikes in the Kingdom of Poland during the Revolution of 1905–1907. Drobner himself took part in its activities in Warsaw, Łódź, and Sosnowiec.
title: Drobner, Bolesław
related: Łódź
related: Chełm
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Silesia
related: Warsaw

Economic Trials
described at: Economic Trials
has abstract: Cases mounted in the first half of the 1960s in the Soviet Union involving a disproportionately high number of Jewish defendants. The nature of the Soviet regime—in which state ownership of all capital was a basic ingredient, and every sphere of life became highly politicized—made economic offenses political crimes of the first order. The phenomenon of economic trials dates from the regime’s inception, although the types of economic crime for which people were indicted and the harshness of the sentences varied from period to period.
title: Economic Trials
related: Doctors’ Plot
related: Kiev
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Efimov, Boris Efimovich
described at: Efimov Boris Efimovich
has abstract: (Fridliand; 1900–2008), Soviet political caricaturist and memoirist who was, for some time, the world's oldest living Jew. During his heyday, which lasted from the 1920s to the fall of the Soviet Union, Boris Efimov was an obedient satirist whose brilliant cartoons depicted Soviet policy on the pages of its major newspapers and magazines: Izvestiia, Pravda, and Krokodil. His career was interrupted for several years following the arrest in 1938 of his brother, the writer Mikhail Kol’tsov, who was shot as an enemy of the people in 1940. Efimov was devoted to his brother, trying to secure his release even after—unbeknownst to him—Kol’tsov had been killed. Either because he was valuable to Stalin or because of the peculiar randomness of the Soviet Terror, Efimov himself was spared and brought back to his former position, at first anonymously. He was the recipient of numerous Soviet medals and was named a member of the Academy of Arts. In addition to many collections of cartoons, he published four volumes of memoirs, beginning at age 70 and ending at 100.
title: Efimov, Boris Efimovich
related: Anticosmopolitan Campaign
related: Białystok
related: Doctors’ Plot
related: Grossman, Vasilii Semenovich
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: Kol’tsov, Mikhail Efimovich
related: Slutskii, Boris Abramovich
related: Trotsky, Leon
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Efros, Anatolii Vasil’evich
described at: Efros Anatolii Vasilevich
has abstract: (1925–1987), theater and cinema director. In 1943 Efros began studying at Iurii Zavadskii’s acting studio at the Mossovet Theater, where he played his first small roles. In 1945, on Zavadskii’s recommendation, Efros studied at the directing department of the State Institute of Theatrical Arts in Moscow. He completed his studies in 1949, at the height of the anticosmopolitan campaign, which made it impossible for him to obtain steady work in a Moscow theater. His efforts to pursue graduate studies (aspirantura) also proved unsuccessful.
title: Efros, Anatolii Vasil’evich
related: Anticosmopolitan Campaign
related: Cinema
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Theater)

Ehrenstamm Family
described at: Ehrenstamm Family
has abstract: Leaders in the textile industry of Moravia. The Ehrenstamm family came to prominence in the early nineteenth century. Its head was Veit Ehrenstamm (1760–1827), son of Salomon Jakob Kolin, a minor Jewish merchant from Prossnitz (Prostĕjov) who during the 1750s had been involved in the wool trade, purchasing fabrics from importers and then selling them piecemeal to hawkers and peddlers. After he lost his fortune as a result of the ban imposed by the Habsburg government on textile imports, his son, who had in the meantime adopted a German name, turned to different economic enterprises.
title: Ehrenstamm Family
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Industry
related: Lämmel Family
related: Prague
related: Prostějov
related: Trade

Ehrlich, Ludwik
described at: Ehrlich Ludwik
has abstract: (1889–1968), jurist and legal scholar. After attending elementary and secondary school in Tarnopol and Lwów (then Lemberg), Ludwik Ehrlich studied philosophy, Polish studies, and law at the university in Lwów (1907–1911), graduating with a doctorate in law. He did supplementary studies at universities in Halle (1911–1912), Berlin (1913), and Oxford (1913–1916), and then lectured on modern history at Oxford (1916–1917) and at the University of California at Berkeley (1917–1920). In the United States, he supported the movement for Poland to regain independence, and worked for the inclusion of Upper Silesia in the Polish state.
title: Ehrlich, Ludwik
related: Gdańsk
related: Iaşi
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Silesia
related: Ternopil’

Eidel’man, Natan Iakovlevich
described at: Eidelman Natan Iakovlevich
has abstract: (1930–1989), historian, writer, and publicist. From 1947 to 1952, Natan Eidel’man studied history at Moscow State University. Despite his academic brilliance, he was unable to pursue graduate studies (aspirantura) after his father, the journalist Iakov Eidel’man, was arrested in 1950 on charges of “bourgeois nationalism.” Natan Eidel’man instead found a position teaching history at a night school near Moscow, where he worked from 1952 to 1955.
title: Eidel’man, Natan Iakovlevich
related: Moscow
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Eilburg, Eli‘ezer
described at: Eilburg Eliezer
has abstract: (ca. 1530–ca. 1580), physician and skeptic. Born in Braunschweig, Germany, Eilburg moved to Poznań in 1546. After a brief stay there, he moved to Ancona, Italy, where he studied medicine. Around 1552, he moved to Oleśnica in Silesia, and subsequently appears to have lived in various places in that region, and perhaps Moravia or Poland. He was imprisoned twice and was perhaps excommunicated, though it is not clear if this was a result of his unorthodox views.
title: Eilburg, Eli‘ezer
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: Silesia

Epstein, Kalonimos Kalman of Kraków
described at: Epstein Kalonimos Kalman of Krakow
has abstract: (1754–1823), Hasidic master. Kalonimos Kalman Epstein of Kraków was born in Neustadt (now Prudnik), Poland, to a prestigious rabbinic family. He is considered one of the most influential masters of the third generation of Hasidism. Epstein settled in Kraków early in his life and was primarily a disciple of Elimelekh of Lizhensk (1717–1786/87), who, as a student of Dov Ber, the Magid of Mezritsh (1704–1772), had been sent to Kraków to spread the teachings of the Ba‘al Shem Tov. When Epstein met Dov Ber, Kraków had no discernible Hasidic presence, and Epstein is considered to have been the first major Hasidic master in that city.
title: Epstein, Kalonimos Kalman of Kraków
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: Elimelekh of Lizhensk
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Levi Yitsḥak of Barditshev
related: Pilgrimage
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz
related: Yeḥi’el Mikhl of Zlotshev

Falk, Miksa
described at: Falk Miksa
has abstract: (1828–1908), Hungarian journalist, publisher, and member of parliament. Born into an impoverished merchant family in Pest, Miksa Falk began writing articles for both German- and Hungarian-language newspapers as early as age 14. In the wave of conversions during the 1840s, he and his brother Zsigmond became Christian. Of all of Falk’s associates, he alone retained a tenuous connection to Judaism. In 1847, he received a Ph.D. from the University of Pest and later continued his studies at the Vienna Polytechnic. In 1848, he returned to Pest, where he became an editor of the German-language newspaper Ungar during the first few months of the revolution. In September 1848, Falk returned to Vienna and lived there until 1867, writing political articles for several newspapers.
title: Falk, Miksa
related: Arad
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Wahrmann, Mór

Fényes, Adolf
described at: Fenyes Adolf
has abstract: (1867–1945), painter. Born in Kecskemét, Hungary, Adolf Fényes was one of his country’s most distinguished Jewish painters. The motifs of his works can be considered a metonym for the struggle to create a Hungarian Jewish identity, particularly during the decades immediately before and following World War I.
title: Fényes, Adolf
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)

Fleck, Ludwik
described at: Fleck Ludwik
has abstract: (1896–1961), microbiologist and pioneer in the sociology of knowledge. Born in Lwów, Ludwik Fleck graduated from Lwów University’s medical school in 1920, eventually specializing in microbiology. In 1923 he married Ernestina Waldman; they had one son, Ryszard (Arieh), born in 1924. After 1925, Fleck headed a bacteriological laboratory at Lwów General Hospital and served as director of a private medical laboratory.
title: Fleck, Ludwik
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)

Frankel, Leó
described at: Frankel Leo
has abstract: (1844–1896), labor activist and a leader of the Paris Commune. Leó Frankel was born into a large, wealthy German-oriented family in Óbuda, Hungary, where his father, Albert, was the official doctor of the city’s shipyard. The family sent Frankel to Germany in 1861 to learn to be a goldsmith. There he became involved with the labor movement, especially with the ideology of Ferdinand Lasalle.
title: Frankel, Leó
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Frenk, Azriel Natan
described at: Frenk Azriel Natan
has abstract: (1863–1924), writer, journalist, and historian. Azriel Natan (Nosn) Frenk was a seminal figure in early Hebrew- and Yiddish-language journalism and literature in Warsaw. Renowned for translating the Zohar, Hasidic legends, and Polish literature, he also wrote numerous popular works on the history of Polish Jews.
title: Frenk, Azriel Natan
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haynt
related: Kielce
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Opatów
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Rabbinowitz, Sha’ul Pinḥas
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Spektor, Mordkhe
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Friesenhausen, David
described at: Friesenhausen David
has abstract: (1756–1828), Hungarian maskil and rabbi. Born in a small community in southern Germany, David Friesenhausen studied with Yosef Steinhardt in Fürth. Mosheh Sofer, the rabbi of Pressburg, knew Friesenhausen in his youth and would later testify to his reputation as one of the outstanding students in the yeshiva. Until the age of 30, Friesenhausen devoted himself exclusively to Torah study, but then—seized by an intellectual restlessness—he immersed himself in mathematics and astronomy.
title: Friesenhausen, David
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bratislava
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Sátoraljaújhely
related: Seminary
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: Transylvania
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Füst, Milán
described at: Fust Milan
has abstract: (1888–1967), Hungarian poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, and diarist. The descendant of the illustrious Fürst family, he dropped the “r” from Fürst for the more poetic Füst, meaning “smoke” in Hungarian. Milán Füst’s early poems appeared in Nyugat, the premier modernist literary journal in Hungary. His fame as a poet rests on several dozen poems, and he was among the first to introduce free verse into Hungarian poetry, though his poems are a blend of both classical and modern qualities. He produced verses that are universal and timeless expressions of the tragedy of the human condition, conveyed in language that is alternately high-flown and quotidian.
title: Füst, Milán
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)

Gensch Family
described at: Gensch Family
has abstract: Prominent residents of Tartu (Ger., Dorpat), a town in eastern Estonia. Members of the Gensch family were active in the public and cultural life of the town from the nineteenth century. The father, merchant Barukh Gensch, was involved with local charitable associations, including the Lines Tsedek (Righteous Lodging for the Night) Society.
title: Gensch Family
related: Estonia
related: Tartu

Ginzburg, Moisei Iakovlevich
described at: Ginzburg Moisei Iakovlevich
has abstract: (1892–1946), architect, theorist, teacher, and a leader of the Constructivist group in Soviet avant-garde architecture. Moisei Ginzburg was born in Minsk into an architect’s family. With limited access to higher education in Russia, he went abroad for his architectural training. He gained a classical education in this field at the Academia di Belli Arti in Milan and then opted for more technical training at the Riga Polytechnical Institute, graduating in 1917. After spending four years in Crimea studying Tatar folk architecture, Ginzburg settled in Moscow, where he taught architectural history and theory at the Moscow High Technical School and in the architecture faculty at the Vkhutemas Art School.
title: Ginzburg, Moisei Iakovlevich
related: Crimea
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Riga
related: About this Article (Russia)

Goldberger, Leó
described at: Goldberger Leo
has abstract: (1878–1945), industrialist. Leó Goldberger studied at the Evangelical High School in Budapest and in 1900 received a juris doctor degree. In 1867, his grandmother had been Hungary’s first Jewish woman to be ennobled and had thus been allowed to use the predicate Budai (or Buday; “of Buda”) before her name; hence he is also known as Leó Budai-Goldberger. As the second-born son, Goldberger did not at first intend to continue the tradition of working in his family’s factory. But after the early death of his older brother in 1913 and a long period of recession, he took over the management enterprise from his father. At the time, the factory, with headquarters in Óbuda, concentrated on manufacturing cotton fabrics.
title: Goldberger, Leó
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)

Goldstücker, Eduard
described at: Goldstucker Eduard
has abstract: (1913–2000), scholar and critic. Born in Podbiel in northern Slovakia, in his teens Eduard Goldstücker was a member of the Zionist youth group Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, then joining the Communist Party in 1933. He studied German literature at Charles University in Prague. After the German invasion in 1939, he and his wife Marta escaped to Britain, where he wrote a B.Litt. thesis on German literature at Oxford and worked for the Czechoslovak government in exile. His mother and other family members died in the Holocaust.
title: Goldstücker, Eduard
related: Communism
related: Czechoslovakia
related: German Literature
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kafka, Franz
related: Prague
related: Shomer
related: Slovakia

Gornfel'd, Arkadii
described at: Gornfeld Arkadii
has abstract: (1867–1941), literary scholar, critic, and translator who played an important role in the development of Jewish literature in Russia. The son of a lawyer who had been one of the first Jews to receive a law degree from Kharkov University, Arkadii Gornfel’d suffered a serious childhood illness and remained disabled throughout his life. He studied Jewish subjects at home, and mastered German and French while still a child. After graduating from the Simferopol gymnasium, he studied law at Kharkov University (1886–1891) and simultaneously attended A. A. Potebnya’s seminar on the theory of literature. At the University of Berlin from 1891 to 1893, he took courses on philosophy and psychology, studying with Moritz Lazarus.
title: Gornfel'd, Arkadii
related: Aizman, David Iakovlevich
related: An-ski Ethnographic Expedition and Museum
related: Ben-Ami
related: Berman, Jakub
related: Borokhov, Ber
related: Brutskus, Iulii
related: Engel, Yo’el
related: Gershenzon, Mikhail Osipovich
related: Iushkevich, Semen Solomonovich
related: Khar’kiv
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Sobol’, Andrei
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Tsinberg, Yisroel
related: Vinaver, Maksim Moiseevich
related: Voskhod
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Gurin, Samuel
described at: Gurin Samuel
has abstract: (1888–1956), educator and public figure in Estonia. Born in Brest-Litovsk, a large center of Jewish communal life, Samuel Gurin grew up in a poor neighborhood in a family of seven children. He studied at a heder and then at a primary school, and then moved with his family to Warsaw, where he completed high school and studied history at the university. As a student, Gurin was affiliated with the Bund; later he turned to the Russian social democrats, and for a period was a member of the Menshevik Party. However, he soon became disappointed with party politics.
title: Gurin, Samuel
related: Bessarabia
related: Brest
related: Bund
related: Estonia
related: Heder
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Tallinn
related: Tighina
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw

Gurland, Ḥayim Yonah
described at: Gurland Hayim Yonah
has abstract: (1843–1890), Russian Jewish intellectual and crown rabbi. Born in Kleck, Belorussia (mod. Kletsk, Belarus), Ḥayim Yonah Gurland received a maskilic education at the Vilna rabbinical seminary. After graduating in 1860, he was accepted at the University of Saint Petersburg, where he studied Semitic languages under the convert Daniil Khvol’son (Daniel Chwolson), whose work on the Babylonian god Tammuz he translated into Hebrew. Gurland also translated the fables of Lockman (Ar., Lugmān) from Arabic into Russian, and in 1863 was awarded a gold medal for his thesis on the influence of Arabic philosophy on Maimonides.
title: Gurland, Ḥayim Yonah
related: Belarus
related: Calendars
related: Crown Rabbi
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Firkovich, Avraam Samuilovich
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: Karaites
related: Karmel, Ha-
related: Khvol’son, Daniil Avraamovich
related: Odessa
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Proverbs
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Seminary
related: Vilnius
related: Zhytomyr

Gutfreund, Oto
described at: Gutfreund Oto
has abstract: (1889–1927), Czech sculptor. Oto Gutfreund was born in Dvůr Králové nad Labem. He attended local schools, studied ceramics at Bechyné from 1903 to 1906, and then took up applied arts at Umprum (the school of applied arts) in Prague between 1906 and 1909. While in Paris in 1909–1910, he studied at the Grande Chaumière under Émile Antoine Bourdelle, visiting Belgium, England, and Germany before returning to Prague in 1911.
title: Gutfreund, Oto
related: Prague

Hajós, Alfréd
described at: Hajos Alfred
has abstract: (1878–1955), Olympic champion and architect. Alfréd Hajós (born in Budapest as Arnold Guttmann) came from a working-class Hungarian Jewish family; in his youth he converted to Christianity. The word first summarizes and characterizes Hajós’s athletic career. He won the 100-meter and 1,200-meter swimming championships in the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896. With this achievement he was not only Hungary’s first Olympic champion, but also the first in the world, as swimming had not been part of the ancient Olympic Games. From 1898 to 1904, he was also on the team that won the first Hungarian soccer championship. Although he stopped competing in 1904, he remained active in the sporting world, and led the Hungarian Soccer Association in 1905 and 1906.
title: Hajós, Alfréd
related: Budapest
related: Cluj
related: Debrecen
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Romania
related: Slovakia
related: About this Article (Sport)

Hantke, Bernard Ludwik
described at: Hantke Bernard Ludwik
has abstract: (1826–1900), industrialist. Born in Warsaw to a family that had moved from the Poznań district in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, Bernard Hantke was raised in a Polonized home that had discarded Jewish traditions; he was educated in institutions attended by very few Jews. His grandfather had been a grain merchant in the Poznań district, and Hantke’s father, Adolph, owned a haberdashery store in Warsaw and was a moderately successful fabric merchant. Hantke’s sister’s conversion to Christianity led some biographers to assume that he too had converted, yet there is no documentary evidence to support this contention. Unlike most of the other Jewish entrepreneurs in contemporary Poland, Hantke made his initial fortune in farming and only later reinvested the money in industry—a path far more common for the non-Jewish industrialists of Congress Poland districts. He began his career as a farmer on an estate in Drybus, but soon returned to Warsaw to be a partner in a plant that manufactured agricultural machines and implements. In 1867 he founded a factory to produce chains, nails, and agricultural implements, and in 1879 he acquired the only factory in Warsaw that made rolled steel.
title: Hantke, Bernard Ludwik
related: Conversion
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Industry
related: Kielce
related: Poznań
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw

Hatvany-Deutsch Family
described at: Hatvany-Deutsch Family
has abstract: Hungarian industrialists and cultural figures. The Hatvany-Deutsch family played a decisive role for several generations in the economic and—later—the cultural life of Hungary.
title: Hatvany-Deutsch Family
related: Arad
related: Assimilation
related: Banking
related: Budapest
related: Conversion
related: Hatvany, Lajos
related: Hungarian Literature
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Industry
related: Košice
related: Mukacheve
related: Seminary
related: Timişoara
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Hazai, Samu
described at: Hazai Samu
has abstract: (1851–1942), Hungarian general and minister of defense. Born Samu Kohn in Rimaszombat (now Rimavská Sobota, Slovakia), Samu Hazai (he changed his name in 1876) completed his studies at the Commercial Academy of Budapest and then became manager of his father’s distillery. Hazai started his military career in 1873 as a common honvéd (soldier). His excellent performance led him that same year to the Ludovika Military Academy in Budapest, where as a cadet he converted to Christianity. In 1874, he passed the officer’s exam and the following year became a professional soldier.
title: Hazai, Samu
related: Budapest
related: Slovakia

Heller, Ḥayim
described at: Heller Hayim
has abstract: (1879–1960), rabbi and biblical scholar. Born in Białystok, Ḥayim Heller earned a doctorate from the University of Würzburg in Germany and was appointed rabbi of Łomża in 1912, a position that he resigned from within months. In 1914, he was elected rabbi of Suwałki, but World War I broke out before he could accept the position, and he moved to Gomel.
title: Heller, Ḥayim
related: Łomża
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Białystok
related: Homel’
related: Lithuania
related: Mizraḥi
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
related: Seminary
related: Suwałki
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Heller, Isidor
described at: Heller Isidor
has abstract: (1816–1879), journalist, prose writer, and poet. Born in Mladá Boleslav (Ger., Jungbunzlau), Bohemia, Isidor Heller attended both a yeshiva and a secondary school; he hoped to become a rabbi. In 1832 he left for Prague, where he attended the New Town Gymnasium and, briefly, Prague University. In 1837 he went to Nancy, France, where he tried unsuccessfully to join the French Foreign Legion and to support the liberal party in the Spanish civil war (1833–1840). He hoped that he could obtain French citizenship in reward for the five-year military service.
title: Heller, Isidor
related: Hartmann, Moritz
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kapper, Siegfried
related: Mladá Boleslav
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Hirszfeld, Ludwik
described at: Hirszfeld Ludwik
has abstract: (1884–1954), bacteriologist and serologist, creator of the Polish school of immunology. Ludwik Hirszfeld was born in Warsaw and studied medicine at the universities of Würzburg and Berlin, where he was graduated with highest honors in 1907. He then obtained a post at the Institute for the Study of Cancer in Heidelberg. Following his groundbreaking work, he transferred to the Institute of Serology, where in 1910 in collaboration with Emil von Dungern he demonstrated the hereditary factors of different blood groups. In 1911, he became a professor in the department of hygiene at the University of Zurich. During World War I he was in Serbia, where he organized efforts to combat a typhoid epidemic and discovered paratyphoid C. He was awarded honorary citizenship for his work by the king of that country.
title: Hirszfeld, Ludwik
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Warsaw
related: Wrocław

Holländer, Leó
described at: Hollander Leo
has abstract: (1806–1887), community leader. Leó Holländer’s father, Mark, originally from Tarnopol, immigrated to Hungary and was the first Jew to settle in Eperjes (Prešov), a royal free city, in 1780. The wealthy merchant was elected as rosh medinah, the head of Sáros county Jewry, in which capacity he served as an influential intercessor with local and Viennese authorities. Leó was instructed by private tutors from abroad; later, he completed eight years of gymnasium studies at the famous Eperjes College. It was here that Holländer formed close ties with the local gentry, which would serve him in good stead later. In 1833, he joined Ferenc Pulszky, the budding liberal politician and future president of the Hungarian Academy, for a five-month grand tour to visit sites of antiquarian interest in Italy, where they also received the pope’s blessing. Holländer’s hobby was antiques, and he came to own one of the most important coin collections in the country, later donated to the National Museum.
title: Holländer, Leó
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Orthodoxy
related: Pápa
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Ternopil’

Horovits, Ber
described at: Horovits Ber
has abstract: (1895–1942), Yiddish poet, writer, and artist. Ber Horovits was the only son of a Jewish family from the rural village of Majdan, in the Carpathian Mountains of eastern Galicia. He received a traditional Jewish education at home, from private tutors, while at the same time studying at a Ukrainian elementary school. In 1914, he graduated from the Polish gymnasium in Stanisławów (now Ukr., Ivano-Frankivs’k). During World War I, he was recruited into the Imperial Austro-Hungarian Army and was sent to various areas of the empire. He ultimately arrived in Vienna, where he enrolled as a medical student and was stationed at a military hospital. During his time in the army, he wrote Yiddish poems that reflected his war experiences.
title: Horovits, Ber
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Galicia
related: Imber, Shmuel Yankev
related: Ivano-Frankivs’k
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: L’viv
related: Yiddish Poetry (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ravitch, Melech

Horwitz-Kancewiczowa, Kamila
described at: Horwitz-Kancewiczowa Kamila
has abstract: (1879–1952), Polish socialist activist, feminist, and psychiatrist. Kamila Horwitz-Kancewiczowa was born in Warsaw to a middle-class Jewish family in which both Polish and Yiddish were spoken. After completing gymnasium in Warsaw, she went abroad in 1898 to study medicine, first in Berlin and then in Zurich, and became active on the Foreign Committee of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS).
title: Horwitz-Kancewiczowa, Kamila
related: Communism
related: Horwitz, Maksymilian
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw

Hourwitz, Zalkind
described at: Hourwitz Zalkind
has abstract: (1751–1812), maskil, political activist, journalist, and author. As a young man, Zalkind Hourwitz left his village near Lublin and set out for Berlin. There he tutored children of wealthy families—perhaps even coming into contact with the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn—before making his way to Metz and ultimately to Paris in 1774. Whether hawking used clothing or eking out a living teaching foreign languages to the young, he avoided starvation only with the support of his friends. In his spare time he studied Ovid, Molière, Voltaire, and Rousseau.
title: Hourwitz, Zalkind
related: About this Article (Lublin)

Huberman, Bronisław
described at: Huberman Bronisław
has abstract: (1882–1947), violinist. Bronisław Huberman was born in Częstochowa, Poland and was a child prodigy who began to take violin lessons at the age of six. He appeared in public for the first time a year later, playing at a benefit concert for the poor. Huberman studied violin in Warsaw, with, among others, Isidor Lotto at the Warsaw Conservatory. He began to study with Joseph Joachim in Berlin in 1892, and also took lessons briefly with Hugo Heermann in Frankfurt and Martin Marsick in Paris.
title: Huberman, Bronisław
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Warsaw

Ianovskaia, Sof'ia Aleksandrovna
described at: Ianovskaia Sofia Aleksandrovna
has abstract: (1896–1966), Soviet mathematician who specialized in logic and the history of mathematics. Ianovskaia was born Sof’ia Neimark in Pruzhany, now Belarus, the daughter of an accountant. She grew up in Odessa and attended a classical gymnasium. During the revolution, she was a student at the Odessa Higher Women’s Courses. Ianovskaia joined the Bolsheviks and served as a political commissar during the Civil War. Captured by the Whites, she faced a firing squad but survived.
title: Ianovskaia, Sof'ia Aleksandrovna
related: Belarus
related: Communist Party of the Soviet Union
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Russian Civil War
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Jakobovits, Tobias
described at: Jakobovits Tobias
has abstract: (1887–1944), historian, librarian, and rabbi. Tobias Jakobovits was born in Lakompak (Lackenback), in the Hungarian part of the Habsburg monarchy. He studied at the yeshiva in Bratislava (Pressburg), and continued at a rabbinical seminary in Berlin and in the philosophical faculty at the German University in Prague.
title: Jakobovits, Tobias
related: Altneuschul
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bratislava
related: Guilds
related: Kolín
related: Prague
related: Seminary
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Kalecki, Michał
described at: Kalecki Michał
has abstract: (1899–1970), economist. Michał Kalecki was born in Łódź to a middle-class Jewish family. His regular studies were made difficult by familial and financial problems, so he mastered mathematics and economics on his own. His research on economic fluctuations resulted in an appointment to a position at the Institute of Business Cycles and Prices, a position from which he resigned in 1936 to protest the firing of two colleagues for political reasons. Kalecki gained international acclaim after he published Próby teorii koniunktury (An Essay on the Theory of the Business Cycle; 1933), a study that anticipated the theories of John Maynard Keynes. In 1930, he married Adela Szternfeld.
title: Kalecki, Michał
related: Łódź
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Warsaw

Kamelhar, Yekuti’el
described at: Kamelhar Yekutiel
has abstract: (1871–1937), rabbi, educator, and publisher. Born in Kołaczyce, Galicia, Yekuti’el Kamelhar was educated in Tarnów, where he was exposed to Hasidism. He gained experience as a religious educator, heading a group of Talmud students in Korczyna (from 1890) and in Rzeszów (from 1897). At the end of the nineteenth century, Kamelhar was involved in establishing several pioneering new yeshivas in Galicia, modeled after those in Lithuania and Hungary. He was appointed head of the Or Torah yeshiva in Stanisławów in 1907. An Orthodox activist, Kamelhar helped to found societies that supported a religious education network, and took part in the attempts to organize a rabbinic convention in Kraków in 1903.
title: Kamelhar, Yekuti’el
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Ivano-Frankivs’k
related: Kook, Avraham Yitsḥak
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Landau, Yeḥezkel ben Yehudah
related: Lithuania
related: Menaḥem Mendel of Rimanov
related: Mizraḥi
related: Orthodoxy
related: Prague
related: Rzeszów
related: Tarnów
related: Yehudah Ḥasid ha-Levi
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Kaminka, Aharon
described at: Kaminka Aharon
has abstract: (1866–1950), Hebrew poet, playwright, translator, and scholar. Aharon (Armand) Kaminka was born in Berdichev, Kiev province. In 1880, he was sent to Berlin to study at the rabbinical college founded by Esriel Hildesheimer. At the age of 17, in Hamburg, he founded a society called Ahavat Tsiyon (Love of Zion).
title: Kaminka, Aharon
related: Berdychiv
related: Drogobych
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Hildesheimer, Esriel
related: Kiev
related: Land of Israel
related: Prague
related: Rabbinowitz, Sha’ul Pinḥas
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Karinthy, Ferenc
described at: Karinthy Ferenc
has abstract: (1921–1992), novelist, playwright, and short-story writer. Ferenc Karinthy was part of a literary family whose members have been present on the Hungarian cultural scene for nearly a century. In a two-volume family history published in 2003, Márton Karinthy, a theater director and the oldest living member of the family, reveals that his great-grandparents, both of whom had hailed from observant Jewish homes, converted to Christianity in the 1870s before they were married, so that their children would be born Protestant. (This revelation put the lingering doubt about the family’s origins to rest.)
title: Karinthy, Ferenc
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)

Kármán, Mór
described at: Karman Mor
has abstract: (1843–1915), educator and cultural policymaker. Mór Kármán was born in Szeged, Hungary, where he came under the influence of Rabbi Lipót (Leopold) Löw, a pioneer of Neolog Judaism in Hungary. Kármán studied philosophy, pedagogy, and philology at the University of Vienna, and received his doctoral degree from the faculty of humanities of the University of Pest in 1866.
title: Kármán, Mór
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Löw, Leopold
related: Múlt és Jövő

Katz, Pinḥas
described at: Katz Pinhas
has abstract: (1907–1941), Estonian Revisionist Zionist leader. Pinḥas Katz was born in Daugavpils, Latvia. After his graduation from high school in 1923, he worked in several businesses. In 1926, he moved to Estonia to study law at the University of Tartu, an institution famous for liberal academic traditions and a popular place for Latvian Jewish students. He joined Hasmonea, a Zionist Jewish student organization that gradually advocated Revisionism.
title: Katz, Pinḥas
related: Daugavpils
related: Estonia
related: Jabotinsky, Vladimir
related: Latvia
related: Revisionist Zionists
related: Tallinn
related: Tarbut
related: Tartu
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Keleti, Ágnes
described at: Keleti Agnes
has abstract: (Klein; 1921– ), gymnast, five-time Olympic champion, and coach. Ágnes Keleti won 10 Olympic medals, including 5 gold, in gymnastics over three Olympic Games. In 2000, she ranked third all-time among women athletes for most Olympic medals and fourth all-time as a winner of Olympic gold medals. Keleti is the most successful Jewish female athlete in Olympic history and was ranked among the world’s top five gymnasts from 1952 until 1956. Between 1947 and 1956, she won the All-Around Hungarian Championships 10 times.
title: Keleti, Ágnes
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)

Kenigsberg, Dovid
described at: Kenigsberg Dovid
has abstract: (1891–1942?), poet. Dovid Kenigsberg was born in the provincial town of Busk, in the Tarnopol district of eastern Galicia. He received a general education in secondary schools in Brody and Czernowitz, and learned ancient Greek and Latin. In 1911, he worked as a bookkeeper in Lwów. Scholars claim that he first wrote poetry (in German and Polish) when he was 15, but his first piece was printed in the collection Yugnt (Youth; 1909), edited by Yankev Zrubovl.
title: Kenigsberg, Dovid
related: Brody
related: Chernivtsi
related: Galicia
related: L’viv
related: Ternopil’
related: Warsaw

Klemperer, Gutmann
described at: Klemperer Gutmann
has abstract: (1815–1882), rabbi, historian, and essayist. Gutmann (Gumpel) Klemperer was born into a family that had been in Prague for several generations. His father was a leader of the Zigeuner Synagogue, and his mother stemmed from the family of Yom Tov Lipmann Heller. Klemperer studied at yeshivas in Prague and Bratislava (Pressburg), at the Piarist gymnasium in Prague, and finally at the faculty of philosophy at Charles University. His first wife was the daughter of his teacher Rabbi Elias Bunzelfedern (1799–1843). In 1843, Klemperer became a preacher in Tábor, and then served as the local rabbi from 1845 until his death. Begining in 1868, he also held the title of district rabbi.
title: Klemperer, Gutmann
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bratislava
related: Eybeschütz, Yonatan
related: Gans, David ben Shelomoh
related: Health and Healing
related: Heller, Yom Tov Lipmann
related: Kisch, Guido
related: Luria, Shelomoh ben Yeḥi’el
related: Mysticism and Mystical Literature
related: Prague
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el

Kohen Family
described at: Kohen Family
has abstract: Printers and publishers active in Prague. In the early sixteenth century, Prague became the leading center of Hebrew printing in Central and Eastern Europe, the first prayer book being produced there in 1512. From 1514 onward, the leading figure in the local group of printers was Gershom (also Gerson or Hermann) ben Shelomoh ha-Kohen (d. 1544). Between 1514 and 1522, this group issued four prayer books and an elaborate Pentateuch with a commentary by Rashi (1518; reprinted in 1530). Kohen is listed first in all the colophons, and his symbol—a pair of hands raised in blessing—appears on the opening page of the Pentateuch (1518) and the Maḥzor (1522). After 1522, the group disbanded. In 1526 Kohen, together with his brother Gronem, printed the earliest Passover Haggadah, containing more than 60 lavish woodcut illustrations (mostly by Ḥayim Shaḥor) in the style of Holbein and Dürer. This work became the preeminent model for subsequent Haggadahs and is widely regarded as a masterpiece.
title: Kohen Family
related: Bak Family
related: Gans, David ben Shelomoh
related: Helicz Brothers
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Passover
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Printing and Publishing before 1800 (Printing and Publishing)
related: Shtadlan
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el

Kohner, Zsigmond
described at: Kohner Zsigmond
has abstract: (1840–1908), industrialist, banker, and philanthropist. Zsigmond Kohner’s family moved to Pest from Leipzig. His father, Adolf Kohner, joined Zsigmond’s uncle’s firm, specializing in the produce and feather trade. Zsigmond’s mother, Lujza Sváb, was a member of a distinguished entrepreneurial and landowning family.
title: Kohner, Zsigmond
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Seminary
related: Wahrmann, Mór

Kolin, Shemu’el ben Natan ha-Levi
described at: Kolin Shemuel ben Natan ha-Levi
has abstract: (ca. 1720–1806), rabbi and posek (decisor; one who is recognized as having sufficient authority to rule on questions of Jewish law). Shemu’el Kolin’s name (sometimes rendered as Kelin, Keln, or Kell) is derived from his birthplace in Bohemia. His father, Natan ha-Levi, was a wealthy merchant and grandson of Natan Note ben Shelomoh Spira (1585–1633), the kabbalist and rabbi in Kraków and author of the classic Megaleh ‘amukot.
title: Kolin, Shemu’el ben Natan ha-Levi
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Boskovice
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Krochmal, Menaḥem Mendel ben Avraham
related: Prague
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Spira, Natan Note ben Shelomoh
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Kopelian, Efim Zakharovich
described at: Kopelian Efim Zakharovich
has abstract: (1912–1975), Soviet theater and cinema actor. Born in Rechitsa, Belorussia, Kopelian moved to Leningrad with his parents and began his studies at the Architecture Faculty of the Leningrad Academy of Arts, at the same time performing as an extra with the Bolshoi Dramatic Theater (BDT). In his second year of studies he transferred to the BDT studio school, joining its troupe in 1935. He continued to perform at the BDT throughout his life, appearing on stage in 80 different roles.
title: Kopelian, Efim Zakharovich
related: Belarus
related: Cinema
related: Kozintsev, Grigorii Mikhailovich
related: Saint Petersburg
related: About this Article (Theater)

Kőrösy, József
described at: Korosy Jozsef
has abstract: (1844–1906), statistician. József Kőrösy was born in Pest to a poor family, and was forced to interrupt his university studies as a consequence of his financial circumstances. He went to work for the Első Magyar Általános Biztosító Társaság (First Hungarian General Insurance Company), and was the economic columnist for the newspapers Pesti Napló (from 1868) and Reform (from 1870). He was appointed director of the Statistical Office of Budapest (Fővárosi Statisztikai Hivatal) in 1870. During the 30 years of his tenure in that position, he developed the agency into a renowned institution.
title: Kőrösy, József
related: Assimilation
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Transylvania

Kramsztyk, Izaak
described at: Kramsztyk Izaak
has abstract: (1814?–1889), teacher, author, and rabbi. Izaak Kramsztyk was a leading figure in the period of Jewish–Polish rapprochement in the 1860s and in the movement for religious reform. The son of a merchant and prominent member of the Jewish community of the Warsaw suburb of Praga, Kramsztyk hailed from a family with deep rabbinic roots. After receiving a traditional education, he decided, against his parents’ wishes, to attend the rabbinical seminary that had been founded in Warsaw in 1826. He stayed on at this school as a Talmud instructor from 1837 until its close in 1863. In keeping with the spirit of reform and acculturation, he conducted his lessons in Polish and, in 1852, became the first rabbi to preach in that language in a Jewish house of worship in Warsaw—the so-called “Polish” synagogue on Nalewki Street.
title: Kramsztyk, Izaak
related: Bobruisk
related: Jastrow, Markus
related: Lithuania
related: Meisels, Dov Berush
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Reform, Religious
related: Seminary
related: Warsaw

Kramsztyk, Roman
described at: Kramsztyk Roman
has abstract: (1885–1942), Polish painter and illustrator. Roman Kramsztyk was a scion of two of the most prominent Jewish families of Warsaw, the Kramsztyks and the Fajans, who belonged to the Polonizing Jewish elite. This small group played a significant role in the social and intellectual life of nineteenth-century Poland. Baptized as an infant, Kramsztyk considered himself a Pole and a Polish artist. It was only during World War II that Jewish motifs began to appear in his work.
title: Kramsztyk, Roman
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Warsaw

Krinskii, Vladimir Fedorovich
described at: Krinskii Vladimir Fedorovich
has abstract: (1890–1971), architect, teacher, and a leader of the Rationalist group in Soviet avant-garde architecture. Born into a teacher’s family in Ryazan, Vladimir Krinskii was able to complete his secondary education in Saint Petersburg, thanks to the intercession of a prominent patron, and study at the Art School of the Imperial Society for Support of the Arts. He then enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts, graduating from its architecture department in 1917.
title: Krinskii, Vladimir Fedorovich
related: Moscow
related: Saint Petersburg

Kristianpoller Family
described at: Kristianpoller Family
has abstract: Wealthy rabbinic family in Galicia. Several members of the Kristianpoller family were rabbis in Brody from the end of the eighteenth century. The dynasty began with Me’ir Kristianpoller (1740–1815), who served for a time as rabbi of Kristianpol (Pol., Krystynopol; about 60 km north of Lwów), from which the family adopted its name. In 1785, he was appointed rabbi of Brody and served in that capacity for 30 years until his death. He wrote novellae on the Talmud, titled Yad ha-Me’ir (1874).
title: Kristianpoller Family
related: Brody
related: Galicia
related: L’viv
related: Seminary

Kunfi, Zsigmond
described at: Kunfi Zsigmond
has abstract: (1879–1929), Social Democratic politician, publicist, and editor. Zsigmond Kunfi was born in Nagykanizsa, Hungary, the son of a civil servant of Jewish origin, and converted to Calvinism. Kunfi was never interested in religion, but as Zoltán Rónai (his friend and brother-in-law) wrote, he labored under the weight of “an invisible yellow star.” At Kolozsvár (now Cluj, Romania) University, Kunfi earned a doctorate and a degree that enabled him to teach Hungarian and German, which he did at a gymnasium in Temesvár (now Timişoara, Romania) for five years. As a teacher, he contributed to local and Budapest democratic and Social Democratic papers and journals and criticized Hungarian policies in Neue Zeit (published in Stuttgart).
title: Kunfi, Zsigmond
related: Budapest
related: Cluj
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jászi, Oszkár
related: Romania
related: Timişoara

Lajta, Béla
described at: Lajta Bela
has abstract: (1873–1920), architect. Born in Budapest-Óbuda to a traditional Jewish family of tailors, Béla Lajta (originally Leitersdorfer) became the most important protomodernist architect in Hungary, bridging the art nouveau of Ödön Lechner and modernism proper. With Joseph Hoffmann, Adolf Loos, and Ian Kotěra, Lajta was one of the most significant architects between 1900 and 1920 in Habsburg lands. Talented in music, drama, sculpture, and painting, he ultimately graduated from Budapest Technical University in 1896 as a student of Alois Hausmann and Imre Steindl; he then was awarded a travel grant to Italy, Germany, France, Spain, and Russia. Lajta worked in the offices of Alfred Messel in Berlin, Norman Shaw in London, and Ödön Lechner in Budapest.
title: Lajta, Béla
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Transylvania

Lánczy, Leó
described at: Lanczy Leo
has abstract: (1852–1921), Hungarian banker and business leader. Born in Pest, Leó Lánczy (Lazarsfeld) studied at a commercial school and at the age of 16 worked at the warehouse of the Laczkó and Gomperz Company. He then switched to a banking career, first working for the Anglo-Hungarian Bank. When this institution failed after the 1873 stock market crash, Lánczy became the managing director of the Hungarian General Mortgage Company. Like his brother Gyula (1850–1911), the historian, Lánczy converted to Christianity as a young man.
title: Lánczy, Leó
related: Banking
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Transportation

Landau, Leib
described at: Landau Leib
has abstract: (1879–1943), lawyer, community leader, and Bundist. Leib Landau was born in Kirov, Russia, to a traditional Yiddish-speaking Jewish family. As a child, he moved to Przemyśl, the city in which he spent most of his life. Upon graduation from gymnasium, Landau studied law and became a celebrated attorney who defended Jewish civil rights. Between 1905 and 1914, Landau was a leading member of Galicia’s Żydowska Partia Socjalno-Demokratyczna (Jewish Social Democratic Party; ŻPS).
title: Landau, Leib
related: Bund
related: Galicia
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Przemyśl
related: Przytyk Pogrom
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Żydowska Partia Socjalno-Demokratyczna

Lejbowicz, Herszek
described at: Lejbowicz Herszek
has abstract: Eighteenth-century Lithuanian artist and engraver. Herszek Lejbowicz seems to have been born in Sokal, a small settlement not far from Minsk, sometime in the 1720s or 1730s. Nothing is known of his childhood years or education. He followed in the footsteps of his father, Lejb Zyskielowicz, working as a coppersmith and engraver. In the spring of 1747, Michał Kazimierz Radziwiłł invited father and son to his palace at Nieśwież to prepare an album of family portraits.
title: Lejbowicz, Herszek
related: Lithuania
related: Minsk
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Warsaw

Lev Tov, Seyfer
described at: Lev Tov Seyfer
has abstract: Ethical work in Yiddish. The Seyfer lev tov (Book of the Good Heart) was first printed in Prague in 1620. Nothing is known about its author, Yitsḥak ben Elyakim of Posen (Poznań). The book has 20 chapters that present appropriate Jewish behavior from a religious perspective; it deals with the conduct of the Jew in the religious context (mainly the synagogue) as well as in everyday life.
title: Lev Tov, Seyfer
related: Ashkenaz
related: Eybeschütz, Yonatan
related: Horowitz Family
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Poznań
related: Prague
related: Sabbatianism
related: Yehudah Ḥasid ha-Levi
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el

Levin, Gershn
described at: Levin Gershn
has abstract: (1868–1939), Yiddish and Hebrew writer, physician, and communal activist. Gershn Levin was born in Lublin and moved to Warsaw, where he completed medical studies in 1896. An energetic promoter of improved hygiene, he collaborated with Yisra’el Ḥayim Zagorodski (1864–1931) to write Ḥayenu ve-orekh yamenu: ‘Etsot ve-ḥukim lishmor beri’ut ha-guf (Our Life and Longevity: How to Stay Healthy; 1898). Levin’s views are particularly expressed in the chapter “Gidul-banim” (Childrearing), a critique of traditional heder education that contained a plea for children’s rights.
title: Levin, Gershn
related: Assimilation
related: Bar Kochba Association
related: Childhood
related: Haynt
related: Health and Healing
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Military Service in Russia
related: Musical Education and Musical Societies
related: Parody
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Personal Hygiene and Grooming
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: TOZ
related: Tunkel, Yoysef
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Lewin Brothers
described at: Lewin Brothers
has abstract: Rabbis and political activists. Aron Lewin (1879–1941) was a leader of the Agudas Yisroel movement and a deputy in the Polish parliament. His younger brother Yeḥezkel Lewin (1898–1941) was a Zionist leader and rabbi of the progressive (Reform) community of Lwów. They were sons of Natan Lewin, rabbi in Rohatyn and Rzeszów, and maternal grandsons of the noted scholar Yitsḥak Shmelkes of Lwów.
title: Lewin Brothers
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Galicia
related: Katowice
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lithuania
related: L’viv
related: Romania
related: Rzeszów
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Liberman, Evsei Grigor’evich
described at: Liberman Evsei Grigorevich
has abstract: (1897–1981), economist. Evsei Liberman was chair of the economics and engineering department at the Kharkov Institute of Economics and Engineering (1947–1963) and from 1963 headed the statistics department at Kharkov State University. He was a key figure in the debates over economic reform in the Soviet Union following Stalin’s death.
title: Liberman, Evsei Grigor’evich
related: Khar’kiv
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Lipski, Leo
described at: Lipski Leo
has abstract: (1917–1997), Polish prose writer. Born in Zurich into a Polonized Jewish family, Leo Lipski (originally Lipschütz) spent his childhood and youth in Kraków where he studied psychology and philosophy and made his literary debut. He fled to Lwów in 1939, where he was arrested by the Soviets and sent to labor camps in 1940. Managing to leave the USSR with the Polish Army, he fell ill with typhoid fever and encephalitis in Tehran and, as a result, was discharged from the army. After briefly studying in Beirut, Lipski settled in Tel Aviv in 1944. Partially paralyzed and unable to speak clearly, he typed his works with one hand, later switching to dictation. In 1975 he traveled to Paris with the poet Lucja Gliksman, who cared for him.
title: Lipski, Leo
related: Communism
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Lubliner, Ludwik
described at: Lubliner Ludwik
has abstract: (1809–1868), lawyer and journalist. Born in Warsaw, Ludwik Ozjasz Lubliner attended a Piarist (Catholic) school against the wishes of his observant parents. As a student at a polytechnical college, he then joined the uprising of 1831, during the course of which he received numerous injuries and was decorated with military honors.
title: Lubliner, Ludwik
related: Czyński, Jan
related: Hollaenderski, Leon
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Warsaw

Margolis, Osher Leibovich
described at: Margolis Osher Leibovich
has abstract: (1891–1976), Soviet historian and literary critic. Margolis (later Margulis) was born in Rovno (Rivne), Ukraine. He graduated from the history department of Kiev University and taught Jewish history at the Jewish Pedagogical Institute in Kiev in the early 1920s. At the end of the 1920s, he headed the historical section of the Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kiev. At this time, he was also affiliated with the Jewish Section of the Moscow-based Communist University of the Peoples of the West, known in Yiddish as the Mayrevke.
title: Margolis, Osher Leibovich
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Aksenfeld, Yisroel
related: Anticosmopolitan Campaign
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Eynikayt
related: Haskalah
related: Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Kahal
related: Kiev
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rivne
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Wiener, Meir

Melcer, Róża
described at: Melcer Roza
has abstract: (1880–1934), political figure. Born Róża Pomeranc in Tarnopol, Pomeranc married Izaak Melcer, legal adviser for the state railways in Lwów, in 1906 (the marriage was childless). Melcer studied at universities in Vienna and Paris, and also spent three years in Leipzig at a conservatory. She was fluent in several languages.
title: Melcer, Róża
related: Chwila
related: Galicia
related: Ivano-Frankivs’k
related: L’viv
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: Ternopil’
related: Ukraine
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Menasheh of Ilya
described at: Menasheh of Ilya
has abstract: (1767–1831), rabbi, thinker, and harbinger of the Haskalah. Born in the small town of Smorgon’, Belorussia, Menasheh of Ilya married at age 15 but was divorced after a short time; he remarried at 17 and went to live with his new wife in her hometown, Ilya. From a very young age he attracted attention as a self-taught scholar of exceptional ability; he subsequently adopted the approach to study pursued by the school of the Gaon of Vilna.
title: Menasheh of Ilya
related: Belarus
related: Brody
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Haskalah
related: Kaliningrad
related: Lefin, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Zamość

Mendelson, Stanisław
described at: Mendelson Stanisław
has abstract: (1858–1913), socialist, publisher, writer, and editor of the first Polish-language Jewish daily newspaper. Born to a well-to-do assimilated banking family in Warsaw, Stanisław Mendelsohn attended medical school. As a student at Warsaw University in 1875–1877, he helped to establish the first Polish socialist circle.
title: Mendelson, Stanisław
related: Assimilation
related: Banking
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sokolow, Naḥum
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Merin, Mosheh
described at: Merin Mosheh
has abstract: (1906–1943), Jewish council leader in Sosnowiec during World War II. A businessman active in local politics, Mosheh Merin became a Zionist representative on the Sosnowiec Jewish community council in January 1939. When the Germans occupied the city on 4 September of that year, he presented himself as the council’s representative, although he was not officially its chair. That same month, however, he was appointed head of the Sosnowiec Jewish council.
title: Merin, Mosheh
related: Będzin
related: Bund
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Labor Camps
related: Silesia
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Messerer Family
described at: Messerer Family
has abstract: Russian family of dancers and actors. Asaf Messerer (1903–1992) studied privately with Mikhail Mordkin in 1919 in Moscow and was later singled out by Aleksandr Gorsky, who placed him in an experimental class at the Bolshoi Ballet School (from which Messerer graduated in 1921). He then joined the ballet as a principal dancer.
title: Messerer Family
related: Latvia
related: Moscow

Mezei, Ernő
described at: Mezei Erno
has abstract: (1851–1932), politician, journalist, writer, and member of the Hungarian parliament. The younger brother of Mór Mezei, Ernő Mezei studied law in Pest and worked as a journalist from the time of his youth. His original family name was Grünfeld, which he changed in 1875 together with the rest of his family (his brother Mór had already taken this step in 1860). By the age of 20 he was already working as a political analyst for the opposition newspaper Ellenőr. Three years later, when Egyetértés, the leading daily of the constitutional opposition (Independence Party, the most nationalistic of the liberal parliamentary parties) was founded, Mezei joined its staff as an editorial writer. During the period 1875 to 1877, he published several booklets on contemporary political issues (on government activity, civil marriage, and the like). He had therefore already established himself as a known publicist in the capital before embarking on a political career in 1881.
title: Mezei, Ernő
related: Budapest
related: Mezei, Mór
related: Tiszaeszlár Blood Libel

Mieses, Fabius
described at: Mieses Fabius
has abstract: (1824–1898), poet, translator, and essayist. Fabius Mieses was born in Brody, Galicia, where his father exposed him to the ideas of the Hebrew Haskalah. As a youth, Mieses studied philosophy with David Lokatsher, a former student of Naḥman Krochmal. In 1840, Mieses went to the home of his father’s uncle Yitsḥak Mieses (a philosopher and researcher of Kabbalah) in Kraków; subsequently, Fabius married his relative’s daughter.
title: Mieses, Fabius
related: Brody
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Krochmal, Naḥman
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Magid, Ha-
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Seminary
related: Wrocław

Miesięcznik Żydowski
described at: Miesiecznik Zydowski
has abstract: Polish-language Jewish academic journal. Published by the Menora publishing house and edited by Zygmunt Ellenberg, Miesięcznik Żydowski (Jewish Monthly) appeared in Warsaw between 1930 and 1935; the periodical targeted Jewish and Polish intelligentsia. Miesięcznik Żydowski’s editorial offices were located in Łódź, but its administration and press were in Warsaw. As the journal was financed by subscription, the publishers found it difficult to maintain its continuity. They tried to remedy the problem by printing double issues; however, in 1934, publication was suspended for six months. In all, a total of 46 issues were published.
title: Miesięcznik Żydowski
related: Łódź
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Bałaban, Majer
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brandstaetter, Roman
related: Friedman, Filip
related: Guilds
related: Habimah
related: Hartglas, Apolinary
related: Hebrew Literature
related: About this Article (Historiography)
related: Industry
related: Kafka, Franz
related: Kanfer, Mojżesz
related: Klaczko, Julian
related: Korczak, Janusz
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lestschinsky, Jakob
related: Mahler, Raphael
related: Mieses, Matthias
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Polish Literature
related: Przemyśl
related: Ringelblum, Emanuel
related: Roth, Joseph
related: Schiper, Ignacy
related: Schorr, Mojżesz
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Stein, Edmund
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Vilner Trupe
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Migdal, Arkadii Benediktovich
described at: Migdal Arkadii Benediktovich
has abstract: (1911–1991), theoretical and nuclear physicist. A member of the USSR Academy of Sciences from 1966, Migdal was born in Lida, Belarussia. He began his studies at the Leningrad State University Department of Physics in 1929, only to be expelled in 1931 because of nonproletarian origins. He completed his university studies in the evening division. From 1931 to 1936, while working as an engineer at a factory, Migdal was able to carry out some scientific work. In 1936 he became a graduate student at the Leningrad Physics and Technical Institute, where he wrote and defended his dissertation for the degree of candidate of sciences.
title: Migdal, Arkadii Benediktovich
related: Landau, Lev Davidovich
related: Moscow
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Mints, Isaak Izrailevich
described at: Mints Isaak Izrailevich
has abstract: (1896–1991), historian and Communist Party activist. Isaak Mints was born in the village of Krinichki, Ekaterinoslav province. As a youth, he participated in the revolutionary movement and circulated propaganda to workers in Verkhnedneprovsk and Ekaterinoslav. In 1917, he joined the Bolshevik Party and became a Red Guard, joining the Red Army in 1918. He finished the war as a commissar of the Chervonnii Cossack corps.
title: Mints, Isaak Izrailevich
related: Anticosmopolitan Campaign
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Moscow
related: Russian Civil War

Morgenshtern, Yankev
described at: Morgenshtern Yankev
has abstract: (1820–1890), Yiddish author. Born in Piotrków, Poland, Yankev Morgenshtern subsequently moved to Łódź. He acquired the nickname Yankl Lerer (Yankl the Teacher) from his job teaching poor women the rudiments of elementary Hebrew and Yiddish writing. To make ends meet, he worked as a wedding jester and tried his hand at matchmaking. He later used the pseudonym Y. Katchko for his writings.
title: Morgenshtern, Yankev
related: Łódź
related: Demons
related: Piotrków
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sabbath
related: Satire
related: Trunk, Yekhiel Yeshaye
related: Warsaw
related: Yung-teater

Mosheh Me’ir ben El‘azar Perles of Prague
described at: Mosheh Meir ben Elazar Perles of Prague
has abstract: (1666–1739), communal scribe, preacher, author, and burial society official; a descendant of Yehudah Löw (Maharal of Prague) and an ancestor of El‘azar Fleckeles. A native of Prague, Me’ir Perles studied under Avraham Gombiner (the “Magen Avraham”) in Kalisz. He traveled through Germany and Holland, working for Samson Wertheimer (a court Jew and rabbi in Vienna) and remaining under his patronage after returning to Prague.
title: Mosheh Me’ir ben El‘azar Perles of Prague
related: Fleckeles, El‘azar ben David
related: Golem Legend
related: Gombiner, Avraham Abele ben Ḥayim ha-Levi
related: Kalisz
related: Prague
related: Purim
related: Sabbath
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el

Muneles, Otto
described at: Muneles Otto
has abstract: (1894–1967), Hebraist and historian. Otto Muneles was descended from an old Jewish family in Prague, records of which date to the sixteenth century; one of his ancestors was Avraham Muneles, who wrote an index to the Shulḥan ‘arukh. From 1904 to 1912, Muneles attended the German gymnasium in Prague and studied halakhic literature at a Talmud Torah school. From 1912 to 1915, he studied classical philology at the German University in Prague and continued to pursue Judaic studies.
title: Muneles, Otto
related: Altneuschul
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Hock, Simon
related: Langer, Jiří
related: Names and Naming
related: Prague
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Terezín

Naiditsch, Yitsḥak Asher
described at: Naiditsch Yitshak Asher
has abstract: (1868–1949), manufacturer, Zionist activist, and philanthropist. Born in Pinsk where his father was a distiller, Yitsḥak Naiditsch was raised as a Karlin Hasid, though when he completed his heder education he was taught modern subjects and Russian by a tutor. At age 15, Naiditsch joined the Ḥibat Tsiyon movement and formed a friendship with Chaim Weizmann. In 1889, Naiditsch settled in Moscow, where he built factories to produce liquor and invented a method to extract alcohol from potatoes. The Russian Ministry of Finance sent him abroad to promote trade.
title: Naiditsch, Yitsḥak Asher
related: Heder
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Karlin-Stolin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Moscow
related: Pinsk
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Weizmann, Chaim
related: Zeman, Ha-
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Nakhalnik, Urke
described at: Nakhalnik Urke
has abstract: (1897–1942?), pseudonym of Yitskhok Farberovitsh, writer of books on the Polish Jewish criminal underworld. Urke Nakhalnik was born in the Łomża region in 1897 to a middle-class family. As a boy, he went to heder and later attended the local yeshiva with the intention of becoming a rabbi. At the age of 14, following the death of his mother, he ran away to Vilna, where he taught Hebrew and Bible. While there, he was caught stealing from his employer and was sentenced to prison for a short time. Following his release, he worked at a variety of jobs, including as an assistant to a wagon driver. This association led him into the company of professional thieves and criminals. From that point on, he spent much time in and out of prison.
title: Nakhalnik, Urke
related: Łomża
related: Anielewicz, Mordekhai
related: Haynt
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: Riga
related: Argots (Talk)
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: YIVO
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Năsăud
described at: Nasaud
has abstract: Town in northern Romania, on the Someşul Mare River, 24 km north-northwest of the city of Bistrița. The first documented reference to Năsăud (Ger., Nussdorf; Hun., Naszód) dates to 1264. In 1762, imperial authorities turned this small market town into the center for a regiment of frontier guards; it remained as such until 1851.
title: Năsăud
related: Cluj
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Orthodoxy
related: Romania
related: Transylvania

Nepomniashchii, Shlomo Iakov Moiseevich
described at: Nepomniashchii Shlomo Iakov Moiseevich
has abstract: (1896–1930), publicist and literary critic. Born in Krolevets, Ukraine, Nepomniashchii was raised in a traditional Jewish family that after numerous moves finally settled in Poltava. His father was a supporter of Ḥoveve Tsiyon who devoted special attention to the Jewish education of his eldest son. Nepomniashchii showed an inclination for writing at an early age. While still a child he took part in editing a children’s magazine. As he grew older he was sent to a nearby yeshiva where, along with studying Talmud and Jewish law, he read Hebrew poets Ḥayim Naḥman Bialik and Sha’ul Tchernichowsky.
title: Nepomniashchii, Shlomo Iakov Moiseevich
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Evsektsiia
related: Kiev
related: Moscow
related: Pogroms
related: Society for the Settlement of Jewish Toilers on the Land
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Tsherikover, Elye
related: Ukraine
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Olitski Brothers
described at: Olitski Brothers
has abstract: Writers, poets, and educators. Born in Trisk (Turzysk), Volhynia, the Olitski brothers—Leyb, Borukh, and Mates—each made meaningful contributions to Yiddish education and literature. The eldest, Leyb (1895–1975), was an educator who wrote novels and short stories for adults and children. The second brother, Borukh (1907–1941), had a strong reputation as a poet and teacher of Yiddish language and literature. Mates (1915– ), the youngest, is a poet and educator, first in Europe and later in New York.
title: Olitski Brothers
related: Łódź
related: Bund
related: Finkelshteyn, Leo
related: Heder
related: Hrodna
related: Literarishe Bleter
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rapoport, Yoshue
related: TSYSHO
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw

Oshry, Ephraim
described at: Oshry Ephraim
has abstract: (1914–2003), rabbi and halakhic authority, known primarily for his book She’elot u-teshuvot mi-ma‘amakim, a collection of halakhic rulings issued in the Kovno (Kaunas) ghetto during the Holocaust period. Ephraim (Efroim) Oshry was born in Kupishok, in the district of Panevėžys (Ponevezh) in Lithuania. He studied in the finest yeshivas in Lithuania—Khelm, Ponevezh, and Keneset Yisra’el in Slobodka. Oshry discussed halakhic issues and the clarification of Talmudic passages with prominent authorities, including Ḥayim Ozer Grodzenski and Avraham Duber Shapira, with whom he maintained a particularly close relationship.
title: Oshry, Ephraim
related: Grodzenski, Ḥayim Ozer
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kaunas
related: Lithuania
related: Memory
related: Panevėžys
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Perlmutter, Avraham Tsevi
described at: Perlmutter Avraham Tsevi
has abstract: (1844/46–1930), rabbi, Polish Sejm deputy. A child prodigy, Avraham Tsevi Perlmutter was ordained as a rabbi at age 14 and was a disciple of some of the leading rabbis of his era, including Ḥayim Halberstam of Sandz (Nowy Sącz), Shim‘on Sofer of Kraków, and Dov Berush Meisels of Warsaw. At first Perlmutter served as rabbi in a series of small communities, including Osięciny, Pabianice, and Raciąż. While officiating in Raciąż, he learned Russian at the urging of the provincial governor, but only after receiving the approval of his father and of the rebbe of Gostynin, to whom he was close even though Perlmutter was not a Hasid.
title: Perlmutter, Avraham Tsevi
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Meisels, Dov Berush
related: Mohilewer, Shemu’el
related: Radom
related: Sandz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Warsaw

Pines, Yeḥi’el Mikha’el
described at: Pines Yehiel Mikhael
has abstract: (1843–1913), Torah scholar and early advocate of religious Zionism. Yeḥi’el Mikha’el Pines was born into a well-to-do family in Ruzhany in the district of Grodno, where he received both a traditional and a general education. From his early years, Pines was a prolific essayist and sharp-witted polemicist; as early as 1867–1869 his articles appeared in the pages of the Hebrew periodicals Ha-Melits, Ha-Magid, and Ha-Levanon.
title: Pines, Yeḥi’el Mikha’el
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Hrodna
related: Land of Israel
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Magid, Ha-
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Mizraḥi
related: Reform, Religious
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Pomeranchuk, Isaak Iakovlevich
described at: Pomeranchuk Isaak Iakovlevich
has abstract: (1913–1966), theoretical physicist, member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and professor. Born in Warsaw to an educated family (his father was a chemical engineer and his mother a doctor), Isaak Pomeranchuk moved with them first to Rostov-on-Don, and then to the Donbass. He began his studies at the Ivanovo Institute of Chemical Technology, transferring to the Department of Physics and Mechanics of the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute; he completed his degree in 1936.
title: Pomeranchuk, Isaak Iakovlevich
related: Landau, Lev Davidovich
related: Moscow
related: Rostov-on-Don
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw

Popper Family
described at: Popper Family
has abstract: Merchants and communal leaders in Bohemia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Popper family came from Bresnitz (Břesnice), a commercial junction in southern Bohemia owned by the Kolowrat barons, one of the few noble families of Slavic descent that remained in Bohemia after 1620. During the seventeenth century, the Popper family provided a range of services to the Kolowrats, particularly granting credit. Under Kolowrat patronage, the Popper family business expanded substantially, also moving into commerce.
title: Popper Family
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Credit
related: Economic Life
related: Familiants Laws
related: Galicia
related: Industry
related: Prague
related: Trade

Possession and Exorcism
described at: Possession and Exorcism
has abstract: The concept of possession by and exorcism of deceased souls (dibukim; dybbuks) who inhabited the bodies of unwilling hosts is based on the kabbalistic concept of gilgul (transmigration), found in the Zohar and other medieval sources. ‘Ibur neshamah (soul impregnation) is a related concept also found in kabbalistic sources; it refers to the penetration of a kabbalist’s soul by the additional soul of an ancient sage who aids him in a spiritual quest. ‘Ibur neshamah was valued as a positive, highly prized form of possession.
title: Possession and Exorcism
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Ba‘ale Shem
related: Cinema
related: Dybbuk, The
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Land of Israel
related: Prague
related: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl

Rabinowicz, Oskar K.
described at: Rabinowicz Oskar K
has abstract: (1902–1969), educator, journalist, and Zionist politician. Oskar Rabinowicz was born in Aspern, Austria, but was raised in Boskovice, Moravia. His father, a Hebrew teacher and cantor, had grown up in the household of the Sadegora rebbe but gave his son a secular education.
title: Rabinowicz, Oskar K.
related: Boskovice
related: Brno
related: Hickl, Max
related: Jabotinsky, Vladimir
related: Prague
related: Revisionist Zionists
related: Selbstwehr
related: Sokolow, Naḥum
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Race Science
described at: Race Science
has abstract: Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century term for physical anthropology, or the study of human difference, with scientists proceeding from the common assumption that Europeans were racially superior to non-European peoples. Jews played a central role in race science both as practitioners and objects of study. As many Jews were doctors, they were especially well placed to become race scientists and in a position to combat claims of inherent Jewish difference and/or degeneracy. The rise of antisemitism at the end of the nineteenth century provided further impetus for Jews to employ race science because antisemites used its “evidence” to justify anti-Jewish prejudice.
title: Race Science
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Ashkenaz
related: Assimilation
related: Khazaria
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sephardim
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Rafalovich, Artur Germanovich
described at: Rafalovich Artur Germanovich
has abstract: (1853–1921), economist and financial agent for the Russian government. Although Artur Rafalovich was born and raised in Odessa, he lived in France from the 1880s on, where he wrote a series of economic studies. His analyses remain valuable today as a resource for learning about the economic history of Europe.
title: Rafalovich, Artur Germanovich
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917

Reghin
described at: Reghin
has abstract: Town in eastern Transylvania, at the confluence of the Mureş and Gurghiu Rivers, 32 km north-northeast of the city of Târgu Mureş. The first reference to Reghin (Ger., Sächsisch-Reen; Lat., Regun; Hun., Szászrégen) dates to 1228. In the second half of the nineteenth century, it experienced substantial economic development and was designated as a free royal town in 1863.
title: Reghin
related: Bucovina
related: Cluj
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Lichtenstein, Hillel
related: Orthodoxy
related: Romania
related: Târgu Mureş
related: Transylvania

Reifmann, Ya‘akov
described at: Reifmann Yaakov
has abstract: (1818–1894), Hebrew writer and scholar, historian of ancient Jewish literature, the Bible, and Jewish philosophy. Ya‘akov Reifmann was born in Łagów, Poland. He spent his childhood in nearby Opatów, where he acquired a basic religious education, but subsequently spent most of his life—including the days of his extensive and highly diversified scholastic achievements—in Szczebrzeszyn, near Zamość, where he relocated after marrying. There he was introduced to classic Jewish philosophical literature and was profoundly influenced by Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed. Reifmann, who lived most of his life in poverty, learned German on his own, and, like others who followed the Haskalah, read the writings of German philosophers, which introduced him to scholarly research methods.
title: Reifmann, Ya‘akov
related: Buber, Salomon
related: Haskalah
related: Magid, Ha-
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: Opatów
related: Passover
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Shaḥar, Ha-
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Zamość

Rényi, Alfréd
described at: Renyi Alfred
has abstract: (1921–1970), mathematician. Alfréd Rényi was born in Budapest. His father, Artúr, was a mechanical engineer and translator; his mother, Barbara (Borka), was a photographer and the daughter of philosopher Bernát Alexander (1850–1927). It was from his mother’s side that Rényi acquired a love of literature and Greek philosophy; in secondary school his studies focused more on humanities than on sciences.
title: Rényi, Alfréd
related: Alexander, Bernát
related: Budapest
related: Debrecen
related: Fejér, Lipót

Roth, Mosheh Aryeh
described at: Roth Mosheh Aryeh
has abstract: (1845–1906), rabbi and Zionist. A disciple of Rabbis Esriel Hildesheimer of Eisenstadt and Avraham Shemu’el Binyamin Sofer, Mosheh Aryeh Roth was born in Hanusfalva, Hungary, and married the daughter of his uncle, Mordechai Roth, the head of the Jewish community in Hunsdorf. After his marriage, Roth settled in Altendorf, near the Galician border.
title: Roth, Mosheh Aryeh
related: Eisenstadt
related: Glasner, Mosheh Shemu’el
related: Hildesheimer, Esriel
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Orthodoxy
related: Pápa
related: Sofer, Avraham Shemu’el Binyamin
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Rozental-Shnayderman, Ester
described at: Rozental-Shnayderman Ester
has abstract: (1902–1989), Yiddish educator, journalist, and memoir writer. Ester Shnayderman (Shneyderman; Shneiderman; Rosenthal) was born in Częstochowa, Poland. After receiving a primary education at a Russian elementary school and passing external examinations for secondary education, she studied at Warsaw University and worked at the Central Yiddish School Organization (TSYSHO). In 1926, she was sent to the Soviet Union, where she soon began to work with Yoysef Liberberg, director of the Kiev-based Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture (IJPC). Like many other activists in the left wing of the Labor Zionist movement, which had been her initial ideological affiliation, she joined the Communist Party. As a graduate student, she headed the Communist Party organization at the IJPC, later becoming a research fellow at the institute’s Pedagogical Section and also lecturing at the Kiev Pedagogical Institute.
title: Rozental-Shnayderman, Ester
related: Autobiography and Memoir
related: Birobidzhan
related: Erik, Maks
related: Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture
related: Kiev
related: Liberberg, Yoysef
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Shtif, Nokhem
related: Spivak, Elye
related: TSYSHO
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw
related: Wiener, Meir
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Rubin, Hadasah
described at: Rubin Hadasah
has abstract: (1912–2003), Yiddish poet, editor, and cultural activist. Hadasah Rubin was born into a poor family in Iampol’, Ukraine. In 1921, her family moved to Zbarazh in Galicia and later to Kremenets, where she finished high school. In her youth Rubin was an ardent member of the Communist Party, and consequently spent a few years in a Polish prison. She emerged with her revolutionary zeal intact and a bundle of poems under her arm. Traces of this youthful restlessness, which pervaded her early political sensibilities, stayed present in her work throughout her literary career. Even though she later renounced communism, she maintained her original ideals, namely freedom, equality, and friendship among nations.
title: Rubin, Hadasah
related: Communism
related: Galicia
related: Hofshteyn, Dovid
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Reyzen, Zalmen
related: Sfard, Dovid
related: Sutzkever, Avrom
related: Ukraine
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Yung-Vilne

Sachs, Feliks
described at: Sachs Feliks
has abstract: (1869–1935), Polish socialist, Yiddish writer and editor, and physician. Feliks Sachs was born in Warsaw to a lower middle-class Jewish family. A native Yiddish speaker, he completed gymnasium in 1888 and subsequently entered the faculty of medicine at Warsaw University, earning his degree in 1895. At the university, Sachs attended illegal meetings of radical students and became a convinced Marxist. In 1898, he joined the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) and in 1899 sat on the executive committee of the party’s Warsaw division. Sachs coedited the party’s central organ, Robotnik, with Józef Piłsudski in 1899–1900.
title: Sachs, Feliks
related: Bund
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Salonta
described at: Salonta
has abstract: Town in the extreme west of Romania, in the Crişurilor Plain, 14 km east of the border with Hungary and 40 km southwest of Oradea. The first written reference to Salonta (Hun., Nagyszalonta) dates to 1332 and was found in a papal document. Destroyed by the Turks in 1598, the town was rebuilt by the free soldiers of Prince István Bocskay in 1606. The town was ravaged by severe fires in 1658 and 1847, and by floods in 1816.
title: Salonta
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Oradea
related: Orthodoxy
related: Romania
related: Transylvania
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Sava, Iosif
described at: Sava Iosif
has abstract: (1933–1998), musicologist, radio and television host, and journalist. Iosif Sava (originally Segal) was born in Iaşi to a family of musicians—his grandfather, Iosif Segal (1868–1927), after whom he was named, was a violinist and a close friend and collaborator of Avrom Goldfadn, the founder of the Yiddish theater. Sava’s father, Bernard Segal (1897–1958), was a violist in the Iaşi philharmonic who also made his mark as a composer and conductor at the Jewish theater in Iaşi.
title: Sava, Iosif
related: Bucharest
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Iaşi
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Theater)

Schmelkes Family
described at: Schmelkes Family
has abstract: Prominent rabbinic family. Several members of the Schmelkes family served as rabbis and community leaders in Galicia from the middle of the nineteenth century. Most prominent among them were the rabbis of Przemyśl: Yitsḥak Yehudah Schmelkes (1828–1905) and his nephew Gedalyah Schmelkes (1857–1928).
title: Schmelkes Family
related: Galicia
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Kolomyia
related: L’viv
related: Mizraḥi
related: Przemyśl
related: Tarnów
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Schnirelmann, Lev
described at: Schnirelmann Lev
has abstract: (1905–1938), Soviet mathematician who contributed to the calculus of variations, topology, and number theory. Lev Schnirelmann went to Moscow in 1921, aged 16, and immediately enrolled at Moscow University. He was admitted without a formal high school diploma because mathematics professor Nikolai Luzin was impressed by his potential. Soon Schnirelmann became an active member of Luzitania, a group of young and talented mathematicians that formed around their professor. Later this group gave rise to the powerful Moscow mathematical school.
title: Schnirelmann, Lev
related: Moscow
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Schwimmer, Rózsika
described at: Schwimmer Rozsika
has abstract: (1877–1948), feminist, journalist, and politician. Rózsika (Róza) Schwimmer was born in Budapest into a middle-class Jewish family; her father was a produce merchant. Schwimmer studied at an evening commerce school in Temesvár (Timişoara, Romania) in 1893–1894. Following the bankruptcy of her father’s business, her family moved back to Budapest. There, she first worked as a governess and then as a bookkeeper and a correspondent clerk. She also wrote for various journals such as the Pester Lloyd. From 1904, she supported herself as a journalist and lecturer. From 1911 until 1913, Schwimmer was married to a journalist whose surname was Bédy.
title: Schwimmer, Rózsika
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Romania
related: Timişoara

Seini
described at: Seini
has abstract: Town in northern Romania in the county of Maramureş, on the Someşului Plain at the southwestern foot of the Gutîi Mountains and on the Seinel River, 48 km northwest of Baia Mare. The first documented reference to Seini (Hun., Szinyérváralja or Szinérváralja) dates to 1334, and the first indication of a Jewish population comes from the second half of the eighteenth century. A census of Jews in Maramureş in 1768–1769 recorded 2 Jewish families with 6 people living in Seini. In 1839–1840 there were 151 Jews; a century later, the census of 1930 counted 673 Jews (13% of the total town population). The Jewish community was established by the end of the 1700s, with its own rabbi, and it later affiliated strongly with Orthodoxy. In 1885, it became the administrative center for the surrounding rural communities.
title: Seini
related: Baia Mare
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Romania
related: Transylvania

Sel’vinskii, Il’ia L’vovich
described at: Selvinskii Ilia Lvovich
has abstract: (1899–1968), Russian poet, playwright, and novelist. Il’ia Selvinskii’s achievements include the epic poem Ulialaevshchina (The Lay of Ulyalaev; 1924, pub. 1927) and the novel in verse Pushtorg (Fur Trade; 1928). He was one of the first Soviet poets to write about the Holocaust.
title: Sel’vinskii, Il’ia L’vovich
related: Birobidzhan
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Krymchaks
related: Moscow
related: Russian Civil War

Shalnikov, Aleksandr Iosifovich
described at: Shalnikov Aleksandr Iosifovich
has abstract: (1905–1986), physicist, member of the USSR Academy of Sciences from 1979. Born in Saint Petersburg, Shal’nikov grew up in a family associated with the Russian intelligentsia. One of his childhood friends was the composer Dmitri Shostakovich. In his youth Shal’nikov was drawn to literature, and in the 1920s he attended lectures given in the literary circle of Nikolai Gumilev.
title: Shalnikov, Aleksandr Iosifovich
related: Moscow
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Shapiro, Kalonymus Kalmish ben Elimelekh of Piaseczno
described at: Shapiro Kalonymus Kalmish ben Elimelekh of Piaseczno
has abstract: (1889–1943), Hasidic master and educational theorist; communal leader of special prominence during the Holocaust. Son of Elimelekh Shapiro of Grodzisk and a descendant of Yisra’el Hapstein (the Magid of Kozhenits [Pol., Kozienice]), Kalonymus Kalmish Shapiro was the rabbi of Piaseczno, a small town just outside Warsaw; he later moved his main residence to Warsaw.
title: Shapiro, Kalonymus Kalmish ben Elimelekh of Piaseczno
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Yisra’el ben Shabetai of Kozhenits
related: Zeitlin Family

Shvadron, Shalom Mordekhai
described at: Shvadron Shalom Mordekhai
has abstract: (1835–1911), rabbi and halakhic authority. Shalom Mordekhai Shvadron was born in Złoczów, Galicia. At the age of 16, he married in Biały Kamień and for two years was supported by his father-in-law. He then returned to Złoczów and for several years engaged in commerce, trading in wine, timber, flax, and cattle.
title: Shvadron, Shalom Mordekhai
related: Belz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Buchach
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Stratin Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zhidachov-Komarno Hasidic Dynasty

Solodar’, Tsesar’ Solomonovich
described at: Solodar Tsesar Solomonovich
has abstract: (1909–1992), Soviet poet, playwright, and polemicist. A graduate of the law faculty of the Kiev Institute of Economics (1930), Tsesar’ Solodar’ was a war correspondent during World War II, and joined the Communist Party in 1943.
title: Solodar’, Tsesar’ Solomonovich
related: Kiev
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Solomon, Dumitru
described at: Solomon Dumitru
has abstract: (1932–2003), playwright and critic. Dumitru (Dolfi) Solomon attended elementary school and high school in Bârlad, Romania. After graduating from Bucharest University (1955), he worked as an editor for Gazeta literară (1955–1962) and Luceafărul (Evening Star; 1962–1964). He made his mark in literary society with essays and critical studies, contributing to Romania’s major journals in the field. In 1964, he began a career in cinematography, first as a director at the Film Studios of Bucharest (until 1972), and then, until 1989, as a script reader and executive producer. At the same time, he was a prolific playwright and drama critic. After 1989, he served as editor in chief of the theatrical culture reviews Teatrul, azi (Theater Today) and Scena (Stage).
title: Solomon, Dumitru
related: Bârlad
related: Bucharest
related: Romania

Sol’ts, Aron Aleksandrovich
described at: Solts Aron Aleksandrovich
has abstract: (1872–1945), revolutionary and Soviet public figure. Aron Sol’ts was born near Vilna to a well-established merchant family. While a student in secondary school, he became active in worker revolutionary circles in Vilna. In 1895, Sol’ts enrolled in Saint Petersburg University and simultaneously began studying Marxism; in 1898 he joined the Rossiiskaia Sotsial-Demokraticheskaia Rabochaia Partiia (Russian Social Democratic Workers Party) and helped distribute the illegal paper Rabochee znamia (Workers’ Banner). He was expelled from the university for participating in the student demonstrations in 1899.
title: Sol’ts, Aron Aleksandrovich
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Martov, L.
related: Moscow
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius

Sportcajtung
described at: Sportcajtung
has abstract: Yiddish-language sports periodical. The passion of a significant number of Jews in interwar Poland for organized sports was reflected in the pages of Sportcajtung (Sport News). Edited by L. Koprowicz and published in Warsaw between April 1931 and August 1939, this biweekly, illustrated periodical played an important role in encouraging enthusiasm for sports. Earlier attempts to publish weeklies of the same title in Warsaw and Łódź in 1924 had been unsuccessful.
title: Sportcajtung
related: Łódź
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rotholc, Stanisław
related: About this Article (Sport)
related: Warsaw

Stein, August
described at: Stein August
has abstract: (1854–1937), Hebrew scholar, translator, journalist, editor, and a founder of the Czech Jewish movement. August Stein was born in Nový Knín, near Dobříš, into a family of a liberal rabbi and teacher of religion. Stein studied law in Prague at the Charles Ferdinand University and received a doctorate in 1880. As a student, he worked as a clerk in the law office of Alois Zucker, a criminal law professor. At the same time, he served as private tutor to Bohuš Rieger, future professor and son of František Ladislav Rieger, leader of the Old Czech Party. Stein originally supported this party before becoming a Social Democrat.
title: Stein, August
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Prague
related: Sicher, Gustav
related: Silesia

Sterian, Margareta
described at: Sterian Margareta
has abstract: (1897–1992), painter, set designer, woman of letters, and translator. Born in Buzău, Romania, to a middle-class family, Margareta Sterian attended the Ranson Academy and the École du Louvre in Paris between 1926 and 1929. On her return to Romania in 1929, she studied sociology at the University of Bucharest and participated in ethnographic research conducted by Dimitrie Gusti in the village of Drăguş. As a result of this experience, she produced a series of portraits, titled Copii din Drăguş (The Children of Drăguş), which was exhibited with other works at her first personal exhibition, organized in 1929 at the Mozart Hall in Bucharest.
title: Sterian, Margareta
related: Bucharest
related: Budapest
related: Iancu, Marcel
related: Maxy, Max Hermann
related: Romania
related: Warsaw

Szabó, Ervin
described at: Szabo Ervin
has abstract: (1877–1918), librarian and socialist theoretician. Ervin Szabó was born in northern Hungary in a region that is now part of Slovakia. He changed his name from Samuel Armin Schlesinger and converted to Calvinism while still in his teens. Later, as a revolutionary, he expressed no attachment either to Judaism or Christianity. Szabó studied at the faculties of law and administration at universities in Budapest and Vienna, and earned a doctorate in 1903. Beginning in 1904 he worked as founder and director of the Budapest Municipal Library, where he adopted the model of the American public library, unknown until then in Hungary. Even today, the Hungarian library network remains named for him.
title: Szabó, Ervin
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jászi, Oszkár
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Slovakia

Szabolcsi, Lajos
described at: Szabolcsi Lajos
has abstract: (1889–1943), editor and publisher. Lajos Szabolcsi was the son of journalist and editor Miksa Szabolcsi (1857–1915), the brother of music historian Bence Szabolcsi (1899–1973), and the father of literary historian Miklós Szabolcsi (1921–2000). Lajos completed his studies in Hungarian and French at the Philological Faculty of Pázmány Péter University in Budapest and then studied in Munich and Paris. He received his doctorate in philosophy in 1907 in Budapest. Upon completion of this degree, Szabolcsi started working for the Jewish weekly Egyenlőség, edited by his father. He himself became associate editor in 1911 and full editor in 1915 upon his father’s death, remaining in this position until the paper was banned in 1938. Szabolcsi was already very ill when he was taken into the forced labor service in 1940–1941.
title: Szabolcsi, Lajos
related: Budapest
related: Kiss, József
related: Sándor, Pál
related: Szabolcsi, Miksa
related: Vázsonyi, Vilmos

Szereszewski Family
described at: Szereszewski Family
has abstract: Bankers and entrepreneurs in Lithuania and Warsaw. The family’s most prominent members were Moses David Szereszewski (also spelled Szereszowski; 1844–1915), a banker and businessman in Warsaw; and his son Rafał (1869–1948), who was a banker, businessman, and senator of the Republic of Poland.
title: Szereszewski Family
related: Bałaban, Majer
related: Banking
related: Credit
related: Hrodna
related: Lithuania
related: Nasz Przegląd
related: Natanson Family
related: ORT
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Warsaw

Szomory, Dezső
described at: Szomory Dezso
has abstract: (1869–1944), writer and journalist. Born Mór Weisz in the crowded Jewish quarter of old Pest, Dezső Szomory reinvented himself as an ivory-tower aesthete and a dandy who knew little about the world of crass reality. Of course he knew a great deal about it, and let his readers know this, though always in a teasing, suggestive manner. In 1890, to avoid being conscripted into the army, he fled to Paris, and stayed there for 17 years. In A párizsi regény (The Paris Story; 1929), he evokes the years he spent abroad with a mixture of lyricism and irony, which makes this his most consistently satisfying book.
title: Szomory, Dezső
related: Budapest
related: Circumcision
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: About this Article (Hungary)

About this Article (Talk)
described at: Talk
has abstract: To treat the many types of talk characteristic of Jews of Eastern Europe, this entry begins with a general overview, which discusses speech in relation to the multilinguism of East European Jewish culture, followed by four more specific articles: Storytelling; Professional Talkers; Blessings, Curses, and Other Expressions; and Argots. For further general discussion, see Language; for sermonizing, see Preachers and Preaching; for jesters, see Badkhonim. See also Humor, article on Oral Tradition; Proverbs; and Riddles.
title: About this Article (Talk)
related: Badkhonim
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: About this Article (Language)
related: Preachers and Preaching
related: Proverbs
related: Riddles

Tamares, Aharon Shemu’el
described at: Tamares Aharon Shemuel
has abstract: (1869–1931), rabbi, essayist, and advocate of nonviolence. Born in a village in the Grodno district, Aharon Shemu’el Tamares (who often signed his publications with the pseudonym Aḥad ha-Rabanim ha-Margishim) studied at Kolel ha-Perushim in Kovno, followed by two years at the Volozhin yeshiva. In 1893, he became the rabbi of the village of Milejczyce (in the Białystok region), succeeding his father-in-law.
title: Tamares, Aharon Shemu’el
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Beilis, Mendel
related: Białystok
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brest
related: Folkists
related: Fraynd, Der
related: Hrodna
related: Kaunas
related: Kolot
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Odessa
related: Passover
related: Sabbath
related: Seminary
related: Tchernowitz, Ḥayim
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Yud, Der
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Tarle, Evgenii Viktorovich
described at: Tarle Evgenii Viktorovich
has abstract: (1874–1955), historian. In 1893, Evgenii Tarle entered the Kiev University Historical-Philological Department. As a young man, he drew close to the Social Democrats and published articles in left-wing newspapers. In May 1900, he was arrested at an illegal gathering. After a month and a half of imprisonment, Tarle was exiled to Kherson province, then to Warsaw. There he finished his master’s degree, having written his thesis on Thomas More’s social views. In 1903, Tarle was appointed privatdocent at Saint Petersburg University, where he became one of the most popular lecturers. In 1913–1918 he held a professorship at Iur’ev University.
title: Tarle, Evgenii Viktorovich
related: Anticosmopolitan Campaign
related: Kiev
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw

Tencer, Pál
described at: Tencer Pal
has abstract: (Tenczer; 1836–1905), journalist and public figure. Pál Tencer was a pivotal figure of nineteenth-century Hungarian Jewry, or at least of the Neolog (Reform) community in Budapest, although much of the information available about him would not make this evident. A true portrait of him inevitably seems vague, illustrated by the fact that he used a varying spelling for his name (Tencer, rather than Tenczer, as others spelled it), and the fact that the newspaper Egyenlőség—the public forum with which he was most closely associated—celebrated his sixtieth birthday a year early. Major manuals, encyclopedias, and biographical collections give contradictory—and to a large extent false—information about him. All this appears to be a result of his role as an éminence grise, an expression that seems to characterize him most appropriately.
title: Tencer, Pál
related: Budapest
related: Jewish Congress
related: Mezei, Mór
related: Reform, Religious

Turda
described at: Turda
has abstract: An ancient town in the central northern region of Romania, on the Arieş River, 30 km southeast of Cluj. Known in German as Thorenburg and in Hungarian as Torda, Turda was an important center for salt mining and trading. Jews were not allowed to live in Turda until the middle of the nineteenth century, as Austrian imperial authorities imposed a ban (introduced between 1693 and 1700) to prevent them from settling in mining areas. It was only after 1850 that restrictions were gradually lifted; they were formally repealed in January 1860.
title: Turda
related: Bucharest
related: Budapest
related: Cluj
related: Constanța
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: Slovakia
related: Transylvania

United Jewish Community of Ukraine
described at: United Jewish Community of Ukraine
has abstract: Created as an all-encompassing umbrella organization in April 1999, the United Jewish Community of Ukraine (Ob”edinennaia Evreiskaia Obshchina Ukrainy; OEOU) aimed to serve as the “political wing” of the All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress (Vseukrainskii Evreiskii Kongress; VEK). The latter was founded in April 1997 by a group of wealthy Ukrainian Jewish businessmen, led by Vadim Rabinovich and supported by Reuven Asman, a Lubavitch leader in Kiev.
title: United Jewish Community of Ukraine
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Jewish Confederation of Ukraine
related: Kiev
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Maccabi Movement
related: Ukraine
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Varga, Evgenii Samuilovich
described at: Varga Evgenii Samuilovich
has abstract: (1879–1964), political economist. Born in Hungary, Evgenii Varga, known in Hungarian as Jenő Varga, studied in Berlin, Paris, and Budapest and became a professor of economics at the University of Budapest. In 1919, he took part in the Communist Revolution and became a commissar of finance and then chairman of the Supreme Council of the National Economy in the Hungarian Soviet Republic of Béla Kun. Following the collapse of the revolution, he emigrated to Austria and then to the USSR, where he worked as a close adviser to Lenin and Stalin, mainly as an economist and expert on the world economy and the capitalist system.
title: Varga, Evgenii Samuilovich
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kun, Béla
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Varshavskii, Avram Moiseevich
described at: Varshavskii Avram Moiseevich
has abstract: (1821–1888), philanthropist, public figure, and businessman. Avram Varshavskii (sometimes spelled Warshawski) was from a wealthy family in Poltava. He had a traditional Jewish education supplemented with secular subjects, and was a supporter of the moderate Haskalah.
title: Varshavskii, Avram Moiseevich
related: Brest
related: Haskalah
related: Moscow
related: ORT
related: Pale of Settlement
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Trade

Vatra Dornei
described at: Vatra Dornei
has abstract: Town in northeastern Romania, in the region of southern Bucovina and the present county of Suceava. Traversed by one of the important trade routes linking Moldova to Transylvania, Vatra Dornei was for a long time administratively dependent on the town of Câmpulung Moldovenesc. The Jews’ early presence in the area was primarily linked to the establishment of the first sawmills, marking the beginning of the forestry industry. It was only during the second half of the nineteenth century that Vatra Dornei acquired greater importance with the discovery of natural resources for creating spa facilities and the growing realization of the tourism potential in the area. Jewish entrepreneurs were involved in the exploitation of these resources from the outset.
title: Vatra Dornei
related: Bucovina
related: Câmpulung Moldovenesc
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Industry
related: Kosov-Vizhnits Hasidic Dynasty
related: Moldova
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Suceava
related: Trade
related: Transnistria
related: Transylvania
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Warski, Adolf
described at: Warski Adolf
has abstract: (1868–1937), Polish Communist activist and leader. Born in Kraków into an assimilated family that favored the country’s independence, Adolf Warski (orig. Warszawski) was one of the founders of the Związek Robotników Polskich (Polish Workers Union; ZRP) in 1889. In 1893, he helped organize the Socjaldemokracja Królestwa Polskiego i Litwy (Social Democratic Party of Poland and Lithuania; SDKPiL), which, as its name implied, renounced the independence of Poland as one of its goals and directed its activities to the tsarist empire, where it sought a proletarian revolution. From 1902 to 1913, Warski was a member of the party’s Central Executive and played an active part in the Revolution of 1905–1907, during which he was arrested several times by tsarist police.
title: Warski, Adolf
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Wegmeister, Joel
described at: Wegmeister Joel
has abstract: (1837–1919), entrepreneur, Jewish community leader in Warsaw, follower of the Ger Hasidic dynasty, and member of the Polish Council of State. Nothing is known about Joel Wegmeister’s family background. As a successful merchant and entrepreneur, he was active in a large number of mainly religious associations, some of which he founded, as well as in the Warsaw Jewish community. In addition, he strove to increase the influence of Ger Hasidism on Polish Jewry.
title: Wegmeister, Joel
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Katowice
related: Natanson Family
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shtadlan
related: Silesia
related: Warsaw
related: World War I

Weigel, Katarzyna
described at: Weigel Katarzyna
has abstract: (late 1450s–1539), convert to Judaism who was burned at the stake for apostasy in 1539. Weigel was also known as Katarzyna Malcherowa or Katarzyna Zalaszowska, and was the wife of a Kraków city councilman, Melchior Weigel.
title: Weigel, Katarzyna
related: Conversion
related: Gniezno
related: About this Article (Kraków)

Weinberg, Mieczysław
described at: Weinberg Mieczysław
has abstract: (1919–1996), composer and pianist. Mieczysław Samuilovich Weinberg (Moisei Vaynberg) was born in Warsaw, the son of a violinist and Yiddish theater music director. Graduating from the Warsaw Conservatory with a degree in piano in 1939, Weinberg fled the Nazi invasion of Poland that year, settling in Minsk, where he studied composition under Vasilii Zolotarev at the Belorussian state conservatory. After Hitler’s invasion in 1941, Weinberg relocated to Tashkent in Soviet Central Asia. There he met his wife, daughter of the Soviet Jewish theater director and political leader Solomon Mikhoels. In 1943, Weinberg’s first symphony came to the attention of Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich. The result was an immediate friendship that subsequently defined Weinberg’s musical and personal life. With Shostakovich’s assistance, he moved to Moscow, quickly establishing himself as the latter’s junior colleague in the world of Soviet composers of the 1940s and 1950s.
title: Weinberg, Mieczysław
related: Babi Yar
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Halkin, Shmuel
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Yiddish Theater (Theater)
related: Tuwim, Julian
related: Warsaw

Weinzieher, Salomon
described at: Weinzieher Salomon
has abstract: (1869–1943), physician, community activist, and politician. Salomon Weinzieher was born in Białystok to an assimilationist Jewish family. After graduating from high school in Piotrków Trybunalski, he studied medicine at the University of Warsaw but was expelled after a year because of his affiliations with radical socialist organizations. Subsequently he was accepted, through personal connections, to the University of Kiev where he joined a Polish students’ group. After graduating from medical school, he remained active in the underground movement associated with the Polish Socialist Party. He was not a Zionist; indeed, as a Polish nationalist he regarded Zionism as a reactionary movement that alienated Jews from their civic duties in Poland.
title: Weinzieher, Salomon
related: Będzin
related: Białystok
related: Grünbaum, Yitsḥak
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kiev
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Piotrków
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Weiss, Yitsḥak Hirsh
described at: Weiss Yitshak Hirsh
has abstract: (1815–1905), scholar of rabbinic literature. Born in Velké Meziříčí (Ger., Gross-Meseritsch) in the Habsburg province of Moravia, Yitsḥak Hirsh Weiss (known also by the German form of his name, Eisik Hirsch Weiss) attended heder in his native town. At the age of eight, he began studying at the local yeshiva, and spent the years 1828–1834 attending various other yeshivas in Moravia and Hungary.
title: Weiss, Yitsḥak Hirsh
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Eisenstadt
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kolín
related: Krochmal, Naḥman
related: Mikulov
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Seminary
related: Trebitsch, Neḥemyah Naḥum
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Winter, Gustav
described at: Winter Gustav
has abstract: (1889–1943), journalist, writer, and translator. Gustav Winter (brother of politician Lev Winter), was born in the Czech village of Radenín near Tábor in southern Bohemia, and studied at Charles University in Prague and at the Sorbonne. Fully integrated into the Czech linguistic and cultural milieu, in 1913 he began to teach Czech and French language and literature at a secondary school in Prague.
title: Winter, Gustav
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Prague
related: Weiner, Richard
related: Winter, Lev

Wiślicki, Wacław
described at: Wislicki Wacław
has abstract: (1882–1935), economist, Sejm deputy, representative of the Central Office of the Merchants Association in Poland, a Jewish organization committed to cooperation with the Polish authorities. Born in Warsaw and raised in an acculturated environment, Wacław Wiślicki attended the Leopold Kronenberg High School for Commerce and then studied economics in Brussels. In 1907, tsarist authorities arrested him for supporting the revolutionary youth movement.
title: Wiślicki, Wacław
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw

Wolfowicz, Szymon
described at: Wolfowicz Szymon
has abstract: (1755–1830), businessman and public figure. Szymon (Shiml) Wolfowicz was a leading figure among Vilna’s Jews during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Though born into the wealthy elite (into which he also married), Wolfowicz criticized the ways in which organizational leaders and their subordinates operated, and he demanded changes in the administrative system. When a struggle erupted over the appointment of the young Rabbi Shemu’el ben Avigdor, Wolfowicz stood at the head of those who supported the rabbi, against the members of the city’s kahal.
title: Wolfowicz, Szymon
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Kahal
related: Vilnius

Yehudis
described at: Yehudis
has abstract: (Pseudonym of Rokhl Bernshteyn; 1869–1942), Yiddish poet and writer. Virtually forgotten today, Yehudis is notable for her bold poems, several dramatic pieces, short stories, fragments of a novel, translations from Russian, and a memoir of her youth. Born into a well-to-do merchant family in Minsk, Bernshteyn was educated by private tutors and began working in her parents’ shop at age 12. Her subsequent exposure to the socialist movement, and through it to Russian culture, led her to read widely on her own. She and her husband, Shmuel Bernshteyn (whose family name was the same as hers), a leading Jewish intellectual in Minsk, hosted authors whose involvement in the new Yiddish literature inspired her to write.
title: Yehudis
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Orshanski, Ber
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Yitsḥak ben Shemu’el ha-Levi
described at: Yitshak ben Shemuel ha-Levi
has abstract: (1580–ca. 1646), halakhist and grammarian. Yitsḥak ben Shemu’el ha-Levi was born in Ludmir and was a student of Yehoshu‘a Falk. Yitsḥak’s younger brother was David, author of Ture zahav on the Shulḥan ‘arukh and known as Taz. After a period of time in Lwów, Yitsḥak ben Shemu’el served as rabbi of Chełm for an unknown number of years and was appointed rector of the yeshiva in Poznań in 1627. His responsa were published in Neuwied in 1736, and some of his insights are recorded in his brother’s Ture zahav. In his legal decisions, he was considerate of his congregants’ needs and tried to be lenient in rulings connected with running a Jewish household. With respect to other scholars, including great legal authorities, he was not afraid to express dissenting opinions.
title: Yitsḥak ben Shemu’el ha-Levi
related: Chełm
related: David ben Shemu’el ha-Levi
related: Heller, Yom Tov Lipmann
related: L’viv
related: Poznań
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Volodymyr Volyns’kyi
related: Yehoshu‘a ben Aleksander ha-Kohen
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Yosef Shemu’el ben Tsevi of Kraków
described at: Yosef Shemuel ben Tsevi of Krakow
has abstract: (d. 1703), rabbi and Talmudist. Born to a rabbinic family in Krzemieniec (Kremenets), Yosef Shemu’el ben Tsevi served as a rabbinic judge in Kraków from 1663 to 1689, when he was appointed rabbi of Frankfurt am Main. There, he established a yeshiva. A scholar of the Talmud and of halakhah, he also had bibliographic and lexicographic interests—along with, apparently, an interest in astronomy and in Kabbalah.
title: Yosef Shemu’el ben Tsevi of Kraków
related: Approbation
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Zingman, Kalmen
described at: Zingman Kalmen
has abstract: (1889–1929), Yiddish author and publisher. Kalmen Zingman (last name also rendered Singman) was born in Slobodka, near Kovno. He received a traditional Jewish education, but difficult family circumstances forced him to start working at an early age. In 1909, his poem “Baym Nyeman” (At the Nieman) appeared in the miscellany Shtraln (Rays), edited by A. Litvin (Shmuel Hurvits; 1862–1943). During World War I, Zingman found himself among refugees from the theater of operations. He wound up in Kharkov, where he worked as a small businessman, continuing to dream about a literary career.
title: Zingman, Kalmen
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Crimea
related: Folkists
related: Kaunas
related: Khar’kiv
related: Lithuania
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Zsolt, Béla
described at: Zsolt Bela
has abstract: (1895–1949), writer, poet, editor, dramatist, publicist, and member of parliament. As a second-generation contributor to the modernist journal Nyugat (West), Zsolt followed a career path similar to that of writers from Nyugat’s first generation. He began as an admirer and imitator of Endre Ady, and became a journalist and editor in Nagyvárad (mod. Rom., Oradea). In 1925, he moved to Budapest, where he wrote spirited political pieces for several newspapers. In 1929, he became editor in chief of A Toll (The Pen), a bourgeois-liberal periodical.
title: Zsolt, Béla
related: Assimilation
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kasztner, Rezső
related: Komlós, Aladár
related: Oradea
related: Sexuality
related: Ukraine

Abeles, Shim‘on
described at: Abeles Shimon
has abstract: (1682/85–1694), Jewish youth in Prague whose father was accused of murdering him “out of hatred for the Christian faith.” The death of Shim‘on Abeles in February 1694 illuminates the tensions that beset Prague’s Jewish community in the late seventeenth century. Coming at the height of the Catholic Habsburg Counter-Reformation, in which the Jesuit order played a leading role in reshaping Bohemian religion and culture, the case signaled a new stage of repression for Prague’s Jewish community.
title: Abeles, Shim‘on
alternative label: Shim‘on Abeles
related: Conversion
related: Prague

Acsády, Ignác
described at: Acsady Ignac
has abstract: (1845–1906), historian, journalist, and fiction writer. Ignác Acsády (Adler until 1875) was born in Nagykároly, Hungary, the oldest son of a wealthy landowner. Acsády’s father served as head of the Jewish community of Hajdúszoboszló for almost 30 years and was a member of the board of Hajdú county. Acsády earned a law degree in 1869 and a doctorate in 1877 at the University of Budapest. With his wide interest in the humanities, he decided against limiting his career to law.
title: Acsády, Ignác
alternative label: Ignác Acsády
related: Assimilation
related: Budapest
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Magyar Zsidó Szemle

Adalberg, Samuel
described at: Adalberg Samuel
has abstract: (1868–1939), paremiologist (collector of proverbs), Polish state official, and advocate for assimilated Jews. Born in Warsaw, Samuel Adalberg received his elementary education at the Szkoła Realna (1878–1888), the first modern school widely attended by Warsaw Jews. There he was regarded highly by the principal, Samuel Dickstein, and also formed a friendship with Shemu’el Poznański, who later became rabbi of a progressive synagogue and a social activist.
title: Adalberg, Samuel
alternative label: Samuel Adalberg
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Bernstein, Ignatz
related: Dickstein, Samuel
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poznański, Shemu’el Avraham
related: Proverbs
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Warsaw
related: Wawelberg, Hipolit
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Russian Government Initiatives
type: Concept
broader: Agriculture

Soviet-Era Colonization
type: Concept
broader: Agriculture

The Impact of Ideology
type: Concept
broader: Agriculture

Foundation of the Movement
type: Concept
broader: Agudas Yisroel

Organizational Structure
type: Concept
broader: Agudas Yisroel

Aktion Reinhard
described at: Aktion Reinhard
has abstract: Operation to murder Jews of the Generalgouvernement in Poland. From March to December 1942 nearly two million Jews were murdered, including most Jews of the Generalgouvernement together with approximately 135,000 Jews from Germany, Austria, Bohemia-Moravia, Slovakia, Holland, France, Yugoslavia, and Greece. Aktion (Operation) Reinhard was headed by Odilo Globocnik, who was Lublin District SS and Police Leader. The aktion received its name in the summer of 1942, apparently in memory of Reinhard Heydrich, who had been assassinated by Czech resistance fighters in late May of that year.
title: Aktion Reinhard
related: Einsatzgruppen
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Warsaw

Information and Image: 1800–1881
type: Concept
broader: America

The Great Migration: 1881–1921
type: Concept
broader: America

The Soviet and Post-Soviet Period: 1917–2000
type: Concept
broader: America

Child Care
type: Concept
broader: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

From the End of World War II until the Collapse of the Communist Bloc
type: Concept
broader: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

Medicine and Sanitation
type: Concept
broader: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

Reconstruction
type: Concept
broader: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

Refugees and Emigrants
type: Concept
broader: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

The Post-Soviet Era
type: Concept
broader: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

The Soviet Union before World War II
type: Concept
broader: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

World War II, the Holocaust, and Displaced Persons
type: Concept
broader: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

Ámos, Imre
described at: Amos Imre
has abstract: (1907–1945), painter. Imre Ámos’s birthplace, Nagykálló, was the first center of Hungarian Hasidism, and the memory and legend of its famous rabbi, Yitsḥak Isaak Taub and his remarkable song, “Szól a kakas már” (Hear the Sound of the Rooster), persist today. Because of his father’s early death, Ámos was raised by his maternal grandfather, the town’s melamed. He completed his studies at the School of the Arts in Budapest, and his initial experiments with style followed the decorative manner of the Nabi group.
title: Ámos, Imre
alternative label: Imre Ámos
related: Angels
related: Budapest
related: Chagall, Marc
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kertész, Imre

Expeditions
type: Concept
broader: An-ski Ethnographic Expedition and Museum

Museum Exhibits
type: Concept
broader: An-ski Ethnographic Expedition and Museum

Ashkenazic Traditions
type: Concept
broader: Angels

Folklore
type: Concept
broader: Angels

After Communism
type: Concept
broader: Antisemitic Parties and Movements

Before World War I
type: Concept
broader: Antisemitic Parties and Movements

Between the World Wars
type: Concept
broader: Antisemitic Parties and Movements

Under Communist Rule
type: Concept
broader: Antisemitic Parties and Movements

APPENDIX 1: SELECTED PRINT RESOURCES
type: Concept
broader: Archives

APPENDIX 2: SELECTED WEB RESOURCES
type: Concept
broader: Archives

Archival Guides
type: Concept
broader: Archives

Inventory and Other Projects
type: Concept
broader: Archives

Libraries and Other Repositories in Eastern Europe
type: Concept
broader: Archives

Libraries and Other Repositories outside of Eastern Europe
type: Concept
broader: Archives

Private Collections
type: Concept
broader: Archives

Resources for Genealogical Research
type: Concept
broader: Archives

Art Education
described at: Art Education
has abstract: The first generation of Jewish artists in Eastern Europe (beginning with Mark Antokol’skii, Maurycy Gottlieb, and their younger contemporaries) received professional training at state art academies and private schools in Warsaw, Vilna, Saint Petersburg, Odessa, and Kraków. By the end of the nineteenth century, Jews had become a visible group in these institutions, and it was already possible to discern signs of ethnic solidarity among them. This tendency was first articulated in Russia in the 1880s, when, goaded by antisemitic sentiment expressed by administrative personnel and attacks by fellow students, Jewish artists were brought together not only by their exceptional position but also by their understanding of their particular artistic and social challenges.
title: Art Education
alternative label: art education
related: Al’tman, Natan Isaevich
related: An-ski Ethnographic Expedition and Museum
related: Antokol’skii, Mark Matveevich
related: Belarus
related: Brodskii, Isaak Izrailevich
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Crafts
related: Dobrushin, Yekhezkl
related: Evsektsiia
related: Gintsburg, Il’ia Iakovlevich
related: Gottlieb, Maurycy
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Kultur-lige
related: Latvia
related: Lissitzky, El
related: Minsk
related: ORT
related: Odessa
related: Painting and Sculpture
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pen, Yehudah
related: Photography
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Riga
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Rybak, Yisakhar Ber
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Stage Design
related: Tarbut
related: Tombstones
related: TSYSHO
related: Tyshler, Aleksandr Grigor’evich
related: Ukraine
related: Vilnius
related: Vitsyebsk
related: Warsaw

Askenazy, Szymon
described at: Askenazy Szymon
has abstract: (1866–1935), Polish historian and diplomat. Szymon Askenazy was born in Zawichost, southwest of Lublin, to a wealthy Orthodox family. He was a descendant of Tsevi Hirsh ben Ya‘akov Ashkenazi (1660–1718), known as Ḥakham Tsevi, who had held positions as a rabbi in Altona, Hamburg, Amsterdam, and Lwów. Askenazy studied law at Warsaw University, graduating in 1887, and subsequently took up history at the University of Göttingen, where he received his doctorate.
title: Askenazy, Szymon
alternative label: Szymon Askenazy
related: Assimilation
related: Chess
related: Galicia
related: Gdańsk
related: About this Article (Historiography)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shatzky, Yankev
related: Warsaw
related: Wawelberg, Hipolit

Bohemia and Moravia
type: Concept
broader: Assimilation

Elsewhere in Eastern Europe
type: Concept
broader: Assimilation

Hungary
type: Concept
broader: Assimilation

Poland
type: Concept
broader: Assimilation

Russia
type: Concept
broader: Assimilation

Aszód, Yehudah
described at: Aszod Yehudah
has abstract: (1796–1866), rabbi and halakhic scholar. A leading figure in the Hungarian Orthodox rabbinate during the mid-nineteenth century, Yehudah Aszód achieved renown both as an expert halakhic adjudicator and as an outspoken opponent of educational and religious reform. Unlike some of his younger Hungarian contemporaries, however, Aszód did not promote a uniformly strict and antimodernist approach. Instead, he exemplified a more pragmatic and less doctrinaire Hungarian Orthodoxy than that which later became the norm. Toward the end of his life, he also gained a reputation as one who possessed great mystical abilities.
title: Aszód, Yehudah
alternative label: Yehudah Aszód
related: Banet, Mordekhai ben Avraham
related: Circumcision
related: Eisenstadt
related: Hildesheimer, Esriel
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Reform, Religious
related: Seminary
related: Slovakia
related: Sofer, Avraham Shemu’el Binyamin
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Early Modern Autobiographical Texts
type: Concept
broader: Autobiography and Memoir

Postwar Period
type: Concept
broader: Autobiography and Memoir

The Early Twentieth Century
type: Concept
broader: Autobiography and Memoir

The Modern Period
type: Concept
broader: Autobiography and Memoir

Babad Family
described at: Babad Family
has abstract: Leading wealthy rabbinic family in Galicia. Beginning in the seventeenth century, many members of the Babad family served in rabbinic posts in Poland and Lithuania; others were quite wealthy and held a variety of leadership positions in their communities. The founder of the line was Yitsḥak Krakover (1650–1705), rabbi of the city of Brody from about the year 1690. His children were called by the name Babad, an acronym for Bene Av Bet Din (Children of the Head of the Rabbinic Court); in state records they are referred to by the name Rabinowitz. Some of Krakover’s sons were merchants; two of them, Mordekhai (d. 1752) and Ya‘akov Yokel (d. 1748), were communal leaders in Brody in the first half of the eighteenth century, as were a number of their descendants.
title: Babad Family
alternative label: Yehoshu‘a Heshel Babad
related: Babad, Yosef
related: Brody
related: Galicia
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Perl, Yosef
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Ternopil’

Bacher, Simon
described at: Bacher Simon
has abstract: (1823–1891), Hebrew poet and community leader. A branch of the illustrious Bacharach family settled in Hungary around the last third of the eighteenth century. The Bachers (the shortened form of the family name was used among non-Jewish circles; in Hebrew they continued to be called Bacharach) settled in Liptószentmiklós (now Liptovský Mikuláš, Slovakia) in northwest Hungary. When Simon Bacher was born, the town had a fairly large Jewish community, and was famous as a seat of traditional learning (El‘azar Löw, author of the Shemen rokeaḥ, had just come to serve as rabbi and maintained an important yeshiva), but was also known for its sympathy for the Haskalah.
title: Bacher, Simon
alternative label: Simon Bacher
related: Agriculture
related: Budapest
related: Eisenstadt
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Land of Israel
related: Löw, El‘azar
related: Magid, Ha-
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Seminary
related: Slovakia
related: Trade
related: Trebitsch, Neḥemyah Naḥum
related: Wahrmann, Mór
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Early Modern Period
type: Concept
broader: Banking

Middle Ages
type: Concept
broader: Banking

Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
type: Concept
broader: Banking

Barash, Efrayim
described at: Barash Efrayim
has abstract: (1892–1943), community leader and head of the Białystok ghetto during the Holocaust. Born in Volkovysk, Efrayim Barash was an engineer who had studied in Germany. He was a member of the town council and Jewish community board, president of the Jewish Commerce Bank, and chair of the local Zionist federation. He moved to Białystok in 1934 to become the Jewish community’s executive director.
title: Barash, Efrayim
alternative label: Efrayim Barash
related: Armed Resistance
related: Białystok
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Informers
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Killing Centers
related: Labor Camps
related: About this Article (Lublin)

Barukh ben David Yavan
described at: Barukh ben David Yavan
has abstract: (d. 1770s), Polish communal leader and lobbyist. Barukh ben David Yavan was born at the beginning of the eighteenth century in Konstantynów, Volhynia. He came from an eminent family that descended from Rabbi Shalom Shakhnah of Kraków and received an education encompassing not only traditional Jewish learning (he studied Talmud under Ya‘akov Yehoshu’a Falk) but also an extensive non-Jewish curriculum, including German, French, Latin, and Polish.
title: Barukh ben David Yavan
related: Eybeschütz, Yonatan
related: Frankism
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sabbatianism
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shakhnah, Shalom
related: Shtadlan

Bass, Shabetai ben Yosef
described at: Bass Shabetai ben Yosef
has abstract: (1641–1718), biblical exegete, bibliographer, printer, and cantor. Shabetai ben Yosef Bass was born in Kalisz, Poland. His parents were murdered in wartime violence in 1655; Bass and his older brother, Ya‘akov Strimmers (d. 1686), a renowned kabbalist, survived and fled to Prague. In Prague, Bass received a traditional education; studied secular subjects, including Latin; and, because of his pleasant voice, was taught liturgical singing. He subsequently accepted a position as a basso (bassista) singer in the Altneuschul in Prague, from which the surname Bass (Heb., Meshorer) is derived.
title: Bass, Shabetai ben Yosef
alternative label: Shabetai Bass
related: Altneuschul
related: Cantors
related: Kalisz
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Printing and Publishing)
related: Silesia
related: Wrocław

Between Kabbalah and Modernity
type: Concept
broader: Beards

Hair: His and Hers
type: Concept
broader: Beards

Modern Antisemitism and Its Memories
type: Concept
broader: Beards

BELARUSIAN WRITERS
type: Concept
broader: Belarusian Literature

Bernstein-Cohen, Miriam
described at: Bernstein-Cohen Miriam
has abstract: (1895–1991), actor, Hebrew writer, poet, and translator. Miriam Bernstein-Cohen was born in Kishinev. Her father, the physician Ya‘akov Bernstein-Cohen (1859–1929), was a Russian Zionist leader. The images and sounds of the 1903 Kishinev pogrom that shocked Bessarabian Jews were embedded in her memory and recorded in her autobiographical work, Ke-Tipah ba-yam (Like a Drop in the Ocean; 1971). After the pogrom her family moved to Kharkov, where Bernstein-Cohen attended the German gymnasium, and where she acted, for the first time, in plays staged at her school.
title: Bernstein-Cohen, Miriam
alternative label: Miriam Bernstein-Cohen
related: Habimah
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: Kishinev
related: Moscow
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: About this Article (Theater)

Bettelheim, Sámuel
described at: Bettelheim Samuel
has abstract: (1872–1942), Orthodox journalist; Zionist; and Agudas Yisroel politician. Born in Pressburg (Hun., Pozsony; mod. Bratislava), Sámuel (Samu) Bettelheim studied at the renowned yeshiva in his city. In 1897, he was among the founders and the president of the first legally recognized Zionist society in Hungary, the Yagdil Torah Society, renamed Ahavat Tsiyon in 1899. Although its members were hesitant to call themselves Zionists, Rabbi Simḥah Bunem Sofer permitted students from the yeshiva to join and thus eased their way.
title: Bettelheim, Sámuel
alternative label: Sámuel (Samu) Bettelheim
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Bratislava
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Mizraḥi
related: Reines, Yitsḥak Ya‘akov
related: Rónai, János
related: Sofer Family
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Bihari, Sándor
described at: Bihari Sandor
has abstract: (1856–1906), painter. Sándor Bihari (known as Alexander in the West) was one of the leading artists of late nineteenth-century Hungary, and a major representative of that country’s realist school of the 1880s. Although Bihari did not use specifically Jewish themes in his work, his career epitomized the contributions of Jews to Hungarian culture. Born in Rézbánya, a small town in Bihar county, he later lived in Debrecen and Nagyvárad (Rom., Oradea). Bihari was among the scores of Jews who freed themselves from the squalor of small-town life by utilizing their cultural and artistic abilities. In 1878, he made his way to Vienna where he studied painting under Carl Wurzinger and other Geneva masters; in Paris, he studied under Jean-Paul Laurens.
title: Bihari, Sándor
alternative label: Sándor Bihari
related: Ágai, Adolf
related: Debrecen
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Oradea
related: Tiszaeszlár Blood Libel

Bíró, Lajos
described at: Biro Lajos
has abstract: (1880–1948), novelist, publicist, editor, dramatist, and screenwriter. As was the case with other writers of the second generation of Hungarian Jewish literature, Lajos Bíró saw himself not only as culturally Hungarian but also as a modernist in the artistic sense and as a political and social liberal. Members of his generation were active in the antifeudal opposition, a movement that developed and refined socialist liberal values. Most second-generation writers neither worked within Jewish frameworks nor participated in Jewish cultural affairs. When attacked, they defended the role of Jewish intelligentsia and their own attempts to assimilate; following the revolutions of 1918 and 1919, they responded to the counterrevolutionary regime’s open persecution of Jews.
title: Bíró, Lajos
alternative label: Lajos Bíró
related: Assimilation
related: Balázs, Béla
related: Budapest
related: Hungarian Literature
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Molnár, Ferenc
related: Oradea
related: Transylvania

Birth and Birthing
described at: Birth and Birthing
has abstract: The birth of a child in the premodern period was accompanied by many fears, anxiety, and a sense of powerlessness. There were many possible dangers for both the mother and the baby. In traditional Jewish life, these dangers were perceived as connected not only to objective difficulties, but also to the influence of the world of demons and evil spirits.
title: Birth and Birthing
alternative label: birth
related: Amulets and Talismans
related: Charity
related: Circumcision
related: Demons
related: Ḥazakah
related: Magic
related: Poznań
related: Sabbath
related: Tykocin

Bloshteyn, Oyzer
described at: Bloshteyn Oyzer
has abstract: (1840–1898), Yiddish author. Born in the Latgale region of Latvia in the Russian Empire to a working-class family, Oyzer Bloshteyn spent his early teenage years studying at a yeshiva. At 15, he was attracted to Enlightenment ideas and began studying German and Russian; after briefly becoming a teacher, he subsequently devoted himself to a career as a writer. During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, Bloshteyn was among the most prolific and popular authors of popular Yiddish works in Eastern Europe, publishing more than 50 novels and short stories, generally with the Matz publishing house in Vilna. Although Bloshteyn died in Warsaw in 1898, his work was read widely by Yiddish readers well into the interwar period, particularly in Galicia.
title: Bloshteyn, Oyzer
alternative label: Oyzer Bloshteyn
related: Galicia
related: Latvia
related: Reyzen, Zalmen
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Cross-Cultural Relations, Conflicts, and New Directions
type: Concept
broader: Bohemia and Moravia

Enlightened Absolutism, Cultural Reform, and Emancipation
type: Concept
broader: Bohemia and Moravia

Jewish Settlement and Population Patterns
type: Concept
broader: Bohemia and Moravia

Moravian Exceptionalism: The Political Jewish Community
type: Concept
broader: Bohemia and Moravia

Rabbinic Culture and Institutions
type: Concept
broader: Bohemia and Moravia

Bohemus, Abraham Judeus
described at: Bohemus Abraham Judeus
has abstract: (d. 1533), tax collector and financial adviser to Polish kings Aleksander Jagiellończyk and Zygmunt Stary. Known as Abraham of Prague, Abraham Judeus Bohemus moved from Bohemia to Poland at the end of fifteenth century. There he lived in the Kazimierz district of Kraków before settling in Lwów. Along with the Fiszel family and Ozer from Opoczno, Bohemus was one of the chief financiers of the Polish court.
title: Bohemus, Abraham Judeus
alternative label: Abraham Bohemus
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Councils
related: Fiszel Family
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Trade

Bondy, Filip
described at: Bondy Filip
has abstract: (1830–1907), Czech rabbi. After completing gymnasium in Prague (one of his teachers was the playwright Václav Kliment Klicpera), Filip Bondy studied philosophy at Prague University. He was simultaneously tutored in Jewish theology and Hebrew literature by Shelomoh Yehudah Rapoport, the city’s chief rabbi, as well as by Daniel Frank, rabbi of Brünn (Brno), who ordained him in 1857. That same year he also earned his doctorate of philosophy. Bondy’s exceptional linguistic gifts enabled him to master not only Czech and German, Hebrew and Aramaic, and Latin and Greek, but also English, Italian, and French.
title: Bondy, Filip
alternative label: Filip Bondy
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brno
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Prague
related: Rakous, Vojtěch
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah

Book Design in the Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
type: Concept
broader: Book Design and Illustration

Early Jewish Printing in Poland
type: Concept
broader: Book Design and Illustration

Jewish Printing in Prague
type: Concept
broader: Book Design and Illustration

The Nineteenth-Century Shift toward Modernity
type: Concept
broader: Book Design and Illustration

Borşa
described at: Borsa
has abstract: Town in the extreme north of Romania, at the foot of Rodna Mountains and on the Vişeu River (157 km east of Baia Mare). The first documentary reference to Borşa (Hun., Borsa) dates to 1365, but a Jewish presence was not noted until 1728, when immigrants from Galicia and Bucovina settled in the area. The first synagogue was founded in 1783, and a burial society was set up in 1815.
title: Borşa
related: Baia Mare
related: Bucovina
related: Charity
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Romania
related: Transylvania

Bragin, Abram Grigor’evich
described at: Bragin Abram Grigorevich
has abstract: (1893–?), agronomist and Soviet Jewish activist. Abram Bragin was a key figure in the movement to establish an official Jewish territory in the Soviet Union. Born in Krasnopole, Ukraine, Bragin studied law at Kiev University and belonged for a time to the socialist Zionist party Tse‘ire Tsiyon. His connection with Tse‘ire Tsiyon’s form of labor Zionism got Bragin interested in movements to the land as “solutions” to the “Jewish question.” Bragin therefore became more interested in agronomy and eventually became a leading agronomist who combined his training in agricultural production with principles of socialist Zionism to devise a program for settling Jews in farming colonies within the USSR.
title: Bragin, Abram Grigor’evich
alternative label: Abram Bragin
related: Agriculture
related: Birobidzhan
related: Crimea
related: Evsektsiia
related: Kiev
related: Kol’tsov, Mikhail Efimovich
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Brandys, Kazimierz
described at: Brandys Kazimierz
has abstract: (1916–2001), writer. While studying law at the University of Warsaw (1934–1939), Kazimierz Brandys, the younger brother of writer Marian Brandys, worked in socialist youth organizations and wrote for leftist journals. He spent World War II in Warsaw, hiding on the Aryan side. After 1945, as a member of the Writers Union and of the editorial boards of Kuźnica and Nowa Kultura, he promoted socialist realism, a new literary doctrine sponsored by the Communist regime.
title: Brandys, Kazimierz
alternative label: Kazimierz Brandys
related: Communism
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Warsaw

Braun, Mieczysław
described at: Braun Mieczysław
has abstract: (1902–1941 or 1942), writer, poet, publicist, and member of the Esperanto movement. Mieczysław Braun (Braunstein, Bronsztejn, or Braunstein) collaborated with both the interwar Polish and Polish Jewish press (Skamander, Wiadomości Literackie, Nasz Przegląd, Nowy Dziennik, Ster). After fighting in the Polish–Soviet war of 1920, he studied law in Warsaw from 1922 to 1926, and then worked as an attorney in Łódź. He died of typhus in the Warsaw ghetto.
title: Braun, Mieczysław
alternative label: Mieczysław Braun
related: Łódź
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Nasz Przegląd
related: Warsaw
related: Wiadomości Literackie

Breitbart, Zishe
described at: Breitbart Zishe
has abstract: (1883–1925), popular entertainer, circus strongman, and folk hero. Billed as “the strongest man in the world” in the 1920s, Zishe (Siegmund) Breitbart was better known to his Yiddish-speaking audiences as Shimshn-hagibr (Samson the Mighty). Breitbart was born into a family of blacksmiths in Łódź. According to his autobiography, he began casting iron in his father’s workshop at the age of four. Breitbart eventually embarked upon a career as a circus acrobat and strongman, as well as an actor on the Yiddish stage.
title: Breitbart, Zishe
alternative label: Zishe Breitbart
related: Łódź
related: Entertainers
related: Prague
related: Warsaw

Brivnshtelers
described at: Brivnshtelers
has abstract: A brivnshteler (letter-writing manual; Heb., igron) is a collection of formulas for composing letters on topics ranging from business to courtship to family life. In addition to providing templates for composition, the collections were widely used for teaching handwriting skills. Because many of the manuals were bi- or even trilingual, they served as textbooks for learning Hebrew, German, Russian, Polish, and respectable, educated Yiddish.
title: Brivnshtelers
alternative label: brivnshteler
related: Heder
related: Hebrew (Language)
related: Planning and Standardization of Yiddish (Language)
related: Yiddish (Language)
related: Letters and Letter Writing
related: Love
related: Marriage
related: Printing and Publishing before 1800 (Printing and Publishing)
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shomer
related: Shtetl
related: Social Conduct
related: Blessings, Curses, and Other Expressions (Talk)

Broda Family
described at: Broda Family
has abstract: Rabbinic family, originating in Bohemia, that settled in Galicia, Lithuania, and Hungary. The surname Broda (Braude, Broide, Braudo) indicates that the family’s origins were likely in the city of Brod, though the name could also be a Hebrew acronym for bene rabanim ve-dayane emet (the sons of rabbis and judges of truth).
title: Broda Family
alternative label: Broda
related: Łódź
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Braude, Markus
related: Brest
related: Broda, Avraham ben Sha’ul
related: Galicia
related: Hrodna
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Ivano-Frankivs’k
related: Kaunas
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lithuania
related: L’viv
related: Mladá Boleslav
related: Musar Movement
related: Orenstein Family
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Rzeszów
related: Warsaw
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Brokhes, Rokhl
described at: Brokhes Rokhl
has abstract: (1880–1942), Yiddish prose writer. Rokhl Brokhes was born in Minsk. With the encouragement of her father, Volf Brokhes, a maskil, she learned Hebrew and could read modern literature in that language. Her father died when she was nine, and soon after his death, Brokhes went to work as a seamstress. Later she taught needleworking at the Minsk Jewish Vocational School for Girls.
title: Brokhes, Rokhl
alternative label: Rokhl Brokhes
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Yud, Der

Brüll, Jacob
described at: Brull Jacob
has abstract: (1812–1889), rabbi and Talmudic scholar. Jacob Brüll was born in Rousínov (Ger., Neu-Raussnitz) in the Habsburg province of Moravia. He attended several yeshivas in Hungary (Bonyhád, Pressburg, and Buda) before returning to Moravia, where he was ordained by Michael Wronik, rabbi of Rousínov, and Neḥemyah Trebitsch, chief rabbi of Moravia. He later married Trebitsch’s daughter, Regina. Brüll served as rabbi of Kojetín (Kojetein), Moravia, from 1844 until his death.
title: Brüll, Jacob
alternative label: Jacob Brüll
related: Ben Chananja
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Chajes, Tsevi Hirsh
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kaufmann, David
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
related: Trebitsch, Neḥemyah Naḥum

Acculturation
type: Concept
broader: Budapest

Community and Religious Life
type: Concept
broader: Budapest

Early History
type: Concept
broader: Budapest

Occupations
type: Concept
broader: Budapest

Politics, Power, Antisemitism
type: Concept
broader: Budapest

Population
type: Concept
broader: Budapest

Postwar and Contemporary Jewry
type: Concept
broader: Budapest

Settlement and Residential Clustering
type: Concept
broader: Budapest

The War Years
type: Concept
broader: Budapest

Cajal, Nicolae
described at: Cajal Nicolae
has abstract: (1919–2004), scientist and Jewish community leader. Nicolae Cajal was born in Bucharest, the son of Marcu Cajal (1885–1972), a professor and one of the first specialists in pediatrics in Romania. Cajal graduated as a doctor in medicine and pharmacy from the Faculty of Medicine at Bucharest University (1946) and eventually took his degree as a doctor of medical sciences (1959). Specializing in microbiology and virology under the guidance of Ştefan Nicolau (1896–1967), Cajal became his professor’s spiritual heir and collaborator in 1945.
title: Cajal, Nicolae
alternative label: Nicolae Cajal
related: Bucharest
related: Romania

Calahora Family
described at: Calahora Family
has abstract: A family of physicians, pharmacists, community leaders, and Jewish scholars in Poland from the second half of the sixteenth century until the twentieth century. Branches of the Calahora family were also known by the names Kalahora, Kolahari, Kalafri, Landsberg, and Pozen.
title: Calahora Family
alternative label: Calahora family
related: Banking
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Luria, Shelomoh ben Yeḥi’el
related: Piotrków
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Trade

APPENDIX: CANTORS
type: Concept
broader: Cantors

Dissemination of East European Cantorial Music
type: Concept
broader: Cantors

East European Cantorial Music in the United States
type: Concept
broader: Cantors

Formation of an East European Style
type: Concept
broader: Cantors

Intersections between East and West
type: Concept
broader: Cantors

Meshorerim and the Choir
type: Concept
broader: Cantors

Musical Styles and Composed Music
type: Concept
broader: Cantors

Training and Duties
type: Concept
broader: Cantors

Censorship in the USSR (Censorship)
described at: Censorship in the USSR
has abstract: The Provisional Government that succeeded the tsars in March 1917 abolished censorship. However, two days after the Bolsheviks seized power in November 1917, they reintroduced censorship and extended it to films, art, and music. Though labeled a “temporary measure,” censorship lasted until the late 1980s. Even labels on bottles were subject to censorship; the knowing eye could discern the censor’s individual number, stamp, and date of issue. Violation of censorship rules could be construed as “divulging state secrets,” a crime punishable by imprisonment.
title: Censorship in the USSR (Censorship)
alternative label: censorship
related: Babi Yar
related: Black Book
related: Ehrenburg, Ilya Grigor’evich
related: Grossman, Vasilii Semenovich
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Poland)

Assistance for Nonresidents
type: Concept
broader: Charity

Local Assistance
type: Concept
broader: Charity

Sources of Funding, Collection, and Distribution
type: Concept
broader: Charity

The Poor of the Land of Israel
type: Concept
broader: Charity

Chekhanov Hasidic Dynasty
described at: Chekhanov Hasidic Dynasty
has abstract: Avraham Landau of Chekhanov (Ciechanów; 1784–1875) was an important rabbi and Hasidic leader in central Poland. He was primarily a disciple of Fishel of Strikov (1743–1822), one of the founders of Hasidism in central Poland. Landau became rabbi of Chekhanov in 1820 and remained there for the rest of his life, despite offers from larger communities. He did not formally become a tsadik until after the death of his friend, Yitsḥak Me’ir of Ger (1789–1866), when many of the latter’s Hasidim came to him.
title: Chekhanov Hasidic Dynasty
alternative label: Chekhanov
related: Aleksander Hasidic Dynasty
related: Biała
related: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Liturgy
related: Menaḥem Mendel of Kotsk
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Vurke Hasidic Dynasty

Chernyi, Sasha
described at: Chernyi Sasha
has abstract: (Pseudonym of Aleksandr Mikhailovich Glikberg; 1880–1932), Russian poet. Born to a pharmacist’s family in Odessa, Sasha Chernyi was baptized at the age of 10 in order to bypass the numerus clausus. In 1895 he ran away from home to Saint Petersburg. In 1904 Chernyi debuted as a feuilletonist in the Zhitomir newspaper Volynskii vestnik (Volhynian Messenger). In 1905, his poem “Chepukha” (Gibberish) appeared in the satirical magazine Zritel’ (The Spectator), signed Sasha Chernyi. Although his first poetry collection, Pestrye motivy (Sundry Themes [or Sundry Tunes]), came out in 1906, Chernyi considered the next collection, Satiry (Satires; 1910), his true entrance into literature.
title: Chernyi, Sasha
alternative label: Sasha Chernyi
related: Odessa
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shtetl
related: Zhytomyr

APPENDIX: PROMINENT JEWISH CHESS PLAYERS
type: Concept
broader: Chess

APPENDIX: JEWISH FILM PERSONALITIES
type: Concept
broader: Cinema

After Communism
type: Concept
broader: Cinema

Early Cinema
type: Concept
broader: Cinema

Post–World War II Period
type: Concept
broader: Cinema

World War I and After
type: Concept
broader: Cinema

Yiddish Talkies
type: Concept
broader: Cinema

Żydokomuna
type: Concept
broader: Communism

Jews and Communism
type: Concept
broader: Communism

Jews and Radicalism
type: Concept
broader: Communism

The Post–World War II Era
type: Concept
broader: Communism

Christian Conversions to Judaism
type: Concept
broader: Conversion

Jewish Conversions to Christianity after 1772
type: Concept
broader: Conversion

Jewish Converts to Christianity in Pre-Partition Poland (before 1772)
type: Concept
broader: Conversion

Cookbooks
described at: Cookbooks
has abstract: Compendia of instructions for the preparation of Jewish food or addressed to the Jewish reader constitute the single largest body of literature written by and for Jewish women. These cookbooks initially arose during the first half of the nineteenth century in response to the social aspirations of those who wished to add culinary refinement to the kosher kitchen. Among the earliest extant examples are several small Yiddish manuscripts from Bohemia, Moravia, or neighboring areas; they were in all likelihood intended to teach young brides to cook or to supervise a servant in the kitchen.
title: Cookbooks
alternative label: cookbooks
related: Bloshteyn, Oyzer
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Czech Republic
related: Dress
related: Food and Drink
related: Gender
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Passover
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Romania
related: Servants
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Weddings

Characterization and Background
type: Concept
broader: Councils

Regional Councils
type: Concept
broader: Councils

The Council of Four Lands
type: Concept
broader: Councils

The Decline and Disappearance of the Councils
type: Concept
broader: Councils

Revolutionary Activity and Terrorism
type: Concept
broader: Crime and Criminals

Violations of Restrictive Legislation
type: Concept
broader: Crime and Criminals

Violations of the Criminal Code
type: Concept
broader: Crime and Criminals

APPENDIX: CZECH WRITERS
type: Concept
broader: Czech Literature

Antisemitism
type: Concept
broader: Czechoslovakia

Culture
type: Concept
broader: Czechoslovakia

Demographic Structure
type: Concept
broader: Czechoslovakia

National Identity
type: Concept
broader: Czechoslovakia

Political Affiliation
type: Concept
broader: Czechoslovakia

Religious Identity
type: Concept
broader: Czechoslovakia

The Holocaust
type: Concept
broader: Czechoslovakia

The Postwar Period
type: Concept
broader: Czechoslovakia

Dawidsohn, Ḥayim
described at: Dawidsohn Hayim
has abstract: (1760–1854), merchant, leading member of the Warsaw Jewish community, and its chief rabbi. Ḥayim Dawidsohn was born in Pińczów and, after the death of his father, grew up at the home of the wealthy Tsentseminer family, Warsaw bankers to whose daughter he was wed as a young man. Thanks to an inheritance from his father-in-law and to the sharp business acumen of his wife, Dawidsohn’s family amassed a great fortune, acquired among other means by obtaining the leasehold for taxes on kosher meat. His teacher, Ya‘akov Lorbeerbaum of Lissa (Leszno), ordained him. In 1797, on the basis of the Prussian law regarding Jewish surnames, Ḥayim became the first member of his family to assume the family name of Dawidsohn.
title: Dawidsohn, Ḥayim
alternative label: Ḥayim Dawidsohn
related: Agriculture
related: Eisenbaum, Antoni
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Leszno
related: Lorbeerbaum, Ya‘akov ben Ya‘akov Mosheh of Lissa
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Warsaw

The Burial Society
type: Concept
broader: Death and the Dead

The Cemetery
type: Concept
broader: Death and the Dead

Dej
described at: Dej
has abstract: Salt-mining town in northwestern Romania, on the Someş River 60 km northeast of Cluj. The first documented reference to Dej (Ger, Desch; Hun., Dés) dates to 1061. After legislation in 1693–1700 had prohibited Jews from settling in mining towns, authorities in Dej decided in 1722 to forbid Jewish residence. No Jews lived there until 1834; and just three were mentioned in 1838.
title: Dej
related: Cluj
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Orthodoxy
related: Paneth, Yeḥezkel
related: Romania
related: Transylvania
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Dembitzer, Ḥayim Natan
described at: Dembitzer Hayim Natan
has abstract: (1820–1892), Orthodox community leader, religious court judge, and chronicler. Ḥayim Natan Dembitzer was born in Kraków, where he served from 1849 as a dayan (religious court judge) and magid (preacher); by 1856 he was appointed head of one of the community’s religious courts. In the 1850s, he was active in the first stages of Galician Orthodoxy’s response to the challenges of modern culture, organizing a group of rabbis who took defensive stands in several public halakhic controversies. The leader of the group was Dembitzer’s teacher, the dayan Shelomoh Kluger of Brody.
title: Dembitzer, Ḥayim Natan
alternative label: Ḥayim Natan Dembitzer
related: Brody
related: Councils
related: Kluger, Shelomoh ben Yehudah
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Land of Israel
related: L’viv
related: Orthodoxy
related: Passover
related: About this Article (Poland)

Dickstein, Szymon
described at: Dickstein Szymon
has abstract: (1858–1884), early Polish socialist, writer, and editor. Szymon Dickstein, who used the pseudonym Jan Młot, was born in Warsaw to a lower middle-class Jewish family. In 1872, he completed gymnasium and then studied medicine at Warsaw University. Even as a university student, Dickstein took an active role in illegal socialist circles.
title: Dickstein, Szymon
alternative label: Szymon
related: Bund
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Warsaw

Disenchik, Aryeh
described at: Disenchik Aryeh
has abstract: (1907–1978), journalist, editor, and Zionist activist. Born in Riga, Aryeh Disenchik studied at the local university and then at the school of international commerce in Vienna. He served as the parliamentary correspondent for the Riga newspaper Dos folk and as an editor of the newspapers Morgen post and Ovent post. Active in the Jewish scouting movement, in 1923 he was among the founders of Betar, eventually joining its international leadership in Paris. For a time, he worked as an aide to Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, the leader of Revisionist Zionism.
title: Disenchik, Aryeh
alternative label: Aryeh Disenchik
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Betar
related: Haynt
related: Jabotinsky, Vladimir
related: Latvia
related: Revisionist Zionists
related: Riga
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Dobruschka-Schönfeld Family
described at: Dobruschka-Schonfeld Family
has abstract: Prominent Moravian family that took its name from its patriarch, Jacob Moses Wimer (d. 1763), who came from Dobruschka, a small town near Königgrätz (Hradec Králové) in Bohemia. In 1730 Wimer moved to Brünn (Brno) as a widower with two children, and despite the fact that Jews were forbidden to live in that city, was given permission to settle and to deal first in precious stones and jewelry, and later in spices and tobacco. In 1750 he was granted a monopoly on the tobacco trade for the royal cities of Moravia. Dobruschka’s daughter Esther married Adam Oppenheimer of Vienna, a relative of the court purveyor Samuel Oppenheimer. Dobruschka’s son Solomon (1715–1774) married Schöndl, daughter of Löbl Hirschl of Rzeszów and Güttel Jacobi of Prossnitz.
title: Dobruschka-Schönfeld Family
alternative label: Dobruschka
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brno
related: Frankism
related: Prague
related: Prostějov
related: Rzeszów
related: Sabbatianism

Donath, Oskar
described at: Donath Oskar
has abstract: (1882–1940), literary historian and teacher. Oskar Donath was a proponent of coexistence for Czechs, Germans, and Jews in the Czech lands (and later in Czechoslovakia). Born in Újezd, near Přeřov (Prerau) in the Habsburg province of Moravia, Donath studied Slavic languages and philology at the University of Vienna, where he earned his doctorate. He taught the Czech language at the German gymnasium in Hodonín (Göding) from 1907 to 1913, then in Brno (Brünn) from 1913 to 1930, and finally in Prague from 1930 to 1940. While in Brno, he also was an adjunct instructor at the Jewish gymnasium, which opened in 1920.
title: Donath, Oskar
alternative label: Oskar Donath
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brno
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Jüdische Volksstimme
related: Kapper, Siegfried
related: Kompert, Leopold
related: Prague

Donets’k
described at: Donetsk
has abstract: Founded in 1869 as a coal and steel center by the Welsh engineer John Hughes, Donets’k was originally named Iuzovka (Hughes’ Town), but took on the name Stalino between 1924 and 1962. The city is the capital of the Donets’k Oblast’ (region) in southeastern Ukraine. Its population of 164 in 1870 grew to more than one million by 1989. The steel and coal industries continue to dominate its economy today.
title: Donets’k
related: Banking
related: Habimah
related: Industry
related: Pogroms
related: Rostov-on-Don
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Ukraine

Men’s Clothing
type: Concept
broader: Dress

Men’s Headgear
type: Concept
broader: Dress

Women’s Clothing
type: Concept
broader: Dress

Women’s Headgear
type: Concept
broader: Dress

Driz, Shike
described at: Driz Shike
has abstract: (1908–1971), Soviet Yiddish poet. Born in Krosno (Vinnitsa region) and named after his father, who died before his birth, Shike (Ovsei, in Russian) Driz was raised by his grandfather, a tinsmith. Driz first studied with a private melamed and later transferred to a Soviet Yiddish elementary school. Later he moved to Kiev, where he worked in a factory and studied at the Kiev Art School and later at the Kiev Art Institute. An aspiring sculptor, perhaps inspired by his grandfather’s craftsmanship, he turned to writing Yiddish poetry in the late 1920s. Some 20 years later, he was forced to rely on his practical skills, working at menial masonry works when public Yiddish literary activity was forbidden. Driz’s first collection of Yiddish verse, Likhtike vor (Radiant Life), appeared in Kiev in 1930 and his second, Shtolener koyakh (Might of Steel), was published in 1934.
title: Driz, Shike
alternative label: Shike Driz
related: Babi Yar
related: About this Article (Children’s Literature)
related: Gordon, Shmuel
related: Kiev
related: Kvitko, Leyb
related: Manger, Itsik
related: Moscow
related: Yiddish Poetry (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sapgir, Genrikh Veniaminovich
related: Wise Men of Chelm

Dymshits, Veniamin Emmanuilovich
described at: Dymshits Veniamin Emmanuilovich
has abstract: (1910–1993), Soviet government figure. The son of a white-collar worker, Veniamin Dymshits was born in Feodosiia. In 1931, he began working as a construction foreman at the Kuznetsk Metallurgical Plant, and later participated in building the Azov (Azovstal’) and Krivoi Rog (Ukr., Kryvyy Rih) metallurgical plants. In 1941, he was appointed director of the Magnitostroi Trust, which constructed blast furnaces at metallurgical sites. From 1946 to 1950 he headed the Zaporozhstroi Trust, which rehabilitated large-scale industry in Zaporozh’e (Ukr., Zaporizhzhia). In 1945 and again in 1950, he was awarded a Stalin Prize.
title: Dymshits, Veniamin Emmanuilovich
alternative label: Veniamin Dymshits
related: Anti-Zionist Committee of The Soviet Public

A Possible Motivation for the Translations
type: Concept
broader: East Slavic Texts

Readership
type: Concept
broader: East Slavic Texts

The Identity of the Translators
type: Concept
broader: East Slavic Texts

The Ideology of the Translators
type: Concept
broader: East Slavic Texts

The Link between the Translations and the Muscovite Heresy
type: Concept
broader: East Slavic Texts

Banking and Finance
type: Concept
broader: Economic Life

Other Occupations
type: Concept
broader: Economic Life

Production
type: Concept
broader: Economic Life

Supply and Distribution
type: Concept
broader: Economic Life

The Holocaust and After
type: Concept
broader: Economic Life

Eisenstadt, Hirsch
described at: Eisenstadt Hirsch
has abstract: (1885–1963), Estonian community activist and philanthropist. Born in Pinsk, Belorussia, Hirsch (Grigori) Eisenstadt studied economics at the Kiev Institute of Commerce between 1908 and 1913. After graduation, he joined his parents in Riga, Latvia, working for an oil company. In 1914, he was transferred to Tallinn, Estonia, where he had a business career and was active in local Jewish life.
title: Eisenstadt, Hirsch
alternative label: Hirsch (Grigori) Eisenstadt
related: Estonia
related: Kiev
related: Latvia
related: Pinsk
related: Riga
related: Tallinn
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Eppler, Sándor
described at: Eppler Sandor
has abstract: (1890–1942), Hungarian community leader. Sándor Eppler was born in Pest into a family affiliated with the Neolog movement. His father served as chief secretary of the Shas Ḥevrah (Talmud Study Society), and his uncle Viktor Sussmann was an Orthodox rabbi in Budapest. Eppler remained stringently observant his entire life. After completing elementary school, he spent three years at a commercial academy, where he gained financial and business training. The many statistical tables accompanying Eppler’s writings testify that his early training was valuable. At age 18, he became an employee of the Neolog Pest Israelite Community (PIH), thanks in large part to his personal contacts.
title: Eppler, Sándor
alternative label: Sándor Eppler
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: ORT
related: Orthodoxy
related: Stern, Samu
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Erdős, Pál
described at: Erdos Pal
has abstract: (1913–1996), mathematician. Born in Budapest to parents who taught mathematics and physics at the high-school level, Pál Erdős became interested in mathematics and showed exceptional talent at an early age. In college, he belonged to a group of students, most of them Jews, who became lifelong friends, all renowned mathematicians, such as Tibor Gallai (Grünwald), György Szekeres, Géza Grünwald, and Pál Turán. Their talents were stimulated and nurtured by their superior education; they were also decisively influenced by the Hungarian mathematical monthly Középiskolai Matematikai Lapok (Mathematical Journal for Secondary Schools), which was dedicated to problem-solving.
title: Erdős, Pál
alternative label: Pál Erdős
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Turán, Pál

Legacies of Estate-based Integration
type: Concept
broader: Estate System

The Reform Era
type: Concept
broader: Estate System

Interwar Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union
type: Concept
broader: Family

Medieval and Early Modern Periods
type: Concept
broader: Family

The Habsburg Empire
type: Concept
broader: Family

The Holocaust
type: Concept
broader: Family

The Russian Empire
type: Concept
broader: Family

Fanta, Berta
described at: Fanta Berta
has abstract: (1866–1918), literary and intellectual figure. Berta Fanta (née Sohr) came from an assimilated, well-to-do Jewish family living in the small town of Libochovice (Libochowitz), near Prague. She was an intellectual who hosted a famous philosophical salon. The gatherings that took place in the Fanta family’s home over the two-decade period before World War I were attended by professors at the German university in Prague, including Albert Einstein and Christian von Ehrenfels; intellectuals of the younger generation, such as Franz Kafka and Max Brod; and occasional visitors, such as the anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner.
title: Fanta, Berta
alternative label: Berta Fanta
related: Bergmann, Hugo
related: Brod, Max
related: Kafka, Franz
related: Prague

Fassel, Hirsch Bär
described at: Fassel Hirsch Bar
has abstract: (1802–1884), rabbi, theologian, and scholar. Born in Boskovice (Ger., Boskowitz) in the Habsburg province of Moravia, Hirsch Bär (Hebrew name, Tsevi Hirsh) Fassel attended yeshivas in Boskovice and Pressburg (mod. Bratislava). Upon his return to Moravia, he married Jozefa Arnstein, with whom he had eight children. In 1836, he was offered the rabbinate of Prostĕjov (Ger., Prossnitz) despite strident opposition from Moravia’s chief rabbi, Neḥemyah Trebitsch (1779–1842), who was wary of Fassel’s predilection for religious reform.
title: Fassel, Hirsch Bär
alternative label: Hirsch Bär Fassel
related: Ben Chananja
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Boskovice
related: Bratislava
related: Circumcision
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Passover
related: Prostějov
related: Reform, Religious
related: Steinschneider, Moritz
related: Trebitsch, Neḥemyah Naḥum

Feitelson, Menaḥem Mendel
described at: Feitelson Menahem Mendel
has abstract: (1870–1912), Hebrew literary critic. Born in a village in Crimea, Menaḥem Feitelson received a traditional and secular education from his father, a maskil who worked as a melamed. In 1884, while still an adolescent, Feitelson published articles and impressions in the local press. He then turned to literary criticism as the main focus of his writings. Feitelson’s most significant early essays were about Mendele Moykher-Sforim (Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh; 1891) and Ben-Avigdor (Avraham Leib Shalkovich; 1893). In 1891, he issued his only published book, a booklet titled Meḥkarim be-divre yeme Yisra’el (Studies on Jewish History). At various points he lived in Melitopol, Ukraine, as well as in Galicia and Austria.
title: Feitelson, Menaḥem Mendel
alternative label: Menaḥem Mendel Feitelson
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Crimea
related: Galicia
related: Lachower, Yeruḥam Fishel
related: Hebrew Criticism and Scholarship (Literary Criticism and Scholarship)
related: Nomberg, Hersh Dovid
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Pinski, Dovid
related: Shalkovich, Avraham Leib
related: Shneour, Zalman
related: Smolenskin, Perets
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw

Fenyő, Miksa
described at: Fenyo Miksa
has abstract: (1877–1972), economist, politician, writer, and publisher. Miksa Fenyő—who changed his name from Fleischmann in 1895—was raised in Mélykútin in modest circumstances (his father was a tailor) but graduated from the prestigious Lutheran Central Gymnasium of Budapest. After finishing his legal studies, he maintained a law practice in Budapest from 1900. In 1903, he became vice secretary of the Magyarországi Gyáriparosok Országos Szövetségének (Hungarian Federation of Industrialists; GyOSz), its secretary from 1904, acting director from 1907, and director from 1918. From 1912, he was the director of the Center for Hungarian Customs Policy and the editor of the periodical Magyar Gyáripar. In 1913, he converted to Catholicism.
title: Fenyő, Miksa
alternative label: Miksa Fenyő
related: Budapest
related: Hatvany, Lajos
related: Hungarian Literature
related: About this Article (Hungary)

Ferenczi, Sándor
described at: Ferenczi Sandor
has abstract: (1873–1933), neurologist, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst. Sándor Ferenczi was born and raised in Miskolc, though his family had roots in Galicia. His father, Bernát (Baruch) Fraenkel, who changed the family name to Ferenczi in 1879, ran a well-known bookshop and publishing house. Ferenczi graduated from the medical faculty of the University of Vienna and settled in Budapest in 1895. There he worked as a physician at several hospitals, opening a private surgery practice in 1900. As a physician, Ferenczi developed ideas that went beyond the dominant, purely positivistic, and reductionist biological and medical thinking of his age, and sought philosophical and psychological explanations for the “secrets” of life and matter, as well as for unconscious phenomena. In 1903, he opened a neurological practice at the outpatients’ clinic of the Workers Health Insurance Association.
title: Ferenczi, Sándor
alternative label: Sándor Ferenczi
related: Budapest
related: Galicia
related: Kun, Béla
related: Miskolc
related: Psychoanalysis

Collecting Folk Songs
type: Concept
broader: Folk Songs

Origins
type: Concept
broader: Folk Songs

Songs of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
type: Concept
broader: Folk Songs

Structure and Poetic Devices
type: Concept
broader: Folk Songs

Beverages
type: Concept
broader: Food and Drink

Bread and Baked Goods
type: Concept
broader: Food and Drink

Culinary Repertoire
type: Concept
broader: Food and Drink

Eating Out
type: Concept
broader: Food and Drink

Festive Fare
type: Concept
broader: Food and Drink

Hunger
type: Concept
broader: Food and Drink

Ritual Requirements and Customary Practices
type: Concept
broader: Food and Drink

Frankl-Grün, Adolf
described at: Frankl-Grun Adolf
has abstract: (1847–1916), rabbi and historian. Born in Kromĕříž (Ger., Kremsier) in the Habsburg province of Moravia, Adolph (Abraham) Frankl-Grün attended yeshiva in Lipník nad Bečvou (Leipnik), where he studied with Moses Bloch (1815–1909). Thereafter he attended the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau, where his teachers included Zacharias Frankel and Heinrich Graetz.
title: Frankl-Grün, Adolf
alternative label: Adolf Frankl-Grün
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Prague
related: Seminary
related: Uherský Brod
related: Wrocław
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Freund, Samuel
described at: Freund Samuel
has abstract: (1794–1881), rabbi, Torah scholar. Born in Křenice (Krimnitz) near Touškov (Tuschkau) in western Bohemia, Samuel Freund was noted for his keen intellect and unusual memory. He studied at the Triesch (now Ťrešt’) yeshiva under El‘azar Löw (1758–1837), in Leipnik, Moravia under Barukh Fränkl-Te’omim (1760–1828), and in Prague under Betsal’el Ranschburg (1760–1820). While in Prague, he lived in the house of Koppel Frankel, the father of Zacharias Frankel, the latter of whom became the head of the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau, and whom Freund assisted in Talmudic studies.
title: Freund, Samuel
alternative label: Samuel Freund
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Fleckeles, El‘azar ben David
related: Haskalah
related: Löw, El‘azar
related: Orthodoxy
related: Passover
related: Prague
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Seminary
related: Te’omim Family
related: Wrocław
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Friedman, Tsevi Hirsh
described at: Friedman Tsevi Hirsh
has abstract: (1808–1874), rabbi and Hasidic leader in Hungary. Born in Sátoraljaújhely, Tsevi Hirsh Friedman grew up in the house of Mosheh Teitelbaum and ultimately became his foremost disciple. Friedman continued his Talmudic studies at the yeshiva of Tsevi Hirsh Heller (Ḥarif) in Bonyhád. He was also close to Ḥayim Halberstam of Sandz.
title: Friedman, Tsevi Hirsh
alternative label: Tsevi Hirsh Friedman
related: Apt Hasidic Dynasty
related: Belz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Löw, Yirmiyahu
related: Opatów
related: Orthodoxy
related: Pilgrimage
related: Ropshits-Dzikov Hasidic Dynasty
related: Ruzhin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Sandz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Sátoraljaújhely
related: Ukraine
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zhidachov-Komarno Hasidic Dynasty

Galich, Aleksandr
described at: Galich Aleksandr
has abstract: (Pseudonym of Aleksandr Arkad’evich Ginzburg; 1918–1977), poet, songwriter, playwright, screenwriter, and prose writer. Born in Moscow and raised in Sebastopol, Galich was celebrated in the 1940s and 1950s for his dramatic works (including Vas vyzyvaet Taimyr [The Taimyr Is Calling You]) and screenplays (Vernye druz’ia [Eternal Friends]; Na semi vetrakh [To Seven Winds]). His lasting fame, however, rested on the songs—widely understood as countercultural and satirical—that he wrote and performed beginning in the early 1960s. Accompanying himself on guitar, Galich staged shows throughout the Soviet Union at universities, clubs, and private apartments.
title: Galich, Aleksandr
alternative label: Aleksandr Galich
related: Moscow
related: Samizdat

From Annexation until Emancipation (1772–1867)
type: Concept
broader: Galicia

From Emancipation through the End of Empire (1867–1918)
type: Concept
broader: Galicia

Ganzfried, Shelomoh ben Yosef
described at: Ganzfried Shelomoh ben Yosef
has abstract: (1804–1886), Hungarian rabbi and author. Born in Ungvár and orphaned at the age of eight, Shelomoh Ganzfried was raised by the chief rabbi of that city, Tsevi Hirsh Heller, and later followed him to Bonyhad. After his marriage he turned to commerce, but the failure of his business drew him to a rabbinical career.
title: Ganzfried, Shelomoh ben Yosef
alternative label: Shelomoh Ganzfried
related: Danzig, Avraham ben Yeḥi’el Mikhl
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Leszno
related: Lorbeerbaum, Ya‘akov ben Ya‘akov Mosheh of Lissa
related: Orthodoxy
related: Seminary
related: Shneur Zalman of Liady
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Sofer, Mosheh

Gel’fond, Aleksandr Osipovich
described at: Gelfond Aleksandr Osipovich
has abstract: (1906–1968), Soviet mathematician. Born in Saint Petersburg into a family of physicians, Aleksandr Gel’fond studied at the Bauman Higher Technical School in Moscow, and later at the physics and mathematics faculty of Moscow State University. After completing his studies in 1927, he entered a postgraduate program. During his university and postgraduate years, Gel’fond worked under the guidance of Viacheslav Stepanov and Aleksandr Khinchin.
title: Gel’fond, Aleksandr Osipovich
alternative label: Aleksandr Gel’fond
related: Moscow
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Gellner, František
described at: Gellner Frantisek
has abstract: (1881–1914?), Czech poet, caricaturist, and journalist. Gellner was born in the town of Mladá Boleslav, southwest of Prague, into the family of a small textile factory owner whose business had just collapsed. As a secondary school student, Gellner began writing poetry, drawing, and translating Goethe and Heine for school magazines. His subsequent studies were erratic: over the next decade he abandoned studies at a technical university in Vienna, a mining academy in Příbram, and art schools in Munich and Dresden. While living in Příbram, Gellner often visited the circle of anarchists in nearby Prague, led by the poet Stanislav Kostka Neumann, and contributed poems and drawings to his magazine Nový kult. After 1905, Gellner lived mainly in Paris; in 1911, he settled down in the Moravian city of Brno, where he joined the newspaper Lidové noviny and edited its Sunday supplement Večery. He became known for his satiric poetry and caricatures.
title: Gellner, František
alternative label: František Gellner
related: Brno
related: Mladá Boleslav
related: Prague

Beginnings
type: Concept
broader: German Literature

Farther East
type: Concept
broader: German Literature

Jews in Eastern German Lands
type: Concept
broader: German Literature

The Habsburg Monarchy
type: Concept
broader: German Literature

The Range of Inquiry
type: Concept
broader: German Literature

Gerő, Katalin
described at: Gero Katalin
has abstract: (1853–1944), director of the Girls’ Orphanage of the Pest Israelite Women’s Association and cofounder of the first Zionist girls’ association in Budapest. Katalin Gerő’s mother was Zsófia Benkő, whose family had been successful and respectable residents in the village of Hévízgyörk northeast of Budapest from the eighteenth century. Katalin’s father, László Gerő, was an intellectual and son of a Polish freedom fighter who had found shelter for his family in Hungary. The early death of Zsófia left László with six children and little experience in running the farm. As a result, he quickly became impoverished and abandoned his children.
title: Gerő, Katalin
alternative label: Katalin Gerő
related: Bischitz, Johanna
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kiss, József
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Gershuni, Grigorii Andreevich
described at: Gershuni Grigorii Andreevich
has abstract: (1870–1908), a founding member of the Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party and one of the leaders of its Combat Organization. Grigorii Gershuni was born near Kaunas, Lithuania. Some sources describe him as a chemist, while others call him a pharmacist. He joined the revolutionary movement, and by the late 1890s had become an important promoter of socialist and anarchist ideas.
title: Gershuni, Grigorii Andreevich
alternative label: Tsevi (Grigorii) Gershuni
related: Belarus
related: Finland
related: Kaunas
related: Khar’kiv
related: Lithuania
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg

Gertsa
described at: Gertsa
has abstract: Town in Ukraine, close to the Romanian border; now part of the region of Chernivtsi. Jews settled in Gertsa (Rom., Herța) in the second half of the seventeenth century, the result of a privilege granted in 1672 by Prince Gheorghe Duca (renewed in 1817 and 1824). A yeshiva had been founded there in the eighteenth century. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, Rabbi Eli‘ezer Volf, a Hasid, settled in the town.
title: Gertsa
alternative label: Herța
related: Bessarabia
related: Bucovina
related: Chernivtsi
related: Dorohoi
related: Galicia
related: Romania
related: Transnistria
related: Ukraine
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Gessen, Iulii Isidorovich
described at: Gessen Iulii Isidorovich
has abstract: (1871–1939), historian and social activist. Iulii Gessen was born in Odessa and graduated from the commercial school in that city; he also studied history independently. In 1895 he was employed by the newspaper Odesskie novosti (Odessa News); a year later he moved to Saint Petersburg, where he worked in a bank until 1905. Apparently heavily influenced by social activists such as Ahad Ha-Am and Simon Dubnow, from 1905 Gessen was active in the work of the Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia (OPE).
title: Gessen, Iulii Isidorovich
alternative label: Iulii Gessen
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Odessa
related: Rabinovich, Osip Aronovich
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Ukraine

Gesundheit, Ya‘akov
described at: Gesundheit Yaakov
has abstract: (1816–1878), chief rabbi of the Warsaw community, businessman, and Talmudic scholar. The son of a wealthy merchant, Ya‘akov Gesundheit grew up in the Warsaw suburb of Praga. He worked as a merchant and became one of the most outspoken opponents of Hasidism during the period in which the movement grew into the leading force among observant Jews in Warsaw.
title: Gesundheit, Ya‘akov
alternative label: Ya‘akov Gesundheit
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Meisels, Dov Berush
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Gezkul’t
described at: Gezkult
has abstract: (From Yid., Gezelshaft kultur; Culture Society), the All-Ukrainian Society for Promoting the Development of Jewish Culture, an independent organization, Communist in ideology, that worked mainly in Yiddish. Gezkul’t was founded in Kiev on 26 September 1926 (the date of its charter) and was active until the early 1930s.
title: Gezkul’t
related: Kiev
related: Kultur-lige
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Life in Ghettos (Ghettos)
described at: Life in Ghettos
has abstract: The establishment of the 800 to 900 ghettos in Poland, the Soviet Union, and Romania between late 1939 and mid-1942 introduced radical and rapid changes in Jewish communal and individual life, and was a multifaceted and complicated phenomenon. Those changes and the coping strategies Jews invented in response can best be examined from three perspectives—physical space; social welfare; and educational, cultural, and religious activity.
title: Life in Ghettos (Ghettos)
alternative label: ghetto life
related: Łódź
related: Białystok
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Historiography)
related: Art and the Holocaust (Holocaust)
related: Hrodna
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Kaunas
related: Kielce
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: L’viv
related: Minsk
related: ORT
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Radom
related: Ringelblum, Emanuel
related: Romania
related: Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (Russia)
related: Šiauliai
related: TOZ
related: Tarnów
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: YIVO
related: Youth Movements

David Gintsburg
type: Concept
broader: Gintsburg Family

Evzel’ Gintsburg
type: Concept
broader: Gintsburg Family

Goratsii Gintsburg
type: Concept
broader: Gintsburg Family

Rise of the Family
type: Concept
broader: Gintsburg Family

The Gintsburg Circle and the Legal Position of Russian Jewry
type: Concept
broader: Gintsburg Family

Ginzburg, Evgeniia Semenovna
described at: Ginzburg Evgeniia Semenovna
has abstract: (1904–1977), activist, teacher, journalist, and memoir writer. An ardent member of the Communist Party who was arrested during the purges of the 1930s and sentenced to 18 years in the gulag, Evgeniia Ginzburg is renowned for her compelling articulation of that ordeal in her two-volume memoir Krutoi marshrut. Translated as Journey into the Whirlwind and Within the Whirlwind, her account ranks with and complements Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s fiction in its suspenseful, introspective description of one woman’s “journey” through the Stalinist gulag.
title: Ginzburg, Evgeniia Semenovna
alternative label: Evgeniia Ginzburg
related: Communist Party of the Soviet Union
related: Moscow
related: Samizdat

Goldin, Ezra
described at: Goldin Ezra
has abstract: (1868–1915), Hebrew writer. Ezra Goldin was born in Luna, a town in the Grodno region. In 1886 he moved to Warsaw, and a year later published his first book, Shire no‘ar (Poetry of Youth). This was an anthology of both original and translated poems from Russian, with nationalist themes and emotional tones that were typical of Ḥibat Tsiyon poetry. He soon abandoned poetry and turned his attention to prose, publishing stories and articles in Hebrew and Yiddish in the local press.
title: Goldin, Ezra
alternative label: Ezra Goldin
related: Łódź
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Gnessin, Uri Nisan
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Hrodna
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Riga
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Warsaw
related: Zeman, Ha-

Gorenshtein, Fridrikh Naumovich
described at: Gorenshtein Fridrikh Naumovich
has abstract: (1932–2002), prose writer, playwright, and screenwriter. Fridrikh Gorenshtein was born in Kiev; his father, a professor, was repressed in 1935. A graduate of the Dnepropetrovsk Mining Institute (1955), Gorenshtein also completed a course in screenwriting (1963). Between 1963 and 1980, he wrote 15 screenplays, including Solaris (dir. Andrei Tarkovskii; 1972) and Raba liubvi (Slave of Love; dir. Nikita Mikhalkov; 1976). In the Soviet Union, Gorenshtein was permitted to publish just one piece, the story “Dom s bashenkoi” (House with a Turret; 1964); however, his novella, Stupeni (Steps), was included in a celebrated “unofficial” collection, Metropol’ (1979). In 1980 he emigrated to Germany, where he remained until his death in 2002.
title: Gorenshtein, Fridrikh Naumovich
alternative label: Fridrikh Gorenshtein
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Kiev
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Gorshman, Shira
described at: Gorshman Shira
has abstract: (1906–2001), Yiddish prose writer. Born in the Lithuanian town of Krakes, Shira (or Shirke; original surname unknown) grew up in poverty, with little attention from her parents. She moved to Palestine in 1924, but in 1929 arrived in Odessa with a group of disillusioned members of the Gedud ha-‘Avodah labor corps. Led by Mendl Elkind, they attempted to recreate their commune in the Soviet Union by establishing the agricultural settlement of Vojo Nova (“New Way [of life]” in Esperanto) in Crimea. At that point, Shira Kushnir (as she was known then; Kushnir may not have been her surname at birth) was a single mother of three daughters.
title: Gorshman, Shira
alternative label: Shira Gorshman
related: Birobidzhan
related: Crimea
related: Kvitko, Leyb
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Sovetish Heymland
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw

Grosser, Bronisław
described at: Grosser Bronisław
has abstract: (1883–1912), Bundist, writer, and theorist on Jewish nationalism. Bronisław Grosser was born in Miechów, Congress Poland, to a middle-class Jewish family. Raised in a wholly Polish cultural milieu, he regarded himself as fully Polish during his childhood. Even though Grosser’s parents had not converted, they had severed their ties to the Jewish community to such an extent that Grosser did not know about his Jewish origins until the second decade of his life. During his years at a gymnasium in Warsaw, Grosser first began to wrestle with his Jewish background, gradually moving away from the assimilationist spirit in which he was raised. At 13, he studied Hebrew with his uncle.
title: Grosser, Bronisław
alternative label: Bronisław Grosser
related: Assimilation
related: Bund
related: Horwitz, Maksymilian
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Warsaw

Gruzenberg, Oskar Osipovich
described at: Gruzenberg Oskar Osipovich
has abstract: (1866–1940), lawyer, communal advocate, and chief counsel of Mendel Beilis. Born in Ekaterinoslav, in 1876 Gruzenberg moved with his family to Kiev, where he attended a Russian gymnasium. Upon earning a law degree from Saint Vladimir University in 1889, Gruzenberg moved to Saint Petersburg to begin his profession. Despite his talents, he remained an apprentice lawyer until 1905 because of a government decree that admitted non-Christians to the bar only by personal authorization from the minister of justice.
title: Gruzenberg, Oskar Osipovich
alternative label: Oskar Gruzenberg
related: Beilis, Mendel
related: Blood Libels and Host Desecration Accusations
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Kiev
related: Kishinev
related: Minsk
related: Odessa
related: Pogroms
related: Razsvet
related: Riga
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Trotsky, Leon
related: Vilnius
related: Voskhod

Gumplowicz Family
described at: Gumplowicz Family
has abstract: Advocates of the Haskalah and then of Polish Jewish assimilation. Abraham Gumplowicz (1803–1876) was a wealthy merchant and politician. His son Ludwik (1838–1909) was a legal historian and sociologist. Abraham’s grandson, Maksymilian Ernest (1864–1897), was an attorney, historian, and Slavic studies specialist. Maksymilian’s son Władysław (1869–1942), a physician by training, was a geographer and journalist.
title: Gumplowicz Family
alternative label: Ludwik Gumplowicz
related: Assimilation
related: Conversion
related: Galicia
related: Haskalah
related: Jutrzenka
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Reform, Religious

Guzik, Anna Iakovlevna
described at: Guzik Anna Iakovlevna
has abstract: (1909–1994), variety artist. Born in Kharkov, Anna Guzik was the daughter of Iakov Guzik, founder of the Yiddish Traveling Folk Ensemble of Musical Comedy. She first appeared in her father’s troupe in 1924, acting in Avrom Goldfadn’s comedies and operettas and appearing in stage versions of Sholem Aleichem’s works. She sang, danced, acted, read feuilletons from the stage, and performed Jewish folk songs. In the mid-1930s Guzik toured the USSR with a Jewish folk music ensemble and also appeared on the Russian stage in musical comedies. In 1939 she won a national contest for variety performers.
title: Guzik, Anna Iakovlevna
alternative label: Anna Iakovlevna Guzik
related: Folk Songs
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Khar’kiv
related: Moldavia
related: Moscow
related: Operetta
related: Riga
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Ha-Efrati, Yosef
described at: Ha-Efrati Yosef
has abstract: (1770–1804), Hebrew playwright and poet. Born in Troplowitz (Pol., Opawica), Silesia, Yosef Ha-Efrati (also known as Joseph Troplowitz) served as a private tutor for a wealthy household in Ratibor (Pol., Racibórz) until 1791. Between 1791 and 1794, he lived in Prague. Many of his poems were printed in the Hebrew periodical Ha-Me’asef, which also published his translation (from German) in 1788 of works by Heinrich Von Kleist.
title: Ha-Efrati, Yosef
alternative label: Yosef ha-Efrati
related: Haskalah
related: Klausner, Yosef
related: Landau, Yeḥezkel ben Yehudah
related: Levinzon, Yitsḥak Ber
related: Prague
related: Purim-shpil
related: Silesia

He-Ḥaluts and Youth Movements
type: Concept
broader: Ḥaluts, He-

He-Ḥaluts in Russia
type: Concept
broader: Ḥaluts, He-

Hârlău
described at: Harlau
has abstract: Town in northeastern Moldavia, located within 50 kilometers of Botoşani and 73 kilometers of Iaşi. A Jewish presence in Hârlău apparently existed during the reign of Stephen the Great (1475–1504), as the prince hired the Jewish doctor Şmil of Hârlău to work at his court in Suceava. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Jewish craftsmen and merchants, encouraged by Moldavian rulers, began to arrive from Poland, some settling in Hârlău.
title: Hârlău
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Bessarabia
related: Botoşani
related: Carp, Horia
related: Crafts
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Iaşi
related: Moldavia
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Renaşterea Noastră
related: Romania
related: Suceava
related: Trade
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Everyday Life (Hasidism)
described at: Everyday Life
has abstract: By the end of the eighteenth century, Hasidism, in its various groupings, was striking a responsive chord in ever-broadening circles of East European Jews. The central feature of Hasidism from its inception has been allegiance to a holy master (rebbe or tsadik) who has loyal followers. People do not qualify as Hasidim, no matter how great their admiration for Hadisic ideas, unless they are loyal to a particular rebbe, whether Belz, Satmar, Bobov, Lubavitch, Ger, or the like. The place where the rebbe resides defines where his “court” is located (the regal analogy holds), whence the Hasidim of that dynasty receive particular rules and acquire their individual identity and contribute to the upkeep according to their means. Thus, in pre-Holocaust times, the Belzer rebbe resided in Bełz in Galicia and the Gerer rebbe in Gur (Ger in Hasidic parlance) in Poland; the Belzer Hasidim, in the larger towns, had their Belzer prayer houses and the Gerer theirs. After the Holocaust, the rebbes who survived retained their old town names but, of course, lived elsewhere: the Belzer rebbe, for example, in Jerusalem, and the Gerer rebbe in Ashkelon.
title: Everyday Life (Hasidism)
alternative label: Hasidic society
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Beards
related: Belz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Dress
related: Galicia
related: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
related: Dance (Hasidism)
related: Landau, Yeḥezkel ben Yehudah
related: Misnagdim
related: Orthodoxy
related: Piety
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Sabbath
related: Sexuality
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Weddings
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Berlin Haskalah
type: Concept
broader: Haskalah

Early Haskalah
type: Concept
broader: Haskalah

Haskalah and Jewish Nationalism
type: Concept
broader: Haskalah

Haskalah in Galicia
type: Concept
broader: Haskalah

Haskalah in Russia
type: Concept
broader: Haskalah

Hausner, Bernard Dov
described at: Hausner Bernard Dov
has abstract: (1874–1938), Zionist leader, rabbi, and Polish consul in Palestine. Born in Czortków, Galicia, Bernard Hausner was involved in Zionist activity during his high school years. He was ordained by the rabbinical seminary in Vienna and received a doctorate in philosophy from the German University in Prague. When he returned to Galicia in 1903, he taught Jewish studies at the government high school in Lemberg (Lwów) and also participated in Zionist activities. As an administrator, he granted financial aid to needy students, and initiated programs to encourage the involvement of Galician Jewry in the fields of crafts, industry, and agriculture.
title: Hausner, Bernard Dov
alternative label: Bernard Hausner
related: Agriculture
related: Crafts
related: Galicia
related: Industry
related: L’viv
related: Mizraḥi
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Seminary
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Ḥayim Ḥaykl of Amdur
described at: Hayim Haykl of Amdur
has abstract: (d. 1787), Hasidic leader. Ḥayim Ḥaykl ben Shemu’el was a leading disciple of Dov Ber, the Magid of Mezritsh, and did much to introduce Hasidism in Lithuania. According to Hasidic tradition, he had begun his career as a cantor in Karlin, and had been a close disciple of Eliyahu, the Gaon of Vilna, before coming to Hasidism.
title: Ḥayim Ḥaykl of Amdur
related: Cantors
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Hrodna
related: Lithuania
related: Misnagdim
related: Warsaw

Health Care Facilities
type: Concept
broader: Health and Healing

Health Care Personnel
type: Concept
broader: Health and Healing

Professionalization and Nationalization of Jewish Medicine
type: Concept
broader: Health and Healing

APPENDIX: HEBREW WRITERS
type: Concept
broader: Hebrew Literature

The Early Twentieth Century
type: Concept
broader: Hebrew Literature

The Galician Haskalah
type: Concept
broader: Hebrew Literature

The Generation of Transition (1880–1900)
type: Concept
broader: Hebrew Literature

The Interwar Years
type: Concept
broader: Hebrew Literature

The Russian and Lithuanian Haskalah
type: Concept
broader: Hebrew Literature

Modernization
type: Concept
broader: Heder

The Melamed
type: Concept
broader: Heder

Herrmann, Leo
described at: Herrmann Leo
has abstract: (1888–1951), journalist and Zionist activist. Leo Herrmann was born in Landškroun (Landskron), Bohemia. After studying law in Prague, he joined the Bar Kochba Association, the organization of Prague Zionists, in 1906, and served as its chairman between 1908 and 1909. That year, he invited Martin Buber to Prague to deliver his famous “Three Speeches on Judaism,” a presentation that had a decisive influence on Zionism in that city. Herrmann was editor of the Prague Zionist weekly Selbstwehr (Self-Defense) from 1910 to 1913; under his editorship it became a respected political and literary journal. He also contributed to the Jüdische Volksstimme (Jewish People’s Voice) in Brünn (Brno) and the Jüdische Zeitung (Jewish News) in Vienna.
title: Herrmann, Leo
alternative label: Leo
related: Bar Kochba Association
related: Birnbaum, Nathan
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brno
related: Herrmann, Hugo
related: Jüdische Volksstimme
related: Prague
related: Selbstwehr
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Heryng, Helena
described at: Heryng Helena
has abstract: (1859–1916), early Polish socialist. Born in Warsaw in 1856 to a well-to-do assimilated Jewish family that had taken part in the 1863 Polish uprising, Helena Heryng (née Kon) was a member of the first circle of socialists in Warsaw. The older sister of Feliks Kon, a Polish socialist, Heryng was among a circle of women who helped to found the socialist movement in the second half of the 1870s. Arrested in 1878 along with her mother, Paulina Kon, for socialist activity, Heryng was sentenced to Siberian exile, where she met and married her husband, Zygmunt Heryng.
title: Heryng, Helena
alternative label: Helena Kon (Heryng)
related: Łódź
related: Galicia
related: Heryng, Zygmunt
related: Kon, Feliks
related: Warsaw

Heryng, Zygmunt
described at: Heryng Zygmunt
has abstract: (1854–1931), early Polish socialist, economist, translator, and publicist. Zygmunt Heryng was born in Warsaw to a middle-class assimilated Jewish merchant family that “had been Polonized for several generations,” according to his memoirs. Heryng claimed to have taken part in patriotic demonstrations in Warsaw during the Polish uprising of 1863. In 1868–1869, while a gymnasium student in Warsaw, he first encountered socialist literature and became an activist. After graduation, Heryng studied briefly at the Commercial Academy in Vienna and subsequently, in 1875–1878, at the Mining Academy in Saint Petersburg.
title: Heryng, Zygmunt
alternative label: Zygmunt Heryng
related: Heryng, Helena
related: Horwitz, Maksymilian
related: Kon, Feliks
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Warsaw

Hillels, Shelomoh
described at: Hillels Shelomoh
has abstract: (1873–1953), Hebrew and Yiddish writer. Shelomoh Hillels was born in the town of Bar, Podolia. When he was six years old, his family moved to Soroca, Bessarabia, where he received a traditional Jewish education. Following his marriage, he began to read Haskalah literature, including the works of Kalman Schulman, Avraham Mapu, and Yehudah Leib Gordon. In 1891, he published his first story, “Ikar ‘ivri” (A Hebrew Farmer), in the Hebrew periodical Ha-Tsefirah. The story reflected his interest in agricultural settlement in Argentina.
title: Hillels, Shelomoh
alternative label: Shelomoh Hillels
related: Bessarabia
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Haskalah
related: Kishinev
related: Mapu, Avraham
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Schulman, Kalman
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Soroca
related: Tarbut
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw
related: Yud, Der
related: Zeman, Ha-

Hirschler, Ignác
described at: Hirschler Ignac
has abstract: (1823–1891), ophthalmologist and president of the Jewish Community of Pest. Ignác Hirschler was born in Stomfa, where his father was a merchant. The family moved to Pest in the 1830s, and Hirschler studied at the prestigious Piarist secondary school, where he experienced antisemitism firsthand. In his autobiography, he wrote: “Sitting at the Jewish desk in the back of the classroom, I felt the poisoned sting of humiliation, which influences a person’s spirit and frame of mind more adversely than is generally believed.”
title: Hirschler, Ignác
alternative label: Ignác Hirschler
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Seminary
related: Transylvania

Hock, Simon
described at: Hock Simon
has abstract: (1815–1887), historian, publicist, and businessman. Simon (Sinai) Hock was born into family that had been in Prague for several generations. He studied at the city’s yeshiva and the Jewish Normalschule. In 1835, he helped found Aurora, the Prague society for youth participating in morning prayers, a group committed to blending religious tradition and ideas of the Enlightenment. During the 1840s, Hock wrote about the impact of political conditions on Jewish life in Bohemia and on religious reform; his articles were printed anonymously in the newspapers Die Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums and Der Orient.
title: Hock, Simon
alternative label: Simon Hock
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Kaufmann, David
related: Normalschulen
related: Prague
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Reform, Religious
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Holder, Yoysef
described at: Holder Yoysef
has abstract: (1893–1945?), poet and translator. One of the most important Yiddish writers in Hungary, Yoysef (Hun., József) Holder was born to a Hasidic family in Nagybocskó (Rom., Bocicou Mare; Hun., Veliky Bichkif; the town is now divided between Romania and Ukraine) near Máramarossziget (Rom., Sighet Marmației, in Maramureş), where Yiddish was spoken as a matter of course. He left the Hasidic milieu quite early, yet continued to speak his first language. At age 15, he wrote Hebrew poems and a story about the famous yeshiva of Pressburg; he published this story in the Kraków monthly Ha-Mitspeh. After writing for other Hebrew papers such as Ha-‘Olam (London), Ha-Tsefirah (Warsaw) and ‘Al ha-mishmar (Jerusalem), Holder found his calling as a Yiddish poet.
title: Holder, Yoysef
alternative label: Yoysef Holder
related: Bratislava
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Romania
related: Sighet Marmaţiei
related: Transylvania
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Ukraine
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Hollaenderski, Leon
described at: Hollaenderski Leon
has abstract: (1808/12?–1878), bookseller, printer, and journalist. Little is known about Leon (Leib ben David) Hollaenderski’s family background, childhood, and adolescence. As a printer and bookseller of Polish literature in the border region of Suwałki near Lithuania, Hollaenderski was vulnerable to police persecution and decided in 1843 to move to France.
title: Hollaenderski, Leon
alternative label: Leon Hollaenderski
related: Chess
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Suwałki

Art and the Holocaust (Holocaust)
described at: Art and the Holocaust
has abstract: During World War II, Jews produced art in concentration camps, in ghettos, or while in hiding. Unlike artistic production undertaken by outsiders in the name of propaganda, or to confirm the events after the killing had ended, art created by victims under Nazi domination may be viewed as a form of documentation, witnessing, and spiritual resistance that plays a very important historical role as evidence from the victim’s perspective.
title: Art and the Holocaust (Holocaust)
alternative label: Art
related: Łódź
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Fleischmann, Karel
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Kaunas
related: Kiev
related: Lithuania
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Szyk, Artur
related: Terezín
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Music and the Holocaust (Holocaust)
described at: Music and the Holocaust
has abstract: The sufferings of Jews under the Nazi regime were reflected in their music and musical life. Music offered Jews a way to express their humanity in inhuman conditions, to escape from reality and give voice to their yearning for freedom, and to find comfort and hope.
title: Music and the Holocaust (Holocaust)
alternative label: Holocaust: Music and the Holocaust
related: Łódź
related: Babi Yar
related: Gebirtig, Mordkhe
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Kaczerginski, Shmerke
related: Killing Centers
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Przytyk Pogrom
related: Rumkowski, Khayim Mordkhe
related: Terezín
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Honor Courts
described at: Honor Courts
has abstract: After World War II, Holocaust survivors found consolation in the claim that Jews had heroically resisted the Nazis on a large scale, and that even if not every Jew had engaged the enemy in armed combat, all Jews had exhibited high moral standards. Survivors from Eastern Europe demonstrated their solidarity and identification with the myth of Jewish valor by censuring the questionable conduct of a small fraction of Jews suspected of collaboration with the Nazi regime. During the war, the Jewish underground in Eastern Europe had assassinated several Judenrat functionaries, ghetto policemen, and informers, while concentration camp inmates had occasionally killed brutal former kapos stripped by the Germans of their authority. After liberation there were survivors who wanted to settle scores with Jewish collaborators still alive. This wish for revenge led to prosecutions of putative collaborators in Jewish honor courts, administrative tribunals mandated by local Jewish communities to investigate individuals whose behavior under Nazi occupation was called into question, and to condemn and sanction those whose actions were deemed reproachable.
title: Honor Courts
alternative label: honor courts
related: Łódź
related: Central Committee of Jews in Poland
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Informers
related: Jewish Historical Institute
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Kasztner, Rezső
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rotholc, Stanisław
related: Warsaw
related: Weichert, Michał

Horovitz, Leah
described at: Horovitz Leah
has abstract: (fl. 18th century), scholar and liturgical poet. Leah Horovitz (her entire first name was Sarah Rivkah Raḥel Leah) was a descendant of a family that had had distinguished rabbis and scholars in its ranks for centuries. Her father, Ya‘akov ben Me’ir Horovitz (1680–1755), was the rabbi of Bolechów and later of Brody, where he was also a member of the elite kloyz (circle) of scholar-mystics. Three of Leah’s five brothers also functioned as rabbis. Leah was married twice, first to Aryeh Leib, son of the rabbi of Dobromil, and then to Shabetai ben Binyamin Rapoport, the rabbi of Krasny. It is not known if she had children.
title: Horovitz, Leah
alternative label: Leah Horovitz
related: Ber of Bolechów
related: Brody
related: Kloyz
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
related: Sabbath
related: Tkhines

APPENDIX: HUNGARIAN WRITERS
type: Concept
broader: Hungarian Literature

A Defining Cultural Role: The Second and Third Generations
type: Concept
broader: Hungarian Literature

Flowering: The First Generation
type: Concept
broader: Hungarian Literature

Hurwitz, Sha’ul Yisra’el
described at: Hurwitz Shaul Yisrael
has abstract: (1861–1922), Hebrew essayist and editor. Born near Gomel in White Russia (mod. Homel’, Belarus), Sha’ul Hurwitz (also known as Shai Ish Hurwitz) received an enlightened Talmudic education and emulated the progressive tendentious scholarship of such authors as Mosheh Leib Lilienblum in Hebrew and Il’ia Orshanskii in Russian. After attending university classes in Saint Petersburg, Hurwitz studied Jewish laws concerning women, a project that culminated in his monograph Ha-‘Ivriyah veha-yehudiyah (Hebrew Woman, Jewish Woman; 1892).
title: Hurwitz, Sha’ul Yisra’el
alternative label: Sha’ul Yisra’el Hurwitz
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Banking
related: Belarus
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Brainin, Re’uven
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Cahan, Ya‘akov
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Homel’
related: Krochmal, Naḥman
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Magid, Ha-
related: Orshanskii, Il’ia Grigor’evich
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sabbatianism
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Zweifel, Eli‘ezer

Ickowicz Brothers
described at: Ickowicz Brothers
has abstract: Extremely wealthy Jewish dzierżawcy (estate lessees) in Lithuania. Presumably born at the turn of the eighteenth century, Shmuel (known in Polish as Szmojło) and his younger brother Yoysef Gdalye (known as Gdal), were the sons of a businessman from Ołyka on the Radziwiłł estates in Volhynia. In 1726, they moved to the town of Biała Podlaska, and began to lease estates from Anna Radziwiłłowa.
title: Ickowicz Brothers
alternative label: Shmuel Ickowicz
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Kaliningrad
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Leaseholding
related: Lithuania
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Riga
related: Slutsk
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Ignotus, Hugó
described at: Ignotus Hugo
has abstract: (1869–1949), writer, poet, critic, and editor. Hugó Ignotus’s father, Leo Veigelsberg (1846–1907) was a publicist and editor in chief of the leading German-language Hungarian daily Pester Lloyd. Ignotus (he formally adopted this pseudonym) was born in Pest but spent his childhood with his maternal grandfather in the Hungarian great plains. He went to high school in Budapest and completed law studies. While still young, he joined the editorial staff of the modernist literary weekly Hét (The Week), founded by József Kiss in 1890, and worked there between 1891 and 1906. Ignotus’s first book, A slemil keservei (Complaints of the Schlemiel; 1891), a narrative poem, received a favorable review by the leading literary critic of the time, Pál Gyulai.
title: Ignotus, Hugó
alternative label: Ignotus
related: Assimilation
related: Budapest
related: Fenyő, Miksa
related: Hatvany, Lajos
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kiss, József
related: Komlós, Aladár
related: Psychoanalysis
related: Radnóti, Miklós

Infeld, Leopold
described at: Infeld Leopold
has abstract: (1898–1968), physicist. The son of a shoeshop owner, Leopold Infeld was born in Kraków. He studied at the Jagiellonian University with Władysław Natanson between 1916 and 1921 and was later able to study briefly in Berlin. Infeld was an assistant to the chair of theoretical physics at the Jagiellonian University between 1921 and 1924, when he went again to Berlin, and at the Jan Kazimierz University in Lwów from 1932, where until 1934 he held the position of docent (lecturer).
title: Infeld, Leopold
alternative label: Leopold Infeld
related: Konin
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Warsaw

Ioffe, Vladimir Il’ich
described at: Ioffe Vladimir Ilich
has abstract: (Yeraḥmi’el Ze‘ev Volf; 1898–1979), Soviet microbiologist and immunologist. Born in the town of Mglin, Chernigov province, in the Pale, Vladimir Ioffe grew up in Perm. The education given in the Ioffe home was Jewish in character. The family read books on Jewish history and culture, written mostly in Hebrew and Yiddish. From his childhood Vladimir showed a particular interest in Hebrew, and at 10, together with his two brothers, he issued a children’s magazine in Hebrew called Kitme diyo (Ink Stains), comprising 32 pages of prose and verse. Ioffe’s study of Hebrew did not prevent him from graduating with honors from the local boys’ high school.
title: Ioffe, Vladimir Il’ich
alternative label: Vladimir Ioffe
related: Lenski, Ḥayim
related: Saint Petersburg

Jackson-Vanik Amendment
described at: Jackson-Vanik Amendment
has abstract: Signed into law by U.S. President Gerald Ford in 1975, the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the Trade Act of 1974 was instrumental in eliminating barriers to the emigration of Soviet Jewry. Officially known as the [Wilbur] Mills–[Charles] Vanik Bill in the House of Representatives and as the [Henry] Jackson Amendment in the Senate, this amendment required that nonmarket economy countries comply with specific free emigration criteria as a prerequisite for receiving economic benefits in trade relations with the United States. These benefits included Most Favored Nation (MFN) status—now known as Normal Trade Relations—and access to U.S. government financial facilities.
title: Jackson-Vanik Amendment
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Moscow
related: Migration since World War I (Population and Migration)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Jastrun, Mieczysław
described at: Jastrun Mieczysław
has abstract: (Original surname Agatstein; 1903–1983), poet and essayist. Mieczysław Jastrun studied German and Polish philology and subsequently worked as a high-school teacher, publishing poetry in literary journals. After World War II, which he survived on the so-called Aryan side in Warsaw, Jastrun joined the Communist Party and edited the government-sponsored journal Kuźnica (1945–1949). After breaking with the party in 1957, he belonged to the group of writers actively defending freedom of speech.
title: Jastrun, Mieczysław
alternative label: Mieczysław Jastrun
related: Assimilation
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Sandauer, Artur
related: Warsaw

Jaszuński, Józef
described at: Jaszunski Jozef
has abstract: (1881–1943), engineer, researcher, translator, and educator. Józef Jaszuński was born in Grodno to a wealthy family that provided him with both a traditional Jewish and a general education. Jaszuński studied physics and mathematics at Saint Petersburg University and at the Berlin Polytechnikum. Politically, he sympathized early on with the Zionist movement, but later identified with the Bund.
title: Jaszuński, Józef
alternative label: Józef Jaszuński
related: Bund
related: Folks-tsaytung
related: Fraynd, Der
related: Hrodna
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Kultur-lige
related: ORT
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Weichert, Michał
related: YIVO

Jewish Confederation of Ukraine
described at: Jewish Confederation of Ukraine
has abstract: Established in 1999, the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine (Evreiskaia konfederatsiia Ukrainy; EKU) is an association of national, regional, and local organizations with a focus on “philanthropy, the reconstruction of the Jewish national way of life, and the support of humanitarian values.” It was set up by four umbrella organizations: the Union of Jewish Religious Organizations of Ukraine (Ob”edinenie Iudeiskikh Religioznykh Organizatsii Ukrainy; OIROU), the Society for Jewish Culture / Jewish Council of Ukraine (Obshchestvo Evreiskoi Kultury / Evreiskii Sovet Ukrainy; ESU), the Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities-VAAD of Ukraine (Assotsiatsiia Evreiskikh Organizatsii i Obshchin–VAAD Ukrainy; VAAD-AEOOU), and the Kiev City Jewish Community.
title: Jewish Confederation of Ukraine
related: Babi Yar
related: Kiev
related: Ukraine

Josko
described at: Josko
has abstract: (d. 1506), customhouse leaseholder. Josko (Josef) of Hrubieszów (the son of Lea and Shakhnah of Hrubieszów; husband of Golda; brother of Szania, Mordusz, and Iczchan (Yitsḥak?); father of Pesaḥ and Shakhnah) was the most important customhouse leaseholder of Red Russia during the reigns of Casimir IV, Jan Olbracht, and Aleksander; he also served the royal court as financier and supplier.
title: Josko
related: Chełm
related: Leaseholding
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Luts’k
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Przemyśl
related: Volodymyr Volyns’kyi

Karlinski, Ber
described at: Karlinski Ber
has abstract: (1886–1935), journalist. Ber Karlinski was born in the provincial town of Kolno, in the Białystok district. He also used the first name Boaz, as well as the aliases B. Karlinius, B. K-I, and B. Karliner. The son of a wealthy and learned family, Karlinski received a traditional Jewish education. Subsequently, he acquired a general education independently, in Warsaw as of 1904.
title: Karlinski, Ber
alternative label: Ber Karlinski
related: Association of Jewish Writers and Journalists in Warsaw
related: Białystok
related: Kaganovski, Froyim
related: Moment, Der
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sokolow, Naḥum
related: Steinberg, Yehudah
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Karni, Yehudah
described at: Karni Yehudah
has abstract: (1884–1949), Hebrew poet. Yehudah Karni was born in Pinsk and received a Hebrew and general education. At the age of 13 he published his first poem, “Gemul ha-meshorer” (The Poet’s Recompense; 1897) in Ha-Tsefirah and continued to write poetry in Hebrew and Yiddish for the organs of the Zionist socialist Po‘ale Tsiyon movement. His true “arrival” as a poet came when his piece “Yesh na‘arah temimah” (There Is an Innocent Young Girl) was published by Ḥayim Naḥman Bialik in Ha-Shiloaḥ in 1909.
title: Karni, Yehudah
alternative label: Yehudah Karni
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Cahan, Ya‘akov
related: Druyanow, Alter
related: Fichmann, Ya‘akov
related: Katzenelson, Yitsḥak
related: Odessa
related: Pinsk
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Shimonovitz, David
related: Shneour, Zalman
related: Steinberg, Ya‘akov
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Katzburg, David Tsevi
described at: Katzburg David Tsevi
has abstract: (1856–1937), rabbi and editor. Born in the Hungarian town of Nagybörsöny, David Katzburg studied at several yeshivas and was a favored disciple of Simḥah Bunim Sofer, the head of the Pressburg (Bratislava) yeshiva. After Katzburg married, he worked in the business world, though without success. Between 1884 and 1891, he served as a rabbi in two small towns. Katzburg then moved to Waitzen (Hun., Vác), a centrally located town with an active Jewish community that was, in his mind, sufficiently removed from the rush of larger cities. Soon after his arrival, he began to publish Tel Talpiyot, modeled on the first Orthodox periodical Shomer Tsiyon ha-ne‘eman (the latter had appeared between 1846 and 1856). The first issue was produced in the winter of 1891.
title: Katzburg, David Tsevi
alternative label: David Tsevi Katzburg
related: Bratislava
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Mizraḥi
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Schlesinger, Akiva Yosef
related: Sofer Family
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Katzenellenbogen, Tsevi Hirsh
described at: Katzenellenbogen Tsevi Hirsh
has abstract: (1796–1868), rabbi, teacher, commentator, public figure. Born in Vilna, Tsevi Hirsh Katzenellenbogen received a traditional Jewish education and even as a youth was recognized as a talented Torah scholar. His early teachers were the rabbis Sha’ul Katzenellenbogen (who gave his surname to Tsevi Hirsh as a marriage present) and Abele Posvoler.
title: Katzenellenbogen, Tsevi Hirsh
alternative label: Tsevi Hirsh Katzenellenbogen
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Bobruisk
related: Dress
related: Haskalah
related: Kahal
related: Karmel, Ha-
related: Lebensohn, Avraham Dov
related: Levinzon, Yitsḥak Ber
related: Lilienthal, Max
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Seminary
related: Vilnius
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Katzenelson, Yehudah Leib-Binyamin
described at: Katzenelson Yehudah Leib-Binyamin
has abstract: (1846–1917), Russian and Hebrew writer. Born in Chernigov, Russia, Yehudah Leib-Binyamin Katzenelson, who adopted the pseudonym Buki ben Yogli (the name of the head of the biblical tribe of Dan), grew up in Gomel. In 1861, he began his yeshiva education in Bobruisk, and while there he grew interested in the Haskalah.
title: Katzenelson, Yehudah Leib-Binyamin
alternative label: Yehudah Leib-Binyamin Katzenelson
related: Agriculture
related: Bobruisk
related: Dor, Ha-
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Frishman, David
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Homel’
related: Kantor, Yehudah Leib
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Seminary
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Yom, Ha-
related: Zhytomyr
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Kerler, Yoysef
described at: Kerler Yoysef
has abstract: (1918–2000), Yiddish poet, lyricist, and literary editor. Yoysef Kerler was born in Haysyn (Rus., Gaisin), southern Ukraine. He was named after his grandfather, who was a tailor and a badkhn (wedding jester and rhymester). In 1930, his family moved to Mayfeld, a Jewish kolkhoz (collective farm) in northern Crimea, where Kerler worked and continued his secondary education. In 1934, he attended a Yiddish machine-building technical school in Odessa, and also studied Yiddish literature and creative writing with Irme Druker (1906–1982). Kerler’s first poems appeared in the newspaper Odeser arbeter in 1935.
title: Kerler, Yoysef
alternative label: Yoysef Kerler
related: Badkhonim
related: Birobidzhan
related: Birobidzhaner Shtern
related: Crimea
related: Daniel’, Iulii Markovich
related: Eynikayt
related: Guzik, Anna Iakovlevna
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Moscow
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Odessa
related: Refuseniks
related: Riga
related: Samizdat
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Khaldei, Evgenii Anan’evich
described at: Khaldei Evgenii Ananevich
has abstract: (1917–1997), Soviet photojournalist. Among a small number of photographers whose images have become iconic representations of key moments in Soviet history, Khaldei remains less well-known than his works. His photograph of Russian soldiers raising the Soviet flag above a burning Reichstag has been reproduced countless times, though for many years his name was not attached to it. His photographs of the Nuremberg Trials, of Churchill, Truman, and Stalin at Potsdam, and of the progress of the war from Murmansk to the south of Russia and throughout Eastern Europe were widely reproduced. Khaldei’s photographs are remarkable for their aching beauty (a cityscape of Nuremberg, destroyed; a lone reindeer against a night sky filled with warplanes) and their appreciation of human endurance. While Khaldei also photographed Jews in Budapest during World War II, Soviet censorship prevented their exhibition until recently.
title: Khaldei, Evgenii Anan’evich
alternative label: Evgenii Khaldei
related: Anticosmopolitan Campaign
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Moscow
related: Photography
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Khariton, Iulii Borisovich
described at: Khariton Iulii Borisovich
has abstract: (1904–1996), physicist; one of the creators of the Soviet atom bomb and scientific director of the hydrogen bomb project. Iulii Khariton was born into a middle-class Jewish family. Both of his parents left Russia before he completed his education. His mother lived in Berlin from 1910 and moved to Tel Aviv in 1933. His father, a journalist who was expelled from Soviet Russia in 1922 with many Russian intellectuals, lived in Riga and perished during World War II.
title: Khariton, Iulii Borisovich
alternative label: Iulii Khariton
related: Ioffe, Abram Fedorovich
related: Riga
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zel’dovich, Iakov Borisovich

Khelm, Shelomoh ben Mosheh
described at: Khelm Shelomoh ben Mosheh
has abstract: (1715/16–1781), rabbinical scholar. Born in Zamość, Poland, to wealthy parents from well-known families, Shelomoh ben Mosheh was regarded as a prodigy, and showed interest in secular knowledge in addition to his religious studies; he studied mathematics, logic, and a number of foreign languages. In 1742, before he had turned 25, he was elected to the position of rabbi of Chełm (Yid., Khelm or Khelem) and its nine satellite communities. From then on, he was known as Rabbi Shelomoh Khelm.
title: Khelm, Shelomoh ben Mosheh
alternative label: Shelomoh ben Mosheh Khelm
related: Chełm
related: Eybeschütz, Yonatan
related: Land of Israel
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sabbath
related: Zamość

Kikoin, Isaak Konstantinovich
described at: Kikoin Isaak Konstantinovich
has abstract: (1908–1984), physicist; one of the creators of the Soviet atomic bomb. Isaak Konstantinovich (patronymic originally Kushelevich) Kikoin was born into the family of a teacher. His father had both an excellent traditional Jewish education and secular training in languages and mathematics. At the beginning of World War I, the family was evacuated from the Pale of Jewish Settlement to Pskov. After graduating from high school in 1923, Kikoin studied at a specialized land surveying school and then entered the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute (1925). He soon joined Abram Ioffe’s famous team in the neighboring Physical-Technical Institute.
title: Kikoin, Isaak Konstantinovich
alternative label: Isaak Kikoin
related: Ioffe, Abram Fedorovich
related: Moscow
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Kisch, Guido
described at: Kisch Guido
has abstract: (1889–1985), lawyer and historian. Guido Kisch (son of Rabbi Alexander Kisch and an older brother to noted medical scholar Bruno Kisch) was born in Prague; he studied law at the German university there and received his habilitation from the University of Halle in 1915. Kisch became professor of the history of German law in Königsberg in 1920; he returned to Prague in 1921; and from 1922 he taught at the University of Halle. He was forcibly retired in November 1933 by the Hitler regime and worked thereafter as a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau. In 1935, Kisch moved to the United States, where he taught Jewish history at the Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. He moved to Basel in 1962.
title: Kisch, Guido
alternative label: Guido Kisch
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Kaliningrad
related: Kisch, Alexander
related: Prague
related: Seminary
related: Steinherz, Samuel
related: Wrocław

Kleinbaum, Moyshe
described at: Kleinbaum Moyshe
has abstract: (1909–1972), Zionist leader and publicist. Moyshe Kleinbaum (Sneh) was born in Radzyn Podlaski, Poland, to a traditional Zionist family. In 1935, he graduated as a physician from the University of Warsaw. During his college years he had chaired the Warsaw Zionist youth organization Jardenia, while at the same time starting his career in journalism and public affairs. In 1931, he was appointed editor of Nowe Słowo, a Zionist daily, which was issued as a weekly under the title Opinia after 1933.
title: Kleinbaum, Moyshe
alternative label: Moyshe Kleinbaum
related: Bund
related: General Zionists
related: Grünbaum, Yitsḥak
related: Haynt
related: Opinia
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Koidanov Hasidic Dynasty
described at: Koidanov Hasidic Dynasty
has abstract: A branch of Lithuanian Hasidism founded by Shelomoh Ḥayim Perlov (1797–1862) after the death in 1832 of his uncle, Noaḥ Jaffe of Lakhovits. Koidanov has, for most of its history, been the smallest of the three Lithuanian Hasidic dynasties (the others being Slonim and Karlin-Stolin). Before the Holocaust, its centers of influence were in the regions of Koidanov and Minsk in Belorussia.
title: Koidanov Hasidic Dynasty
alternative label: Koidanov
related: Belarus
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Karlin-Stolin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Lakhovits-Kobrin-Slonim Hasidic Dynasty
related: Minsk
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Komoly, Ottó
described at: Komoly Otto
has abstract: (1892–1945), architect and Zionist leader. Ottó Komoly was born as Ottó (Nathan) Kohn into a middle-class family in Budapest. His father participated in the First Zionist World Congress in Basel in 1897, and Ottó followed his example by becoming a Zionist. Komoly served in the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I. Because he earned medals for bravery and was a reserve captain, he was exempted from discriminatory anti-Jewish laws. Komoly became deputy chairman of the Hungarian Zionist Association in 1940, and in 1941 was chairman of the organization. He wrote two books on Zionism: A zsidó nép jövője (The Future of the Jewish People; 1919), and Cionista életszemlélet (Zionist View of Life; 1942).
title: Komoly, Ottó
alternative label: Ottó Komoly
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Konin
described at: Konin
has abstract: City in central Poland about two-thirds of the way on the east–west route from Warsaw to Poznań. The Jews of Konin probably arrived from Poznań and Kalisz (about 50 km due south of Konin) and are first mentioned in a Polish court record of 1397. The community gained full autonomy from Kalisz in 1810. It is likely that a Jewish burial ground existed at the beginning of the sixteenth century, though the town’s “old” cemetery was first used in the eighteenth century. The Jewish population had reached 180 in the fifteenth century, but destruction by the Swedes (in 1656 and 1707) and plague (especially during the cholera epidemics of 1628–1631 and 1662) kept the numbers of inhabitants lower. It was estimated that 168 Jews lived in Konin in 1764–1765 (making up 24% of the town’s population); by 1827, the numbers had grown to 872 (24.4%) and in 1897 to 2,482 (31.7%). In 1939, it was approximately 3,000 (23%).
title: Konin
related: Haskalah
related: Infeld, Leopold
related: Kalisz
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: L’viv
related: ORT
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: Radom
related: About this Article (Sport)
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Kornfeld, Paul
described at: Kornfeld Paul
has abstract: (1889–1942), dramatist, expressionist writer and theorist, and stage director. Born and raised in Prague in the generation of Franz Kafka, Paul Kornfeld moved to Germany and made an important contribution to German expressionism on the stage. While he must be considered an assimilated Jew, as was the case with many of his German-speaking Jewish counterparts in the so-called Prague Circle, he and his friends made much of his descent from Orthodox rabbis, including a prominent great-grandfather. Jewish themes and biblical language were central instruments of his universalist, expressionist vision. While he left Prague for Frankfurt at the age of 25 and much of his contribution was made during a career in Germany proper, his background as a Jew from Prague is deeply relevant to that contribution.
title: Kornfeld, Paul
alternative label: Paul Kornfeld
related: Brod, Max
related: Kafka, Franz
related: Prague
related: Werfel, Franz

Kreizer, Iakov Grigor’evich
described at: Kreizer Iakov Grigorevich
has abstract: (1905–1969), army general. Iakov Kreizer was born in Voronezh, the son of a petty trader. He completed a road construction course and for a while worked as a foreman. In 1921, Kreizer joined the Soviet army and fought against antigovernment military insurgents. After completing his studies at the Voronezh Infantry School, he was appointed platoon commander of a unit in the Moscow garrison. Kreizer joined the Communist Party in 1925. Over a period of slightly more than 13 prewar years, he followed a steady course that led him from platoon commander to commander of the Moscow Proletarian Division.
title: Kreizer, Iakov Grigor’evich
alternative label: Iakob Kreizer
related: Belarus
related: Communist Party of the Soviet Union
related: Crimea
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Lithuania
related: Moscow
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Kuh, David
described at: Kuh David
has abstract: (ca. 1818–1879), journalist, politician, and poet. Born in Prague, David Kuh studied medicine and law there and in Vienna. From 1842 to 1844 he was a private tutor, first in Vienna and then briefly in Moravia. Kuh spent some time traveling with a group of itinerant actors. He subsequently founded German-language newspapers in Budapest and Pécs (Fünfkirchen). His agitation against the Slavs led to a two-year jail sentence (1848–1850).
title: Kuh, David
alternative label: David Kuh
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Budapest
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Kapper, Siegfried
related: Prague

Kuzmir-Modzits Hasidic Dynasty
described at: Kuzmir-Modzits Hasidic Dynasty
has abstract: Line of rabbinic leaders that emphasized the centrality of music and melody. Its founder, Yeḥezkel ben Tsevi Hirsh Taub (1772–1856), was born in Płońsk. He was a disciple of Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz (the Seer of Lublin), and Simḥah Bunem of Pshiskhe (Przysucha), and became a rebbe in Kuzmir (Kazimierz) in 1827. Taub grew famous for his musical talents and composed many Hasidic melodies. His teachings are collected in Neḥmad mi-zahav (1909).
title: Kuzmir-Modzits Hasidic Dynasty
alternative label: Modzits
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Menaḥem Mendel of Kotsk
related: Simḥah Bunem of Pshiskhe
related: Warsaw
related: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz

Lämmel Family
described at: Lammel Family
has abstract: Bankers and industrialists in Bohemia. Simon von Lämmel (1766–1845) was a financier and supplier of the Austrian army. His son Leopold (1790–1867) continued Lämmel’s financial activities and helped to organize a credit institution. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the Lämmel (also Lämel) family played a significant role in developing industries in the Czech lands.
title: Lämmel Family
alternative label: Lämmel
related: Banking
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Credit
related: Prague
related: Shtadlan

Lange, Antoni
described at: Lange Antoni
has abstract: (1861–1929), poet, literary critic, and translator. Born into an assimilated, patriotic Polish family in Warsaw, Antoni Lange first studied sciences in Warsaw, then spent 1886–1890 in Paris, studying oriental languages, philosophy, and literature. There he met members of the French literary elite, including Stéphane Mallarmé. Back in Warsaw, he wrote literary criticism, popular essays on history, philosophy, and aesthetics, as well as poetry, literary translations, and plays.
title: Lange, Antoni
alternative label: Antoni Lange
related: Assimilation
related: Messianism
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Planning and Standardization of Yiddish (Language)
described at: Planning and Standardization of Yiddish
has abstract: The planning of Yiddish, insofar as both formulation and implementation are concerned, has primarily come from nongovernmental sources (as is also the case with English, German, Italian, and many other languages), except as will be briefly noted in this article with respect to the Soviet Union. Thus, any discussion of language planning for Yiddish is necessarily restricted to corpus planning (i.e., to changes within the language per se, for example, in reviews of older terms, selections among alternatives and synonyms, development of neologisms, and revisions of orthography), rather than extended to status-planning efforts that deal with societal forces (schools, publishers, theaters, government agencies, etc.) outside of language per se.
title: Planning and Standardization of Yiddish (Language)
alternative label: “purer” Yiddish
related: Beys Yankev
related: Bick, Ya‘akov Shemu’el
related: Birnbaum, Nathan
related: Birobidzhaner Shtern
related: Czernowitz Conference
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Lefin, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sovetish Heymland
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Weinreich, Max
related: YIVO

Early Settlement
type: Concept
broader: Latvia

The Interwar Years
type: Concept
broader: Latvia

The Postwar Period
type: Concept
broader: Latvia

World War II
type: Concept
broader: Latvia

Lec, Stanisław
described at: Lec Stanisław
has abstract: (1909–1966), poet, satirist. and aphorist. Stanisław Lec, whose surname means jester in Hebrew (lets), was born in Lwów into a family of wealthy landowners and bankers. With an aristocratic title and socialist views, and his education at the best academic institutions in his home city and Vienna, Lec represented a unique combination of now-extinct Austro-Hungarian, Jewish, and Polish cultures.
title: Lec, Stanisław
alternative label: Stanisław Lec
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: Memory
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Proverbs
related: Warsaw

Jewish Courts and Jewish Autonomy
type: Concept
broader: Legal Institutions

Jewish Courts in the Modern Period
type: Concept
broader: Legal Institutions

Regional Judicial Institutions
type: Concept
broader: Legal Institutions

The Breadth and Scope of Judicial Autonomy
type: Concept
broader: Legal Institutions

Lesser, Aleksander
described at: Lesser Aleksander
has abstract: (1814–1884), painter, sketch artist, illustrator, art critic, and amateur researcher of antiquities. Lesser holds a place in the chronicles of Polish art as an outstanding representative of his country’s historical school. He was also one of the first artists to paint scenes from the modern history of Polish Jews.
title: Lesser, Aleksander
alternative label: Aleksander Lesser
related: Bersohn, Mathias
related: Esterke
related: Jastrow, Markus
related: Joselewicz, Berek
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: L’viv
related: Meisels, Dov Berush
related: Poznań
related: Warsaw

Letters and Letter Writing
described at: Letters and Letter Writing
has abstract: Throughout East European Jewish history, the letter was an important vehicle of written communication about everyday concerns. Letters were written to serve many practical purposes: to communicate about Jewish law; to report on communal affairs; to engage in commerce; and to discuss personal matters, among others. Naturally, letters could be written with more than one purpose in mind. Singly and in constellations, they also served as a literary form.
title: Letters and Letter Writing
alternative label: letters
related: Ashkenaz
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Brivnshtelers
related: Gender
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: Love
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Perl, Yosef
related: Sholem Aleichem

Levin, Khane
described at: Levin Khane
has abstract: (1900–1969), Yiddish poet. Born in Ekaterinoslav (mod. Ukr., Dnipropetrovs’k) to the family of an undertaker, Khane Levin was educated at a school for poor children. She worked as a seamstress and a sales assistant. Initially, Levin wrote poems in Russian, but under the influence of Leyb Naydus, who lived in Ekaterinoslav in 1915, she switched to Yiddish. While living in Kharkov, she made her literary debut in the almanac Kunst-ring (Art Circle) in 1917. The following year, her poems appeared in the Petrograd weekly Folksblat (People’s Paper), edited by Nokhem Shtif.
title: Levin, Khane
alternative label: Khane Levin
related: Birobidzhan
related: Chernivtsi
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Fefer, Itsik
related: Folk Songs
related: Gildin, Khayim
related: Halkin, Shmuel
related: Hofshteyn, Dovid
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: About this Article (Literary Journals)
related: Markish, Perets
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Naydus, Leyb
related: Royte Velt, Di
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shtif, Nokhem
related: Singer, Israel Joshua
related: Sovetish Heymland
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Levin, Yehudah Leib (rabbi)
described at: Levin Yehudah Leib rabbi
has abstract: (1894–1971), rabbi. Born in Nikopol’, Ekaterinoslav province, Yehudah Leib Levin studied at the Slobodka yeshiva and then in a Jewish teachers’ seminary in Ekaterinoslav (mod. Dnipropetrovs’k). He taught Jewish studies in Ekaterinoslav until 1923, when he was invited to take up the post of rabbi in Grishino (Krasnoarmeiskoe). He remained in that city until the German invasion of the Soviet Union, subsequently evacuating to Uzbekistan and then returning to Krasnoarmeiskoe in late 1944.
title: Levin, Yehudah Leib (rabbi)
alternative label: Yehudah Leib Levin
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Kol Ya‘akov Yeshiva
related: Moscow
related: Revista Cultului Mozaic din R.P.R.
related: Shlifer, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Slobodka, Yeshiva of
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Lieben, Salomon Hugo
described at: Lieben Salomon Hugo
has abstract: (1881–1942), Jewish scholar, founder of the Jewish Museum in Prague. Salomon Lieben was born in Prague, studied in Germany and at the German University in Prague, and taught Jewish religion at various secondary schools in Prague. He was actively involved with that city’s Jewish community and in its ḥevrah kadisha’, the burial society.
title: Lieben, Salomon Hugo
alternative label: Salomon Hugo Lieben
related: Assimilation
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Fleckeles, El‘azar ben David
related: Oppenheim, David
related: Prague

Lieberman, Hermann
described at: Lieberman Hermann
has abstract: (1870–1941), lawyer and socialist politician. Born in Drohobycz, Galicia, into an assimilated family, Hermann Lieberman became active in Polish patriotic activities while still a high school student. He studied in Paris and at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków; then practiced law in Przemyśl, where he frequently defended political activists. He became active in the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) of Galicia and Silesia and in 1905 opposed the establishment of a separate Jewish Social Democratic Party, modeled on the Bund in the tsarist empire.
title: Lieberman, Hermann
alternative label: Hermann Lieberman
related: Brest
related: Bund
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Drogobych
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Przemyśl
related: Silesia

Lifshits, Il’ia Mikhailovich
described at: Lifshits Ilia Mikhailovich
has abstract: (1917–1982), theoretical physicist. Il’ia Lifshits was a distinguished physicist, teacher, and loyal friend—a very dangerous combination in the Soviet Union, especially for a Jew who was not a Communist Party member. Not by chance, all his Soviet honors came much later than deserved, and only once—just six years before his death—was he allowed to travel beyond the Iron Curtain.
title: Lifshits, Il’ia Mikhailovich
alternative label: Il’ia Lifshits
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Daniel’, Iulii Markovich
related: Khar’kiv
related: Landau, Lev Davidovich
related: Moscow
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Lipkin, Semen Izrailevich
described at: Lipkin Semen Izrailevich
has abstract: (1911–2003), poet, translator, and fiction writer. Semen Lipkin was born and raised in Odessa, where his first poetic experiments attracted the attention of Eduard Bagritskii, the major romantic revolutionary poet who also lived in that city. Lipkin’s childhood recollections appear in his vibrant autobiographical sketches, Zapiski zhiltsa (Notes of an Inhabitant; 1992). By 1932, Lipkin’s poetry was no longer publishable and he became a translator, having mastered Farsi on his own. He served at the front during World War II, an experience he recounts in his narrative poem “Tekhnik-intendant” (Quartermaster; 1963, published in 1981).
title: Lipkin, Semen Izrailevich
alternative label: Semen Lipkin
related: Bagritskii, Eduard Georgievich
related: Odessa

Period of Wandering: 1857–1883
type: Concept
broader: Lipkin, Yisra’el ben Ze’ev Volf

The Musar Approach
type: Concept
broader: Lipkin, Yisra’el ben Ze’ev Volf

The Musar Method: The First Stage (1845–1849)
type: Concept
broader: Lipkin, Yisra’el ben Ze’ev Volf

The Musar Movement in Vilna and Kovno
type: Concept
broader: Lipkin, Yisra’el ben Ze’ev Volf

Hebrew Literary Journals (Literary Journals)
described at: Hebrew Literary Journals
has abstract: The first Hebrew literary journals appeared in Galicia just when a literary center in that language began to flourish there in the early nineteenth century. The earliest examples were annuals or single publications of limited scope, such as Yosef Perl’s Tsir ne’eman (Tarnopol; 1813–1815) or Me’ir Letteris’s Ha-Tsefirah (Żółkiew; 1823). At the same time, maskilim in Galicia read periodicals that were issued in Vienna or Prague; among these were Shalom ben Ya‘akov ha-Kohen’s Bikure ha-‘itim (1820–1831), and Shelomoh Yehudah Rapoport and Shneur Sachs’s Kerem ḥemed (1833–1843, 1854, 1856). As forums for the expression of ideas and scholarship, polemics and exegesis, the journals devoted limited space to belles lettres; that which was printed was mainly satiric, either translated (from ancient writers such as Lucian) or original (Yitsḥak Erter, Yosef Perl). Maskilim of Galicia also produced the yearbook He-Ḥaluts (Lwów, 1852–1865; then in Frankfurt, Prague, and Vienna until 1889), published by Yehoshu‘a Heshel Schorr, which expressed a radical maskilic line in the battle against rabbinical Judaism. It also influenced the antirabbinic and anti-Talmudic ideas that developed in Russia in the 1860s and 1870s.
title: Hebrew Literary Journals (Literary Journals)
alternative label: literary journal
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Agnon, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Asif, Ha-
related: Bader, Gershom
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brainin, Re’uven
related: Braudes, Re’uven Asher
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Cahan, Ya‘akov
related: Dor, Ha-
related: Erter, Yitsḥak
related: Fichmann, Ya‘akov
related: Frishman, David
related: Fuenn, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Galicia
related: Gnessin, Uri Nisan
related: Goldberg, Leah
related: Gordon, Shemu’el Leib
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Gottlober, Avraham Ber
related: Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: Haskalah
related: Hazaz, Ḥayim
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: ‘Ivri, Ha-
related: Kantor, Yehudah Leib
related: Karmel, Ha-
related: Katz, Bentsiyon
related: Kaunas
related: Kerem Ḥemed
related: Klausner, Yosef
related: Kolot
related: Lachower, Yeruḥam Fishel
related: Letteris, Me’ir
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Lithuania
related: Luaḥ Aḥi’asaf
related: Lusternik, Malki’el
related: L’viv
related: Magid, Ha-
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Moscow
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: Odessa
related: Otsar ha-Sifrut
related: Perl, Yosef
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Rabbinowitz, Sha’ul Pinḥas
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Ravnitski, Yehoshu‘a Ḥana
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Schorr, Yehoshu‘a Heshel
related: Shaḥar, Ha-
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Shofman, Gershom
related: Smolenskin, Perets
related: Sokolow, Naḥum
related: Steinman, Eli‘ezer
related: Stybel, Avraham Yosef
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Yom, Ha-
related: Zeman, Ha-

Early History
type: Concept
broader: Lithuania

The Interwar Years
type: Concept
broader: Lithuania

The Postwar Period
type: Concept
broader: Lithuania

World War I
type: Concept
broader: Lithuania

World War II
type: Concept
broader: Lithuania

Löwisohn, Salomon
described at: Lowisohn Salomon
has abstract: (1789–1821), Hebrew poet, linguist, and historian. Salomon Löwisohn was born in Mór, Hungary, a small community led by his relatives, the prominent Rosenthal and Saphir families, who played key roles in the Hungarian Haskalah. As a child, he received a traditional education. When he was 12, he studied German and arithmetic at a Capuchin monastery. By the time he celebrated his bar mitzvah in 1802, Löwisohn was well versed in the Bible and began writing poems in Hebrew.
title: Löwisohn, Salomon
alternative label: Salomon Löwisohn
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jeitteles Family
related: Prague
related: Saphir, Moritz Gottlieb
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Lukács, György
described at: Lukacs Gyorgy
has abstract: (1885–1971), Marxist philosopher and literary critic. György (Georg) Lukács was one of the foremost cultural theorists of the twentieth century; his Hegelian Marxism laid the groundwork for contemporary critical theory. Born György Bernát Lőwinger, in Budapest, Georg Lukács came from a wealthy Hungarian Jewish family that had been granted noble status and was equally fluent in German and Hungarian. József Lukács, his father, was a self-made man who had risen from an impoverished rural background to become director of the Hungarian General Credit Bank in 1906. Although Lukács had a troubled relationship with his father, the elder Lukács remained a warm and generous supporter of his son’s academic ambitions, which he saw as an extension of his own social mobility.
title: Lukács, György
alternative label: György Lukács
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kun, Béla
related: Moscow
related: Mysticism and Mystical Literature

Luzki, Simḥah Yitsḥak ben Mosheh
described at: Luzki Simhah Yitshak ben Mosheh
has abstract: (1716–1760), prominent eighteenth-century Karaite scholar and spiritual leader; also known as the Karaite Rashi and ‘Olam Tsa‘ir (meaning microcosm; from an acronym based on the gimatriyah, or mystical substitution of numerical values for the Hebrew letters of his name). Simḥah Yitsḥak Luzki (Lutski) lived in Łuck (Lutsk) until 1754, when the wealthy patron Mordekhai ben Berakhah, one of the leaders of the local community in Chufut-Kale, invited him to become head of that community’s study house, and Luzki taught there for the rest of his life.
title: Luzki, Simḥah Yitsḥak ben Mosheh
alternative label: Simḥah Yitsḥak Luzki
related: Karaites
related: Luts’k
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)

Independent Poland
type: Concept
broader: L’viv

Soviet and Post-Soviet Period
type: Concept
broader: L’viv

The Austrian Period
type: Concept
broader: L’viv

The Premodern Period
type: Concept
broader: L’viv

World War I
type: Concept
broader: L’viv

World War II
type: Concept
broader: L’viv

Maiskii, Ivan Mikhailovich
described at: Maiskii Ivan Mikhailovich
has abstract: (1884–1975), Soviet diplomat. Born in Kirillov, Novgorod Province, to the family of an assimilated army doctor and village school teacher, Ivan Liakhovetskii (Maiskii [Maisky] was a pseudonym he later adopted) became involved in revolutionary activities that led to his expulsion from Saint Petersburg University and exile to Siberia in 1902. In Siberia, he gravitated toward the Menshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Party (RSDWP). In 1908, he immigrated to Switzerland, and later obtained a degree in economics at Munich University. Proceeding to London in 1912, he adopted Lenin’s militant internationalist position and forged close relations with future Commissars for Foreign Affairs Georgii Chicherin and Maksim Litvinov. Maiskii returned to Russia in February 1917, shortly after the tsar was overthrown, but it was only in 1919 that he renounced his association with the Mensheviks and joined the Bolshevik Party. His command of foreign languages and familiarity with the international scene, clearly bolstered by his friendship with Litvinov, secured his meteoric rise in the Soviet diplomatic service.
title: Maiskii, Ivan Mikhailovich
alternative label: Ivan Maiskii
related: Doctors’ Plot
related: Litvinov, Maksim Maksimovich
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Weizmann, Chaim
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Me’ir ben Gedalyah of Lublin
described at: Meir ben Gedalyah of Lublin
has abstract: (1558–1616), rabbinical scholar and authority. Me’ir ben Gedalyah of Lublin, known as Maharam (an acronym for “Our teacher, the Rabbi Me’ir”) or Maharam of Lublin, was a major figure in the Golden Era of Torah study in Poland during the second half of the sixteenth century. He was born in Lublin and was a student of Shalom Shakhnah; he also studied with Yitsḥak ha-Kohen Shapira of Kraków, whose daughter Esther he married. In 1582, he founded a yeshiva in Lublin, and five years later was a rabbi and head of the yeshiva in Kraków. In 1595, he moved to Lwów, where he served as a dayan (rabbinic judge) and head of the yeshiva.
title: Me’ir ben Gedalyah of Lublin
related: Economic Life
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Luria, Shelomoh ben Yeḥi’el
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shabetai ben Me’ir ha-Kohen
related: Shakhnah, Shalom
related: Shemu’el Eli‘ezer ben Yehudah ha-Levi Edels
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Slonik, Binyamin Aharon ben Avraham
related: Spira, Natan Note ben Shelomoh
related: Yehoshu‘a ben Aleksander ha-Kohen
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Meisel, Maurycy
described at: Meisel Maurycy
has abstract: (1872–ca. 1942), politican and community leader. Maurycy Meisel completed secondary school in Warsaw, where he worked in a large trading house as a manager. Beginning in 1897, he was a board member of the Association of Trade Workers. In 1905, he took part in the fight for the Polish character of schools, and during World War I he was active on a committee assisting refugees. Elected in 1919 to the city council of Warsaw from the lists of the Orthodox and merchant organizations, he was particularly active in the public health commission. From 1927 to 1934 he again served on the council, this time as a representative of the Jewish National Bloc.
title: Meisel, Maurycy
alternative label: Maurycy Meisel
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw

Memory and the Model Person
type: Concept
broader: Memory

Memory and the Model Place
type: Concept
broader: Memory

The Liturgy of Remembrance
type: Concept
broader: Memory

The Politics of Memory
type: Concept
broader: Memory

Early Modern Messianism
type: Concept
broader: Messianism

Medieval Messianism
type: Concept
broader: Messianism

Modern-Era Messianism
type: Concept
broader: Messianism

Sabbatianism in Eastern Europe
type: Concept
broader: Messianism

Mezey, Ferenc
described at: Mezey Ferenc
has abstract: (1860–1927), community leader, philanthropist, editor, and writer. Ferenc Mezey’s father, Albert Mezey (originally Grünfeld), was a merchant; Ferenc’s mother, Rózsa Fábián, was born into a small landholder’s family. His parents had planned a rabbinic career for him, but Mezey instead went into commerce and later worked as a bank clerk. Dissatisfied, he attended Pázmány Péter University in Budapest, receiving a degree in law. As a law student, he wrote for newspapers and law journals under a pseudonym.
title: Mezey, Ferenc
alternative label: Ferenc Mezey
related: Bacher, Vilmos
related: Blau, Lajos
related: Budapest
related: Jewish Congress
related: Magyar Zsidó Szemle
related: Mezei, Mór

Mieses, Józef
described at: Mieses Jozef
has abstract: (1882–1942), rabbi, scholar, and Polish army chaplain. The elder brother of author and scholar Matthias Mieses, Józef Mieses was born in Przemyśl and lived there until he completed his high school education in 1900. Sent to Vienna to study in the rabbinical seminary and university, he was ordained as a rabbi and received his doctorate in 1907. Since very few posts for modern rabbis existed in Galicia at that time, Mieses accepted a position as instructor in Jewish religion in the first Polish gymnasium established in his hometown.
title: Mieses, Józef
alternative label: Józef Mieses
related: Galicia
related: Mieses, Matthias
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Przemyśl
related: Seminary
related: Warsaw

Mikhailov, Mikhail Efimovich
described at: Mikhailov Mikhail Efimovich
has abstract: (1902–1938), Communist Party activist. Mikhail Mikhailov (Katsenelenbogen), son of a bookkeeper, was born in Vitebsk (Bel., Vitsyebsk) and subsequently moved with his family, first to Pokrov and later to Moscow. Mikhailov attended gymnasium in all three cities but never graduated. He began working as a photographer at the age of 15 while at the same time continuing his self-education. Mikhailov joined the Komsomol (Communist youth organization) in 1918 and the Communist Party in 1919. While in the Red Army from 1919 to 1921, he served as a political instructor and deputy head of the political division of the western front.
title: Mikhailov, Mikhail Efimovich
alternative label: Mikhail Mikhailov
related: Communist Party of the Soviet Union
related: Moscow
related: Vitsyebsk

History
type: Concept
broader: Misnagdim

Theology
type: Concept
broader: Misnagdim

Mitin, Mark Borisovich
described at: Mitin Mark Borisovich
has abstract: (1901–1987), philosopher and Communist Party activist. The son of a laborer from Zhitomir, Mark Mitin joined the Communist Party in 1919. In 1929, he completed his studies in the philosophy department at the Institut Krasnoi Professury (Institute of Red Professors; IKP).
title: Mitin, Mark Borisovich
alternative label: Mark Mitin
related: Communist Party of the Soviet Union
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zhytomyr
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Mordekhai ben Ḥayim of Eisenstadt
described at: Mordekhai ben Hayim of Eisenstadt
has abstract: (d. 1729), Sabbatian preacher. Mordekhai of Eisenstadt was born in Alsace (according to sources in Prague) around 1650. He was a pupil of Natan of Gaza and Avraham Cardozo. In the 1670s, he came to Nikolsburg, the center of Sabbatianism in Moravia. Thereafter he led an itinerant life, traveling through Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary, Germany, and Poland. Between 1678 and 1680, he was active as one of the first Sabbatian propagandists in Poland–Lithania. During his wanderings, he acquired the nickname Mokhiaḥ (“Rebuker”) and became famous for his talents as a preacher and for his ascetic conduct.
title: Mordekhai ben Ḥayim of Eisenstadt
alternative label: Mordekhai of Eisenstadt
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bratislava
related: Eisenstadt
related: Frankism
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Mikulov
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Sabbatianism

Mosheh ben Aharon ha-Kohen of Kraków
described at: Mosheh ben Aharon ha-Kohen of Krakow
has abstract: (Johan Kemper; d. 1716), Sabbatian kabbalist; after his conversion to Christianity, lector in Hebrew at the University of Uppsala. Little is known about Mosheh ben Aharon’s early activity. It is certain that he was active in one of the groups linked to Yehudah Ḥasid, which around 1695 began to prepare to immigrate to Palestine in order to await Shabetai Tsevi’s second coming in Jerusalem.
title: Mosheh ben Aharon ha-Kohen of Kraków
related: Conversion
related: Hrodna
related: Sabbatianism
related: Yehudah Ḥasid ha-Levi

Mugur, Florin
described at: Mugur Florin
has abstract: (Mugur Legrel; 1934–1991), journalist, editor, and writer. The son of a journalist with democratic anticommunist political leanings, Florin Mugur worked as a journalist and radio editor at the beginning of his career. While his father faced difficult times when the Communist regime came to power in Romania after World War II, Mugur made his literary debut at 19, sincerely believing in the potential of the new political regime and its leftist ideology (he had already started publishing poems at the age of 14). Under the impact of the 1956 anticommunist revolution in Hungary, he protested the Romanian regime; as a result, with other young writers, he was prevented from publishing until the mid-1960s.
title: Mugur, Florin
alternative label: Florin Mugur
related: Bucharest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Romania

Munk, Me’ir Avraham
described at: Munk Meir Avraham
has abstract: (1830–1907), Hebrew author. Me’ir (Adolf) Munk’s autobiography, Sipure korot ḥayai (My Life’s Histories), completed in 1899, is a unique document in the history of Hungarian Jewry. Few book-length autobiographies or memoirs written by Jews in nineteenth-century Hungary have come down to us, and Munk’s composition is additionally the only extant example of the genre to have been written in Hebrew.
title: Munk, Me’ir Avraham
alternative label: Me’ir Avraham Munk
related: Autobiography and Memoir
related: Budapest
related: Burgenland
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Munkácsi, Bernát
related: Oradea
related: Orthodoxy
related: Tiszaeszlár Blood Libel
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Munkácsi, Bernát
described at: Munkacsi Bernat
has abstract: (1860–1937), Hungarian linguist, ethnographer, and pedagogue. Born in Oradea (Rom., Nagyvárad; Ger., Grosswardein), then located in Hungary, Bernát Munkácsi was the son of Me’ir Avraham Munk, a Hebrew writer. Munkácsi began his education in a traditional heder but later was sent to the local gymnasium. He started his university training in medicine but switched his concentration to Hungarian and German language and literature.
title: Munkácsi, Bernát
alternative label: Bernát Munkácsi
related: Budapest
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Munk, Me’ir Avraham
related: Oradea
related: Vámbéry, Ármin

Museums and Exhibitions
described at: Museums and Exhibitions
has abstract: The history of Jewish exhibitions, both of ceremonial objects and memorabilia (generally known as Judaica) and of Jewish painting and sculpture, begins in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Essentially a postemancipation phenomenon, the founding of Jewish museums housing permanent collections, as well as the periodic display of Jewish exhibits, started in Western Europe. A portion of Isaac Strauss’s collection of Judaica was displayed at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1878 and, 10 years later, at the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition, opened at Royal Albert Hall as well as at three other London venues. Praised by the Russian art critic V. V. Stasov in a review published in the literary journal Evreiskaia biblioteka (The Jewish Library), these forays into what the historian Richard Cohen has called “self-exposure” came to have special significance for East European Jewish culture, associated even by Western Jews with the institutionalization of memory that Jewish museums came to exemplify. Although the phenomenon of Jewish museums and exhibitions remained limited prior to World War II, it expanded considerably in the West after 1945 and moved eastward after 1989; in the twenty-first century nearly every East European capital and regional center will have its own Jewish museum.
title: Museums and Exhibitions
narrower: MAJOR JEWISH MUSEUMS IN EASTERN EUROPE
related: Al’tman, Natan Isaevich
related: An-ski Ethnographic Expedition and Museum
related: Antokol’skii, Mark Matveevich
related: Archives
related: Belarus
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bratislava
related: Bucharest
related: Budapest
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Czech Republic
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Fal’k, Robert
related: Galicia
related: Gdańsk
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Gintsburg Family
related: Goldziher, Ignác
related: Gottlieb, Maurycy
related: Hirszenberg, Szmul
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kiev
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Kultur-lige
related: Latvia
related: Lieben, Salomon Hugo
related: Lithuania
related: L’viv
related: Memory
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Nossig, Alfred
related: Odessa
related: Painting and Sculpture
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Riga
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Slovakia
related: Szabolcsi, Miksa
related: Tyshler, Aleksandr Grigor’evich
related: Ukraine
related: Vilnius
related: Vinaver, Maksim Moiseevich
related: Vitsyebsk
related: Warsaw

MAJOR JEWISH MUSEUMS IN EASTERN EUROPE
type: Concept
broader: Museums and Exhibitions

Nadson, Semen Iakovlevich
described at: Nadson Semen Iakovlevich
has abstract: (1862–1887), Russia’s most popular poet in the three decades preceding the 1917 Revolutions. Nadson was the first Russian poet of Jewish origin to achieve national fame and to reach a large, popular audience. Following the collapse of the revolutionary movement in the 1870s, his writing captivated younger readers during the reign of Alexander III. Oscillating between the poetry of pure art and social reflection (the former exemplified by Afanasii Fet and Aleksei Apukhtin), Nadson bridged the styles that marked the civic poetry of Nikolai Nekrasov and early Russian Symbolism. Emotionally evocative, his verses showcase a disillusioned poet’s quest for a liberal ideal of humanity. His first collection, Stikhotvoreniia (Poems; 1885), was reprinted 29 times before 1917 and sold more than 200,000 copies.
title: Nadson, Semen Iakovlevich
alternative label: Semen Nadson
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Ukraine

Naimark, Mark Aronovich
described at: Naimark Mark Aronovich
has abstract: (1909–1978), Soviet mathematician. Born in Odessa into the family of an artist, Mark Naimark graduated from the Odessa Physics and Chemistry Institute in 1933 and became a graduate student at Odessa University. He began his scientific work under the guidance of Mark Krein. After completing graduate studies in 1936, Naimark was awarded the degree of candidate in physics and mathematical sciences. He worked at Odessa University from 1933 to 1938, and from 1938 to 1950 at the USSR Academy of Sciences.
title: Naimark, Mark Aronovich
alternative label: Mark Naimark
related: Krein, Mark Grigorievich
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Family Names
type: Concept
broader: Names and Naming

Personal Names
type: Concept
broader: Names and Naming

Neuda, Fanny Schmiedl
described at: Neuda Fanny Schmiedl
has abstract: (1819–1894), writer. Born in Lomnice (Lomnitz), Moravia, to a family of rabbis, Fanny Schmiedl Neuda was the daughter of Juda Schmiedl (d. 1855), a rabbi. Her brother, Adolph Schmiedl (1821–1913), was a rabbi in Prostějov (Prossnitz) and Vienna. Fanny was married to Abraham Neuda (1812–1854), a rabbi in Loštice (Loschitz).
title: Neuda, Fanny Schmiedl
alternative label: Fanny Schmiedl
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Neuda, Abraham
related: Prague
related: Prostějov

Jewish Print Media in Other National Languages
type: Concept
broader: Newspapers and Periodicals

Socialist and Revolutionary Periodicals
type: Concept
broader: Newspapers and Periodicals

The Hebrew Press
type: Concept
broader: Newspapers and Periodicals

The Yiddish Press
type: Concept
broader: Newspapers and Periodicals

Nissenbaum, Yitsḥak
described at: Nissenbaum Yitshak
has abstract: (1868–1942), rabbi and Zionist leader. Born in Bobruisk, Belorussia, Yitsḥak Nissenbaum studied at various yeshivas, including in Volozhin and Vilna. In 1889, he settled in Minsk and was among the founders of the Safah Berurah association for the dissemination of the Hebrew language. When the Volozhin yeshiva closed in 1892, the clandestine national religious association Netsaḥ Yisra’el moved to Minsk, and Nissenbaum was appointed as one of its directors. In 1894, he moved to Białystok, where he served as the secretary of Ha-Merkaz ha-Ruḥani (an Orthodox organization that disseminated the ideas of Ḥibat Tsiyon [Love of Zion]) and as assistant to Rabbi Shemu’el Mohilewer. After Mohilewer’s death in 1898, Nissenbaum began to act as an itinerant preacher for Ḥoveve Tsiyon (Lovers of Zion, as the followers of Ḥibat Tsiyon were known), a position he filled for 11 years. In 1900, he moved to Warsaw and preached regularly in synagogues there.
title: Nissenbaum, Yitsḥak
alternative label: Yitsḥak Nissenbaum
related: Belarus
related: Białystok
related: Bobruisk
related: Brodt, Shemu’el
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Minsk
related: Mizraḥi
related: Mohilewer, Shemu’el
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sabbath
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Vilnius
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Opotshinski, Perets
described at: Opotshinski Perets
has abstract: (ca. 1895–1943), Yiddish writer and journalist. Born in Lutomiersk (near Łódź) into a poor Hasidic family and orphaned at a young age, Perets Opotshinski (name also rendered Peretz Opoczinski) received only a traditional Jewish education in heder and at various yeshivas. In Kalisz, where he joined a circle of breakaway former yeshiva students, Opotshinski came under the spell of the Yiddish poet and enlisted soldier Osher Shvartsman, who convinced him to switch from Hebrew to Yiddish.
title: Opotshinski, Perets
alternative label: Perets Opotshinski
related: Łódź
related: Asch, Sholem
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Kalisz
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ringelblum, Emanuel
related: Shtetl
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Ornea, Zigu
described at: Ornea Zigu
has abstract: (1930–2001), literary historian and editor. Zigu Ornea (Orenstein) was born in Frumuşica, a village near Botoşani in northern Moldavia. In 1941, when racial laws enforced by Antonescu’s regime forcefully transferred Jewish inhabitants from their villages to the administrative center of each county, Ornea’s family moved to Botoşani, where he attended a Jewish high school. He studied philosophy at Bucharest University between 1951 and 1955, graduating after writing a dissertation on Romanian thought in the mid-nineteenth century.
title: Ornea, Zigu
alternative label: Zigu Ornea
related: Botoşani
related: Bucharest
related: Dobrogeanu-Gherea, Constantin
related: Moldavia
related: Romania

Osherovitsh, Hirsh
described at: Osherovitsh Hirsh
has abstract: (1908–1994), Yiddish poet. Hirsh Osherovitsh was born in Ponevezh (Panevėžys, Lith.). Together with thousands of other Jews who lived in the Russian border region, his family was exiled at the outbreak of World War I to the Donbass in eastern Ukraine. In 1921, the family returned to Ponevezh, and in 1928 Osherovitsh graduated from the local Hebrew high school. He studied law at Kaunas (Kovno) University, graduating in 1933. Osherovitsh began to write poetry at a very young age, and began publishing in 1934, when he worked for various newspapers, in particular Kaunas’s Di yidishe shtime.
title: Osherovitsh, Hirsh
alternative label: Hirsh Osherovitsh
related: Fichmann, Ya‘akov
related: Kaunas
related: Lithuania
related: Manger, Itsik
related: Moscow
related: Panevėžys
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Jewish Artists in the “Great Utopia”
type: Concept
broader: Painting and Sculpture

The “Other Art”
type: Concept
broader: Painting and Sculpture

The Genealogy of Jewish Art in Eastern Europe
type: Concept
broader: Painting and Sculpture

Vision in Time of Revolution
type: Concept
broader: Painting and Sculpture

Impact of the Pale
type: Concept
broader: Pale of Settlement

Modifications of the Pale
type: Concept
broader: Pale of Settlement

Origins of the Pale
type: Concept
broader: Pale of Settlement

Public Debate on the Pale
type: Concept
broader: Pale of Settlement

Pals, Sesto
described at: Pals Sesto
has abstract: (1913–2002), poet. Sesto Pals (Simion Şestopali) was born in Odessa. His family fled to Galați, Romania, after the Russian Revolution. Having obtained the status of Italian subject, his father changed the family name from Sestopali and moved in 1920 to Bucharest, where Pals completed high school. During this period he became friends with Gherasim Luca, Geo Bogza, and Paul Păun, future prominent avant-garde poets. With Aurel Baranga and the painter Jules Perahim, Pals edited the avant-garde literary review Alge (1930; 1933). From that point on, he adopted Sesto Pals as his pen name.
title: Pals, Sesto
alternative label: Sesto Pals
related: Bucharest
related: Galaţi
related: Odessa
related: Romania
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917

Social, Religious, and Geographical Divisions
type: Concept
broader: Parties and Ideologies

The Final Years (1944–1948)
type: Concept
broader: Parties and Ideologies

The Interwar Period
type: Concept
broader: Parties and Ideologies

The Parties in Ebb and Flow (1900–1914)
type: Concept
broader: Parties and Ideologies

World War II
type: Concept
broader: Parties and Ideologies

Paşcani
described at: Pascani
has abstract: Town in the Romanian region of Moldavia (known in Yiddish as Peshkan). In 1845, there were 17 Jewish families living in Paşcani. Numbering 85 persons, they were among the founders of the town and were involved in timber, cereal, and the cattle business. Many Jews from neighboring towns attended fairs in Paşcani; and the extension of roads and the building of railways contributed to its economic development. Jews built a synagogue and a ritual bathhouse, as well as a cemetery.
title: Paşcani
related: Bessarabia
related: Botoşani
related: Buhuşi
related: Dorohoi
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Moldavia
related: Romania
related: Ruzhin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Tighina
related: Transnistria
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

At the Crossroad of Languages
type: Concept
broader: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush

Forging a Modern Literature
type: Concept
broader: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush

In Service of Cultural Autonomy
type: Concept
broader: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush

After the Holocaust
type: Concept
broader: Pogroms

Pogroms in the Russian Empire
type: Concept
broader: Pogroms

Wartime Pogroms
type: Concept
broader: Pogroms

Between the Two World Wars
type: Concept
broader: Polish Literature

POLISH WRITERS
type: Concept
broader: Polish Literature

The Long Shadow of the Holocaust
type: Concept
broader: Polish Literature

The Maskilim in Search of Integration
type: Concept
broader: Polish Literature

The Slow Beginnings
type: Concept
broader: Polish Literature

Polish State Yiddish Theater
described at: Polish State Yiddish Theater
has abstract: State-funded theater established in November 1949 as a result of the merger and nationalization of two Yiddish theater companies based in Wrocław and Łódź. Headed by celebrated actress and stage director Ida Kamińska (Kaminski; 1899–1980), the theater toured between both cities. In 1955 it moved to Warsaw, where it has performed since 1970 in its own building on Plac Grzybowski. It is currently called Teatr Żydowski im. E. R. Kaminskiej (Ester-Rokhl Kaminski Yiddish Theater).
title: Polish State Yiddish Theater
alternative label: Poland
related: Łódź
related: Babel, Isaac
related: Dybbuk, The
related: Kaminski Family
related: Morevski, Avrom
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rotbaum, Jakub
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Warsaw
related: Wrocław

Population since World War I (Population and Migration)
described at: Population since World War I
has abstract: After World War I, the two countries with the largest numbers of Jews were Poland (2.8 million in 1921) and the Soviet Union (2.7 million in 1926). (See Table 1: Jewish Population by Country, 1920s-1930s) For this period numerical data are based mostly on religious affiliation as recorded in national censuses, except for the Baltic States and the Soviet Union, where they are based on ethnicity data from the censuses. Conceptually, these numbers correspond to what has been defined in Jewish demography as the “core” Jewish population. The “core” Jewish population is the aggregate of all those who, when asked, identify themselves as Jews or, in the case of children, are identified as such by their parents; it does not include persons of Jewish origin who report another ethnicity and/or religion in the census.
title: Population since World War I (Population and Migration)
alternative label: population
related: Assimilation
related: Belarus
related: Bessarabia
related: Bucovina
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Estonia
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Latvia
related: Lithuania
related: Moldova
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Federation (Russia)
related: Slovakia
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Preachers
type: Concept
broader: Preachers and Preaching

Sermons and Sermonic Literature
type: Concept
broader: Preachers and Preaching

Prochownik, Abraham
described at: Prochownik Abraham
has abstract: Legendary Jewish merchant (the name signifies a gunpowder merchant) who supposedly was declared king of Poland. The story is set in the ninth century, when the legendary king, Piast, ascended to the Polish throne (ca. 860), thus establishing a medieval dynasty.
title: Prochownik, Abraham
alternative label: Abraham Prochownik
related: Agnon, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Bogrov, Grigorii Isaakovich
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Wahl, Sha’ul

Hebrew Prose (Prose)
described at: Hebrew Prose
has abstract: At the beginning of the nineteenth century, shortly after the focal point of maskilic literature had shifted from Central to Eastern Europe, modern Hebrew fiction was invented in Galicia. This unprecedented event sprang from a literary void: creative fiction writing—unknown in Hebrew literature for generations—had been replaced by the folk story in all its various incarnations. During the course of the eighteenth century, Germany’s producers of maskilic Hebrew literature focused energy on cultivating the poem, the biblical epic, the allegory, and the lyrical drama, using models from traditional Hebrew and modern European literature as sources of inspiration. These writers resisted the urge to try their hands at belles lettres, however, even though they were intimately familiar with outstanding examples of contemporary European short stories and novels. They justified their resistance on two grounds: Hebrew literature was not meant to give concrete prosaic expression to present realities; and the linguistic tools then available were inadequate for this task. Indeed, the history of 120 years of Hebrew fiction in Eastern Europe may be described as a continuing struggle over the capacity of Hebrew—a language that was not used in daily conversation—to be able to depict landscapes, society, characters, spoken dialogue, and internal monologues, and to be able to create imaginary worlds representing reality in a satisfactory and credible manner.
title: Hebrew Prose (Prose)
alternative label: Hebrew prose
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Agnon, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Barash, Asher
related: Baron, Devorah
related: Belarus
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Berkowitz, Yitsḥak Dov
related: Bershadsky, Yesha‘yahu
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brandstetter, Mordekhai David
related: Braudes, Re’uven Asher
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Buchach
related: Dik, Ayzik Meyer
related: Erter, Yitsḥak
related: Fahn, Re’uven
related: Feierberg, Mordekhai Ze’ev
related: Frishman, David
related: Galicia
related: Gintsburg, Mordekhai Aharon
related: Gnessin, Uri Nisan
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Gottlober, Avraham Ber
related: Gutmann, Simḥah Alter
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Hazaz, Ḥayim
related: Hebrew Literature
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kabak, Aharon Avraham
related: Kompert, Leopold
related: Kovner, Avraham Uri
related: Land of Israel
related: Lebensohn, Avraham Dov
related: Lefin, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Lithuania
related: Mapu, Avraham
related: Odessa
related: Parody
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Perl, Yosef
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Preigerzon, Tsevi Hirsh
related: Rabinowitz, Ya‘akov
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Satire
related: Schulman, Kalman
related: Shalkovich, Avraham Leib
related: Shofman, Gershom
related: Shtetl
related: Smolenskin, Perets
related: Steinberg, Ya‘akov
related: Steinberg, Yehudah
related: Tarnów
related: Ternopil’
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Weinberg, Tsevi Zevulun
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zweifel, Eli‘ezer

Psantir, Iacob
described at: Psantir Iacob
has abstract: (1820–1902), historian and musician. Iacob Psantir (originally surnamed Zelig) was born in Botoşani, Romania, where his father, Asher, worked as an interpreter for the nobleman Scarlat Calimachi, and then for the French consulate in Iaşi. An orphan at the age of 11, Psantir finished his education at the Israelite Confessional Elementary School in Iaşi, where he learned to pray in Hebrew; the rest of his education was in Yiddish.
title: Psantir, Iacob
alternative label: Iacob Psantir
related: Barasch, Iuliu
related: Botoşani
related: Gaster, Moses
related: Iaşi
related: Romania

Rachmilewitz, Naḥman
described at: Rachmilewitz Nahman
has abstract: (1876–1941), politician and public figure. Naḥman Rachmilewitz (Nachmanas Rachmilevičius) was born in Volkovysk, close to Hrodna (now in Belarus). In 1896, he graduated from classical secondary school in Bensheim, south of Hessen, Germany, and from 1896 to 1900 studied humanities and sciences at universities in Königsberg and Heidelberg, receiving his doctorate. After graduation he settled in Vilna, where he was active in Jewish public life.
title: Rachmilewitz, Naḥman
alternative label: Naḥman Rachmilewitz
related: Belarus
related: General Zionists
related: Hrodna
related: Kaliningrad
related: Lithuania
related: Rosenboim, Shimshon
related: Vilnius
related: World War I
related: Wygodzki, Jakub

Radek, Karl
described at: Radek Karl
has abstract: (1885–1939), international revolutionary activist and publicist. Born in Lwów, Karl Radek (originally surnamed Sobel’son) grew up in Tarnów, in his mother’s family, where the German culture was dominant. In gymnasium he was attracted by the ideas of Polish nationalism, which influenced his choice of pseudonym. The surname Radek was adopted after the name of the hero of a novel about Polish students’ revolutionary struggle. Later Radek became acquainted with German social-democratic literature and launched social-democratic propaganda in his gymnasium, which led to his expulsion from school in 1901.
title: Radek, Karl
alternative label: Karl Radek
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lithuania
related: L’viv
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Tarnów
related: Trotsky, Leon
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw
related: World War I
related: Zinov’ev, Grigorii Evseevich

Raikin, Arkadii Isaakovich
described at: Raikin Arkadii Isaakovich
has abstract: (1911–1988), Soviet comic and variety actor. Born in Riga, Raikin grew up in an assimilated family, the son of a businessman, although his paternal grandfather tried to send him to heder. After World War I and the revolution, Raikin’s family moved to Leningrad. Raikin took part in the young people’s drama circle headed by the actor and director Iurii Iurskii. In 1930 Raikin entered the Leningrad Institute of Stage Arts; his teacher, director Vladimir Solov’ev, had studied with Meyerhold but also valued Stanislavskii’s Method. Raikin absorbed the Russian theatrical culture of the early twentieth century, with its interest in farce and commedia dell’arte.
title: Raikin, Arkadii Isaakovich
alternative label: Arkadii Raikin
related: Heder
related: Moscow
related: Riga
related: Saint Petersburg

Rakovsky, Puah
described at: Rakovsky Puah
has abstract: (1865–1955), educator, Zionist, and feminist. Puah Rakovsky was born in Białystok, the oldest of 15 children, into a traditional Jewish family. Although most Jewish girls of her time received little Jewish education, her prosperous parents enrolled her in a heder and subsequently hired a tutor for her in Hebrew and Yiddish texts, as well as for secular subjects. Her studying came to an end when she was married off, much against her will, at the age of 16 to a yeshiva student, even though she had lost her faith. By the time she was 20, she had a son and a daughter. Persuading her parents and husband to allow her to study as an extern for a teaching license with the claim that she could then support the family, she finally succeeded in becoming a teacher. She then secured a divorce from her first husband. She subsequently married twice more for love and gave birth to another daughter in 1903.
title: Rakovsky, Puah
alternative label: Puah Rakovsky
related: Łomża
related: Białystok
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Trotsky, Leon
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Life
type: Concept
broader: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl

Major Achievements
type: Concept
broader: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl

Reception, Law of
described at: Reception Law of
has abstract: Although the Hungarian parliament emancipated Jews as individuals in 1867 (Act Seventeen), it was only later legislation, Act Forty-Two of 1895, that made Judaism equal to other received religions (religiones receptae). The Law of Reception was deemed necessary because in the nineteenth century the legal standing of various religions was defined by their position in the hierarchical structure as either received, recognized, or tolerated. Received religions benefited from protection of the state.
title: Reception, Law of
alternative label: Law of Reception
related: Conversion
related: Mezei, Mór
related: Orthodoxy
related: Szabolcsi, Miksa
related: Vázsonyi, Vilmos
related: Wahrmann, Mór

Bohemia and Moravia
type: Concept
broader: Reform, Religious

Galicia
type: Concept
broader: Reform, Religious

Hungary
type: Concept
broader: Reform, Religious

Russia
type: Concept
broader: Reform, Religious

The Twentieth Century
type: Concept
broader: Reform, Religious

Reich, Koppel
described at: Reich Koppel
has abstract: (1838–1929), rabbi and Orthodox leader. Born to a well-known rabbinic family, Koppel Reich grew up in Vérbo (now Vrbové, Slovakia) and studied at the Pressburg yeshiva under his relative Avraham Shemu’el Binyamin Sofer (Ketav Sofer). In 1880, Reich returned to Vérbo as chief rabbi. He was an outstanding orator and a skillful and energetic organizer. These qualities, along with his longevity, elevated him to the pinnacle of Hungarian Jewish leadership during his extended tenure as rabbi of the independent Orthodox community in Budapest (1890–1929).
title: Reich, Koppel
alternative label: Koppel Reich
related: Bratislava
related: Budapest
related: Hildesheimer, Esriel
related: Jewish Congress
related: Orthodoxy
related: Slovakia
related: Sofer, Avraham Shemu’el Binyamin
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Reischer, Ya‘akov ben Yosef
described at: Reischer Yaakov ben Yosef
has abstract: (also known as Jakob Backofen or Back; ca. 1670–1733), rabbi, halakhic authority, and author. Probably born in Prague to a rabbinical family, Reischer studied under Rabbi Aharon Shim‘on Spira (presiding judge of the rabbinical court of Prague; 1610–1680) and Spira’s son Binyamin Volf Spira (d. 1715), the chief rabbi of Bohemia. Reischer married the latter’s daughter.
title: Reischer, Ya‘akov ben Yosef
alternative label: Ya`akov Reischer
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Oppenheim, David
related: Passover
related: Prague
related: Sabbatianism
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Reizes Brothers
described at: Reizes Brothers
has abstract: (also Reizeles; Raices; and Ickowicz), rabbis and martyrs. Ḥayim ben Yitsḥak Reizes (1687–1728), a wealthy and educated man who knew Latin, served as a rabbi in Kamionka and a rabbinic judge in Lwów, and was a delegate to the Ruthenian Jewish council. His brother Yehoshu‘a ben Yitsḥak (1697–1728) was head of a yeshiva in Lwów.
title: Reizes Brothers
alternative label: Reizes brothers
related: Conversion
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Righteous Gentiles
described at: Righteous Gentiles
has abstract: Title bestowed by Yad Vashem (the Israeli Holocaust remembrance authority) on certain gentiles who rescued Jews in opposition to Nazi efforts to annihilate them. The distinction is granted according to stringent criteria requiring conclusive evidence. Depending on the nature and extent of help, special kinds of recognition are bestowed upon Christians who saved Jews. To qualify for any one of the distinctions, Christian actions had to involve “extending help in saving a life; endangering one’s own life; absence of reward, monetary and otherwise; and similar considerations which make the rescuers’ deeds stand out above and beyond what can be termed ordinary help.” In part ambiguous, the criteria leave no doubt that those who saved Jews primarily because of payment do not fit the definition of righteous Christians.
title: Righteous Gentiles
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Belarus
related: Czech Republic
related: Estonia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Latvia
related: Lithuania
related: Moldova
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Slovakia
related: Ukraine

Culture and Education
type: Concept
broader: Romania

Holocaust Period
type: Concept
broader: Romania

Jewish Politics after World War I
type: Concept
broader: Romania

Jews in the Old Kingdom (Regat)
type: Concept
broader: Romania

Political Antisemitism in Greater Romania
type: Concept
broader: Romania

Postcommunist Period
type: Concept
broader: Romania

Relations with the Romanian Population
type: Concept
broader: Romania

Romanian Jews after World War I
type: Concept
broader: Romania

Social Structure and Domestic Politics
type: Concept
broader: Romania

The Communist Period
type: Concept
broader: Romania

APPENDIX: JEWISH ROMANIAN WRITERS
type: Concept
broader: Romanian Literature

Dilemmas of Double Identity
type: Concept
broader: Romanian Literature

Jewish Romanian Writing after World War I
type: Concept
broader: Romanian Literature

Modernism
type: Concept
broader: Romanian Literature

The Communist Period
type: Concept
broader: Romanian Literature

The Image of Jews in Romanian Literature
type: Concept
broader: Romanian Literature

Romm, Mikhail Il’ich
described at: Romm Mikhail Ilich
has abstract: (1901–1971), film director, scriptwriter, and educator. In 1925, Mikhail Romm graduated from the Moscow Higher Art–Technical Institute and worked as a sculptor and translator. From 1928 to 1930, he held a fellowship at the Institute for Methods of Extracurricular Work, where he did research on issues relevant to cinema. Starting in 1929, he wrote screenplays, completing the texts for Revansh (Revenge; 1930), Riadom s nami (Next to Us; 1931), and Konveier smerti (The Conveyor of Death; 1933). He served as an assistant at the Mosfilm Cinema Studio in 1931 and became a director two years later. From 1938, he taught at the Actors and Directors Workshop of the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography and in 1948 became its director.
title: Romm, Mikhail Il’ich
alternative label: Mikhail Romm
related: Cinema
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)

Rosin, Shmuel
described at: Rosin Shmuel
has abstract: (1890–1941), Yiddish poet and short-story writer. Born in Shumiachi, Belorussia, into the family of a village trader and coachman, Shmuel Rosin received a traditional Talmudic education, but around 1905 was influenced by socialist ideas and became involved in the Bundist movement. He settled in Ekaterinoslav (mod. Dnipropetrovs’k) and worked as a painter and tinsmith. Subsequently, in the second decade of the 1900s, he spent time in Odessa, Kharkov, Penza, and Jewish agricultural colonies in southern Russia.
title: Rosin, Shmuel
alternative label: Shmuel Rosin
related: Belarus
related: Bund
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Dobrushin, Yekhezkl
related: Halkin, Shmuel
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kushnirov, Arn
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Rabin, Yoysef
related: Royte Velt, Di
related: About this Article (Russia)

Rozenfeld, Yona
described at: Rozenfeld Yona
has abstract: (1880–1944), Yiddish prose writer. Born in Tshartorisk (mod. Staryi Chartoriisk), Ukraine, Yona Rozenfeld received a traditional Jewish education that was interrupted when his parents both died of cholera in 1893. Shortly thereafter, under arrangements made by his older brother, 13-year-old Yona began an apprenticeship with a turner in Odessa—an experience vividly depicted in his autobiographical novel Eyner aleyn (All Alone; 1940). Rozenfeld showed his early writings to Y. L. Peretz when the latter visited Odessa in 1902. As a result, Rozenfeld’s first (autobiographical) story, “Dos lernyingl” (The Apprentice), was published in Der fraynd in 1904.
title: Rozenfeld, Yona
alternative label: Yona Rozenfeld
related: Fraynd, Der
related: Kiev
related: Odessa
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Yiddish Prose (Prose)
related: Russian Civil War
related: Ukraine
related: Vilnius
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Rubinstein, Akiba
described at: Rubinstein Akiba
has abstract: (1882–1961), chess grand master, often called the greatest player not to have become a world champion. The youngest of 12 children born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Stawiski, Russian Poland, Rubinstein learned chess moves relatively late, at about age 16. Most notable players learn to play at a significantly earlier age, and Rubinstein’s delayed start was blamed for the number of major blunders he occasionally made.
title: Rubinstein, Akiba
alternative label: Akiba Rubinstein
related: Łódź
related: Chess
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Saint Petersburg

APPENDIX: RUSSIAN WRITERS
type: Concept
broader: Russian Literature

Attitudes toward Jews in Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature
type: Concept
broader: Russian Literature

Dissidence, Renewal, and Emigration in Late Soviet Jewish Writing
type: Concept
broader: Russian Literature

Early Soviet Period
type: Concept
broader: Russian Literature

From the 1930s to the Death of Stalin
type: Concept
broader: Russian Literature

Post-Soviet Jewish Literatures
type: Concept
broader: Russian Literature

Russian Jewish Writing from the Late Nineteenth to the Early Twentieth Century
type: Concept
broader: Russian Literature

Writers with Roots in the Early Twentieth Century
type: Concept
broader: Russian Literature

Rybakov, Anatolii Naumovich
described at: Rybakov Anatolii Naumovich
has abstract: (1911–1998), novelist and screenwriter. Anatolii Rybakov was born into an educated family Chernigov (Ukr., Chernihiv); the family moved to Moscow when he was eight years old. He attended the local high school and, in his last two years, an experimental “commune-school” staffed by outstanding teachers, many of them Civil War veterans. After working as a loader and driver for a chemical plant, he enrolled in the Moscow Transportation Economic Institute in 1930. Arrested for “subversion” in 1933, he spent three years in Siberian exile before working as a transport engineer in places that did not require citizens to have an internal passport (having been exiled, he was not entitled to one). After serving in the army in World War II, he turned to literature, first writing the novella Kortik (The Dagger; 1948) for children, followed by a novel based on his work experience, Voditeli (The Drivers; 1950).
title: Rybakov, Anatolii Naumovich
alternative label: Anatolii Rybakov
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Moscow
related: Refuseniks
related: Russian Literature

After the Apostasy
type: Concept
broader: Sabbatianism

Before the Apostasy
type: Concept
broader: Sabbatianism

The Imperial Period
type: Concept
broader: Saint Petersburg

The Late Soviet Period and Beyond
type: Concept
broader: Saint Petersburg

Wars and Revolutions (1917–1945)
type: Concept
broader: Saint Petersburg

Sándor, Pál
described at: Sandor Pal
has abstract: (1860–1936), liberal politician and economist. Pál Sándor studied in Budapest at the Commercial Academy, the alma mater of many Hungarian Jewish youngsters at that time. He supplemented his education with studies in Dresden and a later trip to Antwerp. After continuing his father’s commercial enterprise in corn trading, he became a manager at a number of Budapest-based firms, serving most significantly as chief executive of the city’s communal electric street railway company (Budapesti Közúti Villamosvasút Rt.). He was a member of the Budapest Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the City Council, and the Stock Exchange Council, and was chairman of the Civil Club of the City of Budapest (Lipótvárosi Polgári Kör). As a participant in the national commercial congresses of the early 1900s, in 1906 Sándor founded the National Hungarian Commercial Union (Országos Magyar Kereskedelmi Egyesülés), which he then led for several decades. Within the Jewish community, he was notably the chairman of the Országos Magyar Izraelita Közművelődési Egyesület (National Hungarian Israelite Cultural Society).
title: Sándor, Pál
alternative label: Pál Sándor
related: Budapest
related: Mezei, Mór
related: Wahrmann, Mór

Săucan, Mircea
described at: Saucan Mircea
has abstract: (1928–2003), film director and writer. Born in Paris of a Jewish mother and Romanian father, both Romanian immigrants, Săucan spent his early childhood among Jewish immigrants in France. The family moved to Prague, where his father studied at the Polytechnical University, and then, in 1934, returned to Romania, settling in the town of Carei in northern Transylvania. In 1940, when this region of Romania was transferred to Hungary, they fled to Sibiu and Sighişoara. From 1948 to 1952, Săucan studied in Moscow at the USSR Institute of Cinematography (VGIK); among his teachers were Sergei Eisenstein, Mark Donskoi, and Sergei Gerasimov.
title: Săucan, Mircea
alternative label: Mircea Săucan
related: Bucharest
related: Cinema
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Moscow
related: Prague
related: Romania
related: Sibiu
related: Transylvania

Schick, Barukh ben Ya‘akov
described at: Schick Barukh ben Yaakov
has abstract: (1744–1808), rabbinic scholar of mathematics and natural sciences, popularly known as Reb Barukh of Shklov. Schick was the son of the rabbi of Shklov and the nephew of Aryeh Leib Gintsburg of Minsk (author of the Sha’agat Aryeh), one of the foremost rabbinic authorities in eighteenth-century Poland–Lithuania. Schick moved to Minsk in 1760, received rabbinic ordination, and served as a dayan (rabbinic judge) and parnas (leader) of the Minsk kahal. In his youth, he pursued the study of science and Latin as well as Talmudic studies and Kabbalah.
title: Schick, Barukh ben Ya‘akov
alternative label: Barukh Schick
related: Belarus
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Gintsburg, Aryeh Leib ben Asher
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Jeitteles Family
related: Kahal
related: Minsk
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shklov
related: Vilnius

Schorr, Barukh
described at: Schorr Barukh
has abstract: (1823–1904), cantor and composer. Barukh Schorr was born in Lemberg. As a boy he reportedly traveled to Odessa with the famed cantor Betsal’el Shulsinger (Tsalel Odesser; d. ca. 1873) to become part of his choir, eventually joining the choir of Cantor Yeruḥam Blindman (Yeruḥam ha-Katon). Upon his return to Lemberg for his bar mitzvah, Schorr was sufficiently skilled to be able to lead services in the central synagogue. He then joined the synagogue choir in Jassy (Iaşi), Romania, where he met his wife.
title: Schorr, Barukh
alternative label: Barukh Schorr
related: Bessarabia
related: Budapest
related: Cantors
related: Iaşi
related: Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi
related: Liturgy
related: L’viv
related: Odessa
related: Operetta
related: Passover
related: Romania

Schulman, El‘azar
described at: Schulman Elazar
has abstract: (1837–1904), Hebrew short-story writer, journalist, and Yiddish researcher. El‘azar Schulman was born in the district town of Kretinge, in the Kovno province of Lithuania. In 1867, he published a two-part novel, Ha-‘Ovdim veha-nidaḥim (The Lost and the Lonesome), in imitation of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. When the book received negative reviews, Schulman destroyed most of the printed copies.
title: Schulman, El‘azar
alternative label: El‘azar Schulman
related: Asif, Ha-
related: Brodskii Family
related: Haskalah
related: Kiev
related: Lithuania
related: Melits, Ha-
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shaḥar, Ha-
related: Smolenskin, Perets
related: Warsaw
related: Zeman, Ha-

Schwefelberg, Arnold
described at: Schwefelberg Arnold
has abstract: (1896–1979), jurist. Arnold Schwefelberg grew up in Brăila, Romania, where his father, Isac, was a teacher and headmaster of the Romanian-Israelite school, which Arnold and his four brothers attended. Schwefelberg’s paternal grandfather, Iancu Pecetaru Schwefelberg, originally from Galicia, was a well-known engraver (seal maker) in Iaşi. Arnold’s maternal grandfather, Velvl Stein, had been a melamed (teacher) in Galați.
title: Schwefelberg, Arnold
alternative label: Arnold Schwefelberg
related: Brăila
related: Bucharest
related: Communism
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Filderman, Wilhelm
related: Galaţi
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Iaşi
related: Porumbacu, Veronica
related: Romania

Segalovitsh, Zusman
described at: Segalovitsh Zusman
has abstract: (1884–1949), writer and poet. Born in Białystok, where his father was an unsuccessful merchant and the family frequently suffered deprivation, Zusman Segalovitsh received his education in heder and from private tutors. Between 1903 and 1905, he was a member of Bundist underground circles, an affiliation that led to his imprisonment. Following a pogrom in Białystok in 1906, Segalovitsh’s family moved to Łódź.
title: Segalovitsh, Zusman
alternative label: Zusman Segalovitsh
related: Łódź
related: Association of Jewish Writers and Journalists in Warsaw
related: Białystok
related: Bund
related: Crimea
related: Finkelshteyn, Leo
related: Fraynd, Der
related: Haynt
related: Heder
related: Kiev
related: Lithuania
related: Moment, Der
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Warsaw

Breslau
type: Concept
broader: Seminary

Budapest
type: Concept
broader: Seminary

Vilna and Zhitomir
type: Concept
broader: Seminary

Semyatitski, Khayim
described at: Semyatitski Khayim
has abstract: (1908–1943), Yiddish poet. Born in Tykocin, Khayim Semyatitski was raised in a rabbinic family, and was educated at a heder and several yeshivas, among them the Yeshiva of Mir. He was ordained as a rabbi but chose not to assume an official position. In 1929, he settled in Warsaw and worked at intermittent jobs. He apparently began to write poetry a number of years before his first pieces were published in the daily Haynt in 1932. Thereafter and until the outbreak of World War II, he published poems, stories, and critical reviews in daily newspapers and literary journals in Warsaw, Vilna, Białystok, and New York.
title: Semyatitski, Khayim
alternative label: Khayim Semyatitski
related: Białystok
related: Haynt
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Literary Journals)
related: Mir, Yeshiva of
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Tykocin
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Sfard, Dovid
described at: Sfard Dovid
has abstract: (1905–1981), Yiddish writer. Born in Trisk (Turiysk), Ukraine, Dovid Sfard spent his childhood in Ozeryany, where his father was a rabbi. Having received a traditional Jewish education, Sfard studied in Kovel’ at secondary schools that taught Hebrew and Polish; he then attended school in Luts’k from 1919 to 1926. After publishing some Hebrew poems in a periodical produced by young Hebraists in the latter city, he decided to devote himself to literature.
title: Sfard, Dovid
alternative label: Dovid Sfard
related: Białystok
related: Fraynd, Der
related: Kacyzne, Alter-Sholem
related: Kletskin, Boris Arkadevich
related: Luts’k
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vaysenberg, Itshe Meyer
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Shapira, Ḥavah
described at: Shapira Havah
has abstract: (1879–1943) Hebrew writer. Ḥavah Shapira was born in Slavuta, Ukraine, to a scholarly and affluent family of Hasidic ancestry. Despite being raised in a traditional environment, she received a rich Jewish and secular education and even enjoyed the support of her family while pursuing her literary goals. From 1899, she received the encouragement and patronage of the writer Re’uven Brainin. Though their relationship intensified after she separated from her husband in 1903, it ended painfully. In 1900, Shapira had moved to Warsaw to begin her literary career, and in December 1901 her first story, “Ha-Shoshanah” (The Rose), was published in David Frishman’s weekly Ha-Dor. From 1903 she studied in Vienna and in 1906 moved to Bern, where four years later she received her Ph.D.
title: Shapira, Ḥavah
alternative label: Ḥavah
related: Brainin, Re’uven
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Dor, Ha-
related: Frishman, David
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Prague
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Terezín
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Shapira, Ḥayim Naḥman
described at: Shapira Hayim Nahman
has abstract: (1895–1943), historian of Hebrew literature, author, and translator. Ḥayim Naḥman Shapira was born in Minsk. His father was the chief rabbi of Kovno (Lith., Kaunas) and his mother came from a distinguished family of rabbis. Shapira received his education at a heder and at several yeshivas. In 1921 he began to study Semitic philology in Vienna, earning his doctoral degree in 1925. That year, he began lecturing in that field at the University of Kaunas, and was promoted to professorial rank in 1931. He was also involved in Lithuanian Zionist activities and served on the boards of numerous cultural and literary societies. In 1935, he was a delegate to the Zionist Congress.
title: Shapira, Ḥayim Naḥman
alternative label: Ḥayim Naḥman Shapira
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Kaunas
related: Lithuania
related: Mapu, Avraham
related: Minsk
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Shapiro, Malkah
described at: Shapiro Malkah
has abstract: (1894–1971), Hasidic writer and memoirist. Born Reyzl Malke Hapstein in Kozienice (Kozhenits), Poland, Malkah Shapiro was the daughter of Yeraḥmi’el Mosheh Hapstein (1860–1909), a descendant of the Magid of Kozhenits (ca. 1737–1814), one of the founders of Polish Hasidism. Her mother was Brakha Tsipora Gitl Twersky (1861–1930), a descendant of Menaḥem Naḥum of Chernobil (1730?–1797). In 1908, Shapiro married her first cousin Avraham Elimelekh Shapiro of Grodzisk.
title: Shapiro, Malkah
alternative label: Malkah Hapstein Shapiro
related: Autobiography and Memoir
related: Chernobil Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Land of Israel
related: Piety
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Yisra’el ben Shabetai of Kozhenits

Shefner, Borekh
described at: Shefner Borekh
has abstract: (1896–1977), Yiddish journalist and cultural activist. Born in Tomaszów Mazowiecki, Borekh Shefner moved to Łódź with his family while he was still an infant. After receiving a traditional education, he traveled to Vilna in 1913 to study, but returned to Łódź a year later. There he became an active member of the Bund.
title: Shefner, Borekh
alternative label: Borekh Shefner
related: Łódź
related: Association of Jewish Writers and Journalists in Warsaw
related: Bund
related: Folks-tsaytung
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Shekhtman, Eli
described at: Shekhtman Eli
has abstract: (1908–1996), Yiddish writer. Born in Voskovichi in Ukrainian Polesye, Eli Shekhtman began writing in Yiddish at the age of 12, before entering a yeshiva in Zhitomir in 1921. His first publication—two poems—appeared in 1928 in the Kharkov literary monthly Di royte velt. Shekhtman studied at the literary department of the Yiddish Teachers Institute in Odessa from 1929 to 1933. He spent the following three years in Kharkov, later moving to Kiev.
title: Shekhtman, Eli
alternative label: Eli Shekhtman
related: Belarus
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Der Nister
related: Godiner, Shmuel-Nisn
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Shtetl
related: Sovetish Heymland
related: Ukraine
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zhytomyr

Shemu’el ben Yisakhar Ber Segal
described at: Shemuel ben Yisakhar Ber Segal
has abstract: (d. ca. 1817), Hebrew printer of kabbalistic, Hasidic, halakhic, and ethical works. Shemu’el ben Yisakhar Ber Segal was a major Hebrew-language printer in Poland–Russia at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. In the third and final volume of his edition of the Mishneh Torah of Maimonides (Berdichev, 1817), which appeared shortly before Segal’s death, prominent rabbis testified that he had trained generations of printers and was “the father of all printing craftsmen.” He carried out his career in six cities, sometimes in several at the same time.
title: Shemu’el ben Yisakhar Ber Segal
related: Approbation
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Berdychiv
related: Brody
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: Feder, Tuviah
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Levi Yitsḥak of Barditshev
related: Mosheh Ḥayim Efrayim of Sudilkov
related: Ostrog
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shklov
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Ya‘akov Yosef of Polnoye

Shraybman, Yekhiel
described at: Shraybman Yekhiel
has abstract: (1913–2005), Yiddish writer. Born in the Bessarabian town of Vad-Rashkev, Yekhiel Shraybman was educated in a heder, at a Romanian primary school, by private teachers, and in the Czernowitz Hebrew Teachers Seminary. In the 1930s he lived in Bucharest, working as a prompter at a Yiddish theater. Affiliated with illegal socialist circles, he took part in Komsomol underground work. Shraybman was also fascinated by Soviet Yiddish cultural life: as he recalled in 1990, even the reformed Soviet spelling “stirred up the flight of my fancy.”
title: Shraybman, Yekhiel
alternative label: Yekhiel Shraybman
related: Altman, Moyshe
related: Bessarabia
related: Bucharest
related: Chernivtsi
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kishinev
related: Moldavia
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Sovetish Heymland
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw

Shtern, Lina Solomonovna
described at: Shtern Lina Solomonovna
has abstract: (1878–1968), biologist and physiologist. Born in Russian-controlled Courland, which later became part of Latvia, Lina Shtern studied at Geneva University, where she also later worked, becoming a full professor—the university’s first female professor—in 1917. She settled in the Soviet Union in 1925 and held leading academic positions. In her first post (1925–1948) she served as head of the physiology department at the Second Moscow University (after a reorganization of 1930, the department was part of the Second Moscow Medical Institute). Simultaneously, Shtern was director of the Physiology Institute of the Academy of Medical Sciences from 1929 to 1948 and became the first female member of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1939. She joined the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences in 1944.
title: Shtern, Lina Solomonovna
alternative label: Lina Shtern
related: Courland
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Latvia
related: Moscow
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

After the Holocaust
type: Concept
broader: Shtetl

Defining the Shtetl
type: Concept
broader: Shtetl

Origins of the Shtetl
type: Concept
broader: Shtetl

The Imagined Shtetl
type: Concept
broader: Shtetl

The Transformation of the Shtetl: Poland and the Soviet Union
type: Concept
broader: Shtetl

The World of the Shtetl
type: Concept
broader: Shtetl

Silberbusch, David Yesha‘yahu
described at: Silberbusch David Yeshayahu
has abstract: (1854–1936), Hebrew and Yiddish writer. David Yesha‘yahu Silberbusch was born in Zaleszczyki, in eastern Galicia, and was raised in a Hasidic environment. At the age of 20 while still living in his father-in-law’s well-appointed home in the village, he was given the opportunity to study German. He thus became acquainted with modern European literature and eventually also with the literature of the Hebrew Haskalah. Among those who encouraged him to pursue this path was the playwright Avrom Goldfadn. After becoming a widower in 1876, Silberbusch married his second wife and settled in Kolomea (Pol., Kołomyja).
title: Silberbusch, David Yesha‘yahu
alternative label: David Silberbusch
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Botoşani
related: Galicia
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Kolomyia
related: L’viv
related: Romania
related: Shaḥar, Ha-
related: Smolenskin, Perets
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Silberstein, Yesha‘yahu
described at: Silberstein Yeshayahu
has abstract: (1857–1930), halakhist and Orthodox leader. Born in the southern Hungarian town of Zenta, Yesha‘yahu Silberstein was two years old when his family moved to Jerusalem. There he received his initial formal education within the framework of the traditionalist Yishuv system. He returned to Hungary as an 11-year-old, when his father was appointed rabbi of Bodrogkeresztúr. Throughout his early adulthood he continued to study under his father’s tutelage and to assist him in his rabbinical positions and in his yeshiva. Upon his father’s death in 1884, Silberstein succeeded him as chief rabbinical judge of the Orthodox community in Vác (Waitzen), not far from Budapest.
title: Silberstein, Yesha‘yahu
alternative label: Yesha‘yahu Silberstein
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Approbation
related: Budapest
related: Conversion
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Katzburg, David Tsevi
related: Land of Israel
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Sirota, Gershon
described at: Sirota Gershon
has abstract: (1874–1943), cantor, concert singer, and recording celebrity. Gershon Sirota was born in 1874 in Podolia; little is known about his early years. His first appointment as a cantor was in Odessa, and he also served in Vilna. In 1908, he became cantor of the Tłomackie Street Synagogue in Warsaw, a position that he left in 1927 to devote himself to a concert career. He toured the United States several times and in 1935 became the cantor at Warsaw’s Nożyk Synagogue. He died with his family in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943.
title: Sirota, Gershon
alternative label: Gershon Sirota
related: Cantors
related: Odessa
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Smushkevich, Iakov Vladimirovich
described at: Smushkevich Iakov Vladimirovich
has abstract: (1902–1941), military pilot and air force lieutenant general. Iakov Smushkevich (Vol’fovich) was born in Rokishkes, Lithuania, the son of an itinerant tailor. As a child, he studied in a heder. In 1915, together with other World War I refugees, Smushkevich and his family were evacuated to Russia. There he joined the Red Army and the Communist Party in 1918, and participated in fighting on the western front. He became commissar of a battalion and then of a regiment. In 1922, Smushkevich joined the air force and in 1931 was appointed commander and commissar of an air force brigade.
title: Smushkevich, Iakov Vladimirovich
alternative label: Iakov Smushkevich
related: Finland
related: Heder
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Sobol’, Andrei
described at: Sobol Andrei
has abstract: (1888–1926), poet, essayist, and short-story writer. Born into an impoverished Jewish family in Saratov, Andrei Sobol’ (Iulii Mikhailovich [Izrail’ Moiseevich]; early pseudonym Andrei Nezhdanov) left for Vilna in 1904. He was arrested for participating in an illegal Zionist group, and consequently spent four years in Siberia in forced labor. His first poem was published in 1904, followed by the short stories “Broshenny” (Rejected; 1905) and “Machekha Rudi” (The Stepmother Rudi; 1906).
title: Sobol’, Andrei
alternative label: Andrei Sobol’
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Bal-Makhshoves
related: Bund
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Civil War
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Vilnius
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Social Conduct
described at: Social Conduct
has abstract: East European Jewish civilization generated constantly evolving concepts of social conduct formed in relation to class, regional character, ideology, gender, and Jews’ relationships to non-Jews and non-Jewish culture. There was a continual tension between behavior that might be considered dictated by Jewish law and conduct beyond the strict scope of the law, and between that which was regarded as ethics and what was merely etiquette.
title: Social Conduct
alternative label: social relations
related: Dress
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Gender
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Kotik, Yekhezkl
related: Lipkin, Yisra’el ben Ze’ev Volf
related: Litvak
related: Musar Movement
related: About this Article (Relations between Jews and Non-Jews)
related: Yikhes
related: Zederbaum, Aleksander

Sore bas Toyvim
described at: Sore bas Toyvim
has abstract: (Sarah bat Tovim; 18th century), author of women’s prayers (Yid., tkhines; from Heb., teḥinot). Sore, daughter of Mordekhai (though various editions list her as the daughter of Yitsḥak or Ya‘akov), of Satanów in Podolia, Ukraine, was a great-granddaughter of Rabbi Mordekhai of Brisk (on this, all editions agree). She became the emblematic tkhine author, and one of her works, Shloyshe sheorim (Three Gates), was perhaps the most beloved of all tkhines. Unusual for this genre, her works contain a strong autobiographical voice. She refers to herself as “I, the renowned woman Sore bas Toyvim, of distinguished ancestry,” and tells the story of her fall from a wealthy youth to an old age of poverty and wandering, attributing her fate to the sin of talking in synagogue.
title: Sore bas Toyvim
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Liturgy
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Piety
related: Sabbath
related: Sabbatianism
related: Tkhines
related: Tuwim, Julian
related: Ukraine
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Steinherz, Samuel
described at: Steinherz Samuel
has abstract: (1857–1942), historian, medievalist, and editor. Born in Güssing (Burgenland), Austria, to the family of an estate agent, Samuel Steinherz spent his childhood in Vienna and Graz. At the latter city’s university, he studied German literature and history, and his first job was at the Institute for Austrian History in Vienna. He later returned to Graz, where he studied law.
title: Steinherz, Samuel
alternative label: Samuel Steinherz
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Burgenland
related: Prague
related: Terezín

Steklov, Iurii Mikhailovich
described at: Steklov Iurii Mikhailovich
has abstract: (1873–1941), revolutionary, Soviet historian, and publicist. Born Ovsii Moiseevich Nakhamkis, and subsequently known by the pseudonym Nevzorov, Iurii Steklov was the son of a Jewish merchant from Odessa. In 1893 he joined the Social Democratic movement and spread propaganda to workers’ circles. Arrested the following year, he was sentenced to 10 years in Siberia. He spent his first five years of exile in Iakutsk and fled abroad in 1899, living in Paris from 1900 to 1905.
title: Steklov, Iurii Mikhailovich
alternative label: Iurii Steklov
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Saint Petersburg

Stryjkowski, Julian
described at: Stryjkowski Julian
has abstract: (1905–1996), writer, playwright, and translator. Born Pesaḥ Stark to an Orthodox family in the town of Stryj, Julian Stryjkowski studied Polish literature in Lwów, earning a doctorate in 1932. He later worked as a teacher in Płock and as a canvasser in Warsaw. Initially associated with the Zionist youth movement Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, he joined the Communist Party in 1934 and was briefly jailed for political activism in 1935–1936.
title: Stryjkowski, Julian
alternative label: Julian Stryjkowski
related: Chwila
related: Communism
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sandauer, Artur
related: Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Ha-
related: Shtetl
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Surits, Iakov Zakharovich
described at: Surits Iakov Zakharovich
has abstract: (1882–1952), Soviet diplomat. Born in Dvinsk (Lat., Daugavpils), Iakov Surits became involved in revolutionary activities as early as 1899. A Bundist in 1902 and 1903, he was a Menshevik from 1903 to 1914 and an Internationalist from 1914 to 1917. Repeatedly arrested, he spent 1907 to 1910 in Siberian exile. He then emigrated abroad and studied philosophy at Berlin University. A member of the Bolshevik Party from 1917, in 1918 and 1919 he was a deputy plenipotentiary of the Bolshevik regime in Denmark and, for a short time, a member of the State Control Collegium, a body that controlled the activities of the Soviet state apparatus.
title: Surits, Iakov Zakharovich
alternative label: Iakov Surits
related: Bund
related: Daugavpils
related: Moscow
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Szerb, Antal
described at: Szerb Antal
has abstract: (1901–1945), novelist, critic, and literary historian. Like a number of modern Hungarian literary artists of Jewish origin, Antal Szerb saw himself as a Hungarian writer only, with no significant ties to Jewish culture and religion. Indeed, his only connection to the Jewish people was that he was killed as a Jew. Some of his close writer friends and contemporaries (e.g., György Sárközi, Gábor Halász, László Fenyő), however, were also assimilated Jews, or converts to Christianity, who became victims of the Holocaust.
title: Szerb, Antal
alternative label: Antal Szerb
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Hungarian Literature

Tal’, Mikhail Nokhem’evich
described at: Tal Mikhail Nokhemevich
has abstract: (1936–1992), eighth world chess champion. Born in Riga, Mikhail Tal’ learned to play chess from his father, a physician, at the age of seven. A meeting with chess master Aleksandr Koblents (1916–1993) played a decisive role in his life. His brilliant career started when he was 21, when he won the first of his six USSR chess champion titles. Tal’ became the youngest world champion in chess history after winning the title from Mikhail Botvinnik in 1960; however, he lost the return match against Botvinnik the next year. Nevertheless, his legendary skill in creating elaborate strategic combinations granted Tal’ a unique place in the chess pantheon.
title: Tal’, Mikhail Nokhem’evich
alternative label: Mikhail Tal’
related: Botvinnik, Mikhail Moiseevich
related: Chess
related: Kaminski Family
related: Riga
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Argots (Talk)
described at: Argots
has abstract: Among the social dialects of Yiddish are the argots or slangs of various professions. Unlike regional dialects, which may differ from the standard language in pronunciation, grammar, and lexicon, argots are distinctive primarily in their vocabulary. The best documented Yiddish argots are those of musicians (klezmer-loshn) and of the underworld (ganovim-loshn [thieves’ language] or hentshke-loshn [lit., glove-language]), but in the linguistic literature on Yiddish there are accounts of, or at least references to, the slang of wagon drivers and coachmen (balagole-loshn), actors, cantors, typesetters, tailors, shoemakers, merchants, butchers, jewelers, barbers, and soldiers.
title: Argots (Talk)
alternative label: argot
related: Sholem Aleichem

Blessings, Curses, and Other Expressions (Talk)
described at: Blessings Curses and Other Expressions
has abstract: As psycho-ostensive expressions that are highly characteristic formulaic utterances in Yiddish, blessings and curses are typically inserted parenthetically into longer statements and purport to reflect the speaker’s emotional attitude to the topic of conversation. Yiddish psycho-ostensives, like those in other languages (e.g., Greek, Turkish, Arabic, Irish) fall into several categories according to the psychic stance of the speaker toward the good or evil that may befall either the person talking or others. The passive acceptance of good or evil may be called recognitive; the active attitude of seeking or desiring is petitive; while that of shunning or fearing is fugitive. This terminology, along with the Greek roots for “self” and “others” (auto- and allo-), and the Latin roots for “good” and “evil” (bono- and malo-), allows us to classify all the speech acts expressed by Yiddish psycho-ostensives.
title: Blessings, Curses, and Other Expressions (Talk)
alternative label: blessings
related: Death and the Dead
related: Demons
related: Haynt
related: Magic

Opposition to Pilpul
type: Concept
broader: Talmud Study

Pilpul in Eastern Europe
type: Concept
broader: Talmud Study

Talmud Study after 1800
type: Concept
broader: Talmud Study

Târgu Frumos
described at: Targu Frumos
has abstract: Small town in the Moldavian region of Romania, near Iaşi. A Jewish-owned inn stood in the village that preceded Târgu Frumos as early as 1755, and in 1763, when the Moldavian prince decided to develop the town, Jewish inhabitants were exempted from taxes. In 1774, there were 15 Jewish families; the total fluctuated from 70 in 1803 to 60 in 1830, and to 225 in 1845 (representing 17.7% of the population). The number of Jews grew in the second half of the nineteenth century to 1,258 in 1859, peaking at 2,123 in 1899. Later, the population diminished as a result of railway construction, a factor that reduced the need for local merchants and craftsmen. Hence, there were 2,106 Jews in 1910 and just 1,608 in 1930.
title: Târgu Frumos
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Botoşani
related: Iaşi
related: Moldavia
related: Romania
related: Taubes Family
related: Transnistria

Târgu Neamţ
described at: Targu Neamt
has abstract: Town in the Moldavian region of Romania, at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains. Jewish settlement in Târgu Neamț (also Tîrgu Neamț) dates from the second half of the seventeenth century: Jews were first mentioned in a document from 1685, and the oldest tombstones in the Jewish cemetery are dated 1677 and 1689. A synagogue was built in 1737.
title: Târgu Neamţ
alternative label: Târgu Neamț
related: Blood Libels and Host Desecration Accusations
related: Buhuşi
related: Moldavia
related: Passover
related: Piatra Neamţ
related: Romania
related: Transnistria

Tarniks
described at: Tarniks
has abstract: Appellation for individuals and groups who attributed messianic significance to the Hebrew year 5600 (1840), which is represented in abbreviated form by the Hebrew letters tav, resh, and can be pronounced tar. The “Tarniks” expected that the redemption of the Jews would take place in that year—or, at least, that the process of redemption would begin, continue, and materialize sometime during the seventh century of the sixth millennium of creation.
title: Tarniks
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Gesundheit, Ya‘akov
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Historiography)
related: Kloyz
related: Land of Israel
related: Levinzon, Yitsḥak Ber
related: Lithuania
related: Messianism
related: Minsk
related: Orthodoxy
related: Pogroms
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Reform, Religious
related: Romania
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Sephardim
related: Warsaw
related: Yisra’el of Ruzhin
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Teichthal, Yisakhar Shelomoh
described at: Teichthal Yisakhar Shelomoh
has abstract: (1885–1945), Hasidic rabbi. Born in Nagyhalász in northeastern Hungary and educated in Hasidic yeshivas in Poland and Hungary, Yisakhar Shelomoh Teichthal studied in several Hasidic kloyzn (small study and prayer houses) in Poland during his teen years, most notably in the kloyz of the Sandz Hasidim in Tarnów, before returning to Hungary. There he became a close disciple of Mosheh Grünwald (1853–1910) at the renowned yeshiva of Chust, the second largest Orthodox yeshiva in the country.
title: Teichthal, Yisakhar Shelomoh
alternative label: Yisakhar Shelomoh Teichthal
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Bratislava
related: Budapest
related: Czechoslovakia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kloyz
related: Munkatsh Hasidic Dynasty
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sandz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Slovakia
related: Tarnów
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Teller, Yisakhar Ber
described at: Teller Yisakhar Ber
has abstract: (d. 1687), physician and surgeon. The inscription on Yisakhar Ber Teller’s tombstone in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague gives his father’s name as Leib Berouns (derived from the Bohemian town of Beroun), although the introduction to his work refers to his father more formally as Yehudah. The name Teller, undoubtedly acquired from the emblem of the Barber-Surgeons Guild—a plate—does not appear on his tombstone but is in the epitaph of his son, Yehudah Leib Teller, who followed him in both the medical profession and the service of the Prague burial society.
title: Teller, Yisakhar Ber
alternative label: Yisakhar Ber Teller
related: Prague

Hebrew Theater (Theater)
described at: Hebrew Theater
has abstract: Hebrew theatrical activity in Eastern Europe began as part of the larger project of transforming Hebrew into a national language. By the end of the nineteenth century, sporadic attempts had been made in Łódź and Riga to put on performances in Hebrew. With the establishment of the Agudat Ḥoveve Sefat ‘Ever (Society of Lovers of the Hebrew Language) in Saint Petersburg in 1909, such initiatives received organizational support. The society encouraged Hebrew theatrical performances in order to spread the knowledge of the language and to raise funds for the society. Most performances were staged in the context of banquets that marked holidays and anniversaries of various sorts. Such performances were a significant tool in the modernization of the Jewish educational system. Organized and staged by teachers and students at the new Hebrew-language secular schools, they spread the new culture to the children’s families and communities. Indeed, the first Hebrew theater activists in Eastern Europe were schoolteachers who were both devoted to the revival of spoken Hebrew and had artistic ambitions.
title: Hebrew Theater (Theater)
alternative label: theater
related: Łódź
related: Arnshteyn, Mark
related: Bernstein-Cohen, Miriam
related: Białystok
related: Bobruisk
related: Dybbuk, The
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Habimah
related: Homel’
related: Katzenelson, Yitsḥak
related: Kaunas
related: Land of Israel
related: L’viv
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Pinsk
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Riga
related: Romania
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Tarbut
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Polish Theater (Theater)
described at: Polish Theater
has abstract: Part of the Polish landscape—both real and imagined—for centuries, the figure of the Jew is also rooted in the history of Polish theater. The żydek (little Jew), a figure typically associated with laughter and entertainment, appears throughout Polish folk theater. With grotesque physiognomy, dressed in an exaggerated version of traditional Jewish attire, often with a hump, the żydek gesticulates, shouts, wails over the wrongs done to him, and dances and sings. In the theatrical interludes, monologues, farces, and sketches of the Polish gentry as early as the sixteenth century, the żydek is also common. This stage tradition flowered in the nineteenth century when many celebrated Polish comic actors were skilled purveyors of the żydek. The tradition also developed specialists, foremost among them Aleksander Ładnowski (1815–1891), whose Berek Kugelman was called “the personification of persecuted innocence” (Prokopówna, 1998, p. 133). By the end of the century, the żydek, singing couplets in a mixture of broken Polish and stylized Yiddish (a combination known as żydłaczenie) and performing a Jewish dance known as majufes, was a fixture of the popular Polish stage, recognizable even when transformed, in the plays of Feliks Schober (Szober, 1846–1879), into the figure of Józio Grojseszyk, an urban dandy privy to all the good-time secrets of the modern city.
title: Polish Theater (Theater)
alternative label: Polish theater
related: Arnshteyn, Mark
related: About this Article (Dance)
related: Dybbuk, The
related: Ezofowicz Family
related: Feldman, Wilhelm
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Hemar, Marian
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Money
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Słonimski, Antoni
related: Schulz, Bruno
related: Singer, Isaac Bashevis
related: Tavernkeeping
related: Tuwim, Julian
related: Warsaw
related: Wat, Aleksander
related: Weddings

Russian Theater (Theater)
described at: Russian Theater
has abstract: Despite early governmental prohibitions against Jewish participation in the theater, the period of the late nineteenth to early twentieth century saw strong and even leading Jewish contributions to all aspects of theatrical production, as performers, writers, and directors. This degree of involvement, as well as the changing depiction of Jews on stage over time, in many ways mirrors the history of relations between Russians and Jews and, later, of the Soviet government stance toward Jews.
title: Russian Theater (Theater)
alternative label: theaters
related: Aizman, David Iakovlevich
related: Anticosmopolitan Campaign
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Babel, Isaac
related: Brushtein, Aleksandra Iakovlevna
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Communism
related: Dymov, Osip
related: Grossman, Vasilii Semenovich
related: Habimah
related: Iushkevich, Semen Solomonovich
related: Kozintsev, Grigorii Mikhailovich
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Moscow
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pogroms
related: Raikin, Arkadii Isaakovich
related: About this Article (Relations between Jews and Non-Jews)
related: Riga
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtetl
related: Tairov, Aleksandr Iakovlevich
related: Trauberg, Leonid Zakharovich
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Utesov, Leonid Osipovich
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Theben, Koppel
described at: Theben Koppel
has abstract: (Mosheh Ya‘akov ben Avraham Mandl; 1732–1799), principal lay leader of eighteenth-century Hungarian Jewry. Koppel Theben’s family, alternately called Mandl or Theben (Devény) after a small Hungarian village on the Danube near the Austrian border, played a central role in the leadership of Pressburg (Bratislava, Pozsony), the most important eighteenth-century Hungarian Jewish community. Theben’s father, Avraham (d. 1768) served not only as head of the Pressburg community, but also as nationwide leader and shtadlan (lobbyist or intercessor); he was the sole importer of textile from the imperial Linz factory. The Thebens were related to leading families in Hungary and the nearby Bohemian lands; indeed, the family’s reputation and prestige extended far beyond Hungary. One of Avraham’s daughters married a son of the world-renowned Yonatan Eybeschütz, Mordekhai, whose suspected Sabbatian sympathies embroiled the Thebens in an extended communal conflict.
title: Theben, Koppel
alternative label: Koppel Theben
related: Blood Libels and Host Desecration Accusations
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bratislava
related: Eybeschütz, Yonatan
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Landau, Yeḥezkel ben Yehudah
related: Prague
related: Rosenthal Family
related: Sabbatianism
related: Shtadlan

Thieberger, Friedrich
described at: Thieberger Friedrich
has abstract: (1888–1958), writer, translator, and teacher. Friedrich Thieberger was born in Golčův Jeníkov (Goltsch-Jenikau), Bohemia, to a rabbinical family. He studied philosophy and philology in Prague, where he also taught modern languages and philosophy in German secondary schools. He was dismissed from his job in 1939 and moved to Palestine. There, he worked first as writer and later as a librarian at the B’nai B’rith Lodge in Jerusalem, the city in which he died.
title: Thieberger, Friedrich
alternative label: Friedrich Thieberger
related: Bar Kochba Association
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Golem Legend
related: Kafka, Franz
related: Prague
related: Selbstwehr
related: Weltsch, Felix
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

A Changing Role for Later Tkhines
type: Concept
broader: Tkhines

Characteristics and Early History
type: Concept
broader: Tkhines

Literary Setting
type: Concept
broader: Tkhines

Toeplitz, Teodor and Henryk
described at: Toeplitz Teodor and Henryk
has abstract: Financiers and supporters of the Haskalah in Warsaw. Teodor Toeplitz (1793–1838), advocate of the work of Moses Mendelssohn, was the grandson of Juda Leopold Toeplitz (who had emigrated from the Czech lands to Leszno) and the son of Samuel (Szymon) Toeplitz (1766–1838), a wealthy merchant from Warsaw. Teodor’s son Henryk Toeplitz (1822–1891) was an industrialist, politician, and patron of Jewish education.
title: Toeplitz, Teodor and Henryk
alternative label: Henryk Toeplitz
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Haskalah
related: Jastrow, Markus
related: Leszno
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Warsaw
related: Zbytkower, Shmul

From the Partitions to World War I
type: Concept
broader: Trade

The Early Modern Period
type: Concept
broader: Trade

The Holocaust and Postwar Periods
type: Concept
broader: Trade

The Interwar Period
type: Concept
broader: Trade

The Middle Ages
type: Concept
broader: Trade

Trębacz, Maurycy
described at: Trebacz Maurycy
has abstract: (1861–1941), Polish painter and illustrator. Maurycy (Mojżesz) Trębacz was among the first generation of Jewish painters in Poland who followed in the artistic tradition of Maurycy Gottlieb. Along with Samuel (Szmul) Hirszenberg, Jakub Weinles (1870–1938), and Leopold Pilichowski (1869–1934), Trębacz chose subjects from religion, as well as from Jewish history and Jewish daily life.
title: Trębacz, Maurycy
alternative label: Maurycy Trębacz
related: Łódź
related: Gottlieb, Maurycy
related: Hirszenberg, Szmul
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: L’viv
related: Pilichowski, Leopold
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Trokenheim, Ya‘akov
described at: Trokenheim Yaakov
has abstract: (1888–1943), merchant; leader of the Warsaw kehilah and Agudas Yisroel; and member of the Polish Sejm and senate. Born in Warsaw to an affluent Hasidic family whose members were followers of the Gerer rebbe, Ya‘akov Trokenheim received a traditional education while also learning Russian and Polish. Following his marriage, he became involved in the textile trade and managed his family’s considerable real estate holdings, located in the center of Warsaw’s Jewish district.
title: Trokenheim, Ya‘akov
alternative label: Ya‘akov Trokenheim
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Białystok
related: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Schorr, Mojżesz
related: Trade
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Tsimbl
described at: Tsimbl
has abstract: The tsimbl (Eng., cimbalom) is an instrument of the dulcimer family, a trapezoidal box with strings in courses of two to six, some of which are divided into fifths by a partitioning bridge. The cimbaloms played by Jews generally had a range of two and a half octaves and were tuned chromatically; the metal (mainly brass) strings were struck with wooden hammers. Jewish association with the instrument was continuous from the early seventeenth until the early twentieth century in much of Eastern Europe. In Belorussia and Galicia, it was an essential component of the klezmer band until the Holocaust; in Ukraine and in large cities in Russian Poland and Lithuania it had been replaced by brass instruments by the last third of the nineteenth century. (See image at right, top.)
title: Tsimbl
alternative label: tsimbl
related: Belarus
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Iaşi
related: Latvia
related: Lithuania
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: Ukraine
related: Vitsyebsk

Tsypkin, Leonid Borisovich
described at: Tsypkin Leonid Borisovich
has abstract: (1926–1982), writer and physician. Leonid Tsypkin’s grandmother and other relatives were murdered in the Minsk ghetto during World War II, a fate he and his parents narrowly avoided when they managed to escape at the last moment on foot. After the war, he returned to Minsk where, in 1947, he graduated from medical school, in keeping with family tradition. For the rest of his life Tsypkin worked as a physician and medical researcher. In the course of his medical career he published nearly 100 articles in Soviet and international professional journals.
title: Tsypkin, Leonid Borisovich
alternative label: Leonid Tsypkin
related: Minsk
related: Refuseniks
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Turán, Pál
described at: Turan Pal
has abstract: (1910–1976), mathematician. As was the case with many of his contemporary mathematicians, Pál Turán (until 1919, Rosenfeld) entered a problem-solving contest sponsored by the Hungarian monthly journal Középiskolai Matematikai Lapok (Mathematical and Physical Journal for Secondary Schools). By the point at which the finest problem solvers entered the universities, they were already familiar with each other’s mathematical interests and strengths. At Pázmány Péter University, Turán was the student of Lipót Fejér, who came from a similar background. Turán received his Ph.D. in 1935.
title: Turán, Pál
alternative label: Pál Turán
related: Budapest
related: Erdős, Pál
related: Fejér, Lipót
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Seminary

Új Élet
described at: Uj Elet
has abstract: (New Life), published in Budapest, is the official journal of the Hungarian Jewish organized community. Appearing first on 18 November 1945, it was a weekly until 1957 and has been a biweekly ever since. Until 1984, no editor’s name was listed on the masthead. From 1984 until 1991, Rabbi István Domán edited the journal, succeeded by Rabbi Péter Kardos.
title: Új Élet
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)

1881–1914
type: Concept
broader: Ukraine

1914–1939
type: Concept
broader: Ukraine

1944–1991
type: Concept
broader: Ukraine

After 1991
type: Concept
broader: Ukraine

History to 1881
type: Concept
broader: Ukraine

The Holocaust in Ukraine
type: Concept
broader: Ukraine

Attitude toward Israel
type: Concept
broader: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Chronology
type: Concept
broader: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Conclusion
type: Concept
broader: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Culture
type: Concept
broader: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Jewish Identity
type: Concept
broader: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Leadership
type: Concept
broader: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Population
type: Concept
broader: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Relations with Society and the State
type: Concept
broader: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Religion
type: Concept
broader: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Social Structure
type: Concept
broader: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

The Holocaust
type: Concept
broader: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Uri ben Pinḥas of Strelisk
described at: Uri ben Pinhas of Strelisk
has abstract: (1757–1826), Hasidic leader. Uri ben Pinḥas lived in eastern Galicia during the period when Hasidism expanded significantly. He was probably born in the town of Janów or nearby, the son of a poor artisan. His main teacher of Hasidism was Shelomoh of Karlin, who lived in Ludmir at the time. After Shelomoh was killed by Russian soldiers in 1792, Uri ben Pinḥas became the leader of a group of Hasidim in Lwów. Later he moved to Strelisk, where he continued as a Hasidic leader, although apparently without establishing a formal court. Among those who traveled to study with him and identified themselves as his students, Shalom Rokeaḥ, founder of the Belz dynasty, stood out.
title: Uri ben Pinḥas of Strelisk
alternative label: Uri of Strelisk
related: Belz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Karlin-Stolin Hasidic Dynasty
related: L’viv
related: Pshiskhe Hasidic Dynasty
related: Stratin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Volodymyr Volyns’kyi
related: Yisra’el of Ruzhin
related: Zhidachov-Komarno Hasidic Dynasty

Utitz, Emil
described at: Utitz Emil
has abstract: (1883–1956), philosopher and psychologist. Emil Utitz was born in Prague, studied philosophy at the universities of Prague, Munich, and Leipzig, and started his career in Rostock, Germany, where he became a professor of philosophy and aesthetics in 1916. Beginning in 1925, he lectured at the university in Halle. In September 1933 he was forcibly retired and he moved back to Prague. Thanks to the intercession of Josef Schneider, professor of German studies at the German University in Prague, Utitz was entrusted to catalog the unpublished works of Franz Brentano.
title: Utitz, Emil
alternative label: Emil Utitz
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Prague
related: Terezín

Vendrof, Zalmen
described at: Vendrof Zalmen
has abstract: (1877–1971), Yiddish writer. Born in Slutsk, Belorussia, into a family of a ritual slaughterer, Zalmen Vendrof (commonly rendered Zalman Wendroff) received a traditional Talmudic education and studied with private teachers, but ultimately failed his secondary school examinations. From the age of 16, he lived in Łódź, where he worked at a factory. From the early 1900s, Vendrof traveled the world, trying different jobs such as peddling, teaching, and typesetting. His peripatetic youth included a stint in England (1901–1905), a brief spell in Moscow as an English teacher (1905), and another period as a Yiddish journalist in America. In London, he became a friend of anarchist leader Rudolf Rocker and wrote for anarchist Yiddish periodicals.
title: Vendrof, Zalmen
alternative label: Zalmen Vendrof
related: Łódź
related: Habimah
related: Haynt
related: Litvakov, Moyshe
related: Moscow
related: Pale of Settlement
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Slutsk
related: Sovetish Heymland
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Wygodzki, Stanisław
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Vertov, Dziga
described at: Vertov Dziga
has abstract: (1896–1954), documentary film director and film theoretician. The most radical of Soviet montage theorists and father of cinéma verité was born Dovid (later Denis) Kaufman, the son of a Białystok bookseller and a rabbi’s daughter. A precocious poet and aspiring avant-garde composer who renamed himself Dziga Vertov (a Polish-Ukranian hybrid that suggests “perpetual motion”), he studied medicine first in Moscow and then Saint Petersburg, while continuing to write music. After the October Revolution, Vertov left school to edit a weekly newsreel; during the civil war, he served as a battlefield cameraman.
title: Vertov, Dziga
alternative label: Dziga Vertov
related: Białystok
related: Cinema
related: Moscow
related: Saint Petersburg

Veynger, Mordkhe
described at: Veynger Mordkhe
has abstract: (1890–1929), Yiddish linguist and dialectologist; creator of the first atlas of Yiddish-speaking regions. Born in Poltava, Ukraine, Mordkhe Veynger moved as a boy to Warsaw, where he went on to study Germanic philology in the faculty of philology at Warsaw University. In 1912 and 1913 he published studies on Yiddish syntax and on the role of Hebrew sounds in Yiddish, and also proposed spelling reforms for Yiddish. His work was included in Shmuel Niger’s Vilna Pinkes (Record Book) of 1913.
title: Veynger, Mordkhe
alternative label: Mordkhe Veynger
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilenkin, Leyzer
related: Warsaw

Vilenkin, Leyzer
described at: Vilenkin Leyzer
has abstract: (1894–1985), Yiddish linguist. Born in Horodok, Belorussia, into a poor family, Leyzer Vilenkin worked in Kharkov from 1912. In 1917 he moved to Petrograd, where he studied pedagogy, literature, and linguistics at several institutions, including Leningrad (previously Petrograd) University from 1921 to 1925. Simultaneously between 1923 and 1927, he taught at an orphanage and a secondary school. Vilenkin was a research student at the Leningrad Institute for Literature and Languages of the East and West from 1926 to 1929. Subsequently, from 1929 to 1931 he worked at the Yiddish Institute of the Belorussian Academy of Sciences.
title: Vilenkin, Leyzer
alternative label: Leyzer Vilenkin
related: Belarus
related: Khar’kiv
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shtif, Nokhem
related: Sovetish Heymland
related: Ukraine
related: Veynger, Mordkhe

Fifteenth–Eighteenth Centuries
type: Concept
broader: Vilnius

Holocaust (1939–1945)
type: Concept
broader: Vilnius

The Postwar Period
type: Concept
broader: Vilnius

Under Russian Rule (1795–1914)
type: Concept
broader: Vilnius

World War I and Its Aftermath
type: Concept
broader: Vilnius

Vishniac, Roman
described at: Vishniac Roman
has abstract: (1897–1990), photographer and biologist. Roman Vishniac’s photographs of East European Jewish life, which he took in the mid- to late 1930s, are today among the most widely familiar images of this “vanished world.” Though these photographs were but a small part of Vishniac’s lifework, they remain his best-known accomplishment as a photographer.
title: Vishniac, Roman
alternative label: Roman Vishniac
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Czechoslovakia
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Moscow
related: Photography
related: Piety
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: Saint Petersburg
related: YIVO

Vogler, Elkhonen
described at: Vogler Elkhonen
has abstract: (1907–1969), Yiddish poet and essayist. Elkhonen Vogler (born Rozhanski) was a symbolist poet and a leading member of the interwar Yiddish literary group Yung-Vilne. His three volumes of Yiddish verse, A bletl in vint (A Leaf in the Wind; 1935), Tsvey beriozes afn trakt (Two Birch Trees by the Highway; 1939), and Friling afn trakt (Springtime by the Highway; 1954) are hymns to the Lithuanian and Belorussian countryside.
title: Vogler, Elkhonen
alternative label: Elkhonen Vogler
related: Łódź
related: Kulbak, Moyshe
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Tsukunft
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Yung-Vilne

Volynskii, Akim L’vovich
described at: Volynskii Akim Lvovich
has abstract: (Pseudonym of Ḥayim Leibovich Flekser, 1861–1926), literary critic, historian, editor, and art theoretician (especially of ballet). Born in Zhitomir, Akim Volynskii was the son of a bookseller. He studied in a Russian high school in Zhitomir, but was expelled because of a conflict with a teacher, so that he did his matriculation exams as an extern. His first publication was a letter to the Jewish Russian newspaper Razsvet about an orphanage in Saint Petersburg (published in 1880). During the 1880s, he wrote articles on Jewish themes for the Jewish Russian periodicals Razsvet, Russkie evrei, and Voskhod. In 1884, he served as an editor of the Russian-language anthology Palestina, in which he published a review of Lev Pinsker’s Autoemancipation. In 1885, Volynskii published his essay “Teologo-politicheskoe uchenie Spinozy” (Spinoza’s Theological-Political Teaching) in Voskhod, and also wrote articles on the poet Shimen Frug and on the Bible in Russian poetry.
title: Volynskii, Akim L’vovich
alternative label: Akim Volynskii
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Frug, Shimen Shmuel
related: Goldberg, Leah
related: Russian Criticism and Scholarship (Literary Criticism and Scholarship)
related: Minskii, Nikolai Maksimovich
related: Pinsker, Simḥah and Lev
related: Razsvet
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Voskhod
related: Zhytomyr

From 1864 to 1914
type: Concept
broader: Warsaw

Jews in Warsaw during the Kingdom of Poland
type: Concept
broader: Warsaw

The Nazi Occupation
type: Concept
broader: Warsaw

The Postwar Period
type: Concept
broader: Warsaw

World War I and After
type: Concept
broader: Warsaw

Wassercug, Mosheh
described at: Wassercug Mosheh
has abstract: (d. after 1819), Polish Jewish memoirist. Born in the mid-eighteenth century in Skoki, near Poznań, the son of a textile and clothing merchant, Mosheh Wassercug seems to have died in Płock. His parents saw to it that he received a broad Jewish education, and he remained traditionally observant all his life. After his father’s death, he tried to continue in his footsteps but was unsuccessful and lost his inheritance.
title: Wassercug, Mosheh
alternative label: Mosheh Wassercug
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poznań

Ważyk, Adam
described at: Wazyk Adam
has abstract: (Ajzyk Wagman; 1905–1982), poet, prose and essay writer, and translator. The brother of Saul Wagman, a poet and publicist associated with the Zionist journal Nasz Przegląd, and Leon Trystam, an actor, film critic, and screenwriter, Adam Ważyk became one of the leading poets of the Polish avant-garde movement. During World War II, Ważyk was in the USSR, where he joined the Polish Army. After the war, he returned to Poland, where he actively participated in Communist-sponsored literary life as a theorist of socialist realism, laureate of state awards, contributor to Kuźnica (1946–1949), and editor in chief of Twórczość (1950–1954). In 1955, he dramatically settled scores with Stalinism in “Poemat dla dorosłych” (Poem for Adults), which marked a literary and ideological turning point in the political thaw of 1956. In 1957, he quit the party and distanced himself from politics.
title: Ważyk, Adam
alternative label: Adam Ważyk
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Nasz Przegląd
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Weil, Jiří
described at: Weil Jiri
has abstract: (1900–1959), Czech novelist and short-story writer. Jiří Weil was born in the village of Praskolesy, near Prague; after World War I, when his father’s frame shop failed, the family moved to Prague, where Weil went to high school and university. Weil soon became involved in the political and cultural left; in 1922 he visited the Soviet Union, and on his return he took a job in the press department of the Soviet mission in Prague. In the 1920s he translated extensively from Russian literature, joined the avant-garde grouping Devětsil, and completed a Ph.D. in Slavic philology, with a dissertation on Gogol and the eighteenth-century English novel.
title: Weil, Jiří
alternative label: Jiří Weil
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Moscow
related: Prague
related: Terezín
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Weiss, Marcus Nissa
described at: Weiss Marcus Nissa
has abstract: (1751–1817), early maskil and pioneering religious reformer in Hungary. Marcus Nissa Weiss received a strong Talmudic education, and although he was a businessman, would preach on occasion in his community, Ungvár. In an 1808 autobiography, he recorded his sudden transformation wrought by the establishment of the Josephinian school system. Painstakingly, he learned German and discovered Moses Mendelssohn and the Haskalah. He became a lessee on the royal cameral estates of Ungvár and prospered at least until the mid-1780s, when he was embroiled in a debilitating and costly lawsuit that in the decade to come was to drain him financially.
title: Weiss, Marcus Nissa
alternative label: Marcus Nissa Weiss
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Normalschulen
related: Reform, Religious
related: Wrocław

Wessely, Wolfgang
described at: Wessely Wolfgang
has abstract: (1801–1870), jurist, publicist, and scholar. Born in Třebíč (Trebitsch), Moravia, to the family of a local leaseholder, Wolfgang (Binyamin Ze’ev) Wessely studied at yeshivas in his hometown, Polná, and Prague. He then studied philosophy and law at Prague’s Charles University and in 1829 was the first Jew to be awarded a doctorate in philosophy from that institution. Four years later, he earned a doctorate in civil law and also applied for one in canon law but was rejected because he was Jewish. After graduating, Wessely was hired as a private tutor for the family of the Viennese merchant Ernst Wertheimer. In 1831 he was appointed teacher of Jewish religion at a secondary school, and from 1837 he taught at the Jewish Normalschule of Prague.
title: Wessely, Wolfgang
alternative label: Wolfgang Wessely
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Freund, Samuel
related: Landau, Mosheh Yisra’el
related: Leaseholding
related: Normalschulen
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah

Wojdowski, Bohdan
described at: Wojdowski Bohdan
has abstract: (1930–1994), prose writer, publicist, and critic. Bohdan (originally Dawid) Wojdowski was the founder, in 1991, of the Masada Cultural Foundation for Jewish culture and editor of its journal, Masada (its only issue appeared in 1991). A member of the editorial boards of Przegląd Kulturalny and Współczesność, he also wrote for Teatr. After studying Polish literature in postwar Warsaw, Wojdowski made his literary debut in the 1950s. A Warsaw ghetto survivor, he committed suicide in 1994.
title: Wojdowski, Bohdan
alternative label: Bohdan Wojdowski
related: Life in Ghettos (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Memory
related: Warsaw

Hardship and Relief
type: Concept
broader: World War I

Political Activity
type: Concept
broader: World War I

Population Dislocations
type: Concept
broader: World War I

Relations with the Central Powers
type: Concept
broader: World War I

Revolution, Civil War, and Pogroms
type: Concept
broader: World War I

The War’s Effects
type: Concept
broader: World War I

The War in the East
type: Concept
broader: World War I

Wunderbar, Re’uven Yosef
described at: Wunderbar Reuven Yosef
has abstract: (1812–1868), historian, teacher, translator, and government-appointed rabbi. Born in Mitau, Courland guberniia (now Jelgava, Lat.), and educated in a traditional heder, Re’uven Yosef Wunderbar adopted a Haskalah (Enlightenment) worldview in spiritual and cultural matters. Self-taught, he acquired a broad general education in addition to a knowledge of German and Russian. In 1835, he passed the official examinations to acquire a teaching certificate for government-sponsored schools, and in 1840 moved to Riga to teach at the Haskalah school under the direction of Max Lilienthal.
title: Wunderbar, Re’uven Yosef
alternative label: Re’uven Yosef Wunderbar
related: Courland
related: Haskalah
related: Heder
related: Jelgava
related: Lilienthal, Max
related: Mapu, Avraham
related: Riga

Finances
type: Concept
broader: YIVO

Origins and Founding
type: Concept
broader: YIVO

Postwar Adjustment
type: Concept
broader: YIVO

Scholarship in Times of Crisis
type: Concept
broader: YIVO

World War II
type: Concept
broader: YIVO

Yitsḥak ben Shimshon ha-Kohen
described at: Yitshak ben Shimshon ha-Kohen
has abstract: (ca. 1560–1624), son-in-law of Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el (Maharal of Prague); scholar of midrash. Yitsḥak ben Shimshon ha-Kohen was born and died in Prague. According to family tradition, he served as rabbi in Nikolsburg and Vienna and was also a member of Prague’s rabbinic court. He was one of the circle of scholars in Prague who were colleagues and disciples of his father-in-law, Maharal of Prague. The group shared wide-ranging intellectual interests: halakhah and agadah, Kabbalah and Jewish philosophy, Bible and Hebrew poetry.
title: Yitsḥak ben Shimshon ha-Kohen
related: Magid, Ha-
related: Mikulov
related: Piety
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Tsene-rene
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el

Links to Larger Organizations
type: Concept
broader: Youth Movements

Major Movements and Subdivisions
type: Concept
broader: Youth Movements

Postwar Youth Movements in Poland
type: Concept
broader: Youth Movements

Youth Movements outside Poland
type: Concept
broader: Youth Movements

Zamenhof, Ludwik
described at: Zamenhof Ludwik
has abstract: (1859–1917), ophthalmologist, linguist, and inventor of Esperanto. Ludwik Zamenhof was born in the Polish border city of Białystok. Both his father, Markus, and his grandfather worked as foreign-language instructors. Zamenhof completed heder at 13 and from 1869 on attended a public secondary school. In 1873, his parents moved to Warsaw, where he began studying at a private secondary school that specialized in languages. From his youth Zamenhof occupied himself with poetry and drama; he wrote, among other pieces, a five-act tragedy based on the myth of the Tower of Babel.
title: Zamenhof, Ludwik
alternative label: Ludwik Zamenhof
related: Białystok
related: Heder
related: Hrodna
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Warsaw
related: World War I
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Zaslavskii, David Iosifovich
described at: Zaslavskii David Iosifovich
has abstract: (1880–1965), Bundist activist and Soviet publicist. Born in Kiev, David Zaslavskii became interested in Russian Jewish literature and Jewish history while still in his youth. In 1899, he took part in a Jewish student organization established by Zionists and socialists at Kiev University and was expelled from the university in 1901 for participating in student riots. He began his activities at the Bund in 1903, simultaneously writing for the Russian-language press. In 1905 and 1906, he worked for the Bund Central Committee, publishing in their press in both Yiddish (Di tsayt) and Russian (Evreiskie vesti). From 1907 to 1917, he also published widely in the general liberal Russian press in Kiev and Saint Petersburg.
title: Zaslavskii, David Iosifovich
alternative label: David Zaslavskii
related: Bund
related: Emes, Der
related: Eynikayt
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Kiev
related: Mandel’shtam Osip Emil’evich
related: Moscow
related: Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Tribuna
related: Ukraine
related: Vilnius
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Zbąszyń
described at: Zbaszyn
has abstract: Town 70 kilometers west of Poznań, on the Polish–German border of 1919–1939; population (1938) 5,400, including 360 Germans and 52 Jews. From November 1938 to August 1939 Zbąszyń housed a transit camp for Jews expelled from Germany during the so-called Polenaktion (27–29 October 1938).
title: Zbąszyń
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: Ringelblum, Emanuel

Zeyer, Julius
described at: Zeyer Julius
has abstract: (1841–1901), Czech poet, dramatist, and novelist. Julius Zeyer’s father was a wealthy lumber merchant descended from Alsatian aristocracy; his mother came from a Jewish family in Prague, although she raised her children as Catholics. Zeyer would become one of the most prolific Czech writers of his day—his collected works run to some 30 volumes, including his verse epics drawing on Czech legends (Vyšehrad; 1880)—but his embrace of Czech culture was not automatic. Like other writers from the Czech lands, he grew up speaking German; nevertheless, he published his first stories in Czech, in his early thirties. Still, he was a fierce, if ambivalent, patriot: he loved Czech culture and yearned for independence from Vienna, and yet excoriated Czechs for their provincialism and docile obedience to Habsburg rule. He felt like a literary outsider in Prague, which he called both “queen” and “whore,” and in 1887 moved to the small town of Vodňany, where he spent the next 12 years, except for his frequent trips abroad. Although Zeyer’s relations with established Czech literary life could be prickly, he was widely admired and honored, and in 1901 became the first person to be buried in Slavín, the tomb of great Czechs in the national Vyšehrad cemetery.
title: Zeyer, Julius
alternative label: Julius Zeyer
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Prague

From the First Zionist Congress to World War I
type: Concept
broader: Zionism and Zionist Parties

The Interwar Years
type: Concept
broader: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Zionism after 1989
type: Concept
broader: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Zionism during the Holocaust
type: Concept
broader: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Zionism in the Age of Empires, 1880–1897
type: Concept
broader: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Zionism in the Cold War Era, 1944–1989
type: Concept
broader: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Zygielbojm, Shmuel Mordkhe
described at: Zygielbojm Shmuel Mordkhe
has abstract: (1895–1943), labor and political leader. Born near Chełm, Shmuel (Artur) Zygielbojm spent his childhood in Krasnystaw. To help support his family, he left heder at age 10 and went to work at a factory. After the outbreak of World War I, he became active in the Bund and before long was assigned a prominent role in the party.
title: Zygielbojm, Shmuel Mordkhe
alternative label: Shmuel (Artur) Zygielbojm
related: Łódź
related: Bund
related: Chełm
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Zylbercweig, Zalmen
described at: Zylbercweig Zalmen
has abstract: (1894–1972), Yiddish theater historian and lexicographer. Zalmen Zylbercweig (Zilbertsvayg) was born in Ozorków, a small town near Łódź, to a religiously observant but reform-minded father who was a Yiddish and Hebrew writer. Zylbercweig was educated in both a progressive yeshiva and a commercial school. Attracted to the theater at an early age, he first performed with amateur Yiddish and Hebrew groups, then acted in professional companies, directed a troupe that performed in and around Łódź, produced Yiddish translations of European plays, and edited and contributed to numerous Yiddish publications.
title: Zylbercweig, Zalmen
alternative label: Zalmen Zylbercweig
related: Łódź
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Kaminski Family
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Ágai, Adolf
described at: Agai Adolf
has abstract: (1836–1916), writer, journalist, editor, and humorist. Adolf Ágai established his literary reputation in Budapest during the 1870s and 1880s, where he was the pioneer of a new kind of popular urban culture implicitly associated with the city’s assimilated Jewish lower-middle classes. Ágai was born in the west Hungarian town of Jánoshalma into a Polish Jewish family whose language remained Yiddish, even though his father had changed the family name from Rosenzweig to the more Hungarian-sounding Ágai in 1848.
title: Ágai, Adolf
alternative label: Adolf Ágai
related: Assimilation
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Humor)

Alexander, Bernát
described at: Alexander Bernat
has abstract: (1850–1927), philosopher, aesthetician, literary scholar, and educator. Bernát Alexander completed his high school studies at the Royal Catholic Gymnasium in Pest, Hungary, where he befriended József Bánóczi, with whom he later collaborated on scholarly projects. Alexander’s parents wanted him to become a physician; he himself briefly considered a rabbinical career before choosing to become an educator.
title: Alexander, Bernát
alternative label: Bernát Alexander
related: Bánóczi, József
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Múlt és Jövő

Avraham ben Avigdor
described at: Avraham ben Avigdor
has abstract: (d. 1542), rabbi. The inscription on Avraham ben Avigdor’s tombstone in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague states that he was a chief rabbi and head of Prague’s yeshiva for more than 20 years. Avraham ben Avigdor is also mentioned in the memorial book of the Altneuschul (fol. 20a) and in David Gans’s chronicle Tsemaḥ David (1592). In the Prague municipal register, Avraham is cited as the author of a legal verdict in a dispute between two parties and as a witness involving the purchase of realty. His name, and the fact that he wrote a liturgical poem, has led to the unsupported view that he was a descendant of Avigdor Kara.
title: Avraham ben Avigdor
related: Altneuschul
related: Gans, David ben Shelomoh
related: Kara, Avigdor
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Baia Mare
described at: Baia Mare
has abstract: Town in northwestern Romania, on the Săsar River at the foot of the Gutâi Mountains. Baia Mare, a mining town, was known in German as Frauenbach and Neustadt, in Latin as Rivulus Dominarum, and in Hungarian as Asszonypatak and Nagybánya. After several sporadic reports of a Jewish presence there in the second half of the seventeenth century, and after the establishment of Austrian rule, in 1693–1700 Jewish people’s access to mining towns and neighboring areas was forbidden. These restrictions were in place until 1850; in 1855 the presence of Rabbi Tsevi Yehudah Horovitz in Baia Mare is documented.
title: Baia Mare
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Orthodoxy
related: Romania
related: Transylvania
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Bakst, Léon
described at: Bakst Leon
has abstract: (1866–1924), Russian artist. Of the many artists of the Russian Silver Age, Léon Bakst (Lev Samoilovich Rozenberg) deserves the highest acclaim for his achievements in studio painting and the applied arts. He was especially successful in portraiture, interior decoration, book illustration, haute couture, and, above all, stage design.
title: Bakst, Léon
alternative label: Léon Bakst
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shtetl
related: Stage Design

Bally Family
described at: Bally Family
has abstract: Romanian Sephardic bankers from the Ottoman Empire; descendants included scholars, educators, and writers. Celebi Mentes Bally, a banker from Constantinople, supported the Greek aristocrat Neculai Mavrocordat in becoming the ruler of Walachia. Mavrocordat then brought Bally with him to Bucharest and, in 1715, granted him the title of grand vizier. From 1730, Bally was the founder and leader of the first Sephardic Jewish community in Walachia. His descendants also held privileged positions as bankers and advisers to the Phanariot princes who took the throne of Walachia.
title: Bally Family
alternative label: Davicion Bally
related: Banking
related: Barasch, Iuliu
related: Bucharest
related: Egalitatea
related: Haskalah
related: Passover
related: Romania
related: Seminary
related: Walachia

Baumhorn, Lipót
described at: Baumhorn Lipot
has abstract: (1860–1932), architect and designer of synagogues. Lipót (Leopold) Baumhorn was born in Kisbér (near Győr, Hungary), and graduated from the Technische Hochschule in Vienna in 1883. Working in the office of the architect Ödön Lechner in Budapest between 1884 and 1894, Baumhorn adopted Lechner’s characteristic combination of plain plastered surfaces and red or yellow wavy brick string courses, string pilasters, gables, and battlements. Baumhorn, however, broke with Lechner’s folkloric style and followed more standard architectural conventions, using patterns that were welcomed by a range of Jewish communities from the more traditional to the ostentatious. Baumhorn opened his own office in 1894, where he worked with his son-in-law György Somogyi. Baumhorn built 25 synagogues and restored numerous others in Austria-Hungary from the 1880s until his death.
title: Baumhorn, Lipót
alternative label: Lipót Baumhorn
related: Braşov
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Löw, Immánuel
related: Synagogue Architecture
related: Timişoara

Becal
described at: Becal
has abstract: (More fully, Jakub Becal, son of Natan; Heb., Ya‘akov Betsal’el ben Natan), factor of Polish King Jan III Sobieski (1629–1696). Probably hailing from Ruthenia, Jakub Becal is said to have lost his father in the Khmel’nyt’skyi uprising, though in court files from 1676 Becal’s home is given as Dybów near Toruń.
title: Becal
related: Ḥazakah
related: Kahal
related: Leaseholding
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: L’viv
related: Servants
related: Zhovkva

Beck, Karl Isidor
described at: Beck Karl Isidor
has abstract: (1817–1879), poet and promoter of German-language culture. Karl Beck was born in Baja, a large Jewish community in southern Hungary; his father was a businessman. Beck was a medical student in Vienna until illness forced him to return home. After a brief interlude in the business world, he studied philosophy in Leipzig. There he associated with young radical Austrian writers, including Moritz Hartmann, Ignaz Kuranda, and Alfred Meissner (all of whom went into exile to avoid the severe censorship practiced under Metternich’s government), and made literary contacts within the libertarian Young Germany movement. Beck ultimately opposed nationalism, advocated the dominance of German-language culture throughout the Habsburg Empire, and venerated Bismarck, Germany’s “Iron Chancellor.”
title: Beck, Karl Isidor
alternative label: Karl Beck
related: Hartmann, Moritz
related: About this Article (Hungary)

Beider, Khayim
described at: Beider Khayim
has abstract: (1920–2003), Yiddish poet, journalist, and literary historian. The son of an artisan, Khayim (Efim in Russian publications) Beider was born in the shtetl of Kupel, near Proskurov (mod. Khmel’nyts’kyi), Ukraine. After finishing the local seven-year Yiddish school, Beider studied at the Odessa Yiddish Teachers’ Training College and a rabfak (workers’ faculty) in Zhitomir, and from 1936 to 1940 at the Yiddish department of the Odessa Teachers’ Training Institute. After graduating in 1940, he worked as a teacher in the Stalindorf Jewish National District, one of three such Jewish districts in pre–World War II Ukraine.
title: Beider, Khayim
alternative label: Khayim Beider
related: Birobidzhan
related: Birobidzhaner Shtern
related: Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shtetl
related: Sovetish Heymland
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vergelis, Arn
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zhytomyr

Ben-Adir
described at: Ben-Adir
has abstract: (pseudonym of Avrom Rozin; 1878–1942), socialist leader. A leading figure first in the Jewish Socialist Workers Party (known as SERP, the party’s initials in Russian, or the Sejmists in Yiddish usage), later in the United Jewish Socialist Workers Party (Fareynikte), and ultimately in the territorialist grouping known as the Freeland League (Frayland-lige), Rozin was born in Krucha (Mohilev province; now in Belarus), in the Russian Empire, and received a traditional education. He affiliated with illegal socialist circles in Minsk in the mid-1890s and studied in Paris at the beginning of the twentieth century.
title: Ben-Adir
related: Belarus
related: Bund
related: Evsektsiia
related: Fareynikte
related: Frayland-lige
related: Kiev
related: Minsk
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Bercovici, Israil
described at: Bercovici Israil
has abstract: (1921–1988), Yiddish poet, playwright, translator, literary historian, and journalist. Israil Bercovici (Yid., Yisroel Berkovitsh) was born in Botoşani to a poor family and had to earn his own living as a teenager. He was self-taught and studied foreign languages on his own, becoming fluent in Yiddish, Hebrew, and Romanian. He also acquired a thorough literary and humanistic cultural foundation independently.
title: Bercovici, Israil
alternative label: Israil Bercovici
related: Bessarabia
related: Botoşani
related: Bucharest
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Berezhany
described at: Berezhany
has abstract: A town now in western Ukraine, better known by its traditional Polish name, Brzeżany (also Yid., Berezhan). Brzeżany was originally a village, but it was granted the status of town by the Polish king Sigismund the Old in the sixteenth century. It became part of the Habsburg Empire in 1772.
title: Berezhany
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Youth Movements

Berman, Adolf Abraham
described at: Berman Adolf Abraham
has abstract: (1906–1978), psychologist; left-wing Zionist activist, and a leader of the Warsaw ghetto underground. Adolf Berman (who used the code names Adam, Borowski, and Ludwik) studied psychology and philosophy at Warsaw University, receiving his doctorate in 1931. As one of the pioneers of professional counseling in Poland, he headed the Warsaw organization of Jewish counseling clinics, affiliated with Centrala Opieki nad Sierotami (Federation of Associations for the Care of Orphans; CENTOS). He also taught in high schools and published articles on social and educational psychology. While a student, Berman joined the Jewish socialist group Yugnt (Youth). In 1925, he became a member of the Left Po‘ale Tsiyon and was involved in publication of the party’s Polish- and Yiddish-language press organs.
title: Berman, Adolf Abraham
alternative label: Adolf (Avraham) Berman
alternative label: Adolf Berman
related: Beriḥah
related: Berman, Jakub
related: Central Committee of Jews in Poland
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ringelblum, Emanuel
related: Warsaw
related: Yugnt
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Bikl, Shloyme
described at: Bikl Shloyme
has abstract: (1896–1969), Yiddish writer, critic, and journalist. Born in the shtetl of Ustechko, in Austrian eastern Galicia (now Ukraine), Shloyme Bikl (alternately, Bickel), received a traditional Jewish education and then attended high school in Kołomyja (mod. Ukr., Kolomyia). Between 1915 and 1918, Bikl was an officer in the Austrian army, and from 1919 to 1922 he studied law at Chernivtsi University. From 1922 until 1939 Bikl lived in Bucharest, combining his law practice with journalism, publicistics, and literary activity. In 1939, he immigrated to the United States, and died in New York City 30 years later.
title: Bikl, Shloyme
alternative label: Shloyme Bikl
related: Altman, Moyshe
related: Bucharest
related: Chernivtsi
related: Galicia
related: Kolomyia
related: Kultur-lige
related: Literarishe Bleter
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: Romania
related: Shternberg, Yankev
related: Shtetl
related: Singer, Isaac Bashevis
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw
related: YIVO
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Bin, Di
described at: Bin Di
has abstract: Illustrated humorous weekly published in Warsaw from March through August 1906. Di bin (The Bee) represented the first attempt by Shmuel Yankev Yatskan (1874–1936) to publish a popular Yiddish newspaper, two months before he launched his successful daily Idishes tageblat. Di bin’s copublisher and editor was Eleazar David Finkel (1862–1918), a talented journalist and translator.
title: Bin, Di
alternative label: Di bin
related: Warsaw
related: Yaknehoz
related: Yatskan, Shmuel Yankev

Birnboym, Avrom Ber
described at: Birnboym Avrom Ber
has abstract: (1865–1922), cantor, composer, and pedagogue. Avrom Ber Birnboym was born in the city of Pułtusk, north of Warsaw. He reportedly learned music from his Hasidic father, and also studied violin in Łódź with Ḥayim Janowski, the founder of the Hazomir Choral Society. Birnboym’s first position was as a cantor and kosher butcher in Hethar, Hungary, where he studied music theory and German. He then took a cantorial position in Prosnitz (Prostějov), Moravia. Birnboym eventually became the chief cantor for the Choir Synagogue in the Polish community of Częstochowa.
title: Birnboym, Avrom Ber
alternative label: Avrom Ber Birnboym
related: Łódź
related: Cantors
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Prostějov
related: Sabbath
related: Warsaw

Bischitz, Johanna
described at: Bischitz Johanna
has abstract: (Née Hani Fischer; 1827–1898), philanthropic activist and head of a women’s association. Johanna Bischitz’s father was Moritz (Mór) Fischer (1799–1880), director and owner of the world-famous porcelain factory of Herend and a prominent Orthodox lay leader of Hungarian Jewry (he was the grandfather of Rabbi Stephen Wise). Little is known about her mother, Mária Salzer (1799–1886). Moritz Fischer was ennobled in 1867 and added the Hungarian name Farkasházi to his family name. During the Hungarian Revolution of 1848–1849, his daughter cared for wounded Hungarian soldiers, whom he had accommodated in his house. In October 1852, Johanna married the widower David Bischitz (1811–1897), a merchant and landowner from Sárbogárd (Fejér county), and moved to Pest. She became the stepmother of her husband’s three children and gave birth to another four.
title: Bischitz, Johanna
alternative label: Johanna Bischitz
related: Budapest
related: Gerő, Katalin
related: About this Article (Hungary)

Blank, Maurice
described at: Blank Maurice
has abstract: (1848–1929), banker. Maurice Blank was born in Piteşti, Romania, into the family of a Jewish tradesman and entrepreneur, Mauriciu Blanco. Blank studied economics in Vienna and Leipzig, and upon his return to Romania became Iacob Marmorosch’s partner in running the largest bank in Romania, which in 1874 was renamed the Marmorosch-Blank Bank.
title: Blank, Maurice
alternative label: Blank
alternative label: Maurice Blank
related: Bacău
related: Banking
related: Brăila
related: Bucharest
related: Dorohoi
related: Iaşi
related: Ploieşti
related: Romania
related: Timişoara

Botvinnik, Mikhail Moiseevich
described at: Botvinnik Mikhail Moiseevich
has abstract: (1911–1995), sixth world chess champion, a title he held from 1948 to 1963. Mikhail Botvinnik became a master in 1927 and a grandmaster in 1935. He was a seven-time USSR champion, and won the special title of absolute champion of that country in 1941. Among his most remarkable victories were Moscow 1935, where he shared first and second places with Salomon Flohr and ranked higher than Emanuel Lasker and José Raúl Capablanca; Nottingham 1936, where he shared first and second places with Capablanca and ranked higher than three world champions; Groningen 1946, where he won first place; and finally the Hague–Moscow 1948, where he became world champion.
title: Botvinnik, Mikhail Moiseevich
alternative label: Mikhail Botvinnik
related: Bund
related: Chess
related: Moscow
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Brik, Liliia Iur’evna and Osip Maksimovich
described at: Brik Liliia Iurevna and Osip Maksimovich
has abstract: Important Soviet cultural figures. Liliia (1891–1978) was active in poetic and artistic circles, while Osip (1888–1945) was a literary theorist and playwright.
title: Brik, Liliia Iur’evna and Osip Maksimovich
alternative label: Liliia Brik
alternative label: Osip Brik
related: Jakobson, Roman Osipovich
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shklovskii, Viktor Borisovich
related: Tynianov, Iurii Nikolaevich

Broda, Avraham ben Sha’ul
described at: Broda Avraham ben Shaul
has abstract: (ca. 1650–1717), rabbi and Talmudist. Born in Prague, Avraham ben Sha’ul Broda studied in Poland with Yitsḥak ben Ze’ev Ḥarif, later chief rabbi of Kraków. Returning to Bohemia, Broda lived in Bunzlau (Mladá Boleslav). He served as a rabbi in Lichtenstadt (Hroznětín) before 1692, and in Raudnitz (Roudnice) from 1692 to 1693.
title: Broda, Avraham ben Sha’ul
alternative label: Avraham Broda
related: Bassevi of Treuenberg, Ya‘akov
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Mladá Boleslav
related: Oppenheim, David
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Sabbath
related: Sabbatianism
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Broder, Berl
described at: Broder Berl
has abstract: (ca. 1817–1868), early composer and performer of Yiddish popular songs. Born in Podkamen, three miles from Brody in Austrian Galicia, Berl Broder (also Broder-Margulies) began his public career as a folksinger in 1857, when he gave up his job in the pig bristle business and took up entertaining at inns, with two former synagogue choirboys as members of his troupe. The original repertory was sad, the melodies too, and consisted of the individual monologues of a poor shepherd, night watchman, shingler, drayman, moneylender, wanderer, cantor, matchmaker, Hebrew-school teacher, preacher, or water carrier. Once the routine caught on, each monologue-in-song was performed in appropriate costume, followed by a little dance. “I, poor so-and-so” became the universally popular signature of the Broder Singers, semiprofessional entertainers who wandered through Eastern Europe over the following decades.
title: Broder, Berl
alternative label: Berl Broder
related: Brody
related: Ehrenkranz, Benjamin Wolf
related: Entertainers
related: Galicia
related: Gordon, Mikhl
related: Purim
related: Songs and Songwriters
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Tsunzer, Elyokem
related: Weddings

Brodskii, Isaak Izrailevich
described at: Brodskii Isaak Izrailevich
has abstract: (1883 [1884 according to the Gregorian calendar]–1939), painter, graphic artist, art critic, and educator. Born in Sofievka (Taurida guberniia), Isaak Brodskii studied at the Odessa School of Art from 1896 to 1902. He then attended the Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg until 1908, receiving a grant from this institute to travel in Western Europe between 1909 and 1911.
title: Brodskii, Isaak Izrailevich
alternative label: Isaak Brodskii
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg

Brodsky, Joseph
described at: Brodsky Joseph
has abstract: (1940–1996), Russian-born poet and Nobel Prize Laureate in literature in 1987. Joseph Brodsky (as he is known in the West; in Russian, Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodskii) was born in Leningrad. He was the only child of Aleksandr Ivanovich Brodskii, a photojournalist who served for a time in the Soviet Navy, and Mariia Moiseevna Volpert, both assimilated Jews. Because of his Jewish background and growing interest in philosophical and literary questions, Brodsky experienced increasing alienation at an early age.
title: Brodsky, Joseph
alternative label: Joseph Brodsky
related: About this Article (Russia)

Brodt, Shemu’el
described at: Brodt Shemuel
has abstract: (1885–1963), rabbi and Zionist leader. Born in Łódź, Shemu’el Yom Tov ha-Levi Brodt studied at a Hasidic yeshiva, and was elected in 1907 to be the rabbi of Brisk Dekuyave (Pol., Brześć Kujawski). Prior to World War I, Brodt was the rabbi of Lipno. He joined the ranks of Mizraḥi at the end of the war, and called on it to strengthen its role in Polish political life as well as to organize immigration to Palestine.
title: Brodt, Shemu’el
alternative label: Shemu’el Brodt
related: Łódź
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Farbstein, Yehoshu‘a Heshel
related: Mizraḥi
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Bródy, Sándor
described at: Brody Sandor
has abstract: (1863–1924), novelist, dramatist, and short-story writer. Born into a provincial Hungarian Jewish merchant family, Sándor Bródy grew up in the town of Eger. His father was typical of his generation in that he was imbued with Hungarian patriotism while remaining faithful to traditional Judaism. In the 1870s, the elder Bródy’s various business ventures failed, and he moved his family to Budapest. After a rather carefree childhood, Sándor Bródy got to know the seamier side of city life. As a young writer he was among the first in Hungarian literature to focus attention on the urban proletariat, and the first to introduce the coarse and pungent vernacular of the big city into literary works.
title: Bródy, Sándor
alternative label: Sándor Bródy
related: Assimilation
related: Budapest
related: Hungarian Literature
related: About this Article (Hungary)

Brushtein, Aleksandra Iakovlevna
described at: Brushtein Aleksandra Iakovlevna
has abstract: (1884–1968), Russian playwright, memoirist, and teacher. Aleksandra Brushtein was born in Vilna, where her father, Iakov Vygodskii (Wygodzki; 1857–1941), was a physician and a leading figure in the Jewish community. She graduated from the History–Philosophy Department of the Higher Women’s Courses in Saint Petersburg. After the revolution, Brushtein concentrated on educational work and writing, organizing 173 literacy schools for adults and writing extensively for children and adolescents.
title: Brushtein, Aleksandra Iakovlevna
alternative label: Aleksandra Brushtein
related: Lekert, Hirsh
related: Moscow
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Passover
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Vilnius

Brzechwa, Jan
described at: Brzechwa Jan
has abstract: (1898–1966), poet, satirist, and children’s book author. Jan Brzechwa (Jan Wiktor Lesman), a cousin of the poet Bolesław Leśmian, was born into a family of assimilated Jews; his father converted to Protestantism. Brzechwa fought on the Polish side in the Polish–Soviet War of 1920. After studying law in Warsaw from 1920 to 1924, Brzechwa worked as a lawyer, copyright expert, and legal author. He was a member of the literary circle around the poetry group Skamander and the journal Wiadomości Literackie, and also wrote for cabarets and composed song lyrics. Brzechwa cofounded the Union of Stage Artists and Composers. After World War II, he worked for UNESCO.
title: Brzechwa, Jan
alternative label: Jan Brzechwa
related: About this Article (Children’s Literature)
related: Leśmian, Bolesław
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Tuwim, Julian
related: Warsaw
related: Wiadomości Literackie

Burshtin, Mikhoel
described at: Burshtin Mikhoel
has abstract: (1897–1945), Yiddish novelist and short-story writer. Born in Błonie (Yid., Bloyne) near Warsaw, Mikhoel Burshtin moved to Warsaw in 1912, where he attended high school and studied to be a teacher of history and literature. He first published in Yiddish around 1930, and his earliest book, Iber di khurves fun Ployne (Over the Ruins of Ployne; 1931), received positive reviews from Yiddish literary critics. He contributed to the Warsaw Yiddish dailies Haynt and Moment, as well as the New York newspaper Forverts, the monthly Di tsukunft, and other publications.
title: Burshtin, Mikhoel
alternative label: Mikhl Burshtin
alternative label: Mikhoel Burshtin
related: Białystok
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Conversion
related: Haynt
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: Kaunas
related: Landkentenish
related: Moment, Der
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Shtetl
related: Warsaw

Cartoons
described at: Cartoons
has abstract: Humorous illustrations or cartoons, as a critical visual element of the popular press, appeared in East European Jewish journals relatively late as compared to non-Jewish coterritorial language publications. The small number of Yiddish periodicals that were permitted in the Russian Empire from the mid-nineteenth century to the turn of the twentieth century generally contained few, if any, illustrations.
title: Cartoons
alternative label: cartoons
related: Łódź
related: Bin, Di
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Chernivtsi
related: Fraynd, Der
related: Haynt
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: Linetski, Yitskhok Yoyel
related: L’viv
related: Moment, Der
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Riga
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Satire
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Ceremonial and Decorative Art
described at: Ceremonial and Decorative Art
has abstract: The earliest examples of Ashkenazic Judaica (art used in the service of Jewish ceremony in the home or synagogue) date only to the High Middle Ages. Although texts confirm the existence of some types in prior centuries, there are no extant examples before the fourteenth century when the first kiddush cups, Hanukkah lamps (menorahs), and wedding rings were found at various sites in the German lands. Two new types were added in the sixteenth century: the tower-form spice container (used for the Havdalah service) and the Torah shield.
title: Ceremonial and Decorative Art
alternative label: ceremonial objects
alternative label: ceremonial silver objects
related: Ashkenaz
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Calendars
related: Paper Cuts
related: Passover
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Shpanyer Arbet

Chemeriskii, Aleksandr
described at: Chemeriskii Aleksandr
has abstract: (1880–1942), participant in the Russian Jewish revolutionary movement and Soviet Communist official. Born in Bar, Ukraine, Aleksandr Chemeriskii settled in Minsk in the mid-1890s and worked as a photographer. In 1898, he joined the Bund. The following year, he was arrested and sent to Moscow where Sergei Zubatov, head of the secret police, persuaded him to help found a legal Jewish workers’ party. The party would defend professional interests and seek to expand Jewish civil rights, but would not fight against the autocracy.
title: Chemeriskii, Aleksandr
alternative label: Aleksandr Chemeriskii
related: Łódź
related: Bund
related: Crimea
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Emes, Der
related: Evsektsiia
related: Folks-tsaytung
related: Kiev
related: Kishinev
related: Komfarband
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Society for the Settlement of Jewish Toilers on the Land
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Childbearing
described at: Childbearing
has abstract: Along with a value system that encouraged reproduction, various social and demographic factors prevailing in the East European Jewish community led to an extremely high rate of childbirth (until the nineteenth century). The marriage rate in Jewish society was much higher than that of the surrounding Christian population, as was the rate of remarriage among the widowed and divorced. In addition, the marriage age was relatively low, as was the woman’s age at first birth—most Jewish women had their first child before the age of 20. Books of charms from the period, such as the popular Sefer zekhirah (Book of Remembrance) by Zekharyah ben Ya‘akov Simner, mention a few formulas for avoiding pregnancy. It would appear, however, that even these were reserved for cases in which a woman’s health was at risk and were not intended to limit the birthrate.
title: Childbearing
alternative label: childbirth
related: Amulets and Talismans
related: Ba‘ale Shem
related: Demons
related: Rivke bas Me’ir of Tikotin
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Servants
related: Tkhines

Polish Literature (Children’s Literature)
described at: Polish Literature
has abstract: Children’s literature produced by Polish-Jewish writers targeted two distinct audiences: a Polish readership and a Polish Jewish readership. Texts intended for the Polish audience generally lacked special references to Jewish life and culture, while texts intended for Polish-speaking Jews mostly featured Jewish themes and motifs. Janusz Korczak (1878/79–1942) wrote for both audiences: his Król Maciuś Pierwszy (King Maciuś the First; 1923) and Kajtuś czarodziej (Kajtuś the Wizard; 1935) were aimed at Poles, whereas stories such as Ludzie są dobrzy (People Are Good; 1938) and Trzy wyprawy Herszka (Herszek’s Three Expeditions; 1939)—which appeared in the book series Biblioteka Palestyńska dla Dzieci (Palestinian Library for Children)—were intended for Polish Jews.
title: Polish Literature (Children’s Literature)
alternative label: Polish children’s literature
alternative label: children’s literature
related: Assimilation
related: Brzechwa, Jan
related: Christmas
related: Chwila
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Korczak, Janusz
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Kraushar, Aleksander
related: Leśmian, Bolesław
related: Nasz Przegląd
related: Słucki, Arnold
related: Szymel, Maurycy
related: Trumpeldor, Yosef
related: Tuwim, Julian
related: Vogel, Dvora
related: Wygodzki, Stanisław

Yiddish Literature (Children’s Literature)
described at: Yiddish Literature
has abstract: The period in which modern children’s literature in Yiddish flourished began in the early twentieth century. This era also saw the growth of educational institutions in which Yiddish was the language of instruction. In the Soviet Union as well as in Poland, Yiddish educational textbooks, readers (anthologies), as well as series of booklets for children were published, containing original Yiddish literary writings and translations into that language. A substantial part of children’s literature in Yiddish was first disseminated by means of children’s periodicals, which were edited by educators and writers. In these books and journals, one finds literary selections for different age groups in a variety of genres: nursery rhymes for toddlers; stories about animals, friends, and events for elementary school children; and folklore and travelogues for adolescents.
title: Yiddish Literature (Children’s Literature)
alternative label: Yiddish children’s literature
alternative label: children’s books
related: Łódź
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Bastomski, Shloyme
related: Beys Yankev
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Der Nister
related: Fraynd, Der
related: Katzenelson, Yitsḥak
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: Kipnis, Itsik
related: Kishinev
related: Kletskin, Boris Arkadevich
related: Kultur-lige
related: Kvitko, Leyb
related: Lissitzky, El
related: Marshak, Samuil Iakovlevich
related: Minsk
related: Molodowsky, Kadia
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Purim
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: Rybak, Yisakhar Ber
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Spektor, Mordkhe
related: TSYSHO
related: Tunkel, Yoysef
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Committee of Rabbis in the USSR
described at: Committee of Rabbis in the USSR
has abstract: Clandestine Jewish religious organization in the Soviet Union, 1922–1930. The Committee of Rabbis was founded by the Lubavitcher rebbe, Yosef Yitsḥak Shneerson (1880–1950), who was its chairman until his departure from the USSR in October 1927. The Committee was subsequently led by Rabbi Ya‘akov Klemes of Moscow (1880–1953) and the organization’s secretary, Rabbi Shelomoh Yosef Zevin (1890–1978).
title: Committee of Rabbis in the USSR
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Artels
related: Crafts
related: Kamenev, Iurii
related: Latvia
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Passover
related: Riga
related: Sabbath
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Constanța
described at: Constanta
has abstract: Port city on the Black Sea, in the Dobruja (Dobrogea) region of Romania. Named for a small Genovese local port from the twelfth century, Constanța (Gk., Tomis; Tk., Küstenje) was annexed to Romania in 1878. Archaeological evidence indicates the presence of a small Jewish settlement in the third century. Ashkenazic Jewish traders who accompanied the Russian army as suppliers during the Russian–Turkish war then reestablished Jewish settlement in 1828. In the 1830s, Sephardic Jews from Anatolia settled in the area, set up a community of their own, obtained a plot of land for a cemetery in 1853, and leased land to construct a synagogue in 1867. That same year, Ashkenazic Jews organized as a distinct community.
title: Constanța
related: Bessarabia
related: Crafts
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Romania
related: Trade
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Crohmălniceanu, Ovid S.
described at: Crohmalniceanu Ovid S
has abstract: (1921–2000), critic, literary historian, and writer. Ovid S. Crohmălniceanu (originally Moise Cahn) was born in Galați, attended high school in the same town, and began his studies at the Polytechnical University of Bucharest. He was compelled to suspend his education because of the antisemitic legislation in force in Romania between 1940 and 1944, but he ultimately graduated in 1947 with an engineering degree. He began publishing literary criticism in newspapers and reviews in 1944.
title: Crohmălniceanu, Ovid S.
alternative label: Ovid Crohmălniceanu
alternative label: Ovid S. Crohmălniceanu
related: Bucharest
related: Galaţi
related: Romania
related: Romanian Literature

Czyński, Jan
described at: Czynski Jan
has abstract: (1801–1867), publicist, politician, writer, and philosopher. Born in Warsaw into a Christian family of Frankist descent, Jan Czyński became the first recognizably Jewish writer—his family’s origins were well known—to enter the ranks of Polish literature. A veteran of the November uprising of 1830, he joined the exodus of Polish patriots to France after its defeat. There he engaged in politics to champion “universal emancipation.” History, according to this “Polish fourrierist,” was a movement toward the emancipation of all disadvantaged groups.
title: Czyński, Jan
alternative label: Jan Czyński
related: Frankism
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Polish Literature
related: Warsaw

Diamand, Herman
described at: Diamand Herman
has abstract: (1860–1930), socialist, editor, publisher, and parliamentarian. Born in Lwów to a middle-class Jewish family, Herman Diamand attended a modern Jewish primary school. After completing Realschule (a modern German secondary school system adopted in several countries) in Lwów, he studied law and political science at the university there and in Vienna, earning a doctorate in 1894.
title: Diamand, Herman
alternative label: Herman Diamand
related: Galicia
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties
related: Żydowska Partia Socjalno-Demokratyczna

Dickstein, Samuel
described at: Dickstein Samuel
has abstract: (1851–1939), mathematician, pedagogue, and historian of science. One of the leading intellectuals in Congress Poland, Samuel Dickstein was born in Warsaw and was an activist in the assimilationist movement. From 1884 to 1918 he served on the executive committee of the Warsaw Jewish Community, responsible mainly for issues related to Jewish schools.
title: Dickstein, Samuel
alternative label: Samuel Dickstein
related: Assimilation
related: Bersohn, Mathias
related: Dickstein, Szymon
related: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
related: Natanson Family
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Warsaw

Dorian, Emil
described at: Dorian Emil
has abstract: (1891–1956), writer and translator. The son of a teacher of German, Emil Dorian (originally Lustig) received his early education at Jewish schools in Bucharest. After graduating from medical school in that city, he was sent to the front as a physician during World War I, even though, as a Jew, he was not yet a Romanian citizen. After a two-year medical specialization in France, he returned to Romania and worked as a physician until the end of his life, publishing numerous books on popular medicine. After World War II, he became involved in Jewish community life in Bucharest as a secretary general and afterward as director of the documentary library and archives of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania.
title: Dorian, Emil
alternative label: Emil Dorian
related: Bucharest
related: Yiddish Poetry (Poetry)
related: Romania
related: Shteynbarg, Eliezer

Ehrenfeld, Nathan
described at: Ehrenfeld Nathan
has abstract: (1843–1912), rabbi and teacher. Born in Csusz, Hungary, Nathan Ehrenfeld studied at the most prestigious rabbinical schools of that country: Pressburg (Hun., Pozsony; mod. Bratislava) and Eisenstadt. At the latter—and, then, at the rabbinical seminary in Berlin—he was the pupil of the Orthodox rabbi and scholar Esriel Hildesheimer (1820–1899). Ehrenfeld completed his university studies in Vienna and earned a doctorate in Kiel with a dissertation on Yosef Albo’s Sefer ha-‘ikarim (The Doctrine of Joseph Albo on the Principles and Criteria of Religion). Later he was active as a rabbi in the Prussian towns of Brandenburg an der Havel and Prenzlau, and, from 1878, in Gniezno, Poland.
title: Ehrenfeld, Nathan
alternative label: Nathan Ehrenfeld
related: Bratislava
related: Eisenstadt
related: Gniezno
related: Hildesheimer, Esriel
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Seminary

Eliasberg, Mordekhai
described at: Eliasberg Mordekhai
has abstract: (1817–1889), rabbi, public activist, and early leader of religious Zionism. Mordekhai Eliasberg studied in the Volozhin yeshiva and served as rabbi in Bauska, Latvia, from 1862 until his death. Fluent in German and well versed in contemporary literature, Eliasberg firmly believed that there was no contradiction between faith and the Haskalah (Enlightenment). Nonetheless, he expressed concern about what was at the time called “false enlightenment” (i.e., enlightenment that serves social purposes such as secularizing society), which he felt posed a great danger to faith. He also believed in the importance of improving the economic situation of Russian Jews.
title: Eliasberg, Mordekhai
alternative label: Mordekhai Eliasberg
related: Agriculture
related: Berlin, Naftali Tsevi Yehudah
related: Haskalah
related: Industry
related: Kalischer, Tsevi Hirsh
related: Kook, Avraham Yitsḥak
related: Land of Israel
related: Latvia
related: Mohilewer, Shemu’el
related: Pinsker, Simḥah and Lev
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Eli‘ezer ben Yitsḥak
described at: Eliezer ben Yitshak
has abstract: (fl. 16th century), itinerant Hebrew printer. Eli‘ezer ben Yitsḥak learned the craft of printing in Prague, and went from there to Lublin upon the request of the Shaḥor family, who had moved from Prague to Lublin and established the city’s first Hebrew printing house there in 1547. After Yitsḥak ben Ḥayim Shaḥor and his brother-in-law Yosef ben Yakar had worked for 10 years in the trade, they both died of the plague, and their orphaned sons were too young and inexperienced to take on the business. Eli‘ezer thus became their manager in 1557. In 1559 the surviving children, Ḥayim ben Yitsḥak Shaḥor and Ḥanah bat Yosef ben Yakar, received a privilege from King Sigismund II Augustus to print and trade Hebrew books. In addition, they received the sole right to import Hebrew books produced outside of Poland. To defend their right as importers, the privilege stated that anyone found importing Hebrew books from abroad would be fined 20 marks.
title: Eli‘ezer ben Yitsḥak
related: Land of Israel
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Printing and Publishing before 1800 (Printing and Publishing)
related: Sabbatianism

Emyot, Yisroel
described at: Emyot Yisroel
has abstract: (1909–1978), author, poet, and critic. Born in Ostrów Mazowiecka, Yisroel Emyot (originally Goldwasser; Emyot is a combination of the Polish names of his father’s initials: Meylekh Yanowski, “em” and “yot”) descended from two prominent Hasidic families. After his father’s immigration to the United States, Emyot was raised and educated in the home of his maternal grandparents; as an adolescent, he studied at a yeshiva in Warsaw. Emyot’s first poem—signed Y. Yanover—was published in 1926 in the periodical Inzer hofenung (Our Hope), edited by Itshe Meyer Vaysenberg. Emyot’s literary ability was also recognized by Nakhmen Mayzel, editor of Literarishe bleter (Literary Pages), which published his poems, as did other literary journals.
title: Emyot, Yisroel
alternative label: Yisroel Emyot
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Białystok
related: Birobidzhan
related: Birobidzhaner Shtern
related: Eynikayt
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Literarishe Bleter
related: Mayzel, Nakhmen
related: Moscow
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Shtern, Yisroel
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vaysenberg, Itshe Meyer
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Epstein, Zalman
described at: Epstein Zalman
has abstract: (1860–1936), essayist and Zionist activist. Zalman Epstein was born in Lubań, in the Minsk district of Russia. During his adolescence he studied at the Volozhin yeshiva. At age 16, he moved with his family to Odessa, where he acquired a secular education but was not admitted to the university. Though he enjoyed a very fruitful literary career, he drew his main source of income from his lifelong work as a bookkeeper and merchant.
title: Epstein, Zalman
alternative label: Zalman Epstein
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Boker Or, Ha-
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Feierberg, Mordekhai Ze’ev
related: Fichmann, Ya‘akov
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Hebrew (Language)
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Minsk
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Schulman, Kalman
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Shtetl
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Estate System
described at: Estate System
has abstract: Preindustrial European societies were typically divided into hereditary estates, consisting of social groups distinguished by occupation, legal status, and customs. Nobility, clergy, and peasantry are classic examples from the early modern period. Subgroups existed within these categories (including nobles related by blood to the ruling dynasty; monastic clergy; and peasants who worked on lands owned by the monarch) and there were additional estates outside them (town dwellers, merchants, serfs, and so on).
title: Estate System
narrower: Legacies of Estate-based Integration
narrower: The Reform Era
related: Guilds
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Warsaw

Ettinger Family
described at: Ettinger Family
has abstract: Prominent rabbinic family. The Ettinger family originated in the city of Öttingen, Bavaria. One branch was related by marriage to a number of other prominent families, including the Orensteins, Natansons, and Rapoports. Several members of the family distinguished themselves as rabbinic leaders in Poland and Galicia during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
title: Ettinger Family
alternative label: Ettinger family
alternative label: Mordekhai Ze’ev Ettinger
related: Bucovina
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Land of Israel
related: L’viv
related: Natanson Family
related: Natanson, Yosef Sha’ul
related: Orenstein Family
related: Pale of Settlement
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Przemyśl

Ezofowicz Family
described at: Ezofowicz Family
has abstract: Sixteenth-century Jewish financiers living in Poland. Three Ezofowicz (or Józefowicz) brothers—Jan Abraham (d. 1519), Michal (d. 1529?), and Ajzyk (Isaac; dates unknown)—were among a number of prominent Jews in medieval and early modern Poland who managed the finances of Polish monarchs.
title: Ezofowicz Family
alternative label: Ezofowicz
related: Brest
related: Conversion
related: Kiev
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Opatów
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: Vilnius

Făgăraş
described at: Fagaras
has abstract: Town in central Romania, in the Făgăraş Depression on the Olt River, and northwest of Braşov. The first documented reference to Făgăraş (Ger., Fogarasch; Hun., Fogaras) dates to 1291; in the second half of the seventeenth century it was the seat of the Transylvanian legislative assembly. At the end of the same century (1694–1700), the first factory in Transylvania was established near Făgăraş (the glassworks in Porumbacul de Sus), and was leased to the Jews Iacob Fincz, Abraham Veider, Abraham Naphtali, and Solomon.
title: Făgăraş
related: Braşov
related: Charity
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Jewish Congress
related: L’viv
related: Orthodoxy
related: Romania
related: Rónai, János
related: Sibiu
related: Transylvania
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Fahn, Re’uven
described at: Fahn Reuven
has abstract: (1878–1939), Hebrew scholar and writer. Born in eastern Galicia, Re’uven Fahn received a maskilic as well as a traditional education, which motivated him to embark on a lifelong quest to combine nationalism with a religious spirit. He married at 19 and moved to the town of Halicz, in the Stanislau district, where he lived until World War I. There his acquaintance with the Karaite community prompted him to research and compile facts, stories, and details about their folklore.
title: Fahn, Re’uven
alternative label: Re’uven Fahn
related: Bader, Gershom
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Galicia
related: Haskalah
related: Ivano-Frankivs’k
related: Karaites
related: L’viv
related: Mizraḥi
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Ukraine
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Farbstein, Yehoshu‘a Heshel
described at: Farbstein Yehoshua Heshel
has abstract: (1870–1948), Zionist leader. Born in Warsaw, Yehoshu‘a Heshel Farbstein was an active member of the Ḥibat Tsiyon movement and a delegate to the First World Zionist Congress in 1897. Earlier, Farbstein had been involved in ill-fated attempts to gain a commitment from Theodor Herzl that Zionism would not be contrary to Jewish religious law. After the founding of Mizraḥi in 1902, Farbstein participated in its activities and struggled against members of the organization who supported withdrawal from the Zionist Federation.
title: Farbstein, Yehoshu‘a Heshel
alternative label: Yehoshu‘a Heshel Farbstein
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Folkists
related: Galicia
related: Grünbaum, Yitsḥak
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Land of Israel
related: Lewite, Leon
related: Mizraḥi
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Feder, Richard
described at: Feder Richard
has abstract: (1875–1970), Czech rabbi. Richard Feder was born in Václavice (near Benešov, south of Prague). He studied philosophy in Vienna and also attended the rabbinical seminary in that city; he then served as a rabbi in Kojetín, Louny, and Roudnice nad Labem. From 1917 until 1942, Feder held a rabbinic position in Kolín. Each of these communities was located in the Czech regions of Bohemia and Moravia; sermons were delivered in Czech before World War I.
title: Feder, Richard
alternative label: Richard Feder
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brno
related: Českožidovské Listy
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kolín
related: Prague
related: Sicher, Gustav
related: Silesia
related: Terezín
related: Židovské Zprávy

Federation of Jewish Communities and Organizations of the USSR
described at: Federation of Jewish Communities and Organizations of the USSR
has abstract: Known as the Va‘ad (council) of the USSR, the Federation of Jewish Communities and Organizations was founded in late 1989 with the development of an overt Jewish movement under perestroika and glasnost. Unlike the majority of national movements or “fronts” that emerged rapidly between 1988 and 1991, the Jewish movement did not link its aspirations for a national revival with any particular territory in the USSR. It was characterized by two conflicting approaches. One argued that the struggle for aliyah (emigration to Israel) should be its exclusive focus; the other, while insisting on the right to aliyah, also sought a Jewish national and cultural revival in the USSR. After most refuseniks were allowed to depart and mass emigration began, the second position predominated. “Informal” (i.e., unregistered) Jewish clubs and cultural societies arose, like similar groups among other nationalities. By the end of 1989, the number of Jewish organizations exceeded 200. Among these were Evreiskaia Kul’turnaia Assotsiatsiia (Jewish Cultural Association), established in 1988; Soiuz Prepodavatelei Ivrita/Igud Morim (Association of Hebrew Teachers); Evreiskoe Istoricheskoe Obshchestvo (Jewish Historical Society); Obshchestvo Druzhby i Kul’turnykh Sviazei c Izrailem (Association for Friendship and Cultural Ties with Israel); and Irgun Tsiyoni (Zionist Organization), founded in August 1989.
title: Federation of Jewish Communities and Organizations of the USSR
alternative label: Federation of Jewish Organizations and Communities of the USSR
related: Congress of Jewish Religious Communities and Organizations in Russia
related: Latvia
related: Lithuania
related: Moscow
related: Refuseniks
related: Riga
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Federation of Jewish Communities in Russia
described at: Federation of Jewish Communities in Russia
has abstract: (Federatsiia Evreiskikh Obshchin Rossii; FEOR), the umbrella organization of various associations established by the Ḥabad (Lubavitch) movement in 1998–1999. Officially, these associations and their unifying body surfaced later than the other large umbrella organizations—the Federation of Jewish Communities and Organizations of the USSR (Va‘ad), the Russian Jewish Congress (REK), and the Congress of Jewish Religious Communities and Organizations in Russia (KEROOR). In fact, the Ḥabad associations were preceded by a lengthy period during which the movement developed its organizations first in Mikhail Gorbachev’s Soviet Union and then in the Soviet successor states (FSU).
title: Federation of Jewish Communities in Russia
alternative label: Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia
related: Congress of Jewish Religious Communities and Organizations in Russia
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Federation of Jewish Communities and Organizations of the USSR
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Jewish Congress
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Fejér, Lipót
described at: Fejer Lipot
has abstract: (1880–1959), mathematician. Lipót Fejér was born in Pécs, Hungary. Though he had difficulty with mathematics in elementary school, Fejér excelled at this subject in high school. In particular, he mastered problems presented in the monthly journal Középiskolai Matematikai Lapok (Mathematical Journal for Secondary Schools), established in 1893 by Dániel Arany to advance the teaching of mathematics in general and to nurture talented high school students. This journal, thought to be the first of its kind in the world, had a major impact on Hungary’s contributions to mathematics.
title: Fejér, Lipót
alternative label: Lipót Fejér
related: Budapest
related: Cluj
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Romania
related: Transylvania

Finkelshteyn, Leo
described at: Finkelshteyn Leo
has abstract: (1895–1950), journalist, publicist, and Yiddish activist involved in socialism. Leo Finkelshteyn (Finkelstein) was born in Radom, where he received a general education and later studied philosophy at Jagiellonian University in Kraków. In 1923, he moved to Warsaw and became a member of the Folkist Party, serving as its representative on the executive committee of the Warsaw Jewish community from 1927 to 1937.
title: Finkelshteyn, Leo
alternative label: Leo Finkelshteyn
related: Łódź
related: Association of Jewish Writers and Journalists in Warsaw
related: Białystok
related: Bund
related: Folkists
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Kultur-lige
related: Literarishe Bleter
related: Moscow
related: Nasz Przegląd
related: Radom
related: TSYSHO
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zeitlin Family

Fleischmann, Karel
described at: Fleischmann Karel
has abstract: (1897–1944), physician, graphic artist, and writer. Karel Fleischmann was born in Klatovy, Bohemia, and he finished secondary school in České Budějovice, a southern Bohemian town with a small Jewish population, before studying at the faculty of medicine in Prague. In 1925, Fleischmann returned to České Budějovice, where he practiced dermatology and pursued literary and artistic interests. His father, a graphic artist and calligrapher, had long encouraged his son’s talents.
title: Fleischmann, Karel
alternative label: Karel Fleischmann
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Prague
related: Terezín

Frydman, Aleksander Zysha
described at: Frydman Aleksander Zysha
has abstract: (1897–1943), activist, publicist, and official of Agudas Yisroel in Poland. Born in Sochaczew to a Hasidic family, Frydman received a traditional education. In 1914, his family fled to Warsaw. It was there that the young Frydman came under the influence of Emanuel Carlebach, a representative of Frankfurt Orthodoxy who was instrumental in the founding of the Polish branch of Agudas Yisroel in 1916.
title: Frydman, Aleksander Zysha
alternative label: Aleksander Zysha Frydman
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Armed Resistance
related: Czerniaków, Adam
related: Heder
related: Orthodoxy
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Schiper, Ignacy
related: Tseirey Agudas Yisroel
related: Warsaw

Fuchs, Alfred
described at: Fuchs Alfred
has abstract: (1892–1941), journalist, essayist, and translator. Alfred Fuchs first was a Zionist, then a member of the Czech Jewish academic community, and later an active Roman Catholic. In secondary school, he took a keen interest in Jewish mysticism and wanted to become a rabbi. At Prague University he studied philosophy, law, and theology, and earned his doctorate in 1915. He was also an active member of Spolek Českých Akademiků Židů (Association of Czech Academic Jews).
title: Fuchs, Alfred
alternative label: Alfred Fuchs
related: Assimilation
related: Prague
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Fuchs, Rudolf
described at: Fuchs Rudolf
has abstract: (1890–1942), poet, playwright, essayist, translator, and promoter of Czech culture. After graduating from secondary school, Rudolf Fuchs completed a series of courses at the German Commercial Academy in Prague. From 1909 to 1911, he worked as a clerk in an export firm first in Berlin and then in Prague. He was conscripted in 1917; upon returning from the front, he continued in his job until his emigration to Britain in 1939.
title: Fuchs, Rudolf
alternative label: Rudolf Fuchs
related: Prague
related: Werfel, Franz

Galitsianer
described at: Galitsianer
has abstract: Yiddish term for a Jew who lived in Galicia, a territory that existed from 1772 to 1918, as one of the crown lands of the Austrian Empire. In addition to the adjective that defines geographical origin, Galitsianer became a cultural identifier bearing, for the most part, negative connotations. Among the stereotypes attributed to the Galitsianer were the following: a troublemaker, a shrewd operator, a money grubber, a religious fanatic, a spineless compromiser, a speaker of popular, vulgar Yiddish, and someone ashamed of his or her origins who liked to pose as an Austrian. Jokes about Galitsianer men and women became very popular; some of these continue to exist despite the fact that Galicia itself disappeared long ago.
title: Galitsianer
alternative label: Galitsianers
related: Agnon, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Autobiography and Memoir
related: Bader, Gershom
related: Brody
related: Buchach
related: Dress
related: Drogobych
related: Franzos, Karl Emil
related: Galicia
related: Gottlieb, Maurycy
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kaufmann, Izidor
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Roth, Joseph
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: YIVO

Geese
described at: Geese
has abstract: Every part of the goose was used by East European Jews, for whom rendered goose fat was a staple and feathers an essential component of bedding. In some regions, Jewish women were responsible for most aspects of the raising, fattening, and selling of geese; women also rendered and sold fat and traded in goose feathers.
title: Geese
alternative label: geese
related: Belarus
related: Courland
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lithuania
related: Opatów
related: Passover
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Ukraine
related: Weddings

Gershenzon, Mikhail Osipovich
described at: Gershenzon Mikhail Osipovich
has abstract: (1869–1925), historian, literary critic, and anti-Zionist. Born in 1869 in Kishinev, Gershenzon attended a local gymnasium. Unable to gain entrance into a Russian university where there were quotas for Jews, he was sent to study engineering in Berlin. There he audited courses on history, especially those taught by Theodore Mommsen and Heinrich von Treitschke. Returning home, he gained entrance to Moscow University, ironically arriving at the same time that thousands of Jews were forced to evacuate the city.
title: Gershenzon, Mikhail Osipovich
alternative label: Mikhail Gershenzon
related: Kishinev
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Ghetto Police (Ghettos)
described at: Ghetto Police
has abstract: Officially called the Jewish Organization for the Maintenance of Public Order (Ger., Jüdischer Ordungsdienst; Pol., Żydowska Służba Porządkowa), Jewish police units were established under Nazi occupation in most East European ghettos. The establishment of a police force usually was connected with the creation of the ghettos, which excluded the Jewish population from general police jurisdiction and thus created a need for an alternative system of ensuring that the Jewish population complied with German occupiers’ orders. The absence of a general German order regarding the establishment of the Jewish police indicates that in all probability, it was the various local occupying forces—and not the Central Reich Government—that took the initiative to set up this force. Indeed, the composition of the Jewish police in different ghettos, their jurisdictional powers, and their status within the Jewish community varied from ghetto to ghetto, according to local conditions. A small ghetto could muster only a handful of individuals to join its police force, whereas the Warsaw ghetto police comprised more than 2,000 members.
title: Ghetto Police (Ghettos)
alternative label: ghetto police
alternative label: police
related: Armed Resistance
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Honor Courts
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Killing Centers
related: Labor Camps
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw

Ginzburg, Aleksandr Il’ich
described at: Ginzburg Aleksandr Ilich
has abstract: (Sometimes spelled Gintsburg; 1907–1972), Soviet cinematographer and cinema director. Born into a traditional Jewish family, Aleksandr Ginzburg took up photography, and then cinematography, at an early age. After moving to Leningrad, he began at the age of 18 to film popular science movies. In 1927 he graduated from the Camera Department of the Leningrad Technical School of Cinematography, becoming a cameraman at the Sovkino (later, Lenfil’m) Movie Studio. In 1934 he received a bachelor’s degree from the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute.
title: Ginzburg, Aleksandr Il’ich
alternative label: Aleksandr Ginzburg
related: Belarus
related: Cinema
related: Moscow
related: Photography
related: Saint Petersburg

Goldbaum, Meshulam Zalman
described at: Goldbaum Meshulam Zalman
has abstract: (1836–1915), Hebrew poet and playwright. Born in Lwów, Meshulam Goldbaum was inspired to write poetry by the revolutions of 1848 (his initial pieces have not survived). His earliest remaining poem is “Be-hakifi pe’ot roshi” (When My Sidelocks Surround Me), written when he was 15; the work protests against external marks that set Jews apart from gentiles.
title: Goldbaum, Meshulam Zalman
alternative label: Meshulam Zalman Goldbaum
related: Haskalah
related: Iaşi
related: Kohen-Tsedek, Yosef
related: L’viv
related: Prague
related: Romania

Gozhansky, Shmul
described at: Gozhansky Shmul
has abstract: (1867–1943?), political leader and Bundist theorist. Shmul Gozhansky (sometimes spelled Gozshansky; also known by his pseudonyms Lonu or Der Lerer [the teacher]) was born in Grodno to a middle-class family and graduated from the Vilna Teachers’ Institute in 1888. He then taught in Kovno, Białystok, and Vilna. Gozhansky participated in revolutionary activities as a young man and in 1889 helped to organize the tailors’ strike in Vilna. In the 1890s, he was a Russified intellectual who led the revolutionary circles of Jewish workers that gave rise to the Jewish Labor Bund.
title: Gozhansky, Shmul
alternative label: Shmul Gozhansky
related: Białystok
related: Bund
related: Communist Party of the Soviet Union
related: Kaunas
related: Kremer, Arkadii
related: Mill, John
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius

Halevy, Meyer Abraham
described at: Halevy Meyer Abraham
has abstract: (1900–1972), rabbi, historian, and philosopher. Meyer Abraham Halevy was born in Piatra Neamț, Romania, into a religious family; his father was a rabbi and his mother also came from a rabbinic family. After completing his heder education, Halevy studied at the Beit Israel yeshiva in Buhuşi.
title: Halevy, Meyer Abraham
alternative label: Meyer Abraham Halevy
related: Bucharest
related: Buhuşi
related: Curierul Israelit
related: Egalitatea
related: Heder
related: Iaşi
related: Piatra Neamţ
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Harkavy, Avraham
described at: Harkavy Avraham
has abstract: (1835–1919), historian, public activist, and librarian. Avraham (Albert Iakovlevich) Harkavy was born into a wealthy and prominent family in Novogrudok, Minsk guberniia, where he received a typical religious education. As an adolescent he studied briefly at the Volozhin yeshiva before transferring in 1858 to the state-sponsored Vilna Rabbinical Seminary. In 1863, he enrolled at Saint Petersburg University, where he received a master’s degree in oriental studies in 1868. He then went to Berlin and Paris to study Egyptology and Assyriology. He returned to Saint Petersburg and was awarded a doctorate in 1872. After teaching briefly at the university, Harkavy was appointed to a position at the Russian Imperial Public Library and became the librarian of the Oriental and Semitic Department in 1877.
title: Harkavy, Avraham
alternative label: Avraham Harkavy
alternative label: Harkavy
related: Crimea
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Firkovich, Avraam Samuilovich
related: Karaites
related: Karmel, Ha-
related: Lithuania
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Minsk
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Vilnius
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: Voskhod

Hartglas, Apolinary
described at: Hartglas Apolinary
has abstract: (1883–1953), Zionist, attorney, and Polish parliament deputy. Born in Biała Podlaska, Apolinary Hartglas came from an assimilated Jewish family. From 1892 to 1900, he attended a Russian high school and subsequently studied law at the Russian University in Warsaw, graduating in 1904. While a student he joined the rapidly growing Zionist movement in the Polish Kingdom, editing, with Yitsḥak Grünbaum, the first Zionist journals there: Głos Żydowski (Jewish Voice) and Życie Żydowskie (Jewish Life).
title: Hartglas, Apolinary
alternative label: Apolinary Hartglas
related: Grünbaum, Yitsḥak
related: Haynt
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Dance (Hasidism)
described at: Dance
has abstract: From the beginning of Hasidism, teachers associated with the movement considered dance, along with music, an avenue of worship. In Hasidic thought and literature, dancing is both an expression and a stimulator of joy, and as such has a therapeutic effect. It purifies the soul and produces spiritual uplift, unites the community, and enhances social relationships; the tsadik’s dance may even encourage repentance.
title: Dance (Hasidism)
alternative label: Hasidic dance
alternative label: Hasidism: Dance
related: Bratslav Hasidism
related: About this Article (Dance)
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: Elimelekh of Lizhensk
related: Kosov-Vizhnits Hasidic Dynasty
related: Lakhovits-Kobrin-Slonim Hasidic Dynasty
related: Levi Yitsḥak of Barditshev
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Mosheh Leib of Sasov
related: About this Article (Music)
related: Naḥman of Bratslav
related: Roth, Aharon
related: Sabbath
related: Sandz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Weddings
related: Ya‘akov Yosef of Polnoye

Hayoets
described at: Hayoets
has abstract: Yiddish social and political newspaper published in Romania from 12 June 1874 until 5 January 1913. In 1882, its editors concluded an agreement with the Bucharest representatives of the Central Committee for the Colonization of the Land of Israel; in effect, Hayoets (The Counselor) became an organ of the emerging Zionist movement and the chronicler of Romanian Jewish immigration to Palestine.
title: Hayoets
related: Assimilation
related: Bucharest
related: Haskalah
related: Land of Israel
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: Romania
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Hirschhorn, Samuel
described at: Hirschhorn Samuel
has abstract: (1876–1942), journalist, poet, translator, and political leader. Born into an affluent family in Slonim, Grodno province, Samuel (Shmuel) Hirschhorn moved to Warsaw when he was 13, where he completed commercial studies in addition to receiving a religious education. He began a career in journalism with the progressive Polish press, to which he contributed articles and poems, both original and translated from French and Russian.
title: Hirschhorn, Samuel
alternative label: Samuel Hirschhorn
related: Association of Jewish Writers and Journalists in Warsaw
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Moment, Der
related: Moriah
related: Nasz Przegląd
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Hirszowicz, Abraham
described at: Hirszowicz Abraham
has abstract: (fl. 18th century), factor of the Polish king Stanisław August Poniatowski (1732–1798), and author of a project aimed at reforming Jewish lifestyles. He was probably the same person as Abraham Hirszewicz, a goldsmith and factor who was granted the status of servitor regis by Poniatowski on 19 January 1775.
title: Hirszowicz, Abraham
alternative label: Abraham Hirszowicz
related: Crafts
related: Marriage
related: Money
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Shtadlan
related: Sumptuary Legislation
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw

Horontshik, Shimen
described at: Horontshik Shimen
has abstract: (1889–1939), Yiddish author and novelist. Shimen Horontshik (Pol., Szymon Horonczyk) was born in Wieluń, in the Kalisz district of Poland. When Horontshik was 8 years old, his father died, and until he was 11, he lived with his grandfather, a Kotsk Hasid. Following the death of his grandfather, he returned to his mother’s home and received a traditional Jewish education. At 17, he worked as a production laborer at a lacework factory in Kalisz, where he lived until the town was captured by Germany in early August 1914. Horontshik then escaped to Łódź.
title: Horontshik, Shimen
alternative label: Shimen Horontshik
related: Łódź
related: Kalisz
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Vaysenberg, Itshe Meyer
related: Vilnius
related: Włocławek
related: Warsaw

Hostovský, Egon
described at: Hostovsky Egon
has abstract: (1908–1973), novelist. The youngest of eight children, Egon Hostovský was born in Hronov, a northeast Bohemian town of about 30,000 people, into a family that owned a small factory. He left university in 1930 to work as a journalist and editor at various publishing houses; he was also one of the editors of the Kalendář českožidovský (Czech Jewish Almanac) from 1931 to 1937. By his mid-twenties, he had already established himself as a major writer, and his Žhář (The Arsonist) won the state prize for literature in 1935.
title: Hostovský, Egon
alternative label: Egon Hostovský
related: Kohn, Jindřich
related: Memory
related: Prague

Iagoda, Genrikh Grigor’evich
described at: Iagoda Genrikh Grigorevich
has abstract: (1891–1938), Soviet official. Genrikh Grigor’evich Iagoda (first known as Genokh Gershevich; last name also rendered Yagoda), was born in Iaroslavl’ province to the family of a Jewish artisan who made his living engraving and repairing jewels and watches. In his hometown, Iagoda completed only the four-grade elementary educational program, but later passed the examination of the gymnasium in Nizhnii Novgorod, the city in which in 1904 and 1905 he worked as a typesetter at an underground printing house.
title: Iagoda, Genrikh Grigor’evich
alternative label: Genrikh Iagoda
related: Communist Party of the Soviet Union
related: Kamenev, Iurii
related: Moscow
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Sverdlov, Iakov Mikhailovich
related: Trotsky, Leon
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zinov’ev, Grigorii Evseevich
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Iakir, Iona Emmanuilovich
described at: Iakir Iona Emmanuilovich
has abstract: (1896–1937), military figure. Iona Iakir (also rendered Yona Yakir) was born in Kishinev to the family of a pharmacist. In 1913, he graduated from a Kishinev professional school and continued his studies at the University of Basel in Switzerland. During World War I, he returned to Russia and studied at the Kharkov Institute of Technology. In 1915, he was sent as a conscript to Odessa, where he worked as a lathe operator in a military factory.
title: Iakir, Iona Emmanuilovich
alternative label: Iakir
alternative label: Iona Iakir
related: Bessarabia
related: Crimea
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: Kishinev
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Ukraine

Iampol’skii, Boris Samoilovich
described at: Iampolskii Boris Samoilovich
has abstract: (1912–1972), Russian-language writer. Boris Iampol’skii was born and raised on the Jewish outskirts of the provincial Ukrainian town of Belaia Tserkov’, where his father worked at a mill and his mother owned a small dry goods store. Although Iampol’skii left home in 1927, the impressions of his Jewish childhood informed his work for the rest of his life.
title: Iampol’skii, Boris Samoilovich
alternative label: Boris Iampol’skii
related: Asch, Sholem
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Grossman, Vasilii Semenovich
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kiev
related: Levin, Doyvber
related: Magic
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtetl
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Ibrāhīm ibn Ya‘qūb
described at: Ibrahim ibn Yaqub
has abstract: Tenth-century traveler who journeyed from Tortosa (Spain) through Central and Eastern Europe. Some of the written impressions of Ibrāhīm ibn Ya‘qūb (more fully, Ibrāhīm ibn Ya‘qūb al-Isrā’ilī al-Turtushi) survive through later Arabic sources. The original work was probably a report drafted for the Umayyad caliph of Spain, al-Ḥakam II (r. 961–976), following a visit to Germany as head of a delegation to Emperor Otto I. The depth of knowledge and proficiency that ibn Ya‘qūb displays in his discussions of medical matters suggest that he may have been a physician.
title: Ibrāhīm ibn Ya‘qūb
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Prague

Igra, Meshulam ben Shimshon
described at: Igra Meshulam ben Shimshon
has abstract: (1742–1801), rabbi and halakhist. Born into a distinguished rabbinic family from Buczacz (Galicia), by age nine Meshulam ben Shimshon Igra had already presented a complex halakhic discourse in the study hall of the famous community of Brody. By age 17 he was appointed rabbi of Tysmenitsa (now Ukr., Tysmenytsya). There he attracted as students such future rabbinical leaders as Mordekhai Banet of Nikolsburg, Ya‘akov of Lissa, and Mosheh Münz of Óbuda.
title: Igra, Meshulam ben Shimshon
alternative label: Meshulam Igra
related: Banet, Mordekhai ben Avraham
related: Bratislava
related: Brody
related: Buchach
related: Chorin, Aharon
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Münz, Mosheh
related: Sofer, Mosheh

Il’f, Il’ia Arnol’dovich
described at: Ilf Ilia Arnoldovich
has abstract: (1897–1937), Russian writer. With Evgenii Petrov, Il’ia Il’f (originally surnamed Fainzil’berg) wrote some of Soviet Russia’s most exuberant satires. Their two novels, Dvenadtsat’ stul’ev (The Twelve Chairs; 1928) and Zolotoi telenok (The Little Golden Calf; 1931), slipped past censorship to become the texts through which generations of knowing readers mocked Soviet reality. Innocent enough to be reading material for adolescents, the novels were actually cynical works that adults memorized in part or in full. Quotations from the books, as comments on post-Soviet society, continue to turn up in the Russian-language press on three continents.
title: Il’f, Il’ia Arnol’dovich
alternative label: Il’ia Il’f
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Iser, Iosif
described at: Iser Iosif
has abstract: (1881–1958), painter and graphic artist. Born in Bucharest, Iosif Iser moved with his family to Ploieşti, where he completed his secondary education and showed early artistic promise. Beginning in 1899, he studied painting at the Royal Academy of Arts in Munich, and had his first personal show upon returning to Ploieşti in 1904. He soon moved to Bucharest, where he worked as a cartoonist and caricaturist at the editorial office of the Adevărul newspaper. In 1905, he was part of the Tinerimea Artistică (Young Artists) group exhibit, and in 1906 had his first show in Bucharest.
title: Iser, Iosif
alternative label: Iosif Iser
related: Bucharest
related: Ploieşti
related: Romania

Jakubowicz, Yehudis Halevi
described at: Jakubowicz Yehudis Halevi
has abstract: (1749–1829), German–Polish banker and merchant. Born to a wealthy family in Frankfurt an-der-Oder, Yehudis ha-Levi Jakubowicz had an excellent education. At age 30, she became the third wife of Shmul Zbytkower, a successful army provisioner and merchant in Warsaw. She was an active partner in her husband’s business and, based on her contacts, helped expand its scope. After his death in 1801, she led the company alone, continuing to provide supplies to the Prussian, French, and Russian armies. She achieved a leading position among the purveyors to the court of the Duchy of Warsaw, second only to Berek Shmuel Sonnenberg (Bergson), her stepson and competitor. Her company also acted as a purveyor to the Prussian court. Having received unrestricted rights of residence, trade, and manufacturing from the Prussian king in 1798, Jakubowicz saw this privilege recognized by the Kingdom of Poland in 1815, granting her the right to acquire real estate. Moreover, the privilege was heritable by all her descendants.
title: Jakubowicz, Yehudis Halevi
alternative label: Jakubowicz
alternative label: Yehudis Halevi Jakubowicz
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Trade
related: Warsaw
related: Zbytkower, Shmul

Jedwabne
described at: Jedwabne
has abstract: (Yedvabneh) is situated in the Mazowsze region of Poland, 20 kilometers northeast of Łomża and 45 kilometers west of Tykocin (Tiktin). Jews first came to Jedwabne from Tykocin and were initially subject to that town’s Jewish communal authority. In 1770, when the wooden synagogue of Jedwabne was built, 387 Jews out of a total population of 450 lived in the community, a place known for its shoemakers.
title: Jedwabne
related: Łomża
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Tykocin
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Kahana, Yehudah
described at: Kahana Yehudah
has abstract: (ca. 1740–1819), rabbi and author. Born in Kalisz (in what was to become Galicia), Yehudah Kahana was the eldest of four sons of Yosef ha-Kohen, who traced his lineage to the seventeenth-century rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller (hence, some members of the family were called Kahana-Heller). Kahana at first shunned the rabbinate, leasing a village inn near Kalisz. Unsuccessful as an innkeeper, he became a private tutor to advanced students of wealthy families in Lwów, where he befriended a fellow tutor, Yosef Te’omim, later the rabbi of Frankfurt an der Oder and the author of the Peri megadim.
title: Kahana, Yehudah
alternative label: Yehudah Kahana
related: Bratislava
related: Frankism
related: Galicia
related: Heller, Yom Tov Lipmann
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kalisz
related: L’viv
related: Mukacheve
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Sabbatianism
related: Satmar Hasidic Dynasty
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Sighet Marmaţiei
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: Te’omim Family

Kantorovich, Leonid Vital’evich
described at: Kantorovich Leonid Vitalevich
has abstract: (1912–1986), Soviet mathematician and economist, Nobel Prize laureate. Born into a family of physicians in Saint Petersburg, Kantorovich went right from his nine-year primary school to the Department of Physics and Mathematics of Leningrad State University. Upon graduation, he was asked to stay on in graduate school, which he completed in two years while also teaching at the Institute of Construction. In 1932 he became professor and department head at the Institute of Industrial Transport. That same year he was named assistant professor at Leningrad State University, becoming full professor in 1934.
title: Kantorovich, Leonid Vital’evich
alternative label: Leonid Kantorovich
related: Moscow
related: Saint Petersburg

Kaplan, Fannie Efimovna
described at: Kaplan Fannie Efimovna
has abstract: (1890–1918), failed assassin of Vladimir Lenin. On 30 August 1918, Fannie Kaplan was arrested for having shot and wounded Vladimir Lenin in Moscow. At 4:00 A.M. on 4 September, she was executed in a Kremlin parking lot as truck engines drowned out the pistol shots. A famed Bolshevik poet, Demian Bedny, watched the execution “for revolutionary inspiration.” The order was given that Fannie Kaplan’s remains be destroyed without a trace. In reprisal for the crime—and for the assassination of the head of the Petrograd secret police on the same day as the Lenin shooting—thousands fell victim to the “Red Terror” unleashed on 5 September 1918. The shooting also sparked the beginning of the cult of Lenin. Fannie Kaplan is known only for this one act of attempted assassination and for its fateful aftermath.
title: Kaplan, Fannie Efimovna
alternative label: Fannie Kaplan
related: Kiev
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Ukraine

Kayserling, Meir
described at: Kayserling Meir
has abstract: (1829–1905), rabbi and historian. Meir Kayserling was born in Hannover, Germany, where he attended high school at Meyer Michel David’s Freischule between 1838 and 1844. He then studied at a yeshiva in Halberstadt and at the Talmudic academy of Samson Raphael Hirsch in Nikolsburg. In 1849, he went to study with Shelomoh Yehudah Rapoport in Prague and later with Seligmann Baer Bamberger in Würzburg.
title: Kayserling, Meir
alternative label: Meir Kayserling
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kohn, Sámuel
related: Prague
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Sephardim
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Kazakevich, Emmanuil Genrikhovich
described at: Kazakevich Emmanuil Genrikhovich
has abstract: (1913–1962), Yiddish and Russian writer. Emmanuil Kazakevich was born in the Ukrainian town of Kremenchug. His father, Henekh Kazakevich (1883–1935), was a Jewish political activist and journalist who joined the Bolsheviks and edited Communist Yiddish periodicals, notably the Kharkov literary journal Di royte velt (The Red World). In Kharkov, Emmanuil studied machine building, and was a member of the Yiddish literary group at the Communist newspaper Yunge gvardye (Young Guard), which published his early poems. From 1931 to 1937, Kazakevich lived in Birobidzhan, where his father edited the local Yiddish newspaper, Birobidzhaner shtern (Birobidzhan Star).
title: Kazakevich, Emmanuil Genrikhovich
alternative label: Emmanuil Kazakevich
related: Berdychiv
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Birobidzhan
related: Birobidzhaner Shtern
related: Kiev
related: Martov, L.
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vergelis, Arn
related: Warsaw
related: Zinov’ev, Grigorii Evseevich

Kisch, Alexander
described at: Kisch Alexander
has abstract: (1848–1917), rabbi, educator, and publicist. Alexander Kisch came from an established family in Prague, where his father, Joseph Kisch, was director of the first modern private school in the city’s Jewish quarter. Beginning in 1863, Kisch studied first at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau and later at the local university there. In 1871, he received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Tübingen. He then lived in Paris, where he attended lectures at the Séminaire Israélite while working as a private tutor to the children of Russian financier and Jewish philanthropist Baron Horace Gintsburg (Günzburg).
title: Kisch, Alexander
alternative label: Alexander Kisch
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brod, Max
related: Gintsburg Family
related: Hilsner Affair
related: Liturgy
related: Maisel, Mordecai
related: Mladá Boleslav
related: Prague
related: Seminary
related: Werfel, Franz
related: Wrocław

Klaczko, Julian
described at: Klaczko Julian
has abstract: (1825–1906), political activist and journalist. Julian Klaczko was born to a wealthy merchant family in Vilna. Influenced by his father’s Haskalah ideology, he was educated in both Hebrew and Polish, and was tutored by Shemu’el Yosef Fuenn, among others. Klaczko published his first poems when he was 13, initially in Polish in the collection Pierwsza ofiara (The First Sacrifice; 1838) and then in Hebrew in the volume Dudaim (1842). Other texts in Hebrew such as the novel The Fisherman remained unpublished. Those works were strongly influenced by the poetry of Adam Mickiewicz.
title: Klaczko, Julian
alternative label: Julian (Yehuda) Klaczko
alternative label: Julian Klaczko
related: Conversion
related: Fuenn, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Haskalah
related: Kaliningrad
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Vilnius

Kóbor, Tamás
described at: Kobor Tamas
has abstract: (1867–1942), writer and journalist. Tamás Kóbor was born in Pozsony (Pressburg; today Bratislava) as Adolf Bermann. His family moved to Budapest when he was three years old. The name Tamás Kóbor, which he adopted as a young artist, is a Hungarian version (translated by János Arany) of Tam o’ Shanter, Robert Burns’s famous character. Kóbor studied law and started his literary career at the journal A Hét, whose editor in chief was his brother-in-law, the poet József Kiss. Kóbor was a principal contributor to numerous other journals and newspapers, including Magyar Hírlap, Pesti Napló, Pesti Hírlap, and Az Újság. His most significant works were short stories and novels.
title: Kóbor, Tamás
alternative label: Tamás Kobor
alternative label: Tamás Kóbor
related: Bratislava
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kiss, József

Kon, Feliks
described at: Kon Feliks
has abstract: (1864–1941), revolutionary politician in Poland and the Soviet Union. Feliks Kon (known by many pseudonyms, including Bolesław Janowski, Feliks Bolesławski, and F. C. Stożyński) was born in Warsaw into a wealthy merchant family with strong Polish patriotic traditions. Kon became involved with the socialist movement while still in high school. In 1882, he joined the group Proletariat, the first major socialist movement in the Kingdom of Poland, which called for a struggle of the united working classes against the ruling order and the bourgeoisie in the tsarist empire.
title: Kon, Feliks
alternative label: Feliks Kon
related: Białystok
related: Khar’kiv
related: Lithuania
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw

Kossovskii, Vladimir
described at: Kossovskii Vladimir
has abstract: (1867–1941), Bundist leader. Vladimir Kossovskii (pseudonym of Nokhem Mendl Levinson) was born in Dvinsk (now Daugavpils, Latvia) and attended high school in Kovno (Kaunas). As a result of his revolutionary activities, he was expelled in 1885 shortly before he was expected to graduate. In 1894, he moved to Vilna and became involved in the social democratic (Marxist) revolutionary circles of Jewish workers. A major advocate of the idea that Jewish revolutionary circles should be united under one party, Kossovskii was instrumental in creating the Jewish Labor Bund.
title: Kossovskii, Vladimir
alternative label: Vladimir Kossovskii
related: Assimilation
related: Bund
related: Daugavpils
related: Kaunas
related: Latvia
related: Medem, Vladimir Davidovich
related: Minsk
related: Pinsk
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Krein, Mark Grigorievich
described at: Krein Mark Grigorievich
has abstract: (1907–1989), Soviet mathematician. The son of a Kievan lumber merchant, Mark Krein showed an early talent for mathematics, attending research seminars at age 14. While he never obtained an undergraduate degree, he was accepted for doctoral studies at Odessa University in 1926, completing them in 1929. He became the author of more than 300 papers and monographs that opened up new areas of mathematics and greatly enriched the more traditional ones. Krein’s work was characterized by a profound intrinsic unity and a close interlacing of general abstract and geometric ideas with concrete and analytical results and applications.
title: Krein, Mark Grigorievich
alternative label: Mark Krein
related: Kiev
related: Odessa
related: Ukraine

Larin, Iurii Aleksandrovich
described at: Larin Iurii Aleksandrovich
has abstract: (1882–1932), Soviet economist, political figure, and publicist. Iurii Larin was born in Simferopol’ as Mikhail Aleksandrovich Luria. His father, Shneur (Shelomoh) Zalman Luria, was an engineer, Hebrew author, Zionist, and, according to some sources, a kazennyi ravvin, or “crown rabbi.”
title: Larin, Iurii Aleksandrovich
alternative label: Iurii Larin
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Birobidzhan
related: Brest
related: Crimea
related: Crown Rabbi
related: Evsektsiia
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Society for the Settlement of Jewish Toilers on the Land
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Lavi, Theodor
described at: Lavi Theodor
has abstract: (1905–1983), educator, journalist, Zionist leader, and historian. Theodor Lavi (originally Theodor Loewenstein) was born in Turnu-Severin, Romania, and attended schools in his native town. He studied educational psychology at the University of Bucharest, and in 1935 defended his Ph.D. with a thesis influenced by Sigmund Freud’s theories. Lavi then served as the principal of the Israelite-Romanian school of Ploieşti.
title: Lavi, Theodor
alternative label: Theodor Lavi
alternative label: Theodor Loewenstein (Lavi)
related: Bucharest
related: Ploieşti
related: Romania
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Lelov Hasidic Dynasty
described at: Lelov Hasidic Dynasty
has abstract: Line of important second-tier rabbinic leaders originating in Central Poland. Its folksy progenitor, David Biderman of Lelov (Pol., Lelów; 1746–1814), was a highly effective recruiter of scions of prestigious rabbinic families. David himself came from a humble background and was famous for his compassion for transgressors and his love for children and animals. A disciple of Elimelekh of Lizhensk (Leżajsk) and then of Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz (the “Seer of Lublin”), he remained the latter’s devotee even after obtaining his own following.
title: Lelov Hasidic Dynasty
alternative label: David of Lelov
alternative label: Lelov
related: Elimelekh of Lizhensk
related: Karlin-Stolin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Land of Israel
related: Leżajsk
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Opatów
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Pshiskhe Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Simḥah Bunem of Pshiskhe
related: Vurke Hasidic Dynasty
related: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz

Lerer, Yekhiel
described at: Lerer Yekhiel
has abstract: (1900 [1910 in some sources]–1942), poet. Born in Mrozy, Warsaw district, to a prominent Hasidic family, Yekhiel Lerer spent his childhood and adolescence in the shtetl of Żelechów, where he received traditional Jewish training and a general education from private tutors. In his adolescence (during the years of World War I), he became acquainted with modern Yiddish and Hebrew writings, and read Polish and German literature. Concurrently, he studied watchmaking and the fur business, but preferred to live in the He-Ḥaluts movement’s agricultural collective. When his hopes of leaving for Palestine fell through, he moved to Warsaw, apparently at the end of the 1920s.
title: Lerer, Yekhiel
alternative label: Yekhiel Lerer
related: Dror
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: Ringelblum, Emanuel
related: Shtetl
related: Vaysenberg, Itshe Meyer
related: Warsaw

Lerner, Ya‘akov
described at: Lerner Yaakov
has abstract: (1879–1918), Hebrew poet. Ya‘akov Lerner was born in the town of Brzeżany in Volhynia to an affluent family of rabbinic pedigree. During his childhood, the family became impoverished and was forced to relocate to a village near the town of Kostopol, settling in Kostopol itself a few years later. Lerner attended heders and became engrossed in Judaic studies. He also studied Russian and French with private teachers. In 1901, he went to Warsaw, hoping to earn a matriculation certificate, and for the next five years he eked out a subsistence living as a teacher.
title: Lerner, Ya‘akov
alternative label: Ya‘akov Lerner
related: Berdychiv
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Fichmann, Ya‘akov
related: Frishman, David
related: Hrodna
related: Klausner, Yosef
related: Hebrew Poetry (Poetry)
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Shneour, Zalman
related: Steinberg, Ya‘akov
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Levin, Doyvber
described at: Levin Doyvber
has abstract: (1904–1941), Russian writer. Doyvber (Boris Mikhailovich) Levin was born in the shtetl of Liady, Mogilev province. In 1921 he entered Petrograd University, transferring the next year to the theater department of the State Institute for the History of the Arts, from which he graduated in 1928. In the 1930s he lived in Leningrad, where he published eight books, most of them for young people, and wrote the scenario for the children’s film Fed’ka. Levin fought in the Soviet–Finnish War of 1939–1940. He was killed on 17 December 1941, on the Leningrad front.
title: Levin, Doyvber
alternative label: Doyvber Levin
related: Belarus
related: Iudovin, Solomon Borisovich
related: Marshak, Samuil Iakovlevich
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Civil War
related: Russian Literature
related: Shtetl
related: Ukraine

Levin, Lipman
described at: Levin Lipman
has abstract: (1877–1946), Yiddish and Hebrew prose writer. Lipman Levin was born in Mogilev (mod. Mahilyow), Belorussia, to a prosperous family. A precocious boy, he studied religious and secular subjects and later worked as a teacher. In 1900, he arrived in Warsaw, where, following his successful debut as a story writer in the newspaper Der yud (The Jew), he contributed to other Hebrew and Yiddish periodicals, including Di yudishe folks-tsaytung (The Jewish People’s Paper), coedited by his brother-in-law Khayim Dovid Hurvits, a prominent journalist and editor.
title: Levin, Lipman
alternative label: Lipman Levin
related: Belarus
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Bund
related: Eynikayt
related: Fraynd, Der
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Markish, Perets
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Yud, Der
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Levitan, Isaak Il’ich
described at: Levitan Isaak Ilich
has abstract: (1860–1900), Russian painter. Russia’s outstanding landscape painter of the second half of the nineteenth century, Levitan was born in Kubarty, a town in the Lithuanian province of Suvalki. He was educated at the Moscow School of Painting, Architecture, and Sculpture, studying with the landscape painter Aleksei Savrasov and the prominent Russian realists Vasilii Perov and Vasilii Polenov. Early poverty undermined his health, and he died at the age of 40. He nonetheless left an oeuvre of more than 1,000 paintings, among them iconic depictions of the Russian landscape like Vladimirka (1892), Nad vechnym pokoem (Above “Eternal Rest”; 1894), and Svezhii veter. Volga (Fresh Wind: The Volga; 1891–1895). The Moscow collector Pavel Tret’iakov built up a large holding of Levitan’s works, and the Tret’iakov Gallery holds many of his masterpieces. During his short career, Levitan was elected to the Russian Academy of Art. He likewise associated with significant Russian and Western European artistic movements such as the Peredvizhniki (Society for Traveling Art Exhibitions), the Munich Secession, and Sergei Diaghilev’s journal Mir iskusstva (The World of Art).
title: Levitan, Isaak Il’ich
alternative label: Isaak Levitan
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Suwałki

Lewite, Leon
described at: Lewite Leon
has abstract: (1878–1944), Zionist leader in Poland. Born in Warsaw, Leon Lewite joined Kadimah, the association of Jewish students at the University of Warsaw and at the Technikum (Polytechnic College). As an active Zionist, he devoted himself to acquiring pledges for shares in the Jüdische Kolonialbank (Jewish Colonial Trust).
title: Lewite, Leon
alternative label: Leon Lewite
related: Grünbaum, Yitsḥak
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Lippe, Karpel
described at: Lippe Karpel
has abstract: (Natan Petaḥyah ben Barukh Mosheh Lipa; 1830–1915), physician, writer, and Zionist activist. Karpel Lippe was born in Tyśmienica (near Stanisławów, Galicia) into a traditional family. Influenced by the ideas of the Haskalah, he stopped preparing for the rabbinate and decided to study medicine. Unable to complete his program, in 1860 he moved to Iaşi and worked as a secondary physician at the Israelite Hospital. He finally received his medical degree from the University of Erlangen in Germany, and practiced in Iaşi, where he helped the poor and was the first Romanian physician to give free consultations at designated hours.
title: Lippe, Karpel
alternative label: Karpel Lippe
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Assimilation
related: Braunstein, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Galicia
related: Haskalah
related: Iaşi
related: Ivano-Frankivs’k
related: Katowice
related: Magid, Ha-
related: Niemirower, Iacob Isac
related: Pinsker, Simḥah and Lev
related: Przemyśl
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Rülf, Isaak
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Literarishe Tribune
described at: Literarishe Tribune
has abstract: Yiddish literary and cultural monthly periodical. Literarishe tribune (Literary Tribune) was officially published in Łódź between April 1930 and March 1933. Issued monthly (biweekly in the last five months of its publication), it produced a total of 43 issues. Each contained between 16 and 24 pages with a print run of 2,000 to 3,000 copies. The actual number of readers was much higher.
title: Literarishe Tribune
alternative label: Literarishe tribune
related: Łódź
related: Bund
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Fraynd, Der
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: Orthodoxy
related: Piotrków
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw

Litvak, A.
described at: Litvak A
has abstract: (1874–1932), pseudonym of Khayim Yankl Helfand, socialist, Yiddish writer, translator, and editor. Helfand was born in Vilna to a strictly observant Jewish family. He went to heder until the age of 12 and subsequently studied at a yeshiva and taught himself Russian. At the age of 19, he joined an illegal study group in Vilna organized by the Jewish Social Democratic Group in Russia, the organization that later established the Bund in 1897.
title: Litvak, A.
alternative label: A. Litvak
related: Bund
related: Folks-tsaytung
related: Heder
related: Kultur-lige
related: Medem, Vladimir Davidovich
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: TSYSHO
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Lotman, Iurii Mikhailovich
described at: Lotman Iurii Mikhailovich
has abstract: (1922–1993), scholar of literature, culture, and semiotics. Iurii Mikhailovich Lotman founded the Tartu school of semiotics and was the author of numerous important works on the semiotics of culture, and the structure of poetic and literary texts.
title: Lotman, Iurii Mikhailovich
alternative label: Iurii Lotman
related: Estonia
related: Moscow
related: Prague
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Tartu

Madarassy-Beck, Nándor
described at: Madarassy-Beck Nandor
has abstract: (1840–1909), economist and banker. A nephew of Hungarian-born German poet Karl Beck, Nándor Beck was born in (Bács-) Madaras to poor parents; his father was a grocer. Beck (Madarassy-Beck from 1906) studied banking in Vienna and upon his return to Hungary in 1862 was employed at the Pest branch of the Credit-Anstalt für Gewerbe und Handel. From 1867, he was a senior clerk at the Anglo-Hungarian Bank.
title: Madarassy-Beck, Nándor
alternative label: Nandor Beck de Madarassy
alternative label: Nandor de Madarassy
related: Banking
related: Beck, Karl Isidor
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Wahrmann, Mór

Maiden of Ludmir
described at: Maiden of Ludmir
has abstract: (Khane-Rokhl Werbermacher; 1806?–1888?), Hasidic religious leader. Little concrete information is known about the pious Hasidic woman popularly known as the Maiden of Ludmir (Yid., Di Ludmirer Moid). Despite or perhaps because of the lack of historical detail, she has inspired a century of writers who have told and retold her story in fiction (including Isaac Bashevis Singer’s novel Shosha), plays, and articles.
title: Maiden of Ludmir
related: Chernobil Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pilgrimage
related: Shtetl
related: Singer, Isaac Bashevis
related: Volodymyr Volyns’kyi

Makai, Emil
described at: Makai Emil
has abstract: (1870–1901), poet, journalist, dramatist, and translator. In his life as well as in his work, Emil Makai was a paradigmatic figure for the first generation of Hungarian Jewish writers. His career exemplifies the path of Jewish intellectuals as they moved from the framework of Jewish life and literature into national Hungarian culture (writer József Kiss followed a similar pattern).
title: Makai, Emil
alternative label: Emil Makai
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Hungarian Literature
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kiss, József
related: Kóbor, Tamás
related: Love
related: Operetta

Mandelsberg-Schildkraut, Bella
described at: Mandelsberg-Schildkraut Bella
has abstract: (1901–1943), teacher and historian. Bella Mandelsberg-Schildkraut (or Szyldkraut) was one of the few women among the nearly 70 students who earned masters’ degrees with dissertations on Polish Jewish history at the University of Warsaw between 1919 and 1939. An economic historian who studied with Jan Kochanowski, Mandelsberg wrote her thesis, “The Socio-economic and Public-legal History of Lublin’s Jews in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century, with Emphasis on the Reign of Władysław IV,” between 1926 and 1928; the manuscript remains at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw.
title: Mandelsberg-Schildkraut, Bella
alternative label: Bella Mandelsberg-Schildkraut
related: Bałaban, Majer
related: Jewish Historical Institute
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Ringelblum, Emanuel
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Schiper, Ignacy
related: TSYSHO
related: Warsaw
related: YIVO

Mandel’shtam, Nadezhda Iakovlevna
described at: Mandelshtam Nadezhda Iakovlevna
has abstract: (1899–1980), memoirist and cultural critic. Nadezhda Mandel’shtam figures as the best-known and most talented “widow of Russia,” a female survivor of the Stalinist era who preserved the politically suppressed work of her husband, the poet Osip Mandel’shtam. As a memoirist and raconteur among friends, she also served as a keenly perceptive, highly opinionated source on Soviet culture and society.
title: Mandel’shtam, Nadezhda Iakovlevna
alternative label: Nadezhda
alternative label: Nadezhda Mandel’shtam
related: Kiev
related: Mandel’shtam Osip Emil’evich

Marczali, Henrik
described at: Marczali Henrik
has abstract: (1856–1940), historian. Born Henrik Morgenstern, Marczali’s father was Mór Morgenstern (1824–1889), the Neolog rabbi of Marcali, Hungary (the family’s name change in 1875 was inspired by the town). Marczali attended Benedictine high schools in Győr and Pápa. He was 14 when he started studies at the University of Budapest, earning his history and geography teacher’s diploma in 1873. Between 1875 and 1877, he attended universities in Vienna, Berlin, Paris, London, and Oxford, and in 1878 earned a doctorate at the University of Budapest. Marczali became the most significant Hungarian historian from the 1880s until the first decade of the twentieth century.
title: Marczali, Henrik
alternative label: Henrik Marczali
related: Assimilation
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Pápa

Markuze, Moyshe
described at: Markuze Moyshe
has abstract: (1743–?), physician and medical writer. Born in Słonim, Moyshe Markuze (or Marcuse) received a thorough Talmudic education. From 1766 to 1768, he studied medicine in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) and then traveled to Holland and England. Returning to Eastern Europe in 1774, he worked as a physician in the estates of the Lubomirski family in Kapust (Kopyś) near Szkłów (Shklov), an area that had been annexed to Russia two years earlier. By 1782 he had moved to Trisk (Turyjsk) in Volhynia, where he served as a government-licensed physician. It is said that he was physician to Poland’s King Stanisław August Poniatowski and to some members of the commission of the crown treasury.
title: Markuze, Moyshe
alternative label: Moyshe Markuze
related: Ba‘ale Shem
related: Haskalah
related: Heder
related: Kaliningrad
related: Lefin, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Personal Hygiene and Grooming
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shklov

Mauthner, Fritz
described at: Mauthner Fritz
has abstract: (1849–1923), journalist, novelist, philosopher, and literary critic. Born into an assimilated, well-to-do Jewish family from Hořitz (Hořice; also Horschitz) in Bohemia, Fritz Mauthner received his primary and secondary education at German schools in Prague. Although he officially studied law, he acquired a broad education at the German university in Prague. In 1876, Mauthner moved to Berlin, where he published articles in or collaborated on several literary journals, earning his living primarily through writing theater reviews. In 1889, he was a founder of the avant-garde theater Freie Bühne (Free Stage). He wrote plays, novels, short stories, and satires.
title: Mauthner, Fritz
alternative label: Fritz Mauthner
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Frankism
related: Kuh, David
related: Prague

Me’ir Simḥah ha-Kohen
described at: Meir Simhah ha-Kohen
has abstract: (1843–1926), rabbi and commentator. One of the outstanding Orthodox thinkers in Lithuania during the first quarter of the twentieth century. Me’ir Simḥah ha-Kohen was a wealthy merchant’s son. He received his religious education first in his hometown of Butrimonys and later in Eishishok, where he studied under Mosheh Denishevsky.
title: Me’ir Simḥah ha-Kohen
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Białystok
related: Daugavpils
related: Land of Israel
related: Lithuania
related: Misnagdim
related: Musar Movement
related: Yisra’el Me’ir ha-Kohen
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Me’ir ha-Levi Rotenberg of Apt
described at: Meir ha-Levi Rotenberg of Apt
has abstract: (1760–1827/31?), Hasidic leader. In his youth, Me’ir ha-Levi Rotenberg studied under the rabbis Yitsḥak Avraham Aba ha-Kohen Katz and Aryeh-Yehudah Leib Te’omim, all the while living in poverty. He was nominated in 1809 to serve as a rabbi in Apt (Opatów) and, in 1815, in Stavnits (Stopnica). In 1816, his son Yisra’el was elected to the Stopnica rabbinate, and Me’ir returned to Opatów.
title: Me’ir ha-Levi Rotenberg of Apt
alternative label: Me’ir ha-Levi Rotenberg
alternative label: Me’ir of Apt
related: Elimelekh of Lizhensk
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: L’viv
related: Opatów
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Pshiskhe Hasidic Dynasty
related: Radomsk Hasidic Dynasty
related: Simḥah Bunem of Pshiskhe
related: Warsaw
related: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz

Mezhyrichi
described at: Mezhyrichi
has abstract: Village on the Stava River (Pripiat’ basin) in Ukraine’s Rivne (Rovno) region. Mezhyrichi, known as Mezhirech in Russian and Międzyrzecz in Polish, was called Mezhirich Gadol by Jews; currently known as Velikie Mezhyrichi (Great Mezhyrichi), it has also been referred to as Mezhyrichi Koretskie. From 1569 it was in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and from 1793 in the Korets district of the Russian Empire’s Volhynia province. Between 1921 and 1939 the town belonged to independent Poland.
title: Mezhyrichi
alternative label: Mezhirichi
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Heder
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Ostrog
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: Rivne
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Tarbut
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Mincberg, Leib
described at: Mincberg Leib
has abstract: (1887–1943), manufacturer, head of the Łódź kehilah, Polish parliamentary deputy, and leader of Agudas Yisroel. Born in Radom to a Hasidic family, Leib Mincberg received a traditional education yet also learned several European languages. Upon his marriage into a Gerer Hasidic family, he transferred his allegiance to that dynasty. With the outbreak of World War I, Mincberg moved to Łódź, where he began a successful career in manufacturing.
title: Mincberg, Leib
alternative label: Leib Mincberg
related: Łódź
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Białystok
related: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Radom
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius

Mincs, Pauls
described at: Mincs Pauls
has abstract: (1868–1941), lawyer. Born into the family of a businessman in Daugavpils, Latvia, Pauls Mincs (Paul Mintz) graduated from gymnasium in Riga in 1885. He received a law degree from Saint Petersburg University and another from Tartu University in Estonia in 1892. His brother Vladimirs, a lawyer, was also prominent in Latvian public life. From 1918, Mincs taught at Tartu University. He also devoted much of his time to Jewish social issues, having in 1898 been one of the founders and then head of Riga’s chapter of the Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia.
title: Mincs, Pauls
alternative label: Pauls
related: Daugavpils
related: Estonia
related: Latvia
related: Mincs, Vladimirs
related: Riga
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Tartu
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Mincs, Vladimirs
described at: Mincs Vladimirs
has abstract: (Mintz; 1872–1945), surgeon. Vladimirs Mincs’s father, Jehil Mikelis Mincs, moved to Riga from Daugavpils. Vladimir and his brother Pauls became prominent figures in Latvia and its Jewish community.
title: Mincs, Vladimirs
alternative label: Vladimirs
alternative label: Vladimirs Mincs
related: Daugavpils
related: Estonia
related: Kaplan, Fannie Efimovna
related: Latvia
related: Mincs, Pauls
related: Moscow
related: Riga
related: Tartu

Minskii, Nikolai Maksimovich
described at: Minskii Nikolai Maksimovich
has abstract: (Pseudonym of N. M. Vilenkin; 1855–1937), poet and essay writer. Born in a village in the Vitebsk region of Belorussia, Nikolai Minskii graduated from a Russian gymnasium with high honors and received a degree in law from Saint Petersburg University. In 1882, he converted to Russian Orthodox Christianity in order to marry.
title: Minskii, Nikolai Maksimovich
alternative label: Nikolai Minskii
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: Pogroms
related: Razsvet
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Vitsyebsk
related: Volynskii, Akim L’vovich

Moineşti
described at: Moinesti
has abstract: Town in the Moldavian region of Romania, in the county of Bacău. Located in an area of petroleum exploitation, Moineşti experienced Jewish settlement in the second half of the eighteenth century: one tombstone from the Jewish cemetery dates from 1748, another from 1787. In 1820, Moineşti was home to 42 Jewish taxpayers; by 1831, there were 93 Jews in the town; and in 1899, a total of 2,398 Jews represented 50.6 percent of the population. Later, this number diminished: in 1910, it had fallen to 2,141; in 1930 to 1,761; and in 1941 to 1,325. Jews were employed in crafts, local commerce, and the petroleum industry. Many were Hasidim, followers of Yitsḥak Friedman of Buhuşi or of Hersh Tsevi Landman of Bacău.
title: Moineşti
related: Bacău
related: Bessarabia
related: Buhuşi
related: Crafts
related: Land of Israel
related: Moldavia
related: Romania
related: Rosen, Mozes

Molnár, Ferenc
described at: Molnar Ferenc
has abstract: (1878–1952), playwright, novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. The son of a hard-working Budapest physician, Ferenc Molnár grew up in a typical assimilated middle-class household. He became an international celebrity at a fairly young age, one of the very few Hungarian writers to have achieved that status in the twentieth century. In phenomenally successful plays such as Az ördög (The Devil; 1907), Liliom (1909), A testőr (The Guardsman; 1910), and Játék a kestélyban (The Play’s the Thing; 1926), he popularized, and in a sense vulgarized, the techniques and assumptions of the naturalist, impressionist, and symbolist theater, and revitalized the conventions of the nineteenth-century French drawing room comedy. Molnár was a consummate craftsman, a master of dialogue, pacing, and plot construction. Though far more than an entertainer, he failed whenever he tried to write “serious,” morally weighty dramas. Molnár scored his greatest successes abroad as a playwright; his many prose works, including brilliant sketches and humorous pieces, are less well-known outside of Hungary, although A Pál utcai fiúk (The Paul Street Boys; 1907) remains a juvenile classic in a number of European countries.
title: Molnár, Ferenc
alternative label: Ferenc Molnár
related: Assimilation
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)

Mosheh Leib of Sasov
described at: Mosheh Leib of Sasov
has abstract: (ca. 1745–1807), Hasidic master in eastern Galicia. Mosheh Leib was born in Brody; his main teacher was Shemu’el Shmelke Horovitz, leader of a Hasidic center in Ryczywol and from 1766 head of the rabbinical court in Sieniawa. After returning from a stay with his master, Mosheh Leib settled in Apt (Opatów) and probably led a small Hasidic community there. During the 1780s, he moved to Sasov (Yid., more properly Sasev).
title: Mosheh Leib of Sasov
related: Agnon, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Brody
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Opatów
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush

Mülhausen, Yom Tov Lipmann
described at: Mulhausen Yom Tov Lipmann
has abstract: (fl. late fourteenth–early fifteenth century), eminent rabbinic leader in Bohemia, anti-Christian polemicist, halakhist, philosopher, kabbalist, and commentator. Mülhausen’s activities, coming a generation or two after the devastation of the Black Plague, raised the intellectual, cultural, and religious profile of Bohemian Jewry. Along with contemporaries such as the brothers Avigdor and Menaḥem Kara and Menaḥem Shalem, Mülhausen belonged to a set of rabbinic figures whose intellectual breadth was not usually associated with the Ashkenazic rabbinate of the late medieval period.
title: Mülhausen, Yom Tov Lipmann
alternative label: Yom Tov Lipmann Mülhausen
related: Ashkenaz
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Kara, Avigdor
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)

Musical Education and Musical Societies
described at: Musical Education and Musical Societies
has abstract: Historically, most Jewish musicians in Eastern Europe came from families involved with music, and received their musical education through individual apprenticeships and other informal channels. The traditional Jewish professions of klezmer, badkhn (wedding jester), and ḥazan (cantor) were usually passed from father to son or father to son-in-law, creating dynasties of musicians that persisted into the modern period. Guilds of Jewish musicians with more formal apprenticeships could be found in some towns in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, but after the partitions of Poland, they were largely restricted to towns within Austrian and Ottoman territories. Cantors also passed on their skills to their assistants and accompanists, either to solo zingers (singers) or to ensembles of meshorerim (choristers). More formal cantorial associations were established in the late nineteenth century under German influence in parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in Poland in the interwar period. Hasidic melodies were also orally transmitted through Hasidic courts.
title: Musical Education and Musical Societies
alternative label: music society
alternative label: musical society
related: Badkhonim
related: Beregovskii, Moisei Iakovlevich
related: Birnboym, Avrom Ber
related: Cantors
related: Engel, Yo’el
related: Folk Songs
related: Ginsburg, Sha'ul
related: Guilds
related: Music (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture
related: Kiev
related: Kipnis, Menakhem
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Pryłucki, Noah
related: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl
related: Riga
related: Rostov-on-Don
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Society for Jewish Folk Music
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: YIVO

Natonek, Yosef
described at: Natonek Yosef
has abstract: (1813–1892), rabbi and early Zionist. Yosef Natonek attended yeshiva in Komárom with Pinḥas Leib Frieden, in Nikolsburg with Neḥemyah Naḥum Trebitsch until 1835, and in Ungvár for the year 1836. Although he never studied at the yeshiva of Mosheh Sofer (Ḥatam Sofer) as is often stated, he did apparently obtain ordination in Pressburg. He turned to trade and during the revolution of 1848–1849 supplied livestock to the Austrians and then to the Hungarian forces at the fortress of Komárom, where he settled in 1849. Later, he was issued a certificate of good conduct addressed to the Austrian authorities stating that during the revolution he had not “budged a hairsbreadth” from the path of loyalty.
title: Natonek, Yosef
alternative label: Yosef Natonek
related: Ben Chananja
related: Bratislava
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kalischer, Tsevi Hirsh
related: Kompert, Leopold
related: Löw, Leopold
related: Mikulov
related: Orthodoxy
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: Trade
related: Trebitsch, Neḥemyah Naḥum
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Notkin, Nota Khaimovich
described at: Notkin Nota Khaimovich
has abstract: (d. 1804), merchant, shtadlan (lobbyist for Jewish interests), and Jewish political leader in late eighteenth-century Russia. In the late 1770s and 1780s, Notkin was a contractor for the court of Count Semen Gavriilovich Zorich in Shklov, and for Count Grigorii Potemkin, Russia’s “viceroy of the south.” During this period, Notkin traveled frequently to Prussia, and came into contact with the circle of the Berlin Haskalah. He was a subscriber to the journal Ha-Me’asef, and was apparently responsible for commissioning Naftali Herts Wessely to compose Hebrew poems, with German translation, in honor of the visit by Empress Catherine II to Shklov and Mogilev in 1780.
title: Notkin, Nota Khaimovich
alternative label: Nota Notkin
alternative label: Note Notkin
related: Agriculture
related: Haskalah
related: Industry
related: Moscow
related: Pale of Settlement
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shklov
related: Shneur Zalman of Liady
related: Shtadlan

Olbracht, Ivan
described at: Olbracht Ivan
has abstract: (Kamil Zeman; 1882–1952), Czech novelist and journalist. Ivan Olbracht’s mother, Kamila Schonfeldová, came from a German-speaking Jewish family in northern Bohemia; his father, the writer Antal Stašek (originally Antonín Zeman), forced her to convert to Catholicism before he would marry her. (“For me,” he wrote to her in a letter, “departure from my church would be an excommunication from Czech society.”) Olbracht studied law in Berlin and Prague, but eventually left his studies to become a full-time journalist for a Czech Social Democratic paper in Vienna, where he worked from 1909 until 1916.
title: Olbracht, Ivan
alternative label: Ivan Olbracht
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Orthodoxy
related: Prague
related: Subcarpathian Rus’
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Orgelbrand Family
described at: Orgelbrand Family
has abstract: Booksellers and publishers in Warsaw. Samuel Orgelbrand (1810–1868) founded the family’s business, which, from the middle of the nineteenth century until its sale in 1920, maintained a leading position in the Polish and Polish Jewish publishing industries. His brother Maurycy (1826–1904) and sons Hipolit (1843–1920) and Mieczyslaw (1847–1903) were also associated with the business. The publishing house produced texts on Polish literature and history, reference works in different disciplines, and specialist literature in social sciences, economics, law, and medicine.
title: Orgelbrand Family
alternative label: Samuel Orgelbrand
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Seminary
related: Tsene-rene
related: Warsaw

Peltz, Isac
described at: Peltz Isac
has abstract: (1899–1980), writer, playwright, and journalist. Isac Peltz was born in Bucharest, to a family of impoverished craft workers. Beyond attending heder, it is unlikely that he received formal schooling. At age 16, Peltz single-handedly edited a review titled Indrumarea (Guidance). One year later, he published a pamphlet, Menirea literaturii (The Purpose of Literature), pleading for writers’ moral and social commitment. In 1916, he took his first job, at the editorial office of a newspaper.
title: Peltz, Isac
alternative label: Isac Peltz
related: Bucharest
related: Heder
related: Pogroms
related: Revista Cultului Mozaic din R.P.R.
related: Romania

Petschek Family
described at: Petschek Family
has abstract: Industrialists and bankers in Bohemia. The Petschek family, originally based in Kolín in central Bohemia, included captains of industry of Czech lands from the late nineteenth century. Its members reached their pinnacle of success in the period of the first Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938).
title: Petschek Family
alternative label: Ignaz Petschek
alternative label: Petschek family
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Industry
related: Kolín
related: Prague

Pilichowski, Leopold
described at: Pilichowski Leopold
has abstract: (1869–1933), painter. Born in Piła near Sieradz, Poland, Leopold Pilichowski received his early Jewish education in his native village and then studied art in Łódź. There he spent time in the company of the painter Szmul Hirszenberg (to whom he was related) and the Hebrew writer David Frishman. Pilichowski continued his studies at the Art Academy in Munich and later at the Academy Julian in Paris. In France he painted portraits, Parisian street scenes, and nocturnes, and in 1891 exhibited a painting entitled Pierwsze jesienne liście (First Leaves of Autumn).
title: Pilichowski, Leopold
alternative label: Leopold Pilichowski
related: Łódź
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Frishman, David
related: Hirszenberg, Szmul
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sokolow, Naḥum
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Pipe, Shmuel Zaynvl
described at: Pipe Shmuel Zaynvl
has abstract: (1907–1943), Yiddish folklorist. Born in Sanok, central Galicia, Shmuel Pipe learned the tailoring trade from his father. He was active in the youth organization Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, advancing to the position of youth leader and educator. He became an enthusiastic collector for the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in Vilna, submitting Yiddish folktales and songs, children’s games, and other folklore materials.
title: Pipe, Shmuel Zaynvl
alternative label: Shmuel Zaynvl Pipe
related: Cahan, Yehudah Leib
related: Folk Songs
related: Folklore, Ethnography, and Anthropology
related: Galicia
related: Gordon, Mikhl
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Przemyśl
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Ha-
related: Toys and Games
related: Vilnius
related: YIVO

Poláček, Karel
described at: Polacek Karel
has abstract: (1892–1945), Czech journalist and novelist. Poláček was born to a Czech-speaking Jewish family in the small Bohemian town of Rychnov nad Kněžnou. Although he failed at the local gymnasium, he finished his studies in Prague in 1912; after a short period in law school he was drafted and served on the Russian and Serbian fronts. In Serbia he crossed over into “voluntary captivity” and spent the last two months of the war as a prisoner. On his return to Prague, he launched his career as a journalist, specializing in both short, humorous essays (sloupky) and court reports (soudničky); he wrote hundreds of each in his career. He also wrote two plays, a number of film scripts, and several volumes of short stories, establishing himself by the end of the 1920s as one of the republic’s wittiest writers. Poláček directed his sharp satires at extremism on both sides of the political spectrum, as well as at the complacent banality of the middle classes; he was particularly sensitive to clichés, empty phrases, and the abuse of language. His barbed Žurnalistický slovník (Journalistic Dictionary; 1934) mocked the stereotyped thinking of the political press.
title: Poláček, Karel
alternative label: Karel Poláček
related: Czech Literature
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: Prague
related: Satire
related: Terezín

Poland from 1795 to 1939 (Poland)
described at: Poland from 1795 to 1939
has abstract: At the conclusion of the Third Partition in 1795, the territories of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth were divided among Russia (62% of the area, 45% of the population), Prussia (20% of the land, 23% of the people) and Austria (18% of the land, 32% of the population). Although these borders were not final and would undergo revisions, most notably during the Napoleonic wars and after the Congress of Vienna, Polish independence would not return until 1918. From the time of the partitions onward, the story of Polish Jewry, like the story of Poland itself, became three separate yet often similar stories of adjustment, rejection, and cooperation between the populations of the lands of partitioned Poland and the ruling empires.
title: Poland from 1795 to 1939 (Poland)
alternative label: Kingdom of Poland
related: Łódź
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Akiva
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Armed Resistance
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Assimilation
related: Bałaban, Majer
related: Betar
related: Beys Yankev
related: Białystok
related: Bloch, Jan
related: Brody
related: Bund
related: Chwila
related: Cinema
related: Credit
related: Drogobych
related: Dror
related: Economic Life
related: Eisenbach, Artur
related: Epstein Family
related: Folkists
related: Folks-tsaytung
related: Friedman, Filip
related: Galicia
related: Gordonia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haynt
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Industry
related: Izraelita
related: Joselewicz, Berek
related: Josephinian Reforms
related: Jutrzenka
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Kronenberg Family
related: Lieberman, Hermann
related: Lithuania
related: Litvak
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: L’viv
related: Mahler, Raphael
related: Mandelsberg-Schildkraut, Bella
related: Meisels, Dov Berush
related: Mill, John
related: Moment, Der
related: Moscow
related: Nasz Przegląd
related: Orthodoxy
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Perl, Feliks
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Pogroms
related: Poznań
related: Ringelblum, Emanuel
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Słonimski, Ḥayim Zelig
related: Sabbath
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Schiper, Ignacy
related: Schorr, Mojżesz
related: Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Ha-
related: Shtetl
related: Sokolow, Naḥum
related: Stein, Edmund
related: TOZ
related: Tarbut
related: Ternopil’
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Trade
related: Tsefirah, Ha-

About this Article (Population and Migration)
described at: Population and Migration
has abstract: To treat the demography of the Jewish population of Eastern Europe—its size, its movement within the region, and migration from it—this entry includes three articles. The principal division is chronological, using World War I, a time of great upheaval that disrupted large numbers of people and an event that led to the end of the empires of Eastern Europe and a redrawing of the area’s political map, as the point of division. The first article covers population and migration before World War I; the second and third articles separately treat these topics after the war. For further discussion, see the entries on specific countries, regions, and cities.
title: About this Article (Population and Migration)
alternative label: emigration

Porumbacu, Veronica
described at: Porumbacu Veronica
has abstract: (pseudonym of Veronica Schwefelberg; 1921–1977), poet, prose writer, and translator. Veronica Porumbacu was the daughter of Arnold Schwefelberg, a renowned Jewish community leader. She was born in Bucharest and died as a victim of the earthquake that ravaged the city on 4 March 1977. She took the name Porumbacu from the name of the Transylvanian village where the nurse who raised her was born.
title: Porumbacu, Veronica
alternative label: Veronica Porumbacu
related: Bucharest
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Romania
related: Schwefelberg, Arnold

Postcards and Greeting Cards
described at: Postcards and Greeting Cards
has abstract: On 1 October 1869, the Austrian post office produced the first official governmental Correspodenz-Karte (postal card), based on an idea developed by Emanuel Hermann, a Viennese Jewish economics professor. The first picture postcards appeared in the 1870s in several European countries. Germany, with its advanced print technology, became the center for illustrated cards of Jewish interest in the 1880s. The new form of communication spread to Poland and the United States. As early as 1888, a writer for the Warsaw monthly Izraelita criticized the German Jewish practice of sending ornate and ostentatious postcards for Rosh Hashanah, and was disappointed with the sums of money spent on buying and mailing them. Despite such views, the illustrated postcard became a great success, and by the first decades of the twentieth century the variety, richness, and quantity of them that were produced in Poland exceeded that of Germany.
title: Postcards and Greeting Cards
alternative label: cards
alternative label: postcards
related: Haynt
related: Izraelita
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Money
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sabbath
related: Shtetl
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Poznański, Shemu’el Avraham
described at: Poznanski Shemuel Avraham
has abstract: (1864–1921), rabbi, scholar, and bibliographer. Born in Lubraniets (Pol., Lubraniec), Shemu’el Avraham Poznański received a general and Jewish education from private tutors. In 1880, he moved to Warsaw and completed his studies in a realgymnasium (modern high school). In 1890, Poznański began to study at a number of institutions, including Berlin University, the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (a rabbinical seminary and center for the scientific study of Judaism), and the Veitel Heine Institute. Greatly influenced by the bibliographer Moritz Steinschneider (1816–1907), Poznański submitted his doctoral dissertation in philosophy and Semitic philology to the University of Heidelberg in 1894, and two years later was ordained as a rabbi in Berlin.
title: Poznański, Shemu’el Avraham
alternative label: Shemu’el Poznański
related: Karaites
related: Mizraḥi
related: Seminary
related: Steinschneider, Moritz
related: Tarbut
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Preigerzon, Tsevi Hirsh
described at: Preigerzon Tsevi Hirsh
has abstract: (also known in Russian as Grigorii Izrailevich; 1900–1969), Hebrew writer. Tsevi Preigerzon was born in Shepetovka, in the Volhynia region; his father was a Zionist maskil, and his mother a member of the well-known Halperin family that traced its roots to Rabbi Dov Ber Karasik. Preigerzon spent his early years in heder, and at the age of 13 was sent by his parents to study at the Herzliya gymnasium in Tel Aviv. World War I erupted while he was spending a summer in Europe, and in its wake all routes to Palestine were blocked. Faced with no other option, Preigerzon completed his secondary education at a Russian gymnasium in Odessa, where he concurrently took violin lessons at the local conservatory and spent his evenings studying at a yeshiva. He gradually became disenchanted with religion and poured his energies into Zionism, which soon had to compete with his devotion to communism. Thus in 1917, following the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, Preigerzon found himself torn between these loyalties. Two years later he traveled to Moscow where he was admitted to the Academy for Mining Engineering.
title: Preigerzon, Tsevi Hirsh
alternative label: Tsevi Hirsh Preigerzon
alternative label: Tsevi Preigerzon
related: Communism
related: Halkin, Shmuel
related: Heder
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Hebrew Poetry (Poetry)
related: Shternberg, Yankev
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Prostitz Family
described at: Prostitz Family
has abstract: Printers active in Kraków in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Yitsḥak ben Aharon of Prostitz (Yid., more properly Prostits; d. 1612) was born in Prossnitz (Prostějov) and apparently learned the printing craft in Venice. There he became acquainted with the editor and scholar Shemu’el Böhm (d. 1588), whom Prostitz persuaded to join in establishing a Hebrew printing house in Kraków. Though Böhm’s function was listed on title pages as magihah (proofreader), in the sixteenth century the work of the magihah also included helping to choose, prepare, and print manuscripts. The press bought its types, printing ornaments, and other implements in Venice. In an effort to compete with the great Italian printing houses, Kraków’s rabbis in 1590 encouraged Polish rabbis to use Prostitz rather than Italian printers; alternatively, they ruled that if a Polish rabbi choose to publish in Italy, his sales in Poland would be delayed.
title: Prostitz Family
alternative label: Prostitz
alternative label: Yitsḥak ben Aharon of Prostitz
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Heder
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Prostějov
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Tsene-rene
related: Yafeh, Mordekhai ben Avraham
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Rabinowitz, Ya‘akov
described at: Rabinowitz Yaakov
has abstract: (1874–1948), Hebrew, Yiddish, and German writer. Ya‘akov Rabinowitz was born in Volkovysk, Russia (now Belarus). After receiving a traditional education at heder and a yeshiva, he studied secular topics and taught in Vitebsk. Before he began composing his major literary output in German and Hebrew, he wrote a number of Zionist brochures in Yiddish, the earliest of which (Vu iz undzer oylem? An ernst vort tsum folk [Where Are Our Masses? A Serious Word to the People]) was published in Berdichev in 1899.
title: Rabinowitz, Ya‘akov
alternative label: Ya‘akov Rabinowitz
related: Barash, Asher
related: Belarus
related: Berdychiv
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Dor, Ha-
related: Frishman, David
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Land of Israel
related: Mapu, Avraham
related: Odessa
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Vilnius
related: Vitsyebsk
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Rákosi, Mátyás
described at: Rakosi Matyas
has abstract: (1892–1971), Communist leader; prime minister of Hungary. Son of a retail merchant, Mátyás Rákosi pursued his studies at the Eastern Trade Academy in Budapest. In 1910, he joined the Social Democratic Party. Rákosi acquired practical experience between 1912 and 1914 while working at firms in Hamburg and London; his outstanding linguistic abilities also led him to master a number of languages. In 1914, he enlisted in the army as a volunteer.
title: Rákosi, Mátyás
alternative label: Mátyás Rakósi
alternative label: Mátyás Rákosi
related: Budapest
related: Debrecen
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Moscow
related: Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (Russia)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Rapoport, Yoshue
described at: Rapoport Yoshue
has abstract: (1895–1971), Yiddish-language literary critic, journalist, and translator. Born in Białystok and educated by tutors, Yoshue Rapoport mastered several European languages and gained a broad knowledge of literature. His contributions to Yiddish literature include his translations—among them selections from the works of Maurice Maeterlinck, Romain Rolland, Rabindranath Tagore, Boris Pilnyak, and Upton Sinclair—as well as writings about art, philosophy, the history of Russian revolutions, and Simon Dubnow’s history of the Jews (1938–1940).
title: Rapoport, Yoshue
alternative label: Yoshue Rapoport
related: Białystok
related: Bund
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Globus
related: Literarishe Bleter
related: Yiddish Criticism and Scholarship (Literary Criticism and Scholarship)
related: Mayzel, Nakhmen
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Vaysenberg, Itshe Meyer
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zeitlin Family

Razumny, Mark
described at: Razumny Mark
has abstract: (1896–1988), Yiddish writer. Born in the shtetl of Zhager, Mark Razumny grew up in Riga, where, in addition to receiving a traditional Jewish education, he studied art and architecture. As a young boy, he began to write poems in Yiddish, Russian, and Hebrew. In 1917–1918, he affiliated with the Labor Zionists. Mobilized to the Red Army in 1919, Razumny soon moved to Germany and lived in Hamburg, where he published his first story, in German, in the local Israelitisches Familienblatt (Israelite Family Journal). He worked as a clerk at a Hamburg-based bank and studied philosophy, aesthetics, and literature at the university.
title: Razumny, Mark
alternative label: Mark Razumny
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Folks-shtime
related: Frimorgn
related: Latvia
related: Latzky-Bertholdi, Ya‘akov Ze’ev
related: Moscow
related: Riga
related: Shtetl
related: Sovetish Heymland
related: Warsaw

Rebetsin
described at: Rebetsin
has abstract: The Yiddish term rebetsin was the most prestigious title available to Jewish women. Its simplest definition is the wife of a rabbi, though the term also connotes a pious woman, a woman with good lineage, or a woman learned in religious matters. In Eastern Europe, rebetsins developed reputations for piety, scrupulous observance, religious leadership, and concern for the poor. Just as their rabbi husbands often emerged as community leaders, so too did rabbinic wives serve as important figures in the towns and villages of the region.
title: Rebetsin
alternative label: rebetsin
related: Berlin, Naftali Tsevi Yehudah
related: Grade, Chaim
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Ḥayim ben Yitsḥak of Volozhin
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Piety
related: Religious Year
related: Rubinstein, Yitsḥak
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sabbath
related: Shtetl
related: Tkhines
related: Vilnius
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Yisra’el ben Shabetai of Kozhenits

Robinson, Jacob
described at: Robinson Jacob
has abstract: (1889–1977), jurist, politician, diplomat, and Holocaust researcher. One of seven brothers, Jacob (Ya‘akov ben David) Robinson was born in Seirijai (Serej) into a family with a rabbinic tradition reaching back to Yom Tov Lipmann Heller (seventeenth century). Although Orthodox, Robinson’s father, David, was an early Zionist.
title: Robinson, Jacob
alternative label: Jacob Robinson
related: Heller, Yom Tov Lipmann
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Idishe Shtime, Di
related: Kaunas
related: Klaipėda
related: Lithuania
related: Minorities Treaties
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rosenboim, Shimshon
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Suwałki
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: YIVO

Roman
described at: Roman
has abstract: Town in northeastern Romania at the confluence of the Siret and Moldova Rivers. Oral tradition claims a Jewish presence there from the late fifteenth century, but the first documentary reference dates to 1709, the oldest tomb inscription to 1724, and the record book of the burial society to 1773. Throughout the nineteenth century the Jewish community, integrated in the fields of commerce and crafts, recorded continuous demographic growth: from 288 Jews in 1803, to 1,200 in 1831, to 1,936 in 1838, to 3,290 in 1859, and to 6,432 in 1899 (then representing 39% of the total population). In 1910, there were 322 merchants, 55 shoemakers, 52 tailors, 20 carpenters, 18 blacksmiths, and 305 other craftsmen. As a result of emigration in the early twentieth century, the number of Jews dropped before World War I but eventually rose again during the interwar period: to 4,728 in 1910 and to 5,963 in 1930 (totaling 28%).
title: Roman
related: Bessarabia
related: Blecher, M.
related: Botoşani
related: Brăila
related: Carp, Horia
related: Crafts
related: Iaşi
related: Kosov-Vizhnits Hasidic Dynasty
related: Paşcani
related: Romania
related: Siret
related: Târgu Frumos
related: Transnistria
related: Transylvania
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Rónai, János
described at: Ronai Janos
has abstract: (1849–1919), lawyer and Zionist leader. Born in the Hungarian city of Gyulafehérvár (Rom., Alba Iulia), János Rónai completed his legal studies at the University of Budapest. Working first as a vice notary public in Győr, he then started his own legal practices in Fogaras (Rom., Făgăraş) and in Balázsfalva; he also organized branches of the Independence Party of 1848 in several towns in Transylvania. Rónai’s writings include his 1875 doctoral dissertation, “Nacionalizmus és kozmopolitizmus különös tekintettel a zsidóság mai helyzetére” (Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism with special consideration of the Jewish Situation in Our Time).
title: Rónai, János
alternative label: János Rónai
related: Alba Iulia
related: Budapest
related: Făgăraş
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Transylvania
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Rosen, Mathias
described at: Rosen Mathias
has abstract: (1804–1865), Polish banker and communal leader. Mathias Rosen was the son of the German-born Isaak Simon Rosen, who had established himself as a banker in Warsaw during the Prussian occupation of Poland (1796–1806). In addition to Mathias Rosen’s activities as a partner in the family’s bank, which he ran alone after his father’s death in 1840, Rosen’s business activities included railway construction, tax farming, tobacco processing, and international trade, often as the partner of Leopold Kronenberg.
title: Rosen, Mathias
alternative label: Mathias Rosen
related: Banking
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Trade
related: Warsaw

Rosenthal Family
described at: Rosenthal Family
has abstract: Leading maskilim and shtadlanim (political leaders) of Hungarian Jewry. Naftali Rosenthal (Naftali Mohr; 1727–1798) was, after Koppel Theben, the most important lay national figure of eighteenth-century Hungarian Jewry. Eliyahu Rosenthal (Eliah Komorn; 1758–1833), Naftali’s elder son, was an adviser to the government on issues of Jewish rights. Later members of the family, including Naftali’s younger son Shelomoh Rosenthal (Shelomoh [Solomon] Mohr; 1763–1845), were active in the Haskalah and in Jewish cultural life.
title: Rosenthal Family
alternative label: Rosenthal
alternative label: Shelomoh Rosenthal
related: Archives
related: Banet, Mordekhai ben Avraham
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bratislava
related: Budapest
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Historical Institute
related: Kerem Ḥemed
related: Kunitz, Mosheh
related: Landau, Mosheh Yisra’el
related: Löwisohn, Salomon
related: Moscow
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Saphir, Moritz Gottlieb
related: Schwab, Löw
related: Seminary
related: Theben, Koppel
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Rosenthal, Leon
described at: Rosenthal Leon
has abstract: (Yehudah Leib; 1817–1887), business entrepreneur, public figure, and philanthropist. Leon Rosenthal received both a religious and a secular education, and he was particularly drawn to Hebrew literature. His father Mosheh’s house in Vilna was a popular place for maskilim to gather.
title: Rosenthal, Leon
alternative label: Leon Rosenthal
related: Brest
related: Gintsburg Family
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Levinzon, Yitsḥak Ber
related: Riga
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Słonimski, Ḥayim Zelig
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Schulman, Kalman
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Vilnius

Roth, Aharon
described at: Roth Aharon
has abstract: (1894–1947), Hasidic Ḥaredi leader. Born in Ungvár, Aharon Roth founded a sect, known today as Reb Arele’s, that numbers in the thousands and serves as the most visible representative of radical Hasidic anti-Zionism in Jerusalem.
title: Roth, Aharon
alternative label: Aharon Roth
related: Belz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Dress
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Orthodoxy
related: Piety
related: Satmar Hasidic Dynasty
related: Satu Mare
related: Silberstein, Yesha‘yahu
related: Uzhhorod
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Rudnicki, Adolf
described at: Rudnicki Adolf
has abstract: (Aron Hirszhorn; 1909–1990), prose writer and essayist. Born into a Hasidic family, Adolf Rudnicki rebelled against his father and the Orthodox community. Settling in Warsaw in the early 1930s, Rudnicki joined a circle of young writers. In 1939, he fought the invading Nazis as a soldier in the Polish army, and after escaping German captivity, he went to Soviet-occupied Lwów, and later, in 1942, to Warsaw, where he lived on the Aryan side and took part in underground literary life and efforts to assist Jews.
title: Rudnicki, Adolf
alternative label: Adolf Rudnicki
related: Łódź
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Assimilation
related: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kaminski Family
related: L’viv
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Polish Literature
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Rumkowski, Khayim Mordkhe
related: Słonimski, Antoni
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Słucki, Arnold
described at: Słucki Arnold
has abstract: (1920–1972), poet, publicist, and translator. Born into an Orthodox family in Tyszowce, near Lublin, Arnold Słucki (originally Aron Kreiner) attended the State Seminary for Teachers of Judaism in Warsaw between 1934 and 1939. A Communist activist, Słucki fled the invading Nazis to the USSR, where he worked as a teacher and Komsomol instructor. In 1942, he joined the Red Army, later transferring to Polish units. After demobilization, he studied philosophy in Warsaw. A member of the Communist Party (1945–1966), he emigrated from Poland following the antisemitic campaign of 1968, eventually settling in West Berlin.
title: Słucki, Arnold
alternative label: Arnold Słucki
related: Chagall, Marc
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Shtetl
related: Szymel, Maurycy
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw

Salus, Hugo
described at: Salus Hugo
has abstract: (1866–1929), poet and physician. Born in the exclusively German-speaking town of Böhmisch-Leipa (now Česká-Lípa in the Czech Republic), Salus studied medicine in Prague and stayed on to work as a gynecologist. In the 1890s, however, he dominated the literary scene in Prague, publishing lyric poetry in prominent fin-de-siècle magazines and in popular collections such as Ehefrühling (Springtime of Marriage; 1900), Die Blumenschale (The Flower Vase; 1908), and Glockenklang (The Sound of a Bell; 1911).
title: Salus, Hugo
alternative label: Hugo Salus
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brod, Max
related: Czech Republic
related: Mauthner, Fritz
related: Prague
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Sapgir, Genrikh Veniaminovich
described at: Sapgir Genrikh Veniaminovich
has abstract: (1928–1999), Russian poet, children’s author, screenwriter, fiction writer, and translator. Not permitted to publish any of his original work for adult audiences in the Soviet Union until 1989, Sapgir was a well-known underground poet during the 1970s and 1980s, as well as one of the most beloved authors for children. During perestroika, Sapgir’s “adult” work finally appeared in the USSR, and he spent his last decade regarded as a patriarch of Russian avant-garde letters.
title: Sapgir, Genrikh Veniaminovich
alternative label: Genrikh Sapgir
related: Belarus
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Moscow
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vitsyebsk

Schick, Mosheh
described at: Schick Mosheh
has abstract: (1807–1879), rabbi, halakhist, and yeshiva head. Known as Maharam Schick (acronym for Morenu ha-Rav Mosheh, “Our Teacher, the Rabbi Mosheh”) after his responsa collection, Mosheh Schick was born in Březové, and from the age of 14 he studied under Mosheh Sofer (Ḥatam Sofer) in Pressburg. Eventually he was acknowledged to be Sofer’s heir as the leading halakhic decisor of Hungarian Orthodoxy. While throughout his career Schick was outspoken in his opposition to religious and educational reform, during the last years of his life he was particularly intransigent in demanding unequivocal loyalty to a narrow Orthodox position.
title: Schick, Mosheh
alternative label: Maharam (Mosheh) Schick
alternative label: Mosheh Schick
related: Bratislava
related: Eisenstadt
related: Hildesheimer, Esriel
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Orthodoxy
related: Seminary
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Sebastian, Mihail
described at: Sebastian Mihail
has abstract: (Iosef Hechter; 1907–1945), writer, playwright, and essayist. Son of Mendel and Clara (née Weintraub) Hechter, Mihail Sebastian was born in Brăila, where he also attended high school. He studied law in Bucharest from 1927 to 1929 and in Paris from 1930 to 1931, then worked occasionally as a lawyer while mainly focusing on literary and journalistic work.
title: Sebastian, Mihail
alternative label: Mihail Sebastian
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Assimilation
related: Bessarabia
related: Brăila
related: Bucharest
related: Bucovina
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Iaşi
related: Ludo, Isac Iacovitz
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Shapiro, Konstantin Abba
described at: Shapiro Konstantin Abba
has abstract: (1839–1900), Hebrew poet. Konstantin Abba Shapiro was born in Grodno and was raised in a strict and religious home in which his authoritarian father tried to divert him from an interest in secular literature. To discourage Shapiro from following the Haskalah, his parents married him off at the age of 15. Shapiro’s marriage was shortly annulled, and in an effort to free himself from his restrictive family environment, he moved briefly to Białystok and Vienna, eventually settling in Saint Petersburg. The first phase of his life there was marked by financial hardship and illness, but he overcame these difficulties with the help of a gentile Russian family, whose daughter he married. It was under these circumstances that he converted to Christianity—a decision that continually tormented and embarrassed him greatly, even though he never repudiated it in practice. Paradoxically, it was his conversion to Christianity that was responsible for the strengthening of his national Jewish identity. He retained fond recollections of Jewish experiences and traditions, so much so that toward the end of his life he described himself as one of the anusim (forced converts).
title: Shapiro, Konstantin Abba
alternative label: Konstantin Abba Shapiro
related: Białystok
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Conversion
related: Dolitzki, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Fichmann, Ya‘akov
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Haskalah
related: Hrodna
related: Mane, Mordekhai Tsevi
related: Photography
related: Hebrew Poetry (Poetry)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Satire
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul

Shpanyer Arbet
described at: Shpanyer Arbet
has abstract: The decorative work known as shpanyer arbet has been translated as both “spun work,” derived from the Yiddish word shpinen, and as “Spanish work.” The latter fancifully implies a connection between shpanyer arbet and the craft of lace making incorporating silver and gold threads practiced by Jews of Mallorca, Barcelona, and Toledo in fifteenth-century Spain. Shpanyer arbet is similar to nineteenth-century East European passementerie and bobbin lace, from which it is most likely derived.
title: Shpanyer Arbet
alternative label: Shpanyer arbet
alternative label: shpanyer arbet
related: Belz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Berdychiv
related: Brody
related: Galicia
related: Gottlieb, Maurycy
related: Kaufmann, Izidor
related: L’viv
related: Moldavia
related: Passover
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sabbath
related: Ukraine

Singer, Bernard
described at: Singer Bernard
has abstract: (1893–1966), Polish journalist and parliamentary correspondent. Bernard Singer (who reversed the letters of his name to form the pseudonym Regnis) came from a middle-class, Polonized family and graduated in 1910 from the Kronenberg Commercial High School in Warsaw. He then studied Polish literature and history at the Towarzystwo Kursów Naukowych (Society of Academic Courses) and the Wolna Wszechnica Polska (Free Polish University) in Warsaw.
title: Singer, Bernard
alternative label: Bernard Singer
related: Łódź
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Folkists
related: Haynt
related: Latvia
related: Nasz Przegląd
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Slutskii, Boris Abramovich
described at: Slutskii Boris Abramovich
has abstract: (1919–1986), Russian poet. Boris Slutskii spent his childhood and youth in Kharkov. His serious early interests in literature, art, and history led him to attend the Moscow Institute of Law (1937) and then, on the recommendation of the well-known poet Pavel Antokol’skii (1896–1978), the Gorky Institute of Literature (1938). Slutskii’s studies at both places ended with the Nazi invasion of June 1941, when he volunteered for the front. A recipient of four battlefield medals, he was demobilized in 1946 and spent time in treatment for wounds and shell shock. Because of his talent and civic frankness, he became an unofficial leader of young poets. They looked to him both for advice about their craft and about living ethically in a totalitarian state.
title: Slutskii, Boris Abramovich
alternative label: Boris Slutskii
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Brodsky, Joseph
related: Ehrenburg, Ilya Grigor’evich
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Khar’kiv
related: Moscow
related: Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shtetl

Sokhachev Hasidic Dynasty
described at: Sokhachev Hasidic Dynasty
has abstract: One of the major schools of Hasidism in Poland. Its founder, Avraham Bornstein (1839–1910) was a leading intellectual figure of Polish Hasidism. He married the daughter of Menaḥem Mendel of Kotsk (Kock; 1787–1859), who became his spiritual guide and mentor. Four years after Menaḥem Mendel’s death, Bornstein accepted his first rabbinical position, serving first in several communities until he settled in Sokhachev (Yid., more properly Sokhechev; Pol., Sochaczew) in 1883, where he remained for the rest of his life.
title: Sokhachev Hasidic Dynasty
alternative label: Sokhachev
alternative label: Sokhachever
related: Łódź
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Land of Israel
related: Menaḥem Mendel of Kotsk
related: Passover
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sabbath
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Solieli, Menaḥem
described at: Solieli Menahem
has abstract: (1883–1957), political figure, Zionist leader, and biblical scholar. Born in Kovno to a distinguished and wealthy family, Menaḥem Solieli (Max Soloveichik) studied at the university in Saint Petersburg and continued his education at various institutions of higher learning in Germany. His particular interest was in the biblical period. In 1904, in Saint Petersburg, he was among the founders of the Russian-language Zionist journal Evreiskaia zhizn (Jewish Life).
title: Solieli, Menaḥem
alternative label: Max Solieli
alternative label: Menaḥem Solieli
related: Kaunas
related: Lithuania
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Weizmann, Chaim
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Steinberg Brothers
described at: Steinberg Brothers
has abstract: Russian intellectual figures, active in literature and politics. Yitskhok Nakhmen Steinberg (1888–1957) was a political activist and public intellectual. His brother Aron (1891–1975) was a Russian and Yiddish writer and essayist. The Steinberg brothers were born in Dvinsk (now Daugavpils, Latvia) into an educated, religious, and wealthy merchant family. Their mother was a sister of the Yiddish critic Isidor Eliashev, also known as Bal-Makhshoves.
title: Steinberg Brothers
alternative label: Aron Steinberg
alternative label: Yitskhok Nakhmen Steinberg
related: Bal-Makhshoves
related: Daugavpils
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Latvia
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Vilnius
related: YIVO
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Stratin Hasidic Dynasty
described at: Stratin Hasidic Dynasty
has abstract: Line of Hasidic leaders, active in eastern Galicia from the 1820s until the Holocaust. Some of the dynasty’s offshoots reached Israel, the United States, and Canada. The founder, Yehudah Tsevi Brandwein (ca. 1780–1844), a ritual slaughterer from the village of Stratin, succeeded his teacher, Uri of Strelisk (1757–1826), and was considered to be a leading tsadik of his time. Brandwein’s name appears in a list of prominent tsadikim appended to a report on the Hasidic movement in Galicia, written in 1838 by Lemberg’s chief of police. After Brandwein’s death, most of his Hasidim followed his eldest son, Avraham (ca. 1805–1865), who succeeded him in Stratin; a minority preferred another son, Eli‘ezer (ca. 1810–1865), who established a court at Azipolia.
title: Stratin Hasidic Dynasty
alternative label: Stratin
alternative label: Stratin Hasidic dynasty
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Ivano-Frankivs’k
related: Land of Israel
related: L’viv
related: Ruzhin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Sandz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Uri ben Pinḥas of Strelisk

Szabad, Tsemaḥ
described at: Szabad Tsemah
has abstract: (1864–1935), physician and public figure. Tsemaḥ (Yid., Tsemakh) Szabad was born in Vilna and educated in the traditional Jewish system and in a Russian secondary school. In 1881, he moved to Moscow, completing his medical studies at Moscow University in 1889. Five years later, Szabad returned to Vilna and worked as a physician at the local hospital. Because of his involvement in the 1905 Revolution, he was forced to leave Vilna for several years. During World War I, he provided care and support to Jews living in the battle zones.
title: Szabad, Tsemaḥ
alternative label: Tsemaḥ Szabad
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Folkists
related: Lithuania
related: Moscow
related: ORT
related: OZE
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Vilnius
related: World War I
related: YIVO

Szép, Ernő
described at: Szep Erno
has abstract: (1884–1953), poet, novelist, playwright, and journalist. In a letter written to fellow writer Gyula Krúdy, the young Ernő Szép lamented: “Why did I have to be poor and Jewish?” The son of a schoolteacher and one of nine children, Szép was born in the multiethnic town of Huszt in the Subcarpathian region, now part of Ukraine, which had a sizable, mostly Orthodox Jewish population. Szép was one of a number of Hungarians of humble Jewish origin who by the early years of the twentieth century had established themselves as poets, journalists, and artists in the burgeoning capital city of Budapest.
title: Szép, Ernő
alternative label: Ernő Szép
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Subcarpathian Rus’
related: Ukraine

Tairov, Aleksandr Iakovlevich
described at: Tairov Aleksandr Iakovlevich
has abstract: (1885–1950), theater director, founder of the Kamernyi Theater in Moscow. Aleksandr Tairov (originally Kornblit) was born into a teacher’s family in the town of Romny, Poltava province. He gained his first theatrical experience as a gymnasium student in Kiev, where he played in amateur productions. In 1905, while studying at the Kiev University Law Faculty, Tairov began acting on the professional stage. Accepted into the Saint Petersburg troupe of Vera Komissarzhevskaia in 1906, he transferred to Saint Petersburg University.
title: Tairov, Aleksandr Iakovlevich
alternative label: Aleksandr Tairov
related: Anticosmopolitan Campaign
related: Kiev
related: Moscow
related: Riga
related: Saint Petersburg
related: About this Article (Theater)

Târgu Mureş
described at: Targu Mures
has abstract: Town in north central Romania, on the Mureş River. A documented reference to Târgu Mureş (also Tîrgu Mureş; Ger., Neumarkt am Miresch, Marktstadt; Lat., Forum Siculorum; Hun., Maros-Vásárhely, Székelyvásárhely) dates to 1300. The first Jew who was granted the right to settle in the town, in 1828, was Iosif Vojtitz, a goldsmith. By 1830, the town had two Jewish families; and in 1833, there were 16 Jews living there. The census of 1838 recorded the presence of five Jewish families, made up of 36 inhabitants.
title: Târgu Mureş
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Romania
related: Transylvania

Tchernowitz, Shemu’el
described at: Tchernowitz Shemuel
has abstract: (1879–1929), journalist and Zionist activist. Shemu’el Tchernowitz was born in Shebez, in the Vitebsk region of Belorussia. While studying at the Kovno yeshiva, he established a close relationship with Shemu’el Ya‘akov Rabinowitz, a rabbi and one of the first religious Zionists. With Rabinowitz’s patronage, Tchernowitz was able to pursue a career as a public activist by serving as secretary of the regional Zionist unions of Vilna and Vitebsk.
title: Tchernowitz, Shemu’el
alternative label: Shemu’el Tchernowitz
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Belarus
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Bershadsky, Yesha‘yahu
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Gnessin, Uri Nisan
related: Haynt
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Katz, Bentsiyon
related: Kaunas
related: Kiev
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Moment, Der
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Tchernowitz, Ḥayim
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Tushiyah
related: Vilnius
related: Vitsyebsk
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zeman, Ha-
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Criticism and Scholarship (Theater)
described at: Criticism and Scholarship
has abstract: Criticism of and scholarship on Jewish theater in Eastern Europe have largely focused on Yiddish theater. Hebrew productions in Eastern Europe, however, nearly exclusively those of the Habimah company, were extensively reviewed in the contemporary Yiddish and Hebrew press, where they fueled a discourse on the issue of Jewish national rebirth. But histories of Habimah tend to focus on its work in Palestine and Israel. Jewish-themed theater in non-Jewish languages was regularly reviewed in the press, but little attention has been devoted to its history, with some recent exceptions. For Polish theater, there are studies by Michael C. Steinlauf, and critical and historical essays have been collected in a volume edited by Eleanora Udalska; for Russian theater, the work of Viktoriia Levitina is also to be noted.
title: Criticism and Scholarship (Theater)
alternative label: theater critic
alternative label: theater criticism
related: Łódź
related: Appenszlak, Jakub
related: Badkhonim
related: Communism
related: Dobrushin, Yekhezkl
related: Emes, Der
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Gurshteyn, Aron
related: Habimah
related: Haynt
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Iaşi
related: Kanfer, Mojżesz
related: Karlinski, Ber
related: Kipnis, Menakhem
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Literarishe Bleter
related: Litvakov, Moyshe
related: Mayzel, Nakhmen
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Moment, Der
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Nasz Przegląd
related: Nomberg, Hersh Dovid
related: Nusinov, Yitskhok
related: Oyslender, Nokhem
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Polish State Yiddish Theater
related: Pryłucki, Noah
related: Purim-shpil
related: Romania
related: Romanian State Yiddish Theater
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Schiper, Ignacy
related: Shatzky, Yankev
related: Shmeruk, Khone
related: Sovetish Heymland
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vayter, A.
related: Vilner Trupe
related: Warsaw
related: Warsaw Yiddish Art Theater
related: Weichert, Michał
related: Yung-teater
related: Zylbercweig, Zalmen

Troki, Yitsḥak ben Avraham
described at: Troki Yitshak ben Avraham
has abstract: (1533–1594; according to others: 1525–1586), Karaite scholar who was born and lived in the Lithuanian town of Trakai. Yitsḥak ben Avraham wrote several compositions on Karaite ritual law (a collection of responsa on ritual slaughter is attributed to him), composed versed prayers, served as a dayan (judge) for both the Karaite and Rabbinite Jewish communities of Trakai, and served for a year as secretary to the Karaite Council of Lithuania.
title: Troki, Yitsḥak ben Avraham
alternative label: Yitsḥak ben Avraham Troki
related: Karaites
related: Lithuania
related: Trakai

Tsadok ha-Kohen of Lublin
described at: Tsadok ha-Kohen of Lublin
has abstract: (1823–1900), Hasidic master. Born in Kreuzberg, Courland, to a Latvian and Lithuanian family related to the Gaon of Vilna, Tsadok ha-Kohen (Zadok Rabinowicz) showed great promise as a child, and was married early into a wealthy family, facilitating his continued study. After a few years of marriage, however, he sought a divorce because of rumors about his wife. He eventually became a follower of Mordekhai Yosef Leiner of Izhbits. In 1888, following the death of Tsadok ha-Kohen’s friend and colleague Leibele Eger—who was, similarly, a disciple of Mordekhai Yosef and who had been a rebbe in Lublin continuing the traditions of Izhbits Hasidism—Tsadok ha-Kohen inherited his friend’s position.
title: Tsadok ha-Kohen of Lublin
related: Courland
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Izhbits-Radzin Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Naḥman of Bratslav
related: Shneur Zalman of Liady
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el

Tsevi Elimelekh of Dinov
described at: Tsevi Elimelekh of Dinov
has abstract: (1785–1841), Hasidic leader. A scholar and prolific author, Tsevi Elimelekh (Shapira or Spira) of Dinov (Dynów) was among the outstanding leaders of Galician and Hungarian Hasidism and was known for his staunch opposition to all modernizing trends. He is sometimes referred to as the Bene Yisakhar, after the title of one of his most important books. He was named after his mother’s uncle, Elimelekh of Lizhensk, and was the grandson of Shimshon ben Pesaḥ of Ostropolye. Tsevi Hirsh of Zhidachov, Naftali Horowitz of Ropshits, and Tsevi Elimelekh were seen as the successors to, respectively, Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz (the Seer of Lublin), Menaḥem Mendel of Rimanov, and Yisra’el of Kozhenits. Relations among the three heirs were marked by controversy.
title: Tsevi Elimelekh of Dinov
related: Elimelekh of Lizhensk
related: Galicia
related: Geese
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Menaḥem Mendel of Rimanov
related: Mukacheve
related: Munkatsh Hasidic Dynasty
related: Ropshits-Dzikov Hasidic Dynasty
related: Shimshon ben Pesaḥ of Ostropolye
related: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz
related: Yisra’el ben Shabetai of Kozhenits
related: Zhidachov-Komarno Hasidic Dynasty

Újvári, Péter
described at: Ujvari Peter
has abstract: (1869–1931), writer, journalist, and editor. With his multifaceted ties to the religious communities of Pozsony (Bratislava) and Galicia, and his isolated Jewish upbringing, Péter Újvári was fundamentally different from the assimilated Jews whose trials and tribulations are well recorded by Hungarian Jewish and even non-Jewish writers. Újvári was the first Hungarian Jewish writer who wanted to write specifically Jewish prose in Hungarian. While he had few admirers, those who did appreciate his work thought of him as the Hungarian Sholem Aleichem or Sholem Asch, or even as the Jewish equivalent of the great Hungarian writers Kálmán Mikszáth and Mór Jókai.
title: Újvári, Péter
alternative label: Péter Újvári
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Assimilation
related: Bratislava
related: Cluj
related: Conversion
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Košice
related: Miskolc
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Slovakia
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Ukrainian Literature
described at: Ukrainian Literature
has abstract: Jewish Ukrainian literary creativity was uncommon: East European Jews generally sought acculturation into powerful imperial societies that had great literary traditions, such as Russia or Germany. Nonetheless, some Jews chose to identify with the colonial society of Ukraine even though it was routinely represented not only as powerless, stateless, and oppressed, but also as uncivilized and backward. Most of the Jews who established themselves as Ukrainian writers or expressed sympathy for Ukrainian culture made a conscious anti-imperial choice; indeed, a decision by an East European Jew to integrate into Ukrainian culture was particularly striking because Jews for centuries viewed Ukrainians as perpetrators of anti-Jewish massacres, and Ukrainians perceived Jews as sycophantic servants of the Polish gentry, Russian landlords, or, later, the Bolsheviks.
title: Ukrainian Literature
related: Assimilation
related: Babel, Isaac
related: Babi Yar
related: Celan, Paul
related: Censorship in the USSR (Censorship)
related: Chernivtsi
related: Der Nister
related: Fefer, Itsik
related: Fininberg, Ezra
related: Frug, Shimen Shmuel
related: Jabotinsky, Vladimir
related: Khar’kiv
related: Khashchevatski, Moyshe
related: Kiev
related: Kultur-lige
related: Kvitko, Leyb
related: Lissitzky, El
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Radnóti, Miklós
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Rybak, Yisakhar Ber
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtetl
related: Tyshler, Aleksandr Grigor’evich
related: Ukraine
related: Uman
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Ulinover, Miryem
described at: Ulinover Miryem
has abstract: (1890–1944), Yiddish poet. Miryem Ulinover, originally Manya Hirshbeyn, was born in Łódź. Her father, learned in both Jewish and modern secular culture, was a connoisseur of languages. Her parents divorced in 1905. A childhood visit to her maternal grandfather in the shtetl of Krzepice, near Częstochowa, marked Ulinover’s only recorded experience of the shtetl life that later became the central subject of her poetry. As she reported in an interview, her actual grandmother was a “Jewish aristocrat” and nothing at all like the folkloristic, old-fashioned grandmother in her poems.
title: Ulinover, Miryem
alternative label: Miryem Ulinover
related: Łódź
related: Beys Yankev
related: Frishman, David
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Katzenelson, Yitsḥak
related: Molodowsky, Kadia
related: Yiddish Poetry (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Shatzky, Yankev
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtetl
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Utesov, Leonid Osipovich
described at: Utesov Leonid Osipovich
has abstract: (Lazar’ Iosifovich Vaisbein; 1895–1982), Soviet actor and singer. While attending commercial school, Utesov acted and played violin. Before completing his studies he joined the circus, performing in cabaret theaters in Kremenchug, Kherson, and Odessa. In 1921 Utesov moved to Moscow, where he appeared at the Theater of Revolutionary Satire, the Hermitage Theater, and the Theater of Musical Comedy. In 1922 he began performing in Leningrad at the Palace Theater, the Free Theater, and the Theater of Satire. He was most at home in cabaret theater, popular musical reviews, sketches, and melodramas. He frequently played in shows with Jewish themes, taking the roles of Ioshka the Musician in Osip Dymov’s Pevets svoei pechali (Singer of Grief) and Mendel’ in Mendel’ Marants, based on David Fridman’s novel; he also performed dramatic readings of Isaac Babel’s stories. In 1925, Utesov debuted in the cinema, playing the lead roles in Boris Svetlov’s films Kar’era Spir’ki Shpandyria (The Career of Spir’ka Shpandyr’) and Chuzhie (Strangers).
title: Utesov, Leonid Osipovich
alternative label: Leonid Utesov
related: Anticosmopolitan Campaign
related: Babel, Isaac
related: Cinema
related: Dymov, Osip
related: Kvitko, Leyb
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Russian Theater (Theater)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Vas, István
described at: Vas Istvan
has abstract: (1910–1991), poet, translator, essayist, and memoirist. István Vas’s ancestors were small-town rabbis on his father’s side and well-to-do merchants on his mother’s. His father was an eager first-generation assimilationist who had a checkered career as a businessman and entrepreneur. The young Vas was in some ways a typical second-generation rebel, rejecting his parents’ wholehearted adoption of a conventionally bourgeois lifestyle, their unqualified respect for monetary wealth, their “enlightened” Judaism, and gravitated, politically, to the left and artistically toward the avant-garde movements of the late 1920s.
title: Vas, István
alternative label: István Vas
related: Assimilation
related: Budapest
related: Conversion
related: Kertész, Imre

Ventspils
described at: Ventspils
has abstract: (Ger., Windau), town in northwestern Latvia on the shore of the Baltic Sea. From 1561, Ventspils belonged to the Duchy of Courland (Kurland) and was under the sovereignty of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth until it was annexed to the Russian Empire in 1795. The first Jews came to Ventspils in the second half of the eighteenth century from neighboring localities as well as from Prussia and Lithuania. A burial society and cemetery, however, were not established until 1831. Later a synagogue and a bet midrash were built.
title: Ventspils
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Bund
related: Courland
related: Latvia
related: Lithuania
related: Maccabi Movement
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rubinshteyn, Ruvn
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: World War I
related: Yehoshu‘a ben Aleksander ha-Kohen
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Vohryzek, Viktor
described at: Vohryzek Viktor
has abstract: (1864–1918), physician, writer on ethics and sociology, journalist, translator, and a leading figure in the Czech Jewish Movement. After completing gymnasium, Viktor Vohryzek studied at the faculty of medicine at Prague University, where he was awarded his degree in 1887. In the course of his studies, he was active in Spolek Českých Akademiků Židů (Association of Czech Academic Jews). Following his studies, he moved to Vodňany, where he set up his own medical practice with a specialty in psychology.
title: Vohryzek, Viktor
alternative label: Viktor Vohryzek
related: Assimilation
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Českožidovské Listy
related: Conversion
related: Lederer, Eduard
related: Orthodoxy
related: Prague

Wahl, Sha’ul
described at: Wahl Shaul
has abstract: (d. early 1600s), merchant; legendary king of Poland for a day. Sha’ul Wahl was the son of Shemu’el Yehudah Katzenellenbogen, rabbi of Padua. Sha’ul’s grandfather, Me’ir, commonly known as Maharam (“our teacher, the rabbi Me’ir”) Padua, was born in Hesse-Nassau in the city of Katzenellenbogen, spent his early years at yeshivas in Poland, and moved to Italy. Sha’ul Wahl lived in Brest-Litovsk (Brisk; Brześć nad Bugiem), where he was a large-scale merchant dealing in lumber, salt, and the collection of tariffs and customs duties. For a period of time, he also leased the revenues of the salt mines at Wieliczka, near Kraków, from the Crown. He is best remembered, however, for his association with the widely known legend according to which he was king of Poland for a day.
title: Wahl, Sha’ul
alternative label: Sha’ul Wahl
related: Bałaban, Majer
related: Brest
related: Esterke
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Land of Israel
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prochownik, Abraham

Wehle Family
described at: Wehle Family
has abstract: Followers of Sabbatianism in Prague. The earliest reference to the Wehle family is on the tombstone of Mordekhai bar Yisra’el Wehle (d. 1614), in the Prague Jewish cemetery. The Wehles were among the richest and most prominent Jewish families in Prague. The brothers Efrayim (ca. 1710–1770) and Hersh (d. 1796) engaged in the silk trade and held many important posts in the community. A series of well-arranged marriages cemented the position of the family. Hersh’s son, Aharon Beer (1750–1825), married Esther, the daughter of the leader of Bohemian Jewry, Shim‘on Frankel-Spira; his brother Yonah Beer (1752–1823) married a daughter of the president of the Prague community, Ofner; their sister Rösel married the rich merchant Shim‘on Eger. By the 1770s, the Wehles were the unquestioned secular leaders of Prague Jewry.
title: Wehle Family
alternative label: Wehle
alternative label: Wehle family
related: Conversion
related: Eybeschütz, Yonatan
related: Fleckeles, El‘azar ben David
related: Frankism
related: Landau, Yeḥezkel ben Yehudah
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Sabbatianism

Weidmann, František
described at: Weidmann Frantisek
has abstract: (1910–1944), communal leader. Born in Prague, as a student in secondary school, František Weidmann became a member of Kapper Academic Society, the Czech Jewish student organization. He served as chair of the association from 1930 to 1931 while studying law. In contrast to the leadership of Svaz Čechů-židů (the Union of Czech Jews), which was mostly nationalist and anti-Zionist, Weidmann furthered the cooperation of the Kapper association with Czech-speaking Zionists from the Theodor Herzl Association. Influenced by Jindřich Kohn, the leading philosopher of Czech Jewish integration, Weidmann believed that Jews needed to unite in their fight against antisemitism.
title: Weidmann, František
alternative label: František Weidmann
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Kohn, Jindřich
related: Lederer, Eduard
related: Prague
related: Terezín
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Weisel, Leopold
described at: Weisel Leopold
has abstract: (1804–1873), physician, ethnographer, and writer. Born in 1804 in the Czech city of Přeštice (Prestitz), Leopold Weisel devoted much of his literary career to the recovery of the oral traditions of Bohemian Jews. The son of a traveling cloth merchant, Weisel—whose original name was Joachim Löbl Weisel—spent his youth in Přeštice before moving to Prague to further his education. He lived as a medical student in Prague’s Jewish Town (Cz., Židovské město; Ger., Judenstadt) and supported himself as a private tutor for a number of Jewish families. During the 1830s and 1840s Weisel devoted most of his literary efforts to the collection and dissemination of Jewish folk tales from Prague, a project in which he collaborated with the non-Jewish folklorist Franz Klutschak (1814–1886), publishing some of his earliest efforts alongside those of Klutschak in the journal Panorama des Universums. Weisel was openly conscious of his status as a Jew who was losing contact with the world of traditional Jewish culture and he devoted this part of his career to capturing and preserving the rich folk traditions of the ghetto, which he accomplished by interviewing older residents of the Jewish quarter and recording their stories.
title: Weisel, Leopold
alternative label: Leopold Weisel
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Conversion
related: Pascheles, Wolf
related: Prague

Weiss, Manfréd
described at: Weiss Manfred
has abstract: (1857–1922), Hungarian economist. According to family lore, Manfréd Weiss’s grandfather, Barukh Weiss, had been a simple village artisan. Probably originally from Moravia, the family, which settled in Pest, was relatively prosperous by the time Weiss’s father, Adolf B. Weiss (1807–1877), married. Several relatives made their living trading in produce, and in the 1860s and 1870s the family was involved with the emerging mill industry. Weiss was the sixth and youngest child. He studied at a commercial academy and after a short trip abroad, he joined the family business, immediately changing its profile to a more dynamic and versatile enterprise.
title: Weiss, Manfréd
alternative label: Manfréd Weiss
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Slovakia

Wexler, Max
described at: Wexler Max
has abstract: (1870–1917), socialist activist and journalist. Max Wexler (Wechsler) was born in Iaşi, Romania. He studied philosophy in Brussels and completed his formal education at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the University of Iaşi, where he then worked as a librarian.
title: Wexler, Max
alternative label: Max Wexler
related: Ghelerter, Litman
related: Iaşi
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)

Winter, Lev
described at: Winter Lev
has abstract: (1876–1935), Czech Social Democratic politician, economist, theorist of socialism and social policy, commentator, and the author of numerous studies on economics and social law. After completing gymnasium, Lev Winter studied law and economics at Prague University. He was briefly active in Spolek Českých Akademiků Židů (Association of Czech Academic Jews) and then was a leading representative to the Kruhu Mladých Socialistických Intelektuálů (Circle of Young Socialist Intellectuals), where he worked with Alfred Meissner. Together the two also founded the socialist review Akademie.
title: Winter, Lev
alternative label: Lev Winter
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Prague

Wittlin, Józef
described at: Wittlin Jozef
has abstract: (1896–1976), poet, prose writer, essayist, and translator. After serving in the army during World War I, Józef Wittlin studied philosophy and linguistics in Vienna and in Lwów. A follower of expressionism in 1919–1920, he later joined Skamander, a moderately innovative group of poets headed by Julian Tuwim and Antoni Słonimski, and the circle of writers associated with the weekly Wiadomości Literackie.
title: Wittlin, Józef
alternative label: Józef Wittlin
related: Appenszlak, Jakub
related: Grydzewski, Mieczysław
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Roth, Joseph
related: Słonimski, Antoni
related: Tuwim, Julian
related: Wiadomości Literackie

Wodianer Family
described at: Wodianer Family
has abstract: Economic and political figures, active in nineteenth-century Hungary. Shemu’el (Sámuel) Wodianer, the first member of the family known to us, migrated from Bohemia to southern Hungary where his son Philip (Shraga Feivish, Feivish Ehprevitz, Oporovec; d. 1820) was born in Veprovác, Bács county (now Kruščić, Serbia) in the second half of the eighteenth century. Feivish Ehprevitz moved to Szeged with several siblings once the city opened its gates to Jews in 1783. In a short time, he was the wealthiest Jewish resident, trading in agricultural produce and also maintaining an apartment and a warehouse in Pest. Active in the Szeged Jewish community, he served as its head in 1808, 1813, and 1815. He donated the land for its synagogue in 1792 and later bequeathed silver ceremonial objects to the burial society. He may have had an advanced traditional education since he was addressed by the honorific ḥaver.
title: Wodianer Family
alternative label: Sámuel Wodianer
alternative label: Wodianer
related: Bacher, Vilmos
related: Banking
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Budapest
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: Trade
related: Transportation
related: Ullmann Family
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Yaknehoz
described at: Yaknehoz
has abstract: (Pseudonym of Yeshaye Nisn Hakoyen Goldberg; 1858–1927), Yiddish author. Born to a poor family in the village of Stolbovshchine (on the Neman River in Minsk province), Yaknehoz came from a distinguished lineage: his father, Yekusiel Zalmen, was a grandson of the noted Galician rabbi El‘azar ha-Kalir. Yaknehoz received a traditional Jewish education in Kapulie and Minsk, and, having achieved particular expertise in the Bible, began composing Hebrew poetry under its influence. He also developed a reputation as an inspector of Torah scrolls; still a yeshiva student, he traveled throughout the Minsk region, checking and correcting them. During this period he met the writer and critic Shemu’el Leib Zitron, at whose suggestion he began writing feuilletons in Hebrew and Yiddish in 1878 for periodicals such as Ha-Kol and Kol le-‘am.
title: Yaknehoz
related: Fraynd, Der
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haynt
related: Kiev
related: Lithuania
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Minsk
related: Misnagdim
related: Moment, Der
related: Moscow
related: Passover
related: Hebrew Poetry (Poetry)
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: Sabbath
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtetl
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Yom, Ha-
related: Yud, Der
related: Zitron, Shemu’el Leib

Yehoshu‘a Heshel of Kraków
described at: Yehoshua Heshel of Krakow
has abstract: (1578–1648), halakhist and rabbi. Born in Vilna, Yehoshu‘a Heshel of Kraków served as rabbi in Grodno, Tiktin, Przemyśl, and Lwów between 1634 and 1639. In 1640, he replaced Natan Shapira for 12 months as head of the yeshiva in Kraków; he then served in this role in an honorary capacity. Among his outstanding students were Shabetai ben Me’ir ha-Kohen, Gershon Ulif Ashkenazi, and Menaḥem Mendel Auerbach.
title: Yehoshu‘a Heshel of Kraków
alternative label: Yehoshu‘a Heshel ben Yosef
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Przemyśl
related: Shabetai ben Me’ir ha-Kohen
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Yudishe Togblat, Dos
described at: Yudishe Togblat Dos
has abstract: Orthodox daily published in Warsaw from 20 September 1929 until World War II. Dos yudishe togblat (The Jewish Daily) succeeded where previous attempts to publish an Orthodox daily in Poland had failed. One reason for the earlier failures was the unwillingness of a part of the Orthodox population, especially Hasidim, to read newspapers. The situation changed when the Gerer rebbe, Avraham Mordekhai Alter (1866–1948), accepted the concept of an Orthodox paper to counteract the influence of the Jewish secular and non-Jewish press on Jewish readers.
title: Yudishe Togblat, Dos
alternative label: Dos yudishe togblat
alternative label: Yudishe togblat
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Birnbaum, Nathan
related: Emyot, Yisroel
related: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Warsaw

Yustman, Moyshe Bunem
described at: Yustman Moyshe Bunem
has abstract: (1889–1942), journalist, wit, and public affairs writer. Born in Warsaw to a Hasidic family, Moyshe Bunem Yustman (known also as Ba‘al Ye’ush [master of despair]) identified with Orthodox Jewry all his life. He began writing at an early age; his first articles were published in Hebrew in David Frishman’s paper Ha-Boker (1906). He also adopted the pen names B. Yeushzon (Son of Despair), Itshele, and Lorente.
title: Yustman, Moyshe Bunem
alternative label: Moyshe Bunem Yustman
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Bund
related: Dybbuk, The
related: Frishman, David
related: Haynt
related: Land of Israel
related: Moment, Der
related: Orthodoxy
related: Parody
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Shefner, Borekh
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Zabłudów
described at: Zabłudow
has abstract: (Yid., Zabludove), town on the Meletina River (in the Western Bug basin) in the Białystok district and province of Poland. Zabłudów is first mentioned in archival sources in 1525. From 1569, the town was in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; from 1795 it was belonged to East Prussia; from 1807 to 1918 it was in the Russian Empire.
title: Zabłudów
related: Belarus
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Białystok
related: Councils
related: East Prussia
related: Guilds
related: Hrodna
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Słonimski, Ḥayim Zelig
related: Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Ha-
related: Synagogue Architecture
related: Talmud Study
related: Trade
related: Tykocin
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Zel’dovich, Iakov Borisovich
described at: Zeldovich Iakov Borisovich
has abstract: (1914–1987), theoretical physicist, astrophysicist, physical chemist, and member of the USSR Academy of Sciences from 1958. Born in Minsk, Zel’dovich was raised in an educated family: his father was a lawyer and his mother a translator and member of the Writers Union. In May 1931 Zel’dovich was hired as a laboratory assistant at the Institute of Chemical Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences; he would maintain his ties with this institution for the rest of his life.
title: Zel’dovich, Iakov Borisovich
alternative label: Iakov Borisovich Zel’dovich
alternative label: Iakov Zel’dovich
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Zhemchuzhina, Polina Semenovna
described at: Zhemchuzhina Polina Semenovna
has abstract: (1897–1970), Soviet public figure and wife of Viacheslav Molotov. Born Perl Karpovskaia, Polina Zhemchuzhina was the daughter of a tailor from Ekaterinoslav province. From 1911 until 1917, she worked in a cigarette factory and as a cashier in a pharmacy in Ekaterinoslav.
title: Zhemchuzhina, Polina Semenovna
alternative label: Polina Zhemchuzhina
related: Communist Party of the Soviet Union
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Doctors’ Plot
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Moscow
related: Ukraine

Zil’ber, Lev Aleksandrovich
described at: Zilber Lev Aleksandrovich
has abstract: (1894–1966), immunologist, virologist, and cancer researcher. Lev Aleksandrovich (Abelevich) Zil’ber was born in Novgorod province to the family of a military musician. He spent his childhood and youth in Pskov (northwest Russia). In 1912, he entered the natural science department of Saint Petersburg University, transferring three years later to the medical faculty of Moscow University, from which he graduated in 1919.
title: Zil’ber, Lev Aleksandrovich
alternative label: Lev Zil’ber
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Zjednoczenie
described at: Zjednoczenie
has abstract: Assimilationist student group in Poland. Organized activity of groups of “assimilationist” Jewish students and academicians had taken place in the major cities of Congress Poland and Galicia as far back as the beginning of the twentieth century. The members of these groups called themselves “Polish youth of Jewish origin.” One such group, called Zjednoczenie (Union), operated in Lwów, and a similar group called Żagiew (Torch) operated in Warsaw. Both groups maintained that the patriotism of Polish Jews had been undermined by the rise of Zionism. They explained that they would attempt to resolve the “Jewish problem” by seeking equal political rights for Jews and through economic changes, and voiced their objection to the extensive use of Yiddish as well as to Hebrew.
title: Zjednoczenie
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Assimilation
related: Galicia
related: Land of Israel
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

America
described at: America
has abstract: The United States of America became home to the largest Jewish community of the Diaspora because one-third of the Jews of Europe emigrated there over the course of the nineteenth and the first quarter of the twentieth century. The transformation of a peripheral outpost of Jewish civilization into its major hub outside the boundaries of Israel was a long-term process that was keenly observed as it took shape. Still, the catastrophic finality with which history bestowed that distinction on American Jewry, after the Holocaust, cast new light on its importance and on the participation of European Jewry in its creation—with East European Jewry contributing by far the greatest share. All the while, Old World Jewry had, in turn, been affected by the growing Jewish presence in the New World and by the rise of the United States as a world power. The orbit of Jewish life in Eastern Europe was partly shaped by the magnetic force exerted by America.
title: America
narrower: Information and Image: 1800–1881
narrower: The Great Migration: 1881–1921
narrower: The Soviet and Post-Soviet Period: 1917–2000
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Agriculture
related: Alter, Wiktor
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Bund
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Crimea
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Dik, Ayzik Meyer
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Erlich, Henryk
related: Fefer, Itsik
related: Folk Songs
related: Galicia
related: Gintsburg, Mordekhai Aharon
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Iaşi
related: Jackson-Vanik Amendment
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Land of Israel
related: Lefin, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Levin, Yehudah Leib (poet)
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Lipkin, Yisra’el ben Ze’ev Volf
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Meisel, Eliyahu Ḥayim
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Mohilewer, Shemu’el
related: Moscow
related: ORT
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Philanthropy
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: Refuseniks
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shklov
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shomer
related: Slánský Trial
related: Smolenskin, Perets
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: World War I
related: YIVO
related: Yisra’el Me’ir ha-Kohen

Anti-Zionist Committee of The Soviet Public
described at: Anti-Zionist Committee of The Soviet Public
has abstract: Founded as one of many public groups mobilized to further Soviet policy aims, the Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public (Anti-Sionisticheskii Komitet Sovetskoi Obshchestvennosti; AKSO) was part of a broader program intended to diminish the motivation of Soviet Jews to apply for emigration. In accordance with a decision of 29 March 1983 by the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party (CC CPSU), the committee’s budget was to be provided by the Soviet Peace Foundation, and the technical staff was to operate within the framework of the joint administration of Soviet social organizations. AKSO activities were supervised jointly by representatives of the Department of Propaganda and by the KGB.
title: Anti-Zionist Committee of The Soviet Public
alternative label: Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public
alternative label: anti-Zionist campaign
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Artels
described at: Artels
has abstract: Voluntary cooperative associations of craftsmen or peasants in the Soviet Union. Established on the basis of charters, artels obtained raw materials, produced finished or (less commonly) unfinished products, and sold them. Artels began to extend significantly after the October Revolution and reached their zenith in the late 1920s and 1930s. Both artisanal and agricultural cooperatives worked from the same economic principles, raising basic capital through membership fees and realizing profit through communal labor.
title: Artels
alternative label: artel
alternative label: artels
related: Chemeriskii, Aleksandr
related: Evsektsiia
related: Lekert, Hirsh
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Sabbath
related: Society for the Settlement of Jewish Toilers on the Land
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Ashkenazi, Gershon
described at: Ashkenazi Gershon
has abstract: (1618–1693), rabbinical scholar and religious authority. Rabbi Gershon (Ulif) Ashkenazi was one of the greatest poskim (religious authorities or legal deciders) of his age. He was born in Ulf, Germany, studied under Rabbi Me’ir Schiff (Maharam Schiff) and subsequently moved to Poland to study with the leading religious scholars of Kraków: Yo’el Sirkes (known as Baḥ), Yehoshu‘a ben Yosef, and probably Yehoshu‘a Heshel as well. He was called “Ashkenazi” (Ashkenaz meaning, in its narrower sense, Germany) because of his place of origin.
title: Ashkenazi, Gershon
alternative label: Gershon (Ulif) Ashkenazi
alternative label: Gershon Ashkenazi
related: Ashkenaz
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Krochmal, Menaḥem Mendel ben Avraham
related: Mikulov
related: Mysticism and Mystical Literature
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prostějov
related: Sabbatianism
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Sirkes, Yo’el
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Auschwitz Protocols
described at: Auschwitz Protocols
has abstract: Document describing killings of Jews in Auschwitz-Birkenau, prepared in late April 1944 by Oskar Krasniansky of the Slovakian Ústredňa Židov (Jewish Central Organization; UZ, an organization that functioned as a Judenrat) on the basis of testimony from two Jews, Rudolf Vrba (Walter Rosenberg) and Alfred Wetzler, who had escaped from the camp three weeks earlier. An expanded version was composed in June 1944 following receipt of additional information from two other escapees, Czesław Mordowicz and Arnošt Rosin. The protocols detailed the operation of the killing center, offered a (high) estimate of the number of Jews killed to date, and warned of preparations for gassing 800,000 expected Jewish deportees from Hungary. The expanded version told of the killing of Greek Jews and of the deaths of the first Hungarian arrivals.
title: Auschwitz Protocols
alternative label: Auschwitz protocols
related: Bratislava
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Kasztner, Rezső
related: Slovakia
related: Weissmandel, Mikha’el Dov Ber

Ba-Derekh
described at: Ba-Derekh
has abstract: Hebrew-language newspaper published in Poland between 1932 and 1937. Ba-Derekh (On the Way) represented the last in a series of attempts by the Polish Zionist Organization to establish a daily newspaper in Hebrew. Efforts to do so had started in 1919 with plans for the renewed publication of the long-running Ha-Tsefirah (The Morning/The Dawn), and continued with the founding of Ha-Yom (Today; 1925–1926) and with other failed attempts at once again resuming publication of Ha-Tsefirah (1926–1928; 1931).
title: Ba-Derekh
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Grünbaum, Yitsḥak
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Tarbut
related: Thon, Ozjasz
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Weinberg, Tsevi Zevulun
related: Yom, Ha-
related: Zeitlin Family
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Babad, Yosef
described at: Babad Yosef
has abstract: (1801–1874), Galician rabbinical scholar. Yosef Babad was born in Tarnopol to a family of rabbinical scholars; from his earliest years he devoted his life to the study of the Torah. As an adult, he was introduced to Hasidism and regarded Naftali of Roptshits (Ropczyce) as his spiritual mentor. Of his four marriages, two were to women from Hasidic dynasties: after his first wife died at an early age, he married the sister of Ḥayim Halberstam of Sandz (Nowy Sacz); his third marriage was to the daughter of Rabbi David Hager of Zabludove (Zabludów). Almost nothing is known about his fourth marriage.
title: Babad, Yosef
alternative label: Yosef Babad
alternative label: Yosef ben Mosheh Babad
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Sandz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Ternopil’
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Bagritskii, Eduard Georgievich
described at: Bagritskii Eduard Georgievich
has abstract: (1885–1934), Russian poet and translator. Bagritskii, whose nom-de-plume was derived from the Russian for crimson, was born Eduard Godelevich Dziubin, to an Odessan family in which Judaic traditions were respected, but the lifestyle was that of secularized petit-bourgeoisie. He began publishing in 1913, contributing to literary publications in Odessa between 1915 and 1917. After the February 1917 Revolution, Bagritskii served briefly in law enforcement within the Provisional Government and joined the Red Army in 1919. In 1920 he married Lidiia Suok and had one son, the poet Vsevolod Bagritskii (1922–1942). In 1925 he moved to Moscow, and by the time of his death in 1934 was widely admired. The publication of his collection Iugo-Zapad (South-West; 1928) was followed by, among other books, Duma pro Opanasa (The Lay of Opanas), Izbrannye stikhi (Selected Poems), Pobediteli (Victors), Posledniaia noch’ (The Last Night), all published in 1932, and other works. In his daily life, Bagritskii never shed the skin of an Odessan Jew from Market Street. He retained a strong bond with Jewish culture, splendidly translating the Yiddish poetry of Itsik Fefer and Perets Markish. At the time of his death, he was hailed second only to Vladimir Mayakovsky and given an official funeral.
title: Bagritskii, Eduard Georgievich
alternative label: Eduard Bagritskii
related: Assimilation
related: Babel, Isaac
related: Ehrenburg, Ilya Grigor’evich
related: Fefer, Itsik
related: Markish, Perets
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Ballagi, Mór
described at: Ballagi Mor
has abstract: (1815–1891), advocate of Magyarization, Protestant theologian, and Hungarian linguist. Born Moritz (Mordekhai) Bloch, Mór Ballagi’s first memories were of his father, a tenant farmer, imprisoned a year for debt, and of his mother searching for wild berries in the forest to feed the family. At an early age, Bloch learned to fend for his livelihood, sleeping in synagogues and living off charity. He studied at yeshivas in Nagyvárad (1829) and Pápa (1831), and only while working as a tutor at Mór and later Surány when he was 20 was he first exposed to Greek and Latin classics. In time, he also taught himself Hungarian, and studied classics, math, and history at the Pápa secondary school.
title: Ballagi, Mór
alternative label: Moritz Bloch (Ballagi)
alternative label: Mór Ballagi
related: Bratislava
related: Conversion
related: Goldziher, Ignác
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Löw, Leopold
related: Natonek, Yosef
related: Oradea
related: Pápa
related: Schwab, Löw

Bălţi
described at: Balti
has abstract: Second-largest city of the Republic of Moldova. Bălți (Yid., Belts; Rus., Beltsy) was within Romania’s borders from 1918 until 1944; after World War II, the region in which it is located became part of the Moldavian SSR. Famous personalities from Bălți have included the artist Boris Anisfeld; the Hebrew writer Ya‘akov Fichmann; Yiddish authors Zelik Berdichever, Boris Sandler, and Michael Felsenbaum; and Lia van Leer, founder of the Jerusalem Cinematheque.
title: Bălţi
alternative label: Bălți
related: Agriculture
related: Fichmann, Ya‘akov
related: Moldova
related: Pogroms
related: Romania
related: Transnistria

Bánóczi, József
described at: Banoczi Jozsef
has abstract: (1849–1926), philosopher, literary scholar, linguist, educator, and editor. Born in Szentgál, Hungary, József Bánóczi studied at the Piarist Gymnasium in Veszprém and at the Royal Catholic Gymnasium in Pest, where he befriended Bernát Alexander. Abraham Hochmuth, the rabbi of Veszprém, tried to persuade Bánóczi to enter the rabbinate, but he chose a career in education instead. In 1868, he enrolled at the University of Pest, and having received a fellowship with Alexander, went on a six-year-long study trip abroad. They took courses at universities in Vienna, Berlin, Göttingen, Leipzig, and Paris, mostly in philosophy and philology. In 1875, Bánóczi defended his doctoral dissertation at the University of Leipzig, on Kant’s theory of space and time.
title: Bánóczi, József
alternative label: József Bánóczi
related: Alexander, Bernát
related: Bacher, Vilmos
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Magyar Zsidó Szemle
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Seminary

Bârlad
described at: Barlad
has abstract: City in the central Moldavian region of Romania on the banks of the Bârlad River. Jewish settlement in Bârlad (Bîrlad) is documented from the end of the seventeenth century, and the oldest tombstone in the Jewish cemetery is dated 1728. A Jewish staroste (head of the Jewish guild) was mentioned as early as 1738. Jews in Bârlad were employed in local commerce, grain dealing, and crafts.
title: Bârlad
related: Aderca, Felix
related: Buhuşi
related: Crafts
related: Moldavia
related: About this Article (Population and Migration)
related: Romania
related: Romanian Literature

Barukh ben Yeḥi’el of Mezhbizh
described at: Barukh ben Yehiel of Mezhbizh
has abstract: (ca. 1756–1811), Hasidic leader in Podolia. Barukh was the younger son of Odl, the Ba‘al Shem Tov’s daughter, and the brother of Mosheh Ḥayim Efrayim of Sudilkov. As a child Barukh knew his famous grandfather, and after the Ba‘al Shem Tov’s death Barukh continued to be raised among the Hasidic leader’s most important disciples, among them Pinḥas of Korets, Ya‘akov Yosef of Polnoye, and Dov Ber, the Magid of Mezritsh.
title: Barukh ben Yeḥi’el of Mezhbizh
alternative label: Barukh of Mezhbizh
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Land of Israel
related: Levi Yitsḥak of Barditshev
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Medzhibizh
related: Menaḥem Mendel of Vitebsk
related: Mosheh Ḥayim Efrayim of Sudilkov
related: Naḥman of Bratslav
related: Ostropolyer, Hershele
related: Shapira Family
related: Shneur Zalman of Liady
related: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz
related: Ya‘akov Yosef of Polnoye

Belarusian Literature
described at: Belarusian Literature
has abstract: Translations of books of the Hebrew Bible (most frequently Psalms) and other religious texts into the Old Belarusian language and into a Belarusian version of Old Church Slavonic marked the beginnings of Jewish participation in Belarusian literature. Several of the extant manuscripts of those texts date from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century (Vilna Codices 52 and 262, containing the Five Scrolls, Daniel, Job, Proverbs, and Psalms) and are considered to be the projects of local Jewish translators who worked directly from Hebrew on behalf of fellow Jews or Judaizers, or were commissioned by a Christian amateur.
title: Belarusian Literature
narrower: BELARUSIAN WRITERS
related: Belarus
related: Bronshteyn, Yashe
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Judaizers
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Minsk
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Polish Literature
related: Russian Literature
related: Shtetl
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Belmont, Leo
described at: Belmont Leo
has abstract: (1865–1941), writer, poet, and translator. Leo Belmont (Leopold Blumental) graduated from the University of Warsaw and practiced law in Saint Petersburg and Warsaw. A well-known publicist before World War I, he was harassed by tsarist authorities for his radical views. He wrote for the Polish and Polish Jewish press, cooperated with the assimilationist weekly Izraelita, and edited the democratic weekly Wolne Słowo (Free Word; 1907–1913). He also wrote film reviews and screenplays. Belmont was a founder of the Polish Esperanto Society, and he translated extensively into that language and strove to popularize it.
title: Belmont, Leo
alternative label: Leo Belmont
related: Assimilation
related: Izraelita
related: Maimon, Salomon
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Berekhyah Berakh ben Yitsḥak
described at: Berekhyah Berakh ben Yitshak
has abstract: (d. after 1665), prominent preacher in Kraków. Berekhyah Berakh ben Yitsḥak was a student of the noted kabbalist Natan Spira; Berakh’s wife’s brother was the son-in-law of the celebrated Talmudist and communal leader Yom Tov Lipmann Heller.
title: Berekhyah Berakh ben Yitsḥak
alternative label: Berekhyah Berakh
related: Cantors
related: Hannover, Natan Note
related: Heller, Yom Tov Lipmann
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Liturgy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Preachers and Preaching
related: Sabbatianism
related: Singer, Isaac Bashevis
related: Spira, Natan Note ben Shelomoh

Bergson Family
described at: Bergson Family
has abstract: Influential Warsaw family of industrialists and financiers. Related to other aristocratic Jewish dynasties, including the Bersohn, Heryng, and Toeplitz families, the Bergson family originated with Shmul Zbytkower, one of whose sons, Ber (1764–1822), was also known as Berek Sonnenberg. Berek’s children subsequently adopted the surname Berekson (later Bergson) from their father’s first name.
title: Bergson Family
alternative label: Bergson
related: Banking
related: Bergson, Temerl
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Warsaw
related: Zbytkower, Shmul

Bergson, Temerl
described at: Bergson Temerl
has abstract: (surname also Sonnenberg or Berekson; d. 1830), patron of Polish Hasidism and benefactor of Warsaw Jewry. Little is known about Temerl’s background and early years, although her father, Avraham of Opoczno, is described as “learned and extremely wealthy.” She was briefly married and widowed at a young age to a merchant from Warsaw with whom she had a son. In 1787 she married Berek Sonnenberg, the son of the Warsaw plutocrat Shmul Zbytkower (Berek adopted the surname Sonnenberg under Prussian rule); they had five children. Upon her second husband’s death in 1822, Temerl oversaw his business enterprises, including a salt company and a bank. She won permission to own property outside the ghetto and was only the third Polish Jew to receive such land ownership rights.
title: Bergson, Temerl
alternative label: Bergson
alternative label: Temerl
alternative label: Temerl Sonnenberg Bergson
related: Charity
related: Gdańsk
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Shakhnah, Shalom
related: Shtadlan
related: Simḥah Bunem of Pshiskhe
related: Warsaw
related: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz
related: Zbytkower, Shmul

Berman, Jakub
described at: Berman Jakub
has abstract: (1901–1984), activist in the interwar Communist Party of Poland; brother of psychologist and Warsaw ghetto leader Adolf Abraham Berman (1906–1978). Among the leaders of postwar Stalinist Poland, Berman was responsible for overseeing both cultural policy and the security apparatus.
title: Berman, Jakub
alternative label: Jakub Berman
related: Anticosmopolitan Campaign
related: Białystok
related: Communism
related: Minsk
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Slánský Trial
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: YIVO

Bielsko
described at: Bielsko
has abstract: Section of the urban area of Bielsko-Biała, Silesia, in southern Poland. Bielsko (Ger., Bielitz) was a Bohemian town until about 990, then Polish until 1327, when it was once more under Bohemian rule. Beginning in 1526 it was ruled by the Habsburgs; after World War I (in 1920) it became part of Poland, then fell under Nazi rule from 1939 to 1945, after which it became Polish again. Until 1951 it was an independent town, with municipal rights dating to before 1312. The first mention of Jews in Bielsko comes from 1653; and two complaints about Jewish tax collectors were recorded in 1677. Subsequent legislation hindered Jewish settlement.
title: Bielsko
related: Biała
related: Charity
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Josephinian Reforms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Silesia
related: Trade
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Blau, Lajos
described at: Blau Lajos
has abstract: (1861–1936), Talmudic scholar, historian, and rector of the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest. Born in Putnok, Hungary, Lajos (Ludwig) Blau studied at the Pressburg yeshiva and attended the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest. After his ordination he joined the seminary’s faculty, and when Vilmos Bacher died in 1913, Blau succeeded him as rector until his own retirement in 1932.
title: Blau, Lajos
alternative label: Lajos (Aryeh) Blau
alternative label: Lajos (Ludwig) Blau
alternative label: Lajos Blau
related: Bacher, Vilmos
related: Bratislava
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Magic
related: Magyar Zsidó Szemle
related: Seminary
related: Wrocław
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Blecher, M.
described at: Blecher M
has abstract: (1909–1938), writer. Max Blecher (he signed his works “M. Blecher”) was born in Botoşani, Romania, and spent his childhood and adolescence in Roman, where his family settled, and where there was a large Jewish community. The son of Lazăr Blecher, a businessman who owned a china shop, he attended high school in Roman and was an active member of the Maccabi Zionist association.
title: Blecher, M.
alternative label: M. Blecher
related: Botoşani
related: Braşov
related: Bucharest
related: Kishinev
related: Maccabi Movement
related: Roman
related: Romania
related: Shtetl

Bloch, Yosef Shemu’el
described at: Bloch Yosef Shemuel
has abstract: (1850–1923), rabbi and political leader. Born in Dukla, east Galicia, the son of a poor baker, Yosef Shemu’el Bloch studied independently and in yeshivas throughout east Galicia but then pursued a secular education in Central Europe, eventually earning his doctorate at the University of Munich. After serving as a rabbi in several small communities, Bloch accepted a post in Floridsdorf, a working-class suburb of Vienna.
title: Bloch, Yosef Shemu’el
alternative label: Yosef Bloch
alternative label: Yosef Shemu’el Bloch
related: Buchach
related: Galicia
related: Kolomyia
related: Makhzikey ha-Das
related: Shomer Yisra’el
related: Zhovkva

Brociner Family
described at: Brociner Family
has abstract: Intellectual family, active in Romanian law, the arts, and the military during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The four Brociner brothers were born in Iaşi into a well-to-do maskilic family of Galician origin; they were related to Galician and Moldavian rabbinic families. Joseph B. Brociner (1846–1918) was a legal expert; Marco Brociner (1852–1942) a writer; Mauriciu Brociner (1855–1946) a military leader; and Andre Brociner (1856–1930) a communal activist.
title: Brociner Family
alternative label: Brociner
alternative label: Joseph B. Brociner
alternative label: Joseph Brociner
related: Bucharest
related: Dobrogeanu-Gherea, Constantin
related: Galaţi
related: Galicia
related: Iaşi
related: Moldavia
related: Romania

Censorship in the Russian Empire (Censorship)
described at: Censorship in the Russian Empire
has abstract: State censorship of Jewish publications in the Russian Empire began 25 years after Jews became Russian subjects in 1772. From then until 1796, books in Jewish languages were published in Russia (and were imported from abroad) without restriction. Catherine the Great’s 1763 decree on censorship of imported works did not apply to such materials. Officials in charge of maintaining public order—who according to the 1783 Decree on Independent Printing Houses were responsible for monitoring the content of domestic publications—were unable to scrutinize books in Hebrew and Yiddish due to their ignorance of those languages. Moses Hezekil and Ezekiel David Levi were the first state censors of Jewish works; they were assigned to the censorship committee of the customs house in Riga and were appointed on 30 December 1797. Nevertheless, the monitoring of Jewish works, both imported and domestic, remained sporadic and ineffective.
title: Censorship in the Russian Empire (Censorship)
alternative label: censor
alternative label: censors
related: Brafman, Iakov Aleksandrovich
related: Kiev
related: Landau, Yisra’el
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Riga
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Słonimski, Ḥayim Zelig
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shapira Family
related: Tugendhold, Jakob
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Hebrew Literature (Children’s Literature)
described at: Hebrew Literature
has abstract: Children’s literature began to take form in Hebrew at the end of the eighteenth century, following the Haskalah (Enlightenment) movement in Western Europe. Books and stories for young readers in that language then became standard in Eastern Europe, where the genre continued to develop. After World War I, Hebrew literature flourished more often in Palestine while becoming less popular in Eastern Europe, though texts were published until World War II.
title: Hebrew Literature (Children’s Literature)
alternative label: Hebrew children’s literature
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Fichmann, Ya‘akov
related: Friedberg, Avraham Shalom
related: Galicia
related: Gordon, Shemu’el Leib
related: Gutmann, Simḥah Alter
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Hrodna
related: Katzenelson, Yitsḥak
related: L’viv
related: Mapu, Avraham
related: Moriah
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Proverbs
related: Ravnitski, Yehoshu‘a Ḥana
related: Riddles
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shalkovich, Avraham Leib
related: Steinberg, Yehudah
related: Tarbut
related: Tushiyah
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Wrocław
related: Zeitlin Family

Cilibi Moise
described at: Cilibi Moise
has abstract: (1812–1870), author of adages and aphorisms. Froim Moise, known in Romanian literature as Cilibi Moise, was the son of Alexander Sender Schwartz, a native of Galicia. Illiterate in Romanian, Moise would dictate his compositions to printers and sell them in pamphlets in the market towns of Walachia, where he was a traveling merchant. The 14 pamphlets issued as of 1858 included adages and sayings, maxims, thoughts, and moral lessons drawn from the school of life, revealing a picturesque and lively mixture of popular wisdom, Balkan humor, and Jewish folklore.
title: Cilibi Moise
related: Galicia
related: Gaster, Moses
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: Romanian Literature
related: Schwarzfeld Family
related: Walachia

Congress of Jewish Religious Communities and Organizations in Russia
described at: Congress of Jewish Religious Communities and Organizations in Russia
has abstract: (Kongress Evreiskikh Religioznykh Obshchin i Organizatsii v Rossii; KEROOR), post-Soviet association of Jewish groups in Russia. Before 1990 in the Soviet Union, Jews were allowed neither to create a chief rabbinate nor to form a central organ uniting the Jewish religious communities. Under perestroika, however, at a conference of community representatives held in January 1990, the All-Union Council of USSR Jewish Religious Communities (Vsesoiuznyi Sovet Evreiskikh Religioznikh Obshchin SSSR; VSERO) was created. Vladimir Fedorovskii, chair of the Moscow community, was elected chair of its executive committee, and Adol’f Shaevich, chief rabbi of the Moscow Choral Synagogue, was chosen as the chief rabbi of VSERO and the USSR. The newly created central organ was intended to facilitate the coordination of activities of emerging as well as of older religious communities.
title: Congress of Jewish Religious Communities and Organizations in Russia
alternative label: Congress of Jewish Communities and Organizations of the USSR
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Jewish Congress
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Crime and Criminals
described at: Crime and Criminals
has abstract: In Western tradition, a number of factors combined to create the image of Jews as a group with a special propensity for criminal activity. Theological considerations were paramount in the premodern period when Jews were viewed as committers of deicide and as members of the “synagogue of Satan,” capable of any abomination. They were a threat to Christian souls (by propagating apostasy) and bodies (accused of poisoning wells or of ritual murder).
title: Crime and Criminals
narrower: Revolutionary Activity and Terrorism
narrower: Violations of Restrictive Legislation
narrower: Violations of the Criminal Code
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Babel, Isaac
related: Beilis, Mendel
related: Bund
related: Gintsburg Family
related: Informers
related: Kahal
related: Kiev
related: Lithuania
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Civil War
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shklov
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtetl
related: Tavernkeeping
related: Trade
related: Varshavski, Oyzer

Czerniaków, Adam
described at: Czerniakow Adam
has abstract: (1880–1942), Jewish communal leader, president of the Warsaw Judenrat. Born in Warsaw, Adam Czerniaków received engineering degrees from polytechnic institutes in Warsaw and Dresden. In interwar Poland, he helped lead the movement to improve vocational education for Jewish artisans and defended their interests against growing antisemitism. In 1931, he was elected to the Polish senate, but a technicality prevented him from serving.
title: Czerniaków, Adam
alternative label: Adam Czerniaków
related: Łódź
related: Bund
related: Gens, Jakub
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Meisel, Maurycy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rumkowski, Khayim Mordkhe
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Daas Toyre
described at: Daas Toyre
has abstract: (Heb., da‘at Torah; Torah view), doctrine attributing authority to rabbis for deciding matters secular and spiritual alike, usually associated with the Agudas Yisroel political movement of Orthodox Jewry. While the term daas Toyre does appear in the Babylonian Talmud (Ḥulin 90b), where it has the meaning of an unequivocal legal opinion that may be taught publicly, it carries none of the ideological significance that latter-day Orthodox thinkers assigned to it.
title: Daas Toyre
alternative label: daas Toyre
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Orthodoxy

Druyanow, Alter
described at: Druyanow Alter
has abstract: (1870–1938), Hebrew writer, researcher, editor, and Zionist activist. Alter Druyanow was born in the shtetl of Druja, in the Vilna region, to a rabbinic family. In 1886, he entered the Volozhin yeshiva, where he joined the Ḥibat Tsiyon movement and in 1890 began publishing articles in the Hebrew press. Under the influence of his friend Mikhah Yosef Berdyczewski, Druyanow went to Breslau in 1891, hoping to enroll at the university. Failing to do so, he returned to Druja.
title: Druyanow, Alter
alternative label: Alter Druyanow
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Bessarabia
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brainin, Re’uven
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Galicia
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Land of Israel
related: Lebensohn, Avraham Dov
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ravnitski, Yehoshu‘a Ḥana
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Shtetl
related: Vilnius
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: Wrocław
related: Yud, Der
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Dubin, Mordekhai
described at: Dubin Mordekhai
has abstract: (1889–1956), Lubavitch activist, leader of Agudas Yisroel in Latvia, and politician. A lumber merchant by trade, Mordekhai Dubin began at a young age to devote himself to community service. He gained wide popularity within Latvian Jewry for his work in interceding with the authorities on behalf of individual Jews or Jewish institutions. Starting with the founding National Assembly, Dubin represented Agudas Yisroel in all the legislative bodies of democratic Latvia, from the Constituent Assembly of 1920–1922 to the four Seimas (diets) elected between 1922 and 1934. He also served on the Riga city council, and was one of the founders of the reorganized Riga kehilah, which he chaired. Dubin was recognized as a leader of the world Agudas Yisroel movement, despite the generally limited, often hostile relations between Lubavitch and Aguda.
title: Dubin, Mordekhai
alternative label: Mordekhai Dubin
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Latvia
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Moscow
related: Riga
related: Shtadlan
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Ebner, Mayer
described at: Ebner Mayer
has abstract: (1872–1955), Zionist politician and journalist. Mayer Ebner was born in Cernăuți (Czernowitz) to an assimilated bourgeois family, and he studied law there at Franz Joseph University. As early as his teenage years, Ebner supported the concept of developing a new Jewish national movement. He felt that the liberal ideal of Jewish assimilation had failed, and that outbreaks of antisemitism in the last decades of the nineteenth century required change. It was in this spirit that he utilized the model of the Kadimah association (created by Jewish students in Vienna) to set up the student society Hasmonäain Cernăuți in 1891. In this project, he worked with Philipp Menczel, Isak Schmierer, and Josef Bierer.
title: Ebner, Mayer
alternative label: Mayer Ebner
related: Assimilation
related: Bucovina
related: Chernivtsi
related: Filderman, Wilhelm
related: Romania
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Edelstein, Jakob
described at: Edelstein Jakob
has abstract: (1903–1944), Czech Zionist leader, known as the “Elder of the Jews” in Terezín (Theresienstadt). Jakob Edelstein was born in Gorodenka, Galicia. When the town was occupied by the Russian army during World War I, his family escaped to Brno (Brünn) in Moravia. After the war, Edelstein graduated from a business school in Brno and worked as a traveling salesman in Teplice (Teplitz), northern Bohemia.
title: Edelstein, Jakob
alternative label: Jakob Edelstein
related: Brno
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Ha-
related: Terezín
related: Weidmann, František
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Einhorn, Ignác
described at: Einhorn Ignac
has abstract: (1825–1875), rabbi, journalist, political economist, and politician. Ignác Einhorn (who also published work using the initials J. E. or the name Eduard Horn) was one of the most versatile and talented Hungarian Jews of the nineteenth century. His great-grandfather had served as rabbi of Vágújhely, and his father, Gerson (1793–1883), a wool merchant, was for many years a community leader. Einhorn was tutored privately in a traditional but enlightened fashion. At 13, he attended the yeshiva of Yeḥezkel Banet at Nyitra (mod. Nitra, Slovakia). He later studied at Pressburg and for several months in Prague, while also receiving a gymnasium eduation.
title: Einhorn, Ignác
alternative label: Ignác Einhorn
related: Bratislava
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Neustadt, Adolf
related: Orthodoxy
related: Pogroms
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Reform, Religious
related: Slovakia
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Elijah the Prophet
described at: Elijah the Prophet
has abstract: or Eliyohu hanovi, was the most popular biblical figure in Jewish folklore in Eastern Europe. The oral traditions of late antiquity established the narrative foundation upon which his image would develop; his name also occurs in proverbs and songs. Elijah is said to make an invisible appearance during the Passover Seder, when a special cup of wine is poured in his honor, and at circumcision ceremonies, when a special chair is reserved for him.
title: Elijah the Prophet
alternative label: Elijah
related: Ba‘ale Shem
related: Bernstein, Ignatz
related: Charity
related: Circumcision
related: Folk Songs
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Passover
related: Proverbs

Entertainers
described at: Entertainers
has abstract: While itinerant entertainers of all kinds were a part of European culture in general, and even though they are poorly documented, a bare outline of this phenomenon among East European Jews can be sketched. Among the earliest of such performers were magidim (preachers), who went from place to place delivering sermons illustrated with parables and stories. The shpilman, a traveling singer of poems and tales, often collaborated with musicians, and gradually gave way to phenomena such as the popular Broder Singers. Klezmorim—instrumental musicians—while based in one location, played for weddings in surrounding towns, as well as for the local aristocracy on their estates.
title: Entertainers
alternative label: entertainer
alternative label: entertainers
related: Łódź
related: Breitbart, Zishe
related: Bucharest
related: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
related: L’viv
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Przemyśl
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shtern
related: About this Article (Sport)
related: Warsaw
related: Weddings

Esterke
described at: Esterke
has abstract: Heroine of a Polish and Jewish folk legend about a Jewish woman’s relationship with Casimir the Great, King of Poland (r. 1310–1370). According to the chronicle of Jan Długosz (1415–1480), Esterke was Casimir’s mistress who persuaded him to invite Jews to Poland; he also granted them extensive privileges. The story claims that the couple had four children, two boys raised as Christians and two girls raised as Jews. In 1334, Casimir did, in fact, extend privileges that had been first granted by Bolesław of Kalisz.
title: Esterke
related: Agnon, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Gans, David ben Shelomoh
related: Kalisz
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Purim-shpil
related: Radom

Fal’k, Robert
described at: Falk Robert
has abstract: (1886–1958), graphic artist, painter, set designer, and art teacher. Born in Moscow, Robert Fal’k received a secular Russian education. In 1903 he completed his studies at the Petropavlovsk Real School in Moscow. In 1904–1905 he studied drawing and painting with Konstantin Iuon (1875–1958) and Ivan Dudin (1867–1924), as well as at the private studio of Ilya Mashkov (1881–1944). From 1905–1912, Fal’k was a student at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. In 1909, before his marriage, he converted to Christianity and received the name Roman. From 1910–1916 Fal’k was a core member of the Bubnovyi Valet (Knave of Diamonds) Artists Union, and in 1917 he participated in exhibitions put on by the Mir Issukstva (World of Art) movement.
title: Fal’k, Robert
alternative label: Robert Fal’k
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Al’tman, Natan Isaevich
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Daniel, M.
related: Habimah
related: Kultur-lige
related: Moscow
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Yiddish Theater (Theater)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vitsyebsk

Falkovitsh, Elye
described at: Falkovitsh Elye
has abstract: (1898–1979), Yiddish linguist. Elye Falkovitsh was born in Gomel, where he spent the first 19 years of his life. At age 15, he began giving private lessons as a tutor and soon joined the local Tse‘ire Tsiyon organization. He then worked as headmaster of a Jewish school in Sarapul in 1917 and 1918, and directed a children’s club in Kiev in 1918 and 1919. Subsequently, in 1920 and 1921 he served in the Red Army as a cultural worker, stationed in the Moscow region.
title: Falkovitsh, Elye
alternative label: Elye Falkovitsh
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Homel’
related: Kiev
related: Lifshits, Khaye Malke
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Sovetish Heymland
related: Zaretski, Ayzik

Fayvesh Family
described at: Fayvesh Family
has abstract: (Also spelled Phoebus), printers active in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. Their descendants included the Madpis, Rosanes, and Letteris families of printers.
title: Fayvesh Family
alternative label: Fayvesh
alternative label: Fayvesh family
related: Letteris, Me’ir
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Printing and Publishing)
related: Zhovkva

Ford, Aleksander
described at: Ford Aleksander
has abstract: (1908–1980), motion picture director. Born Moyshe Lipshutz in Łódź, Ford went to Warsaw in the late 1920s to study art. He was an early member of the avant-garde cine-club START, making short films—one on the working-class neighborhood where he grew up, another a portrait of Warsaw street vendors—that anticipated Italian neorealism in their use of staged documentary.
title: Ford, Aleksander
alternative label: Aleksander Ford
related: Łódź
related: Bund
related: Cinema
related: Habimah
related: Korczak, Janusz
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Medem Sanatorium
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Tuwim, Julian
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw

Fortunatus, Imre
described at: Fortunatus Imre
has abstract: (ca. 1460–ca. 1526), adventurer, financial adviser to the royal court, and well-known apostate in Hungary. Imre Fortunatas (also Szerencsés) had the original family name of Seneor (or Sneor; Sneur), a corrupted version of Latin Senior; his personal name was Shelomoh (Zalman) ben Efrayim. Some claim he was of Spanish origin and that he was the brother or nephew of Avraham Seneor, the leader of Spanish Jewry before 1492. Autographs of Hebrew codices in Fortunatus’s library indicate that he must have been a learned man; he wrote his confidential memoranda in cursive Hebrew.
title: Fortunatus, Imre
alternative label: Fortunatus
alternative label: Imre Fortunatus
alternative label: Imre Szerencsés (Fortunatus)
related: Budapest
related: Conversion
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Prague
related: Servants

Franzos, Karl Emil
described at: Franzos Karl Emil
has abstract: (1847/48–1904), writer, novelist, journalist, and publisher. Karl Emil Franzos was born in Czortków in Podolia (now Chortkiv, Ukr.), the son of a Galician mother and a physician father who was of Sephardic origin. After his father’s death in 1858, the family moved to Bucovina, where Franzos attended secondary school. He then studied law in Vienna and Graz, and during his university years belonged to a German nationalist student organization. From 1874 to 1876 he traveled to the eastern borderlands of the Habsburg monarchy and to Russia and Romania; these travels yielded material for the ethnographic vignettes that Franzos published first in the press and later as a book in a collection of “cultural pictures” titled Aus Halb-Asien (From Half-Asia; 1876). He next issued his first collection of stories, Die Juden von Barnow (The Jews of Barnow; 1877), depicting shtetl life. In 1877 he married Ottilie Benedikt in Vienna.
title: Franzos, Karl Emil
alternative label: Karl Emil Franzos
related: Assimilation
related: Bucovina
related: Galicia
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shtetl

Frayland-lige
described at: Frayland-lige
has abstract: Founded in London in 1935, the Frayland-lige far Yidisher Teritoryalistisher Kolonizatsye (Freeland League for Jewish Territorial Colonization) united the three main organizations of the territorialist movement (based in Poland, Paris, and London) and other related local groups. Its objective was to procure a sizable tract of land for agricultural and industrial colonization in an underpopulated area of the world where East European Jews could settle. The fraylandistn, as its members were known, aimed to build a secure foundation for the continuity of their socioeconomic life and culture (including the Yiddish language). For them, compact, mass colonization was the only effective means to avoid the pressures of assimilation and dispersion associated with individual immigration—regardless of its scale.
title: Frayland-lige
alternative label: Frayland
related: Łódź
related: Assimilation
related: Ben-Adir
related: Białystok
related: Bund
related: Dorohoi
related: Fareynikte
related: Iaşi
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: Steinberg Brothers
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Friedman, Filip
described at: Friedman Filip
has abstract: (1901–1960), Polish Jewish historian. Filip Friedman was born in Lwów and studied at the University of Vienna under the direction of Alfred Pribram, and at the Jewish Paedagogium under Salo Baron. Friedman earned his doctorate in 1925 with his dissertation titled Die galizischen Juden im Kampfe um ihre Gleichberechtigung (1848–1868) (The Jews of Galicia and Their Struggle for Legal Equality [1848–1868]), which was published in Frankfurt in 1929.
title: Friedman, Filip
alternative label: Filip Friedman
related: Łódź
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Central Committee of Jews in Poland
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: YIVO

Gamarnik, Ian Borisovich
described at: Gamarnik Ian Borisovich
has abstract: (1894–1937), Communist Party activist, political worker, and military commissar. Ian Gamarnik was born in Zhitomir to the family of an office worker. He studied at the Saint Petersburg Psycho-Neurological Institute and the Kiev University Law Faculty. In September 1916, he joined the Bolsheviks, and by October 1917 was secretary of the Kiev Committee of the Rossiiskaia Sotsial-Demokraticheskaia Partiia Bol’shevikov (Russian Social Democratic Workers Party of Bolsheviks). Gamarnik was elected to the Central Executive Committee of the Ukrainian Congress of Soviets in March 1918. He was a member of the Organization Bureau (Orgburo) that prepared the First Congress of the Ukrainian Communist Party of Bolsheviks.
title: Gamarnik, Ian Borisovich
alternative label: Gamarnik
alternative label: Ian Gamarnik
related: Communist Party of the Soviet Union
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: Odessa
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zhytomyr

Glasner, Mosheh Shemu’el
described at: Glasner Mosheh Shemuel
has abstract: (1856–1924), rabbi and a founder of religious Zionism in Hungary. A great-grandson of Mosheh Sofer (author of the Ḥatam Sofer), Mosheh Shemu’el Glasner was the son of Avraham Glasner, who served as the rabbi of Klausenburg (Hun., Kolozsvár; Rom., Cluj) between 1863 and 1877. Following his father’s death, Glasner was chosen to succeed him at the age of 21.
title: Glasner, Mosheh Shemu’el
alternative label: Mosheh Glasner
alternative label: Mosheh Shemu’el Glasner
related: Cluj
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Misnagdim
related: Orthodoxy
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: Transylvania
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Gold, Hugo
described at: Gold Hugo
has abstract: (1895–1974), publisher, editor, and historian. Born in Vienna, Hugo Gold took over the publishing house of his uncle Max Hickl, the Jüdischer Buch- und Kunstverlag, in Brno, Czechoslovakia (from 1932 also in Prague), following Hickl’s death in 1924. For a time, Gold also edited the newspaper Jüdische Volksstimme (Jewish People’s Voice).
title: Gold, Hugo
alternative label: Hugo Gold
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bratislava
related: Brno
related: Brod, Max
related: Bucovina
related: Burgenland
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Hickl, Max
related: Jüdische Volksstimme
related: Prague

Goldberg, Leah
described at: Goldberg Leah
has abstract: (1911–1970), poet, novelist, playwright, and literary scholar. Born in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad), then an important center of the Haskalah movement and Hebrew culture, Leah Goldberg moved in her early childhood to Kovno (now Kaunas), where in 1923 one-quarter of the population was Jewish. During World War I, her family, with many other Jews in Lithuania, was forced by the Russian government to move to the countryside, and they lived for a few years as refugees in Balashov (Saratov province).
title: Goldberg, Leah
alternative label: Leah Goldberg
related: Al’tman, Natan Isaevich
related: Bat-Miriam, Yokheved
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Kaliningrad
related: Kaunas
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Russian Literature

Gombiner, Avraham Abele ben Ḥayim ha-Levi
described at: Gombiner Avraham Abele ben Hayim ha-Levi
has abstract: (1635–1682), author of commentaries on the Shulḥan ‘arukh (Oraḥ ḥayim) and Yalkut Shim‘oni. He was born in Gombin, Poland (hence his family name), where his father was martyred in 1655, in the aftermath of the Khmel’nyts’kyi massacres of 1648–1649. At a young age Gombiner became a dayan (judge) at the rabbinical court of Yisra’el ben Natan Shapira in Kalisz and directed his own yeshiva. Not yet 30, he began writing his commentary on Oraḥ ḥayim, the first section of the Shulḥan ‘arukh. From the praise this work received, we learn that he lived a difficult life, possibly suffering from illness before dying young. Among his associates were his son-in-law Mosheh Yekuti’el Kaufman (rabbi of Kutno and author of the commentary Leḥem ha-panim on the Yoreh de‘ah section of the Shulḥan ‘arukh) and Eliyahu Shapira of Prague (author of Eliyahu raba and Eliyahu zuta), a friend from the period when both men studied in Kalisz.
title: Gombiner, Avraham Abele ben Ḥayim ha-Levi
alternative label: Avraham Abele Gombiner
alternative label: Avraham Gombiner
related: David ben Shemu’el ha-Levi
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: Kalisz
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Gordon, Shemu’el Leib
described at: Gordon Shemuel Leib
has abstract: (Shalag; 1865–1933), Hebrew writer, editor, and educator. Shemu’el Leib Gordon was born in Lida (Vilna province; now in Hrodna, Bel.) and received a traditional education. He was self-taught in secular studies and became a Hebrew teacher from a young age.
title: Gordon, Shemu’el Leib
alternative label: Shemu’el Leib Gordon
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Hebrew Literature (Children’s Literature)
related: Ger Tsedek
related: Heder
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Hrodna
related: Land of Israel
related: Shalkovich, Avraham Leib
related: Warsaw

Gorfinkel, Leyb
described at: Gorfinkel Leyb
has abstract: (1896–1976), advocate, journalist, and political figure. After graduating from the Russian secondary school in Kovno, Leyb Gorfinkel (also known as Leib Garfunkel) studied jurisprudence at Petrograd University. Later he moved to Gomel and became a member of the Russian Tse‘ire Tsiyon (Youths of Zion) Central Committee. From the end of 1918 he lived in Kovno and was one of the initiators of the Union of Ha-Po‘el ha-Tsa‘ir (The Young Worker) and Tse‘ire Tsiyon in Lithuania.
title: Gorfinkel, Leyb
alternative label: Leyb Gorfinkel
related: Ba-Derekh
related: Homel’
related: Kaunas
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Poland)

Grydzewski, Mieczysław
described at: Grydzewski Mieczysław
has abstract: (Grycendler; 1894–1970), editor, publisher, publicist, and literary critic. Mieczysław Grydzewski converted to Protestantism before World War I, studied in Moscow and later in Warsaw (under the direction of Marceli Handelsman), and earned a doctorate in history in 1922. As a student, he wrote for the academic journal Pro arte and studio. Beginning in 1920, he published—and, from 1921 on, edited—a monthly associated with Skamander, a group of poets. In 1924, he began copublishing, with Antoni Borman, Wiadomości Literackie, the most prominent literary and cultural journal in interwar Poland, of which he remained the only editor until the outbreak of World War II.
title: Grydzewski, Mieczysław
alternative label: Mieczysław Grydzewski
related: Assimilation
related: Handelsman, Marceli
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Warsaw
related: Wiadomości Literackie

Hame’iri, Avigdor
described at: Hameiri Avigdor
has abstract: (1890–1970), Hebrew writer. Avigdor Hame’iri was born in a small village in Hungary, where he received a traditional Jewish education. From 1905 he studied at the high school associated with the (state-run) Budapest Rabbinical Seminary. While still an adolescent, he became actively involved in the Zionist cause, wrote for the Hungarian press, and tried his hand at writing Hebrew literature. His first poem was published in 1909, and his first poetry anthology appeared in Budapest in 1912, arousing much interest. In September 1913, while attending the Eleventh Zionist Congress in Vienna as a journalist, he befriended a number of leading Hebrew writers, including Ḥayim Naḥman Bialik.
title: Hame’iri, Avigdor
alternative label: Avigdor Hame’iri
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Budapest
related: Galicia
related: Hebrew Literature
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kiev
related: Odessa
related: Russian Civil War

Music (Hasidism)
described at: Music
has abstract: Joy and its expression through song and dance have been important values of the Hasidic movement since its beginnings in the second half of the eighteenth century. The idealization of music reflected an innovation in Jewish culture, in contrast to the general attitude of the Ashkenazic rabbinical establishment. Hasidic spiritual leaders since that time devoted increasing attention to music and dance in their writings.
title: Music (Hasidism)
alternative label: Hasidic melodies
alternative label: Hasidic song
alternative label: Hasidism: Music
related: An-ski Ethnographic Expedition and Museum
related: Badkhonim
related: Belz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Beregovskii, Moisei Iakovlevich
related: Bratslav Hasidism
related: Cantors
related: About this Article (Dance)
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: Engel, Yo’el
related: Folk Songs
related: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Karlin-Stolin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Kosov-Vizhnits Hasidic Dynasty
related: Kuzmir-Modzits Hasidic Dynasty
related: Lakhovits-Kobrin-Slonim Hasidic Dynasty
related: Liturgy
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Misnagdim
related: About this Article (Music)
related: Naḥman of Bratslav
related: Rivne
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Ruzhin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Sabbath
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Walachia
related: Weddings
related: Zhidachov-Komarno Hasidic Dynasty

Ḥayim ben Shelomoh Tyrer of Tshernovits
described at: Hayim ben Shelomoh Tyrer of Tshernovits
has abstract: (ca. 1760–1816/17), Hasidic rabbi and kabbalist. Born in Pribiluk, a small village near Buczacz, Galicia, Ḥayim ben Shelomoh Tyrer of Tshernovits (Ger., Czernowitz; Rom., Cernăuți; Ukr., Chernivtsi) was a leading disciple of Yeḥi’el Mikhl of Zlotshev. Tyrer also associated with disciples of Yeḥi’el Mikhl, among them Yisra’el of Kozhenits, Yisakhar Ber of Zlotsev, Meshulam Fayvush Heller of Zbarezh, and Mordekhai of Kremenets. Officiating as a rabbi in Galicia, Bucovina, Czernowitz (where he was district rabbi), Moldavia, and Ukraine, Tyrer ultimately immigrated to the Land of Israel (no later than 1814), settling in Safed, where he is buried. His grave is still a pilgrimage site for many Hasidim.
title: Ḥayim ben Shelomoh Tyrer of Tshernovits
alternative label: Ḥayim Tyrer
alternative label: Ḥayim Tyrer of Tshernovits
alternative label: Ḥayim ben Shelomoh Tyrer
related: Buchach
related: Bucovina
related: Chernivtsi
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Land of Israel
related: Moldavia
related: Pilgrimage
related: Sabbath
related: Ukraine
related: Yeḥi’el Mikhl of Zlotshev
related: Yisra’el ben Shabetai of Kozhenits

Ḥazakah
described at: Hazakah
has abstract: A halakhic (legal) term, ḥazakah has multiple connotations, though common to them all is the idea of preserving an existing condition, real or presumed. Its origin is in the laws of trespass and encroachment on another’s livelihood found in the Talmud. In the context of Eastern Europe, it often applied to a situation in which a monopoly was granted with the intent of preventing uncontrolled economic competition among Jews, and between Jews and others.
title: Ḥazakah
alternative label: ḥazakah
related: Ashkenaz
related: Leaseholding
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Poland)

Heller, Aryeh Leib ha-Kohen
described at: Heller Aryeh Leib ha-Kohen
has abstract: (1745–1813), rabbi and Talmudist. Aryeh Leib ha-Kohen Heller was born in Kałusz, Galicia. Known as the Ketsot ha-Ḥoshen after his famous work, he served as rabbi in Rożniątów and in 1788 was appointed district rabbi in Stryj, where he served until his death. Two of his sons also were rabbis, and his daughter married the Galician maskil Shelomoh Yehudah Rapoport, the rabbi of Tarnopol and Prague. Heller was a fierce opponent of the Hasidic movement.
title: Heller, Aryeh Leib ha-Kohen
alternative label: Aryeh Leib Heller
alternative label: Aryeh Leib ha-Kohen Heller
related: Brody
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Lorbeerbaum, Ya‘akov ben Ya‘akov Mosheh of Lissa
related: Prague
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Ternopil’

Hemar, Marian
described at: Hemar Marian
has abstract: (1901–1972), poet, satirist, and author of cabaret pieces. Born and educated in Lwów, Marian Hemar (born Jan Marian Hescheles), moved to Warsaw in 1924 after fighting on the Polish side in the Polish–Soviet war. He joined the literary circle around the journal Wiadomości Literackie (Literary News) and wrote for theater and cabaret. He was a master of sentimental song and comedic routine (shmontses, a genre of cabaret popular in Central Europe particularly associated with Jews), and jointly composed political sketches with poets Julian Tuwim and Antoni Słonimski. In 1939, he left for Palestine but settled in England in 1941.
title: Hemar, Marian
alternative label: Marian Hemar
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Słonimski, Antoni
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Tuwim, Julian
related: Warsaw
related: Wiadomości Literackie

Herrmann, Hugo
described at: Herrmann Hugo
has abstract: (1887–1940), journalist and Zionist activist. Although known primarily for his political activism, Hugo Herrmann was also an outstanding analyst of German and Italian literature. He was born in Mährisch-Trübau (Moravská Trěbově) and raised in an assimilated German-speaking home. He studied German and Romance philology at universities in Prague and Vienna, and during his student days became interested in Zionism.
title: Herrmann, Hugo
alternative label: Hugo Herrmann
related: Bar Kochba Association
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Prague
related: Purim
related: Selbstwehr
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Horwitz, Maksymilian
described at: Horwitz Maksymilian
has abstract: (1877–1937), theoretician, Polish socialist activist, writer, and editor. Maksymilian Horwitz, known also by the pseudonym Henryk Walecki, was born in Warsaw to a middle-class Jewish family in which both Polish and Yiddish were spoken. After completing gymnasium in that city, Horwitz studied at the university in Ghent, Belgium, where he was active in the Union of Polish Socialists Abroad and wrote for the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) organs, Robotnik and Przedświt.
title: Horwitz, Maksymilian
alternative label: Maksymilian Horwitz
related: Assimilation
related: Bund
related: Luxemburg, Rosa
related: Moscow
related: Perl, Feliks
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Warsaw

Idishe Shtime, Di
described at: Idishe Shtime Di
has abstract: Daily Zionist newspaper in Yiddish, published in Kovno (Kaunas) from 21 July 1919 until 1 August 1940. Although formally the organ of the General Zionists, Di idishe shtime (The Jewish Voice) quickly became the main mouthpiece of Lithuanian Jewry and a platform for literary figures and publicists of various political movements during the interwar years. From 1926 to 1933, some of its material was prepared in Riga by correspondents of the newspaper Frimorgn.
title: Idishe Shtime, Di
alternative label: Di idishe shtime
related: Bal-Makhshoves
related: Frimorgn
related: General Zionists
related: Gorfinkel, Leyb
related: Kaunas
related: Latzky-Bertholdi, Ya‘akov Ze’ev
related: Lithuania
related: Riga
related: Robinson, Jacob
related: Rubinshteyn, Ruvn
related: Shneour, Zalman

Ioffe, Abram Fedorovich
described at: Ioffe Abram Fedorovich
has abstract: (1880–1960), physicist. A graduate of the Saint Petersburg Institute of Technology (1902), Abram Ioffe began his scientific career in Munich, where he worked as a doctoral student in the laboratory of Wilhelm Röntgen, the first Nobel laureate in physics. Ioffe’s collaboration with Röntgen on studies of the elastic and photoelectrical properties of crystals continued until 1914, although most of the results were never published because of Röntgen’s extraordinary experimental exactitude.
title: Ioffe, Abram Fedorovich
alternative label: Abram Ioffe
related: Khariton, Iulii Borisovich
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kikoin, Isaak Konstantinovich
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zel’dovich, Iakov Borisovich

Jászi, Oszkár
described at: Jaszi Oszkar
has abstract: (1875–1957), sociologist, political scientist, editor, and politician. Born in the town of Nagykároly (Rom., Carei or Careŭ Mare), Oszkár Jászi came from a family whose original name was Jakubovits. In 1881, the family converted to Calvinism. Jászi was brought up in this spirit and never considered himself a Jew.
title: Jászi, Oszkár
alternative label: Oszkár Jászi
related: Budapest
related: Cluj
related: Czechoslovakia
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Romania

Jelgava
described at: Jelgava
has abstract: (Ger., Mitau), city in Latvia; provincial capital of Courland. Founded in the thirteenth century by the Livonian Order of German (Teutonic) Knights, Jelgava, along with the Duchy of Courland, was taken over by the Russian Empire in 1795. Jews are known to have lived in the town from the seventeenth century. Earlier tombstones, dating from the fourteenth century, mark the graves of Jewish merchants who passed through the region.
title: Jelgava
related: Courland
related: Haskalah
related: Latvia
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Ventspils
related: Wunderbar, Re’uven Yosef

Jewish Historical and Archaeographic Commission
described at: Jewish Historical and Archaeographic Commission
has abstract: (Rus., Evreiskaia Istoriko-Arkheograficheskaia Komissiia), Soviet research institute at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, specializing in the collection and study of archival materials dealing with Jewish topics. The Commission was founded in summer 1919 at the initiative of Jewish scholars, who submitted a memorandum to the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences stating, “The Jews have a centuries-long history in Ukraine. The fate of the Jews has been closely linked to the fate of the Ukrainian people. The Jews have played a significant role in the economic and cultural life of Ukraine. Nevertheless, a systematic portrayal of the history of Jews in Ukraine has not yet been written. The lack of such a history has fostered many misunderstandings and mistaken impressions about Jewish activities in Ukraine and relations between the Jewish and Ukrainian peoples.”
title: Jewish Historical and Archaeographic Commission
alternative label: Jewish Historic-Ethnographic (or Archaeographic) Society
alternative label: Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Society
alternative label: ewish Historical and Archaeographic Commission
related: Evsektsiia
related: Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture
related: Kiev
related: Pogroms
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Ukraine
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Jihlava
described at: Jihlava
has abstract: Mining town in western Moravia (near the Bohemian border) in today’s Czech Republic. Jews are first mentioned as residing in Jihlava (Ger., Iglau) in 1249. In 1345, Margrave Charles (later Emperor Charles IV) invited Jews to the town, where they engaged primarily in moneylending. In 1426, Margrave Albrecht V expelled the Jews of Jihlava because of their alleged interactions with the heretical Hussites. Jewish houses were divided up among the Christian populace and in 1511 the synagogue was converted into a church. Jihlava’s Jews then settled nearby, helping to found new Jewish communities in Puklice (Puklitz), Třešt’ (Triesch), Police (Pullitz), and Pirnice (Pirnitz).
title: Jihlava
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Czech Republic

Judaizers
described at: Judaizers
has abstract: Defined as heretics by the Russian Orthodox Church, Judaizers were Christians who adopted various practices such as observing the Sabbath, practicing iconoclasm, and, at times, denying the divinity of Jesus. In the sixteenth century, Russian chronicles and decrees of the Orthodox Church Council made note of a “Judaizing heresy” that had existed in Russia in the area of Novgorod and Moscow at the end of the fifteenth century. There is no consensus, however, on whether the movement had been stimulated by actual Jewish influences. Indeed, Russian nationalist historians have tended to dismiss the idea of a modern Jewish impact on Orthodox Christianity, while Soviet historians saw “humanist and antifeudal foundations” in these movements. Historians writing outside of Russia have found trends related to the Reformation within the faction, while some Jewish historians undeniably have argued for the existence of Jewish inspiration. More recently, scholars have linked the emergence of this heresy to failed eschatological expectations among Eastern Orthodox Christians and to political upheavals in the region.
title: Judaizers
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sabbath

Kabak, Aharon Avraham
described at: Kabak Aharon Avraham
has abstract: (1883–1944), Hebrew novelist, critic, and translator. Aharon Avraham Kabak was born in Smorgon in the province of Vilna and died in Jerusalem. His education began at home with his father, who was a rabbi, and continued in a heder and various yeshivas. Kabak lived in several towns, working as a teacher and writing for Hebrew and Yiddish newspapers. Headed for Palestine, he stopped in Constantinople, where he taught and edited. In 1911, he arrived in Palestine and taught at the Herzliya gymnasium in Tel Aviv. In 1914, he returned to Europe, where he studied psychology and philosophy at universities in Berlin, Geneva, and Lausanne. In 1921, he came back to Palestine, settled in Jerusalem, and devoted himself to writing and teaching literature in the Reḥavyah gymnasium. Later in life, during a period of illness, he underwent a spiritual change that is evident in his writing.
title: Kabak, Aharon Avraham
alternative label: Aharon Avraham Kabak
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Assimilation
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Heder
related: Kaunas
related: Minsk
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Kanfer, Mojżesz
described at: Kanfer Mojzesz
has abstract: (1880–1942), publicist, literary and theater critic, and translator. Born in Buczacz, Galicia, Mojżesz Kanfer received both a religious and a secular education. He studied law in Lwów, earning a doctorate in 1908. After serving in the Austrian army during World War I, Kanfer wrote for the Polish-language Zionist daily press as well as for Polish Jewish and Yiddish literary and scholarly journals. He moved to Kraków in 1923, working for the literary section of Nowy Dziennik (1923–1939). He was also an active member of the Jewish Theater Society and was involved in establishing a permanent Yiddish scene in the city.
title: Kanfer, Mojżesz
alternative label: Mojżesz Kanfer
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Buchach
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: L’viv
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Yiddish Theater (Theater)
related: TSYSHO

Kazdan, Khayim Shloyme
described at: Kazdan Khayim Shloyme
has abstract: (1883–1979), Bundist, educator, and leader of the secular Yiddish school movement. Born in Kherson, Russia, Khayim Shloyme Kazdan received a traditional Jewish education and began his teaching career in 1902 at the professional school for girls in Kherson. In 1907, he wrote for the Yiddish press in Di hofnung, a short-lived legal daily of the Bund.
title: Kazdan, Khayim Shloyme
alternative label: Khayim Shloyme Kazdan
related: Bund
related: Heder
related: Kiev
related: Kultur-lige
related: Lithuania
related: Medem Sanatorium
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: TSYSHO
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Kipnis, Menakhem
described at: Kipnis Menakhem
has abstract: (1878–1942), singer, critic, photographer, and ethnographer of Yiddish song. Born in Uzhmir, Volhynia, Menakhem Kipnis was a cantor’s son who entered the world of Jewish music at a young age. He served as a cantor’s assistant in local synagogues on the High Holidays and as a choirboy at the Choral Synagogue in Zhitomir. He also performed throughout the Pale of Settlement.
title: Kipnis, Menakhem
alternative label: Menakhem Kipnis
related: Cantors
related: Folk Songs
related: Haynt
related: About this Article (Music)
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Photography
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Warsaw
related: Zhytomyr

Kleynkunst
described at: Kleynkunst
has abstract: A genre of Yiddish performance, kleynkunst (“little art”; also known as minyatur teater [miniature theater]) developed in the early twentieth century, primarily under the influence of Russian and Polish literary cabaret. The genre was also indebted to older forms of Yiddish performance, that of purim-shpilers and badkhonim, as well as to the nineteenth-century semiprofessional performers known as the Broder Singers. Rooted in traditional Jewish societies, such performers nevertheless subjected the Jewish community and its leadership to merciless parody while exposing a range of injustices. Integrating song and dance with sketches and routines of various kinds, kleynkunst satirized both Jewish society and the political and social order of the non-Jewish world, especially its impact on Jews.
title: Kleynkunst
alternative label: kleynkunst
related: Łódź
related: Badkhonim
related: Berlewi, Henryk
related: Białystok
related: Broderzon, Moyshe
related: Bucharest
related: About this Article (Dance)
related: Dzigan and Shumacher
related: Hrodna
related: Kacyzne, Alter-Sholem
related: Kalisz
related: Levin, Khane
related: Manger, Itsik
related: Operetta
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Purim-shpil
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtern, Yisroel
related: Shternberg, Yankev
related: Songs and Songwriters
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Tunkel, Yoysef
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Kohen-Tsedek, Yosef
described at: Kohen-Tsedek Yosef
has abstract: (1827–1903), publisher, journalist, and Orthodox maskil. Yosef Kohen-Tsedek (last name also rendered Kohen-Zedek) was born in Lwów. While primarily engaged in rabbinic scholarship, he also taught himself languages and secular studies. In 1853, he established a publishing house in Lwów and was among the pioneering publishers of Hebrew periodicals in Galicia. He founded and edited the first Hebrew weekly in Galicia, Ha-Mevaser, with its literary supplement, Ha-Nesher, between 1861 and 1866. The newspaper served, among other things, as a platform for rabbinic authors as well as for moderate maskilim from Galicia and Lithuania. Kohen-Tsedek often challenged radical positions expressed in the competing newspaper, ‘Ivri anokhi, published by Barukh Werber.
title: Kohen-Tsedek, Yosef
alternative label: Yosef Kohen-Tsedek
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lithuania
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Przemyśl
related: About this Article (Russia)

Kohn, Abraham
described at: Kohn Abraham
has abstract: (1807–1848), rabbi and preacher. Born in Zalužani, Bohemia, Abraham Kohn completed his secondary and religious schooling; he later took courses in philosophy at the University of Prague. Ordained as a rabbi in 1832 by Shemu’el Landau and the two Bohemian district rabbis, in 1833 he was appointed rabbi of Hohenems, a town in which many of the Jews were already progressive in their outlook. Kohn established an artisans’ society and invested his efforts in youth education. During his tenure, the synagogue established a choir, but his attempts to abolish the custom of selling Torah honors on the Sabbath were unsuccessful.
title: Kohn, Abraham
alternative label: Abraham Kohn
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Galicia
related: L’viv
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Reform, Religious
related: Sabbath
related: Wrocław

Kohn, Hans
described at: Kohn Hans
has abstract: (1891–1971), Zionist activist, journalist, and scholar of modern nationalism. Hans Kohn was born in Prague to a bilingual (Czech and German) Jewish family; his parents came from the Czech regions outside the Bohemian capital. In 1910, upon his graduation from a German high school and just before he was accepted as a student of law at the Karl-Ferdinand German University of Prague, Kohn joined the Zionist students’ Bar Kochba association, which, until the outbreak of World War I, was the center for Zionist activity in Prague. He served as its chair from 1912 to 1913.
title: Kohn, Hans
alternative label: Hans Kohn
related: Bar Kochba Association
related: Bergmann, Hugo
related: Land of Israel
related: Prague
related: Weltsch, Robert
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Kohn, Jindřich
described at: Kohn Jindrich
has abstract: (1874–1935), philosopher and lawyer. Jindřich Kohn was born in Příbram, studied law at the Czech University in Prague, where he worked as junior lawyer, and later became an advocate in Pilsen (Plzeň). In 1927 he moved to Prague, where he took over an attorney’s office.
title: Kohn, Jindřich
alternative label: Jindřich Kohn
related: Assimilation
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Lederer, Eduard
related: Prague
related: Vohryzek, Viktor
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Korn, Rokhl
described at: Korn Rokhl
has abstract: (1898–1982), Yiddish poet and short-story writer. Raised on a farming estate called Sucha Gora (Dry Mountain) in eastern Galicia, Rokhl Korn was tutored in the classics of Polish literature. Polish was the language of her household, her neighbors, and her education. She began her literary career writing in that language in 1918, publishing two short stories, one in Nowy Dziennik, a Zionist newspaper, and another in Głos Przemyski, a socialist journal.
title: Korn, Rokhl
alternative label: Rokhl Korn
related: Galicia
related: Przemyśl
related: Ravitch, Melech
related: Reyzen, Zalmen
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Kornfeld, Zsigmond
described at: Kornfeld Zsigmond
has abstract: (1852–1909), banker and financial expert. Zsigmond Kornfeld was born in the Czech town of Golčûv Jenikov (Ger., Goltsch-Jenikau), the nephew of Aharon Kornfeld, who was the last great head of a yeshiva in Bohemia. At age 16, Kornfeld left school to work for the Torsch Bank House in Vienna. After a short trip to Paris in 1872, he was employed by the Böhmischer Bankverein in Prague; four years later he was promoted to be vice manager of the local branch of the Vienna Creditanstalt. Early in 1878, Albert Rothschild appointed Kornfeld to direct its partner institution, the Hungarian General Credit Bank in Budapest. From 1900, Kornfeld was the managing director and from 1905 the president.
title: Kornfeld, Zsigmond
alternative label: Siegmund Kornfeld
alternative label: Zsigmond Kornfeld
related: Banking
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Prague
related: Slovakia
related: Transportation
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Kranz, Ya‘akov ben Volf
described at: Kranz Yaakov ben Volf
has abstract: (ca. 1740–1804), preacher and exegete known popularly as the Dubno Magid, and dubbed “the Jewish Aesop” by Moses Mendelssohn. Ya‘akov Kranz was born in the town of Zietil (Dzyatłava) to Ze’ev Volf and Hinde, daughter of Naḥum, rabbi of Kobrin. After a failed business venture with his father-in-law, he was forced to preach professionally. His homiletic style was marked by folksy, incisive parables that often highlighted the different treatment accorded the poor and the rich, a disparity made painfully clear after his own impoverishment.
title: Kranz, Ya‘akov ben Volf
alternative label: Ya‘akov Kranz
alternative label: Ya‘akov ben Volf Kranz
related: Chełm
related: Dubno
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Kalisz
related: Kluger, Shelomoh ben Yehudah
related: Passover
related: Przemyśl
related: Vilnius
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zamość
related: Zhovkva

Kraushar, Aleksander
described at: Kraushar Aleksander
has abstract: (1843–1931), historian, poet, and translator. Born in Warsaw, Aleksander Kraushar came from a moderately prosperous commercial family—his father, Herman, was a senior broker in the Warsaw stock exchange. Kraushar attended a scientific gymnasium and was in the same class as the banker Hipolit Wawelberg. He then studied law at the Szkoła Główna, the proto-university established by Aleksander Wielopolski in the early 1860s.
title: Kraushar, Aleksander
alternative label: Aleksander Kraushar
related: Assimilation
related: Bersohn, Mathias
related: Frankism
related: Izraelita
related: Jutrzenka
related: Warsaw
related: Wawelberg, Hipolit

Krein, Aleksandr Abramovich
described at: Krein Aleksandr Abramovich
has abstract: (1883–1951), composer and cellist. Aleksandr Krein was born in the Russian city of Nizhnii Novgorod into a family of musicians. His father, Avraham (1838–1921), was a klezmer violinist and amateur folk-song collector. Seven of his ten children became professional musicians, notably David (1869–1926), the concertmaster of Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater orchestra, and Grigorii (1879–1955), also a composer. After a childhood spent performing in his father’s klezmer band, Krein entered the Moscow Conservatory at age 13 as a cello student. He went on to study music theory and composition with composers Sergei Taneyev and Boleslav Yavorsky.
title: Krein, Aleksandr Abramovich
alternative label: Aleksandr Krein
related: Habimah
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kiev
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Society for Jewish Folk Music
related: Soviet State Yiddish Theaters
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Krymchaks
described at: Krymchaks
has abstract: Indigenous Rabbinite Jewish community of the Crimean Peninsula. The term Krymchak (also Krimchak; “inhabitant of Crimea”) was first introduced by Russians following the annexation of Crimea in 1783; the name was chosen to distinguish them from Karaites as well as from the Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe. Gradually the members of the community, whose language is Judeo-Crimean Tatar, also began to refer to themselves by this term, their previous self-appellation of Syrael (Israel) surviving residually in their folk poetry. Officially, in Crimean Tatar, both Rabbinite and Karaite Jews were called Yahudiler, but in the unofficial everyday language the pejorative term Chufutlar (“Yids”) was applied to both groups. Rabbinites were called Zülüflü Chufutlar (“Yids” with sidelocks) and the Karaites Zülüfsüz Chufutlar (“Yids” without sidelocks).
title: Krymchaks
alternative label: Krymchak
related: Ashkenaz
related: Crimea
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Karaites
related: Katzenelson, Yitsḥak
related: Khazaria
related: Kiev
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius

Landau, Yisra’el
described at: Landau Yisrael
has abstract: (1758–1829), Hebrew-language printer in Prague and an influential figure in that city’s Haskalah. Yisra’el Landau, the third son of Yeḥezkel Landau (chief rabbi of Prague from 1754 to 1793), was born in Prague. In his youth, he studied in Brody with Yisra’el Zamość (ca. 1700–1772), the Talmudist and early maskil, who had previously taught Moses Mendelssohn in Berlin. Landau was actively involved in the Prague Haskalah, as were such other influential figures as Baruch Jeitteles (1762–1813).
title: Landau, Yisra’el
alternative label: Yisra’el Landau
related: Brody
related: Haskalah
related: Jeitteles Family
related: Landau, Mosheh Yisra’el
related: Landau, Yeḥezkel ben Yehudah
related: Prague
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Zamość, Yisra’el ben Mosheh ha-Levi

Lehman, Shmuel
described at: Lehman Shmuel
has abstract: (1886–1941), folklorist. Shmuel Lehman collected material from marginal social groups such as the Jewish underworld and prostitutes. Although not formally trained in academics or in theories of folklore, he dedicated his life to culling folk songs, proverbs, purim-shpils, and folktales from a wide spectrum of Yiddish-speaking society in Poland. He used whatever work he did, including bill collecting and selling lottery tickets, as an excuse to meet ordinary people and record their folklore. By the time of his death in the Warsaw ghetto, he had published more data than any other Yiddish folklorist.
title: Lehman, Shmuel
alternative label: Shmuel Lehman
related: Bund
related: Elijah the Prophet
related: Folk Songs
related: Folklore, Ethnography, and Anthropology
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Proverbs
related: Pryłucki, Noah
related: Purim-shpil
related: Trunk, Yekhiel Yeshaye
related: Warsaw

Leningradskii Evreiskii Al’manakh
described at: Leningradskii Evreiskii Almanakh
has abstract: Russian-language Jewish samizdat journal published in Leningrad between 1982 and 1989. Leningradskii evreiskii al’manakh (Leningrad Jewish Almanac) was the organ of Leningrad refuseniks (persons denied the right to emigrate to Israel). Among the founding editors were Eduard Erlikh, Iakov Gorodetskii, Iurii Kolker, and Grigorii Vasserman. Initially its creators viewed the journal as the organ of Leningradskoe Obshchestvo po Izucheniiu Evreiskoi Kul’tury (Leningrad Society for the Study of Jewish Culture), which they had tried, unsuccessfully, to register with the authorities in 1982. Its editors changed as some were allowed to emigrate, and the first group was replaced by Mikhail Beizer, Semen Frumkin, and Rimma Zapesotskaia.
title: Leningradskii Evreiskii Al’manakh
alternative label: Leningradskii Evreiskii al’manakh
alternative label: Leningradskii evreiskii al’manakh
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Refuseniks
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Samizdat
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Lenski, Ḥayim
described at: Lenski Hayim
has abstract: (1905–1942?), Hebrew poet and translator. Ḥayim Lenski’s parents divorced when he was an infant, and though he had been born in Slonim, he was raised by his paternal grandfather in a nearby village. During his youth he was an avid reader of Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, and German literature. Lenski wrote his first poem—rhyming verses about the fall of the tsar—at age 12. At 16, he moved to Vilna and studied at a teachers’ seminary. There, he and a friend published Leket (Anthology; 1922?), which included his first collection of poems.
title: Lenski, Ḥayim
alternative label: Ḥayim Lenski
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Mandel’shtam Osip Emil’evich
related: Moscow
related: Hebrew Poetry (Poetry)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius

Lewko
described at: Lewko
has abstract: (fl. late 14th century), financier. Lewko was the most important financial backer to serve Polish kings during the second half of the fourteenth century. Coming from Kraków, he was the son of Yarden and Kaszyca; was married to Swonka (Zwonka); and was the father of Avraham, Kena‘an, Yisra’el, Yarden, and Golda. A member of a council convened by Casimir the Great in 1368 to discuss the organization of salt mines, Lewko became the co-lessee of such mines in Bochnia and Wieliczka and also helped administer the royal mint in Kraków.
title: Lewko
related: Gniezno
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: About this Article (Kraków)

Lilientalowa, Regina
described at: Lilientalowa Regina
has abstract: (1877–1924), ethnographer, folklorist, and writer. Born in Zawichost near Sandomierz, Regina Lilientalowa settled in Warsaw after her marriage. She was at first self-taught, but completed her education by taking clandestine academic courses at the so-called “Flying University.” Influenced by her teacher, sociologist Ludwik Krzywicki, Lilientalowa developed a particular interest in Jewish folklore and published her early studies in Poland’s leading anthropological journals Wisła (Vistula) and Lud (Folk) from 1898 until 1905. She never held an academic position.
title: Lilientalowa, Regina
alternative label: Regina Lilientalowa
related: Assimilation
related: Bałaban, Majer
related: Demons
related: Izraelita
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Religious Year
related: Sandomierz
related: Warsaw

Lima, Mosheh ben Yitsḥak Yehudah
described at: Lima Mosheh ben Yitshak Yehudah
has abstract: (1605–1658), rabbi, halakhic authority, and author. Lima served as rabbi of Slonim (1637), Vilna (prior to 1650), and Brisk (1655). In Vilna he presided over the prestigious rabbinical court, where his associates included Efrayim ben Ya‘akov ha-Kohen and Shabetai ben-Me’ir ha-Kohen. Other prominent members of the court were Aharon Shemu’el ben Yisra’el Koidonover and Hillel ben Naftali Tsevi.
title: Lima, Mosheh ben Yitsḥak Yehudah
alternative label: Mosheh Lima
alternative label: Mosheh ben Yitsḥak Yehudah Lima
related: Brest
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: Koidanover, Aharon Shemu’el and Tsevi Hirsh
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Shabetai ben Me’ir ha-Kohen
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Vilnius

About this Article (Literary Criticism and Scholarship)
described at: Literary Criticism and Scholarship
has abstract: To treat the development of critical and scholarly writing about Jewish literature, this entry includes three articles. The first two treat criticism of Hebrew and Yiddish literature, respectively, detailing the major critics and scholars of literature in each language, the journals in which their writings appeared, and the major critical genres. Russian Literary Criticism takes note of important Jewish figures who developed the major schools of Russian criticism from the formalists through the Tartu School. See also Literary Journals.
title: About this Article (Literary Criticism and Scholarship)
alternative label: Literary Criticism and Scholarship
alternative label: literary criticism
related: About this Article (Literary Journals)

Hebrew Criticism and Scholarship (Literary Criticism and Scholarship)
described at: Hebrew Criticism and Scholarship
has abstract: The stirrings of Hebrew literature in Galicia and Lithuania in the first half of the nineteenth century were accompanied by early critical appraisals. In the periodicals Bikure ha-‘itim (The First Fruits of the Times; 1831) and Kerem ḥemed (Vineyard of Delight; 1839), Shelomoh Yehudah Rapoport (Shir), one of the outstanding intellectuals of Galicia, published articles about Yosef Perl’s satire Megaleh temirin (Revealer of Secrets; 1819) and about its roots in the European satirical tradition. In the journal Pirḥe tsafon (Flowers of the North; 1844), editor Shemu’el Yosef Fuenn published a detailed discussion of Adam ha-Kohen’s Shire sefat kodesh (Poems in the Holy Tongue), and Fuenn’s editorial colleague Eli‘ezer Lipman Horovitz wrote a historical survey of Hebrew poetry from the biblical period to modern times. However, these and others were isolated and rare publications.
title: Hebrew Criticism and Scholarship (Literary Criticism and Scholarship)
alternative label: Hebrew literary critic
alternative label: Hebrew literary criticism
alternative label: literary criticism
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Bal-Makhshoves
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Bernfeld, Shim‘on
related: Bershadsky, Yesha‘yahu
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brainin, Re’uven
related: Braudes, Re’uven Asher
related: Epstein, Zalman
related: Feierberg, Mordekhai Ze’ev
related: Feitelson, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Fichmann, Ya‘akov
related: Friedberg, Avraham Shalom
related: Frishman, David
related: Fuenn, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Galicia
related: Gnessin, Uri Nisan
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Kantor, Yehudah Leib
related: Karmel, Ha-
related: Katz, Bentsiyon
related: Kaunas
related: Kerem Ḥemed
related: Klausner, Yosef
related: Kovner, Avraham Uri
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lachower, Yeruḥam Fishel
related: Lebensohn, Avraham Dov
related: Letteris, Me’ir
related: Levin, Yehudah Leib (poet)
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: About this Article (Literary Journals)
related: Lithuania
related: Magid, Ha-
related: Mane, Mordekhai Tsevi
related: Mapu, Avraham
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: Odessa
related: Orthodoxy
related: Paperna, Avraham Ya‘akov
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Perl, Yosef
related: Hebrew Poetry (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Rabbinowitz, Sha’ul Pinḥas
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Ravnitski, Yehoshu‘a Ḥana
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Satire
related: Shaḥar, Ha-
related: Shalkovich, Avraham Leib
related: Shapira, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Smolenskin, Perets
related: Sokolow, Naḥum
related: Thon, Ozjasz
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Tsinberg, Yisroel
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties
related: Zitron, Shemu’el Leib
related: Zweifel, Eli‘ezer

Yiddish Literary Journals (Literary Journals)
described at: Yiddish Literary Journals
has abstract: Most Russian maskilim of the 1860s were no less contemptuous of Yiddish, the noxious zhargon (jargon), than were their Berlin colleagues, yet—against the grain—the maskil Aleksander Zederbaum (1816–1893) in 1862 issued Kol mevaser (Herald) in Odessa as a Yiddish supplement to the Hebrew weekly Ha-Melits (The Advocate) from 1862 to 1872.
title: Yiddish Literary Journals (Literary Journals)
alternative label: journals
alternative label: literary journal
related: Łódź
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Asif, Ha-
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Bikl, Shloyme
related: Broderzon, Moyshe
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Czernowitz Conference
related: Der Nister
related: Fefer, Itsik
related: Folks-shtime
related: Fraynd, Der
related: Frishman, David
related: Frug, Shimen Shmuel
related: Galicia
related: Globus
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Gottlober, Avraham Ber
related: Grade, Chaim
related: Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
related: Halkin, Shmuel
related: Haynt
related: Hofshteyn, Dovid
related: Katzenelson, Yitsḥak
related: Kiev
related: Kishinev
related: Kol Mevaser
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Kulbak, Moyshe
related: Kushnirov, Arn
related: Kvitko, Leyb
related: Linetski, Yitskhok Yoyel
related: Literarishe Bleter
related: Lithuania
related: Manger, Itsik
related: Mayzel, Nakhmen
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Minsk
related: Moment, Der
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Nomberg, Hersh Dovid
related: Odessa
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Pinski, Dovid
related: Ravitch, Melech
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: Riga
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Schiper, Ignacy
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shomer
related: Shtern, Yisroel
related: Shteynbarg, Eliezer
related: Singer, Isaac Bashevis
related: Sokolow, Naḥum
related: Sovetish Heymland
related: Spektor, Mordkhe
related: Sutzkever, Avrom
related: Tsene-rene
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vergelis, Arn
related: Vilnius
related: Volf, Leyzer
related: Warsaw
related: Weichert, Michał
related: Wiener, Meir
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Yud, Der

Lugoj
described at: Lugoj
has abstract: Town in southwestern Romania, on the Timiş River, 60 km east of Timişoara. The first documentary reference to Lugoj (Ger., Lugosch; Hun., Lugos) dates to 1334. From 1658 to 1688, Lugoj was under Turkish rule. The presence of Jews in the town was first recorded in the late seventeenth century.
title: Lugoj
related: Bucovina
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Romania
related: Timişoara
related: Transylvania

Margulies, Emil
described at: Margulies Emil
has abstract: (1877–1943), lawyer and Zionist leader. Born in Sosnowitz (Pol., Sosnowiec), Katowice province, to an Orthodox family, Emil Margulies became active in Zionism while studying law in Vienna, where he became acquainted with Theodor Herzl. In 1903, Margulies settled in Teplitz Schönau (Teplice Šanov) in northern Bohemia, where he worked as a legal clerk and promoted Zionism through lecture tours, leaflets, and proclamations in the local press.
title: Margulies, Emil
alternative label: Emil Margulies
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Katowice
related: Silesia
related: Slovakia
related: Weizmann, Chaim
related: Židovská Strana
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Mark, Yudl
described at: Mark Yudl
has abstract: (1897–1975), Yiddish linguist, educator, and political activist. Born in Palanga, Lithuania (in the Russian Empire), Yudl Mark was educated by private Jewish teachers and at local Russian schools. From 1915 to 1918, he studied at the historical-philological faculty of Petrograd University. He belonged to historian Simon Dubnow’s intellectual circle, whose followers formed the Folkspartey, or Jewish People’s Party.
title: Mark, Yudl
alternative label: Yudl Mark
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Folkists
related: Kalmanovitch, Zelig
related: Kaunas
related: Latvia
related: Lithuania
related: Weinreich, Max
related: YIVO
related: Yidishe Shprakh, Di

Marshak, Samuil Iakovlevich
described at: Marshak Samuil Iakovlevich
has abstract: (1887–1964), poet and writer. Samuil Marshak’s father, a soapmaker, descended from a family of rabbis. His mother was the daughter of the Vitebsk government rabbi, in whose house Marshak began to study Hebrew at the age of six. Marshak’s talents later drew the attention of the art historian Vladimir Stasov and the writer Maksim Gorky.
title: Marshak, Samuil Iakovlevich
alternative label: Samuil Marshak
related: Babi Yar
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: About this Article (Children’s Literature)
related: Frug, Shimen Shmuel
related: Lithuania
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Razsvet
related: Shneour, Zalman
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Vitsyebsk
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Medal’e, Shemaryahu Yosef Leib Iankelevich
described at: Medale Shemaryahu Yosef Leib Iankelevich
has abstract: (1873–1938), rabbi in Russia and the Soviet Union. Born in Kretinga, Lithuania, Shemaryahu Yosef Leib Medal’e received his rabbinic ordination from the Slobodka yeshiva. His marriage into a Hasidic family brought him close to Lubavitch. In 1898, he was appointed rabbi of the provincial capital of Tula, outside the Pale of Settlement, and had to learn Russian to communicate with his congregation. He became rabbi of Korelichi (Belarus) in 1901. In 1907, he was chosen as rabbi of the provincial capital Vitebsk, the city where he officiated for many years and with which he is generally identified.
title: Medal’e, Shemaryahu Yosef Leib Iankelevich
alternative label: Shemaryahu Yosef Leib Medal’e
alternative label: Shemaryahu Yosef Medal’e
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Belarus
related: Evsektsiia
related: Heder
related: Lithuania
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Moscow
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Rostov-on-Don
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Slobodka, Yeshiva of
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vitsyebsk

Me’ir Leib ben Yeḥi’el Mikha’el
described at: Meir Leib ben Yehiel Mikhael
has abstract: (Weisser; 1809–1879), rabbi and biblical commentator, known by the acronym Malbim. Born in Volochisk (in Volhynia), Me’ir Leib was a child when his father died, after which he studied under the local rabbi, Mosheh Leib Horowitz. Married at 14, Me’ir Leib divorced four years later, leaving a son (of whom little is known except that he attended Moscow University) and daughter (Freida, who married Eliyahu Heilpern of Vilna). After the trauma of divorce, Malbim immersed himself in rabbinic scholarship, and in 1834 traveled throughout Europe—visiting Pressburg, Trieste, Amsterdam, and Breslau—to publicize his first halakhic work, Artsot ha-ḥayim (1837; on , Oraḥ ḥayim), among the prominent rabbis of his day.
title: Me’ir Leib ben Yeḥi’el Mikha’el
related: Assimilation
related: Barasch, Iuliu
related: Belarus
related: Bratislava
related: Bucharest
related: Haskalah
related: Kaliningrad
related: Kiev
related: Orthodoxy
related: Piety
related: Reform, Religious
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sabbath
related: Talmud Study
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw
related: Wrocław

Mekhlis, Lev Zakharovich
described at: Mekhlis Lev Zakharovich
has abstract: (1889–1953), Communist Party activist and Soviet government official. Born in Odessa to the family of a minor official, from 1904 to 1911 Lev Mekhlis worked as a clerk and earned extra income by tutoring. From 1907 to 1910, he was a member of Po‘ale Tsiyon. Drafted in 1911, Mekhlis served as an artilleryman during World War I. In 1918 he joined the Bolshevik Party and was appointed to be a political officer in the Red Army with the rank of brigade commissar. He was later promoted to division commissar, eventually becoming corps commissar.
title: Mekhlis, Lev Zakharovich
alternative label: Lev Mekhlis
related: Communist Party of the Soviet Union
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon

Mihăileni
described at: Mihaileni
has abstract: Town in northern Moldavia. Mihăileni was established in 1792, subsequent to the opening of a customs station between Austria and Moldavia. The town was originally named Vlădeni, but eventually the Moldavian prince Mihail Sturdza (r. 1834–1849) changed it into Mihăileni and, aiming to turn it into an important trading center, encouraged the settlement of Jews from Galicia, exempting them from taxes.
title: Mihăileni
related: Bessarabia
related: Bucovina
related: Crafts
related: Dorohoi
related: Galicia
related: Groper, Iacob Ashel
related: Moldavia
related: Transnistria

Mikra Kodesh
described at: Mikra Kodesh
has abstract: Established in Lemberg in the summer of 1883 as an organization for students, Mikra Kodesh (Holy Assembly) is sometimes considered the first Zionist association in Galicia, though it was not connected to the emergent Ḥoveve Tsiyon (Lovers of Zion) movement in Russia. The organization was founded by Joseph Kobak, a Haskalah rabbi trained in Germany who was then serving as educator and unofficial rabbi at the Lemberg Temple, and Re’uven Bierer, who had just returned to his native Galicia after completing medical training at the University of Vienna, where he had cofounded Austria’s first Zionist fraternity, Kadimah.
title: Mikra Kodesh
related: Agudas Akhim
related: Bloch, Yosef Shemu’el
related: Braude, Markus
related: Galicia
related: Haskalah
related: L’viv
related: Maccabi Movement
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shomer Yisra’el
related: Thon, Ozjasz
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Monuments and Memorials
described at: Monuments and Memorials
has abstract: Jewish tradition marks milestones in the life cycle with domestic commemorative acts and artifacts, including yortsayt candles, tombstones, fast days, and even the pinch of a Sabbath challah as a burnt offering to commemorate the destruction of the ancient temple. Beyond the memorials of daily religious observance, there are also larger, communal, and even collective memorials and monuments such as the remains of ancient synagogues, cemeteries, and ghetto walls, as well as ruins, artifacts, museums, and historical markers of more recent catastrophes such as the Holocaust.
title: Monuments and Memorials
alternative label: memorial
alternative label: monuments
related: Łódź
related: Altneuschul
related: Anielewicz, Mordekhai
related: Babi Yar
related: Belarus
related: Budapest
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Estonia
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Jewish Historical Institute
related: Kiev
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Latvia
related: Life Cycle
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Memory
related: Minsk
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Sabbath
related: Sandomierz
related: Strashun, Shemu’el and Matityahu
related: Terezín
related: Tombstones
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el

Neuda, Abraham
described at: Neuda Abraham
has abstract: (1812–1854), rabbi and religious reformer. Abraham Neuda was born in Loštice (Ger., Loschitz) in the Habsburg province of Moravia. The only son of Aron Moses Neuda, rabbi of Loštice, Abraham attended yeshiva in Mikulov (Nikolsburg), where he studied under Moravian chief rabbi Neḥemyah Trebitsch. While there, Neuda secretly pursued secular “German” subjects with his fellow students.
title: Neuda, Abraham
alternative label: Abraham Neuda
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Mikulov
related: Neuda, Fanny Schmiedl
related: Pápa
related: Reform, Religious
related: Sabbath
related: Trebitsch, Neḥemyah Naḥum
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Neufeld, Daniel
described at: Neufeld Daniel
has abstract: (1814–1874), Polish assimilationist activist, pedagogue, and journalist. Daniel Neufeld was born in Praszka near Wieluń, Great Poland, which from the beginning of the nineteenth century was a center of the Haskalah. He received a traditional religious education and attended a Catholic secondary school, although he ended his formal education in 1830. He was an autodidact both in the traditional literature of Judaism, as well as in contemporary academic literature about Jews, which he explored mainly in German.
title: Neufeld, Daniel
alternative label: Daniel Neufeld
related: Assimilation
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Jutrzenka
related: Orgelbrand Family
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Toeplitz, Teodor and Henryk
related: Warsaw

Nussbaum, Hilary
described at: Nussbaum Hilary
has abstract: (1820–1895), activist, journalist, and cofounder of the Jewish integration movement in Warsaw. Born in Warsaw, Hilary (Hillel) Nussbaum graduated from rabbinical school and taught at an elementary school. He then became a merchant, possibly under the influence of his father-in-law, the prominent maskil Mosheh Tannenbaum (1795–1849).
title: Nussbaum, Hilary
alternative label: Hilary Nussbaum
related: Jutrzenka
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Warsaw

Orshanski, Ber
described at: Orshanski Ber
has abstract: (1883–1945), Yiddish writer and literary historian. Born in Horodok, Belorussia, Ber Orshanski received a traditional education until the age of 16. From 1902 to 1906 he lived in Riga, where he joined the Bund. Subsequently he moved to Vilna, where he wrote and published his first Yiddish plays. Between 1910 and 1913, Orshanski worked as a proofreader at a number of Vilna-based newspapers, including Vilner vokhnblat (Vilna Weekly), edited by Lipman Levin. Orshanski also edited an almanac, Der shnayder (The Tailor), in 1913.
title: Orshanski, Ber
alternative label: Ber Orshanski
related: Bronshteyn, Yashe
related: Bund
related: Der Nister
related: Dobrushin, Yekhezkl
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Kiev
related: Kultur-lige
related: Levin, Lipman
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Oyslender, Nokhem
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Riga
related: Society for the Settlement of Jewish Toilers on the Land
related: Soviet State Yiddish Theaters
related: Vilnius
related: Vitsyebsk
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Orshanskii, Il’ia Grigor’evich
described at: Orshanskii Ilia Grigorevich
has abstract: (1846–1875), lawyer, historian, and publisher. Il’ia Orshanskii was born into a wealthy Jewish family in Ekaterinoslav (mod. Dnipropetrovs’k). After receiving a traditional Jewish education, he studied law at Novorossiiskii University, Odessa, graduating in 1868. Because he refused to convert to Russian Orthodoxy, Orshanskii was denied a lectureship at Novorossiiskii University. He subsequently opened a private law practice in Odessa, and at the same time became involved in communal activities, publishing several articles and books on Jewish topics.
title: Orshanskii, Il’ia Grigor’evich
alternative label: Il’ia Orshanskii
related: Antokol’skii, Mark Matveevich
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Gintsburg, Il’ia Iakovlevich
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Karmel, Ha-
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Russia)

Orten, Jiří
described at: Orten Jiri
has abstract: (Ohrenstein; 1919–1941), poet. Jiří Ohrenstein was the second of three sons of an assimilated Jewish family in the town of Kutná Hora near Prague. His parents owned a haberdashery; his father’s death in 1936 further intensified Jiří’s close relationship to his mother, an amateur actress who passed some of her theatrical talent and character on to her sons. In 1937 Jiří began drama school in Prague, after having failed the entrance exams the previous year. As a student, he began publishing in literary magazines, taking in 1936 the pseudonym Orten; he also participated in theatrical life, acting, adapting texts for the stage, and conceiving a fateful and futile love for the actress Věra Fingerová. Poetry, however, gradually emerged as his first love and true calling.
title: Orten, Jiří
alternative label: Jiří Orten
related: Prague

Ostrava
described at: Ostrava
has abstract: Coal-mining and industrial town in northern Moravia (near the Polish border) in today’s Czech Republic. Ostrava (Ger., Mährisch-Ostrau; known as Moravská Ostrava until 1918) was one of the youngest Jewish communities in Moravia. Like most mining towns in the Habsburg lands, Ostrava was off-limits to Jews until the late eighteenth century. One of its first Jewish inhabitants in modern times, a distiller, arrived in 1792, and the first regular prayer service took place in 1832. Jews began arriving in larger numbers after 1848, when Habsburg Jews were granted freedom of movement, and again after 1860, when residential restrictions were finally lifted.
title: Ostrava
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brno
related: Czech Republic
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Galicia
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: Prague
related: Silesia
related: Slovakia
related: Subcarpathian Rus’
related: Terezín
related: Židovská Strana

Otsar ha-Sifrut
described at: Otsar ha-Sifrut
has abstract: Hebrew publication, issued between 1887 and 1896 and again in 1902. Otsar ha-sifrut (Treasury of Literature), known also as Bet otsar ha-sifrut, appeared in five volumes between 1887 and 1896 and then was intended as a monthly paper; however, only a single issue was published in 1902. The first volume was published in Jarosław and was edited by Shalti’el Yitsḥak Graber, assisted by the author Re’uven Asher Braudes; later volumes were published in Kharkov.
title: Otsar ha-Sifrut
alternative label: Otsar ha-sifrut
related: Asif, Ha-
related: Assimilation
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Bernfeld, Shim‘on
related: Braudes, Re’uven Asher
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Gottlober, Avraham Ber
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Khar’kiv
related: Levin, Yehudah Leib (poet)
related: Mandelkern, Shelomoh
related: Orthodoxy
related: Paperna, Avraham Ya‘akov
related: Schulman, El‘azar
related: Sokolow, Naḥum
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties
related: Zitron, Shemu’el Leib
related: Zweifel, Eli‘ezer

Pap, Károly
described at: Pap Karoly
has abstract: (1897–1945), Hungarian writer. The third child of Miksa Pollák (1868–1944), rabbi of Sopron, Károly Pap was 17 and attending high school when World War I broke out. He volunteered and served as an officer on the Italian front. His earliest drama, Leviát György (George Leviát), written in 1926 but first published only seven decades later, depicts the war as experienced by various types of assimilating Jews against the background of a hostile and prejudiced society.
title: Pap, Károly
alternative label: Károly Pap
related: Assimilation
related: Budapest
related: Communism
related: Hungarian Literature
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Komlós, Aladár
related: Labor Camps
related: Múlt és Jövő
related: Patai, József
related: Seminary
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Paper Cuts
described at: Paper Cuts
has abstract: The making of paper cuts by Jews in Eastern Europe, which differed in style from those made by Jews elsewhere, flourished particularly in the nineteenth century and began to fade as an art in the 1920s. These developments coincided in time and place with paper cuts created by rural Poles and Ukrainians. Researchers nevertheless insist on the distinctiveness of Jewish paper cuts because they were closely related to religious practices, and maintain that the influence of their neighbors, both in techniques and artistic motifs, was limited.
title: Paper Cuts
alternative label: cutouts
alternative label: paper cuts
alternative label: paper-cut
related: Calendars
related: Passover
related: Purim
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Pasternak, Leonid
described at: Pasternak Leonid
has abstract: (1862–1945), painter. Born in Odessa to a poor innkeeper’s family of nine, Leonid Pasternak completed his gymnasium education in 1879. He then studied first at the Odessa Drawing School and between 1882 and 1886 at the Munich Art Academy. Upon his return to Odessa, he painted a series of impressionistic genre works depicting impoverished Jews. Pasternak was first acclaimed in Russia for his Chtenie pis’ma s rodiny (Letter from Home; 1889), a traditional genre scene that portrayed Russian army life in a realist style. In 1889, he married and settled in Moscow, becoming the father of the well-known writer Boris Pasternak. From 1894 to 1918 he taught at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture where he introduced moderate impressionism (a Russian version of French impressionism, with more muted colors) and followed new teaching methods.
title: Pasternak, Leonid
alternative label: Leonid
alternative label: Leonid Osipovich
alternative label: Leonid Pasternak
related: Art Education
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Engel, Yo’el
related: Frishman, David
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich
related: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Stybel
related: Stybel, Avraham Yosef

Perl, Feliks
described at: Perl Feliks
has abstract: (1871–1927), leader of the Polish Socialist Party, writer, editor, and Polish parliamentarian. Born in Warsaw to a Polish-speaking, middle-class Jewish family, Feliks Perl was raised in a Polonizing household, his father having been arrested for participation in the anti-Russian Polish insurrection of 1863. After graduating from a Russian gymnasium in Warsaw, Perl entered the School of Law at Warsaw University, where he joined illegal radical circles and, in 1889, became active in an underground Polish revolutionary organization. In the wake of police repression, Perl fled to Germany in April 1892.
title: Perl, Feliks
alternative label: Feliks Perl
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Warsaw

Personal Hygiene and Grooming
described at: Personal Hygiene and Grooming
has abstract: Religious law calls on Jews to undertake ritual washings or ablutions that range from immersion of the whole body (tevilah) to pouring water over the hands (netilat yadayim), although there is no evidence to prove that the practice of such rituals contributed to higher standards of hygiene among the Jews of Eastern Europe. Still, these laws infused with an aspiration for physical purity had some bearing on the general approach of the East European Jew to his or her level of hygiene and grooming. Thus, according to the Shulḥan ‘arukh, it is incumbent upon a Jew on awakening to purify himself by washing his hands and face and rinsing his mouth. Jews must also flow water over their hands before meals and recite a blessing. Immersion in a mikveh (ritual bath) is required to cleanse a man of an impurity such as a seminal issue and, in the case of women, immersion is performed before marriage and after menstruation, among other states of ritual impurity. No ablution, however, is valid unless the person or, in certain cases an object, has been made scrupulously clean beforehand, so as to ensure that no barrier of foreign matter intervenes between the person or object being immersed and the purifying waters. These laws most certainly contributed to the Jews’ perception of what was hygienic, although immediate factors such as the availability of water, cleansers, and medicine, as well as contemporary understandings of what constituted hygiene were certainly even more important to the hygienic life of East European Jewry.
title: Personal Hygiene and Grooming
alternative label: hygiene
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Autobiography and Memoir
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Berdychiv
related: Childbearing
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Health and Healing
related: Kotik, Yekhezkl
related: Markuze, Moyshe
related: Marriage
related: Misnagdim
related: OZE
related: Passover
related: Sabbath
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shtetl
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Weddings
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Pick, Otto
described at: Pick Otto
has abstract: (1887–1940), poet and translator. Otto Pick belonged to the German-speaking Jewish community in Prague and to the literary circle that included Max Brod, Franz Kafka, and Franz Werfel. With Willy Haas he edited their important, though short-lived, magazine, the Herder-Blätter. As a young man, Pick worked in a bank and devoted his spare time to literature. He published a collection of poems, Freundliches Erleben (Kindly Experience; 1912), and a book of short stories, Die Probe (The Test; 1913).
title: Pick, Otto
alternative label: Otto Pick
related: Brod, Max
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Haas, Willy
related: Kafka, Franz
related: Langer, František
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Werfel, Franz

Pigs
described at: Pigs
has abstract: The prohibition to consume pork is perhaps the most familiar aspect of kashrut, the system of Jewish dietary laws, even though the pig is only one of a number of unclean animals mentioned in the Pentateuch. In Jewish memory, the rejection of pigs is an indicator of Jewish difference; one Yiddish expression characterizes a pig, dover akher (“another thing”) as something not to be mentioned by name.
title: Pigs
alternative label: pig
alternative label: pigs
related: Agriculture
related: Birobidzhan
related: Crimea
related: Dobrushin, Yekhezkl
related: Kishinev
related: Kvitko, Leyb
related: Military Service in Russia
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Shtetl
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Pineles, Samuel
described at: Pineles Samuel
has abstract: (1843–1928), Zionist leader. Samuel Pineles was born in Brody, Galicia; his father was the Hebrew writer Hirsh Mendel Pineles (1806–1870). After graduating from high school in 1860, Pineles moved to Galați, joining his family and working at a business. In 1864 he became secretary of the local committee of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, a position he held until 1900. Hoping the organization would support the emancipation of Romanian Jews, he welcomed its diplomatic success at the Congress of Berlin (1878), but was disappointed when decisions failed to be implemented.
title: Pineles, Samuel
alternative label: Samuel Pineles
related: Brăila
related: Brody
related: Focşani
related: Galaţi
related: Galicia
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Weizmann, Chaim
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Po‘el, Ha-
described at: Poel Ha-
has abstract: The Jewish Socialist Zionist Workers Sports Federation. Ha-Po‘el (“the Worker”) sports clubs were established at a conference in Tel Aviv on 15 May 1926, under the aegis of the Histadrut labor union. The Ha-Po‘el federation considered itself part of the organized socialist workers’ movement and, by 1927, had joined the Socialist Workers Sports International (SWSI). The federation soon set up Ha-Po‘el organizations in Eastern Europe.
title: Po‘el, Ha-
alternative label: Ha-Po‘el
related: Bund
related: Latvia
related: Lithuania
related: Maccabi Movement
related: Morgnshtern
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Riga
related: About this Article (Sport)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Migration since World War I (Population and Migration)
described at: Migration since World War I
has abstract: By the end of the twentieth century, most of the East European Jews who survived the Holocaust and their descendants had moved overseas. The migration that occurred before World War II saved many Jewish lives. Between 1919 and 2005, the total volume of Jewish international migration from Eastern Europe can be roughly estimated at about 3.8 million (for 1969–2005, this figure includes non-Jewish relatives of Jews); of these, approximately 1.95 million went first to Palestine/Israel, and 1.85 million to other countries (see Table 1: Jewish International Migration from Eastern Europe, 1919-2005). Subsequently, part of the former moved on to Western countries; at the same time, a smaller percentage of the latter re-migrated to Palestine/Israel. Internal migration also played a very important role in the demographic development of this Jewry, especially in a country as large as the former Soviet Union (FSU).
title: Migration since World War I (Population and Migration)
alternative label: emigrate
alternative label: emigrated
alternative label: emigration
related: Łódź
related: Belarus
related: Beriḥah
related: Bessarabia
related: Bratislava
related: Bucharest
related: Bucovina
related: Budapest
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: Lithuania
related: L’viv
related: Minsk
related: Moldova
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Slovakia
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw

Portnoy, Yekusiel
described at: Portnoy Yekusiel
has abstract: (1872–1941), leader of the Bund in Poland. Under the name Noyekh (and sometimes as Józef), Yekusiel Portnoy (actually Portney—the spelling can be traced to an error on the part of a Russian registrar) was one of the leading representatives of non-Zionist Jewish socialism in Eastern Europe. To adherents of the Bund (the General Union of Jewish Workers) in Poland between the wars, he was a charismatic paternal figure with enormous moral authority.
title: Portnoy, Yekusiel
alternative label: Yekusiel (Noyekh) Portnoy
alternative label: Yekusiel [Noyekh] Portnoy
related: Alter, Wiktor
related: Bund
related: Erlich, Henryk
related: Heder
related: Kaunas
related: Lithuania
related: Medem Sanatorium
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Prossnitz, Yehudah Leib ben Ya‘akov Holleschau
described at: Prossnitz Yehudah Leib ben Yaakov Holleschau
has abstract: (ca. 1670–after 1736?), Sabbatian prophet and messianic pretender; central figure in early eighteenth-century Moravian Sabbatianism. Yehudah Leib Prossnitz was born in the southeastern Moravian town of Uherský Brod (Broda), and settled after his marriage in Prossnitz (Prostějov), where his wife’s family lived. Although he was not an educated man, at about age 30 he was drawn to Kabbalah, possibly under the influence of traveling Sabbatian prophets and preachers who visited Moravia at that time, such as Yehoshu‘a Heshel Tsoref, Yehudah Ḥasid, and Ḥayim Malakh. He adopted the ascetic life they preached, began to study the Zohar and other kabbalistic texts, and claimed to receive otherworldly instruction from the deceased Yitsḥak Luria and Shabetai Tsevi. Yehudah Leib soon acquired the reputation of an inspired kabbalistic preacher, attracting a local following and gaining the support of the local rabbi of Prossnitz, Me’ir Eisenstadt (ca. 1670–1744), who was not unsympathetic to Sabbatianism.
title: Prossnitz, Yehudah Leib ben Ya‘akov Holleschau
alternative label: Yehudah Leib Prossnitz
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Conversion
related: Eybeschütz, Yonatan
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Malakh, Ḥayim ben Shelomoh
related: Mikulov
related: Prostějov
related: Sabbatianism
related: Tsoref, Yehoshu‘a Heshel ben Yosef
related: Uherský Brod
related: Yehudah Ḥasid ha-Levi

Pryłucki, Tsevi
described at: Pryłucki Tsevi
has abstract: (Hirsh-Sholem Prilutski, 1862–1942), journalist, editor, and early Zionist. Born and raised in a merchant family in Kremenets, Ukraine, Tsevi Pryłucki was educated in the spirit of the Haskalah by his father, a personal friend and pupil of Yitsḥak Ber Levinzon.
title: Pryłucki, Tsevi
alternative label: Tsevi Pryłucki
related: Folkists
related: Folks-shtime
related: Haskalah
related: Haynt
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Jewish Historical Institute
related: Kiev
related: Levinzon, Yitsḥak Ber
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Moment, Der
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw
related: Yatskan, Shmuel Yankev
related: Yom, Ha-
related: Zeman, Ha-
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Rabinovich, Yitsḥak Ya‘akov
described at: Rabinovich Yitshak Yaakov
has abstract: (1854–1919), yeshiva head and rabbinic scholar. Yitsḥak Ya‘akov Rabinovich (Reb Itsele Ponevezher) was born in Shereshevo, Belorussia, the son of a wealthy merchant. After receiving private instruction in Talmud, at the age of 14 he went to study with Yeruḥam Perlman—later a noted rabbi in Minsk—in nearby Selets, and a few years later studied in Brest-Litovsk with Ḥayim Soloveichik (who became the “Brisker rov”) under the tutelage of the latter’s father, Yosef Dov Soloveichik.
title: Rabinovich, Yitsḥak Ya‘akov
alternative label: Yitsḥak Ya‘akov Rabinovich
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Belarus
related: Brest
related: Latvia
related: Minsk
related: Panevėžys
related: Ponevezh, Yeshiva of
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Slobodka, Yeshiva of
related: Soloveichik Family
related: Ukraine
related: Wissotzky, Kalonymus Ze’ev
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Rabinovitz, Aleksander Ziskind
described at: Rabinovitz Aleksander Ziskind
has abstract: (1854–1945), Hebrew writer. Aleksander Ziskind Rabinovitz (known as Azar) was born in Liady, in the Mogilev district, to a poor family. Although he received a comprehensive Talmudic education, as an adolescent he grew acquainted with Hebrew maskilic literature. At the same time, he took it upon himself to study the (Jewish) Bible and, later on, Russian. He married at age 18 and went to live at his father-in-law’s home in nearby Romnova. Three years later, he became a peddler, as his father had done before him, but was not successful in that venture. He then traversed Lithuania, eking out a living from tutoring until eventually finding a permanent teaching position in the Smolensk regional town of Viazma. He published his first batch of articles in the Jewish Russian press, nurturing the hope that eventually he would become a Russian journalist.
title: Rabinovitz, Aleksander Ziskind
alternative label: Aleksander Ziskind Rabinovitz
related: Agnon, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Gershuni, Grigorii Andreevich
related: Haskalah
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Lithuania
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Moscow
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Rabinowitz-Te’omim, Eliyahu David ben Binyamin
described at: Rabinowitz-Teomim Eliyahu David ben Binyamin
has abstract: (1842/43–1905), rabbi in Lithuania and Jerusalem. Eliyahu Rabinowitz-Te’omim was born in Pikeln (Lith., Pikeliai), in western Lithuania. His father, Binyamin Rabinowitz (1813–1869), served as a rabbi in several Lithuanian communities. Eliyahu had a twin brother, Tsevi Yehudah (rabbi of Ragula; d. 1887), and this is the source of the additional name Te’omim, or “twins.” Rabinowitz was the father-in-law of Avraham Yitsḥak Kook, the first chief rabbi of Palestine.
title: Rabinowitz-Te’omim, Eliyahu David ben Binyamin
alternative label: Eliyahu David Rabinowitz-Te’omim
alternative label: Eliyahu David ben Binyamin Rabinowitz-Te’omim
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Kook, Avraham Yitsḥak
related: Lithuania
related: Mir, Yeshiva of
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)

Rabon, Yisroel
described at: Rabon Yisroel
has abstract: (1900–1941), Yiddish author. Yisroel Rabon (orig. Rubin) was born in Gowarchów but grew up in Balut, a working-class suburb of Łódź. He had little formal education but read voraciously, acquiring a broad literary knowledge at an early age and publishing his first poems in his teens. He spent most of the interwar years in Łódź as a professional writer. After the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939, he escaped to Vilna, and was shot in 1941 in Ponar.
title: Rabon, Yisroel
alternative label: Yisroel Rabon
related: Łódź
related: About this Article (Literary Journals)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Yiddish Prose (Prose)
related: Sexuality
related: Shtetl
related: Vilnius
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Radnóti, Miklós
described at: Radnoti Miklos
has abstract: (1910–1944), poet and translator. Considered one of the great Hungarian poets of the twentieth century, Miklós Radnóti was born Miklós Glatter, of Jewish parents, although he remained indifferent toward his Jewish roots all his life, converting formally to Catholicism in 1943. “I do not feel Jewish,” he wrote in a 1942 letter to Hungarian Jewish literary critic Aladár Komlós. “I was never taught to be religious, I do not feel a need for it, I don’t practice it. Race, blood ties, unseverable roots, ancient pangs quivering in every fiber—I consider such things utter nonsense, and not the defining characteristic of either my intellectuality, my spirituality, or my poetry.” Yet he died as a persecuted Jew. In 1944, during a forced march westward across Hungary, Radnóti and members of his labor battalion were shot dead by their Hungarian guards. After the war, his body was removed from a mass grave, and his last poems, his most gripping, were discovered in his coat pocket. His final, prophetic “Razglednica,” or Postcard, is dated 31 October 1944:
title: Radnóti, Miklós
alternative label: Miklós Radnóti
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Komlós, Aladár
related: Markish, Shimon
related: Vas, István

Radomsk Hasidic Dynasty
described at: Radomsk Hasidic Dynasty
has abstract: The Hasidic dynasty of Radomsk (Radomsko) dates from 1843, when the town’s communal rabbi, Shelomoh ha-Kohen Rabinowicz (Rabinovich; 1803–1866; appointed rabbi in 1834), began to conduct himself as a Hasidic rebbe. Rabinowicz had been trained in the more popular wing of Polish Hasidism, following those disciples of Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz (the Seer of Lublin) who did not join the Pshiskhe–Kotsk school. These included Me’ir of Apt (Opatów; d. 1827/31) and Yisakhar Ber of Radeshits (Radoszyce; 1765–1843).
title: Radomsk Hasidic Dynasty
alternative label: Radomsk
related: Łódź
related: Aleksander Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Me’ir ha-Levi Rotenberg of Apt
related: Opatów
related: Pshiskhe Hasidic Dynasty
related: Warsaw
related: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz

Rafes, Moyshe
described at: Rafes Moyshe
has abstract: (Moisei Grigor’evich; 1883–1942), public and political figure active in the Bund and Evsektsiia. Born in Vilna into a family of wine merchants, Moyshe Rafes first attended heder, then a Russian primary school, and passed his examinations as an external pupil at a five-year high school. Rafes joined the Bund while still a youth and devoted himself to party work. He was first arrested in 1903 and spent half a year in prison in Vilna before being released on bail. Later he was suspected of being implicated in the plans for Hirsh Lekert’s attempt on the life of Vilna Governor-General Victor Von Wahl, although Rafes denied this involvement.
title: Rafes, Moyshe
alternative label: Moyshe Rafes
related: Bund
related: Evsektsiia
related: Fareynikte
related: Heder
related: Homel’
related: Kiev
related: Komfarband
related: Lekert, Hirsh
related: L’viv
related: Moscow
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Ukraine
related: Vilnius

Rakous, Vojtěch
described at: Rakous Vojtech
has abstract: (1862–1935), pseudonym of Adalbert Östreicher, writer and journalist. Vojtěch Rakous attended school in a Czech village and at age 12 spent a year at a Jewish school in Brandýs nad Labem. At 13 he left for Prague and worked as an apprentice for a haberdashery; he also began to learn German. After nine years of vocational training, he returned to his native Brandýs area and lived in the village of Mrátín, working as a peddler and a grain merchant. In 1895 he went back to Prague, where he and his brother founded a footwear company; his brother operated the head office while Vojtěch took charge of the Libeň branch. Rakous was recognized by his contemporaries as a solid tradesman, but he apparently had a rough demeanor. Ultimately his business failed when a rival company entered the market.
title: Rakous, Vojtěch
alternative label: Vojtěch Rakous
related: Assimilation
related: Bondy, Filip
related: Czech Literature
related: Galicia
related: Pogroms
related: Prague

Rivke bas Me’ir of Tikotin
described at: Rivke bas Meir of Tikotin
has abstract: (Tiktin; also Rebecca of Tykocin; d. 1605), the first female author of a Yiddish book; preacher and teacher of women. Rivke bas Me’ir was descended from a family whose roots lay in the town of Tiktin (Pol., Tykocin, near Białystok), as indicated by her father’s name, Me’ir Tikotin or Tiktiner. She may have been born and raised in Poland and her date of birth is also unknown, but she spent at least the last years of her life in Prague, where she died. Her headstone in the old Jewish cemetery of that city asserts that she “had preached day and night to women in every pious community.” Her epitaph also refers to her father as “morenu ha-rav rabi [our teacher and master, rabbi] Me’ir,” suggesting that she was the daughter of a scholar and had probably acquired her knowledge of Hebrew and rabbinical literature at her parents’ home. Presumably her husband was not a rabbi and therefore it can be assumed that the titles rabanit (teacher) and darshanit ve-rabanit (preacher and teacher) were honorifics bestowed on her out of respect for her activities in Prague and its surrounding communities.
title: Rivke bas Me’ir of Tikotin
alternative label: Rivke bas Me’ir of Tykocin
related: Białystok
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Servants
related: Tykocin

Romanian State Yiddish Theater
described at: Romanian State Yiddish Theater
has abstract: Established in Bucharest on 1 August 1948, the first Romanian State Yiddish Theater was located on the premises of the Baraşeum Theater in the Jewish quarter of Bucharest, where Jewish actors had given Romanian-language performances during World War II. Between 1944 and 1948, Yiddish actors performed for private groups or were subsidized by various cultural associations.
title: Romanian State Yiddish Theater
alternative label: Romania
alternative label: State Yiddish Theater
related: Benador, Ury
related: Bercovici, Israil
related: Bucharest
related: Dybbuk, The
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Habimah
related: Iaşi
related: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl
related: Romania
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shternberg, Yankev
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Transnistria

Ronetti-Roman, Moise
described at: Ronetti-Roman Moise
has abstract: (1847/53–1908), writer. Moise Ronetti-Roman (Aron Blumenfeld) was born into a Hasidic family in Jezierzany, Galicia (now Ozeryany, Ukr.); as a teenager, he moved to Moldavia and worked as a Hebrew tutor. In 1869, Ronetti-Roman left for Berlin to study medicine, philosophy, and philology, but did not graduate. In the same period, he contributed articles in Hebrew to Ha-Magid under the name Mosheh Roman. Throughout his life he avoided using his true surname and even kept his given name a secret.
title: Ronetti-Roman, Moise
alternative label: Moise Ronetti-Roman
related: Bucharest
related: Galicia
related: Iaşi
related: Magid, Ha-
related: Moldavia
related: Romania
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Rotholc, Stanisław
described at: Rotholc Stanisław
has abstract: (1912–1996), Polish flyweight boxing champion; member of the Ordnungsdienst (Jewish order police) of the Warsaw ghetto. Before World War II, Stanisław (Shepsel) Rotholc was a member of the boxing division of the Jewish sports club Gwiazda (also known by its Yiddish name, Shtern, meaning Star) in Warsaw. This workers’ sports organization was affiliated with the Left Po‘ale Tsiyon. Competing in the flyweight category, in 1933 Rotholc was the first Jewish boxer to become a Polish national champion.
title: Rotholc, Stanisław
alternative label: Stanisław (Shepsel) Rotholc
related: Ghetto Police (Ghettos)
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Shtern
related: About this Article (Sport)
related: Warsaw

Rülf, Isaak
described at: Rulf Isaak
has abstract: (1831–1902), rabbi, journalist, and author. From 1865 to 1898, Isaak Rülf served as rabbi to the Jewish community of Klaipėda (Ger., Memel) in East Prussia, on the border between Prussia and the Russian Empire. Through his philanthropic and journalistic activities on behalf of the Jewish communities of Lithuania, Rülf attained the status of a spokesperson for Russian Jewry. He was also among the minor intellectual fathers of modern Zionism.
title: Rülf, Isaak
alternative label: Isaak Rülf
related: East Prussia
related: Kaunas
related: Klaipėda
related: Lithuania
related: Pogroms
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Spektor, Yitsḥak Elḥanan
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Russian Federation (Russia)
described at: Russian Federation
has abstract: Following the disintegration of the Soviet Union in late 1991, its 15 component union republics became independent states. By far the largest of these in both size and population was the Russian Federation, which retained the precise borders of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR). Due to demographic processes underway over several decades, its Jewish population was among the oldest in the world (median age 52.3 in 1989), with roughly four deaths to every birth. The proportion of mixed marriages was high (73.2 percent for Jewish men and 62.8 percent for Jewish women in the late 1980s), yet the enlarged Jewish population—those living in mixed households—was also declining, along with the core population. The ratio of core to enlarged Jewish population was estimated at the end of the 1980s at 1:1.8.
title: Russian Federation (Russia)
alternative label: Russia
alternative label: Russian Federation
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Congress of Jewish Religious Communities and Organizations in Russia
related: Federation of Jewish Communities and Organizations of the USSR
related: Federation of Jewish Communities in Russia
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Moscow
related: Migration since World War I (Population and Migration)
related: Russian Jewish Congress
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Sabbath Rest
described at: Sabbath Rest
has abstract: The question of Sabbath rest, also called Sunday rest, goes directly to the heart of two fundamental issues that confronted Jews in Eastern Europe as they entered the modern era: the question of relations with the non-Jews among whom they lived, and the issue of Jews’ ability to adapt to the surrounding society while maintaining their own separate sense of identity and community.
title: Sabbath Rest
alternative label: Sabbath rest
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Folkists
related: Grünbaum, Yitsḥak
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Leaseholding
related: Minorities Treaties
related: Perl, Feliks
related: Pogroms
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: Pryłucki, Noah
related: About this Article (Relations between Jews and Non-Jews)
related: Sabbath
related: Servants
related: Tavernkeeping
related: Trade
related: Volodymyr Volyns’kyi
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Sandauer, Artur
described at: Sandauer Artur
has abstract: (1913–1989), Polish writer, literary historian, and critic. A classical philologist educated in Lwów, Artur Sandauer taught at the Hebrew high school in Kraków between 1937 and 1939. He published in both Polish and Polish Jewish literary journals. After escaping from the Sambor ghetto, he spent the remainder of World War II on the Aryan side of the city. After the war, he served as editor of Odrodzenie (1948–1949) and spent several years in Paris. Awarded a doctorate in 1948, Sandauer became a lecturer (1963) and subsequently a professor (1974) at the University of Warsaw.
title: Sandauer, Artur
alternative label: Artur Sandauer
related: Assimilation
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Leśmian, Bolesław
related: L’viv
related: Polish Literature
related: Schulz, Bruno
related: Tuwim, Julian
related: Warsaw

Savran-Bendery Hasidic Dynasty
described at: Savran-Bendery Hasidic Dynasty
has abstract: Hasidic dynasty active from the second decade of the nineteenth century until the Holocaust. The founder was Shim‘on Shelomoh (d. ca. 1802), a disciple of the Magid of Mezritsh, who was a preacher in Savran (Podolia). Shim‘on’s two sons established independent Hasidic dynasties in Podolia and Bessarabia.
title: Savran-Bendery Hasidic Dynasty
alternative label: Savran
related: Apt Hasidic Dynasty
related: Barukh ben Yeḥi’el of Mezhbizh
related: Bessarabia
related: Bratslav Hasidism
related: Chernobil Hasidic Dynasty
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kosov-Vizhnits Hasidic Dynasty
related: Levi Yitsḥak of Barditshev
related: Mizraḥi
related: Natan Sternhartz of Nemirov
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Yisra’el of Ruzhin
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Scheiber, Sándor
described at: Scheiber Sandor
has abstract: (1913–1985), rabbi and scholar, rector of the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest. Sándor Scheiber was a descendant of rabbis on both sides of his family; he studied at the Rabbinical Seminary in Budapest and was ordained in 1938. At the same time, he attended Pázmány Péter University, earning a doctorate of philosophy in 1937. He was a student of the famous Jewish scholar and head of the Jewish Theological Seminary in Budapest, Bernát Heller.
title: Scheiber, Sándor
alternative label: Alexander (Sándor) Scheiber
alternative label: Sándor (Alexander) Scheiber
alternative label: Sándor Scheiber
related: Budapest
related: Debrecen
related: Goldziher, Ignác
related: Löw, Immánuel
related: Seminary

Schenirer, Sarah
described at: Schenirer Sarah
has abstract: (1883–1935), founder of the Orthodox education network Beys Yankev (Bet Ya‘akov; Beth Jacob). Born in Kraków to a Belz Hasidic family, Sara Schenirer finished her studies in a government-sponsored primary school, and worked as a seamstress while educating herself intensively in Jewish philosophy and scripture. She was deeply influenced by the writings of Samson Raphael Hirsch.
title: Schenirer, Sarah
alternative label: Sarah Schenirer
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Belz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Beys Yankev
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Orthodoxy

Schwarzbart, Ignacy
described at: Schwarzbart Ignacy
has abstract: (1888–1961), Polish Zionist leader. Born in Chrzanów, Ignacy (Yitsḥak) Schwarzbart took a law degree at Kraków’s Jagiellonian University, where he was a member of the Zionist student association Przedświt (The Dawn). Following service in the Austrian and Polish armies during and after World War I, he settled in Kraków and opened a law practice.
title: Schwarzbart, Ignacy
alternative label: Ignacy (Yitsḥak) Schwarzbart
alternative label: Ignacy Schwarzbart
related: Galicia
related: General Zionists
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Silesia
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Shapiro, Moyshe
described at: Shapiro Moyshe
has abstract: (1899–1973), Yiddish linguist. Born in Khmelnik, Ukraine, into a religious teacher’s family, Moyshe Shapiro received a traditional education but also attended a Russian high school. In 1923 he was appointed director of a Yiddish school, in which he taught Yiddish and Russian language and literature, as well as mathematics. He graduated from the Kiev Pedagogical Institute in the late 1920s, and also received a degree in mathematics via a correspondence course.
title: Shapiro, Moyshe
alternative label: Moyshe Shapiro
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: Moscow
related: Sovetish Heymland
related: Spivak, Elye
related: Ukraine
related: Zaretski, Ayzik

Shestov, Lev
described at: Shestov Lev
has abstract: (born Lev Shvartsman; 1866–1938), Russian philosopher, advocate of religious existentialism. Born to a wealthy family in Kiev, a city open then to a small number of Jews, Shestov was taught Jewish subjects by private tutors. Early in life, however, he chose assimilation to Russian culture as the keystone to his intellectual development.
title: Shestov, Lev
alternative label: Lev Shestov
related: Assimilation
related: Fundoianu, Beniamin
related: Kiev
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Steinberg Brothers

Shoham, Matityahu
described at: Shoham Matityahu
has abstract: (Poliakewicz; 1893–1937), Hebrew poet and playwright. Matityahu Shoham was born to an affluent family in Warsaw. As a student, he read the classics of Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, Polish, and German literature. In 1915, he married the daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Warsaw, and for the next few years enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle. In 1919, David Frishman published Shoham’s first poem in the prominent journal Ha-Tekufah, exposing him to literary circles.
title: Shoham, Matityahu
alternative label: Matityahu Shoham
related: Frishman, David
related: Warsaw

Sibiu
described at: Sibiu
has abstract: City in central Romania, on the Cibin River. The records of a legal dispute in villages near Sibiu (Ger., Hermannstadt; Lat., Cibinium; Hun., Nagyszeben) in 1357 include the earliest reference to a Jew in Transylvania: Petrus Judaeus. In 1492, the king of Hungary, Vladislav II, ordered the judge of Sibiu to arbitrate legal disputes between Jews and Christians. In 1586, mention was also made of a Jewish organist by the name of Pantalone.
title: Sibiu
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Orthodoxy
related: Paneth, Yeḥezkel
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: Transylvania

Sommerstein, Emil
described at: Sommerstein Emil
has abstract: (1883–1957), Polish Zionist leader. Born near Tarnopol, Sommerstein studied law at Lwów University and established a legal practice. Active in Zionist student organizations, he became president of the Zionist Federation of East Galicia after World War I. In 1922 he was elected to the Polish Sejm (the lower house of parliament), serving until 1927 and again from 1929 through 1939.
title: Sommerstein, Emil
alternative label: Emil Sommerstein
related: Central Committee of Jews in Poland
related: Communism
related: Galicia
related: Grünbaum, Yitsḥak
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Reich, Leon
related: Ternopil’
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Soroca
described at: Soroca
has abstract: Town, district center, and port on the Dniester River, now in the Republic of Moldova. The first reference to a settlement in Soroca (Rus., Soroki; Yid., Soroke) dates from 1499. The town was home to one of the oldest Jewish communities in Bessarabia, mentioned by the Swedish preacher Conrad Jacob Hildebrandt in 1653. The oldest Jewish tombstones are from the sixteenth century and the first notations in the local pinkas (communal record book) are from 1770. The main synagogue was built in 1775. In 1772, a dozen Jewish families (out of a total of 170 households) lived in Soroca.
title: Soroca
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Bessarabia
related: Hillels, Shelomoh
related: Moldova
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Tombstones
related: Transnistria
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Stern, Abraham
described at: Stern Abraham
has abstract: (1762/69–1842), mathematician, inventor, translator, and censor. As an inventor, a committed adherent of Orthodox religious education, and a holder of various official posts, Abraham Stern was highly regarded in administrative circles as well as by broad sections of the Jewish public. By virtue of his talents, the Hrubieszów-born watchmaker was invited to Warsaw on the initiative of the leading reformer Stanisław Staszic. There Stern developed numerous complicated apparatuses, including an agricultural machine and, in 1813, a calculator. The latter device was presented to Tsar Alexander I, who, in acknowledgment, awarded Stern a state pension. On the basis of these and other inventions, Stern was welcomed into the Polish Academy of Sciences.
title: Stern, Abraham
alternative label: Abraham Stern
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Słonimski, Ḥayim Zelig
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Warsaw

Stern, Adolphe
described at: Stern Adolphe
has abstract: (1848–1931), politician, lawyer, diplomat, and man of letters. Adolphe (Avner) Stern was born in Bucharest, where his father was a jeweler. After completing high school in that city, Stern moved to Berlin to study law. He then defended a doctoral thesis in legal and administrative sciences, earning his degree in Leipzig in 1869. He was the first Jewish lawyer in Romania.
title: Stern, Adolphe
alternative label: Adolphe Stern
related: Assimilation
related: Bucharest
related: Renaşterea Noastră
related: Romania
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties
related: Zissu, Abraham Leib

Stern, Samu
described at: Stern Samu
has abstract: (1874–1947), business and communal leader. Samu Stern was born into a rural family in Nemesszalok, near Pápa in western Hungary. He received a general education, studied at the Jánosháza yeshiva for two years, and attended a science high school in Győr. He then moved to Budapest to study commerce.
title: Stern, Samu
alternative label: Samu (Samuel I.) Stern
alternative label: Samu Stern
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Assimilation
related: Budapest
related: Eppler, Sándor
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Pápa
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Szyk, Artur
described at: Szyk Artur
has abstract: (1894–1951), artist. Artur Szyk was born in Łódź, at that time a Polish, Jewish, and German city under Russian rule. He studied art in Paris and Kraków, and during World War I and its aftermath took part in the armed struggle for Polish independence. During the interwar years he divided his time between Poland and Western Europe. In 1940 he settled in the United States, where he died 11 years later.
title: Szyk, Artur
alternative label: Artur Szyk
related: Łódź
related: Gottlieb, Maurycy
related: Kalisz
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Trumpeldor, Yosef
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Taubes Family
described at: Taubes Family
has abstract: Rabbinic family. Originally from Galicia, many members of the Taubes family moved, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, to Romania. Taubes men filled rabbinic posts in various communities in Romania, chief of which was Iaşi in Moldavia, where members of the family occupied the rabbinate of that city from 1852 until World War II.
title: Taubes Family
alternative label: Shemu’el Shmelke Taubes
alternative label: Taubes
alternative label: Yeḥi’el Mikhl Taubes
related: Bârlad
related: Botoşani
related: Bucharest
related: Bucovina
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Focşani
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Iaşi
related: L’viv
related: Mizraḥi
related: Moldavia
related: Romania
related: Vaslui
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Taytsh, Moyshe
described at: Taytsh Moyshe
has abstract: (1882–1935), Yiddish poet and prose writer. Born in Vartai, Moyshe Taytsh studied with private teachers until the age of 14, when he was sent to nearby Vilna. He finished school at the Jewish Teachers Institute and was admitted to the institute proper, but soon was expelled for disciplinary reasons. In 1901, Taytsh was imprisoned for involvement in Bundist revolutionary activities. In prison he began to write Yiddish poems, influenced by Avrom Reyzen.
title: Taytsh, Moyshe
alternative label: Moyshe Taytsh
related: Bund
related: Emes, Der
related: Folkists
related: Gildin, Khayim
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: Kletskin, Boris Arkadevich
related: Litvakov, Moyshe
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: ORT
related: Odessa
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: Shtetl
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Tchernowitz, Ḥayim
described at: Tchernowitz Hayim
has abstract: (1870–1949), rabbi, scholar, publicist, and public figure. Born in the shtetl of Sebesh in Vitebsk guberniia, Ḥayim Tchernowitz (known as Rav Tsa‘ir) studied in Kovno in 1895–1896 and received rabbinical ordination from Yitsḥak Elḥanan Spektor. From 1897, Tchernowitz served as a rabbi in Odessa, where he also established a yeshiva.
title: Tchernowitz, Ḥayim
alternative label: Ḥayim Tchernowitz
related: Conversion
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Kaunas
related: Odessa
related: Sabbath
related: Seminary
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Shtetl
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Spektor, Yitsḥak Elḥanan
related: Vitsyebsk
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Toys and Games
described at: Toys and Games
has abstract: Only sparse information has been gleaned about toys and games enjoyed prior to the mid-nineteenth century. Moreover, in East European memoirs describing childhood in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the heder (elementary school), where young boys frequently spent long hours, dominates the texts. These depictions portray childhood in general and the heder in particular in the darkest of terms—exposing a brutal regime dominated by ignorant teachers who robbed boys of their childhoods. This image became somewhat more nuanced in literature from the turn of the twentieth century. Still, the extremely negative images substantially served the ideological program of the Haskalah that sought to broaden and modernize Jewish education and Jewish life in general, leading to a more positive attitude toward playing and imagination.
title: Toys and Games
alternative label: games
related: Ber of Bolechów
related: Budapest
related: Chess
related: Childhood
related: About this Article (Children’s Literature)
related: Galicia
related: Gebirtig, Mordkhe
related: Gender
related: Haskalah
related: Heder
related: Lilientalowa, Regina
related: Lithuania
related: Minsk
related: Paper Cuts
related: Passover
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Purim
related: Religious Year
related: Riddles
related: Ringelblum, Emanuel
related: Shtetl
related: Terezín
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw

Trauberg, Leonid Zakharovich
described at: Trauberg Leonid Zakharovich
has abstract: (1902–1990), film director, scriptwriter, and educator. In 1920 Trauberg moved from Odessa to Petrograd, where he worked as a journalist and participated in amateur plays. He also attended the Comic Opera Theater School and studied directing. In 1921 Trauberg became acquainted with the directors Grigorii Kozintsev, Sergei Iutkevich, and Georgii Kryzhitskii, with whom he organized Fabrika Ekstsentricheskogo Aktera (Factory of the Eccentric Actor; FEKS); their collaboration continued until 1926, first as a theater and then as a cinema collective that exerted great influence over the aesthetics of Soviet cinematography throughout the 1930s.
title: Trauberg, Leonid Zakharovich
alternative label: Leonid Trauberg
related: Anticosmopolitan Campaign
related: Cinema
related: Kozintsev, Grigorii Mikhailovich
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Saint Petersburg

Tse‘ire Mizraḥi
described at: Tseire Mizrahi
has abstract: Youth movement of the Mizraḥi religious Zionist movement. The movement combined Mizraḥi’s religious Zionist vision with a call for productive labor and for the construction of a new and just society. Tse‘ire Mizraḥi’s social revolutionary views, which were influenced by the secular Zionist labor movement, were presented by Mizraḥi as religious values. The organization also incorporated elements from Hasidism and the German neo-Orthodox Torah ‘im Derekh Erets (Torah Study and Secular Culture) movement.
title: Tse‘ire Mizraḥi
related: Bucovina
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Mizraḥi
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: Transylvania
related: Youth Movements
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Tsharni, Daniel
described at: Tsharni Daniel
has abstract: (1888–1959), Yiddish poet and journalist. The youngest brother of critic Shmuel Niger and political activist Borekh Vladek-Tsharni, Daniel Tsharni (last name also rendered Charney) was born in Dukor, Belorussia. His father died when Tsharni was 18 months old, and his mother, who inherited a small business, worked hard to support her six children. A delicate child, Tsharni received no formal education.
title: Tsharni, Daniel
alternative label: Daniel Tsharni
related: Belarus
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Broderzon, Moyshe
related: Crimea
related: Emes, Der
related: Folkists
related: Kiev
related: Kultur-lige
related: Lissitzky, El
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Nomberg, Hersh Dovid
related: Riga
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shtrom, Der
related: Tsherikover, Elye
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Tugendhold, Jakob
described at: Tugendhold Jakob
has abstract: (1794–1871), maskil and author; Jewish liaison to Polish government. Jakob Tugendhold was born in Działoszyce, the son of a Prussian maskil. He received a traditional heder education and from 1811 or 1812 pursued secular studies in Breslau. From 1814 to 1819, Tugendhold worked as a private tutor in Kraków, Lwów, and Warsaw, and in 1819 was commissioned to create Poland’s first state-run Jewish elementary schools.
title: Tugendhold, Jakob
alternative label: Jakob Tugendhold
alternative label: Jakub Tugendhold
related: Censorship in the Russian Empire (Censorship)
related: Epstein Family
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Heder
related: Homberg, Herz
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Seminary
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Wrocław

Vámbéry, Ármin
described at: Vambery Armin
has abstract: (1832–1913), explorer, ethnographer, diplomat, and spy. Born Hermann Wamberger (Bamberger) in Szenthyörgy, Ármin Vámbéry attended heder and yeshiva as well as the Protestant elementary school in Dunaszerdahely from age eight. He was a tailor’s apprentice for a short time. Due to a dislocated hip, his left leg was paralyzed when he was a small child; he used crutches and later a walking stick for the rest of his life. He never completed high school.
title: Vámbéry, Ármin
alternative label: Ármin Vámbéry
related: Budapest
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Vázsonyi, Vilmos
described at: Vazsonyi Vilmos
has abstract: (Weiszfeld; 1868–1926), lawyer, member of parliament, minister of justice, and the first professing Jewish cabinet minister in Hungary. Vilmos Vázsonyi’s father, a principal of the local Jewish school in Sümeg, was the son of a rabbi; Vilmos’s maternal grandfather owned a factory. The family moved to Budapest in 1874, where Vázsonyi’s father worked as a schoolteacher. Vázsonyi studied in a Catholic gymnasium and started legal studies in the University of Budapest in 1886.
title: Vázsonyi, Vilmos
alternative label: Vilmos Vázsonyi
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Vámbéry, Ármin

Włocławek
described at: Włocławek
has abstract: Town in Kujawy-Pomorze province in northern Poland. Jews were not allowed to live in Włocławek, a bishop-owned town, until the early nineteenth century, though the town was never granted an official privilege de non tolerandis Judaeis. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Jewish traders occasionally appeared at the markets and customs office on the Vistula River. After the town lost its status of ecclesiastical settlement in 1793, the first four Jewish families settled there in 1803–1805; by 1812, there were 99 Jews. In 1824, a Jewish rewir (quarter) was established, and in 1825–1826, officials forcibly moved all but three families to that district. In 1841, however, 32 families were nevertheless still living outside the rewir.
title: Włocławek
related: Łódź
related: Bund
related: Mizraḥi
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: Tarnów
related: Wrocław
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Wald, Henri
described at: Wald Henri
has abstract: (1920–2002), philosopher, logician, and essayist. Henri Wald was born in Bucharest, to the family of a small merchant. In 1940, discriminatory legislation forced him to leave high school; however, he was able to pursue his studies at a private college for Jewish students. He was mobilized during World War II, as a Jew, in a forced labor detachment. A radical antifascist, he supported the Communist Party, which was still illegal at the time. After the war, Wald began to publish articles in the leftist press, making his debut in September 1944 in the newspaper Tribuna poporului (The People’s Tribune), and eventually contributing to several periodicals of the same ideological orientation as well as to cultural publications such as Revista fundațiilor regale (The Review of Royal Foundations).
title: Wald, Henri
alternative label: Henri Wald
related: Bucharest

Weiner, Richard
described at: Weiner Richard
has abstract: (1884–1937), Czech poet, prose writer, and journalist. Weiner’s parents ran a distillery and confectionary in southern Bohemia; Richard, the oldest of five children, studied chemistry and was expected to take over the family business. At the age of 27, however, he abandoned this promising career to devote himself to writing; in 1912 he moved to Paris, where he would launch his journalistic career, and soon published two volumes of poetry.
title: Weiner, Richard
alternative label: Richard Weiner
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Orten, Jiří

Weiss, Ernst
described at: Weiss Ernst
has abstract: (1882–1940), novelist and physician. Born in Brünn (Brno), Moravia, Ernst Weiss studied medicine in Prague and Vienna, traveled to the Far East as a ship’s doctor, and became a surgeon in a Vienna hospital. He was friendly with Franz Kafka, who accompanied him and Weiss’s long-term partner, the actress Rahel Sanzara (Johanna Bleschke; 1894–1936), on holiday in Denmark in summer 1914. Weiss and Kafka later quarreled. From 1921 to 1933, Weiss lived in Berlin. The Nazis’ seizure of power drove him into exile in Paris, where he committed suicide as German troops approached the city.
title: Weiss, Ernst
alternative label: Ernst Weiss
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brno
related: Kafka, Franz
related: Prague

Weltsch, Robert
described at: Weltsch Robert
has abstract: (1891–1984), Zionist activist, journalist, and essayist. Robert Weltsch was born in Prague to one of the oldest and most respected Jewish families in the city. His father, attorney Theodore Weltsch, was active in local Jewish public affairs and at the turn of the century served as director general of the Centralverein zur Pflege Jüdischer Angelegenheiten (Central Society for Handling Jewish Affairs), founded in Prague in 1885.
title: Weltsch, Robert
alternative label: Robert Weltsch
related: Bar Kochba Association
related: Bergmann, Hugo
related: Kohn, Hans
related: Prague
related: Selbstwehr
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Wise Men of Chelm
described at: Wise Men of Chelm
has abstract: In East European Jewish folklore, the city of Chelm (Pol., Chełm; Yid., Khelem) functions as an imaginary city of fools, similar to that of the Greek Abdera, the English Gotham, and the German Schilda, among numerous others. The legendary “town of fools,” often presented ironically as “The Wise Men of . . . ,” is a feature common to most European folklores. Chelm, as was the case with its counterparts in other cultures, spawned hundreds of tales describing outlandish naiveté and stupidity that have been printed in dozens of editions in a variety of languages. Many of these are titled The Wise Men of Chelm. Chelm, located approximately 65 kilometers southeast of Lublin, had a Jewish population from at least the fourteenth century, and was a real town whose residents bore no connection to the stories. If anything, the town was known for Torah scholarship.
title: Wise Men of Chelm
alternative label: fools of Chełm
alternative label: wise men of Chełm
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Chełm
related: Dik, Ayzik Meyer
related: Folklore, Ethnography, and Anthropology
related: Kvitko, Leyb
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Singer, Isaac Bashevis

Wygodzki, Stanisław
described at: Wygodzki Stanisław
has abstract: (1907–1992), writer, poet, and translator. Abandoning his youthful involvement in the Zionism embraced by his father, Yitsḥak, Stanisław (Szaja) Wygodzki became active in the Communist movement and suffered political repression in Poland. As a member of the Polish section of the International Office of Revolutionary Literature in Moscow, he contributed to its Polish paper, Kultura Mas, and other left-wing periodicals.
title: Wygodzki, Stanisław
alternative label: Stanisław Wygodzki
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Będzin
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Polish Literature (Children’s Literature)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kaganovski, Froyim
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Tuwim, Julian
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Yiddish Actors Union
described at: Yiddish Actors Union
has abstract: Professional association of Jewish actors in Poland in the interwar period (1919–1939). Known by its Yiddish name Yidisher Artistn Fareyn (YAF) or by the official Polish name Związek Artystów Scen Żydowskich (ZASŻ), the union was founded in Warsaw by a group of actors and directors, including Aizik Samberg (1889–194?), Andrzej Marek (Marek Arnsztejn), Yankev Kelter (1880–1938), Mordechai Mazo, Leon Kharaz (1886–?), and Simkhe Rozen (1893–194?). Other YAF activists who played an important role in the union’s history were Zishe Kats (1892–194?), Yitskhok Nożyk, Zygmunt Turkow, Michał Weichert, Mark Yuviler (1904–?), and Maks Brin (1884–194?).
title: Yiddish Actors Union
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Yiddish Theater (Theater)
related: Turkow Family
related: Warsaw
related: Weichert, Michał

Yidishe Shprakh, Di
described at: Yidishe Shprakh Di
has abstract: Yiddish linguistic journal published in Kiev from 1927 to 1930. A bimonthly journal, Di yidishe shprakh (The Yiddish Language) was published by the cooperative publishing house Kultur-lige and was the main philological publication of the Kiev Yiddish academic center. Its editor was the veteran Yiddishist Nokhem Shtif, a founder of YIVO, who had returned to Kiev from Germany in 1926.
title: Yidishe Shprakh, Di
alternative label: Di yidishe shprakh
alternative label: Yidishe shprakh
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Falkovitsh, Elye
related: Gurshteyn, Aron
related: Kiev
related: Kultur-lige
related: Liberberg, Yoysef
related: Moscow
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtif, Nokhem
related: Weinreich, Max
related: YIVO
related: Zaretski, Ayzik

Yitsḥak ben Ya‘akov ha-Lavan of Prague
described at: Yitshak ben Yaakov ha-Lavan of Prague
has abstract: (fl. 12th century), Talmudic scholar. Also known as Yitsḥak of Bohemia and Yitsḥak of Regensburg, Yitsḥak ben Ya‘akov reputedly acquired the nickname ha-Lavan (White) because of the color of his hair, but according to other sources the name was connected to that of the river Labe (Elbe). Yitsḥak ha-Lavan lived and worked in Prague, although it is not certain that he actually came from Bohemia. He studied in Germany and France and was a student of Yitsḥak ben Asher ha-Levi and Ya‘akov ben Me’ir Tam (Rabenu Tam). Throughout his life he associated with members of the Prague school of Tosafists (including Yitsḥak ben Mordekhai and Eli‘ezer ben Yitsḥak), who maintained ties to the centers of Jewish culture in northern France and Germany.
title: Yitsḥak ben Ya‘akov ha-Lavan of Prague
alternative label: Yitsḥak ben Ya‘akov Lavan
alternative label: Yitsḥak ben Ya‘akov ha-Lavan
related: Ashkenaz
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Eli‘ezer ben Yitsḥak
related: Prague
related: Yitsḥak ben Mosheh of Vienna

Zabara, Nosn
described at: Zabara Nosn
has abstract: (1908–1975), Yiddish writer. Born in Rogachev, Ukraine, into the family of a potter, Nosn Zabara received a traditional Jewish education, studied at a secondary school in nearby Novograd-Volynskii, and later worked in a Kiev bookstore. His first publications appeared in 1930. Zabara studied at the aspirantur (graduate program) of the Kiev Institute for Jewish Proletarian Culture, and soon was recognized as an accomplished prose writer. Zabara’s first novel, Radio-roman (Radio Novel; 1932), devoted to Red Army soldiers and officers, was published after his demobilization.
title: Zabara, Nosn
alternative label: Nosn Zabara
related: Falkovitsh, Elye
related: Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture
related: Kiev
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Sephardim
related: Shtetl
related: Sovetish Heymland
related: Ukraine

Zamość, Yisra’el ben Mosheh ha-Levi
described at: Zamosc Yisrael ben Mosheh ha-Levi
has abstract: (also Segal; ca. 1700–1772), early maskil who promoted the study of science and wrote commentaries on three classics of medieval Jewish thought. Yisra’el ben Mosheh was born in Bóbrka (near mod. L’viv) to an undistinguished family and studied in Zamość, which is why he is generally known as Yisra’el Zamość. The scientific knowledge he acquired in Zamość was astonishingly broad but outdated, drawn only from Hebrew books, almost all medieval (one exception was Yosef Delmedigo’s Sefer elim [1629], on which Yisra’el wrote a commentary, now lost). His authorities were Aristotle and Ptolemy (his unpublished astronomical treatise, “Arubot ha-shamayim” [The Windows of Heaven], takes a geocentric approach). The exceptional availability of books, many in manuscript, reflected the high level of learning in Zamość, a town with a presence of Sephardic Jews deliberately brought there by its founder, Jan Zamoyski (1541–1605). In Zamość, Yisra’el had followers and allies; the town became a center of early Haskalah a generation later.
title: Zamość, Yisra’el ben Mosheh ha-Levi
alternative label: Yisra’el Zamość
alternative label: Yisra’el of Zamość
related: Brody
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: L’viv
related: Zamość

Židovské Zprávy
described at: Zidovske Zpravy
has abstract: (Jewish News), Czech-language Zionist journal published from 1918 until 1938. Following the short-lived Židovské listy pro Hechy, Moravu a Slezsko (Jewish Paper for Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia), which had been edited by Gustav Fantl and Jehošua Sušický from 1913 to 1914, Židovské zprávy was the first successful Zionist fortnightly published in the Czech language. It appeared initially in April 1918 and became a weekly at the end of that year.
title: Židovské Zprávy
alternative label: Židovské zprávy
related: Edelstein, Jakob
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Maccabi Movement
related: Sicher, Gustav
related: Singer, Ludvík
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Adam
described at: Adam
has abstract: Monthly journal, issued in Bucharest from 1929 to 1940. Adam followed the traditions of the Jewish cultural press in Romania, and in this sense was similar to the publications Anuar pentru israeliți (Yearbook for Israelites) and Sinai: Anuar de studii judaice (Sinai: Judaic Studies Yearbook). Adam was distinct, however, in that it gave particular attention to literary matters and political issues relevant to Romanian Jews. After 1932, its editors dedicated a significant share of each issue to articles on the rise of antisemitism in Nazi Germany and to similar developments in Romania.
title: Adam
related: Aderca, Felix
related: Benador, Ury
related: Blecher, M.
related: Bucharest
related: Călugăru, Ion
related: Carp, Horia
related: Dorian, Emil
related: Fundoianu, Beniamin
related: Ghelerter, Litman
related: Halevy, Meyer Abraham
related: Iancu, Marcel
related: Iser, Iosif
related: Ludo, Isac Iacovitz
related: Maxy, Max Hermann
related: Niemirower, Iacob Isac
related: Romania
related: Ronetti-Roman, Moise
related: Rubin, Rivke
related: Şafran Family
related: Schwarzfeld Family
related: Shternberg, Yankev
related: Stern, Adolphe
related: Voronca, Ilarie
related: Zissu, Abraham Leib

Adler, Yankl
described at: Adler Yankl
has abstract: (1895–1949), artist. Yankl (Jakub) Adler was born in Tuszyn, near Łódź, and died in England. Apprenticed in engraving in Łódź in 1912, he moved to Düsseldorf in 1913 for further studies. There Adler came into contact with the Düsseldorf-based artists of Das Junge Rheinland (Young Germany; 1918). He subsequently moved back to Łódź, joining Moyshe Broderzon as cofounder of Yung-yidish, the first avant-garde Jewish cultural movement in independent Poland.
title: Adler, Yankl
alternative label: Yankl Adler
related: Łódź
related: Broderzon, Moyshe
related: Chagall, Marc
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rybak, Yisakhar Ber
related: Shtetl
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Yung-yidish

Aizman, David Iakovlevich
described at: Aizman David Iakovlevich
has abstract: (1869–1922), Russian fiction writer and playwright. Born in Nikolaev, in the Russian Empire (now Mikolayiv, Ukraine), David Aizman led an itinerant life most of his adult years. In an autobiographical note he wrote, “To the present day I have no certain place of residence. . . . I suffer a great deal from the absence of a residence permit. . . . I am a writer. I pass myself for a shop assistant” (Odessa, 15 January 1914).
title: Aizman, David Iakovlevich
alternative label: David Aizman
related: Markish, Shimon
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Ukraine

Akiva
described at: Akiva
has abstract: General Zionist youth movement. Akiva’s beginnings, and its main followers, were in western Galicia and Silesia. Its origins can be traced to a Zionist youth group formed in Kraków in 1901. Members of that group founded Agudat ha-No‘ar ha-‘Ivri ‘Akiva (Association of Hebrew Youth) in 1924.
title: Akiva
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Assimilation
related: Communism
related: Galicia
related: General Zionists
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Land of Israel
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sabbath
related: Silesia
related: Youth Movements
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Akselrod, Zelik
described at: Akselrod Zelik
has abstract: (1904–1941), Yiddish poet. Born in Molodechno, Belorussia, Zelik Akselrod was 11 years old when his family found themselves among the Jews expelled by the Russian army from the World War I theater of operation. From Tambov, where the family lived after the expulsion, they moved to Minsk, while Zelik went to Moscow to study at the Briusov Institute for Literature and Art (1922–1925). His brother Meyer (or Meer; 1902–1970) also studied in Moscow, becoming a noted artist. Zelik Akselrod was close to his fellow students Izi Kharik and Shmuel-Nisn Godiner, who were active in proletarian literary circles. Aesthetically, however, Akselrod was quite removed from the proletarian poets. His first poetry collection, Tsapl (Tremble; 1922), was published in Kiev by Kultur-lige. From 1925, he lived in Minsk, working at an orphanage and, later, at the State Publishing House.
title: Akselrod, Zelik
alternative label: Zelik Akselrod
related: Białystok
related: Bronshteyn, Yashe
related: Godiner, Shmuel-Nisn
related: Kharik, Izi
related: Kiev
related: Kulbak, Moyshe
related: Kultur-lige
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Rubin, Rivke
related: Shtern
related: Vaysenberg, Itshe Meyer
related: Vilnius

Altman, Moyshe
described at: Altman Moyshe
has abstract: (1890–1981), Yiddish writer. Born in the shtetl of Lipkan in Bessarabia, Moyshe Altman received a traditional Jewish education and attended the Russian school in Kamenets Podolski. Thanks to his exceptional memory and diligence, he acquired an encyclopedic education and mastered six languages. In 1919, he moved to Chernivtsi, where, beginning in 1921, he worked for the Yiddish Culture Federation of Romania, lecturing on Jewish and world literature in the shtetls of Bessarabia.
title: Altman, Moyshe
alternative label: Moyshe Altman
related: Bessarabia
related: Bucharest
related: Chernivtsi
related: Folks-shtime
related: Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi
related: Kishinev
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Romania
related: Shternberg, Yankev
related: Shtetl
related: Shteynbarg, Eliezer
related: Sovetish Heymland
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Bak Family
described at: Bak Family
has abstract: Printers active in Hebrew and Yiddish publishing. The Bak family apparently originated in Venice, where Ya‘akov ben Gershon Bak (1574–1619) followed his father, Gershon ben Mosheh, in training as a printer. After Ya‘akov Bak had printed Maharal of Prague’s Tif’eret Yisra’el (1599), the latter evidently persuaded him to move to Prague. When Bak arrived in that city, he was associated in business with the brothers Avraham ben Mosheh and Yehudah Leib Shidel; by 1605, Yitsḥak ben Aharon Bak had joined them. From the time of the death of Ya‘akov Bak to 1767, the Bak family firm printed 213 texts. Between 1767 and 1788, they and their partners published another 21 books.
title: Bak Family
alternative label: Bak
alternative label: Bak family
related: Eybeschütz, Yonatan
related: Hannover, Natan Note
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Liturgy
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Oppenheim, David
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Printing and Publishing)
related: Sabbath
related: Shabetai ben Me’ir ha-Kohen
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Teller, Yisakhar Ber
related: Tkhines
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Balázs, Béla
described at: Balazs Bela
has abstract: (1884–1949), film theoretician and screenwriter. Balázs was born Herbert Bauer, the son of assimilated German Jewish parents, both school teachers, in Szeged, Hungary. After studying at the Budapest University of Arts, he published poetry and plays; his friends and associates included composers Zoltán Kodály and Béla Bartók, philosopher Georg Lukács, art historian Arnold Hauser, and sociologist Karl Mannheim. Balász held several cultural posts with the revolutionary Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919. When the regime fell, he went into exile, first in Vienna—where he published his early works on “film culture”—and then Berlin. Balázs was among the first and most lucid writers on film language, with a particular appreciation for the power of the close-up; his formalism was tempered by a sense of vision as essentially cultural and motion pictures as determined by economics.
title: Balázs, Béla
alternative label: Béla Balázs
related: Budapest
related: Cinema
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Moscow

Banat
described at: Banat
has abstract: Region in the southwestern section of Romania, between the Mureş and Danube Rivers. The oldest traces of a Jewish presence in the area date to the Roman period in the second through fourth centuries. A second-century coin issued by Shim‘on bar Kokhba discovered in Pojejena, as well as golden plates with Hebrew characters and Judaic symbols found in Dierna-Orşova, prove the existence of Jews among Roman colonists. After Banat became part of the medieval Hungarian kingdom in the eleventh century, the earliest reference to a Jew from the region dates to 1521 in the area of Caransebeş.
title: Banat
related: Assimilation
related: Crafts
related: Guilds
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Industry
related: Josephinian Reforms
related: Lugoj
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: Sephardim
related: Timişoara
related: Trade
related: Transylvania
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Barash, Asher
described at: Barash Asher
has abstract: (1889–1952), Hebrew writer and editor. Born in Lopatyn, near Brody in Galicia, Asher Barash was the son of Naftali Herts Barash, a grain merchant who was descended from a rabbinical family. Barash received both a traditional Jewish education at heder and bet midrash and a secular education at a local Polish government school. He was proficient in languages and by adolescence was familiar with Hebrew maskilic literature as well as Polish and German texts. He was also attracted to the Zionist movement.
title: Barash, Asher
alternative label: Asher Barash
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Brody
related: Frishman, David
related: Galicia
related: Heder
related: Land of Israel
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rabinowitz, Ya‘akov
related: Warsaw

Bastomski, Shloyme
described at: Bastomski Shloyme
has abstract: (1891–1941), Yiddish pedagogue, folklorist, writer; and editor; pioneer of Yiddish secular schooling. Born in Vilna to a poor family, Shloyme Bastomski was orphaned at an early age. After attending a Talmud Torah school, he graduated from the Vilna Teacher’s Institute in 1912. He then taught in nearby towns for two years before being hired to teach at the newly formed school of the Khevre Mefitse Haskole (Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment among the Jews of Russia), the first nontraditional boys’ school in Vilna. Yiddish was the language of instruction, and Bastomski taught there through the 1930s.
title: Bastomski, Shloyme
alternative label: Shloyme Bastomski
related: Folk Songs
related: Frayland-lige
related: Lithuania
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Proverbs
related: Purim-shpil
related: Riddles
related: Vilnius
related: YIVO
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Beggars and Begging
described at: Beggars and Begging
has abstract: In Poland–Lithuania, the emergence of Jewish beggars as a large group with its own subculture can be traced to the Khmel’nyts’kyi massacres of 1648, which destroyed much of the Jewish communal wealth and infrastructure. It has been estimated that up to 20 percent of the Jewish population belonged to the class of beggars at the end of the seventeenth century. East European governments regularly harassed the Jewish poor. In March 1773, Habsburg authorities ordered the expulsion of Betteljuden, Jewish beggars, from Galicia. At the same time, Poland closed its borders to impoverished Jewish refugees. Residents of Oświęcim, a town close to the border of Poland and Prussia, witnessed “caravans of beggars” who were expelled from Galicia but were not admitted to Poland. In 1898, a total of 35 percent of Russian Jews depended on charity institutions to maintain their existence.
title: Beggars and Begging
alternative label: beggars
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: An-ski Ethnographic Expedition and Museum
related: Babel, Isaac
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Charity
related: Dybbuk, The
related: Elijah the Prophet
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Hrodna
related: Kahal
related: Lithuania
related: Manger, Itsik
related: Money
related: Naḥman of Bratslav
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sabbath
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Smolenskin, Perets

Ben-Ami
described at: Ben-Ami
has abstract: (pseudonym of Mark [Mordechai] Iakovlevich Rabinovich; ca. 1854–1932), writer, publicist, and early Zionist theorist. Ben-Ami’s life is a particularly representative example of the world of the shtetl. His articles and memoirs about the Jewish question reflect the period of the birth of Zionist thought in Russia.
title: Ben-Ami
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Bessarabia
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Odessa
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shtetl
related: Voskhod
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Berlewi, Henryk
described at: Berlewi Henryk
has abstract: (1894–1967), painter, graphic designer, typographer, and critic. Henryk Berlewi was a leading figure among constructivist artists in Poland in the 1920s. Though his fame rests on his posters, book jackets, and page designs in Yiddish and Hebrew, he is also known for his advanced constructivist paintings, drawings, and especially his cutting-edge graphic designs based on his theory of Mechano-faktura. He published studies on art in Yiddish, Polish, and German.
title: Berlewi, Henryk
alternative label: Henryk Berlewi
related: Dybbuk, The
related: Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
related: Khalyastre
related: Lissitzky, El
related: Markish, Perets
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Warsaw
related: Wat, Aleksander
related: Yung-yidish

Bernstein, Ignatz
described at: Bernstein Ignatz
has abstract: (1836–1909), folklorist, bibliophile, philanthropist, and compiler of the largest published collection of Yiddish proverbs. Born into a well-to-do maskilic family in Vinnytsa, Podolia (Ukraine), Ignatz Bernstein moved with his parents to Warsaw in 1856. During a visit to Berlin in 1859, he came across a small German book of Jewish proverbs, which inspired his lifelong preoccupation with collecting Yiddish proverbs and assembling a paroemiological library. The fruit of his labor was the still unsurpassed 1908 volume, Yidishe shprikhverter un rednsartn (Yiddish Proverbs and Proverbial Expressions), containing 3,993 entries, and a personal collection of more than 6,000 titles dealing with proverbs in more than 100 languages.
title: Bernstein, Ignatz
alternative label: Ignatz Bernstein
related: Adalberg, Samuel
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Proverbs
related: Spektor, Mordkhe
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw

Bersohn, Mathias
described at: Bersohn Mathias
has abstract: (1824–1908), banker, art collector, and patron. Mathias Bersohn (Berson) managed a sugar refinery set up by his father, Me’ir Bersohn (1801–1873), and founded a private bank. As a young man, Bersohn began to invest in Polish art and Judaica, ultimately amassing one of the most important private collections of such objects. From the mid-1860s, he also began to collect Polish Jewish handicrafts.
title: Bersohn, Mathias
alternative label: Mathias Bersohn
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Synagogue Architecture
related: Warsaw

Bogrov, Grigorii Isaakovich
described at: Bogrov Grigorii Isaakovich
has abstract: (1825–1885), pioneering Russian Jewish writer. Born in Poltava, Grigorii Bogrov was a typical maskil who rebelled against tradition and his family, first learning Russian and devouring secular books on the sly, then divorcing his wife. In 1863, he finished half of Zapiski evreia (Notes of a Jew), a semiautobiographical novel that ultimately was 600 pages long. It was completed and published serially in Otechestvennye zapiski (Fatherland Notes), a popular liberal journal, in 1871–1873. Bogrov then wrote stories and novels on Jewish themes and worked on two Russian Jewish publications, Slovo (Word) and Russkii evrei (The Russian Jew). Shortly before he died, he converted to Christianity to marry a gentile woman.
title: Bogrov, Grigorii Isaakovich
alternative label: Grigorii Bogrov
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Assimilation
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtetl

Brandstaetter, Roman
described at: Brandstaetter Roman
has abstract: (1906–1987), poet, playwright, prose writer, and translator. Roman Brandstaetter studied philosophy and Polish literature in Kraków, earning a doctorate for a thesis on Adam Mickiewicz in 1932. Two years of research in Paris (1929–1931) resulted in the publication of Legion żydowski Adama Mickiewicza (Adam Mickiewicz’s Jewish Legion; 1932). Initially, Brandstaetter actively participated in Polish literary life, publishing, among other things, literary guidelines for the generation of Polish poets entering the literary scene during the interwar period. In the early 1930s, however, he became more closely associated with Jewish national circles, joining the editorial board of Opinia, a Zionist weekly where he published his manifesto on Polish Jewish poetry.
title: Brandstaetter, Roman
alternative label: Roman Brandstaetter
related: Brandstetter, Mordekhai David
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Opinia
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Vilnius
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Brauner, Victor
described at: Brauner Victor
has abstract: (1903–1966), painter and graphic artist. Born in Piatra-Neamț, Victor Brauner grew up in a wealthy family in which artistic expression was encouraged (his father was a photographer). From 1919 to 1922, Brauner studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bucharest and began to travel in avant-garde circles that included Ilarie Voronca, Marcel Iancu, Ion Vinea, Max Hermann Maxy, Stephan Roll, and Claude Sernet (Mihai Cosma).
title: Brauner, Victor
alternative label: Victor Brauner
related: Adam
related: Bucharest
related: Iancu, Marcel
related: Maxy, Max Hermann
related: Moldavia
related: Piatra Neamţ
related: Romania
related: Voronca, Ilarie

Brutskus, Iulii
described at: Brutskus Iulii
has abstract: (1870–1951), physician, political figure, and historian. Born in Polangen (Palanga), Courland, Iulii Brutskus (Julius Brutzkus) was the brother of the economist Boris Brutskus (1874–1938). Iulii studied medicine in Moscow (earning his medical degree in 1894), where he joined the Ḥibat Tsiyon movement. When Jews were expelled from Moscow in 1891–1892, he came to their aid. In 1894, he moved to Saint Petersburg, where he was active in the Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia (OPE) and the Jewish Colonization Association (ICA). From 1898, he was a member of the editorial board of Voskhod but resigned with other Zionist sympathizers when the journal’s editors became hostile to the Jewish national movement. He showed little sympathy for socialism.
title: Brutskus, Iulii
alternative label: Brutskus
alternative label: Iulii (Julius) Brutskus
alternative label: Iulii Brutskus
related: Courland
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Historiography)
related: Kaunas
related: Khazaria
related: Kiev
related: Lithuania
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: ORT
related: OZE
related: Razsvet
related: Revisionist Zionists
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Voskhod

Cahan, Yehudah Leib
described at: Cahan Yehudah Leib
has abstract: (1881–1937), Yiddish folklorist. Born in Vilna, Yehudah Leib Cahan moved to Warsaw in 1889. He studied in heder and later learned watchmaking. At a young age he began to collect and notate Yiddish songs. In 1899 he became a frequenter of the Saturday gatherings in the home of the writer Y. L. Peretz, who encouraged him in his interest in gathering folk songs. In 1901 he moved to London, where he founded the Zionist labor union Forverts (Forward), gave speeches for proletarian Zionist groups, and continued to collect songs.
title: Cahan, Yehudah Leib
alternative label: Y. L. Cahan
alternative label: Yehudah Leib Cahan
related: Burgenland
related: Filologishe Shriftn
related: Folk Songs
related: Folklore, Ethnography, and Anthropology
related: Heder
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Warsaw
related: Weinreich, Max
related: YIVO

Celan, Paul
described at: Celan Paul
has abstract: (Paul Antschel; 1920–1970), poet. Considered one of the most important post–World War II European poets, Paul Celan was born in Czernowitz, in Bucovina, the easternmost province of the former Habsburg monarchy, which had been incorporated into Romania in 1918. Though he learned and spoke Romanian at school, German remained Celan’s primary cultural language and Vienna his cultural lodestar.
title: Celan, Paul
alternative label: Paul Celan
related: Bucharest
related: Bucovina
related: Chernivtsi
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Romania

Českožidovské Listy
described at: Ceskozidovske Listy
has abstract: Organ of the Czech Jewish movement. The first issue of Českožidovské listy (Czech Jewish Press) was published in 1894 under the editorship of Moric Schönbaum, who was succeeded by Jakub Scharf in 1896. The impulse for creating the journal came from the Národní Jednota Českožidovská (National Czech Jewish Union), which was founded in 1893.
title: Českožidovské Listy
alternative label: Českožidovské listy
related: Prague
related: Vohryzek, Viktor

Chajes, Tsevi Hirsh
described at: Chajes Tsevi Hirsh
has abstract: (1805–1855), rabbi and scholar. Tsevi Hirsh Chajes was born in Brody into a wealthy and distinguished family. In 1829, he was appointed rabbi of the Żółkiew district and served in that capacity for more than 20 years. Chajes was active in a circle of Galician maskilic rabbis whose response to modernity in the first half of the nineteenth century was complex. He was the most prominent Galician rabbinic scholar who also engaged in historical research.
title: Chajes, Tsevi Hirsh
alternative label: Tsevi Hirsh Chajes
related: Brody
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kalisz
related: Krochmal, Naḥman
related: Levinzon, Yitsḥak Ber
related: L’viv
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Zhovkva

Commissariat for Jewish National Affairs
described at: Commissariat for Jewish National Affairs
has abstract: Established in January 1918, the Commissariat for Jewish National Affairs (Evreiskii Komissariat; EVKOM) was affiliated with the People’s Commissariat for Nationality Affairs (Narodnyi Komissariat po delam Natsionalnostei; Narkomnats). EVKOM’s purpose was to win Jewish support for the Bolshevik regime both within Soviet Russia and abroad by disseminating Communist and Soviet materials in Yiddish. In contrast to the other ethnic commissariats established slightly earlier, EVKOM was considered temporary. Semen Dimanshtein was appointed commissar. During the first months of EVKOM’s existence, its central body included delegates representing Left Social Revolutionaries or SRs (Il’ia Dobkovskii) as well as Po‘ale Tsiyon (Tsevi Fridlender; 1897–1936). EVKOM’s Yiddish newspaper Di varhayt appeared from 8 March to 1 September 1918.
title: Commissariat for Jewish National Affairs
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Dimanshtein, Semen Markovich
related: Evsektsiia
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Vitsyebsk

Daniel, M.
described at: Daniel M
has abstract: (1901–1940), Yiddish prose writer and playwright. Born in Dvinsk (mod. Daugavpils), Latvia, M. Daniel (born Mordekhai [Mark] Meyerovitsh) lived in several places as a child, and then was employed as a worker, clerk, and teacher. In 1921 he went to Moscow, where he studied at the Academy of Education and, later, the Yiddish department at the Second Moscow State University, from which he graduated in 1924.
title: Daniel, M.
alternative label: M. Daniel
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Daniel’, Iulii Markovich
related: Daugavpils
related: Dobrushin, Yekhezkl
related: Kiev
related: Latvia
related: Maimon, Salomon
related: Markish, Perets
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Moscow
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Yiddish Prose (Prose)
related: Shtrom, Der
related: Vilnius

Danzig, Avraham ben Yeḥi’el Mikhl
described at: Danzig Avraham ben Yehiel Mikhl
has abstract: (1748–1820), halakhic authority and author. Born in Gdańsk (Danzig), Avraham Danzig studied in Prague with, among others, Rabbi Yeḥezkel Landau. Danzig married and moved to Vilna, where he worked in business and refused to earn a rabbinic salary. He remained steadfast in this refusal even after he was appointed dayan (rabbinic judge) in Vilna in 1794; only after his business failed, in 1812, did he agree to receive remuneration. It was during this period that he wrote most of his books.
title: Danzig, Avraham ben Yeḥi’el Mikhl
alternative label: Avraham Danzig
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Gdańsk
related: Land of Israel
related: Landau, Yeḥezkel ben Yehudah
related: Lithuania
related: Misnagdim
related: Passover
related: Prague
related: Sabbath
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Vilnius
related: Yisra’el Me’ir ha-Kohen

Dolitzki, Menaḥem Mendel
described at: Dolitzki Menahem Mendel
has abstract: (1856–1931), Hebrew poet and novelist. Born in Białystok, Menaḥem Mendel Dolitzki received a traditional education. At an early age, he was attracted to the Haskalah, and in 1875–1876 he traveled to Vienna. There Dolitzki became acquainted with Perets Smolenskin, editor of the Hebrew periodical Ha-Shaḥar.
title: Dolitzki, Menaḥem Mendel
alternative label: Menaḥem Mendel Dolitzki
related: Białystok
related: Gordon, Shemu’el Leib
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Haskalah
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Magid, Ha-
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Moscow
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pogroms
related: Proverbs
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Satire
related: Shaḥar, Ha-
related: Smolenskin, Perets
related: Wissotzky, Kalonymus Ze’ev

Dostrzegacz Nadwiślański
described at: Dostrzegacz Nadwislanski
has abstract: Bilingual Polish and Yiddish weekly, 44 issues of which appeared in Warsaw between December 1823 and September 1824. Dostrzegacz Nadwiślański / Der Beobakhter an der Vayksel was the first Jewish journal published in Poland. Originally intended as a bilingual Polish and Hebrew periodical, it eventually appeared in a Polish and Yiddish version with pages split into two parallel linguistic columns.
title: Dostrzegacz Nadwiślański
alternative label: Dostrzegacz nadwiślański
related: Bałaban, Majer
related: Eisenbaum, Antoni
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Warsaw

Eisenbach, Artur
described at: Eisenbach Artur
has abstract: (1906–1992), Polish Jewish historian. Artur Eisenbach was one of the last representatives of a distinguished group of scholars who, in the years before World War I and in independent Poland between 1918 and 1939, laid the foundation for an investigation of the Polish Jewish past.
title: Eisenbach, Artur
alternative label: Artur Eisenbach
related: Buchach
related: Central Committee of Jews in Poland
related: Galicia
related: Handelsman, Marceli
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Jewish Historical Institute
related: Mahler, Raphael
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ringelblum, Emanuel
related: TOZ
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Feldman, Wilhelm
described at: Feldman Wilhelm
has abstract: (1868–1919), literary historian, writer, critic, editor, and politician. Born into a poor Orthodox family in Zbaraż, Wilhelm Feldman ultimately found a place among Poland’s intellectual elite. At 18 he broke with his Hasidic milieu and moved to Lwów, a stronghold of the Haskalah movement. There he joined Agudas Akhim, a group of young maskilim promoting Polish (as opposed to the traditionally German) political orientation among Galician Jews. Intense social activism did not prevent him from immediately launching a career as a writer, publicist, and literary critic.
title: Feldman, Wilhelm
alternative label: Wilhelm Feldman
related: Agudas Akhim
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Assimilation
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Firkovich, Avraam Samuilovich
described at: Firkovich Avraam Samuilovich
has abstract: (1787–1875), Karaite author and collector of ancient manuscripts. Avraam Firkovich was born in Łuck; his family, though possessed of a long and distinguished lineage, was poor, and Firkovich did not receive much education in his childhood. After his marriage in 1808, Firkovich worked as a miller in Volhynia. In 1813 he studied Torah with the prominent Karaite scholar Mordekhai Sultanskii, with whom he eventually quarreled. Firkovich moved to the Crimean city of Gözleve in 1822, and in 1825 was appointed ḥazan (head) of the local Karaite community (although ḥazan refers to a cantor in Rabbinite communities, for the Karaites the term refers instead to the head of a community). He used his status to submit memorandums suggesting to the Russian government that it resettle Rabbinite Jews from the border areas and recommended that they be forced into agriculture, a measure that he thought would prevent them from involvement in smuggling (Rabbinite Jews, who practiced rabbinic rather than scripture-based Judaism, were scorned by Karaites).
title: Firkovich, Avraam Samuilovich
alternative label: Avraam Firkovich
alternative label: Firkovich
related: Agriculture
related: Crimea
related: Karaites
related: Khazaria
related: Land of Israel
related: Luts’k
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg

Fleischmann, Gisela
described at: Fleischmann Gisela
has abstract: (1897–1944), president of the Women’s International Zionist Organization (WIZO) in interwar Czechoslovakia and a leading activist of the Pracovna Skupina (Working Group), an informal leadership group of Slovak Jewry during World War II, who dedicated her life to rescue and welfare efforts. Born in Bratislava to an Orthodox family, Gisi (as she was known) was a relative of Rabbi Mikha’el Dov Ber Weissmandel, later her colleague in the Working Group. Instrumental in social and communal work, she became chairperson of HICEM (the combined acronym for the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society [HIAS], Jewish Colonization Association [ICA], and Emigration-Direct, a German organization) and a much-trusted member of the Joint Distribution Committee and of the Zionist federation executive committees. Most notable are her efforts to render support and organize escape routes for refugees from Germany (1933), Austria (1938), and the Protektorat (1940) who were trying to work their way to safer Hungary or to Palestine.
title: Fleischmann, Gisela
alternative label: Gisi Fleischmann
related: Bratislava
related: Czechoslovakia
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Labor Camps
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Slovakia
related: Weissmandel, Mikha’el Dov Ber

Friedberg, Avraham Shalom
described at: Friedberg Avraham Shalom
has abstract: (1838–1902), Hebrew author and translator. Also known as Har Shalom (or by the acronym Hash), Avraham Shalom Friedberg was born in Grodno, Lithuania. After he turned 13, he chose to study watchmaking, while continuing his traditional Jewish education. In 1854, Friedberg left Grodno to receive advanced training in his craft and to gain a firsthand impression of life in southern Russia.
title: Friedberg, Avraham Shalom
alternative label: Avraham Shalom Friedberg
related: Aḥi’asaf
related: Berdychiv
related: Brest
related: Fuenn, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Gottlober, Avraham Ber
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Hrodna
related: Kaunas
related: Kishinev
related: Lithuania
related: Mapu, Avraham
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Schulman, Kalman
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Warsaw

Frimorgn
described at: Frimorgn
has abstract: Daily independent Yiddish newspaper. Frimorgn (Morning) was a nationally oriented, democratic newspaper issued in Riga from 17 January 1926 until 15 May 1934. The paper was founded by a group of employees who had left the Riga newspaper Dos folk (The Folk), who used the facilities of the publishing group of the popular Riga Russian-language newspaper Segodnia (Today). The paper initially enjoyed financial support from a number of Jewish public figures.
title: Frimorgn
related: Bund
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: General Zionists
related: Kaunas
related: Latzky-Bertholdi, Ya‘akov Ze’ev
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Razumny, Mark
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: Riga
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Gaster, Moses
described at: Gaster Moses
has abstract: (1856–1939), scholar, rabbi, Zionist, folklorist. Moses Gaster was born in Bucharest to a renowned Jewish family; his grandfather Asriel Gaster had been a community leader and synagogue founder, and his father Abraham Emanuel Gaster was the consul of the Netherlands in Bucharest.
title: Gaster, Moses
alternative label: Moses Gaster
related: Bucharest
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Romania
related: Seminary
related: Sokolow, Naḥum
related: Weizmann, Chaim
related: Wrocław
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Ger Tsedek
described at: Ger Tsedek
has abstract: (Also Walentyn Potocki, Graf Potocki), legendary son of a duke who converted to Judaism and died a martyr’s death in Vilna (Wilno). In the late eighteenth century, a well-crafted legend of a nobleman who converted to Judaism attained popularity. (The term ger tsedek refers generally to a righteous convert to Judaism.) The story maintained that Walentyn Potocki had become Jewish and was subsequently burned at the stake in Vilna. A subplot mentions the conversion of Potocki’s friend, Zaremba, who similarly converted along with Zaremba’s wife.
title: Ger Tsedek
alternative label: Ger tsedek
related: Conversion
related: Dik, Ayzik Meyer
related: Frankism
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Land of Israel
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Vilnius

Ghelerter, Litman
described at: Ghelerter Litman
has abstract: (1873–1945), physician, socialist activist, and writer. Born in the Romanian city of Iaşi, Litman (Leon) Ghelerter attended a commercial high school. As a student at the Faculty of Medicine in Iaşi, he also took courses in law and taught at the Cultura school in Iaşi, a renowned “Israelite–Romanian” institution. Ghelerter earned his medical degree in 1899; his defense of his thesis on alcoholism revealed an interest in social medicine that informed his entire career.
title: Ghelerter, Litman
alternative label: Leon (Litman) Ghelerter
alternative label: Litman Ghelerter
related: Bucharest
related: Iaşi

Gintsburg, Il’ia Iakovlevich
described at: Gintsburg Ilia Iakovlevich
has abstract: (1859–1939), sculptor. A child prodigy, Gintsburg was born in Grodno; he became a student of Mark Antokol’skii, who took him to Saint Petersburg in 1870. Gintsburg entered the Russian Academy in 1878 and received the official title of “academician” or professor in 1911. In the formative years of his career, he enjoyed a high degree of commercial success, concentrating in portraiture and small, highly detailed narrative sculptures. He was known primarily for his rendering of contemporary cultural figures “at work.” These included his portraits of the painter Vasilii Vereshchagin, the chemist Dmitrii Mendeleev, the writer Leo Tolstoy, and the composer and conductor Anton Rubinstein, most of whom he knew personally and described in his memoirs.
title: Gintsburg, Il’ia Iakovlevich
alternative label: Il’ia Gintsburg
related: Antokol’skii, Mark Matveevich
related: Hrodna
related: Moscow
related: Saint Petersburg

Goldstein, Angelo
described at: Goldstein Angelo
has abstract: (1889–1947), politician, lawyer, and Zionist leader. Angelo Goldstein was born into a rabbi’s family in Milevsko (Mühlhausen), Bohemia. He studied law in Prague and was an active member of the Zionist Bar Kochba Association. He was the cofounder of the Theodor Herzl Association in 1909 and chaired this first Czech Zionist student group in 1909–1910. He served in the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I and was wounded. After the war, he opened a law office in Prague.
title: Goldstein, Angelo
alternative label: Angelo Goldstein
related: Bar Kochba Association
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Kugel, Ḥayim
related: Margulies, Emil
related: Prague
related: Silesia
related: Singer, Ludvík
related: Slovakia
related: Subcarpathian Rus’
related: Weizmann, Chaim
related: Židovská Strana
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Gordon, Aharon David
described at: Gordon Aharon David
has abstract: (1856–1922), Zionist thinker. Aharon David Gordon was born in Troyanov, a village in Podolia. His father had left Vilna to manage the country estate of Baron Evzel’ Gintsburg. Gordon’s early life in wooded, natural surroundings seems to have informed his later emphasis on the need to bond with nature. Following his marriage at age 19, Gordon lived with his wife’s family in Obodovka, where he seems to have come into contact with Hasidism.
title: Gordon, Aharon David
alternative label: Aharon David Gordon
related: Gintsburg Family
related: Gordonia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Vilnius
related: Weizmann, Chaim
related: Youth Movements
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Gordon, Mikhl
described at: Gordon Mikhl
has abstract: (1823–1890), Hebrew-Yiddish maskil and popular songwriter. Born in Vilna, Mikhl Gordon was a second-generation maskil. His great uncle, Yisra’el Gordon, was the government rabbi of Vilna, and Mikhl’s father, Aharon David, published a Hebrew work that imitated the style of Mosheh Ḥayim Luzzato. At the age of 16, Mikhl married Neḥamah Gordon, the sister of writer Yehudah Leib Gordon, and lived comfortably under his father-in-law’s roof for the next seven years.
title: Gordon, Mikhl
alternative label: Mikhl Gordon
related: Boker Or, Ha-
related: Dinezon, Yankev
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Karmel, Ha-
related: Kiev
related: Lebensohn, Avraham Dov
related: Lebensohn, Mikhah Yosef
related: Love
related: Magid, Ha-
related: Perl, Yosef
related: Pogroms
related: Satire
related: Shaḥar, Ha-
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Songs and Songwriters
related: Vilnius

Gordon, Shmuel
described at: Gordon Shmuel
has abstract: (1909–1998), Yiddish writer. Born in Kovno (mod. Kaunas), Shmuel Gordon spent his youth in Jewish orphanages in Ukraine. In 1929, as a student in the Yiddish Department at the Second Moscow State University, he was castigated in the Soviet press for sending poems to the Warsaw “bourgeois nationalistic publication” Literarishe bleter (Literary Pages). This incident signaled the total alienation of Soviet Yiddish literary figures from their Western colleagues. Nevertheless, in 1931 Gordon graduated from the university and had a successful, albeit unglamorous, career as a Yiddish journalist and prose writer.
title: Gordon, Shmuel
alternative label: Shmuel Gordon
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Birobidzhan
related: Eynikayt
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Kaunas
related: Literarishe Bleter
related: Moscow
related: Shtetl
related: Sovetish Heymland
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw

Groper, Iacob Ashel
described at: Groper Iacob Ashel
has abstract: (1890–1966), poet. Iacob Ashel Groper is considered to be the first modern Yiddish writer of the former Romanian kingdom (Walachia and Moldavia). He was born in Mihăileni (near the border of Bucovina), and attended the Israelite-Romanian elementary school. He then studied law at the University of Iaşi and after World War I moved to Bucharest.
title: Groper, Iacob Ashel
alternative label: Iacob Groper
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Bucharest
related: Bucovina
related: Chernivtsi
related: Communism
related: Czernowitz Conference
related: Iaşi
related: Mihăileni
related: Moldavia
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Romania
related: Walachia

Gurshteyn, Aron
described at: Gurshteyn Aron
has abstract: (1895–1941), Soviet Russian and Yiddish literary critic and scholar. Aron Gurshteyn was born in Chernigov guberniia, Ukraine, to the family of a transport official. Because his father frequently relocated, Gurshteyn studied in various religious and secular schools and with private tutors. He graduated from a Jewish secondary school in Vilna in 1913, and in 1916 began studying Hebrew literature at Petrograd University. During the civil war, Gurshteyn served in the Red Army, and in 1921 he settled in Moscow, working as a journalist and educator.
title: Gurshteyn, Aron
alternative label: Aron Gurshteyn
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Bronshteyn, Yashe
related: Der Nister
related: Halkin, Shmuel
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Kiev
related: Kvitko, Leyb
related: Linetski, Yitskhok Yoyel
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius

Haas, Willy
described at: Haas Willy
has abstract: (1891–1973), critic and editor. The son of a German-speaking Jewish lawyer in Prague, Willy Haas became friendly with Franz Kafka, Max Brod, and Franz Werfel while still at school and was a central member of the literary Prague circle, serving as editor, with Otto Pick, of its literary magazine Herder-Blätter. The journal was sponsored by the Herder-Verein, a society founded by the Prague branch of B’nai B’rith to promote Jewish culture, and named after the eighteenth-century writer and ethnologist Johann Gottfried Herder. Lacking funds, the magazine was issued only four times (April 1911 and February, May, and October 1912), but it published the works of notable young writers from Prague, Vienna, and Berlin, including Brod, Kafka, Werfel, Max Mell, Franz Blei, and Ernst Blass.
title: Haas, Willy
alternative label: Willy Haas
related: Brod, Max
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Kafka, Franz
related: Pick, Otto
related: Prague
related: Werfel, Franz

Handelsman, Marceli
described at: Handelsman Marceli
has abstract: (1882–1945), historian. Coming from a Polonized Jewish family, Marceli Handelsman married the daughter of Józef Kernbaum, a well-known Warsaw Jewish industrialist and philanthropist. Handelsman’s own paternal uncle had been the commander of the insurgents in the Gostynin district during the 1863 uprising.
title: Handelsman, Marceli
alternative label: Marceli Handelsman
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ringelblum, Emanuel
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Warsaw

Hartmann, Moritz
described at: Hartmann Moritz
has abstract: (1821–1872), poet and journalist. Moritz Hartmann was born in Dušnik, Bohemia, and died in Vienna. Coming from a well-to-do family, he studied medicine and philosophy in Prague and Vienna. Hartmann associated with a circle of writers who wrote in German; some of them, including Leopold Kompert and Ludwig August Frankl, were Jews; others, such as August Meissner and Joseph Rank, were Christian. As was the case with the members of his circle, Hartmann wrote poetry based on themes from Czech history. He lived for a time in Breslau, then in Leipzig, where he befriended the German Jewish writer Berthold Auerbach.
title: Hartmann, Moritz
alternative label: Moritz Hartmann
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Fleckeles, El‘azar ben David
related: Kompert, Leopold
related: Prague
related: Wrocław

Hirszenberg, Szmul
described at: Hirszenberg Szmul
has abstract: (1865–1908), painter, born in Łódź into an observant family. Despite the opposition of his father, a textile worker, Szmul Hirszenberg enrolled at the Kraków School of Fine Arts (1881–1883), where he was influenced by the historical school founded by the Polish painter Jan Matejko. He continued his studies at the Munich Academy (1883–1887) and in Paris at the Académie Colarosi (1889–1892). In 1892, Hirszenberg returned to Poland, living in Łódź and later (1904–1907) in Kraków.
title: Hirszenberg, Szmul
alternative label: Samuel (Szmul) Hirszenberg
alternative label: Szmul Hirszenberg
related: Łódź
related: Gottlieb, Maurycy
related: Kishinev
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sabbath

Hit’aḥadut
described at: Hitahadut
has abstract: A Labor Zionist party established in 1920 uniting the Po‘el ha-Tsa‘ir (Young Workers) party of Palestine with members of Tse‘ire Tsiyon (Zionist Youth) in the Diaspora. The formal name of Hit’aḥadut, which means union, changed more than once before 1932 when the party amalgamated with Po‘ale Tsiyon (Workers of Zion) in the Iḥud ‘Olami (World Union).
title: Hit’aḥadut
related: Gdańsk
related: Gordon, Aharon David
related: Gordonia
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: Land of Israel
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Tarbut
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Imber, Shmuel Yankev
described at: Imber Shmuel Yankev
has abstract: (1889–1942?), Yiddish and Polish author and critic. Shmuel Yankev Imber was born in the provincial town of Jezierna in eastern Galicia; his father was Shemaryahu Imber, a maskil Zionist author and nephew of Naftali Herz Imber (who wrote “Hatikvah”). In addition to obtaining a traditional Jewish education, Imber also studied at Polish gymnasiums in Zloczów and Tarnopol. He traveled briefly to Palestine in 1912 and began studying German and Oriental studies at the university in Lwów. In 1915, he was recruited into the Imperial Austro-Hungarian Army and was therefore unable to graduate.
title: Imber, Shmuel Yankev
alternative label: Shmuel Yankev Imber
related: Bikl, Shloyme
related: Chwila
related: Galicia
related: Haynt
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: L’viv
related: Opinia
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Yiddish Poetry (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Polish Literature
related: Reyzen, Zalmen
related: Ternopil’
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw

‘Ivri, Ha-
described at: Ivri Ha-
has abstract: (Also ‘Ivri anokhi), weekly Hebrew publication, issued between 1865 and 1890. In order to avoid the difficulty of obtaining a license for a weekly publication, the editors employed the common tactic of alternating the title each week between Ha-‘Ivri (The Hebrew) and ‘Ivri anokhi (I Am a Hebrew) as if they were two different biweeklies, which would not face the same licensing restrictions. The journal appeared in 26 annual volumes, and was published mainly in Lwów. Volumes 3 through 6 were published in Brody.
title: ‘Ivri, Ha-
alternative label: Ha-‘Ivri
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Brandstetter, Mordekhai David
related: Brody
related: Dik, Ayzik Meyer
related: Frishman, David
related: Galicia
related: Haskalah
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Land of Israel
related: L’viv
related: Magid, Ha-
related: Mandelkern, Shelomoh
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Schorr, Yehoshu‘a Heshel
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Izhbits-Radzin Hasidic Dynasty
described at: Izhbits-Radzin Hasidic Dynasty
has abstract: One of the most radical dynasties in nineteenth-century Hasidism. Although the Izhbits-Radzin (Pol., Iżbica-Radzyn) Hasidim never attracted a large following, their influence on contemporary Hasidic and non-Hasidic Judaism has been profound. The dynasty was founded by Mordekhai Yosef Leiner (1800–1854) and continues to thrive both in Brooklyn, New York, and in Bene Berak, Israel.
title: Izhbits-Radzin Hasidic Dynasty
alternative label: Izhbits
alternative label: Izhbits-Radzin
related: Childhood
related: Eger, Akiva ben Mosheh
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Menaḥem Mendel of Kotsk
related: Messianism
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sabbatianism
related: Simḥah Bunem of Pshiskhe
related: Tsadok ha-Kohen of Lublin
related: Warsaw
related: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz

Kaganovski, Froyim
described at: Kaganovski Froyim
has abstract: (1893–1958), author and storyteller. Froyim Kaganovski was born in Warsaw, but few facts about his background and early years are available. It is known that he displayed an aptitude for painting and studied at an art school. He published his first story, “Bay nakht” (At Night), when he was just 16, in the weekly Teater velt. In the same year (1909), Kaganovski became acquainted with Y. L. Peretz and was honored by having another story, “In der alter mil” (At the Old Mill), included in the literary collection that Peretz edited, Yidish (1910). This recognition enabled Kaganovski to become a regular guest at the Peretz home.
title: Kaganovski, Froyim
alternative label: Froyim Kaganovski
related: Łódź
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Association of Jewish Writers and Journalists in Warsaw
related: Białystok
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Frishman, David
related: Hebrew Literature
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Odessa
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Shtetl
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw

Kahaneman, Yosef Shelomoh
described at: Kahaneman Yosef Shelomoh
has abstract: (1886–1969), rabbi, head of yeshiva, and communal activist. Kahaneman was born in Kool (Kuliai), Lithuania. In 1896 he left home to study in the nearby small town of Plungian (Plunge) and in 1901 continued his education at the Telz yeshiva, where he remained for six years. After an additional short stay at the Novaredok yeshiva, he moved in 1908 to Radin, studying at the yeshiva of Yisra’el Me’ir ha-Kohen (known as Ḥafets Ḥayim; 1838–1933). In 1910 Kahaneman was appointed rabbi of Vidze, Lithuania, married Feige Rubin, and shortly thereafter founded a yeshiva. During World War I, he remained in Lithuania, and in 1919 was appointed rabbi of Panevėžys (Ponevezh), a position he held for 20 years. While in Panevėžys, he founded a yeshiva that gained national fame.
title: Kahaneman, Yosef Shelomoh
alternative label: Yosef Kahaneman
alternative label: Yosef Shelomoh Kahaneman
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Lithuania
related: Panevėžys
related: Ponevezh, Yeshiva of
related: Telz, Yeshiva of
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Yisra’el Me’ir ha-Kohen

Karelits, Avraham Yesha‘yahu
described at: Karelits Avraham Yeshayahu
has abstract: (1878–1953), Talmudic scholar and Orthodox religious authority. Avraham Yesha‘yahu Karelitz, known as Ḥazon Ish, was one of the most prominent religious authorities of the twentieth century and a major leader of Ḥaredi Jewry in Israel in the 1940s and 1950s.
title: Karelits, Avraham Yesha‘yahu
alternative label: Avraham Yesha‘yahu Karelits
related: Daas Toyre
related: Grodzenski, Ḥayim Ozer
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Lithuania
related: Musar Movement
related: Orthodoxy
related: Sabbath
related: Vilnius
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Karlovy Vary
described at: Karlovy Vary
has abstract: (Ger., Karlsbad or Carlsbad), town and spa in the Czech Republic, 110 kilometers west of Prague. In 1921 and 1923, Karlovy Vary hosted the Twelfth and Thirteenth World Zionist Congresses.
title: Karlovy Vary
related: Czech Republic
related: Frankism
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Prague
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Kaufmann, David
described at: Kaufmann David
has abstract: (1852–1899), scholar and manuscript collector. Born in Kojetín (Ger., Kojetein) in the Habsburg province of Moravia, one of five children of a rural leaseholder, David Kaufmann attended the town’s Jewish elementary school from 1856 to 1860. He then studied at the Piarist gymnasium in nearby Kromĕříž from 1860 to 1867, and at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau from 1867 until his ordination as a rabbi in 1877. He took courses at Breslau University, and in 1874 received his doctorate from Leipzig University for a dissertation about Sa‘adyah Gaon’s philosophy of religion.
title: Kaufmann, David
alternative label: David Kaufmann
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Budapest
related: Leaseholding
related: Seminary
related: Wrocław

Kaufmann, Izidor
described at: Kaufmann Izidor
has abstract: (1853–1921), painter. Izidor Kaufmann was born in Arad (today in Romania), a frontier fortress of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, where his father served as captain of a Hungarian regiment. While working as a bank clerk in 1874, Kaufmann created his first painting—a head of Moses—and began to study art, first at the Budapest State School of Drawing and from 1875 at the Vienna Academy of Visual Arts. Among his early genre scenes, which from 1886 he successfully exhibited in Vienna, Berlin, and Munich, were scenes of Jewish life. Die Schachspieler (Chess Players), Das Examen oder Der Besuch des Rabbi (The Exam, or The Rabbi’s Visit), Isaak the Junk Dealer, Kaufmännischer Untericht (Commercial Instruction), and Geschäftsgeheimnis (Business Secret)—created between 1886 and 1893—depict traditional Jews in a humorous and sympathetic light.
title: Kaufmann, Izidor
alternative label: Izidor Kaufmann
related: Arad
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Budapest
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: Slovakia
related: Ukraine

Khashchevatski, Moyshe
described at: Khashchevatski Moyshe
has abstract: (1897–1943), Yiddish poet. Born in Buki, near Uman, Ukraine, into the family of a Talmud Torah teacher, Moyshe Khashchevatski studied at a heder and later at a commerce school in Uman, which he finished in 1916. He wrote poems in Russian and Yiddish, but initially had only one outlet to showcase his works—a handwritten Yiddish journal that he produced in Uman with his friends Leyb Kvitko and Ezra Fininberg. In 1916, Yekhezkl Dobrushin, already a central figure among the Kiev Yiddish literati, wrote to him, criticizing his poems for lack of “color scale and new cultural achievements.”
title: Khashchevatski, Moyshe
alternative label: Moyshe Khashchevatski
related: Birobidzhan
related: Crimea
related: Der Nister
related: Dobrushin, Yekhezkl
related: Emes, Der
related: Fefer, Itsik
related: Fininberg, Ezra
related: Heder
related: Hofshteyn, Dovid
related: Kiev
related: Kvitko, Leyb
related: Markish, Perets
related: Moscow
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Rosin, Shmuel
related: Shtrom, Der
related: Ukraine
related: Uman
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Kohn, Sámuel
described at: Kohn Samuel
has abstract: (1841–1920), rabbi and historian. Sámuel Kohn was born in Baja, Hungary. Several of his ancestors were rabbis, including his paternal grandfather, Götz Kohn-Schwerin, chief rabbi of Baja and Bács County and one of the outstanding rabbinic authorities in the first half of the nineteenth century. Kohn attended the Catholic gymnasium in Baja and then studied at the yeshivas of Esriel Hildesheimer in Kismarton and Sámuel Sommer in Pápa. In 1858, Kohn enrolled at the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau; at the same time, he attended the University of Breslau, where he studied philosophy, history, and linguistics, completing his doctoral dissertation, “De Pentateucho Samaritano” (The Samaritan Pentateuch), in 1865.
title: Kohn, Sámuel
alternative label: Sámuel Kohn
related: Budapest
related: Hildesheimer, Esriel
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Kayserling, Meir
related: Pápa
related: Seminary
related: Transylvania
related: Wrocław

Kol Ya‘akov Yeshiva
described at: Kol Yaakov Yeshiva
has abstract: Rabbinical seminary, opened in Moscow in 1957. The last yeshivas in the Soviet Union had been closed in the 1920s. Subsequently, at the end of World War II Jews had not been allowed to open a seminary, whereas other religious groups were permitted to do so. Realizing the declining status of Jewish learning and its implications for the future of the rabbinate—and of Judaism as a whole—in the Soviet Union, which would remain without Jewish religious functionaries of any kind, Rabbi Solomon Shlifer (unofficially acknowledged as chief rabbi of Soviet Jewry) persistently requested the authorities to endorse the establishment of a Jewish theological seminary. Eventually, in May 1956 permission was granted, and in January 1957 the Kol Ya‘akov Yeshiva began operating on the precincts of the Moscow Choral Synagogue with Shlifer as first rector.
title: Kol Ya‘akov Yeshiva
related: Budapest
related: Levin, Yehudah Leib (poet)
related: Moscow
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Seminary
related: Shlifer, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Kol’tsov, Mikhail Efimovich
described at: Koltsov Mikhail Efimovich
has abstract: (1898–1940), journalist. Mikhail Kol’tsov (originally Fridliand) was born into an artisan family in Kiev. In 1915, he started his studies at the Petrograd Psycho-Neurological Institute, and in 1916 wrote articles for the periodical Put’ studenchestva (Students’ Way). Kol’tsov participated in the February and October 1917 revolutions, and as a member of the workers’ militia took part in the arrest of tsarist ministers.
title: Kol’tsov, Mikhail Efimovich
alternative label: Mikhail Kol’tsov
related: Cinema
related: Kiev
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Society for the Settlement of Jewish Toilers on the Land
related: Tribuna

Komfarband
described at: Komfarband
has abstract: Short-lived political formation of leftist Jews in the USSR in 1919. As World War I drew to a close in November 1918, the tensions among Jewish socialist parties in Ukraine regarding the Bolshevik revolution and the Soviet regime came out into the open. Communist uprisings in Germany, which seemed to support the Bolshevik prognosis that the revolution would spread across Europe, together with the growing stability of the Bolshevik government, intensified inter- and intraparty conflict. Jews were increasingly fearful of persecution and distrusted the Ukrainian powers who opposed the Bolsheviks.
title: Komfarband
related: Bund
related: Fareynikte
related: Kiev
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Kozintsev, Grigorii Mikhailovich
described at: Kozintsev Grigorii Mikhailovich
has abstract: (1905–1973), Soviet film director. Grigorii Kozintsev began his career as a student of the artist Aleksandra Ekster; after the revolution, he organized large-scale street theater. In 1920 he entered the studio school of the Petrograd Academy of Arts.
title: Kozintsev, Grigorii Mikhailovich
alternative label: Grigorii Kozintsev
related: Cinema
related: Shklovskii, Viktor Borisovich
related: Trauberg, Leonid Zakharovich
related: Tynianov, Iurii Nikolaevich
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Kremer, Arkadii
described at: Kremer Arkadii
has abstract: (1865–1935), socialist political leader; known as “Father of the Bund.” Alternately called Aleksandr or Solomon, Arkadii Kremer was born in Sventsian (now Švenčionys, Lith.), Vilna guberniia, to a religious maskilic family. At age 12 he moved to Vilna, where he attended Realschule, later studying at the Technological Institute in Saint Petersburg. His studies were interrupted in 1889 when he was jailed for revolutionary activity. Upon his release in 1890, Kremer was banned from Saint Petersburg.
title: Kremer, Arkadii
alternative label: Aleksandr (Arkadii) Kremer
alternative label: Arkadii Kremer
related: Białystok
related: Bund
related: Gozhansky, Shmul
related: Martov, L.
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Kunitz, Mosheh
described at: Kunitz Mosheh
has abstract: (1774–1837), rabbinic scholar. Born in Alt-Ofen (Óbuda), Hungary, Mosheh Kunitz studied Talmud with the leading authorities of his day: Wolf Boskowitz, Mosheh Münz, Yeḥezkel (Ezekiel) Landau, and Isaiah Berlin (Pick) of Breslau. In Prague he was influenced by the maskil Baruch Jeitteles. Kunitz also studied languages and secular subjects in Breslau.
title: Kunitz, Mosheh
alternative label: Mosheh Kunitz
related: Budapest
related: Chorin, Aharon
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jeitteles Family
related: Landau, Yeḥezkel ben Yehudah
related: Liturgy
related: Münz, Mosheh
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Reform, Religious
related: Wrocław

Lakhovits-Kobrin-Slonim Hasidic Dynasty
described at: Lakhovits-Kobrin-Slonim Hasidic Dynasty
has abstract: The Lakhovits-Kobrin-Slonim Hasidic dynasties, from Belorussia, trace their origins to the third-generation Hasidic leader Avraham of Kalisk (d. 1810), and more specifically to his opposition to Lubavitch’s aggressive approach to the propagation of Kabbalah. This dispute generated a network of dynastic lines within Lithuanian and Belorussian Hasidism that adopted more conservative forms of Hasidic piety, eschewing the popularization of mystical contemplation.
title: Lakhovits-Kobrin-Slonim Hasidic Dynasty
alternative label: Slonim
alternative label: Slonimer dynasty
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Avraham ben Aleksander ha-Kohen of Kalisk
related: Belarus
related: Grodzenski, Ḥayim Ozer
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Ḥayim ben Yitsḥak of Volozhin
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Land of Israel
related: Lithuania
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Misnagdim
related: Piety
related: Spektor, Yitsḥak Elḥanan
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Landau, Adolph
described at: Landau Adolph
has abstract: (1842–1902), publicist, editor, and publisher. Adolph Landau, first known as Aharon Landau, was born in Rassein, Kovno province, to a maskilic merchant’s family. He received a traditional Jewish education and studied at the Vilna Rabbinical Seminary (1855–1862). In 1860, he began publishing short articles about contemporary Jewish life; he wrote for various newspapers, including the Russian Jewish journals Razsvet and Sion.
title: Landau, Adolph
alternative label: Adolph Landau
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Odessa
related: Pogroms
related: Razsvet
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shtadlan
related: Vilnius
related: Voskhod
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Landau, Lev Davidovich
described at: Landau Lev Davidovich
has abstract: (1908–1968), theoretical physicist. Born in Baku, Lev Landau graduated from Leningrad University at the age of 19. For the next two years, he was a doctoral student at the Leningrad Physical-Technical Institute; he also published his first two seminal papers. Then from 1929 to 1931 he studied in Europe, mostly in Copenhagen with Niels Bohr, whom he visited again in 1933–1934 and considered to be his principal teacher.
title: Landau, Lev Davidovich
alternative label: Lev Davidovich Landau
alternative label: Lev Landau
related: Moscow

Landkentenish
described at: Landkentenish
has abstract: Founded in 1926, Landkentenish (Pol., Krajoznawstwo), the Jewish movement to promote touring the countryside, brought together two disparate ideological strands: the ideal of the French Physiocrats, who extolled agricultural labor as being most productive, and the new nationalism that laid exclusive claim to the land and its historic landmarks. Because Jewish membership in the Polish Touring Society was severely restricted, and because the Poles made no effort to preserve Jewish landmarks, Jewish historians, ethnographers, novelists, poets, and other engagé intellectuals formed their own society and issued their own publications: Land un lebn (1927–1928), edited by Yitskhok Lejpuner, as well as the bilingual Landkentenish / Krajoznawstwo (1933–1935) and Landkentenish: Yedies fun Yi. G. F. L. / Krajoznawstwo: Wiadomosci Z. T. K. (1936–1938), both edited by Emanuel Ringelblum.
title: Landkentenish
related: Burshtin, Mikhoel
related: Korn, Rokhl
related: Lithuania
related: Memory
related: Opotshinski, Perets
related: Oyerbakh, Rokhl
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ringelblum, Emanuel
related: Shtetl
related: Singer, Isaac Bashevis
related: Synagogue Architecture
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Langer, Jiří
described at: Langer Jiri
has abstract: (1894–1943), Hebrew and Czech writer. Jiří (Mordekhai Georgo) Langer was born in Prague to an assimilated merchant family. His eldest brother was the well-known Czech writer and playwright František Langer (1888–1965). Langer’s parents sent him to Czech schools, but he noted that even as a young child he was drawn to Judaism and studied Talmud and Kabbalah on a regular basis with his classmate, Alfred Fuchs.
title: Langer, Jiří
alternative label: Jiří (Mordechai Georgo) Langer
alternative label: Jiří Langer
alternative label: Jiří Mordecai Langer
related: Belz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Brod, Max
related: Fuchs, Alfred
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Hebrew Literature
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kafka, Franz
related: Kolot
related: Langer, František
related: Prague
related: Psychoanalysis
related: Steinman, Eli‘ezer
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Hebrew (Language)
described at: Hebrew
has abstract: Hebrew in Eastern Europe (traditionally called in Hebrew and Yiddish loshn koydesh, “the holy tongue,” or by modernizers loshn ivri, sefas ever, or ivris) was never strictly speaking a vernacular, though Jews lacking a shared language did sometimes use it as a lingua franca. Rather, as throughout the Diaspora, it was to varying degrees a medium of study, writing, and recitation, part of a Jewish “polysystem” of two or more languages. Aside from Hebrew proper, the least lettered Jew employed a large stock of Hebraisms, many Judaism-specific, many not, if he or she spoke Yiddish; indeed, Yiddish was an incubator that kept Hebrew alive among the masses. At the same time, to season one’s Yiddish with Hebraic erudition or wit was the mark of an intellectual. This entry treats Hebrew proper.
title: Hebrew (Language)
alternative label: Hebrew
alternative label: Hebrew language
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Agnon, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Assimilation
related: Baron, Devorah
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Bund
related: Gans, David ben Shelomoh
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: Land of Israel
related: Lithuania
related: Mapu, Avraham
related: Me’ir Leib ben Yeḥi’el Mikha’el
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sabbath
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Youth Movements
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Legal Institutions
described at: Legal Institutions
has abstract: The Jewish courts of Eastern Europe were for centuries a central dimension of autonomous Jewish life in the region: a fully functioning judicial system exercised authority over many aspects of Jewish communal life. The Jewish court system gradually fell into a state of decline, however, and by the early part of the twentieth century was limited in its authority to matters of ritual and family law. Earlier, the rabbinical courts (Heb., bate din; sg., bet din) and lay courts of individual communities and the regional courts of each medinah (province) not only determined matters of ritual law, but also served as the central courts with respect to commercial matters, family law, intercommunal disputes, and even many criminal matters.
title: Legal Institutions
narrower: Jewish Courts and Jewish Autonomy
narrower: Jewish Courts in the Modern Period
narrower: Regional Judicial Institutions
narrower: The Breadth and Scope of Judicial Autonomy
related: Councils
related: Eger, Akiva ben Mosheh
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Landau, Yeḥezkel ben Yehudah
related: Lithuania
related: Luria, Shelomoh ben Yeḥi’el
related: Misnagdim
related: Prague
related: Shabetai ben Me’ir ha-Kohen
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Leśmian, Bolesław
described at: Lesmian Bolesław
has abstract: (1877–1937), poet and essayist. The great-grandson of Antoni Eisenbaum, director of the Warsaw Rabbinical School, Leśmian (whose last name originally was Lesman) was baptized in 1887. He spent his youth in Ukraine where, in 1901, he earned a law degree from the University of Kiev. After returning to Warsaw, he was active in the city’s literary life, joining a circle of modernist writers gathered around the journal Chimera, co-funding and directing the innovative Artistic Theater, and traveling extensively in Europe. During the interwar period he worked as a notary in Hrubieszów and Zamość. In 1933, Leśmian was elected to the Polish Academy of Literature.
title: Leśmian, Bolesław
alternative label: Bolesław Leśmian
related: Eisenbaum, Antoni
related: Kiev
related: Mysticism and Mystical Literature
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zamość

Lestschinsky, Jakob
described at: Lestschinsky Jakob
has abstract: (1876–1966), historian and sociologist; specialist in Jewish demography and economic history. Born in Horodishche, near Kiev, Jakob Lestschinsky (Yankev Leshtshinski) received a traditional Jewish education. In 1898, his interests in secular studies led him to Odessa, where he tutored Hebrew while studying for an external matriculation. In 1901, he attended universities in Bern and later in Zurich.
title: Lestschinsky, Jakob
alternative label: Jakob Lestschinsky
alternative label: Jakub Leszczyński
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Fareynikte
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kiev
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: ORT
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Riga
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Trade
related: Warsaw
related: World War I
related: YIVO
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Leżajsk
described at: Lezajsk
has abstract: Town now in the southeastern Polish province of Rzeszów. A royal town founded in the fourteenth century, Leżajsk (also Leżańsk; Yid., Lizhensk) had a Jewish presence by 1521. In 1538, seven Jewish families paid the poll tax, and by 1577 the number of taxpayers had increased to 12. A synagogue was first mentioned in 1626; in that same year, Jews and Christians struggled over the right to trade in leather.
title: Leżajsk
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Beys Yankev
related: Elimelekh of Lizhensk
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Pilgrimage
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Przemyśl
related: Rzeszów
related: Tarbut
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Liberberg, Yoysef
described at: Liberberg Yoysef
has abstract: (1898–1937), Soviet historian, journalist, and functionary. Born in Starokonstantinov, Ukraine, into the family of a clerk, Yoysef Liberberg was educated in Kiev—first at a Russian gymnasium, which gave him a full scholarship, and then at the faculty of history and philosophy at Saint Vladimir University. At the age of 15 he began working at the Kiev Jewish library and became interested in Jewish history. He also joined the local Labor Zionist organization.
title: Liberberg, Yoysef
alternative label: Yoysef Liberberg
related: Berdychiv
related: Birobidzhan
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Erik, Maks
related: Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shtif, Nokhem
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Ukraine
related: Wiener, Meir
related: YIVO

Lieberman, Aharon Shemu’el
described at: Lieberman Aharon Shemuel
has abstract: (1843–1880), socialist author, Hebrew translator, and political essayist. Aharon Shemu’el Lieberman (Liebermann) was born in Luna, Grodno district, Russia. His father, Eli‘ezer Dov Lieberman (1820–1897), was a maskilic author, translator, and political writer. Lieberman studied at the rabbinical seminary in Vilna (1861–1867), worked as a teacher and clerk, and spent time in Białystok, Saint Petersburg, Vilna, and other cities. In 1866, he married Raḥel, the daughter of Mosheh Trotsky, and had three daughters and a son.
title: Lieberman, Aharon Shemu’el
alternative label: Aharon Lieberman
alternative label: Aharon Shemu’el Lieberman
related: Białystok
related: Hrodna
related: Kaliningrad
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Satire
related: Seminary
related: Shaḥar, Ha-
related: Vilnius
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Liepāja
described at: Liepaja
has abstract: (Ger., Libau), Baltic port and the second largest city in Latvia. Jews began to arrive in Liepāja in 1795 and numbered more than 10,000 before World War I (for population, see Table 1).
title: Liepāja
related: Banking
related: Bund
related: Credit
related: Haskalah
related: Industry
related: Latvia
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Russian Criticism and Scholarship (Literary Criticism and Scholarship)
described at: Russian Criticism and Scholarship
has abstract: One of the salient features of modern literary criticism is the proliferation of schools, approaches, and methodologies. In his cross-cultural survey made in 1961, the eminent scholar of comparative literature René Wellek was able to distinguish six “main trends” especially characteristic of the era, ranging from psychoanalytic to myth criticism. As for twentieth-century Russian literary criticism, it was shaped in the main by two divergent, and often opposing, forces—the vitality of the “modern” movement in the arts and, throughout the Soviet period, the privileged status of Marxist or quasi-Marxist perspectives. While many of the figures mentioned in this article have recognizably Jewish names, any connection between their background and the critical methodologies that they championed seems to be tenuous at best.
title: Russian Criticism and Scholarship (Literary Criticism and Scholarship)
alternative label: Russian literary criticism
alternative label: Russian literary criticism and scholarship
alternative label: critics
alternative label: literary scholar
related: Estonia
related: Jakobson, Roman Osipovich
related: Lotman, Iurii Mikhailovich
related: Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich
related: Shklovskii, Viktor Borisovich
related: Tartu
related: Trotsky, Leon
related: Tynianov, Iurii Nikolaevich

Litvinov, Maksim Maksimovich
described at: Litvinov Maksim Maksimovich
has abstract: (1876–1951), revolutionary, Communist Party activist, and Soviet diplomat. Born to a Jewish merchant family in Białystok, Maksim Litvinov (also known as Meir-Henekh Moiseevich Wallach) received a traditional Jewish education and graduated from a secondary school. He was a member of the Rossiiskaia Sotsial-Demokraticheskaia Rabochaia Partiia (Russian Social-Democratic Workers Party) from 1898 and became actively involved in distributing the illegal Communist paper Iskra.
title: Litvinov, Maksim Maksimovich
alternative label: Maksim Litvinov
related: Białystok
related: Communist Party of the Soviet Union
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Kiev
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Löw, El‘azar
described at: Low Elazar
has abstract: (1758–1837), rabbi and yeshiva head. El‘azar Löw was born in Wodzisław, Poland to a rabbinical family; his father, Aryeh Leib, was a wealthy merchant. El‘azar studied with his grandfather Pinḥas Zelig, author of ‘Ateret paz, until the age of 16. After his marriage the following year, he was elected a dayan (rabbinic judge) of his native town. At age 20 he was appointed rabbi of Pilica, Poland, where he served for two decades. In 1800, he became the rabbi of the Moravian community of Triesch (now Ťrešt’), at the recommendation of Moravia’s chief rabbi, Mordekhai Benet.
title: Löw, El‘azar
alternative label: El‘azar
alternative label: El‘azar Löw
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Birnbaum, Nathan
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Budapest
related: Chorin, Aharon
related: Debrecen
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kolín
related: Löw, Yirmiyahu
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Reception, Law of
related: Reform, Religious
related: Sátoraljaújhely
related: Seminary
related: Slovakia
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Löw, Immánuel
described at: Low Immanuel
has abstract: (1854–1944), rabbi, orientalist, art historian, and member of the Hungarian Parliament. The son of Leopold (Lipót) Löw, chief rabbi of the Neolog Jewish community of Szeged, Immánuel Löw completed his university and theological studies in Berlin and Leipzig. The Jewish community of Szeged elected him its rabbi in 1878 (his father had died in 1875). After World War I, he was imprisoned for 13 months because of his condemnation of the White Terror and Admiral Miklós Horthy.
title: Löw, Immánuel
alternative label: Immánuel
alternative label: Immánuel Löw
related: Baumhorn, Lipót
related: Budapest
related: Land of Israel
related: Löw, Leopold
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
related: Seminary
related: Wrocław

Löw, Yirmiyahu
described at: Low Yirmiyahu
has abstract: (1811–1874), leading Hungarian Orthodox rabbi. Yirmiyahu Löw was descended from the most distinguished line of rabbis in Hungary after the Sofer-Eger family. Both his father, Binyamin Ze’ev, the author of Sha‘are Torah, and his grandfather El‘azar, the author of Shemen rokeaḥ, were famous scholars and important heads of yeshivas in Poland, Bohemia and Moravia, and, finally, in Hungary. Löw enjoyed great prestige by virtue of his descent, personality, and acknowledged wisdom, and was considered a natural leader among Orthodox rabbis, second only to the rabbi of Pressburg, Avraham Shemu’el Binyamin Sofer (Schreiber), the Ketav Sofer. A man of not inconsiderable Western culture who was fluent in German, Löw was also the head, in Újhely, of one of the largest Hungarian yeshivas, with between 100 and 150 students in 1865.
title: Löw, Yirmiyahu
alternative label: Yirmiyahu (Jeremiás) Löw
alternative label: Yirmiyahu Löw
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bratislava
related: Budapest
related: Friedman, Tsevi Hirsh
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Löw, El‘azar
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sátoraljaújhely
related: Seminary
related: Sofer, Avraham Shemu’el Binyamin
related: Sofer Family
related: Sofer, Mosheh

Lozovskii, Solomon Abramovich
described at: Lozovskii Solomon Abramovich
has abstract: (1878–1952), political figure and trade unionist. Born in Ekaterinoslav province, the son of a melamed, Solomon Lozovskii (born with the surname Dridzo) joined the Russian Social-Democratic Workers Party in 1901 and in 1905 affiliated with the Bolsheviks. In 1908 he escaped from Siberia, where he had been exiled, and moved to France, where he was active in the Socialist Party. He returned to Russia in June 1917. From 1921 to 1937 he served as secretary-general of the Profintern, the Communist-controlled trade union international, which he had helped found. Simultaneously, Lozovskii was a presidium member of the Comintern (the Communist International) and a delegate at six of its congresses.
title: Lozovskii, Solomon Abramovich
alternative label: Solomon Lozovskii
related: Black Book
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: About this Article (Russia)

Maisel, Mordecai
described at: Maisel Mordecai
has abstract: (also Meisel; 1528–1601), financier, merchant, philanthropist, Jewish community head, and builder of Prague’s Jewish Town. References to Mordecai Maisel’s family in Prague date from as early as 1477; he is first mentioned as a business partner of his father-in-law, Yitsḥak Rofe, in 1569. From 1576 on, Maisel was a member of the Prague Jewish Communal Council, he later became its head.
title: Maisel, Mordecai
alternative label: Mordecai Maisel
related: Gans, David ben Shelomoh
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Pascheles, Wolf
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: Prague

Mandelkern, Shelomoh
described at: Mandelkern Shelomoh
has abstract: (1846–1902), Hebrew poet, author of a major biblical concordance. Born in Mlynów, Volhynia, Shelomoh Mandelkern received a broad traditional education. At the age of 16 he was sent to Dubno to continue his studies, and for some time he lived in Kock (Kotsk), Poland. There he studied Kabbalah and Hasidism with David, the son of Menaḥem Mendel of Kotsk. Drawn to secular studies in the early 1860s, Mandelkern began to send articles to the Hebrew press. While attending rabbinical seminaries from 1865, first in Zhitomir and then in Vilna, he associated with the poet Adam ha-Kohen (Avraham Dov Lebensohn). Under the latter’s patronage, Mandelkern published his first book of poetry, the biblical long poem Bat-Sheva‘ (1866). In that year he also published a collection of satirical verses called Ḥitsim shenunim (Sharp Arrows), as well as a Hebrew translation of the story “‘Ezra ha-sofer” (Ezra the Scribe) by Ludwig Philippson.
title: Mandelkern, Shelomoh
alternative label: Shelomoh Mandelkern
related: Dubno
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Lebensohn, Avraham Dov
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Menaḥem Mendel of Kotsk
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Vilnius
related: Zederbaum, Aleksander
related: Zhytomyr

Margoliot, Efrayim Zalman ben Menaḥem Manes
described at: Margoliot Efrayim Zalman ben Menahem Manes
has abstract: (1760–1828), merchant, halakhic authority, and rabbinic author. Efrayim Zalman ben Menaḥem Manes Margoliot (last name also rendered Margalioth) was born into a distinguished family and was counted among the most successful merchants of Brody. In 1817, he was granted a permit to establish a wholesale commercial establishment in Vienna together with several partners. The business remained in operation until 1837, about 10 years after Margoliot’s death.
title: Margoliot, Efrayim Zalman ben Menaḥem Manes
alternative label: Efrayim Zalman Margoliot
related: Approbation
related: Belarus
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Brody
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Sabbatianism
related: Tsoref, Yehoshu‘a Heshel ben Yosef
related: Ukraine

Markish, Shimon
described at: Markish Shimon
has abstract: (1931–2003), literary and cultural historian; translator. The son of poet Perets Markish, Shimon (Simon Peretsovich) Markish was educated as a classical scholar, a choice determined by his father’s arrest in 1949, which precluded other, more prestigious choices. After his father’s execution, Markish was arrested and sent with the family to exile to Kazakhstan from 1953 to 1954.
title: Markish, Shimon
alternative label: Shimon Markish
related: Babel, Isaac
related: Ehrenburg, Ilya Grigor’evich
related: Grossman, Vasilii Semenovich
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kertész, Imre
related: Markish, Perets
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Maze, Iakov Isaevich
described at: Maze Iakov Isaevich
has abstract: (1859–1924), Russian rabbi, publicist, and Zionist leader. Born in Mogilev, Iakov Maze lost his father at an early age and was raised by his maternal grandfather, who gave him a thorough Jewish education. While studying at the gymnasium in Kerch (Crimea), Maze was shocked to overhear an antisemitic remark by the reputedly liberal Tsar Alexander II. Maze remained observant—unusual for his era—while studying law at Moscow University. He then practiced law for a time after graduation.
title: Maze, Iakov Isaevich
alternative label: Iakov (Ya‘akov) Maze
alternative label: Iakov Isaevich Maze
alternative label: Iakov Maze
related: Beilis, Mendel
related: Crimea
related: Evsektsiia
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Moscow
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Mill, John
described at: Mill John
has abstract: (1870–1952), political leader and Bundist activist. John Mill (also known as Yoysef Shloyme Mil) was one of the founders of the Jewish Labor Bund and a central activist during its first two decades. He was born in Panevėžys (Kovno province, Lithuania; then in tsarist Russia) to a family of acculturated Jews. Despite being exposed to some Yiddish at home, his first language was Russian, he studied in Russian public schools, and most of his childhood friends were Russian-speaking.
title: Mill, John
alternative label: John (Yosef) Mill
alternative label: John Mill
related: Białystok
related: Bund
related: Kaunas
related: Lithuania
related: Luxemburg, Rosa
related: Panevėžys
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Morevski, Avrom
described at: Morevski Avrom
has abstract: (1886–1964), Yiddish actor, director, translator, and essayist. Avrom Morevski (also Morewski; Menaker) was born in Vilna into a comfortable merchant family. He received both a traditional Jewish and a secular education. Drawn to theater and Russian literature, in 1905 he began performing on the Russian stage and in 1910 graduated from the Russian-language Suvorin Theater School in Saint Petersburg. He performed in Russian until 1918 when he turned to the Yiddish stage, first in Vilna and then in Łódź.
title: Morevski, Avrom
alternative label: Avrom Morevski
related: Łódź
related: Cinema
related: Dybbuk, The
related: Kacyzne, Alter-Sholem
related: Kaminski Family
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Riga
related: Saint Petersburg
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilner Trupe
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Zeitlin Family

Morgnshtern
described at: Morgnshtern
has abstract: The sport organization of the Jewish Labor Bund in Poland from 1926 to 1939. Morgnshtern was also the name of the Polish Jewish section of the Socialist Workers Sport International (SWSI). With 5,000 members (more than 1,500 in Warsaw alone) and more than 170 branches, Morgnshtern was one of the largest sport organizations in Poland. Morgnshtern’s first national Congress (Land Tsuzamenfor) was held in 1929. Arbeter sportler, Morgnshtern’s monthly publication, was replaced in the 1930s by Folks-tsaytung far sport, a biweekly section of the Naye folks-tsaytung (the Bund’s daily newspaper).
title: Morgnshtern
related: Bund
related: Po‘el, Ha-
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Shtern
related: About this Article (Sport)
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Mosheh Ḥayim Efrayim of Sudilkov
described at: Mosheh Hayim Efrayim of Sudilkov
has abstract: (1737/48–ca.1800), Hasidic author. Mosheh Ḥayim Efrayim was born in Międzyboż (Yid., Mezhbizh; mod. Ukr., Medzhibizh); his mother, Edel, was the daughter of Yisra’el Ba‘al Shem Tov (the Besht); his father was Yeḥi’el Mikhl Ashkenazi of Mezhbizh; and his younger brother was Barukh of Mezhbizh. Mosheh Ḥayim was a preacher in Sudylków (Yid., Sudilkov), Volhynia, where he lived until shortly before his death. He is remembered chiefly as the author of Degel maḥaneh Efrayim, which was printed by his son, Ya‘akov Yeḥi’el, in Korets in 1810. The book includes traditions and stories about the Besht, with whom Mosheh Ḥayim lived until the age of 12.
title: Mosheh Ḥayim Efrayim of Sudilkov
alternative label: Efrayim of Sudilkov
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Medzhibizh
related: Misnagdim
related: Shapira Family
related: Ya‘akov Yosef of Polnoye

Münz, Mosheh
described at: Munz Mosheh
has abstract: (ca. 1750–1831), rabbi. Born in the village of Minkowitz (Podolia), Mosheh Münz studied with Meshulam Igra of Tysmenitsa. After marrying the daughter of a prominent rabbi, he settled in Brody where he headed a yeshiva. Later, he served as the rabbi of Vishnawitz and subsequently of Radivil. He corresponded with Yeḥezkel Landau of Prague, who regarded him highly and recommended his appointment as rabbi of Alt-Ofen (Óbuda), the second most important community in Hungary. Münz served in this post for 40 years until his death.
title: Münz, Mosheh
alternative label: Mosheh Münz
related: Approbation
related: Arad
related: Banet, Mordekhai ben Avraham
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brody
related: Budapest
related: Chorin, Aharon
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Igra, Meshulam ben Shimshon
related: Landau, Yeḥezkel ben Yehudah
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Traditional and Instrumental Music (Music)
described at: Traditional and Instrumental Music
has abstract: By the later sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries in Bohemia and then in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Jewish musicians began to form their own guilds. The formation of guilds raised the social status of Jewish musicians, and led to the abandonment of the older term leyts (scoffer, clown), applied in Central Europe to singers, instrumentalists, clowns, and dancers, in favor of the new, more respectable term klezmer (from kele zemer, musical instruments or vessels of song; pl., klezmorim), designating exclusively an instrumentalist. The term klezmer made its way to Germany only in the eighteenth century, with the influx of Jewish musicians from Bohemia and Poland. Klezmer was a more favorable term for a Jewish musician, in contrast to the derogatory muzikant. This distinction persisted until the later nineteenth century, when Jews gained admission to conservatories in Russia and Austria-Hungary in significant numbers.
title: Traditional and Instrumental Music (Music)
alternative label: instrumental musical
alternative label: instrumental musicians
alternative label: klezmer music
alternative label: musicians
related: Badkhonim
related: Belarus
related: Berdychiv
related: Beregovskii, Moisei Iakovlevich
related: Bessarabia
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brody
related: Bucovina
related: Buhuşi
related: Crafts
related: About this Article (Dance)
related: Engel, Yo’el
related: Galaţi
related: Galicia
related: Guilds
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Iaşi
related: Krein, Aleksandr Abramovich
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: L’viv
related: Moldavia
related: Passover
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Purim
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sabbath
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Ternopil’
related: Tighina
related: Transylvania
related: Tsimbl
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Vitsyebsk
related: Weddings

Naydus, Leyb
described at: Naydus Leyb
has abstract: (1890–1918), Yiddish poet. Leyb Naydus was born in Grodno (Hrodna) to a wealthy, somewhat maskilic family. Most of his childhood was spent on a spacious estate near his birthplace, where he had private tutors for Jewish and general studies. He later attended Russian schools, but never graduated. He wrote in Russian, Hebrew, and Yiddish from an early age and published poems in the provincial Russian press. A collection of his youthful Russian poems remained unpublished.
title: Naydus, Leyb
alternative label: Leyb Naydus
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Hrodna
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Shtetl
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Neustadt, Adolf
described at: Neustadt Adolf
has abstract: (1812–1875), journalist, editor, and communal leader. Adolf Neustadt (Neustadtl) was exposed early in his life to the world of the Prague literati in his father’s antique bookshop. While studying at the local Piarist secondary school where his literary talent was encouraged, he also came under the wing of the maskil Peter Beer. In his youth, Neustadt made fast friendships with some of the outstanding personalities of his generation, including the publicist and political figure Ignaz Jeitteles; the journalist, editor, member of parliament, and Viennese communal leader, Ignaz Kuranda; and the high civil servant Baron Karl Hock, whose conversion did not diminish their close relationship.
title: Neustadt, Adolf
alternative label: Adolf Neustadt
related: Arad
related: Beer, Peter
related: Bratislava
related: Conversion
related: Einhorn, Ignác
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jeitteles Family
related: Kompert, Leopold
related: Prague
related: Saphir, Moritz Gottlieb

Paneth, Yeḥezkel
described at: Paneth Yehezkel
has abstract: (1783–1845), chief rabbi of Transylvania. In the eighteenth century, the Paneth family formed the core of the small Jewish settlement in Bielitz (Bielsko-Biała) in Austrian Silesia; the town was located between Moravia to the west and Galicia to the east. Yeḥezkel Paneth’s father Yosef (as his father before him) was a wealthy leaseholder on the estates of Christian, Graf von Haugwitz. A considerably learned man with good connections to the economic and scholarly elite, Yosef sent his teenage son to study in Moravia and Bohemia. Yeḥezkel spent two years at the Leipnik yeshiva of Barukh Fränkl-Te’omim, and from 1799 to 1802 in Prague, primarily at the yeshiva for advanced students of Yehudah Leib Fischeles. The campaign to eradicate the last vestiges of the Sabbatian movement in Prague was in full swing, led by El‘azar Fleckeles. Furthermore, the Haskalah was flourishing under the moderating influence of Barukh Jeitteles, a member of the Prague’s rabbinical court.
title: Paneth, Yeḥezkel
alternative label: Yeḥezkel Paneth
related: Alba Iulia
related: Ashkenaz
related: Biała
related: Bielsko
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bratislava
related: Dej
related: Familiants Laws
related: Fleckeles, El‘azar ben David
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Jeitteles Family
related: Kahana, Yehudah
related: Kloyz
related: Leaseholding
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Menaḥem Mendel of Rimanov
related: Mysticism and Mystical Literature
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Ropshits-Dzikov Hasidic Dynasty
related: Sabbath
related: Sabbatianism
related: Sandz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Sephardim
related: Silesia
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: Te’omim Family
related: Transylvania
related: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Yisra’el ben Shabetai of Kozhenits

Paperna, Avraham Ya‘akov
described at: Paperna Avraham Yaakov
has abstract: (1840–1919), Hebrew poet and critic. Avraham Ya‘akov Paperna was born in Kapolia (Kapyl), in the Minsk district of Russia, and was drawn to the Haskalah from an early age. In 1859, Paperna’s family moved to Bobruisk, and a year later he married. From 1862 to 1864, he studied at the rabbinical seminary in Zhitomir, and from 1864 to 1867 he was at the rabbinical seminary in Vilna. After teaching for a short time at a government school in Zakroczym, Poland (1868), he was appointed to teach religion at the government secondary school in Plotsk. During World War I, he fled to Bobruisk in 1915, and subsequently to Odessa, where he remained until his death.
title: Paperna, Avraham Ya‘akov
alternative label: Avraham Ya‘akov Paperna
related: Bobruisk
related: Ha-Efrati, Yosef
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Lebensohn, Avraham Dov
related: Minsk
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Seminary
related: Vilnius
related: Zhytomyr

Pascheles, Wolf
described at: Pascheles Wolf
has abstract: (1814–1857), Hebrew printer, publisher, and bookseller. The son of impoverished parents, Wolf Pascheles earned his livelihood from childhood by tutoring in Prague and its immediate vicinity. In 1828, he edited and published a book of German prayers for Jewish women titled Deutsche Gebete für Frauen (in German with Hebrew letters), whose popularity was evidenced by the appearance of several editions under various titles. In 1832, during the cholera epidemic in Prague, Pascheles edited a booklet containing the prayers and seliḥot (penitential prayers) of Rabbi Eli‘ezer Ashkenazi. With the money earned from editions of the Hebrew and Yiddish prayer books, Pascheles in 1836 opened Prague’s first Hebrew bookshop—selling both new and used books—and another in Brno in 1844.
title: Pascheles, Wolf
alternative label: Wolf Pascheles
related: Brno
related: Kapper, Siegfried
related: Prague
related: Weisel, Leopold

Pauker, Ana
described at: Pauker Ana
has abstract: (1893–1960), prominent official of the Communist International (Comintern), Romanian Communist leader, and foreign minister of Romania. Born Ana Rabinsohn to impoverished Orthodox Jewish parents, Ana Pauker grew up in Bucharest and began teaching Hebrew and Judaica at a Jewish community school when she was 17 or 18. In 1915 she joined the fledgling Romanian Workers Social Democratic Party and supported its pro-Bolshevik wing after the 1917 Russian Revolution; four years later, she and her husband, the Romanian Jewish socialist Marcel Pauker, emerged within the leading ranks of the newly formed Romanian Communist Party (RCP).
title: Pauker, Ana
alternative label: Ana Pauker
related: Bucharest
related: Moscow
related: Prague
related: Romania
related: Slánský Trial
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Perle, Yoshue
described at: Perle Yoshue
has abstract: (1888–1943), novelist. Yoshue Perle was born in Radom (central Poland); his father was a merchant. After several years of traditional Jewish education, Perle was sent to a Russian school and became a bookkeeper. At age 17, he made his way to Warsaw, where he worked in a bank. His free time was spent in reading literature, visiting the theater, and meeting with other young Jewish writers. His first work in Yiddish, an article titled “Shabes,” was published in 1908.
title: Perle, Yoshue
alternative label: Yoshue Perle
related: Bund
related: L’viv
related: Moment, Der
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Radom
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw

Persov, Shmuel
described at: Persov Shmuel
has abstract: (1890–1950), Yiddish writer. Shmuel Persov was born in the shtetl of Pochep, Ukraine, to the family of a religious teacher. In addition to receiving a traditional Jewish education, he read secular books at a private library organized with the assistance of the Hebrew writer Uri Nisan Gnessin. Persov was a member of the Bund in 1905 and 1906. Later, he moved to the United States, where he published short stories in the anarchist newspaper Fraye arbeter shtime (Free Workers’ Voice).
title: Persov, Shmuel
alternative label: Shmuel Persov
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Bronshteyn, Yashe
related: Bund
related: Eynikayt
related: Gildin, Khayim
related: Gnessin, Uri Nisan
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Khar’kiv
related: Moscow
related: Orshanski, Ber
related: Royte Velt, Di
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shtetl
related: Taytsh, Moyshe
related: Ukraine

Pollak, Ya‘akov ben Yosef
described at: Pollak Yaakov ben Yosef
has abstract: (ca. 1460–after 1532), regarded as the first rosh yeshivah in Poland and as the inventor of a unique method of Talmud study. Although his name suggests Polish origins, Ya‘akov Pollak was apparently born in Germany, or at least he grew up and was educated there. He was a student of Ya‘akov Margaliot, the outstanding rosh yeshivah in Germany of that time, in Nuremberg or in Regensburg.
title: Pollak, Ya‘akov ben Yosef
alternative label: Ya‘akov Pollak
alternative label: Ya‘akov ben Yosef Pollak
related: Approbation
related: Fiszel Family
related: Gans, David ben Shelomoh
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Land of Israel
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Shakhnah, Shalom
related: Talmud Study
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Pomerantz, Berl
described at: Pomerantz Berl
has abstract: (1901–1942), Hebrew poet and translator. Berl Pomerantz was born in Odrizhin, a village near Pinsk. From his youth, he was an avid reader of Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian literature. After the Revolution of 1917, his family moved to Janów; later, Pomerantz went on his own to Vilna, where he was admitted to the Hebrew Teachers Seminary and to the conservatory. While in Vilna he became fluent in Polish; he then taught Hebrew and Bible at the Tarbut secondary school in Janów.
title: Pomerantz, Berl
alternative label: Berl Pomerantz
related: Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lusternik, Malki’el
related: Pinsk
related: Hebrew Poetry (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Tarbut
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Population and Migration before World War I (Population and Migration)
described at: Population and Migration before World War I
has abstract: Demographic sources for the entire period before the end of the nineteenth century are not nearly as reliable as those for more recent times. Readers should note, therefore, that the data presented below are speculative and based on the “best guesses” of scholars. A partial exception is material gleaned from the 1764–1765 census of Jews in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which is somewhat better documented.
title: Population and Migration before World War I (Population and Migration)
alternative label: emigration
alternative label: population
related: Ashkenaz
related: Belarus
related: Bessarabia
related: Brest
related: Brody
related: Bucovina
related: Courland
related: Crimea
related: Galicia
related: Gniezno
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Hrodna
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kalisz
related: Karaites
related: Khazaria
related: Kiev
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Krymchaks
related: Leszno
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Luts’k
related: L’viv
related: Misnagdim
related: Moldavia
related: Ostrog
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: Prague
related: Przemyśl
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Sandomierz
related: Sephardim
related: Trade
related: Trakai
related: Ukraine
related: Volodymyr Volyns’kyi
related: Walachia
related: Warsaw
related: Zamość

Printing and Publishing after 1800 (Printing and Publishing)
described at: Printing and Publishing after 1800
has abstract: In the course of the nineteenth century, the geographical center of Hebrew and Yiddish printing shifted decisively to Eastern Europe. Demographic and cultural changes in European Jewry dovetailed with changing patterns of consumption and modes of reading. In addition, economic and technological transformations in the print industry helped to shape a new Jewish print culture. In this new environment, the premodern staples of the Jewish print corpus were joined and to some extent supplanted by Jewish versions of the media and genres common to the modern pan-European sphere.
title: Printing and Publishing after 1800 (Printing and Publishing)
alternative label: book publishing
alternative label: printers and publishers
alternative label: publisher
alternative label: publishing
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Aḥi’asaf
related: Aksenfeld, Yisroel
related: Asif, Ha-
related: Bak Family
related: Będzin
related: Berdychiv
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Bratislava
related: Bucovina
related: Bund
related: Calendars
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Chernivtsi
related: Dik, Ayzik Meyer
related: Dinezon, Yankev
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Emes, Der
related: Fayvesh Family
related: Folks-tsaytung
related: Fraynd, Der
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Haynt
related: Hebrew Literature
related: About this Article (Historiography)
related: Hofshteyn, Dovid
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Ivano-Frankivs’k
related: Izraelita
related: Karaites
related: Karmel, Ha-
related: Kiev
related: Kletskin, Boris Arkadevich
related: Kol Mevaser
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Kultur-lige
related: Kvitko, Leyb
related: Lefin, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Levinzon, Yitsḥak Ber
related: Lissitzky, El
related: Literarishe Tribune
related: Lithuania
related: L’viv
related: Magid, Ha-
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Minsk
related: Moldavia
related: Moment, Der
related: Moriah
related: Moscow
related: Mukacheve
related: Naḥman of Bratslav
related: Nasz Przegląd
related: Natan Sternhartz of Nemirov
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: Odessa
related: Orgelbrand Family
related: Orthodoxy
related: Ostrog
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Piotrków
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: Prague
related: Radom
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: Romm Family
related: Russian Empire (Russia)

Rădăuţi
described at: Radauti
has abstract: Town in northeastern Romania, in the region of southern Bucovina and the present county of Suceava. Jews first settled in Rădăuți (Ger., Radautz), at the end of the eighteenth century, along with German colonists from Bohemia who had been invited to Bucovina by the Austrian regime established after 1774. Whereas in 1807 there had been only three Jewish tax-paying families, in 1880 there were 3,452 Jews living in Rădăuți out of a total of 11,162 inhabitants. The Jewish population swelled to almost 7,000 people by 1914, mainly as a result of emigration from Galicia and Ukraine.
title: Rădăuţi
alternative label: Rădăuți
related: Banking
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bucovina
related: Chernivtsi
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Industry
related: Romania
related: Siret
related: Suceava
related: Trade
related: Transnistria
related: Ukraine
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Rosenboim, Shimshon
described at: Rosenboim Shimshon
has abstract: (1860–1934), politician and Zionist leader. Born in Pinsk, Shimshon Rosenboim studied at the Volozhin yeshiva and, after obtaining a high school diploma, went on to study law at universities in Vienna and Odessa. He established a law practice in Minsk and was involved in a number of cases of a political character and seeking redress for pogrom victims. He was also very active in the Zionist movement, becoming one of its leaders in Russia and participating in the First Zionist Congress in 1897 and many subsequent congresses (he was among the leaders of the opposition to Herzl’s so-called Uganda plan in 1903). In 1906, he was elected to the Russian Duma (parliament), objecting strenuously when it was disbanded.
title: Rosenboim, Shimshon
alternative label: Shimshon Rosenboim
related: Minorities Treaties
related: Minsk
related: Odessa
related: Pinsk
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Rubin, Rivke
described at: Rubin Rivke
has abstract: (1906–1987), prose writer, critic, and translator. Rivke Rubin was born into a family of artisans in Minsk. In 1930, she received a degree from the literature faculty of the Minsk Pedagogical Institute and took graduate studies at the Belorussian Academy of Sciences. She later taught Yiddish literature and literary theory at the Minsk Pedagogical Institute. In 1934, Rubin moved to Moscow and began teaching in that city’s Pedagogical Institute’s Yiddish department.
title: Rubin, Rivke
alternative label: R. Rubin
alternative label: Rivke Rubin
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Akselrod, Zelik
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Fininberg, Ezra
related: Halkin, Shmuel
related: Kipnis, Itsik
related: Kvitko, Leyb
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtetl
related: Sovetish Heymland
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vendrof, Zalmen
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Rubinshteyn, Ruvn
described at: Rubinshteyn Ruvn
has abstract: (1891–1967), jurist, journalist, and public figure. Ruvn Rubinshteyn had a traditional religious education and graduated from the Kagan Jewish Secondary School in Vilna. In 1910, he moved to Saint Petersburg, where he graduated from the law faculty of Saint Petersburg University and also attended the Jewish seminars for oriental studies of Baron David Gintsburg. In 1913 he joined the Organization of Zionist Student Youth He-Ḥaver. From August 1917 to February 1918 he edited Evreiskii student (Jewish Student), and from January to August 1918, the Zionist daily Unzer togblat (Our Daily Newspaper). For a time, Rubinshetyn served as secretary to Moisei Aizenshtadt, the Saint Petersburg crown rabbi.
title: Rubinshteyn, Ruvn
alternative label: Ruvn Rubinshteyn
related: Crown Rabbi
related: General Zionists
related: Gintsburg Family
related: Idishe Shtime, Di
related: Kaunas
related: Lithuania
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Vilnius
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Rubinstein, Yitsḥak
described at: Rubinstein Yitshak
has abstract: (1880–1945), rabbi and Zionist leader. Born in Dotnuva, Lithuania, Yitsḥak Rubinstein studied at yeshivas in Kovno, Slutsk, and Volozhin as well as at the University of Moscow. He was appointed rabbi of Genicheck, Ukraine, in 1906, and in 1910 was chosen as the government-appointed rabbi of Vilna, with the support of the Orthodox community. During World War I, he remained in Vilna, representing the interests of Jews before the Russian and German authorities, and was one of the heads of the Merkaz le-‘Ezrah, a center for providing humanitarian aid.
title: Rubinstein, Yitsḥak
alternative label: Yitsḥak Rubinstein
related: Kaunas
related: Lithuania
related: Mizraḥi
related: Moscow
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Slutsk
related: Ukraine
related: Vilnius
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Russian Jewish Congress
described at: Russian Jewish Congress
has abstract: Organization created in January 1996 at a founding congress in Moscow with the declared goal of unifying all Jewish organizations in Russia. The charter of the Russian Jewish Congress (Rossiiskii Evreiskii Kongress; REK) declares it to be “a Jewish social and nonpolitical organization operating on the territory of the Russian Federation.” It is registered as a welfare fund.
title: Russian Jewish Congress
related: Federation of Jewish Communities in Russia
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Russia)

Saphir, Moritz Gottlieb
described at: Saphir Moritz Gottlieb
has abstract: (1795–1858), humorist, poet, feature writer, and literary and theater critic. The son of a Jewish businessman from one of the most prominent Jewish families in Hungary, Moritz (Moses) Saphir received a traditional Jewish education and subsequently attended yeshivas in Pressburg (Bratislava) and Prague. In Prague he taught himself secular sciences, foreign languages, and world literature; he later studied the classics in Pest. Never having learned proper Hungarian, he consciously decided to adopt German culture at a time when Jews began to assimilate into Hungarian society. Saphir thus realized one of the alternative models of self-definition available to Hungarian Jewish intellectuals.
title: Saphir, Moritz Gottlieb
alternative label: Moritz Gottlieb Saphir
related: Bratislava
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Prague

Satmar Hasidic Dynasty
described at: Satmar Hasidic Dynasty
has abstract: Ultraconservative, anti-Zionist Hasidic sect founded in 1928 by Yo’el Teitelbaum (Reb Yoelish; 1887–1979) in the town of Szatmár (Hun., more properly Szatmárnémeti; now Rom., Satu Mare), the youngest son of the Hasidic rebbe of Sighet (Rom., more fully, Sighet Marmației; Hun., Máramarossziget or Sziget), Ḥananyah Yom Tov Lipa Teitelbaum (1836–1904), author of the biblical commentary Kedushat Yom Tov (1905). Ḥananyah had succeeded his father, Yekuti’el Yehudah Teitelbaum (1808–1883), who served as rabbi of Sighet from 1858 and is best known for his biblical homilies, Yitav lev (5 vols.; 1875). Yekuti’el Yehudah, who allied himself with the Sandz dynasty and struggled to establish Sighet as his own dynastic base in the face of opposition from followers of Vizhnits Hasidism, was the grandson of one of the most prominent figures in the history of Hungarian Hasidism, Mosheh Teitelbaum (1759–1841). A disciple of Ya`akov Yitsḥak Horowitz, the Seer of Lublin, Mosheh was the rabbi of Uyhel (Sátoraljaújhely), and the author of the seminal, multivolume Hasidic biblical commentary Yismaḥ Mosheh (5 vols.; 1848–1861).
title: Satmar Hasidic Dynasty
alternative label: Satmar
alternative label: Satmar Hasidim
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kasztner, Rezső
related: Kosov-Vizhnits Hasidic Dynasty
related: Land of Israel
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Munkatsh Hasidic Dynasty
related: Orthodoxy
related: Romania
related: Sátoraljaújhely
related: Satu Mare
related: Sighet Marmaţiei
related: Slovakia
related: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Satu Mare
described at: Satu Mare
has abstract: (Hun., Szatmárnémeti; Yid., Satmar; also Satmer), a small town in northwestern Romania. Satu Mare was part of Hungary until World War I and again between 1940 and 1944. Jews first appeared there toward the early eighteenth century: they distilled brandy and leased taverns on crown estates. In 1715, however, when Satu Mare became a royal town, their influx came to a halt and Jews who had arrived earlier were expelled. Allowed to come into town just for fairs, Jews did not begin to resettle until the 1820s. Jewish arrivals accelerated in the 1850s: by 1869 the Jewish population had grown to 1,357; by 1890 to 3,427; and by 1910 to 7,194 (representing 7.4%, 16.5%, and 20.6% of the total population, respectively). By 1941, there were 12,960 Jews in Satu Mare—24.9 percent of the total number of residents.
title: Satu Mare
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Miskolc
related: Mizraḥi
related: Orthodoxy
related: Romania
related: Roth, Aharon
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Shapira, Me’ir
described at: Shapira Meir
has abstract: (1887–1933), rabbi, educator, Sejm deputy, and leader of Agudas Yisroel. Me’ir Shapira was born in Shotz, Bucovina (today Suceava, Romania), to a Hasidic family of prominent lineage. By the time he reached adolescence, he had already been granted ordination by prestigious rabbis. Gaining renown as a scholar, Shapira married the daughter of Ya‘akov Breitman, a wealthy businessman from Tarnopol and a Hasid of the rebbe of Czortków, to whom Shapiro transferred his allegiance. At various points in his career, Shapira himself took on some of the mannerisms of a Hasidic rebbe. The young rabbi served congregations in Gliniany (1910–1920) and Sanok (1920–1924). In both communities he distinguished himself by his rhetorical ability and zealousness both in carrying out the duties of the rabbinate and in setting up and supervising traditional educational institutions for the young. His first book was Imre da‘at, on the weekly Torah portions (1910).
title: Shapira, Me’ir
alternative label: Me’ir Shapira
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Bucovina
related: Galicia
related: Katowice
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Piotrków
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: Suceava
related: Ternopil’
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Shemu’el Eli‘ezer ben Yehudah ha-Levi Edels
described at: Shemuel Eliezer ben Yehudah ha-Levi Edels
has abstract: (1555–1631), rabbinical scholar and interpreter of the Talmud. Known as Maharsha—an acronym for “Our teacher, (the) Rabbi Shemu’el Edels (Adels)”—Edels was born in Kraków. He was a descendant of Yehudah Ḥasid on his father’s side, and was a member of the family of Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el (Maharal of Prague) on his mother’s. He studied Torah in Poznań, where he married the daughter of his uncle, Mosheh Ashkenazi-Halperin (Lifshits), the rabbi of Brisk (Brest Litovsk). His wealthy mother-in-law, Edel, supported his yeshiva for 20 years, in recognition of which he adopted the name Edels.
title: Shemu’el Eli‘ezer ben Yehudah ha-Levi Edels
alternative label: Shemu’el Edels
alternative label: Shemu’el Eli‘ezer Edels
alternative label: Shmuel Edels
related: Brest
related: Chełm
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Ostrog
related: Poznań
related: Prague
related: Sabbath
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Tykocin
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Shimshon ben Pesaḥ of Ostropolye
described at: Shimshon ben Pesah of Ostropolye
has abstract: (d. 1648), kabbalist. Shimshon of Ostropolye’s name suggests that he may have been born, or else lived for a time, in the Volhynian town of Ostropolye (Ostropol). Little is known about his life beyond the fact that he died a martyr’s death in July 1648, during the Khmel’nyts’kyi massacre in the town of Polnoye (Pol., Połonne), where he served as resident preacher. According to Natan Hannover’s contemporary account of the event, Yeven metsulah (1653), a heavenly teacher (magid), who used to appear to Shimshon regularly and instruct him in the secrets of the Kabbalah, had warned him in advance of the impending catastrophe and advised him to call on the community to repent in order to avert it—which they did, but to no avail.
title: Shimshon ben Pesaḥ of Ostropolye
alternative label: Shimshon of Ostropol
alternative label: Shimshon of Ostropolye
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: Hannover, Natan Note
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Spira, Natan Note ben Shelomoh

Shkop, Shim‘on Yehudah
described at: Shkop Shimon Yehudah
has abstract: (1860–1939), Lithuanian Talmudist. Shim‘on Shkop studied in the Mir and Volozhin yeshivas, where he stood out as a brilliant student. In Volozhin he met Ḥayim Soloveichik, who became his principal teacher and greatly influenced his approach to Talmud study.
title: Shkop, Shim‘on Yehudah
alternative label: Shim‘on Shkop
alternative label: Shim‘on Yehudah Shkop
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Hrodna
related: Land of Israel
related: Lithuania
related: Mir, Yeshiva of
related: Musar Movement
related: Soloveichik Family
related: Talmud Study
related: Telz, Yeshiva of
related: Vilnius
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Shlifer, Solomon Mikhailovich
described at: Shlifer Solomon Mikhailovich
has abstract: (1890–1957), rabbi of the Moscow Choral Synagogue. Born in Smila, Kiev province (now Smela, Cherkassy province), Solomon (Shelomoh) Shlifer worked as a rabbi in Aleksandria, later Aleksandrovka (Kherson province), from 1913 to 1922. He then moved to Moscow, where he became secretary to the city rabbinate and served as a dayan (rabbinic judge) until the Moscow rabbinic court was liquidated at the end of the 1920s. From then until 1943 Shlifer worked as a bookkeeper.
title: Shlifer, Solomon Mikhailovich
alternative label: Solomon Shlifer
related: Charity
related: Doctors’ Plot
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Kiev
related: Kol Ya‘akov Yeshiva
related: Medal’e, Shemaryahu Yosef Leib Iankelevich
related: Moscow
related: Passover
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Sicher, Gustav
described at: Sicher Gustav
has abstract: (1880–1960), rabbi and Zionist activist. Gustav (Benjamin Ze’ev) Sicher was born in Klatovy, in the Czech lands. He studied medicine in Vienna but decided to become a rabbi. Later he completed a doctoral dissertation in philosophy under František Drtina at the Charles University in Prague.
title: Sicher, Gustav
alternative label: Gustav Sicher
related: Białystok
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brod, Max
related: Czechoslovakia
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kook, Avraham Yitsḥak
related: L’viv
related: Mizraḥi
related: Prague
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Werfel, Franz
related: Židovská Strana
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Slonik, Binyamin Aharon ben Avraham
described at: Slonik Binyamin Aharon ben Avraham
has abstract: (ca. 1550–ca. 1619), Polish rabbi, probably born in Grodno or nearby Tykocin, possibly in the territory disputed by both communities, for he was called Binyamin Horodno (Grodno) on the title page of the 1606 Italian translation of his 1577 work Seyder mitsves noshim. Slonik (also Solnik) served as rabbi in Podhajce and Silesia, and claims to have been “in Russia in [his] youth” (Mas’at Binyamin, no. 62), probably referring to southeastern Poland, that is, Ruthenia, sometimes known as Red Russia (Ruś Czerwona). He lived in Kraków for a time before and after the death of Mosheh Isserles in 1572, but there is a question about whether he served there as a rabbi.
title: Slonik, Binyamin Aharon ben Avraham
alternative label: Binyamin Aharon Slonik
alternative label: Binyamin Slonik
related: Cantors
related: Hrodna
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Liturgy
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Luria, Shelomoh ben Yeḥi’el
related: Piety
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Shakhnah, Shalom
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Silesia
related: Spira, Natan Note ben Shelomoh
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Tykocin

Smolar, Hersh
described at: Smolar Hersh
has abstract: (1905–1993), Polish and Soviet Yiddish writer and editor. Born to a poor family in the town of Zambrów, Poland, Hersh Smolar (also rendered Smolyar) attended primary school until the age of 11, when he began working, and soon became involved in revolutionary activities. He was a leader of the local branch of the Jewish Socialist Youth Association from 1918 to 1920. During the 1920 Polish–Soviet War, Smolar belonged to a revolutionary committee that had formed in Zambrów when the Red Army had occupied the town.
title: Smolar, Hersh
alternative label: Hersh Smolar
related: Białystok
related: Folks-shtime
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Sofer, Ḥayim ben Mordekhai Efrayim Fishel
described at: Sofer Hayim ben Mordekhai Efrayim Fishel
has abstract: (1821–1886), halakhist, Orthodox leader, and ideologue. Ḥayim Sofer’s grandfather, a native of Frankfurt am Main, settled in Pressburg (Bratislava; then in northwest Hungary, today in Slovakia) toward the end of the eighteenth century. Sofer’s father, Mordekhai Efrayim Fishel, was a religious functionary in the community and a close disciple and confidant (though not a relative) of Mosheh Sofer (known as Ḥatam Sofer, 1762–1839). Although initially Ḥayim Sofer’s father opposed rabbinic careers for his seven sons, the Sofers became one of the major rabbinical families in Hungary. Ḥayim (the sixth son) received his training at Ḥatam Sofer’s yeshiva and internalized the antimodernist approach of his mentor exemplified in the famous slogan, “that which is new is biblically forbidden.”
title: Sofer, Ḥayim ben Mordekhai Efrayim Fishel
alternative label: Ḥayim Sofer
related: Bratislava
related: Budapest
related: Hildesheimer, Esriel
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Lichtenstein, Hillel
related: Mukacheve
related: Munkatsh Hasidic Dynasty
related: Orthodoxy
related: Sabbath
related: Schlesinger, Akiva Yosef
related: Seminary
related: Slovakia
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: Ukraine
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Stein, Edmund
described at: Stein Edmund
has abstract: (ca. 1893–1943), Hebrew translator, writer, and Judaic studies scholar. Edmund (Menaḥem Mendel) Stein was born either in Dobromyl or Borynia, shtetls in eastern Galicia. He received a traditional education, continued his studies at a high school in Borysław, and later studied classical linguistics and ancient history in Kraków and Berlin, earning a doctoral degree. In 1929, he completed his studies at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin, as a student of Leo Baeck and Julius Guttman.
title: Stein, Edmund
alternative label: Edmund Stein
related: Łódź
related: Galicia
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Schorr, Mojżesz
related: Tarbut
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Strashun, Shemu’el and Matityahu
described at: Strashun Shemuel and Matityahu
has abstract: Rabbinic scholars and public figures in nineteenth-century Vilna. Shemu’el Strashun (1793–1872) continued the Lithuanian style of scholarship that had been formulated by the Gaon of Vilna. Shemu’el’s son Matityahu (1817–1885) was a rabbi and a prominent maskil, biblical commentator, bibliographer, historian, and community organizer.
title: Strashun, Shemu’el and Matityahu
alternative label: Mathias Strashun
alternative label: Matityahu Strashun
alternative label: Strashun
alternative label: Strashun Library
related: Asif, Ha-
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Charity
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Fuenn, Shemu’el Yosef
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kahal
related: Karaites
related: Karmel, Ha-
related: Kerem Ḥemed
related: Land of Israel
related: Levinzon, Yitsḥak Ber
related: Lilienthal, Max
related: Magid, Ha-
related: Military Service in Russia
related: Romm Family
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Vilnius

Trakai
described at: Trakai
has abstract: A town in southeastern Lithuania, Trakai was home to many Jews as well as to the most ancient and important Karaite community in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The town was founded before 1321 and served as the ancient capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Known as Troki in Polish, and Trok in Yiddish, Trakai (its official Lithuanian name today) was in the Commonwealth until 1795, when it became part of the Russian Empire. Between 1922 and 1939 it belonged to the Polish Republic, and since 1939 it has been part of the Republic of Lithuania. It is located 25 km west of Vilnius.
title: Trakai
alternative label: Troki
related: Belarus
related: Crimea
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Hrodna
related: Karaites
related: Lithuania
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Troki, Yitsḥak ben Avraham
related: Vilnius

Tsunzer, Elyokem
described at: Tsunzer Elyokem
has abstract: (1836–1913), Yiddish folk poet and songwriter. Known as Lyokemke Badkhn (Elyokem the Wedding Entertainer) and the “people’s bard,” Elyokem Tsunzer was born in Vilna (then Russia)—in 1841 rather than 1836, according to his own account—and died in New York, where he is buried in Washington Cemetery, Brooklyn. Tsunzer received a heder education but was raised when ideas of the Haskalah were reaching Eastern Europe; consequently, his years spanned modernization of Jewish life in Russia, eventual emancipation of Jews, secularization, Jewish participation in modern political movements, and the creation of specifically Jewish movements such as Zionism and Yiddishism.
title: Tsunzer, Elyokem
alternative label: Elyokem Tsunzer
related: Agriculture
related: Haskalah
related: Heder
related: Yiddish Poetry (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Uherský Brod
described at: Uhersky Brod
has abstract: Town in southeastern Moravia, in the present Czech Republic. Jews probably settled in Uherský Brod (Ger., Ungarisch Brod) as early as the thirteenth century, but they are first mentioned in a municipal document dating from 1470. In 1558, there were 4 Jewish families, presumably attracted by the growing trade between the German lands and Hungary, and in 1615 the number rose to 18.
title: Uherský Brod
related: Budapest
related: Czech Republic
related: David ben Shemu’el ha-Levi
related: Familiants Laws
related: Frankl-Grün, Adolf
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Slovakia
related: Terezín
related: Trade
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Ullmann Family
described at: Ullmann Family
has abstract: Prominent family in nineteenth-century Hungary; active as rabbis and business leaders. The Ullmann (Ulman) family originated in Fürth and was related to the Steinhardt family. Isser Yisra’el Ullmann’s four sons—Shalom (d. 1825), Avraham (d. ca. 1823), Mosheh, and Zalman—went to Hungary in the late eighteenth century. The oldest brother, known as Shalom Ḥarif because of his sharp mind, served as rabbi of Ansbach, Germany, later of Stompfa (Stampfen) between 1792 and 1799, of Somogy county from 1799 to 1802, and of Frauenkirchen (Boldogasszony), before establishing an important yeshiva in the Burgenland community of Lakenbach (Lakompak).
title: Ullmann Family
alternative label: Gabriel Ullmann
alternative label: Moritz Ullmann
alternative label: Moritz von Ullmann
alternative label: Ullmann
related: Banking
related: Bratislava
related: Burgenland
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Kornfeld, Zsigmond
related: Marczali, Henrik
related: Oradea
related: Orthodoxy
related: Timişoara
related: Wodianer Family
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Vainshtein, Aron Isaakovich
described at: Vainshtein Aron Isaakovich
has abstract: (1877–1938), Bund and Evsektsiia activist, then Soviet government official. Born in Vilna, Vainshtein, who used the pseudonym Rakhmiel, graduated from that city’s Jewish teachers’ institute in 1897. The following year he joined the Bund in Warsaw, and in 1901 (at the Bund’s Fourth Congress) became a member of its Central Committee. Vainshtein published widely in the Bundist Yiddish press (Arbeter shtime; Folks-tsaytung). He was arrested several times for revolutionary activity and was exiled to Siberia in 1914. Subsequently, after the February 1917 Revolution, he returned to Petrograd.
title: Vainshtein, Aron Isaakovich
alternative label: Aron Isaakovich Vainshtein
alternative label: Aron Vainshtein
related: Bund
related: Evsektsiia
related: Folks-tsaytung
related: Lifshits, Khaye Malke
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Society for the Settlement of Jewish Toilers on the Land
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Vaslui
described at: Vaslui
has abstract: Town in the Moldavian region of Romania. Jewish settlement dates from the middle of the eighteenth century, with numbers increasing in the nineteenth century due to immigration from Galicia and Russia and occasional periods of decrease during times such as the cholera epidemic of 1848.
title: Vaslui
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Braunstein, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Buhuşi
related: Crafts
related: Credit
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Moldavia
related: Pauker, Ana
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Taubes Family
related: Transnistria
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Vogel, Dvora
described at: Vogel Dvora
has abstract: (1900–1942), writer, art critic, and philosopher. Dvora Vogel was born in Burshtyn in Galicia into an intellectual family. During World War I, the family fled to Vienna. Upon their return, Vogel attended high school in Lwów and then studied philosophy and psychology at the universities of Lwów and Kraków. Her first literary efforts were in German, but subsequently Vogel switched to Yiddish, allegedly under the influence of her friend and fellow student Rokhl Oyerbakh (Rachel Auerbach).
title: Vogel, Dvora
alternative label: Dvora Vogel
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: L’viv
related: Oyerbakh, Rokhl
related: Schulz, Bruno
related: Shmeruk, Khone
related: Wat, Aleksander
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Voronca, Ilarie
described at: Voronca Ilarie
has abstract: (1903–1946), poet. Ilarie Voronca (Eduard Marcus) was born in Brăila, Romania. After graduating from law school in Bucharest, he worked for various insurance companies and banks and traveled on several occasions to Paris, where he settled in 1933. His first anthology, Restrişti (Hard Times), was published in 1923 with illustrations by Victor Brauner. The poems reveal the poet’s desperation in words sounding like stifled screams, and tell of his anguish when faced with the monotony of life in the shtetls of Moldavia, the region where most of Romania’s Jews lived. Nine more volumes followed: Colomba (An Ode to the Beloved Woman; 1927), Ulisse (1928), Plante şi animale (Plants and Animals; 1929), Brățara nopților (The Bracelet of the Nights; 1929), Zodiac (1930), Invitație la bal (Invitation to the Ball; 1931), Incantații (Incantations; 1931), Petre Schlemihl (1932), and Patmos (1933).
title: Voronca, Ilarie
alternative label: Ilarie Voronca
related: Brăila
related: Brauner, Victor
related: Bucharest
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Iancu, Marcel
related: Maxy, Max Hermann
related: Moldavia
related: Romania
related: Shtetl

Wat, Aleksander
described at: Wat Aleksander
has abstract: (1900–1967), poet, prose writer, and publicist. Aleksander Wat (born Chwat) studied philosophy and psychology at the University of Warsaw. As a young poet, Wat cofounded the Polish futurist movement and participated in the drafting of its manifestos. He also coedited avant-garde literary journals and expressed his pro-Communist sympathies in the left-wing press. Imprisoned by the Soviets in 1940–1941, he spent the remainder of World War II in Kazakhstan and returned to Poland in 1946. Seriously ill, Wat traveled several times for treatment to France, where he eventually settled in 1963.
title: Wat, Aleksander
alternative label: Aleksander Wat
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Warsaw

Wengeroff, Pauline
described at: Wengeroff Pauline
has abstract: (1833–1916), writer. Pauline Wengeroff is the author of the two-volume Memoiren einer Grossmutter, Bilder aus der Kulturgeschichte der Juden Russlands im 19 Jahrhundert (Memoirs of a Grandmother: Scenes from the Cultural History of the Jews of Russia in the Nineteenth Century; vol. 1, 1908; republished with vol. 2, 1910; subsequent editions in 1913, 1919, and 1922). Written after the close of the era of the Haskalah, the memoirs offer a sweeping perspective on Russian Jewry’s passage from traditionalism to modernity. They paint a rich portrait of traditional society as modernity began to make inroads; depict the unraveling of this society under the impact of tsarist policies and the lure of Haskalah; and portray the devastating effect this dissolution had on families and, especially, women.
title: Wengeroff, Pauline
alternative label: Pauline Wengeroff
alternative label: Wengeroff
related: Autobiography and Memoir
related: Brest
related: Gender
related: Haskalah
related: Kaunas
related: Minsk
related: Pilgrimage
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Talmud Study
related: Vilnius
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of

Wygodzki, Jakub
described at: Wygodzki Jakub
has abstract: (1855–1941), physician, public leader, and Zionist activist. Jakub Wygodzki was born in Bobruisk (Bobruysk). In 1860, his family moved to Vilna, where he received a traditional Jewish education. He completed his high school studies in Marijampole and then attended medical school at the University of Saint Petersburg. Following additional studies in Vienna, Berlin, and Paris, he returned to Vilna, where he served as a gynecologist, pediatrician, and medical researcher and writer. He also established and chaired the Society of Jewish Physicians.
title: Wygodzki, Jakub
alternative label: Jakub Wygodzki
related: Bobruisk
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Vilnius
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Yeḥi’el Mikhl of Zlotshev
described at: Yehiel Mikhl of Zlotshev
has abstract: (1726–1781), Hasidic leader in Galicia. Yeḥi’el Mikhl was born in Brody. His father, Yitsḥak of Drohobycz (d. ca. 1760), a scholar and kabbalist, was a magid, rabbi, and dayan in Ostróg, Brody, and other towns. A Hasid of the “old” type, Yitsḥak had contact with the Besht but nevertheless remained independent. Renowned both as a wonder worker and as an uncompromising person, Yitsḥak was undeterred by friction with important contemporary rabbis.
title: Yeḥi’el Mikhl of Zlotshev
alternative label: Yeḥi’el Mikhl
related: Apt Hasidic Dynasty
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Brody
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: Drogobych
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Land of Israel
related: Misnagdim
related: Ostrog
related: Ukraine

Yikhes
described at: Yikhes
has abstract: In Eastern Europe, the concept of yikhes evolved from a narrow biological meaning of lineage or genealogy to a prestigious trait that could be acquired through marriage based on scholarly merit, wealth, or political status (i.e., holders of rabbinical or communal offices).
title: Yikhes
alternative label: yikhes
related: Ashkenaz
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Efrayim Shelomoh ben Aharon of Luntshits
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Ḥayim ben Yitsḥak of Volozhin
related: Hrodna
related: Kotik, Yekhezkl
related: Levi Yitsḥak of Barditshev
related: Lithuania
related: Love
related: Magic
related: Marriage
related: Opatów
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Reines, Yitsḥak Ya‘akov
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Yisra’el of Ruzhin

Yitsḥak ben Mosheh of Vienna
described at: Yitshak ben Mosheh of Vienna
has abstract: (ca. 1180–ca. 1250), legal scholar. Usually referred to as Yitsḥak Or Zaru‘a from the title of his main work, Yitsḥak ben Mosheh was born in Bohemia. He studied in Prague with Yitsḥak ben Ya‘akov ha-Lavan, the latter’s son Ya‘akov ben Yitsḥak, and Avraham ben ‘Azri’el (the “Old Man of Bohemia”).
title: Yitsḥak ben Mosheh of Vienna
alternative label: Yitsḥak ben Mosheh
related: Ashkenaz
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Prague
related: Yitsḥak ben Ya‘akov ha-Lavan of Prague

Yizker-bikher
described at: Yizker-bikher
has abstract: The Yiddish term yizker-bikher (sg., yizker-bukh) has come to refer primarily to a vast body of memorial books commemorating Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust, primarily from prewar Poland though also throughout Eastern Europe (similar works have been created for other parts of Europe and the Mediterranean region). Survivors and émigrés from various communities that have organized landsmanshaftn (associations of Jews from the same hometowns abroad) in the United States, Israel, and elsewhere have produced many hundreds of such books, generally in Yiddish and/or Hebrew.
title: Yizker-bikher
alternative label: yizker-bikher
related: Hannover, Natan Note
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Russian Civil War
related: Shtetl
related: World War I
related: YIVO
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Yudishe Velt, Di
described at: Yudishe Velt Di
has abstract: Literary journal edited by Shmuel Niger and published in Vilna by Boris Kletskin from January 1913 until April 1915. Di yudishe velt (in modern orthography, Di yidishe velt; The Jewish World) was considered the most influential Yiddish journal of its type to appear in Eastern Europe before World War I. Each issue of this Russian-style “thick” monthly was as long as 160 pages and included belles lettres, literary criticism, essays on philology and ethnography, and in-depth journalistic pieces known as publitsitik.
title: Yudishe Velt, Di
alternative label: Di yudishe velt
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Bal-Makhshoves
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Der Nister
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Eynhorn, Dovid
related: Hirshbeyn, Perets
related: Kalmanovitch, Zelig
related: Kletskin, Boris Arkadevich
related: Mayzel, Nakhmen
related: Naydus, Leyb
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtif, Nokhem
related: Singer, Israel Joshua
related: Tsinberg, Yisroel
related: Vaysenberg, Itshe Meyer
related: Vilnius

Yugnt
described at: Yugnt
has abstract: Youth movement of the Left Po‘ale Tsiyon Party, literally meaning youth in Yiddish. Founded in 1904 in Galicia, Yugnt worked in parallel with two organizations: the student youth organization Frayer Shoymer (The Free Scout), whose membership consisted of Polish-speaking gymnasium students in Warsaw, from 1926; and the children’s movement Yungbor (Yung Borokhovisten [Young Borochovists, after the Labor Zionist Ber Borokhov]), which was primarily a scouting organization, from 1927. Yet another youth group affiliated with Yugnt was the sports union Shtern, the only Jewish sports organization that was a member of a general socialist Polish sports union.
title: Yugnt
related: Borokhov, Ber
related: Galicia
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: Land of Israel
related: Mahler, Raphael
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Ringelblum, Emanuel
related: Shtern
related: Warsaw
related: YIVO
related: Youth Movements
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Zak, Avraam Isakovich
described at: Zak Avraam Isakovich
has abstract: (1829–1893), banker, philanthropist, and public figure. Avraam Zak was born into a well-established family in Bobruisk (now Bobruysk, Belarus), where he may have been influenced by local maskilim. He was self-taught, mostly in mathematics and later in economics, and showed an interest in Hebrew literature and music.
title: Zak, Avraam Isakovich
alternative label: Avraam Zak
alternative label: Zak
related: Banking
related: Belarus
related: Blood Libels and Host Desecration Accusations
related: Bobruisk
related: Gintsburg Family
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Kronenberg Family
related: ORT
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia

Zirelson, Yehudah Leib
described at: Zirelson Yehudah Leib
has abstract: (1859–1941), rabbi, public figure, and writer. Yehudah Leib Zirelson (also Tsirel’son) was born in the shtetl of Kozelets, Chernigov province (mod. Ukr., Chernihiv). After receiving rabbinical ordination, he was chosen to serve as the spiritual rabbi of the town of Priluki in Poltava province. In 1907, he was also appointed to be the town’s crown (government-approved) rabbi, and from 1908 he served as both the spiritual and crown rabbi in Kishinev.
title: Zirelson, Yehudah Leib
alternative label: Yehudah Leib Zirelson
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Beilis, Mendel
related: Bessarabia
related: Crown Rabbi
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Katowice
related: Kishinev
related: Magid, Ha-
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Mizraḥi
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: Orthodoxy
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shtetl
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: World War I
related: Yud, Der
related: Zeman, Ha-
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Zitron, Shemu’el Leib
described at: Zitron Shemuel Leib
has abstract: (1860–1930), Hebrew and Yiddish journalist, writer, and critic. Shemu’el Leib Zitron was born in Minsk and received most of his education from his father. After his father’s death in 1870, Zitron studied at various yeshivas, including Volozhin (1875–1876), where he was attracted to the Haskalah. In 1876 he went to Vienna, where he befriended the writer and editor Perets Smolenskin.
title: Zitron, Shemu’el Leib
alternative label: Shemu’el Leib Zitron
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Historiography)
related: Lithuania
related: Luaḥ Aḥi’asaf
related: Magid, Ha-
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Minsk
related: Moment, Der
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rabbinowitz, Sha’ul Pinḥas
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Seminary
related: Shalkovich, Avraham Leib
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Smolenskin, Perets
related: Vilnius
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: Warsaw
related: Wrocław
related: Yud, Der
related: Zeman, Ha-
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Agudas Akhim
described at: Agudas Akhim
has abstract: (Association of Brothers; Pol., Przymierze Braci), cultural and social organization. Founded in Lemberg (Lwów) in 1882, Agudas Akhim aimed to sever the traditional connection of Galician Jewry to German language and culture and to strive for integration within the Galician Polish sphere. Behind Agudas Akhim was a group of youths in their last years of high school as well as university students; its most prominent early leaders were Alfred Nossig, Adolf Lilien, Wilhelm Feldman, and Herman Diamand.
title: Agudas Akhim
related: Assimilation
related: Diamand, Herman
related: Feldman, Wilhelm
related: Galicia
related: L’viv
related: Mikra Kodesh
related: Nossig, Alfred
related: About this Article (Poland)

Alter, Wiktor
described at: Alter Wiktor
has abstract: (1890–1943), leader of the Polish Bund, and of Poland’s Jewish trade union movement. Wiktor Alter was born in Mława to a Hasidic family. His father, a wood merchant, died when Alter was a year old; subsequently, the family moved to Warsaw. Alter was educated in a public school, as his stepfather wanted his children to receive a secular education. When Alter was 15, the 1905 Revolution broke out. He and other students at his Warsaw gymnasium organized a students’ strike to protest the fact that studies were conducted in Russian rather than Polish.
title: Alter, Wiktor
alternative label: Wiktor Alter
related: Bund
related: Erlich, Henryk
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw

Appenszlak, Jakub
described at: Appenszlak Jakub
has abstract: (1894–1950), publicist, writer, and translator. In the period between the two world wars, Jakub Appenszlak was a member of the editorial board of the Warsaw daily Nasz Przegląd, publisher of the literary weekly Lektura (1934), chair of the Jewish Association for the Advancement of Fine Arts, and a Zionist activist. He published poetry, a novel, and translations of works by Theodore Herzl, Sholem Aleichem, and Sholem Asch. He also wrote the screenplay for Henryk Bojm’s film Shaḥar, yom ve-lailah shel Erets Yisra’el (1934).
title: Appenszlak, Jakub
alternative label: Jakub Appenszlak
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Armed Resistance
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Assimilation
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Izraelita
related: Nasz Przegląd
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Warsaw

Bader, Gershom
described at: Bader Gershom
has abstract: (1868–1953), author, playwright, editor, and journalist in Hebrew, Yiddish, German, and Polish. Gershom Bader was born in Kraków and was a representative figure of the mid-nineteenth-century East European Haskalah. He was the son of a learned melamed (teacher), descendant of a line of prominent rabbis, and a scholar who wrote novels under a pseudonym.
title: Bader, Gershom
alternative label: Gershom Bader
related: Galicia
related: Haskalah
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Hildesheimer, Esriel
related: ‘Ivri, Ha-
related: Kolomyia
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Land of Israel
related: L’viv
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sofer Family

Bassevi of Treuenberg, Ya‘akov
described at: Bassevi of Treuenberg Yaakov
has abstract: (1570–1634), financier, merchant, and court Jew. Born in Italy (likely in Verona), Ya‘akov Bassevi of Treuenberg (also known as Bazzevi, Passeni, Bashe [from Heb., Bat Sheva], and Jakob Schmiles) went to Prague with his brother Samuel at the end of the sixteenth century. In 1599, both brothers were granted imperial privileges of free trade, similar to those given to Mordecai Maisel a few years earlier. These privileges were later confirmed by Emperor Mathias in 1611, who named Bassevi his court Jew.
title: Bassevi of Treuenberg, Ya‘akov
alternative label: Ya
alternative label: Ya‘akov Bassevi
alternative label: Ya‘akov Bassevi of Treuenburg
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Heller, Yom Tov Lipmann
related: Land of Israel
related: Maisel, Mordecai
related: Mladá Boleslav
related: Prague

Bat-Miriam, Yokheved
described at: Bat-Miriam Yokheved
has abstract: (1901–1979), Hebrew poet and one of the most influential female figures in Hebrew modernism. Yokheved Bat-Miriam (born Zhelezhiak) completed pedagogical courses in Kharkov and then studied at universities in Odessa and Moscow. She immigrated to Palestine in 1928.
title: Bat-Miriam, Yokheved
alternative label: Yokheved Bat-Miriam
related: Khar’kiv
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Russia)

Baum, Oskar
described at: Baum Oskar
has abstract: (1883–1941), prose writer and poet. The blind poet Oskar Baum was a member of the Prague Circle of German-speaking Jewish writers in the first decades of the twentieth century as well as a particularly close friend of Franz Kafka, to whom the author read his early drafts of “The Metamorphosis” and other manuscripts. As was the case with Kafka and the rest of this informal literary group, Baum was a German writer of Jewish background in a period of intense Czech nationalist challenge to German cultural hegemony.
title: Baum, Oskar
alternative label: Oskar Baum
related: Assimilation
related: Haas, Willy
related: Kafka, Franz
related: Prague
related: Selbstwehr

Ben Chananja
described at: Ben Chananja
has abstract: Hungarian German-language periodical published initially in 1844 and then between 1858 and 1867, edited by Leopold Löw. When Löw published what was to be the first Jewish periodical in Hungary, Ben Chananja: Blätter für israelitisch-ungarische Angelegenheiten in 1844, his choice of German was praised by contemporaries as realistic, given that few Hungarian Jews at the time were fluent in Magyar. The quarterly was discontinued after the pilot issue.
title: Ben Chananja
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Löw, Leopold

Benador, Ury
described at: Benador Ury
has abstract: (1895–1971), writer, playwright, and journalist. Ury Benador (Simon Schmidt) was born in southern Bucovina in the village of Milişăuți; his father was an impoverished tailor and the family had many children. As a teenager, Benador was forced to leave school to work at various trades. He began to write in Yiddish, his mother tongue, and contributed his first works in 1916 to Der hamer. He continued to publish sporadically in Yiddish until the 1940s, but eventually made Romanian his language of preference.
title: Benador, Ury
alternative label: Ury Benador
related: Brăila
related: Bucharest
related: Bucovina

Ber of Bolechów
described at: Ber of Bolechow
has abstract: (in some sources, Ber Birkenthal; 1723–1805), wine merchant, Hebrew writer, and memoirist. Born in the Polish province of Ruthenia (later Galicia), Ber of Bolechów proves the existence of a class of men within the eighteenth-century Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth whose worldviews encompassed deep traditional Jewish learning and broad secular knowledge even before the formal Jewish Enlightenment movement began in Eastern Europe.
title: Ber of Bolechów
alternative label: Ber (Birkental) of Bolechów
alternative label: Dov Ber Birkenthal
related: Frankism
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Shtadlan

Beregovskii, Moisei Iakovlevich
described at: Beregovskii Moisei Iakovlevich
has abstract: (1892–1961), Jewish folklorist and ethnomusicologist. Born in Ukraine into the family of a melamed (itinerant teacher), Moisei Beregovskii was given a traditional Jewish heder education. In 1905 he went to Kiev, where he received an external degree for high school studies (1912), learned music theory, and took cello lessons; from 1915 to 1920, he studied at the Kiev Conservatory (cello with Friedrich von Müllert, composition theory with Boleslav Yavorski). From 1916 to 1922, Beregovskii taught music at various Jewish schools and conducted the chorus at the Kiev Society for Jewish Music.
title: Beregovskii, Moisei Iakovlevich
alternative label: Moisei Beregovskii
alternative label: Moyshe (Moisei) Beregovskii
related: An-ski Ethnographic Expedition and Museum
related: Chernivtsi
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Engel, Yo’el
related: Folk Songs
related: Folklore, Ethnography, and Anthropology
related: Galicia
related: Heder
related: Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture
related: Kiev
related: Kultur-lige
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Purim-shpil
related: Ukraine

Bernfeld, Shim‘on
described at: Bernfeld Shimon
has abstract: (1860–1940), historian, journalist, editor, and translator. Shim‘on Bernfeld was born in Stanisławów, Galicia (now Ivano-Frankivs’k, Ukraine). In the face of persecution by Hasidic circles in Stanisławów, Bernfeld’s father, who was a maskil, relocated in 1872 to Lwów, where Shim‘on took up Hebrew and general studies. When he was 17, he became acquainted with other young maskilim in Lwów and began reading the works of Voltaire, Rousseau, Goethe, Schiller, and Spinoza.
title: Bernfeld, Shim‘on
alternative label: Shim‘on Bernfeld
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Galicia
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Ivano-Frankivs’k
related: Land of Israel
related: Magid, Ha-
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Ukraine

Bershadsky, Yesha‘yahu
described at: Bershadsky Yeshayahu
has abstract: (1871–1908), Hebrew writer. Born in the village of Zimoshti in the Grodno region, Yesha‘yahu Bershadsky (originally surnamed Domashevitski) received a private education in Hebrew and Russian. From 1887 he worked as a teacher in Białystok. In 1889, he started publishing articles in Ha-Melits, and in the early 1890s, his stories appeared in Ha-Tsefirah. He moved to Baku in 1896, and from there to Ekaterinoslav, where he taught and compiled his principal works.
title: Bershadsky, Yesha‘yahu
alternative label: Yesha‘yahu Bershadsky
related: Berkowitz, Yitsḥak Dov
related: Białystok
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Katzenelson, Yitsḥak
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shneour, Zalman
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Zeman, Ha-

Bick, Ya‘akov Shemu’el
described at: Bick Yaakov Shemuel
has abstract: (1772–1831), Hebrew writer, satirist, translator, and merchant. Ya‘akov Shemu’el Bick was one of the most prominent figures in the first generation of Galician maskilim but was eventually drawn to Hasidism. He was born in Brody in eastern Galicia, a major commercial town that became famous, in those years, as a focal point in the conflict between Hasidism and its opponents.
title: Bick, Ya‘akov Shemu’el
alternative label: Ya‘akov Shemu’el Bick
related: Agriculture
related: Brody
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Kerem Ḥemed
related: Krochmal, Naḥman
related: Lefin, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Letteris, Me’ir
related: Margoliot, Efrayim Zalman ben Menaḥem Manes
related: Mieses, Yehudah Leib
related: Perl, Yosef
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Satire
related: Tsefirah, Ha-

Bin
described at: Bin
has abstract: Jewish youth movement that functioned between 1927 and 1937, mainly in the Vilna district and the city of Vilna. Bin (Bee), whose name derives from the original intention of shaping the movement as a structured hierarchical system similar to that of a beehive, was a movement for children and young people (ages 8 to 17). The movement also included a level of senior members, who served primarily as leaders. Its founders were Yiddishist culture activists whose political tendencies were Folkist-socialist; Max Weinreich, who headed the movement, had the most profound impact on its character. Throughout its existence, the movement had a total membership of several thousand.
title: Bin
related: Birobidzhan
related: Folkists
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Sport)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Weinreich, Max
related: YIVO
related: Youth Movements

Braşov
described at: Brasov
has abstract: City in central Romania, in the Bîrsei Depression at the foot of the Tîmpa Massif. Braşov has been variously called Kronstadt (Ger.), Corona (Lat.), and Brassó (Hun.); from 1950 to 1960 its official name was Stalin City. The first references to the town’s Jewish population date from the fifteenth century. In the 1500s, Jewish traders supplied guilds in Braşov with wool and dyes from the Ottoman Empire. Once Jewish residence was restricted to the city of Alba Iulia in the 1600s, there was no further mention of a Jewish presence in Braşov until a plague in Walachia in 1811 compelled several Jewish families to take refuge in this city.
title: Braşov
related: Alba Iulia
related: Guilds
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Romania
related: Trade
related: Transylvania
related: Walachia

Buber, Salomon
described at: Buber Salomon
has abstract: (1827–1906), scholar of rabbinic literature and public activist in Lwów. Salomon (Shelomoh) Buber’s family provided him with a traditional education. His father’s rich and varied library of Talmudic and rabbinic texts enabled Buber to avail himself of homiletic sources that would become the mainstay of his scholarly activity. As a young man, Buber also immersed himself in the writings of the forerunners of the scientific study of Judaism and was influenced greatly by Naḥman Krochmal, Shelomoh Yehudah Rapoport, and Leopold Zunz. Married at age 20, he made his living from business, which afforded him a comfortable lifestyle.
title: Buber, Salomon
alternative label: Salomon Buber
related: Krochmal, Naḥman
related: L’viv
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah

Câmpulung Moldovenesc
described at: Campulung Moldovenesc
has abstract: Town in northeastern Romania, situated in southern Bucovina, currently in the county of Suceava. The early Jews who lived there—mainly small tradesmen but also farmers—were first mentioned in 1684. Following the occupation of Bucovina by the Austrian army in 1774, there were 46 Jews recorded as residing in Câmpulung; however, measures implemented by the authorities to prevent Galician Jews from settling there led to the banishment of eight Jewish families from Câmpulung in 1781.
title: Câmpulung Moldovenesc
alternative label: Câmpulung
related: Bucovina
related: Chernivtsi
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Romania
related: Suceava
related: Transnistria
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Christmas
described at: Christmas
has abstract: Yiddish folklore about Christmas exemplifies the complex understanding that East European Jews evolved of their neighbors’ religiosity. Documentation of this lore, while limited, appears in a variety of linguistic and folkloristic sources dating from the early twentieth century. Ignatz Bernstein’s 1908 collection of Yiddish sayings offers a single proverb—Nitl iz a beyzer layd (Christmas is a wicked burden)—and explains that this saying reflects a history of violence against Jews on Christmas Eve from the time of the Middle Ages.
title: Christmas
related: Bernstein, Ignatz
related: Galicia
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Proverbs
related: Ukraine

Craiova
described at: Craiova
has abstract: Town in southwest Romania; capital of the province of Oltenia. In the eighteenth century, Craiova was a craft center and a hub for specialists in dressing and tanning skins and hides, as there was demand for such products in the neighboring markets of the Habsburg Empire.
title: Craiova
related: Ashkenaz
related: Bucharest
related: Bucovina
related: Crafts
related: Economic Life
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Romania
related: Sephardim
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Daniel’, Iulii Markovich
described at: Daniel Iulii Markovich
has abstract: (1925–1968), fiction writer, poet, translator, and Soviet dissident. Born in Moscow, Daniel’ went from school directly to the front lines of World War II, where he was wounded and demobilized. Upon his return, he graduated from the Moscow Pedagogical Institute and began publishing his poems and translations. Beginning in the 1950s, he smuggled his works to the West, where they were issued under the pseudonym Nikolai Arzhak. In the fall of 1965, this activity led to his arrest, as well as to the arrest of his fellow writer Andrei Siniavskii, a non-Jew who had published abroad under the Jewish-sounding name Abram Terts. In February 1966, Daniel’ was sentenced to five years in labor camp, an experience reflected in his poetry. His works were not officially published in Russia until after his death.
title: Daniel’, Iulii Markovich
alternative label: Iulii Daniel’
related: Ginzburg, Aleksandr Il’ich
related: Moscow
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Samizdat

Dimanshtein, Semen Markovich
described at: Dimanshtein Semen Markovich
has abstract: (1886–1938), Soviet government and Communist Party figure. Semen Dimanshtein, first known as Shimon Dimanshtein, was born into the family of a craftsman in Sebezh and studied at the Slobodka and Lubavitch yeshivas. He received two rabbinical ordinations, one of which was from the renowned rabbi Ḥayim Ozer Grodzenski. However, by 1904 Dimanshtein had joined the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party in Vilna and worked at translating the party platform into Hebrew and Yiddish. He soon joined the Bolsheviks and participated in their struggle with the Bund.
title: Dimanshtein, Semen Markovich
alternative label: Semen (Shimen) Dimanshtein
alternative label: Semen Dimanshtein
related: Birobidzhan
related: Bund
related: Communist Party of the Soviet Union
related: Emes, Der
related: Evsektsiia
related: Grodzenski, Ḥayim Ozer
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Mekhlis, Lev Zakharovich
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Riga
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Slobodka, Yeshiva of
related: Society for the Settlement of Jewish Toilers on the Land
related: Tribuna
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius

Dobrogeanu-Gherea, Constantin
described at: Dobrogeanu-Gherea Constantin
has abstract: (1855–1920), socialist ideologist, theoretician, and literary critic. Solomon Katz, known later in Romania under the pseudonym Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea, was born in Slavianka, Ukraine, and attended elementary school in his native village and secondary school in Ekaterinoslav. In 1872, Dobrogeanu-Gherea left for Kharkov and studied at the faculty of science. He joined student revolutionary (Narodnik) circles, traveling to villages to spread propaganda among the peasants. Constantly followed by the police, he crossed the border into Romania in March 1875. One month later, he left for Switzerland, where numerous Russian revolutionaries had emigrated, and then in May came to Iaşi, where he was involved with socialist Romanian student and intellectual groups.
title: Dobrogeanu-Gherea, Constantin
alternative label: Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
related: Bucharest
related: Bund
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Iaşi
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Ukraine

Dymov, Osip
described at: Dymov Osip
has abstract: (1878–1950), Russian and Yiddish writer, playwright, and journalist. Osip Dymov (also Dymow; Yosef Perelman) was born in Białystok, where his father was a merchant; Dymov’s brother, Iakov (1882–1942), was a well-known popular-science writer. Following graduation from a technical high school in 1896, Dymov studied land surveying at the Forestry Institute in Saint Petersburg. He began his literary career as a columnist for Teatr i iskusstvo (Theater and Art), a weekly in that city. As was the case with many Yiddish writers of his generation, Dymov immigrated to the United States.
title: Dymov, Osip
alternative label: Dymov
alternative label: Osip Dymov
related: Białystok
related: Habimah
related: Jabotinsky, Vladimir
related: Saint Petersburg

East Slavic Texts
described at: East Slavic Texts
has abstract: Two groups of literary works were translated from Hebrew into East Slavic in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The first group, earlier and shorter than the other, consists mainly of historical accounts integrated into Russian compilations, that is, into universal chronicles called chronographs. Notable among these are excerpts from the tenth-century Hebrew Yosipon (an anonymous Hebrew chronicle based on the works of Josephus Flavius) in the Akademicheskii Khronograf (Academy Chronograph) describing, for example, Zerubbabel and King Darius, Alexander the Great in Jerusalem, the persecutions under Antiochus Epiphanes, and the Maccabean revolt. Also among these is a complete translation of a later reworking of the last part of the Yosipon, preserved in Hebrew in a single manuscript dated to 1462, recounting the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple. In Slavic, the latter is titled Plenenie Ierusalima Tretee, Titovo (The Third Sacking of Jerusalem, by Titus) and is integrated into the second redaction of the Ellinskii i Rimskii Letopisec (Hellenic and Roman Chronicler). The Paleia Tolkovaia (Interpreted Palaea) includes a translation of the Zhitie i voskhod Moiseia (Chronicle of Moses Our Teacher).
title: East Slavic Texts
narrower: A Possible Motivation for the Translations
narrower: Readership
narrower: The Identity of the Translators
narrower: The Ideology of the Translators
narrower: The Link between the Translations and the Muscovite Heresy
related: Belarus
related: Crimea
related: Judaizers
related: Kiev
related: Lithuania
related: Magic
related: Moscow
related: Ukraine
related: Vilnius

Einsatzgruppen
described at: Einsatzgruppen
has abstract: As operational units of the Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service; SD) and Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police; Sipo), the Einsatzgruppen (Action Squads) accompanied the German army during the Nazi conquests of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Soviet Union. Their main task was to eliminate political opposition.
title: Einsatzgruppen
related: Babi Yar
related: Brest
related: Crimea
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: Luts’k
related: L’viv
related: Moscow
related: Pinsk
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Epstein, Yeḥi’el Mikhl
described at: Epstein Yehiel Mikhl
has abstract: (1830–1908), rabbi, scholar, and halakhic authority. Born in Bobruisk, Belorussia, Yeḥi’el Mikhl Epstein was successively the brother-in-law and then the father-in-law of Naftali Tsevi Yehudah Berlin, head of the Volozhin yeshiva. In 1862, Epstein was appointed rabbi of Novozybkov in Chernigov guberniia. From 1874, he served as rabbi of the Novogrudok community in northern Belorussia.
title: Epstein, Yeḥi’el Mikhl
alternative label: Yeḥi’el Mikhl Epstein
related: Berlin, Naftali Tsevi Yehudah
related: Bobruisk
related: Passover
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of

Family
described at: Family
has abstract: East European Jewry commonly adhered to Ashkenazic legal traditions and customs in family matters even as people were exposed to new Sephardic traditions through close ties to Jews in the Ottoman Empire and Italy. Even as emerging political states strove for standardization, family practices and arrangements remained diverse, reflecting a wide range of collective strategies and individual interests.
title: Family
narrower: Interwar Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union
narrower: Medieval and Early Modern Periods
narrower: The Habsburg Empire
narrower: The Holocaust
narrower: The Russian Empire
related: Łódź
related: Agriculture
related: Assimilation
related: Belarus
related: Betar
related: Beys Yankev
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bucovina
related: Budapest
related: Bund
related: Conversion
related: Crown Rabbi
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Demons
related: Einsatzgruppen
related: Familiants Laws
related: Galicia
related: Gender
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: Haskalah
related: Heder
related: Herrmann, Hugo
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Homberg, Herz
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Karaites
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Labor Camps
related: Langer, František
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Love
related: L’viv
related: Maimon, Salomon
related: Marriage
related: Misnagdim
related: Orthodoxy
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Reischer, Ya‘akov ben Yosef
related: Romania
related: Rumkowski, Khayim Mordkhe
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Sabbath
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Servants
related: Sexuality
related: Silesia
related: Slovakia
related: Spektor, Yitsḥak Elḥanan
related: Subcarpathian Rus’
related: TOZ
related: Terezín
related: Tkhines
related: Trade
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Weddings
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Youth Movements

Feder, Tuviah
described at: Feder Tuviah
has abstract: (1760–ca. 1817), Hebrew poet, novelist, playwright, and linguist. Born in Przedbórz (in the Kraków district), Tuviah Feder wandered from Piotrków Trybunalski where his father-in-law lived, to Chełm, Kempen, Wołodarka, Berdichev, and finally to Brody and Tarnopol. Failing at commerce, he worked as a proofreader, a preacher, and an assistant cantor. As of 1786, he led the life of a poor, itinerant teacher. While in Galicia, Feder became acquainted with the first maskilim and was known for his aggressive style. He aspired to bring Haskalah closer to Jewish tradition.
title: Feder, Tuviah
alternative label: Tuviah Feder
related: Berdychiv
related: Bick, Ya‘akov Shemu’el
related: Brody
related: Chełm
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Galicia
related: Haskalah
related: Kerem Ḥemed
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lefin, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Parody
related: Satire
related: Ternopil’

Fiszel Family
described at: Fiszel Family
has abstract: The most influential family in Kraków’s Jewish community from the 1470s to the mid-sixteenth century. Members of the Fiszel family served as creditors to King Casimir the Jagiellonian and his sons Jan Olbracht, Aleksander, and Sigismund I. The family’s origins are disputed; it is possible that they came from Prague, elsewhere in Bohemia, or Germany.
title: Fiszel Family
alternative label: Fiszel
alternative label: Fiszel family
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bohemus, Abraham Judeus
related: Conversion
related: Gniezno
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Pollak, Ya‘akov ben Yosef
related: Poznań
related: Prague
related: Shakhnah, Shalom

Gens, Jakub
described at: Gens Jakub
has abstract: (1903–1943), commander of the Jewish police in the Vilna ghetto and later the ghetto’s strongman. Born in Illovieciai, Lithuania, Jakub Gens joined the Lithuanian army at age 16, eventually rising to the rank of captain. In 1935 he graduated from Kaunas University in law and economics. A member of Betar, the rightist youth movement of the Revisionist Zionist party, he moved to Vilna following the annexation of Lithuania to the Soviet Union in June 1940. In September 1941, when the ghetto was established following the German invasion and occupation of Lithuania, Anatol Fried, chairman of the Judenrat, appointed him commander of the ghetto Jewish police. Gradually becoming the ghetto’s strongman by establishing direct contacts with the German authorities, he made the police a decisive force in ghetto life. In the summer of 1942 the Germans dismissed the Judenrat, and Gens officially became the only representative of the ghetto, as well as of the camps and small ghettos nearby. A year later, on 14 September 1943, just 10 days before the final liquidation of the ghetto, he was shot to death in the Gestapo courtyard.
title: Gens, Jakub
alternative label: Jakub Gens
related: Betar
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Kaunas
related: Lithuania
related: Revisionist Zionists
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Youth Movements

Gintsburg, Aryeh Leib ben Asher
described at: Gintsburg Aryeh Leib ben Asher
has abstract: (1695/96–1785), better known as Sha’agat Aryeh (or by his French name, Lion Asser; his surname also spelled Günzberg), Talmudic scholar. Born in Lithuania to a father who was the rabbi of Minsk, Gintsburg was teaching in that city’s yeshiva by 1733. Though he was well respected for his learning, Gintsburg’s severe criticisms of some decisions of his peers were not well received. His debate with Yeḥi’el Heilprin, the rabbi of Minsk and head of the yeshiva, on the role of pilpul (dialectical reasoning) in the teaching of Talmud—Gintsburg practiced it, but refused to mention it in his writings—probably resulted in his having to give up his position in Minsk in 1742.
title: Gintsburg, Aryeh Leib ben Asher
alternative label: Aryeh Gintsburg
alternative label: Aryeh Leib Gintsburg
alternative label: Aryeh Leib ben Asher Gintsburg
alternative label: M. A. Gintsburg
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Ḥayim ben Yitsḥak of Volozhin
related: Lithuania
related: Minsk
related: Vilnius
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Globus
described at: Globus
has abstract: Yiddish literary monthly journal, published between July 1932 and April 1934. Globus was published in Warsaw by Arn Zeitlin, the chair of the Warsaw Yiddish PEN club. In this latter capacity (which he had held since 1930), Zeitlin aspired to present Yiddish literature as a modern form possessing an ancient and respectable past, while at the same time setting a high literary standard as a prerequisite for writers wishing to belong to the Yiddish PEN club.
title: Globus
related: Bund
related: Esterke
related: Katzenelson, Yitsḥak
related: Kazdan, Khayim Shloyme
related: Literarishe Tribune
related: Manger, Itsik
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Pinski, Dovid
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rapoport, Yoshue
related: Singer, Isaac Bashevis
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zeitlin Family

Godiner, Shmuel-Nisn
described at: Godiner Shmuel-Nisn
has abstract: (1892 [or 1893]–1942), Yiddish writer. Born in Telekhan, Belarus, in 1908 Shmuel-Nisn Godiner moved to Warsaw, where he was employed as a metalworker. Self-taught, he could read Russian, Polish, and German, and joined the circle of Jewish culture enthusiasts lead by Y. L. Peretz, who encouraged him to write in Yiddish. Drafted to the Russian army in 1912, Godiner was wounded during World War I and taken prisoner by the Austrians, but managed to escape.
title: Godiner, Shmuel-Nisn
alternative label: Shmuel Godiner
alternative label: Shmuel-Nisn Godiner
related: Belarus
related: Der Nister
related: Moscow
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shklov
related: Shtrom, Der
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw

Hatvany, Lajos
described at: Hatvany Lajos
has abstract: (1880–1961), writer, critic, and literary scholar. Baron Lajos Hatvany was born in Budapest into a prominent Hungarian industrial and banking family. He studied classical philology at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau and received his doctorate in Budapest. Throughout his career, Hatvany was active in the Hungarian literary scene. Besides being a writer, critic, journalist, and literary scholar, he was an important patron of literature and a champion of modernism. He wrote major scholarly studies of the poets Sándor Petőfi and Endre Ady (the latter was his close friend).
title: Hatvany, Lajos
alternative label: Lajos Hatvany
related: Assimilation
related: Banking
related: Budapest
related: Conversion
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Industry

Hazaz, Ḥayim
described at: Hazaz Hayim
has abstract: (1898–1973), Hebrew writer. Ḥayim Hazaz was born in a village in the district of Kiev. Because his father was a logger, Hazaz spent extended periods of his childhood in Ukrainian forests and received some of his Jewish and secular education from private teachers. When he reached adolescence he left his parents’ home to complete his high school studies, and became an avid reader of Russian and Hebrew literature. During the Russian Revolution and the civil war that followed, he witnessed pogroms, the experience of which gave a foundation to his future literary works.
title: Hazaz, Ḥayim
alternative label: Ḥayim Hazaz
related: Bat-Miriam, Yokheved
related: Haskalah
related: Kiev
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Shtetl
related: Ukraine
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Helicz Brothers
described at: Helicz Brothers
has abstract: The first printers of Hebrew and Yiddish books in Poland (fl. 1530s–1550s). Shemu’el, Asher, and Elyakim were the sons of Ḥayim Helicz. After learning their trade in Prague, the three brothers began printing Hebrew and Yiddish books in Kraków in 1534. By 1537 they had published a Hebrew–Yiddish dictionary of biblical words (Merkevet ha-mishneh), a legal guide to the laws of kashrut (Sha‘are Dura’), a Yiddish legal handbook for women (Azhores nashim), a Yiddish ethical text (Muser un hanhoge), and perhaps a second such text (Ka‘arat kesef).
title: Helicz Brothers
alternative label: Helicz brothers
alternative label: Helicz family
alternative label: Helicz press
related: Conversion
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Printing and Publishing)
related: Shakhnah, Shalom
related: Wrocław

Hickl, Max
described at: Hickl Max
has abstract: (1874–1924), publisher and Zionist leader active mainly in Brno (Brünn), Moravia. Born in Slavkov u Brna (Austerlitz), Moravia, Max Hickl came from a poor family and was self-taught. As a friend of Theodor Herzl, he helped to found the organization that eventually became Labor Zionism.
title: Hickl, Max
alternative label: Max Hickl
related: Assimilation
related: Brno
related: Galicia
related: Jüdische Volksstimme
related: Makhzikey ha-Das
related: Prague
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Hilsner Affair
described at: Hilsner Affair
has abstract: Political and cultural controversy surrounding the murder trials of Leopold Hilsner, a Jew from eastern Bohemia, in 1899 and 1900. The case involved an accusation of Jewish “ritual murder,” which was understood by most observers to lie at the heart of the prosecution.
title: Hilsner Affair
alternative label: Hilsner
related: Blood Libels and Host Desecration Accusations
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Czechoslovakia
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jihlava
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Tiszaeszlár Blood Libel

Iudovin, Solomon Borisovich
described at: Iudovin Solomon Borisovich
has abstract: (1892–1954), artist. Solomon Iudovin (or in Yiddish, Yudovin) was born in the village of Beshenkovichi near Vitebsk, into a family of artisans. His first art teacher, beginning in 1906, was Yehudah Pen. In 1910 Iudovin moved to Saint Petersburg, where he studied initially at the School of the Society for Encouragement of Art, and then in 1911–1913 with Mstislav Dobujinsky, one of Chagall’s first teachers. He matured as an artist during the Russian Revolution, and spent the years 1918–1923 in Vitebsk, at that time an important center for the Russian avant-garde.
title: Iudovin, Solomon Borisovich
alternative label: Solomon Iudovin
related: An-ski Ethnographic Expedition and Museum
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Communism
related: Lissitzky, El
related: Pen, Yehudah
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Ukraine
related: Vitsyebsk

Iushkevich, Semen Solomonovich
described at: Iushkevich Semen Solomonovich
has abstract: (1868–1927), fiction writer and playwright. Semen Solomonovich Iushkevich grew up amid Odessa’s multiethnic population, which remained as a background in his literary imagination throughout his life. Acculturated urbanized Jews were his characters of choice. After marrying at 17, Iushkevich left home and supported himself by working as a pharmacist’s assistant and contributing to the Odesskii listok (Odessa Sheet). Between 1893 and 1902, Iushkevich lived in Paris, where he graduated from the medical faculty of the Sorbonne.
title: Iushkevich, Semen Solomonovich
alternative label: Semen Iushkevich
related: Kishinev
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Literature
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Voskhod

Jakobson, Roman Osipovich
described at: Jakobson Roman Osipovich
has abstract: (1896–1982; convert to Orthodox Christianity in 1975), Russian linguist and philologist. One of the twentieth century’s most versatile and imaginative linguists and literary scholars, Roman Jakobson was born in Moscow. Already in his high-school days—he graduated in 1914 from the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages in Moscow—three hallmarks of his long scholarly career were apparent. The first was a penchant for group research and collaborative work; as a student of Slavic philology at the University of Moscow, he cofounded the Moscow Linguistic Circle in March 1915, and joined with the Russian formalists in their efforts to redirect the attention of literary scholars to the construction and form of literary works. A second hallmark was his impressive range of interests, stretching from folklore and mythology through literature, the visual arts, linguistics, and semiotics.
title: Jakobson, Roman Osipovich
alternative label: Roman Jakobson
related: Brno
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Moscow
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Civil War
related: Tynianov, Iurii Nikolaevich
related: Weinreich, Max
related: YIVO

Joselewicz, Berek
described at: Joselewicz Berek
has abstract: (1764–1809), colonel in the Polish Army. Berek Joselewicz was born in Kretynga (Lith., Kretinga), a small town near the city of Polągi (Lith., Palanga). After receiving a traditional Jewish education, he acted as provisioner and agent to the local landowner, Bishop Ignacy Jakub Massalski (1726–1794), in which capacity he also traveled to Western Europe. With the fortune he amassed through entrepreneurial activities, Joselewicz settled in the Warsaw suburb of Praga, where he married his wife Rokhl around 1788 and became a supplier to the army.
title: Joselewicz, Berek
alternative label: Berek (Berko) Joselewicz
alternative label: Berek Joselewicz
related: Galicia
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Warsaw

Kaganovich, Lazar’ Moiseevich
described at: Kaganovich Lazar Moiseevich
has abstract: (1893–1991), Communist Party and Soviet government official. The son of a struggling artisan, Lazar’ Kaganovich was born in the Chernobyl district, Kiev province. An autodidact, from the age of 14 he worked in Kiev as a tanner and shoemaker. Kaganovich joined the Rossiiskaia Sotsial-Demokraticheskaia Rabochaia Partiia (Russian Social Democratic Workers Party) in 1911.
title: Kaganovich, Lazar’ Moiseevich
alternative label: Lazar Kaganovich
alternative label: Lazar’ Kaganovich
alternative label: Lazar’ Moiseevich Kaganovich
related: Bund
related: Communist Party of the Soviet Union
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Donets’k
related: Evsektsiia
related: Homel’
related: Kamenev, Iurii
related: Kiev
related: Moscow
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Soviet State Yiddish Theaters
related: Trotsky, Leon
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zinov’ev, Grigorii Evseevich

Kaminer, Yitsḥak
described at: Kaminer Yitshak
has abstract: (1834–1901), Hebrew poet, physician, and socialist. Yitsḥak Kaminer was born in Levkiev, near Zhitomir. As a child, he received a traditional education, but also began to read Hebrew scientific and Haskalah literature. Hoping to keep him in the traditional fold, his parents married him to a young girl. Kaminer, however, abandoned his wife and headed for Vilna, where he associated with maskilim, in particular with Shemu’el Yosef Fuenn, who supervised the city’s rabbinical college.
title: Kaminer, Yitsḥak
alternative label: Yitsḥak Kaminer
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Fuenn, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Haskalah
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Karmel, Ha-
related: Kiev
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Love
related: Misnagdim
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Pogroms
related: Purim
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Satire
related: Shaḥar, Ha-

Kapper, Siegfried
described at: Kapper Siegfried
has abstract: (1821–1879), Czech and German poet, writer, and translator. Siegfried (Salomon) Kapper studied philosophy at Prague University (1837–1839) and medicine in Vienna (1841–1846), earning his doctorate in medicine in 1847. He then worked briefly in Croatia, took an active part in the revolution in Vienna in 1848, and served as an elected representative in the Austrian parliament. When shots were fired into the assembly in March 1848, he provided medical care to the wounded. Kapper was also a division leader of the academic legion, whose musical anthem used the text of one of his poems. His collection of poems titled Befreite Lieder (Liberated Songs; 1848) was infused with revolutionary sentiment.
title: Kapper, Siegfried
alternative label: Siegfried Kapper
related: Hartmann, Moritz
related: Mladá Boleslav
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague

Kara, Avigdor
described at: Kara Avigdor
has abstract: (d. 1439), rabbi, Talmudic scholar, kabbalist, and poet. Very little is known about the life of Avigdor Kara, a contemporary of Yom Tov Lipmann Mülhausen. Kara survived the “Bloody Easter” pogrom in Prague during Passover 1389, though his father was probably a victim and is described as a martyr in Kara’s tombstone inscription. Kara may also have been the stepbrother of Menaḥem ben Ya‘akov Kara, another Prague scholar. Avigdor Kara’s name, as well as that of his wife Rivkah, appears in municipal registers.
title: Kara, Avigdor
alternative label: Avigdor Kara
alternative label: Kara
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Gans, David ben Shelomoh
related: Mülhausen, Yom Tov Lipmann
related: Passover
related: Pogroms
related: Prague

Kertész, Imre
described at: Kertesz Imre
has abstract: (1929– ), writer and translator. The first Hungarian writer to receive the Nobel Prize, Imre Kertész was conspicuous for winning it as a Jew who wrote about the Holocaust. Kertész identifies himself as a Jew without adherence to Judaism, Jewish tradition, or Jewish nationhood. He wrote his major work, Sorstalanság (Fateless; 1975), about the experience of Auschwitz. Although the novel is written in Hungarian, Kertész in other ways saw his residence in Hungary as a kind of internal exile. He explains in his novel Kudarc (Fiasco; 1988) that he returned to Hungary from Buchenwald by chance, and that the only reason he did not leave in 1956 was because he could write Sorstalanság only in Hungarian; afterward, however, he had no reason to remain. For 35 years, he lived with his first wife in a 28-square-meter apartment, in which he shut himself off from the country’s social, intellectual, and political affairs. This self-exiled existence lies behind the dramatic strength and spiritual independence that can be felt in his work.
title: Kertész, Imre
alternative label: Imre Kertesz
alternative label: Imre Kertész
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Roth, Joseph

Khvol’son, Daniil Avraamovich
described at: Khvolson Daniil Avraamovich
has abstract: (1819–1911), orientalist. Daniil Khvol’son was born in Vilna. He received a traditional rabbinical education but then studied French, German, and Russian. To complement his traditional education, he moved to Riga. There, Max Lilienthal provided him with a letter of introduction to Abraham Geiger, who enabled Khvol’son to finish his studies at the University of Breslau.
title: Khvol’son, Daniil Avraamovich
alternative label: Daniil Khvol’son
related: Blood Libels and Host Desecration Accusations
related: Conversion
related: Gintsburg Family
related: Lilienthal, Max
related: Riga
related: Rosenthal, Leon
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Schulman, Kalman
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Spektor, Yitsḥak Elḥanan
related: Vilnius
related: Wrocław

Kisch, Egon Erwin
described at: Kisch Egon Erwin
has abstract: (1885–1948), journalist, writer, and political activist. The twentieth-century image of the reporter as adventurer-hero is deeply indebted to the self-fashioning of the “roving reporter,” as Kisch called himself in the title of one of his many reportage collections. Kisch was from a prosperous, German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, in the same generation as Franz Kafka. He was a youth in a period of intense social and political conflict between Czechs and Germans in his home country, with the Jews in between; he was a young man during World War I and through the period of intense ideological conflict that followed. Both of these conflicts made powerful impressions on his image of himself and on his creative and political work. He was an innovator of the genre of reportage, a leader of the Communist uprising and brief takeover in Vienna after World War I, a tireless investigator and master of the exposé, and a leftist activist.
title: Kisch, Egon Erwin
alternative label: Egon Erwin Kisch
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Kafka, Franz
related: Prague
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el

Klaipėda
described at: Klaipeda
has abstract: Port city on Lithuania’s western border with Germany. After World War I, Klaipėda (Ger., Memel) and its surrounding district were severed from Prussia by the Treaty of Versailles. In 1923, Lithuania annexed the entire area, most of whose population (141,000 persons) was German. The town became part of an autonomous region until it was captured by German troops in 1939 and turned into a military port.
title: Klaipėda
alternative label: Memel
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kaunas
related: Lithuania
related: Rülf, Isaak
related: Sabbath
related: Trade

Komlós, Aladár
described at: Komlos Aladar
has abstract: (1892–1980), writer, poet, literary historian, high-school teacher, and university professor. A member of the second generation of the preeminent literary journal Nyugat (West), Aladár Komlós was among Hungary’s most important literary historians. Both his regular work as critic and his collections of essays, Új magyar líra (New Hungarian Poetry; 1928) and Írók és elvek (Writers and Principles; 1937), were of seminal importance in setting critical standards for Hungarian poetry. His historical study A magyar líra Petőfitől Adyig (Hungarian Poetry from Petőfi to Ady; 1959) is still the primary monograph of that era.
title: Komlós, Aladár
alternative label: Aladár Komlós
related: Ámos, Imre
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Hungarian Literature
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kiss, József
related: Pap, Károly
related: Újvári, Péter

Kompert, Leopold
described at: Kompert Leopold
has abstract: (1822–1886), novelist, poet, and journalist. The son of a struggling wool merchant in Münchengrätz (Mnichovo Hradiště), Leopold Kompert owed much of his interest in Judaism to his mother and his grandfather, a rabbi. He wrote during a time of great change: Jews in Bohemia were finally allowed to move and settle wherever they wished.
title: Kompert, Leopold
alternative label: Leopold Kompert
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bratislava
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Neustadt, Adolf
related: Prague
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Košice
described at: Kosice
has abstract: City in the center of eastern Slovakia. Košice (Hun., Kassa; Ger., Kaschau) belonged to Greater Hungary until World War I and was the seat of Abaúj-Torna county. Jews first settled in Kassa only after the Diet of 1839–1840 passed legislation permitting them to live in royal free towns. Until that time, Jews lived in nearby Rozgony and would come to the Kassa fairs. Town officials tried to impede Jewish settlement even after 1840, in an attempt to protect Christian trade guilds. Nonetheless, the Jewish community started to grow significantly after the 1850s: Kassa had 2,178 Jews in 1869 and 6,723 in 1910 (10% and 15.2% of the total population respectively), making it one of the larger Jewish communities in Hungary.
title: Košice
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Galicia
related: Guilds
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Industry
related: Jewish Congress
related: Miskolc
related: Oradea
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Slovakia
related: Trade

Kugel, Ḥayim
described at: Kugel Hayim
has abstract: (1897–1966), educator and politician. Ḥayim Kugel was born in Minsk, Belorussia. His parents were members of Ḥoveve Tsiyon who sent him to study at the Herzliya gymnasium in Tel Aviv. With the outbreak of World War I, Kugel could not return to Palestine after his summer holidays, so he continued his schooling in Russia. Between 1920 and 1924, he attended the German University in Prague. He gave private lessons in modern Hebrew and founded the club ‘Ivriyah, which later became part of the Tarbut organization.
title: Kugel, Ḥayim
alternative label: Ḥayim Kugel
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Goldstein, Angelo
related: Minsk
related: Mukacheve
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Silesia
related: Slovakia
related: Subcarpathian Rus’
related: Tarbut
related: Židovská Strana

Langer, František
described at: Langer Frantisek
has abstract: (1888–1965), dramatist, author, and essayist. František Langer was one of the most significant and internationally famous Czech dramatists of the twentieth century. He studied at the medical faculty of Charles University, specializing in psychiatry, and was awarded a doctorate in 1914. While a student, he was active in a group of anarchist writers, and in 1911 was a cofounder (with Jaroslav Hašek) of the Skupina Výtvarných Umělců (Artists’ Group [i.e., Club]), which became the political party Strana Mírného Pokroku v Mezích Zákona (Party of Moderate Progress within the Confines of the Law; SMPVMZ).
title: Langer, František
alternative label: František Langer
related: Bucovina
related: Langer, Jiří
related: Prague

Yiddish (Language)
described at: Yiddish
has abstract: Yiddish is the historic language of Ashkenazic (Central and East European) Jewry, and is the third principal literary language in Jewish history, after classical Hebrew and (Jewish) Aramaic. The language is characterized by a synthesis of Germanic (the majority component, derived from medieval German city dialects, themselves recombined) with Hebrew and Aramaic. The word for the sun (zun) comes from Germanic, the word for the moon (levóne) from Hebrew, and the word for “probably” is from Aramaic (mistáme). The most basic fusion formula entails the insertion of a Semitic root into Germanic grammatical machinery, evident in such verbs as khásmen(en) (to sign) and táynen (to claim, express the view). Frequently words whose previous incarnations in the donor languages are dictionary synonyms become nuanced variants within Yiddish with a capacity for fine-tuned expression, particularly in things Jewish. Hence gest (from German) are any kind of guests, órkhim (from Hebrew) are usually poor visitors who need to be given Sabbath or holiday hospitality, and ushpízn (from Aramaic) are the seven biblical figures, from Abraham to David, who are believed, in Jewish mysticism, to visit the Sukkah during the holiday Súkes (Sukkot, Feast of Tabernacles). During the second half of the history of the language, a Slavic element (largely from neighboring Polish, Belarusian, and Ukrainian dialects in Eastern Europe) was acquired, providing a new layer. Famously, Yiddish words for god include the universal deity, got; the more personal deity interested in human fate, der éybershter (from Germanic); one called out to in second person (or in third, as an exclamation), rebóyne-shel-óylem (from Hebrew); the more philosophical rebóyne deálme (Aramaic); and the emotional, homespun god invoked by Slavic-derived endings in tátenyu zísinker and gótenyu. The process of recombination among the three core components of modern Yiddish has continued apace. There is a smattering of Romance from early t…
title: Yiddish (Language)
alternative label: Eastern Yiddish
alternative label: Yiddish
alternative label: linguistics
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Aksenfeld, Yisroel
related: Ashkenaz
related: Assimilation
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Belarus
related: Birnbaum, Nathan
related: Borokhov, Ber
related: Brest
related: Bund
related: Chernivtsi
related: Czernowitz Conference
related: Ettinger, Shloyme
related: Feder, Tuviah
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Hrodna
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Khazaria
related: Kletskin, Boris Arkadevich
related: Kol Mevaser
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Latvia
related: Lefin, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Lifshits, Khaye Malke
related: Literarishe Bleter
related: Lithuania
related: Litvak
related: Mieses, Matthias
related: Mysticism and Mystical Literature
related: Naḥman of Bratslav
related: Odessa
related: Passover
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Pinsk
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Pollak, Ya‘akov ben Yosef
related: Prague
related: Printing and Publishing before 1800 (Printing and Publishing)
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Reyzen, Zalmen
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Satire
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Singer, Isaac Bashevis
related: Soviet Yiddish-Language Schools
related: Ternopil’
related: Tkhines
related: Tsene-rene
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Weinreich, Max
related: YIVO
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Latzky-Bertholdi, Ya‘akov Ze’ev
described at: Latzky-Bertholdi Yaakov Zeev
has abstract: (1881–1940), journalist and Zionist socialist leader. Born in Kiev, as a young child Ya‘akov (more fully, Ya‘akov Ze’ev Wolf; also later called Wilhelm) Latzky moved to Riga. After receiving a Jewish education, he went on to study at the Riga Polytechnic Institute, from which he was expelled in 1901 because of political activity. In 1901 or 1902 Latzky went to Berlin, where he became involved with Naḥman Syrkin’s Ḥerut group (a Zionist socialist organization), and where he took part in the publication of its Yiddish organ, Der hamoyn (The Masses), in 1903.
title: Latzky-Bertholdi, Ya‘akov Ze’ev
alternative label: Ya‘akov Latzky-Bertholdi
alternative label: Ya‘akov Ze’ev (Wolf) Latzky-Bertholdi
alternative label: Ya‘akov Ze’ev Latzky-Bertholdi
related: Daugavpils
related: Frimorgn
related: Hannover, Natan Note
related: Kiev
related: ORT
related: Riga
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Ukraine
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Lederer, Eduard
described at: Lederer Eduard
has abstract: (1859–1944), writer; important figure in the Czech Jewish movement. Eduard Lederer (Leda) began his studies in Czech, German, and history at Prague University before turning to law, the field in which he took his degree in 1884. He then practiced law in Jindřichův Hradec and, from the mid-1920s, in Prague.
title: Lederer, Eduard
alternative label: Eduard Lederer
related: Assimilation
related: Czechoslovakia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Orthodoxy
related: Prague
related: Terezín
related: Tribuna
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Levanda, Lev Osipovich
described at: Levanda Lev Osipovich
has abstract: (1835–1888), journalist and fiction writer. Born in Minsk, Lev Levanda studied in a local Jewish school that, in response to governmental pressures, offered secular subjects; the students came from poor families who could not afford traditional education. Levanda went on to a government-sponsored rabbinical school in Vilna and a teaching job in Minsk, where he was also appointed to the government post of Jewish Expert, assisting with programs to study Jewish life and editing state textbooks for Jewish children.
title: Levanda, Lev Osipovich
alternative label: Lev Levanda
related: Assimilation
related: Minsk
related: Odessa
related: Pogroms
related: Rabinovich, Osip Aronovich
related: Razsvet
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Vilnius
related: Voskhod
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Life Cycle
described at: Life Cycle
has abstract: The notion of life cycle may appear to reflect a natural human category, but is conditioned by social and cultural circumstances. Cultural elaboration of the special characteristics of “childhood” is associated with early modernity, and the idea of “adolescence” is connected with the Industrial Revolution, expansion of the middle class, extended education of young people, and their dependence on the family. Demographers claim that declining rates of infant mortality are followed by a reduction in birth rates and new images of family formation.
title: Life Cycle
alternative label: life cycle
alternative label: life-cycle
related: Amulets and Talismans
related: Birth and Birthing
related: Childhood
related: Circumcision
related: About this Article (Dance)
related: Death and the Dead
related: Gender
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: L’viv
related: Marriage
related: Names and Naming
related: Orthodoxy
related: Passover
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
related: Sabbath
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Tkhines
related: Weddings
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Yiddish Criticism and Scholarship (Literary Criticism and Scholarship)
described at: Yiddish Criticism and Scholarship
has abstract: The slow development of Yiddish literary criticism in Eastern Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century mirrored the limited role that modern Yiddish literature played in Jewish cultural life at that time. A telling example: when Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh began his career as a Yiddish writer in 1864, he had already written two significant treatises on literary criticism and cultural issues, in Hebrew. He did not deem it necessary, however, to develop this genre in Yiddish in any substantial way because he considered Yiddish primarily suited to belles lettres. Until the 1880s, the beginnings of Yiddish literary criticism were modest and sporadic.
title: Yiddish Criticism and Scholarship (Literary Criticism and Scholarship)
alternative label: Yiddish criticism
alternative label: Yiddish literary scholarship
alternative label: literary critic
alternative label: literary criticism
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Aksenfeld, Yisroel
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Bal-Makhshoves
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Borokhov, Ber
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Dobrushin, Yekhezkl
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Erik, Maks
related: Ettinger, Shloyme
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Gurshteyn, Aron
related: Haskalah
related: Hofshteyn, Dovid
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: Kalmanovitch, Zelig
related: Kiev
related: Kvitko, Leyb
related: Litvakov, Moyshe
related: Markish, Perets
related: Mayzel, Nakhmen
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Naydus, Leyb
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Nusinov, Yitskhok
related: Oyslender, Nokhem
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Ravitch, Melech
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: Reyzen, Zalmen
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shomer
related: Sovetish Heymland
related: Spivak, Elye
related: Trunk, Yekhiel Yeshaye
related: Tsinberg, Yisroel
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Voskhod
related: Weinreich, Max
related: Wiener, Meir
related: YIVO
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zeitlin Family
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Lusternik, Malki’el
described at: Lusternik Malkiel
has abstract: (1912–1943), Hebrew poet, literary editor, and Zionist activist. Malki’el Lusternik was born in Łódź to an assimilated family. Lusternik received a Hebrew Zionist education in Łódź. As a student he was actively involved in Gordonia, the Labor Zionist pioneer youth movement founded in 1925. He wrote the words for the movement’s anthem and edited the movement’s journals in Polish, Hebrew, and Yiddish.
title: Lusternik, Malki’el
alternative label: Malki’el Lusternik
related: Łódź
related: Gordonia
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: Land of Israel
related: Opatów
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Pomerantz, Berl
related: Tuwim, Julian
related: Warsaw
related: Weinberg, Tsevi Zevulun
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Malakh, Ḥayim ben Shelomoh
described at: Malakh Hayim ben Shelomoh
has abstract: (d. ca. 1717), Sabbatian preacher. Ḥayim ben Shelomoh was born in Kalisz in the 1650s. Little is known about his background, but it is certain that he acquired an extensive Jewish education. During his youth he was associated with the Sabbatian prophet Yehoshu‘a Heshel Tsoref of Vilna. In 1690, Ḥayim went to Italy, where he studied with the leaders of the Italian Sabbatians, Avraham Rovigo and Binyamin Kohen, and was introduced to the doctrines of Natan of Gaza. Returning to Poland in 1692, Ḥayim was largely responsible for spreading Rovigo and Kohen’s version of Sabbatianism among Polish followers of the movement.
title: Malakh, Ḥayim ben Shelomoh
alternative label: Ḥayim Malakh
related: Broda, Avraham ben Sha’ul
related: Buchach
related: Frankism
related: Kalisz
related: Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi
related: Land of Israel
related: Mikulov
related: Piety
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Sabbatianism
related: Tsoref, Yehoshu‘a Heshel ben Yosef
related: Yehudah Ḥasid ha-Levi
related: Zhovkva

Meisel, Eliyahu Ḥayim
described at: Meisel Eliyahu Hayim
has abstract: (1821–1912), rabbi of Łódź. Born in Horodok in Vilna guberniia, Eliyahu Ḥayim Meisel attended the Volozhin yeshiva, where his fellow students included Yosef Ber Soloveichik of Brisk and Yitsḥak Elḥanan Spektor. Meisel received rabbinic ordination at the age of 13 from Yitsḥak of Volozhin.
title: Meisel, Eliyahu Ḥayim
alternative label: Eliyahu ?ayim Meisel
alternative label: Eliyahu Meisel
alternative label: Eliyahu Ḥayim Meisel
related: Łódź
related: Łomża
related: Approbation
related: Brest
related: Bund
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Litvak
related: Pogroms
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Soloveichik Family
related: Spektor, Yitsḥak Elḥanan
related: Vilnius
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of

Mezei, Mór
described at: Mezei Mor
has abstract: (1836–1926), journalist, lawyer, politician, and member of the Hungarian parliament. Mór Mezei concluded his secondary studies in Pest, where he also studied law. As one of the leading—and perhaps most important—figures and ideologists of the assimilationist movement among Jews in the nineteenth century, he was a founder of the Izraelita Magyar Egylet (National Israelite Magyar Association) in 1861, of which he became the secretary and finally its chairman.
title: Mezei, Mór
alternative label: Mór Mezei
related: Budapest
related: Jewish Congress
related: Wahrmann, Mór

Molodowsky, Kadia
described at: Molodowsky Kadia
has abstract: (1894–1975), Yiddish poet, writer, teacher of Yiddish and Hebrew, and editor. Kadia Molodowsky (in Yiddish, Kadye Molodovski) was one of the most prolific and public of the Yiddish poets, editors, and teachers in Warsaw and New York. Her life and works were characterized by paradoxes: she advocated both Yiddishism and Zionism; she believed that poetry should be engaged, yet not political, and should reflect both the poet’s individuality and her connection to the Jewish people as a whole; and she wrote powerfully about the struggles of women, yet argued against being categorized as a “woman poet” writing “women’s poetry.”
title: Molodowsky, Kadia
alternative label: Kadia Molodowsky
related: Brest
related: Bund
related: Fraynd, Der
related: Hrodna
related: Kiev
related: Kletskin, Boris Arkadevich
related: Korn, Rokhl
related: Literarishe Bleter
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ravitch, Melech
related: Sexuality
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtetl
related: TSYSHO
related: Ukraine
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Opinia
described at: Opinia
has abstract: Polish Jewish weekly (1933–1939) devoted to political, social, and literary issues. Published by the Alt-Naj Cooperative Publishing House, Opinia: Tygodnik żydowski polityczno-społeczny i literacki (Opinion: Political, Social and Literary Jewish Weekly) was associated with the daily Haynt and was ideologically close to Zionism. Its editorial board consisted of Moyshe Kleinbaum, Abraham Insler, Bronisław Sztraubaum, and Roman Brandstaetter; its editors in chief were Mosheh Indelman (1933) and Sztraubaum (1934). Opinia’s first issue appeared on 5 February 1933 in Warsaw. In 1935, the journal moved its operations to Lwów, where it was published until 1939 as Nasza Opinia under the editorship of Naftali Hauser. In all, 198 issues were published, with circulation reaching 25,000 copies.
title: Opinia
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Agnon, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Arnshteyn, Mark
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Bałaban, Majer
related: Belmont, Leo
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brandstaetter, Roman
related: Frishman, David
related: Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
related: Grünbaum, Yitsḥak
related: Hartglas, Apolinary
related: Haynt
related: Kleinbaum, Moyshe
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lilientalowa, Regina
related: L’viv
related: Manger, Itsik
related: Mieses, Matthias
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Oyerbakh, Rokhl
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
related: Schiper, Ignacy
related: Schorr, Mojżesz
related: Schulz, Bruno
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Sokolow, Naḥum
related: Sommerstein, Emil
related: Stein, Edmund
related: Szymel, Maurycy
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Thon, Ozjasz
related: Warsaw
related: Weichert, Michał
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Patai, József
described at: Patai Jozsef
has abstract: (1882–1953), poet, scholar, and Zionist leader. In his life and work, József Patai is representative of the first generation of Hungarian Zionist intellectuals. He changed his name from Klein to Patai after his birthplace, Gyöngyöspata, a small village in northern Hungary. Patai’s father was a grocer and Talmudic scholar, a follower first of the rebbe of Belz and then of the rebbe of Satmar. It was this world that Patai depicted in his lyrical social study, his most enduring prose work, A középső kapu (1927; new ed., 1998 [published in English as The Middle Gate; 1994]).
title: Patai, József
alternative label: József Patai
related: Agnon, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Belz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Budapest
related: Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
related: Hame’iri, Avigdor
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Liturgy
related: Magyar Zsidó Szemle
related: Makai, Emil
related: Múlt és Jövő
related: Satmar Hasidic Dynasty
related: Sátoraljaújhely
related: Seminary
related: Szabolcsi, Miksa
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Yiddish Prose (Prose)
described at: Yiddish Prose
has abstract: A new genre of fiction in the Yiddish language (the term modern Yiddish literature can mislead) emerged in the first half of the nineteenth century, lagging somewhat behind innovations in drama and other literary genres. The new fiction, moreover, developed during the first half of the century at a very slow pace, first in Galicia and western Ukraine, and eventually (from the 1840s on) also in the Lithuanian north, with Vilna as its epicenter of production and dissemination. The emergence of the new fiction was closely related to the gradual spreading of the Haskalah throughout Eastern Europe. As Yiddish literature of the Haskalah came of age in the 1860s, its fiction quickly reached a high level of productivity.
title: Yiddish Prose (Prose)
alternative label: Yiddish prose
alternative label: prose
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Aksenfeld, Yisroel
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Der Nister
related: Dik, Ayzik Meyer
related: Dinezon, Yankev
related: Erik, Maks
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Horontshik, Shimen
related: Kaganovski, Froyim
related: Kertész, Imre
related: Kipnis, Itsik
related: Kulbak, Moyshe
related: Lefin, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Levinzon, Yitsḥak Ber
related: Linetski, Yitskhok Yoyel
related: Markish, Perets
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Nomberg, Hersh Dovid
related: Parody
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Perl, Yosef
related: Perle, Yoshue
related: Pinski, Dovid
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rabon, Yisroel
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: Rozenfeld, Yona
related: Sabbath
related: Sabbatianism
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Satire
related: Shklov
related: Shneour, Zalman
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shomer
related: Shtetl
related: Singer, Isaac Bashevis
related: Singer, Israel Joshua
related: Spektor, Mordkhe
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Varshavski, Oyzer
related: Vaysenberg, Itshe Meyer
related: Warsaw
related: Wiener, Meir
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zabara, Nosn

Psychoanalysis
described at: Psychoanalysis
has abstract: Sigmund Freud, the originator of psychoanalysis, had deep roots in Eastern Galicia. Freud’s father’s family was from Tyśmenica and Buczacz; his mother was born in Brody and spent her childhood in Odessa, and his wife Martha’s family was from Brody as well. Many of the contributors to the development of psychoanalysis in subsequent decades—and all of Freud’s original followers—also had roots in Eastern Galicia. To this day, a high number of notable psychoanalysts are second- or third-generation descendants of East European Jews.
title: Psychoanalysis
alternative label: psychoanalysis
related: Brody
related: Buchach
related: Ferenczi, Sándor
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Lithuania
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Rostov-on-Don
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Weinreich, Max
related: YIVO

Rabin, Yoysef
described at: Rabin Yoysef
has abstract: (1900–1987), Yiddish writer. Born in Grodno, Yoysef Rabin moved to Vilna in 1915 and studied at an evening school. As the leader of the underground Vilna Komsomol organization, he fled in 1920 to Moscow, where he worked as a Yiddish typesetter and studied at the Moscow Yiddish Printing School. In 1922, he was among the first recruits to the proletarian literary group lead by Khayim Gildin and Moyshe Taytsh.
title: Rabin, Yoysef
alternative label: Yoysef Rabin
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Birobidzhan
related: Bund
related: Emes, Der
related: Gildin, Khayim
related: Godiner, Shmuel-Nisn
related: Hrodna
related: Moscow
related: Nusinov, Yitskhok
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtetl
related: Sovetish Heymland
related: Taytsh, Moyshe
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius

Reines, Yitsḥak Ya‘akov
described at: Reines Yitshak Yaakov
has abstract: (1839–1915), rabbi, rosh yeshivah, and halakhic authority. Born in Karlin, near Pinsk, Yitsḥak Ya‘akov Reines studied in the Volozhin yeshiva and served as rabbi in various Jewish communities in Lithuania, including Saukenai in the district of Kovno, Svencionys in the district of Vilna, and, from 1886 in Lida, Belorussia. Reines was one of the most prominent rabbis in Russia from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until World War I. His signature appears alongside those of rabbis Naftali Tsevi Berlin of Volozhin, Yosef Dov Soloveichik of Brisk (Brest), and others on various proclamations to Russian Jewry regarding communal issues, such as the introduction of general studies into the yeshiva curriculum and the establishment of the Kolel Perushimin Kovno. Eventually he was ostracized by much of the rabbinic leadership because of his support for political Zionism and the modernization of yeshiva education.
title: Reines, Yitsḥak Ya‘akov
alternative label: Yitsḥak Ya‘akov Reines
alternative label: Yitsḥak Ya’akov Reines
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Berlin, Naftali Tsevi Yehudah
related: Brest
related: Land of Israel
related: Lithuania
related: Minsk
related: Mizraḥi
related: Pinsk
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Soloveichik Family
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

About this Article (Relations between Jews and Non-Jews)
described at: Relations between Jews and Non-Jews
has abstract: To treat the subject of the interaction between Jews and the majority populations of the areas of Eastern Europe in which they lived, this entry includes two articles. The first provides a historical overview, analyzing interaction at the community and personal level as well as the relationship between Jews and government authorities. The second article explores the image of non-Jews portrayed in works of Jewish literature. See also Antisemitic Parties and Movements; Assimilation; and Righteous Gentiles.
title: About this Article (Relations between Jews and Non-Jews)
alternative label: Jewish–Christian relations
alternative label: Polish–Jewish relations
alternative label: relations between Jews and non-Jews
alternative label: relations with the non-Jews
alternative label: relationships to non-Jews
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Assimilation
related: Righteous Gentiles

Renaşterea Noastră
described at: Renasterea Noastra
has abstract: Weekly publication issued in Bucharest by its editor, Samu (Samuel I.) Stern. The first issue was published on 14 September 1924, under the title Renaşterea (Renaissance); its goal was to promote the ideology of a literary club bearing the same name. The title was changed to Renaşterea Noastră (Our Revival) on 10 October 1925. The subtitle, “Organ național evreesc” (Jewish National Organ), defined its political orientation.
title: Renaşterea Noastră
alternative label: Renaşterea noastră
related: Aderca, Felix
related: Benador, Ury
related: Bucharest
related: Land of Israel
related: Lavi, Theodor
related: Mântuirea
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Romania
related: Şafran Family
related: Stern, Samu
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties
related: Zissu, Abraham Leib

Revista Cultului Mozaic din R.P.R.
described at: Revista Cultului Mozaic din RPR
has abstract: Romanian trilingual journal. Revista cultului mozaic din R.P.R. (Periodical of the Mosaic Religion in the Romanian People’s Republic) was started as an irregular monthly on 19 October 1956 and was published twice a month from 1965. In 1991 its production again became sporadic and its last issue was dated December 1991.
title: Revista Cultului Mozaic din R.P.R.
alternative label: Revista cultului mozaic
alternative label: Revista cultului mozaic din R.P.R.
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Crohmălniceanu, Ovid S.
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Manger, Itsik
related: Pogroms
related: Romania
related: Rosen, Mozes
related: Wald, Henri

Rotbaum, Jakub
described at: Rotbaum Jakub
has abstract: (1901–1994), theater director, actor, and painter. Born in Żelechów, Poland, Jakub Rotbaum (Yid., Yankev Rotboym) received a traditional heder education. He attended high school and then studied in Warsaw at the School of Decorative Arts, the School of Fine Arts, and the School of Film. Both of his sisters had careers in the theater, and it was in this realm that Rotbaum made his mark, although he had a considerable career as a painter as well.
title: Rotbaum, Jakub
alternative label: Jakub Rotbaum
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Heder
related: Kacyzne, Alter-Sholem
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Moscow
related: Ostropolyer, Hershele
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Vilner Trupe
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Wrocław

Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (Russia)
described at: Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic
has abstract: The Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) was the name of the largest member state of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), exceeding all the other states in both size (occupying three-quarters of the territory) and population (hosting more than half the citizens). The Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic was, in fact, the name of the successor state to the Russian Empire from January 1918 until December 1922 when the name Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was adopted for the entire state.
title: Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (Russia)
alternative label: Russia
alternative label: Russian Republic
alternative label: Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic
related: Agriculture
related: Anticosmopolitan Campaign
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Assimilation
related: Belarus
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Birobidzhan
related: Committee of Rabbis in the USSR
related: Crimea
related: Der Nister
related: Evsektsiia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Habimah
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Markish, Perets
related: Medal’e, Shemaryahu Yosef Leib Iankelevich
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Moscow
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Refuseniks
related: Rostov-on-Don
related: Russian Civil War
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Samizdat
related: Shtetl
related: Soviet Yiddish-Language Schools
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Yiddish Theater (Theater)
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: World War I
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Shimonovitz, David
described at: Shimonovitz David
has abstract: (1886–1956), poet and translator, known in Hebrew as David Shim‘oni. Born in Bobruisk, Belorussia, David Shimonovitz moved to Palestine in 1909, where he stayed for about a year, working as a laborer and watchman at various moshavim (communal settlements). There he formed close friendships with the Hebrew writers Aharon David Gordon and Yosef Ḥayim Brenner.
title: Shimonovitz, David
alternative label: David Shimoni (Shimonovitz)
alternative label: David Shimonovitz
related: Bobruisk
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Frug, Shimen Shmuel
related: Gordon, Aharon David
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Stybel
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Warsaw

Šiauliai
described at: Siauliai
has abstract: (Yid., Shavli), town in northern Lithuania, center of Jewish learning and Haskalah. Šiauliai was a royal town during the period of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Jews were permitted to settle there under a charter from King Jan Sobieski in the second half of the seventeenth century, and the first synagogue was built in the early eighteenth century.
title: Šiauliai
alternative label: Shavli
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Haskalah
related: Kaunas
related: Lipkin, Yisra’el ben Ze’ev Volf
related: Lithuania
related: Mandel’shtam Osip Emil’evich
related: Passover
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Sighet Marmaţiei
described at: Sighet Marmatiei
has abstract: Town in Romania. Sziget (Hun., also Máramarossziget; in Jewish sources Sziget, Siget, or the older Sihot) was the capital of Máramaros county in the Kingdom of Hungary before northern Transylvania became part of Romania after World War I. The town was returned to Hungary briefly between 1940 and 1944. Surrounded by the Carpathian Mountains, it was located in a region least affected by modernization in the kingdom. In all of Hungary, the cultural and economic profile of the Jews of Máramaros county most resembled those of the eastern European shtetls.
title: Sighet Marmaţiei
alternative label: Sighet
alternative label: Sighet Marmației
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Bratislava
related: Crafts
related: Frankism
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Holder, Yoysef
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Industry
related: Kahana, Yehudah
related: Kosov-Vizhnits Hasidic Dynasty
related: Lichtenstein, Hillel
related: Lithuania
related: Mizraḥi
related: Orthodoxy
related: Piety
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: Sabbatianism
related: Satu Mare
related: Trade
related: Transylvania
related: Tseirey Agudas Yisroel
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Youth Movements
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Singer, Ludvík
described at: Singer Ludvik
has abstract: (1876–1931), lawyer and politician. Ludvík Singer was a leader of Czech-speaking Zionists in Bohemia. He was born in Kolín and studied law at the Czech University in Prague, where he became involved in the Czech Jewish movement. In his first job as a lawyer in Liberec (Reichenberg) in northern Bohemia, he was confronted with the Czech–German national conflict, which apparently shook his belief in Czech Jewish assimilation.
title: Singer, Ludvík
alternative label: Ludvík Singer
related: Assimilation
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Kolín
related: Prague
related: Židovská Strana
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Society for Jewish Folk Music
described at: Society for Jewish Folk Music
has abstract: In its brief existence (1908–ca. 1919) the Society for Jewish Folk Music (Rus., Obshchestvo Evreiskoi Narodnoi Muzyki; Yid., Gezelshaft far Yidisher Folks-Muzik) launched an influential movement among young Russian Jewish composers to create a modern national style of Jewish concert music. In the late 1890s and early 1900s, as part of the Russian Jewish intelligentsia’s growing interest in Jewish nationalism and Yiddish folk culture, musician and music critic Yo’el Engel and historian-folklorists Peysekh Marek and Sha’ul Ginsburg promoted the study of Jewish folk music from the Pale of Settlement through fieldwork, public lectures, and publications. These initial efforts, combined with the encouragement of Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, soon inspired a group of young Jewish musicians at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory to organize the Society for Jewish Folk Music in 1908.
title: Society for Jewish Folk Music
related: An-ski Ethnographic Expedition and Museum
related: Engel, Yo’el
related: Folk Songs
related: Ginsburg, Sha'ul
related: Kiev
related: Krein, Aleksandr Abramovich
related: Kultur-lige
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg

Spivak, Elye
described at: Spivak Elye
has abstract: (1890–1950), Yiddish linguist. Elye Spivak was born in Vasilkov, Ukraine. The product of a traditional Jewish education and a secular self-education, he worked as a teacher in various places, including the Kultur-lige Yiddish schools in his hometown and Glukhov. In the early 1920s, he taught Yiddish at the Kiev Yiddish Teachers’ College and at Yiddish vocational schools in Kiev and Kharkov. Spivak was appointed professor of Yiddish linguistics at the Odessa Pedagogical Institute in 1925. When the Kiev Chair (later, Institute) for Jewish Culture opened its Odessa branch, he took an active part in its activities, working under the guidance of Yankev Reznik (1890–1944), a veteran of Yiddish education.
title: Spivak, Elye
alternative label: Elye Spivak
related: Hofshteyn, Dovid
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: Kultur-lige
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Shapiro, Moyshe
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtif, Nokhem
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Sumptuary Legislation
described at: Sumptuary Legislation
has abstract: Although the earliest known sumptuary regulations from the world of East European Jewry date from the late sixteenth century, such regulations were promulgated, albeit in limited form, among medieval Ashkenazic Jews as early as the twelfth century. “Beginning in the fifteenth century,” as Salo Baron has written, “more and more communal organs, regional as well as local” issued detailed ordinances stipulating “articles of clothing that might be worn by various individuals on certain occasions, the number of guests and musicians who might be invited to certain functions, and the amount and type of food that might be served at such celebrations” (Baron, 1942, vol. 2, pp. 301–302). The fifteenth century was also the turning point for sumptuary legislation in Renaissance Italy, where in that century alone, 83 different sets of sumptuary laws were enacted.
title: Sumptuary Legislation
alternative label: sumptuary laws
alternative label: sumptuary legislation
alternative label: sumptuary regulations
related: Charity
related: Circumcision
related: Dress
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Passover
related: Poznań
related: Prague
related: Sabbath
related: Tykocin
related: Weddings

Sverdlov, Iakov Mikhailovich
described at: Sverdlov Iakov Mikhailovich
has abstract: (Moiseevich; party pseudonyms Andrei, Maks; 1885–1919), revolutionary and Soviet party figure. Born in Nizhnii Novrgorod to an artisan engraver who also owned a typographical and printing workshop, as a youth Iakov Sverdlov became a pharmacist’s apprentice and began to spread revolutionary propaganda among workers. He joined the Rossiiskaia Sotsial-Demokraticheskaia Rabochaia Partiia (Russian Social Democratic Workers Party; RSDRP) in 1901 and was arrested for participating in a demonstration against the expulsion of Maksim Gorky from Nizhnii Novgorod. Sverdlov worked as a professional revolutionary there as well as in Kostroma, Yaroslavl’, Kazan’, and other towns. When the RSDRP split, he joined the Bolsheviks.
title: Sverdlov, Iakov Mikhailovich
alternative label: Iakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov
alternative label: Iakov Sverdlov
related: Kamenev, Iurii
related: Kaplan, Fannie Efimovna
related: Moscow
related: Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (Russia)
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Szabolcsi, Miksa
described at: Szabolcsi Miksa
has abstract: (1857–1915), journalist and editor. Born Miksa Weinstein in [Nyír] Tura, Szabolcsi studied at yeshivas in Kemecse, Újfehértó, Érmihályfalva, Püspökladány, and Vác. Later he was a private tutor for children of prominent Jewish families (including Mór Wahrmann and Ignác Einhorn) and in 1877 he enrolled in the newly founded Rabbinical Seminary of Hungary. He left the seminary after one semester, however, and became a journalist. Szabolcsi first wrote for Debreczeni Ellenőr, where he covered the Tiszaeszlár blood libel trial (1882–1883) and received much acclaim. The proceedings had a major influence on his career. Szabolcsi wrote in Hungarian, Hebrew, and German.
title: Szabolcsi, Miksa
alternative label: Miksa Szabolcsi
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Einhorn, Ignác
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Orthodoxy
related: Seminary
related: Tiszaeszlár Blood Libel
related: Wahrmann, Mór
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Tighina
described at: Tighina
has abstract: Town and district center on the Dniester River, presently in the self-proclaimed Republic of Transnistria, which broke away from Moldova. Tighina (Rus., Bendery; Yid., Bender) was part of Romania from 1918 to 1940 and was in the Moldavian SSR from 1944 to 1991. Jews settled there in Ottoman times; the first record of a Jewish presence dates to 1769. In 1770, a synagogue was built within the town’s fortress but was dismantled 76 years later as the community grew. The oldest Jewish cemetery has not been preserved; the earliest tombstone in the new one is dated 1781. Aryeh-Leib Wertheim (d. 1854), who was the son of Hasidic leader Shim‘on Shelomoh of Savran, settled in Bendery in 1814 and founded a Hasidic dynasty. Local tradition dictated the leaving of notes (Yid., tsetlekh) with requests for Wertheim’s intervention at his crypt.
title: Tighina
alternative label: Beltsy
alternative label: Bendery
related: Moldova
related: Romania
related: Savran-Bendery Hasidic Dynasty
related: Transnistria
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Tseirey Agudas Yisroel
described at: Tseirey Agudas Yisroel
has abstract: Male youth movement of Agudas Yisroel. As an Orthodox party, Agudas Yisroel viewed the thousands of young men who devoted years to the study of the Talmud and its commentaries not only as a source of future strength for the Aguda, but also as a key to the survival of the Jewish people. For those young people who had to stop their formal education, the party wished to establish a youth movement that would keep them within the ideological fold. In practice, however, a large part of the membership consisted of students still in yeshivas.
title: Tseirey Agudas Yisroel
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Frydman, Aleksander Zysha
related: Galicia
related: Latvia
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Slovakia
related: Youth Movements
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Tsherikover, Elye
described at: Tsherikover Elye
has abstract: (Elias Tcherikower; 1881–1943), historian of Russian Jewish life and anti-Jewish violence. Elye Tsherikover was raised in a merchant-class, Zionist household in Poltava. After gymnasium in Odessa, where he joined socialist Zionist circles, he attended university in Saint Petersburg and was active in the Russian revolutionary movement. His university studies were interrupted by his arrest at a Menshevik meeting in 1905. After the 1905 Revolution, Tsherikover devoted himself to scholarship and legal public activism, first in the Russian Jewish circles of Saint Petersburg and then in the Yiddishist movement.
title: Tsherikover, Elye
alternative label: Elias Tcherikower
alternative label: Elye (Elias) Tsherikover
alternative label: Elye Tsherikover
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Ginsburg, Sha'ul
related: Grünbaum, Yitsḥak
related: Kiev
related: Lestschinsky, Jakob
related: Odessa
related: Pogroms
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shtif, Nokhem
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Tsukunft
related: Ukraine
related: World War I
related: YIVO
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Tynianov, Iurii Nikolaevich
described at: Tynianov Iurii Nikolaevich
has abstract: (1894–1943), literary scholar and fiction writer. Born in the town of Rezhitsa in Vitsebsk province (mod. Rēzekne, Latvia), Iurii Tynianov studied at the University of Petersburg from 1912 to 1918. From 1921 to 1930 he lectured on Russian poetry at the division of literary history of the Petrograd Institute of Art History. In 1918 he joined Obshchestvo Izucheniia Poeticheskogo Iazyka (Society for the Study of Poetic Language; Opoiaz), and soon became one of the most influential and articulate exponents of the Formalist position.
title: Tynianov, Iurii Nikolaevich
alternative label: Iurii Tynianov
related: Jakobson, Roman Osipovich
related: Latvia
related: Russian Criticism and Scholarship (Literary Criticism and Scholarship)
related: Shklovskii, Viktor Borisovich

Tyshler, Aleksandr Grigor’evich
described at: Tyshler Aleksandr Grigorevich
has abstract: (1898–1980), painter, set designer, graphic artist, and sculptor. Born into a carpenter’s family in Melitopol’, Aleksandr Tyshler grew up among craft workers and from the time of his childhood assisted house painters. His early impressions were reflected later in his series of paintings Sosedi moego detstva (Neighbors of My Childhood, 1930–1968).
title: Tyshler, Aleksandr Grigor’evich
alternative label: Aleksandr Tyshler
related: Belarus
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: Kultur-lige
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Moscow
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Painting and Sculpture
related: Riga
related: Society for the Settlement of Jewish Toilers on the Land
related: Soviet State Yiddish Theaters
related: Stage Design
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Uzhhorod
described at: Uzhhorod
has abstract: (Rus., Uzhgorod; Slov., Užhorod; Hun., Ungvár), city in Ukraine. Ungvár was the historical capital of Ung county in Subcarpathian Rus’, then a region of Hungary. In 1919, after the region became part of Czechoslovakia, the authorities chose the city as the region’s capital, partly, it has been alleged, because it had a smaller Jewish population than the larger Mukačevo (Hun., Munkács; now Ukr. Mukacheve) in Bereg county. By 1941, there were 9,576 Jews living there, representing 27.2 percent of the town’s population.
title: Uzhhorod
alternative label: Ungvár
alternative label: Uzhgorod
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Bratislava
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Galicia
related: Ganzfried, Shelomoh ben Yosef
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Industry
related: Löw, El‘azar
related: Mukacheve
related: Orthodoxy
related: Reform, Religious
related: Seminary
related: Sephardim
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: Subcarpathian Rus’
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Weiss, Marcus Nissa
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Židovská Strana
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Varshavski, Mark
described at: Varshavski Mark
has abstract: (1848–1907), Yiddish folk poet and composer. Mark Varshavski (Warshawski) was born in Odessa and as a child moved to Zhitomir, where he attended the state rabbinical school for four years and then studied jurisprudence for a year at Odessa University. He completed his studies in Kiev in 1875 and practiced law for many years, eking out a meager income. In 1903, he was engaged by a Belgian firm to serve as legal adviser but fell sick in 1905 and had to return to Kiev, where he died two years later.
title: Varshavski, Mark
alternative label: Mark Varshavski
alternative label: Mark Warshawski
related: Folk Songs
related: Kiev
related: Odessa
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zhytomyr
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Weinberg, Tsevi Zevulun
described at: Weinberg Tsevi Zevulun
has abstract: (1884–1971), Hebrew author. Born in Praga (near Warsaw), Tsevi Weinberg was one of the most significant Hebrew writers in Poland during the interwar period. He taught Hebrew studies in Augustów and Warsaw, and was among the founders of the Association of Hebrew Authors and Journalists of Poland. With Eli‘ezer Steinman, Weinberg edited the monthly publication Kolot (Voices) in 1923–1924. He also assisted Malki’el Lusternik in founding the periodical Re’shit: Bamah le-‘inyane ha-ḥayim, sifrut u-mada‘ (Beginning: A Forum on Matters of Life, Literature, and Science), published between 1932 and 1934, and served on its editorial board. In 1934, he moved to Palestine and taught at a school in Tel Mond. Weinberg’s departure from Poland triggered a wave of reactions within his literary circle, as it had lost one of the most important voices of contemporary Hebrew literature.
title: Weinberg, Tsevi Zevulun
alternative label: Tsevi Zevulun Weinberg
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Kolot
related: Lusternik, Malki’el
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Steinman, Eli‘ezer
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw

Weissmandel, Mikha’el Dov Ber
described at: Weissmandel Mikhael Dov Ber
has abstract: (1903–1958), a leading figure in rescue efforts in Slovakia during the Holocaust and a staunch opponent of Zionism after the war. An acclaimed student in the Slovak yeshivas of Sered, Tirnoy, and Nitra, Mikha’el Dov Ber Weissmandel also examined Hebrew rabbinical manuscripts in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. In 1935 he participated in a delegation headed by his father-in-law, Rabbi Shemu’el David ha-Levi Ungar, leader of Slovak Orthodox Jews, to the Agudas Yisroel gathering in Palestine.
title: Weissmandel, Mikha’el Dov Ber
alternative label: Mikha’el Dov Ber Weissmandel
alternative label: Mikha’el Weissmandel
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Auschwitz Protocols
related: Bratislava
related: Fleischmann, Gisela
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Historiography)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kasztner, Rezső
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Slovakia
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Aderca, Felix
described at: Aderca Felix
has abstract: (1891–1962), writer, playwright, literary critic, and journalist. Felix Aderca (originally Froim Zeilic Adercu) was born in the village of Puieşti, Moldavia, to a family of merchants, and did not complete high school. He published several collections of poetry, independently and without success. Under the name Oliver Willy, he also issued an essay titled “Naționalism? Libertatea de a ucide” (Nationalism? The Freedom to Kill; 1910).
title: Aderca, Felix
alternative label: Felix Aderca
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Assimilation
related: Bucharest
related: Dobrogeanu-Gherea, Constantin
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kisch, Egon Erwin
related: Moldavia
related: Romania

Alba Iulia
described at: Alba Iulia
has abstract: Town in the central western area of Romania, on the Mureş River. Alba Iulia (known in German as Karlsburg; Ladino as Carlisburg; Latin as Alba Carolina [or Apulum in ancient Roman times]; and Hungarian as Gyulafehérvár) served from 1542 to 1690 as the capital of the autonomous principality of Transylvania under Turkish suzerainty. It was then part of Hungary until it was annexed to Romania after World War I.
title: Alba Iulia
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Orthodoxy
related: Paneth, Yeḥezkel
related: Romania
related: Sephardim
related: Trade
related: Transylvania
related: World War I

Avraham ben Aleksander ha-Kohen of Kalisk
described at: Avraham ben Aleksander ha-Kohen of Kalisk
has abstract: (1741–1810), Hasidic rabbi and leader. Avraham was a disciple of Dov Ber, the Magid of Mezritsh, and a follower and colleague of Rabbi Menaḥem Mendel of Vitebsk. It is said that before his attachment to Hasidism he had apparently studied with the Gaon of Vilna. Avraham assisted Menaḥem Mendel in leading a group of Hasidim to the Land of Israel in 1777 and then moved with him from Safed to Tiberias. Letters to their followers in Belorussia–Lithuania are signed by both rabbis, with Avraham occasionally adding his own words. When Menaḥem Mendel died in 1788, the Hasidim of Tiberias, as well as a portion of followers in Eastern Europe, deemed Avraham to be their leader.
title: Avraham ben Aleksander ha-Kohen of Kalisk
alternative label: Avraham Kalisker
alternative label: Avraham of Kalisk
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Land of Israel
related: Menaḥem Mendel of Vitebsk
related: Shneur Zalman of Liady

Bacher, Vilmos
described at: Bacher Vilmos
has abstract: (1850–1913), Talmudic scholar, orientalist, and rector of the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest. A descendant of the eighteenth-century German rabbi Ya’ir Ḥayim Bacharach, and a son of Hebrew poet Simon Bacher (Bacharach), Vilmos (Wilhelm) Bacher was born in Liptószentmiklós (now Liptovský Mikuláš, Slovakia), a region in which traditional rabbinic culture was relatively open to secular ideas.
title: Bacher, Vilmos
alternative label: Vilmos (Wilhelm) Bacher
alternative label: Vilmos Bacher
related: Bacher, Simon
related: Budapest
related: Goldziher, Ignác
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Magyar Zsidó Szemle
related: Seminary
related: Slovakia
related: Wrocław

Beards
described at: Beards
has abstract: In his autobiography, the philosopher Salomon Maimon (d. 1800) recalled that the concept of beards “especially gave me trouble.” In reading the Zohar and other kabbalistic works, Maimon explored the image of “God’s Beard, in which the hairs are divided into numerous classes with something peculiar to each, and every hair is a separate channel of divine grace.” Maimon later wrote that with all of his efforts, “I could find no rational meaning in these representations.”
title: Beards
alternative label: beards
narrower: Between Kabbalah and Modernity
narrower: Hair: His and Hers
narrower: Modern Antisemitism and Its Memories
related: Łódź
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Babel, Isaac
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bratislava
related: Dubno
related: Frankism
related: Galicia
related: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jedwabne
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Kaliningrad
related: Landau, Yeḥezkel ben Yehudah
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Luria, Shelomoh ben Yeḥi’el
related: L’viv
related: Maimon, Salomon
related: Mir, Yeshiva of
related: Pogroms
related: Prague
related: Rumkowski, Khayim Mordkhe
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sandz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Silesia
related: Slobodka, Yeshiva of
related: Smolenskin, Perets
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: Sokhachev Hasidic Dynasty
related: Telz, Yeshiva of
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: Warsaw
related: Zhovkva
related: Zhytomyr

Beer, Peter
described at: Beer Peter
has abstract: (ca. 1758–1838), educator, historian, and religious reformer. Peter Beer was born in Nový Bydžov (Neu-Bidschow), Bohemia, to a middle-class family. He received a traditional Jewish education, attended yeshivas in Prague and Bratislava (Pressburg), but also studied German and Latin with a priest in his hometown. After serving as a private tutor in Hungary, Beer went to Vienna around 1781. He was one of the first Jews to attend a teaching seminary, opened to Jews by the Edicts of Toleration of Joseph II.
title: Beer, Peter
alternative label: Peter Beer
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bratislava
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Historiography)
related: Homberg, Herz
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Prague
related: Reform, Religious

Biała
described at: Biała
has abstract: Town in southern Poland, from 1945 in the province of Silesia. The development of Biała was closely tied to that of neighboring Bielsko (situated in what was the Austrian part of Silesia), and was mainly related to textile production and cross-border trade. The presence of Jews in Biała was documented in 1697, when a robber from the nearby mountains confessed that about three years earlier he had sold stolen goods to a Jewish broker in Biała. A reference to a Jewish leaseholder is dated 1715.
title: Biała
related: Bielsko
related: Kahal
related: Mizraḥi
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sandz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Silesia
related: Trade

Book Design and Illustration
described at: Book Design and Illustration
has abstract: The tradition of design and illustration in East European Hebrew and Yiddish printing is connected to the history of itinerant families of printers who wandered in Central and Eastern Europe, transporting their typographical knowledge. Their skills usually originated in the cradle of Jewish printing in northern Italy. The development of book design followed different trajectories in Prague and in printing centers farther east, although both were clearly influenced by the earlier, chiefly Italian, patterns. Prague ultimately was the location of five presses owned by families of Jewish printers.
title: Book Design and Illustration
alternative label: book illustrations
narrower: Book Design in the Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
narrower: Early Jewish Printing in Poland
narrower: Jewish Printing in Prague
narrower: The Nineteenth-Century Shift toward Modernity
related: Al’tman, Natan Isaevich
related: Angels
related: Bak Family
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Białystok
related: Broderzon, Moyshe
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Conversion
related: Der Nister
related: Erik, Maks
related: Fayvesh Family
related: Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Helicz Brothers
related: Hofshteyn, Dovid
related: Kiev
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Kultur-lige
related: Landau, Mosheh Yisra’el
related: Lissitzky, El
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Moriah
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Pascheles, Wolf
related: Passover
related: Perl, Yosef
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Prostějov
related: Prostitz Family
related: Romm Family
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Rybak, Yisakhar Ber
related: Schulz, Bruno
related: Shapira Family
related: Shklov
related: Shneur Zalman of Liady
related: Shtetl
related: Stybel
related: Szyk, Artur
related: Tsene-rene
related: Ukraine
related: Vilnius
related: Vitsyebsk
related: Warsaw
related: Weichert, Michał
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Yung-yidish

Brandstetter, Mordekhai David
described at: Brandstetter Mordekhai David
has abstract: (1844–1928), Hebrew novelist and poet. Mordekhai David Brandstetter was born in the town of Briegel, Galicia. When he was 14, his family arranged his marriage to the daughter of a wealthy family from Tarnów. In that city, Brandstetter became interested in Hebrew and secular literature, and began to publish his own poetry. In 1867–1868, he traveled frequently to Warsaw on business; there he became acquainted with the works of Avraham Mapu, Yitsḥak Ber Levinzon, Adam Ha-Kohen (Avraham Dov Lebensohn), and Yehudah Leib Gordon.
title: Brandstetter, Mordekhai David
alternative label: Mordekhai Brandstetter
alternative label: Mordekhai David Brandstetter
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brandstaetter, Roman
related: Galicia
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Haskalah
related: Lebensohn, Avraham Dov
related: Levinzon, Yitsḥak Ber
related: Mapu, Avraham
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Shaḥar, Ha-
related: Smolenskin, Perets
related: Tarnów
related: Warsaw

Braude, Markus
described at: Braude Markus
has abstract: (1869–1949), rabbi, educator, Zionist leader, and parliamentarian. Born in Brest-Litovsk (Brisk), Markus Braude (Mordekhai Ze’ev Broda) was raised in Lwów (Lemberg) where his maternal grandfather had been the city’s rabbi. In 1890, he enrolled at the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin and at the University of Berlin, ultimately earning his doctorate in 1898 at the University of Freiburg.
title: Braude, Markus
alternative label: Markus (Mordekhai) Braude
alternative label: Markus Braude
related: Łódź
related: Brest
related: Galicia
related: Hildesheimer, Esriel
related: Ivano-Frankivs’k
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Tarbut
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Braunstein, Menaḥem Mendel
described at: Braunstein Menahem Mendel
has abstract: (1858–1944), philologist and educator. Raised in Iaşi, Romania, Menaḥem Braunstein (also Braunstein-Mebaşan, the latter element being the Hebrew acronym of his name) studied philology, specializing in European languages. As a young man he was part of a group of maskilim, an informal set of people with headquarters at a coffee shop in Iaşi. In 1887 he set up Doresh le-Tsiyon, an organization whose objective was to encourage immigration to the land of Israel. That same year, he founded the Yiddish newspaper Der yudishe folksfraynd.
title: Braunstein, Menaḥem Mendel
alternative label: Menaḥem Braunstein
alternative label: Menaḥem Mendel Braunstein
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Bacău
related: Barasch, Iuliu
related: Craiova
related: Iaşi
related: Land of Israel
related: Niemirower, Iacob Isac
related: Romania
related: Vaslui
related: Warsaw

Călugăru, Ion
described at: Calugaru Ion
has abstract: (1902–1956), writer, playwright, and journalist. Ion Călugăru (pseudonym of Ştrul Leiba Croitoru) was born in Dorohoi to an impoverished family; he was a top student at the Israelite-Romanian school, where the Jewish community supported him through elementary school. Although he failed to graduate from high school, his Latin teacher, the influential literary critic Eugen Lovinescu, hired him to serve on the editorial staff of the review Sburătorul, in which Călugăru used his pseudonym for the first time (he had published articles in the Jewish newspaper Mântuirea [The Redemption] as B. Croitoru).
title: Călugăru, Ion
alternative label: Ion Călugăru
related: Communism
related: Dorohoi
related: Mântuirea
related: Sexuality
related: Shtetl

Curierul Israelit
described at: Curierul Israelit
has abstract: Weekly Romanian newspaper founded in Bucharest on 25 December 1906 by I. Negureanu and M. Schweig. Curierul Israelit (The Israelite Courier) was issued with frequent interruptions until 25 March 1945; Schweig eventually appeared on its masthead as owner and director. The publication carried the subtitle “Organ septemânal pentru apărarea intereselor evreieşti” (Weekly Organ for the Defense of Jewish Interests); in 1944 this slogan was altered to “Organ al Uniunii Evreilor Români” (Organ of the Union of Romanian Jews).
title: Curierul Israelit
alternative label: Curierul israelit
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Bucharest
related: Călugăru, Ion
related: Carp, Horia
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Sokolow, Naḥum
related: Weizmann, Chaim
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Czech Literature
described at: Czech Literature
has abstract: The oldest examples of Czech Jewish writing are glosses in medieval Hebrew manuscripts; Jewish scholars in Prague explained unusual or difficult Hebrew terms using Hebrew transcriptions of “the language of Canaan,” which was, Roman Jakobson has argued, a variant of Old Czech. These glosses are most extensive in the work of two Prague scholars, Avraham ben ‘Azri’el of Bohemia (also known as Abraham Chladek), who wrote his commentary ‘Arugat ha-bosem (Bed of Spices) in the late 1230s, and his student Yitsḥak ben Mosheh, whose Or Zaru‘a (Light Sown) dates from the mid-thirteenth century. The glosses cannot really be said to constitute a literary work, but they are evidence that Jews in medieval Prague were thoroughly familiar with spoken Czech.
title: Czech Literature
alternative label: Czech literature
narrower: APPENDIX: CZECH WRITERS
related: Brod, Max
related: Childhood
related: About this Article (Children’s Literature)
related: Communism
related: Czech Republic
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Donath, Oskar
related: Galicia
related: Gellner, František
related: German Literature
related: Hilsner Affair
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Hostovský, Egon
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: Jakobson, Roman Osipovich
related: Kafka, Franz
related: Kapper, Siegfried
related: Langer, František
related: Langer, Jiří
related: Lederer, Eduard
related: Moscow
related: Olbracht, Ivan
related: Orten, Jiří
related: Poláček, Karel
related: Prague
related: Rakous, Vojtěch
related: Russian Literature
related: Samizdat
related: Slánský Trial
related: Subcarpathian Rus’
related: Terezín
related: Weil, Jiří
related: Weiner, Richard
related: Yitsḥak ben Mosheh of Vienna
related: Zeyer, Julius

Debrecen
described at: Debrecen
has abstract: Town in Hungary, home to one of Hungary’s largest Jewish communities. Jews began settling legally in Debrecen, “the Calvinist Rome of Hungary,” after the Diet adopted Act Thirty-Nine of 1840, permitting Jews to settle in cities under royal authority. While only 118 Jews were living in Debrecen in 1848, in 1869 this number had grown to 1,920 and in 1900 it had reached 6,192.
title: Debrecen
related: Agriculture
related: Banking
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Kasztner, Rezső
related: Labor Camps
related: Miskolc
related: Trade

Dzigan and Shumacher
described at: Dzigan and Shumacher
has abstract: Comedy team that performed in Yiddish theaters, cabarets, and films. Shimen (Szymon) Dzigan (1905–1980) and Yisroel Shumacher (or Szumacher; 1908–1961) were both born in Łódź. Dzigan was apprenticed as a teenager to a tailor, but when the well-known writer and poet Moyshe Broderzon noticed his improvised parodies of speakers at a banquet in 1927, he invited Dzigan to join the Ararat literary cabaret that he was founding in Łódź. The following year, Shumacher graduated from a Hebrew gymnasium and also joined the Ararat company. They began to perform together, first with Ararat and then in Warsaw with the troupe Yidishe Bande. In response to their growing popularity, in 1935 they founded their own cabaret company at the Nowości Theater in Warsaw. They also starred in the Yiddish films Al khet (I Have Sinned; 1936), Freylekhe kabtsonim (Jolly Paupers; 1937), and On a heym (Without a Home; 1938).
title: Dzigan and Shumacher
alternative label: Dzigan
alternative label: Shimen Dzigan and Yisroel Shumacher
alternative label: Shimen Dzigan, and Yisroel Shumacher
alternative label: Shumacher
related: Łódź
related: Białystok
related: Birobidzhan
related: Broderzon, Moyshe
related: Cinema
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: Manger, Itsik
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ravitch, Melech
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Warsaw

Ehrenkranz, Benjamin Wolf
described at: Ehrenkranz Benjamin Wolf
has abstract: (1823/26–1883), Yiddish and Hebrew poet; maskil. Known as the singer and troubadour of the Jews of Romania, Benjamin Wolf Ehrenkranz was born in Zbaraż (in Austrian Galicia) and received a traditional education. Under the influence of friends from Tarnopol, he embraced the Haskalah movement. Although Ehrenkranz was married at age 18 to the daughter of a Hasid from his native town, his father-in-law took note of the poet’s irreverent behavior and satiric writings, and forced him to divorce his wife notwithstanding her opposition. Ehrenkranz left for Czernowitz, where he became quite well known among local Jews, and subsequently left for Moldova to work as a tutor. There he began to write Yiddish poetry, occasionally translating or recomposing his works into Hebrew.
title: Ehrenkranz, Benjamin Wolf
alternative label: Benjamin Wolf Ehrenkranz
related: Botoşani
related: Brăila
related: Bucharest
related: Chernivtsi
related: Galaţi
related: Galicia
related: Haskalah
related: Iaşi
related: Mihăileni
related: Moldova
related: Piatra Neamţ
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Pogroms
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Weddings

Filologishe Shriftn
described at: Filologishe Shriftn
has abstract: Three-volume series published in Vilna by the Yiddish Scientific Institute (YIVO) in 1926, 1928, and 1929. Filologishe shriftn (Studies in Philology) was coedited by Zalmen Reyzen and Max Weinreich. The publication continued the tradition established by the pioneer Yiddish academic collection Der pinkes: Yorbukh fun der geshikhte fun der yidisher literatur un shprakh, far folklor, kritik un bibliografye (The Chronicle: Yearbook for the History of Yiddish Literature and Language, for Folklore, Criticism, and Bibliography; 1913), edited by Shmuel Niger, which had also been produced by the Kletskin Publishing House in Vilna.
title: Filologishe Shriftn
alternative label: Filologishe shriftn
related: Borokhov, Ber
related: Courland
related: Kalmanovitch, Zelig
related: Kiev
related: Kletskin, Boris Arkadevich
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Reyzen, Zalmen
related: Shtif, Nokhem
related: Tsinberg, Yisroel
related: Vilnius
related: Weinreich, Max
related: YIVO
related: Zaretski, Ayzik

Fininberg, Ezra
described at: Fininberg Ezra
has abstract: (1899–1946), Yiddish poet and writer. Born in Uman, Ezra Fininberg “published” his first poems in a handwritten journal that he produced in the mid-1910s in his hometown with Leyb Kvitko and Moyshe Khashchevatski. Initially Fininberg supported the Zionist Socialist (Territorialist) Party, but joined the Communists in 1919. From 1920 he lived in Kiev, working at the editorial office of the daily Komunistishe fon (Communist Banner). Fininberg belonged to a group of young Yiddish literary talents called Vidervuks (New Growth), whose mentor was Dovid Hofshteyn. Fininberg married Eva Khenkin, whose sister, Mira Khenkin, was Nokhem Oyslender’s wife and a Yiddish writer in her own right.
title: Fininberg, Ezra
alternative label: Ezra Fininberg
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Der Nister
related: Dobrushin, Yekhezkl
related: Fefer, Itsik
related: Hofshteyn, Dovid
related: Khashchevatski, Moyshe
related: Kiev
related: Kvitko, Leyb
related: Moscow
related: Oyslender, Nokhem
related: Uman

Focşani
described at: Focsani
has abstract: City in Romania, near the Milcov River, the old border between Moldavia and Walachia. The Jewish community of Focşani dates back at least to the second half of the seventeenth century, when Natan Note Hannover, author of Yeven metsulah and Sha‘are tsiyon, was the town’s rabbi for a decade. The first Jewish cemetery reached its capacity and was closed in 1683, the second in 1874. A choral synagogue was built in 1896 on the location of a synagogue that had been destroyed in an earthquake two years earlier.
title: Focşani
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Bacău
related: Betar
related: Cilibi Moise
related: Crafts
related: Galaţi
related: Gordonia
related: Hannover, Natan Note
related: Iaşi
related: Land of Israel
related: Maccabi Movement
related: Moineşti
related: Moldavia
related: Proverbs
related: Romania
related: Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Ha-
related: Walachia
related: Youth Movements
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Gebirtig, Mordkhe
described at: Gebirtig Mordkhe
has abstract: (1877–1942), Yiddish poet and songwriter. Mordkhe Gebirtig (Bertig) was a native of Kraków. Details given in various sources regarding the personal history of this poet in the first 20 years of his life—such as the year of his birth, his alleged studying at a heder until the age of 10, his alleged employment as a carpenter’s apprentice, and the claim that he subsequently made a living working as a carpenter—were refuted by the latest researcher of his work, Natan Gross; thus, information about his early life is practically unavailable.
title: Gebirtig, Mordkhe
alternative label: Mordkhe Gebirtig
related: Galicia
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Yiddish Poetry (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: Songs and Songwriters
related: Żydowska Partia Socjalno-Demokratyczna

Gildin, Khayim
described at: Gildin Khayim
has abstract: (1884–1944), Yiddish writer. Born in Nikopol’, Ukraine, into a worker’s family, Khayim Gildin was 12 years old when he began working in a factory. He was then twice arrested for revolutionary activity. From 1908 to 1914, he lived and worked in Warsaw, where he published articles on labor issues and belonged to the circle of literati directly influenced by Y. L. Peretz. Gildin returned to Ukraine in 1915 and lived in Odessa. After the 1917 Revolution he was a member of the Fareynikte, the United Jewish Socialist Workers Party.
title: Gildin, Khayim
alternative label: Khayim Gildin
related: Fareynikte
related: Markish, Perets
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Persov, Shmuel
related: Rabin, Yoysef
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Taytsh, Moyshe
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw

Gniezno
described at: Gniezno
has abstract: Town in the Wielkopolska province of Poland. In the eleventh century, Gniezno (known in Yiddish and German as Gnesen) was established as the first capital of the Polish state; since the year 1000 it has been the seat of an archbishop. Jews likely lived in the town as early as the twelfth century, where they managed the mint of a local prince. The oldest images of Jews in Polish lands are found on the bronze door of the Gniezno cathedral, dating from the second half of the twelfth century.
title: Gniezno
related: Crafts
related: Guilds
related: Piotrków
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Radom
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Hirshbeyn, Perets
described at: Hirshbeyn Perets
has abstract: (Often spelled Peretz Hirschbein in English sources; 1880–1948), playwright, novelist, journalist, travel writer, and theater director. Perets Hirshbeyn’s father operated a rural water mill outside a small town in Grodno province, where Hirshbeyn was born. Educated initially by local tutors, Hirshbeyn eventually made his way to Grodno and then Vilna, where he joined a circle of yeshiva students who studied the Bible, Hebrew grammar, and Jewish history together. Hirshbeyn began giving Hebrew lessons to support himself while publishing Hebrew poetry and writing Yiddish stories. He also began to shift from writing lyrical poetry to naturalist drama, starting with Miryam (1905), which he first wrote in Hebrew, later translated into Yiddish, and later still revised in Yiddish under the title Barg arop (Downhill). Inspired by an encounter with a prostitute—and perhaps by Hirshbeyn’s own squalid living conditions in Vilna—the play was a harbinger of Hirshbeyn’s skill at characterization, dialogue, and atmosphere.
title: Hirshbeyn, Perets
alternative label: Perets Hirshbeyn
related: Łódź
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Ben-Ami
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Hrodna
related: Iushkevich, Semen Solomonovich
related: Odessa
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Pinski, Dovid
related: Hebrew Poetry (Poetry)
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Iancu, Marcel
described at: Iancu Marcel
has abstract: (1895–1984), plastic artist, architect, and art theorist. Marcel Iancu (Janco) was born in Bucharest. Even as a youth he contributed to the Simbolul review, and had occasion to meet Tristan Tzara and Ion Vinea. He also studied painting and drawing with Iosif Iser. A pioneer of the avant-garde movement, Iancu’s style evolved from expressionism during the interwar period to an abstract mode during his later years in Israel.
title: Iancu, Marcel
alternative label: Marcel Iancu
alternative label: Marcel Janco (Iancu)
related: Bucharest
related: Habimah
related: Iser, Iosif
related: Maxy, Max Hermann
related: Romania

Jastrow, Markus
described at: Jastrow Markus
has abstract: (1829–1903), rabbi, political activist, and academic. Born in Rogasen (Pol., Rogoźno) near Poznań, Markus (Mordekhai) Jastrow received a traditional Jewish education from the local rabbi, Moses Feilchenfeld, and a secular education at the town’s elementary school. He later attended the Friedrich-Wilhelm Gymnasium in Poznań. In 1852, he began his studies in philosophy at the University of Berlin and in 1856 earned a doctorate from the University of Halle. He received rabbinic ordination in 1853.
title: Jastrow, Markus
alternative label: Markus Jastrow
related: Poznań
related: Warsaw

Jüdische Volksstimme
described at: Judische Volksstimme
has abstract: Pioneering Zionist newspaper of the Austrian Empire, published in Brno (Brünn), Moravia, from 1900 to 1934. Jüdische Volksstimme (Jewish People’s Voice) was founded by Max Hickl (1874–1924), who served as publisher and editor in chief until his death, with only a brief interruption from 1920 to 1922, when Arnold Steiner took his place. Jüdische Volksstimme began as a bimonthly in February 1900; it was issued three times a month from September 1907, and weekly from 1910.
title: Jüdische Volksstimme
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Bergmann, Hugo
related: Birnbaum, Nathan
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brno
related: General Zionists
related: Gold, Hugo
related: Hickl, Max
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Pinski, Dovid
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Kalischer, Tsevi Hirsh
described at: Kalischer Tsevi Hirsh
has abstract: (1795–1874), rabbi and the most prominent “harbinger of Zionism.” Tsevi Hirsh Kalischer was born in Leszno (Lissa) in western Poland. He was a disciple of Ya‘akov Lorbeerbaum of Lissa and of Akiva Eger, two of the leading halakhic authorities of his generation. Kalischer served his entire adult life as the unpaid rabbi of Thorn (Toruń), supported by his wife, who had a small shop.
title: Kalischer, Tsevi Hirsh
alternative label: Tsevi Hirsh Kalischer
related: Eger, Akiva ben Mosheh
related: Hildesheimer, Esriel
related: Kaliningrad
related: Land of Israel
related: Leszno
related: Lorbeerbaum, Ya‘akov ben Ya‘akov Mosheh of Lissa
related: Magid, Ha-
related: Natonek, Yosef
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Reform, Religious
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Spektor, Yitsḥak Elḥanan
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Kharik, Izi
described at: Kharik Izi
has abstract: (1898–1937), Soviet Yiddish poet. In his short life, Izi (Israel) Kharik was one of the most significant and powerful Soviet Yiddish writers, a poet whose work engaged aesthetic movements as varied as expressionism and socialist realism and who, despite his position of power, expressed deep ambivalence about the consequences of the Bolshevik Revolution.
title: Kharik, Izi
alternative label: Izi Kharik
related: Belarus
related: Communism
related: Kiev
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Yiddish Poetry (Poetry)
related: Shtetl
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Kipnis, Itsik
described at: Kipnis Itsik
has abstract: (1896–1974), Yiddish fiction writer. Itsik Kipnis was born into a family of craftsmen in Sloveshne, Ukraine. As a child, he studied at heder and with private teachers; he later worked with his father as a tanner. In 1920, Kipnis went to study in Kiev, where he met Dovid Hofshteyn, who became his literary mentor. Kipnis’s first publications were children’s literature and a book of poems titled Oksn (Oxen; 1923) that celebrated modern, urban existence with an optimistic tone and minimalist poetic language. However, his real entry into the world of Soviet Yiddish literature was his first book of fiction, Khadoshim un teg: A khronik (Months and Days: A Chronicle), which was published with an introduction by Yitskhok Nusinov (1926).
title: Kipnis, Itsik
alternative label: Itsik Kipnis
related: About this Article (Children’s Literature)
related: Eynikayt
related: Heder
related: Hofshteyn, Dovid
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kiev
related: Nusinov, Yitskhok
related: Pogroms
related: Shtetl
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Koidanover, Aharon Shemu’el and Tsevi Hirsh
described at: Koidanover Aharon Shemuel and Tsevi Hirsh
has abstract: Father and son; rabbis and scholars. Aharon Shemu’el Koidanover (Kaidanower; 1614–1676) was an eminent Talmudic and halakhic scholar and preacher; Tsevi Hirsh (d. 1712) is known primarily for his book of moral and ethical instruction, Kav ha-yashar.
title: Koidanover, Aharon Shemu’el and Tsevi Hirsh
alternative label: Aharon Shemu’el ben Yisra’el Koidonover
alternative label: Tsevi Hirsh Koidanover
related: Angels
related: Biała
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brest
related: Dubno
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Mikulov
related: Minsk
related: Piety
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: Rzeszów
related: Slutsk
related: Vilnius
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Kolot
described at: Kolot
has abstract: Hebrew literary monthly, published in 1923–1924 in Poland. Kolot (Voices) was established by the writer Eli‘ezer Steinman in Warsaw, where he had arrived as a refugee from Ukraine in 1920. The journal represented one of the boldest attempts to renew Hebrew literary activity in Poland after World War I, and as was true of the majority of other attempts, it was short-lived. The journal reflected its editor’s rebellious, modernist outlook and sought to provide an opportunity for individualistic, nonconformist voices to be heard, as a way of protesting against both the Zionist and the Hebrew literary establishment.
title: Kolot
related: Bat-Miriam, Yokheved
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Cahan, Ya‘akov
related: Fichmann, Ya‘akov
related: Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
related: Hame’iri, Avigdor
related: Hazaz, Ḥayim
related: Hebrew Literature
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Pomerantz, Berl
related: Steinman, Eli‘ezer
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw
related: Weinberg, Tsevi Zevulun
related: Zeitlin Family

Krochmal, Menaḥem Mendel ben Avraham
described at: Krochmal Menahem Mendel ben Avraham
has abstract: (1600–1661), rabbi and writer of responsa. Menaḥem Mendel ben Avraham Krochmal was born in Kraków, where he studied with David ben Shemu’el ha-Levi (Taz) and Yo’el Sirkes. As a young man he served as a rabbinic judge in Kraków and directed a yeshiva there. In his capacity as a judge he participated in the deliberations of the rabbinic courts at the Lublin and Jarosław fairs.
title: Krochmal, Menaḥem Mendel ben Avraham
alternative label: Menaḥem Krochmal
alternative label: Menaḥem Mendel Krochmal
alternative label: Menaḥem Mendel ben Avraham Krochmal
related: Ashkenazi, Gershon
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: David ben Shemu’el ha-Levi
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Mikulov
related: Sirkes, Yo’el
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

About this Article (Language)
described at: Language
has abstract: To explore the principal languages of the Jews in Eastern Europe, this entry includes four articles. The first two treat Hebrew and Yiddish, respectively, from a linguistic perspective, including their historical development, dialects, and status. Planning and Standardization of Yiddish describes the attempts to elevate the status of Yiddish and to standardize its spelling, and the political context of these efforts. Finally, Multilingualism surveys this phenomenon among East European Jews, combining sociolinguistic data with an evaluation of its cultural consequences. For further discussion of Yiddish-language standardization, see Czernowitz Conference. For Hebrew and Yiddish as literary languages, see Hebrew Literature and Yiddish Literature.
title: About this Article (Language)
alternative label: Language
alternative label: Yiddish
alternative label: Yiddish language
alternative label: language
related: Czernowitz Conference
related: Hebrew Literature
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Lewinsky, Elḥanan Leib
described at: Lewinsky Elhanan Leib
has abstract: (1857–1910), Hebrew writer. Elḥanan Leib Lewinsky was born in Podberez’ye (Pol., Podbrodzie; mod. Lith., Paberžė), on the outskirts of Vilna, though during his childhood his family moved to Gilwan in the Kovno region. He received an intensive Talmudic education under his father’s supervision, but at the same time was given the opportunity to read Haskalah literature in Hebrew. Lewinsky was especially impressed with the writings of Mosheh Leib Lilienblum and with the latter’s struggle against the Lithuanian rabbinate then taking place in the nearby town of Wilkomir (Ukmergė). As an adolescent, Lewinsky spent short periods of time studying in Wilkomir and Kovno, and from 1874 he taught in Vilna and in other towns in the provinces of Minsk, Chernigov, and Ekaterinoslav.
title: Lewinsky, Elḥanan Leib
alternative label: Elḥanan Leib Lewinsky
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Kaunas
related: Khar’kiv
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Minsk
related: Odessa
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Ravnitski, Yehoshu‘a Ḥana
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Vilnius
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Lorbeerbaum, Ya‘akov ben Ya‘akov Mosheh of Lissa
described at: Lorbeerbaum Yaakov ben Yaakov Mosheh of Lissa
has abstract: (1760–1832), rabbi and Talmudist. After his first marriage, Ya‘akov ben Ya‘akov Mosheh of Lissa (commonly known as Ḥavat Da‘at) worked in Stanisławów as a partner in a brewery. When the business failed, he supported himself by serving as a rabbi in various communities of Poland and Galicia. Until 1791, he served as rabbi in Monasterzyska, and from there he moved to Kałusz, both in Galicia. It was in Kałusz that Lorbeerbaum wrote his earliest works.
title: Lorbeerbaum, Ya‘akov ben Ya‘akov Mosheh of Lissa
alternative label: Ya‘akov Lorbeerbaum
alternative label: Ya‘akov ben Ya‘akov Mosheh Lorbeerbaum
related: Galicia
related: Heller, Aryeh Leib ha-Kohen
related: Ivano-Frankivs’k
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Warsaw

Ludo, Isac Iacovitz
described at: Ludo Isac Iacovitz
has abstract: (1894–1973), journalist and writer. Isac Iacovitz Ludo was born in Iaşi, Romania, where he published his first writings as a teenager in the literary review Absolutio. In 1919, he moved to Bucharest and joined Abraham Leib Zissu on the editorial board of the Jewish national newspaper Mântuirea (The Redemption). From 1923, Ludo served as editor of the magazine Ştiri din lumea evreiască (News from the Jewish World), focusing on issues agitating Romanian Jewish circles after World War I.
title: Ludo, Isac Iacovitz
alternative label: Isac Ludo
related: Adam
related: Assimilation
related: Bucharest
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: Iaşi
related: Mântuirea
related: Romania
related: Romanian Literature
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zissu, Abraham Leib

Luxemburg, Rosa
described at: Luxemburg Rosa
has abstract: (1870–1919), political writer, activist, and economist. Born in Zamość to a maskilic family, Rosa Luxemburg was the daughter of Elia Luxemburg, a wood merchant, and Lina Loewenstein. In the mid-1870s, the family moved to Warsaw where in 1888 Luxemburg graduated from a Russian high school, in which she belonged to student underground groups that studied Polish literature and history. In 1888, she joined the Polish socialist underground organization Proletariat. Pursued by the police, she escaped to Zürich, where she studied first natural sciences, and, from 1892, political science and economics. There, in 1890, Luxemburg met Leo Jogiches, a Jewish Russian revolutionary from Vilna who became her partner. Although their liaison lasted only until 1907, he remained her political mentor for the rest of her life.
title: Luxemburg, Rosa
alternative label: Rosa Luxemburg
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Bund
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Wrocław
related: Zamość

Mandel’shtam Osip Emil’evich
described at: Mandelshtam Osip Emilevich
has abstract: (1891–1938), Russian poet, prose writer, and literary essayist. Most of Osip Mandel’shtam’s new writings went unpublished in the Soviet Union during the Stalin era (1929–1953) and were almost unknown to generations of Russian readers until the mid-1960s. Mandel’shtam (also spelled Mandelstam) grew up in Saint Petersburg in a middle-class Jewish household. His father, a native of Riga, had abandoned rabbinical training for a secular education in Germany; Mandel’shtam’s mother, Flora Werblowsky, was a cultivated member of the Russian Jewish intelligentsia of Vilna.
title: Mandel’shtam Osip Emil’evich
alternative label: Mandel’shtam
alternative label: Osip Mandel’shtam
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Conversion
related: Finland
related: Russian Criticism and Scholarship (Literary Criticism and Scholarship)
related: Mandel’shtam, Nadezhda Iakovlevna
related: Moscow
related: Riga
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius

Mane, Mordekhai Tsevi
described at: Mane Mordekhai Tsevi
has abstract: (1859–1886), Hebrew poet. Mordekhai Tsevi Mane was born in Radochkovitchi (Radoshkovich), in the Vilna region. As a child he showed a talent for drawing and sketching, and his parents’ support enabled him to realize his goals and enroll in the Vilna Art School in 1876. He was then offered a place in the prestigious Saint Petersburg Royal Academy of Arts, where, thanks to the patronage of Jewish philanthropists, he studied from 1881 to 1884. After suffering a serious bout of tuberculosis, he was forced to return to his hometown, spending the remaining two years of his life in his parents’ house, surrounded by friends and admirers.
title: Mane, Mordekhai Tsevi
alternative label: Mordekhai Tsevi Mane
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Haskalah
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Land of Israel
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Vilnius

Maxy, Max Hermann
described at: Maxy Max Hermann
has abstract: (1895–1971), painter, set designer, and teacher. Max Hermann Maxy was born in Brăila, Romania, but grew up in Bucharest, where he studied at the School of Fine Arts from 1913 to 1916. Among his teachers were Frederic Storck and Camil Ressu.
title: Maxy, Max Hermann
alternative label: Max Hermann Maxy
related: Brăila
related: Brauner, Victor
related: Bucharest
related: Budapest
related: Călugăru, Ion
related: Fundoianu, Beniamin
related: Iancu, Marcel
related: Iaşi
related: Moscow
related: Prague
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Voronca, Ilarie
related: Warsaw

Menaḥem Mendel of Rimanov
described at: Menahem Mendel of Rimanov
has abstract: (Rymanów; 1745–1815), a founder of Hasidism in Galicia. Menaḥem Mendel studied at the yeshiva of Shemu’el Shmelke Horovitz of Nikolsburg (Mikulov) at Ryczywol and later became a disciple of Elimelekh of Lizhensk (Leżajsk). After marrying the daughter of a well-to-do Jew from Przytyk, he made his home there for a number of years, moving to Rymanów in 1807, where he remained until his death. In 1800, the inveterate Misnaged David of Makev (Maków) included Menaḥem Mendel in a list of Hasidic tsadikim in his anti-Hasidic polemic, Shever posh‘im.
title: Menaḥem Mendel of Rimanov
alternative label: Menaḥem Mendel
related: Elimelekh of Lizhensk
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Leżajsk
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Mikulov
related: Paneth, Yeḥezkel
related: Ropshits-Dzikov Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Yisra’el ben Shabetai of Kozhenits
related: Zhidachov-Komarno Hasidic Dynasty

Miskolc
described at: Miskolc
has abstract: Seat of Borsod county, Hungary. Founded by a steady stream of immigrants from Moravia from the 1720s on, the Jewish community of Miskolc grew slowly during the eighteenth century. Until the 1820s, its only functioning communal institutions were the burial society, founded in 1767, and a seven-man executive committee appointed in 1769 to collect the Toleration Tax on behalf of the royal crown. The community had no rabbi until the 1770s, and, until 1784, only a single school, which had been founded in 1734. A Josephinian Normalschule, established in 1784 and highly praised by Ferenc Kazinczy, superintendant of schools for the Habsburg government and a leading figure in the Magyar national revival, functioned for just three years.
title: Miskolc
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Credit
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Hatvany, Lajos
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Lichtenstein, Hillel
related: Normalschulen
related: Orthodoxy
related: Reform, Religious
related: Tavernkeeping
related: Weddings
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Munkatsh Hasidic Dynasty
described at: Munkatsh Hasidic Dynasty
has abstract: Ultraconservative Hungarian Hasidic sect. The spiritual progenitor of Munkatsh Hasidism was Tsevi Elimelekh of Dinov (d. 1841), an outspoken opponent of the Haskalah and prolific author who served briefly as rabbi in Munkács (Hun., more properly Muncács; Cz., Mukačevo; Yid., Munkatsh; now Ukr. Mukacheve; the most commonly used transliteration by English-language scholars is the semi-Polonized spelling Munkacz) from 1824 to 1826 before returning to Galicia in the wake of conflicts with the town’s other rabbis.
title: Munkatsh Hasidic Dynasty
alternative label: Munkatsh
alternative label: Munkatsh Hasidic dynasty
alternative label: Munkatsher
alternative label: Munkatsher rebbe
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Belz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Dress
related: Galicia
related: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kook, Avraham Yitsḥak
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Misnagdim
related: Mukacheve
related: Orthodoxy
related: Reform, Religious
related: Sandz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Tsevi Elimelekh of Dinov
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

About this Article (Music)
described at: Music
has abstract: To survey the traditional music of East European Jews along with the participation of Jews in majority musical culture, this entry includes six articles. The overview defines genres and provides historical context. Music for Sacred Texts describes liturgical music and recitation styles. Traditional and Instrumental Music focuses on what has become commonly known as klezmer music. Concert Music provides a historical analysis of Jewish participation in Western classical music, attending conservatories, becoming professional orchestra and solo performers or composers, and developing a genre of concert music using traditional Jewish themes. Communal Organizations and Social Movements treats the multiplicity of nonprofessional musical organizations that especially arose in urban settings, many of which were closely or even directly associated with political organizations. Study of Jewish Music details the collecting of folk songs and other ethnomusicological activities. For further and related discussion, see Hasidism: Music; Holocaust: Music and the Holocaust; Songs and Songwriters; and Theater.
title: About this Article (Music)
alternative label: music
related: Folk Songs
related: Music (Hasidism)
related: Music and the Holocaust (Holocaust)
related: Songs and Songwriters
related: About this Article (Theater)

Nossig, Alfred
described at: Nossig Alfred
has abstract: (1864–1943), writer, sculptor, musician, and public activist. Alfred Nossig came from a wealthy family in Lemberg (Lwów), where his father served as secretary of the Jewish community and was an activist for Jewish rights in Galicia. Exposed to German culture by his father, Nossig was in favor of Polish-Jewish assimilation and gravitated toward Polish romanticism, which inspired him in the early 1880s to formulate ideas about liberating Jewish culture from the constraints of tradition. He expressed these ideas in the periodical Ojczyzna (The Fatherland) and in an organization that he himself founded, called Przymierze Braci (Union of Brothers).
title: Nossig, Alfred
alternative label: Alfred Nossig
related: Assimilation
related: Galicia
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Parties and Ideologies
described at: Parties and Ideologies
has abstract: The history of Jewish political parties in Eastern Europe was short, stretching as it did only from the 1880s until 1949, when what little remained of them after World War II was liquidated by the then recently established Communist regimes. Even during that brief period, experience demonstrated that their ability to change the circumstances in which the Jewish populations lived was severely limited. With the Jewish people in the states and major historic regions of Eastern Europe only rarely exceeding 10 percent of the total population, the parties could not realistically have been expected to gain a significant share in government.
title: Parties and Ideologies
alternative label: political parties
narrower: Social, Religious, and Geographical Divisions
narrower: The Final Years (1944–1948)
narrower: The Interwar Period
narrower: The Parties in Ebb and Flow (1900–1914)
narrower: World War II
related: Łódź
related: Agudas Akhim
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Alter, Wiktor
related: Anielewicz, Mordekhai
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Armed Resistance
related: Bessarabia
related: Betar
related: Białystok
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Borokhov, Ber
related: Bucharest
related: Bucovina
related: Budapest
related: Bund
related: Communism
related: Crimea
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Dror
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Einsatzgruppen
related: Erlich, Henryk
related: Estonia
related: Evsektsiia
related: Eynikayt
related: Fareynikte
related: Filderman, Wilhelm
related: Fleischmann, Gisela
related: Folkists
related: Galicia
related: General Zionists
related: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Gordonia
related: Grodzenski, Ḥayim Ozer
related: Grünbaum, Yitsḥak
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Hit’aḥadut
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jabotinsky, Vladimir
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Kasztner, Rezső
related: Katowice
related: Kaunas
related: Komoly, Ottó
related: Kossovskii, Vladimir
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Land of Israel
related: Latvia
related: Lifshits, Khaye Malke
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Lithuania
related: Litvakov, Moyshe
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Makhzikey ha-Das
related: Minorities Treaties
related: Minsk
related: Mizraḥi
related: Odessa
related: Orthodoxy
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Portnoy, Yekusiel
related: Prague

Piatra Neamţ
described at: Piatra Neamt
has abstract: City in the Moldavian region of Romania, at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains and on the banks of the Bistrița River. Jewish settlement in Piatra Neamț dates back as far as the eighteenth century: a wooden synagogue was built in 1766; a burial society existed by 1771, and the cemetery includes tombstones from that period as well. At the end of the eighteenth century, Jewish professional guilds were established and continued to function until 1861.
title: Piatra Neamţ
alternative label: Piatra Neamț
alternative label: Piatra-Neamț
related: Banking
related: Brauner, Victor
related: Crafts
related: Guilds
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Industry
related: Moldavia
related: Romania
related: Tombstones
related: Trade
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties
related: Zissu, Abraham Leib

Ploieşti
described at: Ploiesti
has abstract: (formerly Ploeşti), administrative and economic center in Romania, situated 60 kilometers north of Bucharest. The economic importance of Ploieşti resulted mainly from oil extraction and refining. Ploieşti experienced significant growth in the last decades of the nineteenth century, when oil began to be exploited in a systematic manner.
title: Ploieşti
related: Ashkenaz
related: Bucharest
related: Romania
related: Sephardim
related: Transnistria

Printing and Publishing before 1800 (Printing and Publishing)
described at: Printing and Publishing before 1800
has abstract: Jewish printing in Eastern Europe began in Prague in 1513, pioneered by a group of printers led by Gershom ben Shelomoh ha-Kohen (d. 1544). The chief cities for printing in Eastern Europe during the period under discussion—between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries—included Prague, Kraków (from 1534), and Lublin (from the late 1540s); Żółkiew became an important center in the eighteenth century (actually beginning in 1692). The main book dealers after the advent of printing were the owners of print shops; until the end of the eighteenth century, the term publisher was not applicable. Very little is known about the press runs of specific books; hence, historians generally rely on the number of editions printed in trying to gauge the popularity of a work.
title: Printing and Publishing before 1800 (Printing and Publishing)
alternative label: Hebrew printing
alternative label: printer
alternative label: printing
alternative label: printing press
alternative label: publishing
related: Bak Family
related: Dubno
related: Efrayim Shelomoh ben Aharon of Luntshits
related: Eli‘ezer ben Yitsḥak
related: Epstein, Yeḥi’el Mikhl
related: Fayvesh Family
related: Helicz Brothers
related: Heller, Yom Tov Lipmann
related: Horowitz Family
related: Hrodna
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lefin, Menaḥem Mendel
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Luria, Shelomoh ben Yeḥi’el
related: Luts’k
related: L’viv
related: Markuze, Moyshe
related: Ostrog
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Prostitz Family
related: Sabbatianism
related: Shimshon ben Pesaḥ of Ostropolye
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Tkhines
related: Tsene-rene
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Yafeh, Mordekhai ben Avraham
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zhovkva

Rabbinowitz, Sha’ul Pinḥas
described at: Rabbinowitz Shaul Pinhas
has abstract: (1845–1910), scholar, translator, and Zionist activist. Sha’ul (Saul) Pinḥas Rabbinowitz, known also by the acronym Shefer (after his initials), was born in Taurage, in the Kaunas (Kovno) district of Lithuania. He spent his childhood in Shnipishok (Lith., Šnipiškės), a suburb of Vilna, and in 1868 was ordained as a rabbi at Yisra’el Salanter’s yeshiva in Kovno. Rabbinowitz subsequently worked as a tutor in the homes of wealthy Jewish families.
title: Rabbinowitz, Sha’ul Pinḥas
alternative label: Sha’ul Pinḥas Rabbinowitz
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Fuenn, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Heder
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Katowice
related: Kaunas
related: Land of Israel
related: Lipkin, Yisra’el ben Ze’ev Volf
related: Lithuania
related: Magid, Ha-
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Religious Year
described at: Religious Year
has abstract: The rhythm of Jewish life in Eastern Europe was governed substantially by the Jewish calendar, although the calendar of the majority culture impinged on Jewish lives as well. Merchants’ calendars published in Hebrew in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries indicated not only the Jewish months, with their associated astrological signs and holidays, but the Christian ones as well. In one calendar, for example, Easter is designated tselem tog: Cross Day. And particular social and business customs were observed by some Jews on Christmas. Still, the Jewish year served as the timeline and background for much of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. In the twentieth century, secular Jewish movements retained much of the calendar while reinterpreting the significance of some holidays.
title: Religious Year
alternative label: Jewish holidays
alternative label: holiday
alternative label: holiday observance
alternative label: holiday observances
alternative label: holidays
related: Bund
related: Calendars
related: Charity
related: Christmas
related: Councils
related: Geese
related: Guilds
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: Land of Israel
related: Lithuania
related: Memory
related: Misnagdim
related: Money
related: Paper Cuts
related: Passover
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Postcards and Greeting Cards
related: Purim
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Tkhines
related: Toys and Games
related: Vilnius
related: Weddings
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Ropshits-Dzikov Hasidic Dynasty
described at: Ropshits-Dzikov Hasidic Dynasty
has abstract: Hasidic dynasty founded by Naftali Tsevi Horowitz of Ropshits (1760–1827), a leader of Hasidism in Galicia. Naftali Tsevi was a student of Menaḥem Mendel of Rimanov (1745–1815) and, to a lesser extent, of Ya‘akov Yitsḥak, the Seer of Lublin (1745–1815), and Yisra’el of Kozhenits (1737–1814). After the death of his teachers, Horowitz became the leading figure of the Hasidic movement in much of Galicia, though he never served as a leader of Polish Hasidism as a whole. He was also well known for his sense of humor.
title: Ropshits-Dzikov Hasidic Dynasty
alternative label: Dzikov
alternative label: Ropshits
alternative label: Ropshitz
related: Belz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Menaḥem Mendel of Rimanov
related: Pshiskhe Hasidic Dynasty
related: Reform, Religious
related: Sandz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Tsevi Elimelekh of Dinov
related: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz
related: Yisra’el ben Shabetai of Kozhenits
related: Zhidachov-Komarno Hasidic Dynasty

Rosen, Mozes
described at: Rosen Mozes
has abstract: (1912–1994), Romanian rabbi and community leader. Mozes Rosen was born in Moineşti, Moldavia, to an Orthodox rabbinical family from Galicia. His father, Avram Rosen, was the rabbi of the community of Fălticeni. Rosen studied at the yeshiva of Vienna but was forced to leave when the Nazis occupied Austria in 1938. He also studied law at the University of Bucharest.
title: Rosen, Mozes
alternative label: Mozes Rosen
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Bucharest
related: Galicia
related: Moineşti
related: Moldavia
related: Orthodoxy
related: Revista Cultului Mozaic din R.P.R.
related: Romania
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Royte Velt, Di
described at: Royte Velt Di
has abstract: Yiddish journal published in Kharkov between 1924 and 1933. Di royte velt (The Red World) was established at the initiative of Moisei Ravich-Cherkasskii, head of the press department of the Ukrainian Communist Party’s Central Committee, and Motl Kiper, head of the party’s Jewish section. Ravich-Cherkasskii and the experienced Yiddish journalist Henekh Kazakevich edited the periodical.
title: Royte Velt, Di
alternative label: Di royte velt
related: Der Nister
related: Fefer, Itsik
related: Fininberg, Ezra
related: Gildin, Khayim
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: Kvitko, Leyb
related: Litvakov, Moyshe
related: Markish, Perets
related: Minsk
related: Persov, Shmuel
related: Ukraine

Şafran Family
described at: Safran Family
has abstract: (Safran, Schafran, Shafran), rabbinical family. Originally from Galicia, Betsal’el Ze’ev Şafran (Rabaz; 1867–1929) settled in Romania in 1887 and became a rabbi in Sculeni; in 1889 he took a position in Ştefăneşti, and in 1905 he served as rabbi of Bacău, a position he held until the end of his life. Şafran’s sons were rabbis and educators, initially in Romania and later in Israel, Europe, and America.
title: Şafran Family
alternative label: Alexander Şafran
alternative label: Alexandru Şafran
alternative label: Yosef Şafran
alternative label: Şafran
related: Bacău
related: Bucharest
related: Galicia
related: Iaşi
related: Kook, Avraham Yitsḥak
related: Land of Israel
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Mizraḥi
related: ORT
related: OZE
related: Ploieşti
related: Romania
related: Seminary
related: Shapira, Me’ir

Schlesinger, Akiva Yosef
described at: Schlesinger Akiva Yosef
has abstract: (1837–1922), pioneer of ultra-Orthodoxy, early Jewish nationalist, and Yiddishist. Akiva Yosef Schlesinger’s father, Yeḥi’el (1814–1891), a close disciple of Rabbi Mosheh Sofer, was a minor rabbinical functionary in his hometown of Pressburg. As a child, Schlesinger was raised in an ascetic manner, wakened by his grandfather at midnight to mourn the destruction of the Temple. His first teacher was his father, whom he would recognize as his sole master and mentor. It was he who imbued the boy with the spirit of Orthodoxy and the conservative legacy of Sofer. Nevertheless, Schlesinger also attended four years of elementary school, learning to read and write German and mastering mathematics, at which he particularly excelled.
title: Schlesinger, Akiva Yosef
alternative label: Akiva Yosef Schlesinger
related: Agriculture
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Assimilation
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bratislava
related: Crafts
related: Dress
related: Galicia
related: Hildesheimer, Esriel
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kalischer, Tsevi Hirsh
related: Kolomyia
related: Land of Israel
related: About this Article (Language)
related: Lichtenstein, Hillel
related: Messianism
related: Names and Naming
related: Orthodoxy
related: Reform, Religious
related: Schick, Mosheh
related: Sofer, Avraham Shemu’el Binyamin
related: Sofer, Ḥayim ben Mordekhai Efrayim Fishel
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties
related: Zweifel, Eli‘ezer

Shklovskii, Viktor Borisovich
described at: Shklovskii Viktor Borisovich
has abstract: (1893–1984), literary critic and theorist, writer, and a founder of Obshchestvo Izucheniia Poeticheskogo Iazyka (Society for the Study of Poetic Language; Opoiaz). Shklovskii was born in Saint Petersburg and studied literary history there at the university. If one is to believe his retrospective miscellany Tret’ia fabrika (The Third Factory; 1926), academic philology had little to offer this irreverent and restless student. Brilliant, exuberant, versatile, he felt more at home amid the noise of literary cafés than in the calm atmosphere of the university classrooms. A close association with futurist poets and artists gave Shklovskii what his professors sadly lacked—awareness of literary form and of artistic construction. “With the aid of futurism and sculpture one could already understand a great deal. It was then that I grasped art as an independent system.” And it was then that Shklovskii became eligible for the role of a leading spokesman and a pungent phrasemaker of Russian formalism.
title: Shklovskii, Viktor Borisovich
alternative label: Viktor Shklovskii
related: Saint Petersburg

Shmeruk, Khone
described at: Shmeruk Khone
has abstract: (1921–1997), historian of Yiddish literature and Ashkenazic Jewry. Khone Shmeruk was born and raised in Warsaw, where he studied in a modern heder and in the Krinski secondary school before beginning studies at the University of Warsaw and the YIVO Institute. In the latter part of his career, he was instrumental in renewing Jewish studies in Poland.
title: Shmeruk, Khone
alternative label: Chone Shmeruk
alternative label: Khone Shmeruk
related: Łódź
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Ashkenaz
related: Belarus
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Book Design and Illustration
related: About this Article (Children’s Literature)
related: Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lefin, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Manger, Itsik
related: Naḥman of Bratslav
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Perl, Yosef
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: About this Article (Printing and Publishing)
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Purim-shpil
related: Rivke bas Me’ir of Tikotin
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Singer, Isaac Bashevis
related: Sutzkever, Avrom
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw
related: YIVO
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Steinberg, Ya‘akov
described at: Steinberg Yaakov
has abstract: (1887–1947), Yiddish and Hebrew poet, short-story writer, essayist, critic, and translator. Ya‘akov Steinberg left his parents’ home in Belaya Tserkov’, Ukraine, for Odessa at the age of 14. He soon moved to Warsaw, the center of Hebrew belle lettres at the time, where he lived in poverty. His first poem, “Alon ha-dema‘ot” (The Wailing Oak; 1901), marked the beginning of a prolific literary career that was noted by Ḥayim Naḥman Bialik (in an article titled “Shiratenu ha-tse‘irah” [Our Young Poetry]) when Steinberg was just 20 years old. From 1903 to 1909, Steinberg widened his scope and wrote prose, publishing three stories in Ha-Tsofeh, followed by scores of poems and stories in a variety of Hebrew periodicals. In 1910, Steinberg published two small lyrical books of poetry and satire: Sefer ha-satirot (The Book of Satires; 1910) and Sefer ha-bedidut (The Book of Loneliness; 1910).
title: Steinberg, Ya‘akov
alternative label: Ya‘akov Steinberg
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Baron, Devorah
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Fichmann, Ya‘akov
related: Fraynd, Der
related: Nomberg, Hersh Dovid
related: Odessa
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw

Steinman, Eli‘ezer
described at: Steinman Eliezer
has abstract: (1892–1970), writer and essayist. Eli‘ezer Steinman was born in Uvoduvka, in the Podolian region of Russia (now Ukraine). He studied at a yeshiva in Kishinev and at age 15 received rabbinic ordination. Steinman began writing in Hebrew and Yiddish, and in 1909 published his first Hebrew story in the journal Reshafim, edited by David Frishman. That same year he moved to Odessa and joined the circle of Hebrew writers in that city. In 1912 he went to Warsaw, published stories and essays in Ha-Tsefirah, and translated works by Strindberg, Maeterlinck, and Dostoevsky.
title: Steinman, Eli‘ezer
alternative label: Eli‘ezer Steinman
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Frishman, David
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Kishinev
related: Kolot
related: Mysticism and Mystical Literature
related: Odessa
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Stybel
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Steinschneider, Moritz
described at: Steinschneider Moritz
has abstract: (1816–1907), bibliographer, historian, and linguist; a founder of modern Jewish studies. Born in Prossnitz (Prostějov, Moravia), Moritz Steinschneider received both a general and a Jewish education, including yeshiva studies in Nikolsburg (Mikulov). In Prague, he qualified for a Hebrew teacher’s diploma. In the course of his academic studies at the universities of Vienna, Leipzig, and Berlin, Steinschneider made the acquaintance of Leopold Dukes, Leopold Zunz, and Abraham Geiger, as well as Michael Sachs, who had formative influences on him. While working at a series of teaching jobs in Prague, Steinschneider obtained his rabbinical ordination in Prossnitz in 1843, and moved to Berlin in 1845 in search of employment.
title: Steinschneider, Moritz
alternative label: Moritz Steinschneider
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Goldziher, Ignác
related: Mikulov
related: Prague
related: Prostějov
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Stybel, Avraham Yosef
described at: Stybel Avraham Yosef
has abstract: (1885–1946), Hebrew publisher. Avraham Yosef Stybel was born in Zarki, southwestern Poland, to a Hasidic family with ties to the Kotsk and Radomsk dynasties. Despite his father’s attempts to provide him with a religious education that would qualify him to become a rabbi, he was attracted from childhood to secular Hebrew literature. At the same time, he was graced with a practical business sense, and studied bookkeeping through correspondence learning.
title: Stybel, Avraham Yosef
alternative label: Avraham Stybel
alternative label: Avraham Yosef Stybel
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Berkowitz, Yitsḥak Dov
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Cahan, Ya‘akov
related: Frishman, David
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Katz, Bentsiyon
related: Lachower, Yeruḥam Fishel
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Radomsk Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Stybel
related: Warsaw

Synagogue Architecture
described at: Synagogue Architecture
has abstract: There has been neither uniformity nor consistency in the synagogue architecture of Eastern Europe. The constants are the ritual necessities—primarily the bimah and the ark containing the Torah scrolls—and illumination suitable for reading, adequate seating, and at least 10 adult Jewish men to perform the complete services. From the seventeenth century on, it became common practice to hang a perpetual lamp above the ark, a menorah near it, and a curtain over the ark. Male congregants sat on benches around the building’s perimeter and on the sides of the bimah, with elders perhaps seated on either side of the ark. The focal point was the ark–bimah axis and the bimah desk at which the officiants stood. Individual chairs and reading stands—and occasionally even pews in the nineteenth century—were added, to increase seating capacity.
title: Synagogue Architecture
alternative label: synagogue architecture
alternative label: synagogue wood carvings
alternative label: synagogues
related: Altneuschul
related: Archives
related: Ashkenaz
related: Bałaban, Majer
related: Baumhorn, Lipót
related: Belarus
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lissitzky, El
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Luts’k
related: L’viv
related: Moldova
related: Mukacheve
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: Prague
related: Przemyśl
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Rzeszów
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Tykocin
related: Ukraine
related: Vilnius
related: Wrocław
related: Zamość
related: Zhovkva

Szymel, Maurycy
described at: Szymel Maurycy
has abstract: (1903–1942), Polish and Yiddish poet, prose writer, translator, critic, and publicist. Maurycy (Mosheh) Szymel was born into an Orthodox family in Lwów, where he graduated from high school. He made his literary debut in Chwila in 1925, initially writing poetry for children. From the beginning of the 1930s, he participated in Warsaw’s Jewish literary life, publishing a manifesto on Polish Jewish poetry in the weekly Opinia (1933) and writing for the Jewish press in Yiddish and Polish. In 1939 he returned to Lwów and published Yiddish works in Sovetish literatur. During the Nazi occupation, Szymel worked as a clerk for the Judenrat in Lwów. He died at the Janów labor camp.
title: Szymel, Maurycy
alternative label: Maurycy Szymel
related: Chwila
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: L’viv
related: Opinia
related: Tuwim, Julian
related: Warsaw
related: Wise Men of Chelm

Tallinn
described at: Tallinn
has abstract: (Ger., Reval; Rus., Revel, later Tallin), historical capital of the Province of Estonia. Christianized in 1219 by Danish crusaders and then a member of the Hanseatic League, Tallinn was under Swedish rule from 1561 to 1710 and Russian from 1710 to 1918. Beginning in 1918, Tallin was the capital of the Republic of Estonia, including during the years of Soviet annexation (1940–1941, 1944–1991) and Nazi occupation (1941–1944). Its population in 2005 was 402,000, and it still serves as the industrial, logistical, and administrative center of Estonia.
title: Tallinn
related: Betar
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Courland
related: Estonia
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Lithuania
related: Maccabi Movement
related: Military Service in Russia
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Ha-
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Te’omim Family
described at: Teomim Family
has abstract: Wealthy and prominent family that produced rabbis and community leaders in Bohemia, Poland, and Galicia from the end of the sixteenth century. Mosheh Aharon Te’omim of Prague (d. 1609?) was the first to bear the family name. His descendant, Aharon Te’omim (d. 1690), who wrote Mateh Aharon (1678), a commentary on the Haggadah, and Bigde Aharon (1710), a collection of homilies, was a preacher in Prague and a rabbi in Worms. In 1690 he began serving as rabbi in Kraków, but several months later, while on his way to a meeting of the Council of Four Lands, he was arrested on the orders of a Polish nobleman, and died soon thereafter.
title: Te’omim Family
alternative label: Barukh Fränkl-Te’omim
alternative label: Fränkl-Te’omim
alternative label: Te’omim
alternative label: Te’omim-Fränkel
alternative label: Yosef Te’omim
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brody
related: Buchach
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Tribuna
described at: Tribuna
has abstract: Russian-language journal produced by the central board of OZET (Society for the Settlement of Jewish Toilers on the Land) between 1927 and 1937 in Moscow. Semen Dimanshtein, its editor in chief (1927–1934, 1936–1937), was chairman of OZET. Tribuna was published at times monthly (1927–1928, 1933–1935), biweekly (1928–1929, 1932–1933, 1936–1937), and at one point every 10 days (1930–1932). Circulation numbers averaged 13,900.
title: Tribuna
related: Dimanshtein, Semen Markovich
related: Moscow
related: Shtetl
related: Society for the Settlement of Jewish Toilers on the Land
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Tsoref, Yehoshu‘a Heshel ben Yosef
described at: Tsoref Yehoshua Heshel ben Yosef
has abstract: (Heshel Tsoref; 1633–ca. 1700), Sabbatian prophet. Yehoshu‘a Heshel Tsoref was born in Vilna and had little formal education, earning his living as a silversmith. During the Polish–Swedish war, he sought refuge in Amsterdam, where he learned of the advent of Shabetai Tsevi. After returning to Vilna in 1666, Tsoref became the most important personality of the Sabbatian movement in Lithuania; he particularly advocated urgent ascetic acts of penance. In contrast to other Sabbatian leaders, Tsoref’s claim to leadership was based not on personal learning or the development of novel theological doctrines, but on his personal charisma as expressed in prophecy. He had a number of visions, and was known to impart profound interpretations of the Torah despite his lack of rabbinic learning.
title: Tsoref, Yehoshu‘a Heshel ben Yosef
alternative label: Heshel Tsoref
alternative label: Yehoshu‘a Heshel Tsoref
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Brody
related: Chernobil Hasidic Dynasty
related: Karlin-Stolin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Kloyz
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Land of Israel
related: Levi Yitsḥak of Barditshev
related: Lithuania
related: Margoliot, Efrayim Zalman ben Menaḥem Manes
related: Mikulov
related: Sabbatianism
related: Vilnius
related: Yehudah Ḥasid ha-Levi

Tsukunft
described at: Tsukunft
has abstract: Founded in 1913, Yugnt-Bund Tsukunft (the Future) was the main Bundist youth organization in interwar Poland. Its predecessor, Der Kleyner Bund, was a network of youth organizations that spontaneously appeared throughout the Pale of Settlement at the time of the 1905 Revolution. A product of the idealism and enthusiasm of the times, Der Kleyner Bund declined in the years of reaction following the revolution. An attempt to recreate the youth organization on a more systematic basis immediately preceding World War I led to the creation in 1913 of the Sotsyal-Demokratishe Yugnt-Organizatsye Tsukunft.
title: Tsukunft
related: Białystok
related: Bund
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: About this Article (Sport)
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Youth Movements

Varshavski, Oyzer
described at: Varshavski Oyzer
has abstract: (1898–1944), Yiddish writer, painter, and art critic. Born in Sochaczew, Poland, Oyzer Varshavski received a traditional Jewish education and settled in Warsaw with his family at the age of 14. He was encouraged to write during World War I by Itshe Meyer Vaysenberg, whose publishing house later produced Varshavski’s first novel, Shmuglars (Smugglers; 1920). The book was well received by critics and readers and went through several editions and reprints in Warsaw, Vilna, and Kiev before 1930. In the 1920s, he published stories in various—usually modernist—journals in Poland, the United States, and Western Europe.
title: Varshavski, Oyzer
alternative label: Oyzer Varshavski
related: Khalyastre
related: Kiev
related: Kletskin, Boris Arkadevich
related: Markish, Perets
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Shtetl
related: Vaysenberg, Itshe Meyer
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: World War I

Vevyorke, Avrom
described at: Vevyorke Avrom
has abstract: (1887–1935), Yiddish poet, playwright, and critic. Born in Babiak, Poland, Avrom Vevyorke was trained to be a rabbi, but instead became a Labor Zionist and began writing in Yiddish. He made his literary debut with stories and poems in the Warsaw daily Der veg (The Way) in 1906 and the weekly Roman-tsaytung (Novel-Newspaper) in 1907. Vevyorke moved to Galicia in 1908, working for the Kraków Tog (Day) from 1911. His small collection Baladn (Ballads; 1912) was published in Kraków under the imprint of Dos Bukh (The Book). He edited the journal Dos bukh in Berlin, but soon went to Antwerp and then to London, working as a Yiddish journalist and editor until 1916, when he moved to Russia.
title: Vevyorke, Avrom
alternative label: Avrom Vevyorke
related: Emes, Der
related: Galicia
related: Gordon, Shmuel
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Kushnirov, Arn
related: Litvakov, Moyshe
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Persov, Shmuel
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shomer
related: Shtrom, Der
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Volf, Leyzer
described at: Volf Leyzer
has abstract: (1910–1943), Yiddish poet. Leyzer Volf (born Mekler), a founding member of the literary group Yung-Vilne, was one of the great parodists in Yiddish poetry. Beloved by local audiences for his outrageous artistic gestures, including an attempt to break the world record in poetry writing with 1,001 untitled lyrics in June 1930, he bridged popular and elite impulses within Yung-Vilne, making him the group’s first local star. Volf is best remembered for his lack of composure, his bizarre parodies of European and Yiddish writers, his dramatic sketches and grotesque portrayals that took on contemporary political and material concerns, his literary adaptation of folk materials from Vilna’s cultural fabric, and his endless fascination with himself as a poetic subject.
title: Volf, Leyzer
alternative label: Leyzer Volf
related: Bin
related: Frayland-lige
related: Literarishe Bleter
related: Molodowsky, Kadia
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Reyzen, Zalmen
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Vilnius
related: Weinreich, Max
related: YIVO
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Yung-Vilne

Warsaw Yiddish Art Theater
described at: Warsaw Yiddish Art Theater
has abstract: (Varshever Yidisher Kunst-teater; VYKT), critically acclaimed Yiddish dramatic company active in interwar Poland in 1924–1925, 1926–1928, and 1938–1939. After the extraordinary success of S. An-ski’s Der dibek (The Dybbuk; Warsaw, 1920), it became clear that a considerable audience existed in Poland for Yiddish theater with artistic aspirations. But was this new theater to confine itself specifically to Jewish subjects and style? The Warsaw Yiddish Art Theater was founded by two of the leading young representatives of Yiddish dramatic theater, Ida Kaminska and Zygmunt Turkow, who believed that the new theater should open itself to the themes and styles of contemporary European theater. Kaminska and Turkow had already assembled a company that performed at the Tsentral Theater in Warsaw in 1922–1923. The VYKT began to perform as such in 1924.
title: Warsaw Yiddish Art Theater
alternative label: Varshever Yiddisher Kunst-teater
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Broderzon, Moyshe
related: Dybbuk, The
related: Ettinger, Shloyme
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Kaminski Family
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: L’viv
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Operetta
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: Stage Design
related: Yiddish Theater (Theater)
related: Turkow Family
related: Vilner Trupe
related: Wrocław

Wawelberg, Hipolit
described at: Wawelberg Hipolit
has abstract: (1843–1901), banker and philanthropist. Hipolit Wawelberg was born in Warsaw to a banking family and graduated from the Institute of Agronomy in Marymont. In 1863, he joined the January insurgents, but after his father, Tsevi Hirsh Wawelberg, intervened he was sent to study in Berlin. When Wawelberg returned to Warsaw, he married Ludwika Bersohn (1852–1927), the daughter of industrialist Me’ir and sister of the banker and art patron Mathias Bersohn. Continuing his father’s financial activities, Wawelberg established a bank in Saint Petersburg, becoming one of the wealthiest people in the Kingdom of Poland. His financial institution, known from 1913 as Bank Zachodni, existed until 1939.
title: Wawelberg, Hipolit
alternative label: Hipolit Wawelberg
related: Banking
related: Bersohn, Mathias
related: Korczak, Janusz
related: L’viv
related: Pogroms
related: Poland from 1795 to 1939 (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shatzky, Yankev
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Yatskan, Shmuel Yankev
described at: Yatskan Shmuel Yankev
has abstract: (1874–1936), publisher, editor, and publicist. Born in Vobol’niki (Vabalninkas), Lithuania, Shmuel Yankev Yatskan received a traditional Jewish education at the Ponevezh yeshiva, and rabbinical ordination in 1892. He moved to Saint Petersburg in 1895, where he contributed to the Hebrew-language newspaper Ha-Melits. He lived in Warsaw from 1902, became a member of the Zionist movement, and was a leading contributor to Ha-Tsefirah. For some time (in 1903) Yatskan supported the Uganda project and was among the founders of the territorialist faction.
title: Yatskan, Shmuel Yankev
alternative label: Shmuel Yankev Yatskan
related: Bin, Di
related: Haynt
related: Lithuania
related: Melits, Ha-
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ponevezh, Yeshiva of
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Zaretski, Ayzik
described at: Zaretski Ayzik
has abstract: (1891–1956), Yiddish linguist, lexicologist, and educator. Born in Pinsk into the family of a Jewish schoolteacher and compiler of a Russian mathematics textbook, Ayzik Zaretski received a Talmudic education and graduated from a Russian secondary school. He then studied mathematics at Dorpat (mod. Tartu, Estonia) University from 1913 to 1917. Active in the student historical and literary society, he was enthusiastic about Yiddish philology and Esperanto.
title: Zaretski, Ayzik
alternative label: Ayzik Zaretski
related: Borokhov, Ber
related: Bund
related: Estonia
related: Filologishe Shriftn
related: Khar’kiv
related: Moscow
related: Pinsk
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Tartu
related: Vevyorke, Avrom
related: Vilnius
related: YIVO

Al’tman, Natan Isaevich
described at: Altman Natan Isaevich
has abstract: (1889–1970), artist. From 1914 to 1924, Natan Al’tman was the chief rival of Marc Chagall in the Russian Jewish art renaissance. Born in Vinnitsa (Vinnytsya, Ukr.), he attended art school in Odessa from 1903 to 1907 and moved to Paris in 1910, where he studied the works of old masters as well as cubism. His first famous work, Evreiskie pokhorony (Jewish Funeral), appeared in 1911.
title: Al’tman, Natan Isaevich
alternative label: Natan Al’tman
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Dybbuk, The
related: Granovskii, Aleksandr Mikhailovich
related: Habimah
related: Kultur-lige
related: Moscow
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Odessa
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Stage Design
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Tombstones

Anielewicz, Mordekhai
described at: Anielewicz Mordekhai
has abstract: (1920?–1943), Zionist youth leader and commander of the Jewish Fighting Organization (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa; ŻOB) in the Warsaw ghetto. Born in Wyszków, Poland, Mordekhai Anielewicz was initially a member of the Revisionist youth movement Betar but shifted allegiance to the left-wing Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, where his powerful personality, rhetorical skills, and sports prowess marked him as a leader.
title: Anielewicz, Mordekhai
alternative label: Mordekhai Anielewicz
related: Armed Resistance
related: Betar
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Revisionist Zionists
related: Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Ha-
related: Warsaw
related: Youth Movements
related: Zuckerman, Yitsḥak

Baron, Devorah
described at: Baron Devorah
has abstract: (1887–1956), Hebrew writer. Born in Uzda, a shtetl near Minsk, Devorah Baron received the type of religious education generally offered only to boys, in the heder of her father, Rabbi Shabetai (Shepsl) Eli‘ezer Baron. Growing up in a rabbinic home, she was exposed to halakhic decisions as they applied both to the community as a whole and to her own family. This experience marked her creative worldview throughout her life.
title: Baron, Devorah
alternative label: Devorah Baron
related: Childhood
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Heder
related: Kaunas
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Minsk
related: Shtetl
related: Vilnius

Będzin
described at: Bedzin
has abstract: Royal town in southern Poland, since 1945 in the province of Silesia. Będzin (Yid., Bendin) traces Jewish settlement back to the thirteenth century. In 1583, King Stefan Batory granted a charter to Jews of Będzin, giving them the right to own prayer houses and a cemetery, to sell and buy municipal real estate, to carry out unlimited trade, to slaughter animals and sell meat, and to manufacture and distribute alcoholic beverages. The privilege was confirmed by subsequent rulers.
title: Będzin
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Armed Resistance
related: Kahal
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Silesia
related: Trade

Bergmann, Hugo
described at: Bergmann Hugo
has abstract: (1883–1975), philosopher and early Zionist. Hugo Bergmann (also Shemu’el Hugo Bergman) was a member of the German-speaking Jewish minority of Prague in the generation most closely associated with his classmate and friend Franz Kafka. As a young student of philosophy and natural science, Bergmann was an active participant in the Prague philosophical salon of Berta Fanta, along with other Prague Jewish intellectuals of his generation including Felix Weltsch, Emil Utitz, Max Brod, and, more occasionally, Kafka.
title: Bergmann, Hugo
alternative label: Hugo Bergmann
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Bar Kochba Association
related: Brod, Max
related: Fanta, Berta
related: Hit’aḥadut
related: Kafka, Franz
related: Maccabi Movement
related: Prague
related: Utitz, Emil
related: Weltsch, Felix
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Boker Or, Ha-
described at: Boker Or Ha-
has abstract: (1876–1886), Hebrew literary monthly. Ha-Boker or (The Morning Light) was founded in Lwów by the writer Avraham Ber Gottlober as a counterpoint to Perets Smolenskin’s monthly, Ha-Shaḥar (The Dawn). Between 1874 and 1875, Smolenskin had used his monthly to publish sections of his collection of essays ‘Et lata‘at (A Time to Plant), which was devoted, in the main, to attacking the Berlin Haskalah founded by Moses Mendelssohn. Gottlober, a moderate maskil of the older generation, saw it as his duty to defend Mendelssohn’s honor, and in 1876 and 1877 Ha-Boker or provided a platform for Gottlober’s supporters. They were not opposed to Smolenskin’s maskilic, nationalist goals, and therefore concentrated their efforts on refuting claims that Mendelssohn was antinationalist, or that he was responsible for assimilationist trends among Jews.
title: Boker Or, Ha-
alternative label: Ha-Boker or
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Assimilation
related: Braudes, Re’uven Asher
related: Buber, Salomon
related: Frishman, David
related: Gottlober, Avraham Ber
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Levin, Yehudah Leib (poet)
related: L’viv
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shaḥar, Ha-
related: Smolenskin, Perets
related: Warsaw
related: Zweifel, Eli‘ezer

Boskovice
described at: Boskovice
has abstract: Town in Moravia in today’s Czech Republic. Boskovice (Ger., Boskowitz) is one of the oldest Jewish communities in Moravia; a Hebrew tombstone from 1069 and a court document dated 1243 attest to the early presence of Jews. The Jewish cemetery dates to at least the sixteenth century. Boskovice’s first synagogue was built in 1698 and was followed by a second synagogue in the next century. A third synagogue, financed by the Löw-Beer family, was built in 1884.
title: Boskovice
alternative label: Boskowitz
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brno
related: Crafts
related: Czech Republic
related: Familiants Laws
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Industry
related: Kafka, Franz
related: Mikulov
related: Prague
related: Trade
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Brafman, Iakov Aleksandrovich
described at: Brafman Iakov Aleksandrovich
has abstract: (1825–1879), a notorious Russian convert from Judaism and author of the most successful and influential work of Judeophobia in Russian history. Iakov Brafman was born to a poor Jewish family, grew up almost uneducated and rebellious, and clashed with the kahal (the Jewish self-governing community) in his native Kletsk. When faced with the draft, he chose to convert, becoming first Lutheran and later Russian Orthodox.
title: Brafman, Iakov Aleksandrovich
alternative label: Iakov Aleksandrovich Brafman
alternative label: Iakov Brafman
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Kahal
related: Minsk
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Vilnius

Brodskii Family
described at: Brodskii Family
has abstract: Prominent Jewish family in the Russian Empire. The Brodskiis originated in Brody, Galicia, with the family name Schor; the name Brodskii was taken by Me’ir (Mark) Schor when he moved to the small town of Zlatopol’ in Kiev province in the early nineteenth century. The family had a pedigree of some distinction, as Me’ir’s grandfather had been Rabbi Aleksander Schor, author of a work on Jewish law entitled Simlah ḥadashah. One of Me’ir’s five businessmen sons, Izrail’ (Yisra’el; 1823–1888), began to invest in the nascent sugar industry in the 1840s, eventually leasing, managing, and finally owning his own plants. Izrail’ Brodskii moved his family and base of operations to Kiev in 1876; his refinery was one of the largest factories in the city, and he built a sugar empire that eventually came to control a quarter of the sugar production in the Russian Empire. His brothers Iosif, Solomon, and Isaak also became prominent entrepreneurs in Kiev.
title: Brodskii Family
alternative label: Brodskii
alternative label: Brodskii family
alternative label: El‘azar Brodskii
alternative label: Izrail’ (Yisra’el) Brodski
alternative label: Izrail’ (Yisra’el) Brodskii
related: Brody
related: Galicia
related: Gintsburg Family
related: Haskalah
related: Kiev
related: Levin, Yehudah Leib (poet)
related: Odessa
related: Philanthropy
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Bronshteyn, Yashe
described at: Bronshteyn Yashe
has abstract: (1897–1937), Yiddish literary critic. Born in Belsk, Belorussia, Yashe Bronshteyn lived in Warsaw from 1914 to 1918 and went to Russia in 1919 to fight as a Red Army soldier. In 1921 he lived in Orel and worked for the local Russian newspaper Orlovskaia pravda. In the early 1920s he studied in Kiev, where he headed a commune of young Jewish workers and wrote some unremarkable poems.
title: Bronshteyn, Yashe
alternative label: Yashe Bronshteyn
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Communist Party of the Soviet Union
related: Der Nister
related: Emes, Der
related: Kiev
related: Kovner, Avraham Uri
related: Kulbak, Moyshe
related: Kushnirov, Arn
related: Litvakov, Moyshe
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Rabin, Yoysef
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Vevyorke, Avrom
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Carp, Horia
described at: Carp Horia
has abstract: (1869–1943), journalist, writer, translator, and politician. Horia Carp was born in Hârlău, Romania, where he received his elementary education; he then attended high school in Botoşani. After pursuing studies at the faculty of medicine in Iaşi, he left this program in his last year to become a journalist.
title: Carp, Horia
alternative label: Horia Carp
related: Botoşani
related: Curierul Israelit
related: General Zionists
related: Hârlău
related: Iaşi
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Romania
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Dror
described at: Dror
has abstract: The name of two different youth organizations, disconnected geographically, but related to each other ideologically and politically. The term dror means “freedom.” The Zionist Socialist Federation “Dror” originated in Kiev, where a group of Jewish youth began to evolve into an organization on the eve of World War I. The group chose the name ‘Et Livnot (A Time to Build) in 1914; among its leaders were Ze’ev Zelikin and Yesha‘yah Pisarevski.
title: Dror
related: Galicia
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kiev
related: Land of Israel
related: Latvia
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Youth Movements
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

East Prussia
described at: East Prussia
has abstract: (Ger., Ostpreussen), former Prussian province on the Baltic Sea. With its capital at Königsberg (today Kaliningrad, Rus.), East Prussia was bordered to the east by Lithuania, to the south by Poland, and to the west by the province of West Prussia. Teutonic knights forbade the settlement of Jews in the territory in the fifteenth century. This ban, promoted by the province’s constitutionally strong estates, was circumvented in Königsberg from the seventeenth century on. In the province’s next-largest cities, Tilsit (Sovetsk, Rus.) and Memel (Klaipėda, Lith.), only certain “protected Jews” were admitted on the basis of the Generaljudenprivileg (general Jewish privilege) of 1750. A few cities (such as Lyck [Ełk, Pol.]) tolerated the founding of small Jewish communities; others permitted entry to Jewish merchants from Poland and Lithuania only during trade fairs.
title: East Prussia
alternative label: Prussia
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Haskalah
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Kaliningrad
related: Klaipėda
related: Lipkin, Yisra’el ben Ze’ev Volf
related: Lithuania
related: Magid, Ha-
related: Musar Movement
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rülf, Isaak
related: Trade
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Egalitatea
described at: Egalitatea
has abstract: Weekly publication issued in Bucharest from 1890 to 1916, and again from 1919 to 1940. The longest-enduring Jewish periodical in Romania, Egalitatea (Equality) started out as an emancipationist newspaper, “dedicated exclusively to Israelite interests within the country,” as was stated in its platform article. Over the extensive era in which it was issued, Egalitatea analyzed the political, cultural, social, and economic situations of Romanian Jews, as had its predecessor and model publication, Fraternitatea (Fraternity).
title: Egalitatea
related: Bucharest
related: Niemirower, Iacob Isac
related: Peltz, Isac
related: Romania
related: Schwarzfeld Family

Eisenbaum, Antoni
described at: Eisenbaum Antoni
has abstract: (1791–1852), director of the Warsaw Rabbinical School and leader of the radical integrationist movement in the Kingdom of Poland. Born in Warsaw, Antoni Eisenbaum was orphaned at an early age and received an incomplete secular secondary education. As a young man he was fluent in Polish, German, English, French, and Italian but never mastered Hebrew. He first earned his living as a private teacher and bookkeeper.
title: Eisenbaum, Antoni
alternative label: Antoni Eisenbaum
related: Dostrzegacz Nadwiślański
related: Haskalah
related: Kahal
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Reform, Religious
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Warsaw

Erlich, Henryk
described at: Erlich Henryk
has abstract: (1882–1942), Bundist leader and major Jewish politician in interwar Poland. Henryk (Hersh Wolf) Erlich was born in Lublin; his father was a lapsed Hasid who had become a follower of the Ḥoveve Tsiyon (Lovers of Zion) movement. Erlich received a traditional Jewish education as well as secular instruction. A significant turning point in Erlich’s political career came when he befriended Bronisław Grosser, a Bundist activist and prominent young theorist in the movement.
title: Erlich, Henryk
alternative label: Henryk Erlich
related: Alter, Wiktor
related: Bund
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Folks-tsaytung
related: Grosser, Bronisław
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Medem, Vladimir Davidovich
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw

Finland
described at: Finland
has abstract: An independent state in Scandinavia since 1917, Finland was under Swedish rule until 1809, during which time Jews were banned from living there. When Finland became a grand duchy of the Russian Empire in 1809, Jews who had served in the Russian army and been stationed in Finnish territory were allowed to settle with their families in the place of their service. Thus a small Jewish community was established in Finland, consisting in 1870 of about 400 Jews originating from areas that today are part of Russia and Lithuania. The means by which they could earn a living in Finland were severely restricted. Starting in 1872 the Finnish Diet discussed the legal status of Jews several times.
title: Finland
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Assimilation
related: Lithuania
related: Maccabi Movement
related: Orthodoxy
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Fundoianu, Beniamin
described at: Fundoianu Beniamin
has abstract: (1898–1944), poet and philosopher. Born in Iaşi, Romania, Beniamin Fundoianu was the son of Isac Wechsler, a small tradesman from Herța (in Bucovina), and of Adela, sister of Jewish scholars Elias, Wilhelm, and Moses Schwarzfeld. The name of the Fundoaia estate, near Herța, inspired Beniamin to choose his literary pseudonym Fundoianu, which he eventually turned into Fondane in France.
title: Fundoianu, Beniamin
alternative label: Beniamin Fundoianu
alternative label: Benjamin Fondane
related: Bucharest
related: Bucovina
related: Gertsa
related: Groper, Iacob Ashel
related: Iaşi
related: Mântuirea
related: Romania
related: Schwarzfeld Family
related: Shestov, Lev
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties
related: Zissu, Abraham Leib

Golem Legend
described at: Golem Legend
has abstract: The literary, folkloristic tale of the creation of a golem; the most famous formation of which was said to have been effected by Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el (Maharal; d. 1609) of Prague. The notion in Jewish culture that a particularly righteous person, possessed of esoteric wisdom, could create an artificial human being out of inorganic matter—and thus imitate the Divine—has literary roots in the Talmud and early kabbalistic ideas. Some medieval readers of Sefer yetsirah (The Book of Creation), one of Judaism’s earliest mystical texts, understood the work to have practical as well as theoretical implications. In a commentary to that text, Rabbi El‘azar of Worms (ca. 1165–ca. 1230), an exemplar of German Jewish pietism, enumerated instructions for the actual creation of a golem. The kabbalistic writings of Avraham Abulafia (b. 1240) of Spain and the so-called Pseudo-Sa‘adyah—a thirteenth-century text of French Jewish origin—similarly testify to the interest of medieval Jewish mystics in the “practical” arts of creation.
title: Golem Legend
alternative label: Golem
alternative label: Golem legend
alternative label: golem
related: Altneuschul
related: Ba‘ale Shem
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Chełm
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Pascheles, Wolf
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Warsaw
related: Weisel, Leopold
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el
related: Yitsḥak ben Shimshon ha-Kohen

Health and Healing
described at: Health and Healing
has abstract: The approach of the East European Jewish population to health care made no distinction between what would now be considered “scientific” medicine and “folk” medicine. This openness to combining folk remedies and magical cures with modern medical techniques was typical of Hasidim and Misnagdim alike, of both the learned and the illiterate. From the late seventeenth century on, physicians with “Western” training together with health care reformers emerging from the developing Jewish bourgeoisie attempted to reshape the popular attitude toward health care.
title: Health and Healing
alternative label: health
alternative label: health care
narrower: Health Care Facilities
narrower: Health Care Personnel
narrower: Professionalization and Nationalization of Jewish Medicine
related: Amulets and Talismans
related: Ba‘ale Shem
related: Charity
related: Daugavpils
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Latvia
related: Magic
related: Misnagdim
related: OZE
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: TOZ
related: Ukraine
related: Uman

Informers
described at: Informers
has abstract: Since the Talmudic period, Jewish tradition and law have regarded the denunciation of Jews to non-Jewish rulers, even for deplorable or sinful behavior, as a grave offense, to be condemned and combated. This attitude is already evident in one of the 18 benedictions in the daily Amidah prayer. Informers, referred to in Hebrew and Yiddish as moserim (or moysrim in Ashkenazic pronunciation) or malshinim, were considered not only traitors to their people, but a danger to other Jews’ lives and property. Denouncers were excommunicated, disqualified from giving testimony or swearing an oath, barred from participation in public prayer services, and even denied religious burial. Some informers were defined as rodfim (pursuers), a category of persons who according to Jewish law could be executed even before committing the offense. In some places, particularly pre-Expulsion Spain and Poland, government authorities permitted Jewish courts to imprison informers and even condemn them to death. In modern Eastern Europe, informing was used as a weapon in ideological and religious struggles. Hasidim, Misnagdim, and maskilim, mainly in tsarist Russia and Galicia, slandered one another, ostensibly revealing “secrets,” “crimes,” or other illegal acts that their opponents were trying to conceal.
title: Informers
alternative label: informers
related: Brafman, Iakov Aleksandrovich
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Kahal
related: Levinzon, Yitsḥak Ber
related: Minsk
related: Misnagdim
related: Natan Sternhartz of Nemirov
related: Nossig, Alfred
related: Perl, Yosef
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ringelblum, Emanuel
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Sandz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Shklov
related: Shneur Zalman of Liady
related: Smolenskin, Perets
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Yisra’el of Ruzhin
related: Zhidachov-Komarno Hasidic Dynasty

Jeitteles Family
described at: Jeitteles Family
has abstract: Prominent Bohemian family, principally associated with Prague. The main branch of the Jeitteles (Jeiteles, Geidels, Geitler) family descended from David Jeitteles in the seventeenth century. David’s son Leib was a physician; David’s grandson, Mishl Leib (d. 1760) bought the existing Jewish pharmacy in Prague, together with its pertinent privileges, from his cousin David Kisch (d. 1742) in July 1725.
title: Jeitteles Family
alternative label: Baruch Jeitteles
alternative label: Barukh Jeitteles
alternative label: Ignaz Jeitteles
alternative label: Jeitteles
alternative label: Jeitteles family
related: Banet, Mordekhai ben Avraham
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brno
related: Frankism
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kerem Ḥemed
related: Landau, Yeḥezkel ben Yehudah
related: Normalschulen
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Kaczerginski, Shmerke
described at: Kaczerginski Shmerke
has abstract: (1908–1954), Yiddish writer and cultural activist. Born in Vilna to a poor family and educated at that city’s Talmud Torah, Shmerke (Pol., Szmerke) Kaczerginski lost both his parents during World War I. As a youth, he was involved with outlawed Communist groups and was arrested several times, serving a lengthy prison term. In the 1930s, two of his revolutionary poems became popular in Poland. He wrote short stories with a radical bent and was a correspondent and reporter for literary publications, including the semilegal leftist press in Poland and the New York Communist daily Morgn-frayhayt.
title: Kaczerginski, Shmerke
alternative label: Shmerke Kaczerginski
alternative label: Shmerl Kaczerginski
related: Łódź
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kalmanovitch, Zelig
related: Lithuania
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sutzkever, Avrom
related: Vilnius
related: YIVO
related: Yung-Vilne

Kantor, Yehudah Leib
described at: Kantor Yehudah Leib
has abstract: (1849–1915), editor and author; acclaimed for developing the feuilleton as a genre in the Jewish press. Yehudah Leib Kantor was born in Vilna, where his father Yosef served as a cantor in the main synagogue. A promising student at his yeshiva, Kantor soon grew interested in the Haskalah. In 1869, he entered the government-sponsored rabbinical seminary in Vilna and, in the same year, launched his literary career with an article in the Hebrew periodical Ha-Karmel, criticizing the state of education and other aspects of Jewish life.
title: Kantor, Yehudah Leib
alternative label: Yehudah Leib Kantor
related: Haskalah
related: Karmel, Ha-
related: Liepāja
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Pogroms
related: Riga
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Słonimski, Ḥayim Zelig
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Seminary
related: Shaḥar, Ha-
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Vilnius
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Yom, Ha-
related: Zhytomyr

Kluger, Shelomoh ben Yehudah
described at: Kluger Shelomoh ben Yehudah
has abstract: (1785–1869), Orthodox leader, rabbi, dayan (religious court judge), magid (preacher), and halakhic decisor. Shelomoh ben Yehudah Kluger was born in Komarów, Poland, and studied in nearby Zamość. Orphaned in 1801, he moved to Rawa Ruska in Galicia, where he married the daughter of one of the lay leaders of the community. From 1810 to 1820, Kluger officiated as rabbi in Kulików, Galicia, and in Józefów, Poland. In 1820 he was appointed dayan in the Galician community of Brody, where he then served as chief judge and magid for almost 50 years, until his death.
title: Kluger, Shelomoh ben Yehudah
alternative label: Shelomoh Kluger
alternative label: Shelomoh ben Yehudah Kluger
related: Brody
related: Galicia
related: Haskalah
related: Margoliot, Efrayim Zalman ben Menaḥem Manes
related: Natanson, Yosef Sha’ul
related: Orthodoxy
related: Pale of Settlement
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: Sabbath
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Zamość

Korczak, Janusz
described at: Korczak Janusz
has abstract: (1878/79–1942), physician, educator, and writer. Janusz Korczak (originally Henryk Goldszmit) was born in Warsaw to a secular family strongly acculturated into Polish culture and imbued with a tradition of social activism. He was trained as a physician in Poland from 1898 to 1905, continuing his medical training until 1912 in Germany, France, and England.
title: Korczak, Janusz
alternative label: Janusz Korczak
related: Childhood
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Nasz Przegląd
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ringelblum, Emanuel
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties
related: Zuckerman, Yitsḥak

Kovner, Abba
described at: Kovner Abba
has abstract: (1918–1987), partisan and poet, leader and intellectual, and a central figure in twentieth-century Jewish and Israeli history and cultural life. Born in Sebastopol, Abba Kovner moved to Vilna as a child; the Jewish community of the city at that time was a thriving, vibrant cultural center, characterized by political, ideological, and religious diversity. He studied in the Tarbut Hebrew gymnasium and became a member, guide, and admired leader of the 1,000-member local branch of the Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir youth movement.
title: Kovner, Abba
alternative label: Abba Kovner
related: Beriḥah
related: Bucharest
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Land of Israel
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Ha-
related: Tarbut
related: Vilnius
related: YIVO
related: Youth Movements
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Kovner, Avraham Uri
described at: Kovner Avraham Uri
has abstract: (Arkadii Grigor’evich Kovner; 1841/42–1909), Lithuanian maskil and pioneer of modern Hebrew literary criticism. A native of Vilna, Avraham Kovner studied at several yeshivas in the Minsk region, and after reaching adulthood discovered Hebrew maskilic literature. After a personal and intellectual crisis, he abandoned his wife and daughter and resettled in Kiev. There he was exposed to the radical strains of Russian and West European culture and began to write in Hebrew, taking the name Albert Kovner. From 1862 to 1868, his essays on social and literary topics were published primarily in Ha-Melits, but also in Ha-Magid and Ha-Karmel. Some of these essays were later reprinted in Ḥeker davar (An Inquiry; 1865) and Tseror peraḥim (A Bouquet of Flowers; 1868).
title: Kovner, Avraham Uri
alternative label: Avraham Uri Kovner
related: Łomża
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Brainin, Re’uven
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Conversion
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Gottlober, Avraham Ber
related: Haskalah
related: Karmel, Ha-
related: Kiev
related: Hebrew Criticism and Scholarship (Literary Criticism and Scholarship)
related: Magid, Ha-
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Smolenskin, Perets
related: Vilnius
related: Zak, Avraam Isakovich

Kun, Béla
described at: Kun Bela
has abstract: (1886–1938), Hungarian Communist leader. Béla Kun (originally Kohn) was born to a poor Transylvanian family in the village of Lele. His father, then a village official, was later fired and struggled to find work, but nevertheless managed to educate his son at the best gymnasiums of the region. In 1904, Kun began to study law at Kolozsvár (now Cluj, Romania) University and at the same time changed his name (as did many assimilated Jews). Even though he abandoned Judaism, he was never baptized.
title: Kun, Béla
alternative label: Béla Kun
related: Cluj
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Moscow
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zinov’ev, Grigorii Evseevich

Lachower, Yeruḥam Fishel
described at: Lachower Yeruham Fishel
has abstract: (1883–1947), literary historian, Hebrew critic, and editor. Yeruḥam Fishel Lachower was born in Horzel, western Poland. As a child and adolescent he received both a Jewish and a general education. Following his marriage in 1904, he settled in Ciechanów, where he worked in commerce (his father had tried unsuccessfully to introduce him to the business world). That same year, he published his first article in the newspaper Ha-Tsefirah, analyzing the poetry of Sha’ul Tchernichowsky. From 1906 to1907, Lachower contributed review essays on Ḥayim Naḥman Bialik and Ahad Ha-Am to Yosef Ḥayim Brenner’s monthly Ha-Me‘orer, and published other criticism on the burgeoning Hebrew literature.
title: Lachower, Yeruḥam Fishel
alternative label: Fishel Lachower
alternative label: Yeruḥam Fishel Lachower
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Cahan, Ya‘akov
related: Frishman, David
related: Gnessin, Uri Nisan
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Moscow
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Stybel
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Warsaw
related: Zeitlin Family

Landau, Mosheh Yisra’el
described at: Landau Mosheh Yisrael
has abstract: (1788–1852), Prague communal leader, Hebrew printer, and influential maskil. A scion of the illustrious Polish Landau family, Mosheh Landau was the grandson of Prague’s distinguished chief rabbi, Yeḥezkel Landau (1713–1793). Son of the traditional maskil Yisra’el Landau, Mosheh received both a Jewish and a secular education in Prague. In 1824, he followed his father and began to work as a Hebrew printer for a Christian printing house. In 1827, he bought the press and ran it for 25 years.
title: Landau, Mosheh Yisra’el
alternative label: Mosheh
alternative label: Mosheh Landau
alternative label: Mosheh Yisra’el Landau
related: Haskalah
related: Kerem Ḥemed
related: Landau, Yeḥezkel ben Yehudah
related: Landau, Yisra’el
related: Normalschulen
related: Prague
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah

Lekert, Hirsh
described at: Lekert Hirsh
has abstract: (ca. 1879–1902), bootmaker and revolutionary activist. Born into a poor family in the northeastern Lithuanian town of Onuskis (Anushishok), Hirsh Lekert was an apprentice bootmaker as a boy. In 1895, he moved to Vilna, where he worked in a shoemaking workshop and joined a group of Jewish revolutionaries. His dedication and stormy personality gained him early notoriety. In May 1900, Lekert took an active part in attacking the city’s police station in an effort to free a group of political prisoners; he himself was later arrested for attempting to free another prisoner. Lekert was sentenced to 15 months in prison, followed by two years of exile in Ekaterinoslav (Dnipropetrovs’k).
title: Lekert, Hirsh
alternative label: Hirsh Lekert
related: Bund
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Kushnirov, Arn
related: Martov, L.
related: Minsk
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius

Luaḥ Aḥi’asaf
described at: Luah Ahiasaf
has abstract: Hebrew literary annual, published in Warsaw in 1893–1904 and 1923. Founded by the Aḥi’asaf publishing company, Luaḥ Aḥi’asaf (Aḥi’asaf Calendar [Almanac]) was under the patronage and influence of Ahad Ha-Am. Produced each year shortly before the beginning of the Jewish New Year, the publication was a cross between a journal and a literary anthology. Along with its practical sections (calendars, useful information, advertisements, etc.), most of each volume was taken up by a diverse literary section that included fiction, poetry, discussions of current affairs, reviews, literary essays, and biographies.
title: Luaḥ Aḥi’asaf
alternative label: Luaḥ aḥi’asaf
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Aḥi’asaf
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brainin, Re’uven
related: Calendars
related: Friedberg, Avraham Shalom
related: Frishman, David
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Klausner, Yosef
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Shalkovich, Avraham Leib
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Thon, Ozjasz
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Mahler, Raphael
described at: Mahler Raphael
has abstract: (1899–1977), historian. Born in Nowy Sącz, Raphael Mahler received a traditional yeshiva education until age 15. He completed secondary school in Kraków before matriculating at the University of Vienna in history and philosophy and continued his Talmudic studies at the modern rabbinical seminary in Vienna. After earning his doctorate in 1922 with a dissertation on the sociological problems of progress, Mahler returned to Poland. There he taught history at Jewish secondary schools while participating in the Left Po‘ale Tsiyon and promoting modern Jewish historical research. With Emanuel Ringelblum, Mahler cofounded the Jewish Young Historians Circle that eventually affiliated with YIVO’s Historical Section, where he was actively involved both as a researcher and an editor.
title: Mahler, Raphael
alternative label: Raphael Mahler
related: Economic Life
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Historiography)
related: Karaites
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Messianism
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
related: Ringelblum, Emanuel
related: Seminary
related: YIVO
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Martov, L.
described at: Martov L
has abstract: (Iulii Osipovich Tsederbaum; 1873–1923), leader and ideologue of the Menshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party (RSDWP). While attending university in Saint Petersburg (1891–1892), Martov became a “propagandist,” conducting political educational work among small circles of workers. Arrested and sent to Vilna (1893–1895), he joined Jewish Social Democrats in developing and practicing the strategy of “agitation,” seeking to use the workers’ own grievances to foment strikes and draw their attention to capitalist exploitation and tsarist repression. Next, he joined Vladimir Lenin and Aleksandr Potresov in founding the Union for the Emancipation of Labor and, after another arrest and three years in Siberian exile, in publishing the journal Iskra (1900), which advocated the creation of a unified, politically disciplined social democratic party. Disagreements among Iskra’s editors over the organization of the party and its role in revolution led to an open confrontation between Lenin and Martov at the Second Congress of the RSDWP (July 1903), which ushered in the historic split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.
title: Martov, L.
alternative label: Julius Martov
alternative label: L. (Iulii) Martov
alternative label: L. Martov
alternative label: Yulii Martov
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Bund
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Odessa
related: Pogroms
related: Razsvet
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Vilnius
related: Zederbaum, Aleksander

Medem Sanatorium
described at: Medem Sanatorium
has abstract: Educational and clinical facility for children and young adults at risk for tuberculosis. This sanatorium, which functioned in Międzeszyn near Warsaw between 1926 and 1942, was named after Bundist leader Vladimir Medem (1879–1923), and was the best-known establishment of the Bund and of TSYSHO (the Central Yiddish School Organization) in Poland. Until World War II, it was recognized internationally for its reformist pedagogical approach and its left laicist orientation.
title: Medem Sanatorium
related: Bund
related: Ford, Aleksander
related: Medem, Vladimir Davidovich
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Portnoy, Yekusiel
related: TSYSHO
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Mieses, Matthias
described at: Mieses Matthias
has abstract: (1885–1945), philologist and journalist. Born in Przemyśl, Galicia, to a maskil family, Matthias Mieses had studied 10 languages by the age of 18. He published a Hebrew poem in the weekly Ha-Magid at 15, followed by hundreds of articles dealing with science and politics; these appeared in the Hebrew, German, and Jewish Polish press.
title: Mieses, Matthias
alternative label: Mateuz (Matthias) Mieses
alternative label: Matthias (Mateusz) Mieses
alternative label: Matthias (Matisyohu) Mieses
alternative label: Matthias Mieses
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Czernowitz Conference
related: Galicia
related: Magid, Ha-
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Przemyśl
related: Sokolow, Naḥum

Mieses, Yehudah Leib
described at: Mieses Yehudah Leib
has abstract: (1798–1831), Galician maskil. Yehudah Leib Mieses was born in Lemberg (Lwów) to a wealthy family of rabbinical lineage; he received a broad Jewish and secular education. From his early years, Mieses was acknowledged as a forceful champion of Haskalah and an opponent of Hasidism. He supported yeshiva students who wished to receive a university education, supplying them with books from his large personal library and providing generous financial assistance. With his help, many young men were able to attend universities in Germany and Austria.
title: Mieses, Yehudah Leib
alternative label: Yehudah Leib Mieses
related: Amulets and Talismans
related: Angels
related: Ba‘ale Shem
related: Bick, Ya‘akov Shemu’el
related: Erter, Yitsḥak
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Kerem Ḥemed
related: L’viv
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Mladá Boleslav
described at: Mlada Boleslav
has abstract: Town in Bohemia, 60 kilometers north of Prague. The presence of Jews in Mladá Boleslav (Ger., Jungbunzlau; known to Jews as Bumsla) was documented by the second half of the fifteenth century. Until the nineteenth century, Jews comprised roughly 10 percent of all inhabitants. The Jewish quarter there—together with those of Prague and Kolín—was among the most important in all of Bohemia.
title: Mladá Boleslav
related: Archives
related: Bassevi of Treuenberg, Ya‘akov
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Eybeschütz, Yonatan
related: Fleckeles, El‘azar ben David
related: Kolín
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Prague
related: Purim
related: Terezín

Moriah
described at: Moriah
has abstract: Hebrew publishing house, founded in 1901–1902 in Odessa. Moriah was established by the poet Ḥayim Naḥman Bialik, Hebrew-Zionist activist Y. H. Ravnitski, writer Simḥah Alter Gutmann (known as S. Ben-Zion), and others in Ahad Ha-Am’s circle. Under Bialik and Ravnitski, Moriah became the premiere Hebrew publishing house in the period before World War I; a brief revival in 1917–1918 ended amid economic crisis and Bolshevik suppression.
title: Moriah
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Autobiography and Memoir
related: Ben-Ami
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Druyanow, Alter
related: Folklore, Ethnography, and Anthropology
related: Gutmann, Simḥah Alter
related: Odessa
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Ravnitski, Yehoshu‘a Ḥana
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: Shneour, Zalman
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul

Natanson, Yosef Sha’ul
described at: Natanson Yosef Shaul
has abstract: (1808–1875), rabbi, halakhic decisor, and Orthodox educator. Yosef Sha’ul Natanson was born in the Galician town of Brzeżany (Ukr., Berezhany; Yid. Berezhan) to a distinguished and wealthy family. In 1825, after he married his cousin, Sara Idel (of the Ettinger family), he moved to Lwów. Most of Natanson’s time in subsequent years was devoted to study and to writing Talmudic and halakhic works in collaboration with his brother-in-law, Mordekhai Ze’ev Ettinger. In 1848, Natanson established a small yeshiva in a Lwów bet midrash, and he was soon widely recognized as an Orthodox educator. In 1857, he was appointed district rabbi in Lwów, after the post had been unoccupied for some 10 years; he held that position until his death.
title: Natanson, Yosef Sha’ul
alternative label: Yosef Natanson
alternative label: Yosef Sha’ul Natanson
related: Berezhany
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Ettinger Family
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kohen-Tsedek, Yosef
related: L’viv
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Passover
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Nemyriv
described at: Nemyriv
has abstract: (Pol., Niemirów; Rus., Nemirov), town on the Ustia River, a tributary of the Southern Bug, the district center of the Vinnytsya region of Ukraine. From 1569, the town belonged to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, from 1649 it was within the region of Cossack autonomy, and from 1678 to 1699 it was under the rule of the Turkish governor-general, who resided in the city in 1678–1681 and 1683–1685. From 1793, it belonged to Russia and from 1920 to the Soviet Union.
title: Nemyriv
alternative label: Nemirov
alternative label: Niemirów
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Bratslav Hasidism
related: Bund
related: Crown Rabbi
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Heller, Yom Tov Lipmann
related: Kultur-lige
related: Naḥman of Bratslav
related: Natan Sternhartz of Nemirov
related: Pogroms
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Niemirower, Iacob Isac
described at: Niemirower Iacob Isac
has abstract: (1872–1939), rabbi and philosopher of Judaism. Born in Lemberg (Lwów), Iacob Isac (Ya‘akov Yitsḥak) Niemirower received a traditional Jewish education. His parents moved to Iaşi, Romania, when he was a child. Initially influenced by Hasidism, Niemirower later followed the rationalist current characteristic of the Haskalah. In 1890, he went to Berlin to study philosophy, receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Bern in Switzerland in 1895. In Berlin he also studied at the Neo-Orthodox rabbinical seminary and was ordained by Rabbi Ernest Biberfeld. Niemirower also decided to become a Reform rabbi, and was ordained in 1896 by Rabbi Michael Hamburger of Strolitz. Niemirower was additionally influenced by the philosophy of Moritz Lazarus.
title: Niemirower, Iacob Isac
alternative label: Iacob Isac Niemirower
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Ashkenaz
related: Bucharest
related: Curierul Israelit
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Iaşi
related: L’viv
related: Romania
related: Seminary
related: Sephardim
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Nusinov, Yitskhok
described at: Nusinov Yitskhok
has abstract: (1889–1950), Soviet Yiddish and Russian literary critic and scholar. Yitskhok Nusinov was born in the Volhynian town of Chernigov, where his father, a maskil, held a lease on a glass factory. Involved in Bundist revolutionary activity from 1905, Nusinov graduated as an external student from a Warsaw secondary school in 1910, and two years later helped organize one of the first Yiddish schools in Ukraine. Subsequently, he traveled to Italy and Switzerland for medical treatment, also studying literature and philosophy at Lausanne University and participating actively in the cultural life of the Russian émigré colony.
title: Nusinov, Yitskhok
alternative label: Yitskhok Nusinov
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Anticosmopolitan Campaign
related: Bund
related: Der Nister
related: Evsektsiia
related: Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Kiev
related: Kipnis, Itsik
related: Kultur-lige
related: Lukács, György
related: Moscow
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Ostropolyer, Hershele
described at: Ostropolyer Hershele
has abstract: (1770?–1810), folk figure. Although what we know about Hershele Ostropolyer is based mostly on oral tradition and folklore, he was also a real person. Hershele is thought to have come from Balta, Ukraine, and his name is based on the small town of Ostropolye (Ostropol) in Poland, where he served the community as a shoḥet (ritual slaughterer). According to legend, Hershele lost his job because of his constant joking that offended some leaders of the community. He then wandered through Ukraine, and was a familiar personality at inns and restaurants, which explains why such institutions figure so prominently in the stories about him. Eventually he found his calling—at the court of Barukh of Mezhbizh, the grandson of the Ba‘al Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism. Barukh was plagued by depression, and Hershele served as a court jester, frequently mocking the rabbi and his cronies and delighting the common folk.
title: Ostropolyer, Hershele
alternative label: Hershele Ostropolyer
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Babel, Isaac
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ukraine
related: Vilner Trupe

Oyerbakh, Rokhl
described at: Oyerbakh Rokhl
has abstract: (also commonly Rachel Auerbach; 1903–1976), writer and essayist in Yiddish and Polish. Rokhl Oyerbakh was born in Lanowitz (mod Ukr., Lanovitsy), a small village in Podolia. Although the family later moved to Lwów, her rural childhood left her with a lifelong love of Yiddish and a deep interest in Jewish folklore. Auerbach studied psychology and philosophy at Lwów University and also collaborated in Tsushtayer, a journal founded by Melech Ravitch to foster Yiddish culture in Galicia, a region where most of the Jewish intelligentsia spoke Polish.
title: Oyerbakh, Rokhl
alternative label: Rokhl Oyerbakh
related: Folklore, Ethnography, and Anthropology
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Jewish Historical Institute
related: L’viv
related: Manger, Itsik
related: Nasz Przegląd
related: Ravitch, Melech
related: Ringelblum, Emanuel
related: Warsaw

Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich
described at: Pasternak Boris Leonidovich
has abstract: (1890–1960), poet, prose writer, and translator. Boris Pasternak was raised in a highly cultured Moscow family. His mother Rozaliia (née Kaufman) was a pianist; his father, Leonid Osipovich, was a prominent artist and art professor. As a child, Pasternak first studied art and then music (Alexander Scriabin considered him a talented composer); he went on to study philosophy in Moscow and Marburg.
title: Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich
alternative label: Boris Pasternak
alternative label: Pasternak
related: Moscow
related: Pasternak, Leonid
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Pen, Yehudah
described at: Pen Yehudah
has abstract: (1854–1937), painter, graphic artist, teacher, and founder of the “Vitebsk school.” Yehudah (Yudel, Iurii; patronymic Moiseevich, Movshevich) Pen was born in the shtetl Novo-Aleksandrovsk, Kovno guberniia (now Zarasai, Lith.), to an impoverished family. He attended a local heder but did not show much interest in his studies. Instead he devoted most of his time to drawing, for which he showed great talent. According to Pen himself, his talent found its application in the sphere of traditional Jewish art. He drew ornamental letters and captions in books, decorated Purim gragers (noisemakers), and created mizraḥ (Eastern wall) plaques. He painted portraits of shtetl dwellers and various imaginary characters, an activity that brought him great satisfaction, but made his mother very angry. At her insistence Yehudah was sent to Dinaburg (Dvinsk; now Daugavpils, Latvia) at the end of 1867, to become an apprentice house painter.
title: Pen, Yehudah
alternative label: Yehudah (Iurii) Pen
alternative label: Yehudah Pen
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Daugavpils
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Heder
related: Latvia
related: Lissitzky, El
related: Minsk
related: Purim
related: Riga
related: Sabbath
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shtetl
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vitsyebsk

Photography
described at: Photography
has abstract: Invented in Western Europe in 1839, the new technology of photography soon migrated to Eastern Europe and Russia. Beginning in the 1840s, East European Jews were leading figures in developing photography as a new art form, a tool of documentation, and a medium of social criticism. Although initially an expensive and rarified technology, as photography became less costly, easier, and therefore more popular at the end of the nineteenth century, Jews rushed into this new burgeoning field.
title: Photography
alternative label: photographer
alternative label: photographers
alternative label: photography
related: Anticosmopolitan Campaign
related: Archives
related: Budapest
related: Crimea
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kacyzne, Alter-Sholem
related: Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi
related: Khaldei, Evgenii Anan’evich
related: Kol’tsov, Mikhail Efimovich
related: Lissitzky, El
related: Memory
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Pale of Settlement
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Postcards and Greeting Cards
related: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Russian Civil War
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Vishniac, Roman
related: Warsaw

Preachers and Preaching
described at: Preachers and Preaching
has abstract: Preaching in the synagogue dates to late antiquity, when the tradition of weekly sermons given on the Sabbath and based on the reading from the Torah of that week, began. This tradition continued in Eastern Europe. There were also special occasions when the rabbi was particularly called upon to preach, notably Shabat Shuvah (the Sabbath between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur), and Shabat ha-Gadol (the Sabbath before Passover). From the eighteenth century, the communal burial society would gather annually on the 7th of Adar, the traditional birth and death date of Moses in the Hebrew calendar, to hear a sermon from the rabbi. In larger communities, the weekly sermon would be delivered by the darshan (preacher), an appointed member of the communal establishment.
title: Preachers and Preaching
alternative label: preacher
alternative label: preachers
narrower: Preachers
narrower: Sermons and Sermonic Literature
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Berekhyah Berakh ben Yitsḥak
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: Dubno
related: Efrayim Shelomoh ben Aharon of Luntshits
related: Eybeschütz, Yonatan
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Horowitz Family
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Kranz, Ya‘akov ben Volf
related: Landau, Yeḥezkel ben Yehudah
related: Lithuania
related: Maimon, Salomon
related: Malakh, Ḥayim ben Shelomoh
related: Musar Movement
related: Naḥman of Bratslav
related: Passover
related: Prague
related: Prossnitz, Yehudah Leib ben Ya‘akov Holleschau
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Rivne
related: Sabbath
related: Sabbatianism
related: Schorr, Mojżesz
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: Thon, Ozjasz
related: Warsaw
related: Ya‘akov Yosef of Polnoye
related: Yeḥi’el Mikhl of Zlotshev
related: Yisra’el ben Shabetai of Kozhenits

Rabinovich, Osip Aronovich
described at: Rabinovich Osip Aronovich
has abstract: (1817–1869), writer and editor. Osip Rabinovich, who came from a Russified family, studied at Kharkov University before becoming a notary in Odessa. In the latter city, he published a Russian translation of a Hebrew poem (1847), as well as articles in which he alternately criticized Jewish traditionalism and Russian society for its prejudices about Jews.
title: Rabinovich, Osip Aronovich
alternative label: Osip Rabinovich
related: Khar’kiv
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Razsvet
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Sholem Aleichem

Reich, Leon
described at: Reich Leon
has abstract: (1879–1929), Zionist leader in Galicia and independent Poland. Leon Reich completed his law degree at the University of Lwów and then studied at the École des Sciences Politiques in Paris. He became committed to the Zionist movement as a student and was one of the founders of the Union of Jewish Students (Ognisko) and of the Zionist student organization in Galicia (Emunah). He made a name for himself as an effective journalist and publicist and was editor of the Almanach żydowski in Lwów, to which he contributed many articles, and of the Polish-language Zionist weekly Wschód. He was also active in the struggle to democratize Jewish life in Galicia and campaigned unsuccessfully to be elected to the Austrian Reichsrat in 1911. During World War I, he served in the legal department of the Austrian Army.
title: Reich, Leon
alternative label: Leon Reich
related: Chwila
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sokolow, Naḥum
related: Thon, Ozjasz
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Riddles
described at: Riddles
has abstract: Riddles have been described (by the American folklorist Roger Abrahams) as a traditional form of licensed aggression, since the aim of the riddler is to confuse the listener by giving hints that point to the right answer only in hindsight. The answer to a puzzling and seemingly unanswerable question is arbitrary, surprising, and traditional. That is, with all possible answers, the questioner, in keeping with tradition, has the power to insist which choice is the right answer. The puzzle arises from the skillful use of speech-play, metaphor, and other techniques of obfuscation and misdirection. Yet the riddle can serve various functions: as entertainment, as a means of teaching values, and as a way of socializing the child into the poetics of Yiddish speech, including speech-play, metaphor, puns, and proverbs.
title: Riddles
alternative label: riddl
alternative label: riddles
related: Bastomski, Shloyme
related: Folk Songs
related: Folklore, Ethnography, and Anthropology
related: Heder
related: Parody
related: Proverbs
related: Vilnius
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Romm Family
described at: Romm Family
has abstract: Family of printers and publishers in Vilna. The Romm family’s printing house, the largest in Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century, operated continuously for more than 120 years. In the central period of its activity, beginning at the end of the 1860s, the printing house underwent a process of modernization—overseen by Shemu’el Shraga Feigenzohn, a rabbi, entrepreneur, and administrator—that was a key to its success. Feigenzohn directed the firm for two decades beginning in 1867; he also wrote a history of the Romm printing house under the pseudonym Shafan ha-Sofer.
title: Romm Family
alternative label: Romm
alternative label: Romm family
related: Brafman, Iakov Aleksandrovich
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Chernivtsi
related: Danzig, Avraham ben Yeḥi’el Mikhl
related: Dik, Ayzik Meyer
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Fuenn, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Gintsburg Family
related: Gintsburg, Mordekhai Aharon
related: Haskalah
related: Hrodna
related: Lefin, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Levinzon, Yitsḥak Ber
related: Lithuania
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Mapu, Avraham
related: Pogroms
related: Prague
related: Printing and Publishing after 1800 (Printing and Publishing)
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Słonimski, Ḥayim Zelig
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shapira Family
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Tkhines
related: Vilnius
related: Zhytomyr

Roth, Joseph
described at: Roth Joseph
has abstract: (1894–1939), novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. Born in Brody (in Austrian Galicia) and raised without a father, Joseph Roth volunteered during World War I and in 1917 was sent as a reporter to the Galician front. This experience had an enormous impact on him. In 1918, he returned to Vienna and began working as a journalist for leftist newspapers such as Arbeiterzeitung and Der Neue Freie Tag. In 1920, he moved to Berlin, where he contributed to the Neue Berliner Zeitung,Berliner Börsen-Courier, and the Vorwärts, among others. From 1923 to 1932 Roth was a feuilletonist for the liberal Frankfurter Zeitung, as well as its foreign correspondent in France, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, Albania, Italy, and Poland. Beginning in 1923, he published novels as well.
title: Roth, Joseph
alternative label: Joseph Roth
related: Assimilation
related: Brody
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Galicia
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Shtetl
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Słonimski, Antoni
described at: Słonimski Antoni
has abstract: (1895–1976), poet, writer, playwright, publicist, and theater and film critic. Antoni Słonimski was the grandson of Ḥayim Zelig Słonimski, a prominent Warsaw maskil, mathematician, astronomer, inventor, and publisher of Ha-Tsefirah; and the great-grandson of Abraham Stern, a mathematician, inventor, and member of the Warsaw Society of Friends of Science.
title: Słonimski, Antoni
alternative label: Antoni Słonimski
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Assimilation
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Manger, Itsik
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Słonimski, Ḥayim Zelig
related: Stern, Abraham
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Warsaw
related: Wiadomości Literackie

Sandomierz
described at: Sandomierz
has abstract: Town in the Świętokrzyskie province on the Vistula River, and one of the oldest Jewish communities in Little Poland. In the period of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Sandomierz (Yid., Tsuzmir) played an important role as a trade center on a river route to Gdańsk and on a trade route from Kraków to Vilna. The town lost its importance after the partitions of Poland at the end of the eighteenth century.
title: Sandomierz
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Archives
related: Blood Libels and Host Desecration Accusations
related: Crafts
related: Gdańsk
related: Kielce
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Labor Camps
related: Maccabi Movement
related: Monuments and Memorials
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Tombstones
related: Trade
related: Vilnius

Schwab, Löw
described at: Schwab Low
has abstract: (1794–1857), Moravian and Hungarian rabbi; pioneer of moderate reforms in the Habsburg Empire. The son of a peddler in Moravský-Krumlov, Löw (later he would occasionally employ the archaic Hungarian equivalent, Arszlán) Schwab was a gifted child who mastered rabbinic literature under private tutelage. At age 11, he enrolled in the Nikolsburg yeshiva of the chief rabbi of Moravia, Mordekhai Banet, and upon bar mitzvah he briefly attended the Pressburg yeshiva, led by Mosheh Sofer. For the next four years, Schwab continued his studies at Nikolsburg and Trebitsch, where he also acquired a secular education independently and worked his way through the classics of medieval Jewish philosophy. In the new rabbi of Gewitsch (mod. Jevíčko, Czech Rep.), Joachim Deutschmann, Schwab found the mentor he had been seeking: a brilliant Talmudist who had also been part of the circle of Prague maskilim surrounding Baruch Jeitteles.
title: Schwab, Löw
alternative label: Löw Schwab
related: Banet, Mordekhai ben Avraham
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bratislava
related: Chorin, Aharon
related: Fassel, Hirsch Bär
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jeitteles Family
related: Löw, Leopold
related: Mikulov
related: Neuda, Abraham
related: Pápa
related: Prague
related: Prostějov
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
related: Reform, Religious
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: Trebitsch, Neḥemyah Naḥum
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Shtern, Yisroel
described at: Shtern Yisroel
has abstract: (1894–1942), poet and journalist. Born in Ostrołęka, Białystok district, Yisroel Shtern grew up in an economically deprived family. His father, a melamed, died young, leaving his mother—who sold homemade baked goods—and grandfather to support the family. Shtern studied in a heder and continued his religious education in the prestigious yeshivas of Slobodka and Łomża. At the outbreak of World War I, Shtern was living in Vienna, where he was imprisoned as a Russian national. During this period, he became acquainted with contemporary European literature and philosophy.
title: Shtern, Yisroel
alternative label: Yisroel Shtern
related: Łomża
related: Białystok
related: Bratslav Hasidism
related: Bund
related: Folkists
related: Haynt
related: Heder
related: Khalyastre
related: Musar Movement
related: Oyerbakh, Rokhl
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Slobodka, Yeshiva of
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zeitlin Family

Trumpeldor, Yosef
described at: Trumpeldor Yosef
has abstract: (1880–1920), Socialist Zionist leader; war hero. Yosef Trumpeldor was born in Piatigorsk, Russia, the son of a cantonist (a Jewish soldier inducted as a child into the army of Tsar Nicholas I). Trumpeldor grew up outside the Pale of Settlement, in Rostov-on-Don, and attended dentistry school but soon became active in the nascent Zionist movement. He was particularly attracted to its socialist camp, which was inspired by the ideas of Leo Tolstoy to “return to the land” and establish Jewish agricultural communes in Palestine.
title: Trumpeldor, Yosef
alternative label: Yosef Trumpeldor
related: Betar
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: Jabotinsky, Vladimir
related: Memory
related: Military Service in Russia
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pilgrimage
related: Revisionist Zionists
related: Rostov-on-Don
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Tsinberg, Yisroel
described at: Tsinberg Yisroel
has abstract: (1873–1939), historian of Jewish literature; chemist. Yisroel Tsinberg, also known as Sergei Lazarevich Tsinberg (often spelled Zinberg in English sources), received a traditional and a secular education, first from private teachers in his father’s home in Volhynia and then at a secondary school in Rovno (Ukr., Rivne). He studied chemistry at the Karlsruhe Polytechnic Institute from 1891 to 1895, received a doctorate in philosophy from Basel University, and settled in Saint Petersburg in 1898.
title: Tsinberg, Yisroel
alternative label: Yisroel (Sergei) Tsinberg
alternative label: Yisroel Tsinberg
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Fefer, Itsik
related: Folkists
related: Haskalah
related: Hirshbeyn, Perets
related: About this Article (Historiography)
related: Hofshteyn, Dovid
related: Iushkevich, Semen Solomonovich
related: Kvitko, Leyb
related: Levinzon, Yitsḥak Ber
related: Markish, Perets
related: Nomberg, Hersh Dovid
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Rivne
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shatzky, Yankev
related: Shneour, Zalman
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Yiddish Theater (Theater)
related: Vayter, A.
related: Voskhod
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Tunkel, Yoysef
described at: Tunkel Yoysef
has abstract: (1881–1949), Yiddish humorist. The son of a melamed, Yoysef Tunkel (also known by his pseudonym Der Tunkeler, the Dark One), was born in Bobruisk, Belorussia, and died in New York. Between 1896 and 1899, he studied drawing in Vilna, and then moved to Odessa where he worked as an artist and caricaturist. However, he was quickly forced to limit his art production due to poor eyesight. He then turned to writing “serious” literary works in Yiddish.
title: Tunkel, Yoysef
alternative label: Yoysef Tunkel
related: Łódź
related: Bobruisk
related: Bund
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Literarishe Bleter
related: Minsk
related: Moment, Der
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Trunk, Yekhiel Yeshaye
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Yud, Der

Turkow Family
described at: Turkow Family
has abstract: Yiddish actors, theater and film directors, and communal activists. Notable members of the Turkow (Turkov) family included Zygmunt (Zigmunt, Shloyme Zalmen; 1896–1970); Jonas (Yonas; 1898–1988); Mark (Marek; 1904–1983); and Yitskhok Ber (who also used the pseudonym Grudberg; 1906–1970).
title: Turkow Family
alternative label: Marek Turkow
alternative label: Turkow
alternative label: Zygmunt Turkow
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Agriculture
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Cinema
related: About this Article (Dance)
related: Dybbuk, The
related: Dzigan and Shumacher
related: Ettinger, Shloyme
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Habimah
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kacyzne, Alter-Sholem
related: Kaminski Family
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kleynkunst
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: L’viv
related: Moment, Der
related: Operetta
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Pinski, Dovid
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Vilner Trupe
related: Warsaw
related: Warsaw Yiddish Art Theater
related: YIVO
related: Yiddish Actors Union
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Vergelis, Arn
described at: Vergelis Arn
has abstract: (1918–1999), Yiddish poet, novelist, and editor. Born in Lubar, Ukraine, Arn (or Aron) Vergelis received a secondary Yiddish education in Birobidzhan, where his family lived from 1932. He was noted as a local talent in 1934 when his poems began to appear in the newspaper Birobidzhaner shtern (Birobidzhan Star) and the almanac Forpost (Outpost). Upon graduating from a Yiddish school in 1936, he was sent to Moscow to continue his education at the Yiddish department of the Pedagogical Institute. Vergelis graduated in 1940—the same year in which his first book was published. That year, he also joined the Writers Union, and was drafted into the Russian army.
title: Vergelis, Arn
alternative label: Arn Vergelis
alternative label: Aron (Arn) Vergelis
alternative label: Aron Vergelis
related: Anti-Zionist Committee of The Soviet Public
related: Birobidzhan
related: Birobidzhaner Shtern
related: Halkin, Shmuel
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Moscow
related: Rabin, Yoysef
related: Rubin, Rivke
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtetl
related: Sovetish Heymland
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Vurke Hasidic Dynasty
described at: Vurke Hasidic Dynasty
has abstract: Line of Polish rabbinic leaders. The Vurke (Pol., Warka) Hasidic dynasty was established by Yitsḥak Kalish (1779–1848), whose activities as an intercessor (shtadlan) with the government signaled the predominance of Hasidism among Jews in the Kingdom of Poland.
title: Vurke Hasidic Dynasty
alternative label: Vurk
alternative label: Vurke
related: Agriculture
related: Aleksander Hasidic Dynasty
related: Bergson, Temerl
related: Crown Rabbi
related: Dress
related: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Land of Israel
related: Lelov Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Menaḥem Mendel of Kotsk
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Pshiskhe Hasidic Dynasty
related: Sabbath
related: Shtadlan
related: Simḥah Bunem of Pshiskhe
related: Warsaw
related: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz

Weltsch, Felix
described at: Weltsch Felix
has abstract: (1884–1964), philosopher and journalist. Born in Prague, Felix Weltsch obtained doctorates in both law and philosophy, and in his books concentrated on social philosophy and political ethics. He belonged to what his lifelong friend Max Brod, the writer and biographer of Franz Kafka, called the Prague Circle of young Jewish intellectuals, of which Kafka was the most famous member (Weltsch himself was a friend of Kafka). Weltsch was a Zionist from an early age, and in the interwar period he was editor in chief and the moving spirit of the main Zionist weekly in Czechoslovakia, Selbstwehr (Self-Defense). He also worked as an academic librarian.
title: Weltsch, Felix
alternative label: Felix
alternative label: Felix Weltsch
related: Brod, Max
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Kafka, Franz
related: Prague
related: Selbstwehr
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Wissotzky, Kalonymus Ze’ev
described at: Wissotzky Kalonymus Zeev
has abstract: (1824–1904), businessman, Zionist activist, and philanthropist. Kalonymus Wissotzky was born in a town near Kovno (mod. Kaunas) into the family of a small merchant. At 18, he married and his wife’s parents agreed to support his Talmud studies for three years. He attended the Volozhin yeshiva but had to leave because of illness.
title: Wissotzky, Kalonymus Ze’ev
alternative label: Kalonymus Wissotzky
alternative label: Kalonymus Ze’ev Wissotzky
alternative label: Wissotzky
related: Asif, Ha-
related: Charity
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Katowice
related: Kaunas
related: Land of Israel
related: Lipkin, Yisra’el ben Ze’ev Volf
related: Moscow
related: Musar Movement
related: ORT
related: Panevėžys
related: Philanthropy
related: Pogroms
related: Ponevezh, Yeshiva of
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Yung-teater
described at: Yung-teater
has abstract: (Young Theater; 1932–1939), Yiddish avant-garde theater company. Yung-teater emerged out of the Yiddish Theater Studio, founded by Michał Weichert in Warsaw in 1929; it was supported by the Yiddish cultural organization Kultur-lige. Weichert, a highly educated theater director, historian, and critic, was influenced by the avant-garde, politically activist work of Max Reinhardt in Berlin and the Moscow State Yiddish Theater.
title: Yung-teater
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Kultur-lige
related: Molodowsky, Kadia
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Parody
related: Rotbaum, Jakub
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtetl
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Vilnius
related: Volf, Leyzer
related: Warsaw
related: Weichert, Michał

Yung-yidish
described at: Yung-yidish
has abstract: (1918–1921), artistic and literary avant-garde group in Łódź. The founding of Yung-yidish, the first Yiddish artistic avant-garde group in Poland, grew out of a meeting in 1918 between poet Moyshe Broderzon and a group of visual artists centered around Yitskhok Broyner, Yankl Adler, and Marek Szwarc. Eventually, the group included some 20-odd members including Yitsḥak Katzenelson, Yekhezkl-Moyshe Nayman, and Hershele, as well as younger people discovered by the group, such as the artist Henekh Bartshinski and the writers Elimelekh Shmulevitsh, Khayim Leyb Fuks, and Yisroel Shtern. In 1919, the group published a journal, also called Yung-yidish.
title: Yung-yidish
related: Łódź
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Adler, Yankl
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Berlewi, Henryk
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Broderzon, Moyshe
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Katzenelson, Yitsḥak
related: Kiev
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lissitzky, El
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Shtern, Yisroel
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Warsaw

Zbytkower, Shmul
described at: Zbytkower Shmul
has abstract: (d. 1801), merchant and court supplier; ancestor of the Bergson (Berekson) family. In 1756 or 1757, Shmul Zbytkower (also known as Shemu’el ben Ya‘akov Avigdor; Szmul Jakubowicz) arrived in Warsaw from the nearby village of Zbytki, where he was a leaseholder. He worked in commerce and by 1766 had received the title of purveyor to the court of the Polish king, Stanisław August Poniatowski, and from 1771 performed similar services for the Prussian monarch Frederick II.
title: Zbytkower, Shmul
alternative label: Shmul Zbytkower
alternative label: Szmul Zbytkower
alternative label: Zbytkower
related: Banking
related: Bergson Family
related: Jakubowicz, Yehudis Halevi
related: Pigs
related: Trade
related: Warsaw

Zuckerman, Yitsḥak
described at: Zuckerman Yitshak
has abstract: (1915–1981), Polish Zionist youth leader who was prominent in the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Born in Vilna, Yitsḥak (Antek) Zuckerman studied at Tarbut schools and joined the Zionist youth movement He-Ḥaluts ha-Tsa‘ir. In 1936 he went to a hakhsharah (agricultural training) farm in Grochów near Warsaw and worked at the central office of He-Ḥaluts ha-Tsa‘ir. In 1938 he was appointed secretary general of the movement.
title: Zuckerman, Yitsḥak
alternative label: Yitsḥak (Antek) Zuckerman
alternative label: Yitsḥak Zuckerman
related: Akiva
related: Anielewicz, Mordekhai
related: Armed Resistance
related: Beriḥah
related: Central Committee of Jews in Poland
related: Dror
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Labor Camps
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Ha-
related: Tarbut
related: Ukraine
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Youth Movements
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Antokol’skii, Mark Matveevich
described at: Antokolskii Mark Matveevich
has abstract: (1843–1902), sculptor. Born near Vilna, the youngest son in a family of a Jewish tavernkeeper, Mark Antokol’skii went on to distinguish himself as the founder of the realist school in Russian sculpture and as the Russian Jewish artist par excellence.
title: Antokol’skii, Mark Matveevich
alternative label: Mark Antokol’skii
alternative label: Mark Matveevich Antokol’skii
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Vilnius

Association of Jewish Writers and Journalists in Warsaw
described at: Association of Jewish Writers and Journalists in Warsaw
has abstract: (1916–1939; Yid., Fareyn fun Yidishe Literatn un Zhurnalistn in Varshe; Pol., Związek Literatów i Dziennikarzy Żydowskich w Warszawie), a trade union, advocacy group, and social meeting venue for writers. In March 1916—less then a year after Y. L. Peretz’s death—60 Jewish writers and journalists gathered at Hazomir Hall in Warsaw to establish a trade union. The first chair of the group was the Yiddish writer Yankev Dinezon and its initial location was at 13 Tłomackie Street, an address associated with the Jewish secular cultural movement. The premises functioned as a social meeting place not only for members, but also for actors, artists, teachers, guests from abroad, and others who were interested in Jewish secular culture. In addition, the association offered a large variety of literary and other activities, both for its members and for the general public.
title: Association of Jewish Writers and Journalists in Warsaw
alternative label: Association of Jewish Writers and Journalists
alternative label: Association of Yiddish Writers and Journalists
alternative label: Jewish Writers and Journalists Association
alternative label: Professional Association of Writers and Journalists
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Bund
related: Dinezon, Yankev
related: Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
related: Markish, Perets
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ravitch, Melech
related: Singer, Israel Joshua
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zeitlin Family

Beriḥah
described at: Berihah
has abstract: A clandestine, Zionist-organized mass movement of about 250,000 Jews from Eastern and Central Europe following the Holocaust. The goal of Beriḥah (Heb., flight or escape) was to bring the Jews to Palestine. The term refers to both the migration itself and the organization that assisted it. The immigrants were mainly Polish, though Slovak, Romanian, and other Jews participated. Austria and Czechoslovakia served as transit countries from which Jews moved first either to Germany or Italy.
title: Beriḥah
alternative label: beriḥah
related: Łódź
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Betar
related: Bratislava
related: Budapest
related: Central Committee of Jews in Poland
related: Chernivtsi
related: Czechoslovakia
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Karlovy Vary
related: Kielce
related: Kovner, Abba
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Rivne
related: Romania
related: Rzeszów
related: Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Ha-
related: Slovakia
related: Tarnów
related: Terezín
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Youth Movements
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties
related: Zuckerman, Yitsḥak

Birobidzhaner Shtern
described at: Birobidzhaner Shtern
has abstract: Yiddish-language social and political newspaper established in 30 October 1930 in the future city of Birobidzhan. When Birobidzhan was formally declared a Jewish Autonomous Region (JAR) in 1934, the approximate circulation of Birobidzhaner shtern (Birobidzhan Star) was 500 copies. These numbers rose to 1,500 in 1939, but fell to less than 1,000 in 1950. In 1970 circulation numbered 12,000 (according to official data), and in 1991, after the newspaper’s partial shift to Russian (in September 1990), the maximum totals were 4,000.
title: Birobidzhaner Shtern
alternative label: Birobidzhaner shtern
related: Beider, Khayim
related: Birobidzhan
related: Emyot, Yisroel
related: Kazakevich, Emmanuil Genrikhovich
related: Kerler, Yoysef
related: Moscow
related: Society for the Settlement of Jewish Toilers on the Land
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vergelis, Arn

Black Book
described at: Black Book
has abstract: Account of Nazi atrocities against Jews in the Soviet Union. The first plenary session of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) in May 1942 set up a subcommittee to collect material on Nazi crimes against the Jewish population of the occupied territories. Once the tide of the war turned in early 1943, the JAC indicated its intention to systematize the accumulation of this material and began receiving relevant testimonies.
title: Black Book
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Ehrenburg, Ilya Grigor’evich
related: Fefer, Itsik
related: Grossman, Vasilii Semenovich
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Lozovskii, Solomon Abramovich
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Moscow
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius

Calendars
described at: Calendars
has abstract: Jewish calendars (Heb., luḥot; Yid., kalendarn) use rabbinic chronology for determining the year “to the Creation of the World,” and have presented the months and Jewish holidays in remarkably stable form over the centuries. At least through the eighteenth century, knowledgeable Jews learned how to calculate the Jewish calendar, and luḥot were among the earliest printed Jewish works, both broadsides and pocket calendars. Calendars usually contained brief chronographs, time lines that counted the important events from creation, through the biblical period, until contemporary times. Some Jewish calendars served as full almanacs by including astronomical, medical, weather, market, and other information.
title: Calendars
alternative label: calendars
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Hrodna
related: Linetski, Yitskhok Yoyel
related: Perl, Yosef
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Spektor, Mordkhe
related: Vilnius

Chernobil Hasidic Dynasty
described at: Chernobil Hasidic Dynasty
has abstract: (Ukr., Chernobyl; later, Twersky Hasidic Dynasty), one of the leading Hasidic communities in nineteenth-century Ukraine. The Chernobil dynasty was founded by Rabbi Menaḥem Naḥum of Chernobil (1730?–1797), a student of Yisra’el Ba‘al Shem Tov and Dov Ber, the Magid of Mezritsh. In addition to serving as the magid (preacher) of Chernobil, Reb Naḥum apparently traveled around Ukraine, mediating, advising, and spreading his teachings.
title: Chernobil Hasidic Dynasty
alternative label: Chernobil
alternative label: Chernobil dynasty
alternative label: Chernobyl
related: Bessarabia
related: Bratslav Hasidism
related: Bucharest
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Kiev
related: Pilgrimage
related: Pogroms
related: Ukraine

Death and the Dead
described at: Death and the Dead
has abstract: There is a shared foundation in all of Jewish culture with respect to death, the primary and most influential principle of which concerns the impurity of the dead. From this belief derives the need to distance the dead from places of human habitation and to confine them to separate areas set aside for them: cemeteries. The dead were buried with a ceremony—the funeral—and their relatives, the mourners, practiced customs of mourning anchored in halakhah.
title: Death and the Dead
alternative label: dead
alternative label: death
narrower: The Burial Society
narrower: The Cemetery
related: An-ski Ethnographic Expedition and Museum
related: Budapest
related: Epstein, Yeḥi’el Mikhl
related: Haskalah
related: Koidanover, Aharon Shemu’el and Tsevi Hirsh
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: Prague
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Tkhines
related: Tombstones
related: Warsaw
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el

Dinezon, Yankev
described at: Dinezon Yankev
has abstract: (1856?–1919), Yiddish author, editor, and literary activist. Yankev Dinezon was born in the Kovno region of Lithuania; the date of his birth is uncertain and may have been as late as 1862. He received a traditional education and showed a passion for writing at an early age. Dinezon’s father died before the writer was 12, and he was subsequently raised in Mohilev (mod. Mogilev-Podol’skiy) by an uncle. In Mohilev, Dinezon studied at a yeshiva until he was 16. Hired by Bodona Horowitz, a rich Mohilev merchant’s wife, to tutor her children in Hebrew, Dinezon received his first secular education in their home, and grew familiar with German and Russian. Dinezon ultimately became a family confidant and business agent, traveling on behalf of their interests.
title: Dinezon, Yankev
alternative label: Yankev Dinezon
related: Dik, Ayzik Meyer
related: Kaunas
related: Kiev
related: Lithuania
related: Magid, Ha-
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Reyzen, Zalmen
related: Romm Family
related: Shaḥar, Ha-
related: Shomer
related: Smolenskin, Perets
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Epstein Family
described at: Epstein Family
has abstract: Bankers and industrialists in Warsaw. Jakub Epstein (1771–1843) was a merchant, Polish army officer, and Freemason. His sons Josef (1795–1876), Adam (1799–1870), Jan (1805–1885), and Herman (1806–1867) all played leading roles in the economic and social life of the Polish Kingdom. Herman’s sons Mikołaj (1831–1902) and Mieczysław (1833–1914) continued in these roles as well.
title: Epstein Family
alternative label: Epstein
alternative label: Epstein family
alternative label: Epsteins
alternative label: Herman Epstein
alternative label: Jakub Epstein
related: Banking
related: Industry
related: Kronenberg Family
related: L’viv
related: Philanthropy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Reform, Religious
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Warsaw

Eynhorn, Dovid
described at: Eynhorn Dovid
has abstract: (1886–1973), poet and publicist. Dovid Eynhorn was born in Karelitsh and educated in Wołkowysk (now Volkovysk, Belarus) in part by his father Binyomin, a military physician who had “returned to the faith” and become a government-appointed rabbi. In his younger years, Eynhorn wrote in Hebrew. His first Yiddish poems were published mainly in the Bundist press. The failure of the 1905 Revolution was a pivotal point in his life, since he came to perceive literature as a reply to politics.
title: Eynhorn, Dovid
alternative label: Dovid Eynhorn
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Assimilation
related: Belarus
related: Bund
related: Communism
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Kletskin, Boris Arkadevich
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Radom
related: Ravitch, Melech
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Folks-shtime
described at: Folks-shtime
has abstract: Yiddish newspaper published in Poland from April 1945 until December 1991. Folks-shtime (Voice of the People) was the main newspaper of Polish Jews after World War II. It began in Łódź and from October 1949 it came out in Warsaw. Until 8 December 1956 it was published under the auspices of the Polish United Workers Party. Thereafter it became the organ of the Social and Cultural Association of Jews in Poland. In its last period, from 1989 to 1991, the Ministry of Culture and Art financed its publication. Beginning in 1969, the newspaper added a section in Polish. From 1950 to 1968 Folks-shtime appeared four times a week; from 1968 to 1991 it was issued weekly. In Yiddish, it used standard rather than Soviet orthography.
title: Folks-shtime
related: Łódź
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Smolar, Hersh
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Grade, Chaim
described at: Grade Chaim
has abstract: (1910–1982), Yiddish poet and novelist. Chaim Grade ranks among the most important Yiddish writers of the post-Holocaust period. His unsentimental depictions of rabbinic high culture and life on the Jewish streets of Vilna both describe memorable characters drawn from different strata of society, and dramatize the contest of ideas and moral impulses that defined his community in the interwar period. Though today Grade is best remembered for the richness of his prose, he is also the author of nine volumes of poetry.
title: Grade, Chaim
alternative label: Chaim Grade
related: Charity
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Karelits, Avraham Yesha‘yahu
related: Kielce
related: Memory
related: Musar Movement
related: Piety
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Yung-Vilne

Granovskii, Aleksandr Mikhailovich
described at: Granovskii Aleksandr Mikhailovich
has abstract: (1890–1937), director of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater (Gosudarstvennyi Evreiskii Teatr; GOSET). Aleksandr Granovskii (Yid., Aleksander Granovski) was born into a wealthy merchant family in Moscow that moved to Riga while he was an infant. There he was raised in an assimilated environment. Beginning in 1910, he studied theater in Saint Petersburg, where he was influenced by the avant-garde and experimental theater of the Russian Silver Age. He continued his studies under the tutelage of Max Reinhardt in Germany, and developed an appreciation for theater as spectacle. In 1914, he returned to Saint Petersburg and began directing theatrical productions, including Macbeth, Faust, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sadko.
title: Granovskii, Aleksandr Mikhailovich
alternative label: Aleksandr Granovskii
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Cinema
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Moscow
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Riga
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Satire
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: About this Article (Theater)

Grodzenski, Ḥayim Ozer
described at: Grodzenski Hayim Ozer
has abstract: (Often Grodzinski; 1863–1940), religious scholar and community leader. “Reb Khayim Oyzer” (as he was widely known, using the Yiddish form of his name) was a major twentieth-century Jewish rabbinic authority and one of the most prominent leaders of Lithuanian Orthodox Jewry. Even in his childhood, Grodzenski exhibited superlative memory and Talmudic pilpul (casuistry) skills. He studied at the yeshivas of Eishishok (Pol., Ejszyszki; now Eisiskes, Lith.) and Volozhin (now Valozhyn, Bel.) and became known as the “prodigy of Ivya,” after his birthplace in Lithuania (Pol., Iwje). In Volozhin, he befriended Ḥayim Soloveichik of Brisk (Brest Litovsk), but was not influenced by the latter’s innovative methods of study.
title: Grodzenski, Ḥayim Ozer
alternative label: Ḥayim Ozer Grodzenski
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Brest
related: Conversion
related: Daas Toyre
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Homel’
related: Kook, Avraham Yitsḥak
related: Lipkin, Yisra’el ben Ze’ev Volf
related: Lithuania
related: Mizraḥi
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rubinstein, Yitsḥak
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sabbath
related: Soloveichik Family
related: Vilnius
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Katz, Bentsiyon
described at: Katz Bentsiyon
has abstract: (1875–1958), journalist and editor. Bentsiyon Katz was born in Doyg (Lith., Daugai) in Lithuania to a prestigious rabbinical family. At the age of 16, he began to send articles on contemporary problems to Ha-Melits and Ha-Tsefirah, frequently dealing with the need to adapt halakhah to modern times. From 1893 he lived in turn in Vilna, Kovno, and Saint Petersburg, received a university education, and by the end of that decade had published studies on halakhah (Mi-Zekenim etbonen [From the Elders I Shall Gain Wisdom]; 1894), on the Talmud (Or nogah: ‘Al sheme ha-Talmud [A Shining Light upon the Heavens of the Talmud]; 1895), and on Jewish history (Le-Korot ha-yehudim be-Rusyah, Polin, ve-Lita’ bi-shenot me’ot ha-shesh ‘esreh veha-sheva‘ ‘esreh [History of the Jews of Russia, Poland, and Lithuania in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries]; 1899).
title: Katz, Bentsiyon
alternative label: Bentsiyon Katz
related: Beilis, Mendel
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Kaunas
related: Kiev
related: Lithuania
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Stybel
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Vilnius
related: Zeman, Ha-
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Kiss, József
described at: Kiss Jozsef
has abstract: (1843–1921), poet and editor. József Kiss was born in Mezőcsát; both his grandfathers had moved to Hungary from Lithuania. His father, István Klein, was a poor merchant who sent his son to study in a yeshiva. Kiss, however, left that school when he was 13 to attend a gymnasium. For five years he was a melamed (itinerant teacher), wandering from village to village, “for all but nothing, some food, tobacco and a new shoe sole.”
title: Kiss, József
alternative label: József Kiss
related: Budapest
related: Hungarian Literature
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Lithuania
related: Timişoara
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Kolomyia
described at: Kolomyia
has abstract: (or Kolomyya; Pol., Kołomyja; Ger., Kolomea), city on the Prut River in Ukraine. Jews first settled in Kołomyja, then part of Poland, at about the turn of the sixteenth century. Although many were murdered and the community was destroyed during the Khmel’nyts’kyi massacres of 1648–1649, the Jewish population quickly reestablished itself and numbered more than 1,000 residents by 1772, when Austria wrested the city from Polish control and made it part of the new province of Galicia.
title: Kolomyia
alternative label: Kolomea
alternative label: Kołomyja
related: Bloch, Yosef Shemu’el
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bratislava
related: Galicia
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Industry
related: Lichtenstein, Hillel
related: Makhzikey ha-Das
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: Thon, Ozjasz
related: Trade
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Lebensohn, Mikhah Yosef
described at: Lebensohn Mikhah Yosef
has abstract: (1828–1852), Hebrew poet and translator. Mikhah Yosef Lebensohn (Mikhal), son of Avraham Dov Lebensohn (Adam ha-Kohen), was born in Vilna. In addition to receiving a traditional Jewish education, he was encouraged by his father to study Russian, Polish, German, and French, and began writing and translating at an early age. In 1845, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and subsequently traveled to sanatoria in Germany (Reinerz, Salzbrunn, and Berlin) in search of a cure. In Berlin, he was introduced to German culture, including the philosophy of Friedrich Schelling, and befriended the prominent Jewish scholar Shneur Sachs. In 1850, Lebensohn returned to Vilna. Attempts to cure his disease failed and he died at age 24.
title: Lebensohn, Mikhah Yosef
alternative label: Mikhah Yosef
alternative label: Mikhah Yosef Lebensohn
related: Haskalah
related: Lebensohn, Avraham Dov
related: Passover
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Vilnius

Lichtenstein, Hillel
described at: Lichtenstein Hillel
has abstract: (1814–1891), rabbi; pioneer of ultra-Orthodoxy; Yiddishist. Hillel Lichtenstein was born in the small community of Vécs, not far from Pressburg in what today is Slovakia (hence his alternate appellation as Hillel Vécs; he was also known as Hillel Lesh, an abbreviated form of his family name, and later as Hillel Kolomea). His father, Barukh Bendit (d. 1839), served as the town’s dayan. Lichtenstein gloried in his distinguished rabbinic lineage: he was a descendant of both Mordekhai Yafeh and Yesha‘yahu Horowitz (known as Shlah). That the latter was one of only a handful of rabbis ever to be called kadosh (saint) had a decisive impact on young Hillel, who in time himself came to be regarded as a holy man.
title: Lichtenstein, Hillel
alternative label: Hillel Lichtenstein
related: Amulets and Talismans
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Assimilation
related: Aszód, Yehudah
related: Bratislava
related: Budapest
related: Cluj
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Hildesheimer, Esriel
related: Horowitz Family
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Kalischer, Tsevi Hirsh
related: Makhzikey ha-Das
related: Messianism
related: Miskolc
related: Mukacheve
related: Orthodoxy
related: Piety
related: Preachers and Preaching
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Reform, Religious
related: Sandz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Schlesinger, Akiva Yosef
related: Slovakia
related: Sofer, Ḥayim ben Mordekhai Efrayim Fishel
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: Transylvania
related: Yafeh, Mordekhai ben Avraham
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zhidachov-Komarno Hasidic Dynasty

Magyar Zsidó Szemle
described at: Magyar Zsido Szemle
has abstract: (Hungarian Jewish Review), the foremost Jewish studies periodical in the Hungarian language. Magyar Zsidó Szemle, which was published in 65 volumes between 1884 and 1948, was founded at the initiative of József Simon, a key communal leader of Hungarian Jewry, against the background of the Tiszaeszlár blood libel. In autumn 1883, Simon urged the staff of the newly founded Budapest Rabbinical Seminary to publish a Hungarian-language Jewish studies periodical. Vilmos (Wilhelm) Bacher and József Bánóczi, two young scholars, undertook the editorship; the first volume of about 700 pages appeared in 1884.
title: Magyar Zsidó Szemle
related: Bacher, Vilmos
related: Bánóczi, József
related: Blau, Lajos
related: Budapest
related: Goldziher, Ignác
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kaufmann, David
related: Löw, Immánuel
related: Marczali, Henrik
related: Mezey, Ferenc
related: Scheiber, Sándor
related: Seminary
related: Tiszaeszlár Blood Libel

Mântuirea
described at: Mantuirea
has abstract: Daily newspaper published in Bucharest in two series: 1919–1922 and 1944–1948. The director and founder of Mântuirea (Redemption) was Abraham Leib Zissu, and its editor in chief was Abraham Feller. The publication was regarded as the most influential Romanian Jewish newspaper of the interwar period. It had a strong Zionist bent, implied by its subtitle, “Cotidian național evreiesc” (Jewish National Daily).
title: Mântuirea
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Assimilation
related: Bucharest
related: Pinsker, Simḥah and Lev
related: Romania
related: Sokolow, Naḥum
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties
related: Zissu, Abraham Leib

Mohilewer, Shemu’el
described at: Mohilewer Shemuel
has abstract: (1824–1898), rabbi, halakhic authority, and a leader of the Ḥibat Tsiyon movement. Born in Głębokie, near Vilna, Shemu’el Mohilewer was ordained at the Volozhin yeshiva. He served as rabbi in a number of communities in Poland and Lithuania, including Suwałki (1860–1868), Radom (1868–1883), and Białystok (1883–1898).
title: Mohilewer, Shemu’el
alternative label: Shemu’el Mohilewer
related: Łódź
related: Assimilation
related: Białystok
related: Brest
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Hildesheimer, Esriel
related: Kalischer, Tsevi Hirsh
related: Katowice
related: Land of Israel
related: Lithuania
related: Meisel, Eliyahu Ḥayim
related: Orthodoxy
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Radom
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Soloveichik Family
related: Suwałki
related: Vilnius
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Múlt és Jövő
described at: Mult es Jovo
has abstract: (Past and Future), literary, artistic, social, and critical periodical, published in Hungary between 1911 and 1944 and renewed in 1988. Founded by József Patai, Múlt és Jövő first appeared in 1911 as a stylish almanac, becoming a monthly from 1912 until March 1919, when the Hungarian Soviet Republic shut it down. In the first years of the counterrevolutionary regime, between 1919 and 1923, it was published as a political weekly. Beginning in October 1921, it reverted to monthly publication, continuing until March 1944. When Patai immigrated to Palestine in 1939, Ernő Molnár—his brother-in-law and the editor of the periodical’s youth supplement, Remény (Hope)—became editor in chief, though the masthead continued to list Patai’s name in that position. Molnár died in the Holocaust.
title: Múlt és Jövő
alternative label: Múlt és Jövo
related: Bratislava
related: Budapest
related: Cluj
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Pap, Károly
related: Patai, József
related: Szép, Ernő
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Names and Naming
described at: Names and Naming
has abstract: The most appropriate way of considering names used by Jews in Eastern Europe is to separate the discussion of personal names from that of family names. Indeed, personal names represent an organic part of Jewish culture. Their corpus developed over the centuries in a natural way, inside the community. Their history is closely related to that of Yiddish. On the other hand, but for a very few exceptions, the family names were invented during a short period of time, around the turn of the nineteenth century. Their adoption was forced by state authorities. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, in numerous communities they were marginal for Jewish self-consciousness.
title: Names and Naming
alternative label: Names
alternative label: name
alternative label: names
narrower: Family Names
narrower: Personal Names
related: Ashkenaz
related: Belarus
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bucovina
related: Circumcision
related: Courland
related: Death and the Dead
related: Galicia
related: Hrodna
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kahal
related: Kiev
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Yiddish (Language)
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: L’viv
related: Pale of Settlement
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Radom
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Sabbath
related: Transylvania
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw

Natan Sternhartz of Nemirov
described at: Natan Sternhartz of Nemirov
has abstract: (1780–1844), disciple of Naḥman of Bratslav and disseminator of his teachings. Natan Sternhartz served as informal leader of the Bratslav Hasidic sect following his master’s death. He was never considered to be the rebbe of the community, however, and Bratslav Hasidim thus remain faithful to the group’s founder.
title: Natan Sternhartz of Nemirov
related: Bratslav Hasidism
related: Haskalah
related: Misnagdim
related: Naḥman of Bratslav
related: Perl, Yosef
related: Savran-Bendery Hasidic Dynasty
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh

Orenstein Family
described at: Orenstein Family
has abstract: Wealthy and prominent rabbinic family. Many members of the Orenstein family filled major rabbinic posts in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Galicia, especially from the middle of the eighteenth century. The first to bear the family name was Mordekhai Ze’ev Orenstein (1745–1787), who by an early age had served as rabbi in several Polish communities. Following the First Partition of Poland, he held the position of assistant district rabbi in Galicia (1776–1778), and later as rabbi of Lwów until his death.
title: Orenstein Family
alternative label: Orenstein
alternative label: Orensteins
alternative label: Tsevi Hirsh Orenstein
alternative label: Ya‘akov Orenstein
related: Łódź
related: Brest
related: Broda Family
related: Erter, Yitsḥak
related: Galicia
related: Haskalah
related: Ivano-Frankivs’k
related: L’viv
related: Makhzikey ha-Das
related: Mieses, Yehudah Leib
related: Natanson, Yosef Sha’ul
related: Orthodoxy
related: Pale of Settlement
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Rzeszów
related: Seminary
related: Shomer Yisra’el
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Zhovkva

Poliakov Family
described at: Poliakov Family
has abstract: Nineteenth-century Russian entrepreneurs whose activities included railway construction, banking, commerce, and philanthropy. The family included three brothers, Ya‘akov (Yakov), Shemu’el (Samuil), and Eli‘ezer (Lazar); they came from a merchant family in Dubrovna (near Vitebsk) and received traditional Jewish as well as modern educations.
title: Poliakov Family
alternative label: Eli‘ezer (Lazar; Leon) Poliakov
alternative label: Poliakov
alternative label: Poliakov family
alternative label: Samuil Poliakov
alternative label: Shemu’el Poliakov
alternative label: Ya‘akov Poliakov
related: Banking
related: Bobruisk
related: Moscow
related: ORT
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Philanthropy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Vilnius
related: Vitsyebsk

About this Article (Printing and Publishing)
described at: Printing and Publishing
has abstract: To survey the history of Jewish publishing activity in Eastern Europe, this entry is divided chronologically into two articles, the first covering the period up to 1800 and the second from 1800 until 2000. For further discussion, see also Book Design and Illustration.
title: About this Article (Printing and Publishing)
alternative label: Printing and Publishing
alternative label: printers
alternative label: printing
alternative label: printing and publishing
alternative label: publishing
related: Book Design and Illustration

Przytyk Pogrom
described at: Przytyk Pogrom
has abstract: Przytyk, a small town several kilometers from Radom, was the scene of a riot on 9 March 1936 in which two Jews and a non-Jewish Pole were killed, several dozen Jewish apartments and shops were destroyed, and more than 20 people were severely beaten. At that time, 90 percent of Przytyk’s 3,000 inhabitants were Jews and the town served as a market for neighboring hamlets.
title: Przytyk Pogrom
alternative label: Przytyk
alternative label: Przytyk pogrom
related: Kielce
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Radom

Sátoraljaújhely
described at: Satoraljaujhely
has abstract: Town in northeastern Hungary and the seat of Zemplén county before World War I. Sátoraljaújhely (also known as Újhely) was a market town that became a commercial center in the second half of the eighteenth century. Its Jewish community was founded in 1771; a burial society was formed a year later. Its first Jewish public school was established in 1785; it was closed at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Even though in 1807 the town expelled 30 Jewish families (citing immigration from Galicia, which increased the number of poor), the number of Jewish inhabitants reached 1,217 in 1825, 3,253 in 1869 and 5,730 in 1910, making up 18.6, 32.7, and 28.7 percent of the total populations in those years.
title: Sátoraljaújhely
alternative label: Újhely
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Slovakia
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Schorr, Yehoshu‘a Heshel
described at: Schorr Yehoshua Heshel
has abstract: (1814–1895), Hebrew poet, editor, and author. Yehoshu‘a Heshel Schorr (also known by the acronym Yahash) was born in Brody, Galicia to a wealthy family. As a young boy, he was introduced to Haskalah literature and, in 1828, he visited Naḥman Krochmal. Schorr was influenced by the writings of Yitsḥak Erter, who lived in Brody and with whom he developed a lasting friendship.
title: Schorr, Yehoshu‘a Heshel
alternative label: Yehoshu‘a Heshel Schorr
related: Brody
related: Erter, Yitsḥak
related: Galicia
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: Haskalah
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: ‘Ivri, Ha-
related: Kerem Ḥemed
related: Krochmal, Naḥman
related: L’viv
related: Hebrew Poetry (Poetry)
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)

Schwarzfeld Family
described at: Schwarzfeld Family
has abstract: Romanian intellectuals active in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Beniamin Schwarzfeld (1822–1897) was a Hebrew-language writer and educator. His sons Elias (1855–1915), Wilhelm (1856–1894), and Moses (1857–1943) were writers and historians, and his daughter Adela Schwarzfeld-Wechsler (1859–1953) was the mother of the poet Beniamin Fundoianu (Fondane).
title: Schwarzfeld Family
alternative label: Beniamin Schwarzfeld
alternative label: Schwarzfeld
alternative label: Schwarzfeld brothers
related: Bacău
related: Barasch, Iuliu
related: Braunstein, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Bucharest
related: Cilibi Moise
related: Egalitatea
related: Fundoianu, Beniamin
related: Haskalah
related: Iaşi
related: Ivano-Frankivs’k
related: Magid, Ha-
related: Proverbs
related: Romania

Shatzky, Yankev
described at: Shatzky Yankev
has abstract: (1893–1956), historian and librarian. A native of Warsaw, Yankev Shatzky spent most of his career in the United States, closely associated with the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. His published works number more than a thousand, including hundreds of scholarly articles, scores of major book reviews, monographs, and book-length studies, in addition numerous anthologies and annuals that he edited. Writing primarily in Yiddish, but also in Polish and Hebrew, Shatzky ranged over the length and breadth of modern Jewish history and thought. He also wrote extensively on the history of Yiddish theater and popular Jewish culture. His best and most important works focused on the Jews of Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine—the constituent parts of Old Poland.
title: Shatzky, Yankev
alternative label: Yankev Shatzky
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: Handelsman, Marceli
related: Hannover, Natan Note
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw
related: YIVO
related: Yizker-bikher

Shtern
described at: Shtern
has abstract: The Workers’ Society for Physical Education “Shtern” traced its roots to a sports group known as Spartakus, which was established in Warsaw by the Labor Zionist youth organization Yugnt in 1920. In 1923, Spartakus united with a group known as Gwiazda (Star), composed of middle-school students; this new entity then began to refer to itself as the Shtern (Star) Workers’ Sport Club. The club’s formation in the Polish capital provided impetus for the establishment of similar groups elsewhere in the country. A Shtern group formed in Łódź around 1925, and in Kraków in 1928. In 1937—when there were 190 branches of Maccabi and 107 branches of Morgnshtern (the Bundist movement for physical education) in Poland—the Shtern movement was made up of 44 local organizations.
title: Shtern
related: Łódź
related: Brest
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Maccabi Movement
related: Morgnshtern
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rotholc, Stanisław
related: About this Article (Sport)
related: Warsaw
related: Yugnt
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Shteynbarg, Eliezer
described at: Shteynbarg Eliezer
has abstract: (1880–1932), Yiddish writer and educator. Born in Lipkany, Bessarabia, Eliezer Shteynbarg (originally Shteynberg) received a traditional Jewish education but independently mastered German and Russian classics. Like his cousin Yehudah Steinberg (Shteynberg; a pioneer of modern Hebrew education), Eliezer directed a private, secular school, with Hebrew as the language of instruction. From 1919 on, he lived in Czernowitz (Chernivtsi) where he ran, among other things, a Yiddish children’s theater.
title: Shteynbarg, Eliezer
alternative label: Eliezer Shteynbarg
related: Angels
related: Bessarabia
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Chernivtsi
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Purim-shpil
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
related: Romania
related: Steinberg, Yehudah
related: About this Article (Theater)

Simḥah Bunem of Pshiskhe
described at: Simhah Bunem of Pshiskhe
has abstract: (Przysucha; 1765–1827), important Hasidic leader in Poland. Simḥah Bunem was born in Wodzisław, where his father was a magid. Simḥah Bunem studied in the yeshivas of Mattersdorf (in Hungary; now Mattersberg, Austria) and Nikolsburg (Mikulov, Moravia), and his first Hasidic mentors were Mosheh Leib of Sasov (1745–1807) and Yisra’el the Magid of Kozhenits (Kozienice; ca. 1737–1814).
title: Simḥah Bunem of Pshiskhe
alternative label: Simḥah Bunem
related: Aleksander Hasidic Dynasty
related: Bergson, Temerl
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Chekhanov Hasidic Dynasty
related: Gdańsk
related: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Izhbits-Radzin Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Menaḥem Mendel of Kotsk
related: Mikulov
related: Mosheh Leib of Sasov
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Pshiskhe Hasidic Dynasty
related: Vurke Hasidic Dynasty
related: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el
related: Yisra’el ben Shabetai of Kozhenits

Siret
described at: Siret
has abstract: Town in northeastern Romania, in the current county of Suceava. As early as the seventeenth century, Jews had settled in Siret (Ger., Sereth), a medieval Moldavian town that had been the former capital of the principality. When Bucovina was occupied by Austrian troops in 1774, eight Jewish families (with 43 people) were recorded as living there.
title: Siret
related: Bucovina
related: Craiova
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Moldavia
related: Rădăuţi
related: Romania
related: Suceava
related: Transnistria
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Sirkes, Yo’el
described at: Sirkes Yoel
has abstract: (1561–1640), one of the foremost Talmudic scholars and halakhists of Poland, better known by the acronym Baḥ, after the abbreviation of his Bayit ḥadash commentary. Sirkes was born in Lublin to a distinguished rabbinic family and served as rabbi in the prominent communities of Brest Litovsk and Kraków, where he also headed a yeshiva. He was an active participant in the Council of Four Lands and attended numerous fairs where he was involved in halakhic deliberations.
title: Sirkes, Yo’el
alternative label: Yo’el Sirkes
related: Brest
related: David ben Shemu’el ha-Levi
related: Kalisz
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Krochmal, Menaḥem Mendel ben Avraham
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sabbath
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Sofer, Avraham Shemu’el Binyamin
described at: Sofer Avraham Shemuel Binyamin
has abstract: (1815–1871), rabbi, halakhist, exegete, and Orthodox leader. Known as Ketav Sofer, Avraham Sofer (Schreiber) was the eldest son of the chief rabbi of Pressburg (Bratislava), Mosheh Sofer (known as Ḥatam Sofer), and the grandson of Akiva Eger of Posen. Upon the death of Ḥatam Sofer in 1839, his supporters overcame considerable opposition and fulfilled their master’s deathbed wish that his son succeed him. Thus, the 24-year-old scholar was catapulted into the coveted role of Pressburg rabbi and head of its famed yeshiva.
title: Sofer, Avraham Shemu’el Binyamin
alternative label: Avraham Shemu’el Binyamin
alternative label: Avraham Shemu’el Binyamin Sofer
alternative label: Avraham Sofer
related: Bratislava
related: Budapest
related: Cluj
related: Eger, Akiva ben Mosheh
related: Eisenstadt
related: Hildesheimer, Esriel
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Orthodoxy
related: Poznań
related: Seminary
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Songs and Songwriters
described at: Songs and Songwriters
has abstract: The notion of a Yiddish popular song is clearest in an example such as the 1947 hit “Rumenye” [listen to a recording] popularized on stage and through recordings and sheet music by a professional singer, with a text by a professional lyricist and music by a professional composer—in this case all three in the person of Aaron Lebedeff (although here the music was reworked rather than composed by him). Before all these elements of a mass musical culture were present, however, the second half of the nineteenth century brought the appearance of something different from the traditional East European Yiddish folk song. Although folk songs presumably originate as products of individual creativity, as they spread, they lose connections with their creators and become anonymous. What was new in Austrian Galicia, Romania, and Russia was the development of a group of professional or semiprofessional songwriters and performers who produced songs that began to be identified with their authors or performers. Also new was the context of performance, no longer limited to the family circle or to ceremonial occasions such as weddings. Now songs began to be performed to entertain customers—in taverns, wine cellars, and restaurant gardens.
title: Songs and Songwriters
alternative label: Broder Singers
alternative label: song
alternative label: songs
alternative label: songwriter
related: Łódź
related: Badkhonim
related: Birobidzhan
related: Broder, Berl
related: Broderzon, Moyshe
related: Brody
related: Cinema
related: Crimea
related: About this Article (Dance)
related: Dobrushin, Yekhezkl
related: Ehrenkranz, Benjamin Wolf
related: Folk Songs
related: Galicia
related: Gebirtig, Mordkhe
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Music (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Hrodna
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: Kiev
related: Kleynkunst
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Litvak
related: L’viv
related: Manger, Itsik
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Operetta
related: Passover
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Przytyk Pogrom
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sabbath
related: Satire
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Tuwim, Julian
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Varshavski, Mark
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Weddings

Soviet Yiddish-Language Schools
described at: Soviet Yiddish-Language Schools
has abstract: During World War I, politically progressive elements among Polish Jewish refugees in Russia, together with local leaders, established a number of schools in which Yiddish was the language of instruction. In 1914, Russian law, which had previously prohibited Yiddish-language schools, was changed to legalize such institutions. The number of schools increased rapidly, and textbooks and pedagogical manuals began to appear.
title: Soviet Yiddish-Language Schools
alternative label: Soviet Jewish schools
alternative label: Yiddish schools
alternative label: Yiddish-language Jewish schools
alternative label: Yiddish-language educational
alternative label: Yiddish-language school system
alternative label: Yiddish-language schools
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Belarus
related: Birobidzhan
related: Commissariat for Jewish National Affairs
related: Evsektsiia
related: Kaunas
related: Kultur-lige
related: Larin, Iurii Aleksandrovich
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Shtetl
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Spira, Natan Note ben Shelomoh
described at: Spira Natan Note ben Shelomoh
has abstract: (1585–1633), rabbi, preacher, and kabbalist. Natan Note Spira (also Natan Nata Shapira) was born to a rabbinical family and was named after his grandfather, a rabbi in Grodno who was the author of Mavo she‘arim (1575) and Imre shefer (1597). Natan Note, a rabbi and head of the yeshiva in Kraków, became a famous kabbalist after composing Megaleh ‘amukot (published posthumously in 1637), in which he interpreted the prayer of Moses in the weekly Torah portion “Va-Etḥanan” (Deut. 3:23–25) in 252 different ways, some based on numerology (gimatriyah) or complex mathematical calculations and others on kabbalistic interpretations from various traditions.
title: Spira, Natan Note ben Shelomoh
alternative label: Natan Note Spira
alternative label: Natan Note ben Shelomoh Spira
alternative label: Natan Spira
related: Eybeschütz, Yonatan
related: Hrodna
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Messianism
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sabbatianism
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Steinberg, Yehudah
described at: Steinberg Yehudah
has abstract: (1863–1908), Hebrew and Yiddish writer. Yehudah Steinberg was born in Lipkany, Bessarabia, to a fervently religious Hasidic family. When he began to show signs of rebelliousness, he feuded bitterly with his father; still, when Yehudah reached age 17, his father insisted he marry a young woman so that he would “return to the fold.” After his marriage, he went to live at his father-in-law’s home in a village adjacent to the Romanian town of Shtepaneshty, a center of Hasidism. He became close to the local rebbe—a descendant of Yisra’el of Ruzhin—and absorbed the Hasidic experience in its populist rural form. Steinberg simultaneously became friendly with a local maskil who supplied him with literature that opened him up to new worlds but did not wean him away from Hasidism.
title: Steinberg, Yehudah
alternative label: Yehudah Steinberg
related: Bessarabia
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Hebrew Literature (Children’s Literature)
related: Fichmann, Ya‘akov
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Hebrew Literature
related: About this Article (Literary Journals)
related: Odessa
related: Warsaw
related: Yisra’el of Ruzhin

Trunk, Yekhiel Yeshaye
described at: Trunk Yekhiel Yeshaye
has abstract: (1887–1961), Yiddish and Hebrew writer. On his paternal side, Yekhiel Yeshaye Trunk was descended from an important Hasidic family; his great-grandfather was the tsadik Shayele Kutner, and his grandfather the rabbi of Kutno. Trunk’s father inherited a fortune from his own father-in-law, and Trunk himself married a grandchild of Y. Prywes, the “iron king” of Poland, from one of the country’s richest Jewish families. Trunk grew up in Łódź and studied with private tutors.
title: Trunk, Yekhiel Yeshaye
alternative label: Yekhiel Yeshaye Trunk
related: Łódź
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Bund
related: Chełm
related: Folklore, Ethnography, and Anthropology
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Yiddish Criticism and Scholarship (Literary Criticism and Scholarship)
related: Ostropolyer, Hershele
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Psychoanalysis
related: Sabbatianism
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Singer, Isaac Bashevis
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: YIVO
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zeitlin Family

Vayter, A.
described at: Vayter A
has abstract: (also Waiter; pseudonym of Ayzik Meyer Devenishski; ca. 1878–1919); Yiddish writer, political activist, and cultural figure. Born in a shtetl in the Vilna region to a strictly observant family that operated a tavern, Ayzik Meyer Devenishski received a traditional Jewish education. In his youth, he became familiar with Haskalah literature, and later studied Russian and Polish literature and the works of radical and revolutionary thinkers. Devenishski left the traditional world and joined the Bund at the time of its inception. He was active in Kovno, Minsk, and Vilna under his party pseudonym “Comrade Aron,” and endeavored to strengthen the national elements of the Bund platform. Devenishski was arrested several times and exiled to Siberia.
title: Vayter, A.
alternative label: A. Vayter
alternative label: A.Vayter
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Bund
related: Fraynd, Der
related: Haskalah
related: Kaunas
related: Kletskin, Boris Arkadevich
related: Memory
related: Minsk
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Reyzen, Zalmen
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Shtetl
related: Vilnius

Wahrmann, Mór
described at: Wahrmann Mor
has abstract: (Moritz; 1831–1892), merchant banker, communal leader, and member of parliament. The son of a Jewish trader, and grandson of Yisra’el Wahrmann, the first rabbi of Pest, Mór Wahrmann became one of that city’s most successful merchant bankers during the Gründerzeit, the great economic boom of the 1860s. He also played an important role in Jewish communal affairs and served as the first professing Jew in Hungary’s parliament.
title: Wahrmann, Mór
alternative label: Mór Wahrmann
related: Banking
related: Budapest
related: Galitsianer
related: Goldziher, Ignác
related: Gottlieb, Maurycy
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Orthodoxy
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Russia)

Yehudah Ḥasid ha-Levi
described at: Yehudah Hasid ha-Levi
has abstract: (ca. 1650–1700), popular mystical preacher. Yehudah Ḥasid ha-Levi was born in Dubno (according to other sources, in Siedlce), and went to Italy to study Kabbalah around 1678. Returning to Poland, he became the rabbi of Szydłów. In 1696, he and Ḥayim Malakh became leaders of a group of ascetics who intended to immigrate to the Land of Israel in order to await the messiah’s coming in Jerusalem.
title: Yehudah Ḥasid ha-Levi
alternative label: Yehudah he-Ḥasid
alternative label: Yehudah Ḥasid
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Dubno
related: Frankism
related: Land of Israel
related: Lithuania
related: Malakh, Ḥayim ben Shelomoh
related: Mikulov
related: Oppenheim, David
related: Piety
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sabbatianism
related: Sephardim
related: Tsoref, Yehoshu‘a Heshel ben Yosef

Żydowska Partia Socjalno-Demokratyczna
described at: Zydowska Partia Socjalno-Demokratyczna
has abstract: (Jewish Social Democratic Party; ŻPS) was a political party that operated in Galicia from 1905 until 1920. Often called the “Galician Bund,” its foundation capped more than a dozen years of Jewish socialist activity in the province. Activists had formed the first Jewish Workers Party in Galicia in 1892, which though short-lived was followed by other local Jewish workers’ organizations throughout the decade, most calling themselves Brotherhood. By the time the Galician socialist party was renamed the Polish Social Democratic Party of Galicia and Silesia (PPSD) in 1897, the group (especially its assimilationist Jewish members such as Herman Diamand) had begun to oppose all forms of Jewish “separatism.” Other Jewish voices within the PPSD favoring the establishment of an autonomous Jewish division to meet the particular needs of Jewish workers were persistently defeated.
title: Żydowska Partia Socjalno-Demokratyczna
alternative label: Jewish Social Democratic Party
alternative label: Żydowska Partja Socjalno-Demokratyczna
related: Bund
related: Czernowitz Conference
related: Diamand, Herman
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: L’viv
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Silesia
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Łomża
described at: Łomza
has abstract: Town in northeastern Poland in the Mazovia region. By the fourteenth century, Jews had settled in Lomza, engaging mainly in trade in timber, salt, raw materials and in various crafts. In 1566 the town received the right de non tolerandis Judaeis (nontoleration of Jews), and so Jews resettled in suburbs and villages nearby. Only at the beginning of the eighteenth century did Jews return to Lomza itself, but their numbers were small, reaching 157 in 1808.
title: Łomża
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Aleksander Hasidic Dynasty
related: Bund
related: Crafts
related: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Meisel, Eliyahu Ḥayim
related: Misnagdim
related: Mizraḥi
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rakovsky, Puah
related: Revisionist Zionists
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Ha-
related: About this Article (Sport)
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Trade
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Youth Movements
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Altneuschul
described at: Altneuschul
has abstract: (Old-New Synagogue), the oldest building in Prague’s Jewish Quarter and the oldest preserved synagogue in Europe. Originally called the New or Great Shul, it became known as Altneuschul after the establishment of other synagogues in the late sixteenth century. Today it is the oldest surviving Gothic medieval double-nave synagogue. The other examples of this type were the late twelfth-century synagogue in Worms (destroyed in 1938), the early thirteenth-century synagogue in Regensburg (destroyed in 1519), and the fourteenth-century Old Synagogue in Vienna (destroyed in 1420). Similar in layout is the early fifteenth-century Gothic Old Synagogue in Kraków.
title: Altneuschul
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Prague

Apt Hasidic Dynasty
described at: Apt Hasidic Dynasty
has abstract: Hasidic dynasty of the Heshel family, originating in the nineteenth century. Its main influence was in Podolia, Bucovina, Moldavia, and Bessarabia. The founder of the Apt dynasty was Avraham Yehoshu‘a Heshel (ca. 1748–1825), a disciple of Elimelekh of Lizhensk. Heshel was born in Żmigród Nowy in Galicia to a distinguished rabbinical family. By about 1786 he was rabbi of Kolbuszowa, where he first became acquainted with Hasidism and began to function as a rebbe. In 1800, Heshel went to serve as the rabbi of Apt (Opatów), and, as the “Apter Rebbe,” was known by the name of that town for the rest of his life, even when he became rabbi of Jassy (Iaşi; 1809) and, later, of Mezhbizh (Międzyboż, Medzhibizh; from 1814 until his death).
title: Apt Hasidic Dynasty
alternative label: Apt
alternative label: Apter
alternative label: Avraham Yehoshu‘a Heshel of Apt
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Approbation
related: Bessarabia
related: Bucovina
related: Elimelekh of Lizhensk
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Iaşi
related: Land of Israel
related: Medzhibizh
related: Moldavia
related: Opatów
related: Pale of Settlement
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Warsaw

Arnshteyn, Mark
described at: Arnshteyn Mark
has abstract: (ca. 1879–1943), Yiddish and Polish playwright and theater director. Mark Arnshteyn (Arnsztejn) was born in Warsaw. In the Polish world, he used the pseudonym Andrzej Marek. His extended family included a Yiddish actress, Roze Arnshteyn, and a Polish poet, Franciszka Arnsztajnowa. He was educated in both Jewish and Polish schools and at an early age began publishing literature and criticism in both the Yiddish and Polish press.
title: Arnshteyn, Mark
alternative label: Mark Arnshteyn
related: Łódź
related: Assimilation
related: Cinema
related: Dybbuk, The
related: Kaminski Family
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Warsaw

Bacău
described at: Bacau
has abstract: Town in northern Moldavia, at the confluence of the Bistrița and Siret Rivers. Oral tradition claims that the first synagogue was erected in the late fifteenth century, but the oldest documentary reference to the existence of a Jewish community is a tombstone from 1703. In 1742, the Moldavian prince Constantin Mavrocordat granted two Jewish merchants from Hotin (in Bessarabia) the right to settle in the town and exempted them from taxes. Prince Ioniță Sandu Sturza, who encouraged the settlement of Jewish merchants, adopted a similar policy in 1823.
title: Bacău
related: Bessarabia
related: Botoşani
related: Bucharest
related: Moldavia
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Romania
related: Transylvania
related: Yisra’el of Ruzhin

Barasch, Iuliu
described at: Barasch Iuliu
has abstract: (1815–1863), physician, philosopher, writer, and popularizer of science. Born in Brody, Galicia, Iuliu (Julius; Yehudah) Barasch received a traditional education and prepared for a rabbinical career. However, he came under the influence of the Hebrew writers Hirsh Mendel Pineles and Yitsḥak Erter and turned his attention to secular reading. He studied philosophy beginning in 1836 at the University of Leipzig. In 1839 he transferred to the University of Berlin and earned a degree in medicine in 1841.
title: Barasch, Iuliu
alternative label: Iuliu (Julius) Yehudah Barasch
alternative label: Iuliu Barasch
related: Assimilation
related: Brody
related: Bucharest
related: Bucovina
related: Erter, Yitsḥak
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Moldavia
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Reform, Religious
related: Romania
related: Steinschneider, Moritz
related: Walachia

Beilis, Mendel
described at: Beilis Mendel
has abstract: (1874–1934), chief protagonist of the 1911–1913 Kiev blood libel case, referred to as the Beilis Affair. Little is known about Mendel Beilis beyond the fact of his association with the case. Raised in a village, he served in the Russian military and settled in Kiev around 1897. Though he was thrust into the limelight after he was indicted for the ritual murder of 12-year-old Andrei Iushchinskii, Beilis himself did not feature centrally in the affair.
title: Beilis, Mendel
alternative label: Beilis
alternative label: Beilis Affair
alternative label: Mendel Beilis
related: Blood Libels and Host Desecration Accusations
related: Kiev
related: Maze, Iakov Isaevich
related: Moscow
related: Pale of Settlement
related: About this Article (Russia)

Bloch, Jan
described at: Bloch Jan
has abstract: (1836–1902), financier and economist. Born in Radom, Jan (Ivan) Bloch converted to Protestantism in 1851 and to Roman Catholicism in 1856. He began his career in Warsaw as a financier in the banking firm of Szymon Toeplitz. Between 1856 and 1864, Bloch lived in Saint Petersburg where he helped to establish the Warsaw–Petersburg railway; this project set the base for his substantial fortune.
title: Bloch, Jan
alternative label: Bloch
alternative label: Jan Bloch
alternative label: Jan Bogumił Bloch
related: Banking
related: Conversion
related: Economic Life
related: Kronenberg Family
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Radom
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Warsaw

Dorohoi
described at: Dorohoi
has abstract: Romanian town on the border between Moldavia and Bucovina. An important entrepôt for trade with Poland, Dorohoi attracted Jews as early as the fifteenth century, but the oldest documented reference to their presence is a gravestone dating to 1656. Among the Jews who were called upon to establish or to populate towns in Moldavia, a few settled in Dorohoi. A charter (hrisov) issued by prince Constantin Şuțu in 1795 includes a list of duties and taxes payable by Jews.
title: Dorohoi
related: Bessarabia
related: Betar
related: Bucharest
related: Bucovina
related: Călugăru, Ion
related: Charity
related: Crafts
related: Iaşi
related: Maccabi Movement
related: Mihăileni
related: Moldavia
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rădăuţi
related: Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Ha-
related: Trade
related: Transnistria
related: Youth Movements
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Drogobych
described at: Drogobych
has abstract: (Pol., Drohobycz), medium-sized city in the district of L’viv in western Ukraine. In early modern times, Drogobych belonged to the Polish Commonwealth, but in 1772, as a result of the first partition of Poland, it was awarded to Austria (later Austria-Hungary) and became part of the province of Galicia. In 1919, after an unsuccessful effort by Ukrainians to establish an independent state, Drogobych was incorporated into the newly independent Polish state. From 1939 to 1941 it was annexed to the Soviet Union, to which it was returned after World War II (as part of the Ukrainian Socialist Republic). In 1991 it became part of the now wholly independent state of Ukraine.
title: Drogobych
alternative label: Drohobycz
related: Galicia
related: Gottlieb, Maurycy
related: L’viv
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Schulz, Bruno
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Eger, Akiva ben Mosheh
described at: Eger Akiva ben Mosheh
has abstract: (1761–1837), rabbi and halakhist. Born in Eisenstadt (Burgenland) and educated in Breslau, Akiva Eger was considered one of the nimblest halakhic minds of his generation, as well as a particularly humane individual. He was also known for his bitter opposition to the liberal elements within his own community and beyond.
title: Eger, Akiva ben Mosheh
alternative label: Akiva Eger
related: Burgenland
related: Eisenstadt
related: Orthodoxy
related: Poznań
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Reform, Religious
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: Vilnius
related: Wrocław

Feierberg, Mordekhai Ze’ev
described at: Feierberg Mordekhai Zeev
has abstract: (1874–1899), Hebrew writer; pioneer of psychological realism, neoromanticism, and symbolism. Mordekhai Feierberg was born in Novograd Volynsk (now Ukr., Novohrad Volyns’kyi) and was first taught by his father, who was a shoḥet (kosher slaughterer). Although Feierberg then studied at the Chernobil yeshiva, he grew impressed with the ideas of Jewish philosophy and the Haskalah, and subsequently led a group of maskilim. He was persecuted for his activities by traditional Jews, including his own father.
title: Feierberg, Mordekhai Ze’ev
alternative label: Mordekhai Ze’ev Feierberg
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Avraham ben Avigdor
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Gnessin, Uri Nisan
related: Haskalah
related: Luaḥ Aḥi’asaf
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Sokolow, Naḥum
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Voskhod
related: Warsaw

Filderman, Wilhelm
described at: Filderman Wilhelm
has abstract: (1882–1963), lawyer and communal leader. Wilhelm Filderman is considered by many to have been Romanian Jewry’s foremost leader between 1919 and 1947, as he headed virtually every major non-Zionist Romanian Jewish organization. After World War I, he represented the Union of Native-Born Jews at the Paris Peace Conference in the campaign for Romanian Jewry’s civil rights, leaving his mark on the final draft of the Romanian Minorities Treaty. From 1923 until 1947 he served as chair of the Union of Romanian Jews and the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania, which included communities in the territories that had been added to Romania in the peace settlement. He also represented the union in the Romanian parliament.
title: Filderman, Wilhelm
alternative label: Wilhelm Filderman
related: Bessarabia
related: Bucovina
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: Transnistria
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Fleckeles, El‘azar ben David
described at: Fleckeles Elazar ben David
has abstract: (1754–1826), rabbi. El‘azar Fleckeles was born to a well-off, patrician family in Prague; his father served as an elder of the Jewish community. Fleckeles studied in the yeshivas of Mosheh Kohen Rofe and Me’ir Fischels and then, for a decade, with his prime mentor, Yeḥezkel Landau, the rabbi of Prague, becoming his favorite disciple. Fleckeles’s wife, Esther, also belonged to one of the oldest and most prestigious Prague families, the Bondys.
title: Fleckeles, El‘azar ben David
alternative label: El‘azar Fleckeles
alternative label: El‘azar ben David Fleckeles
alternative label: ‘
related: Approbation
related: Christmas
related: Hartmann, Moritz
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Kloyz
related: Landau, Yeḥezkel ben Yehudah
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
related: Reform, Religious
related: Sabbatianism
related: Schlesinger, Akiva Yosef
related: Wehle Family
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Gintsburg, Mordekhai Aharon
described at: Gintsburg Mordekhai Aharon
has abstract: (1795–1846), Hebrew writer, translator, and educator; a leader of the Haskalah movement in Lithuania. Born in the provincial town of Salantai (near Kovno), Lithuania, Gintsburg was first educated at his parents’ home. His father, who wrote articles on Hebrew grammar and mathematics, influenced his predilection for the Hebrew language and the Bible. When he was 14, Gintsburg married a considerably older woman and moved into his father-in-law’s home in the town of Shavli, north of Kovno. There he broadened his general education, studied German, and developed a keen interest in classical and contemporary German literature.
title: Gintsburg, Mordekhai Aharon
alternative label: Mordekhai Aharon Gintsburg
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Assimilation
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Haskalah
related: Kaunas
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Šiauliai
related: Uman
related: Vilnius

Goldziher, Ignác
described at: Goldziher Ignac
has abstract: (1850–1921), orientalist. Ignác Goldziher’s ancestors settled in the western Hungarian community of Kittsee (Köpcsény). His father, Adolf, moved to Székesfehérvár in 1842, where Goldziher was born. By the age of eight, Goldziher was studying the Talmud, and he published his first essay, on the origins and time of prayer (“Síhat Jizhaq. Abhandlung über Ursprung, Eintheilung und Zeit der Gebete” [Isaac’s Discourse: A Contribution to the Origin, Arrangement, and Timing of Prayers]; 1862) while still a child.
title: Goldziher, Ignác
alternative label: Ignác Goldziher
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Steinschneider, Moritz
related: Vámbéry, Ármin

Gordonia
described at: Gordonia
has abstract: A Zionist youth movement, Gordonia was established in 1923 in Galicia. By 1925, local youth organizations merged to form a regional movement. From the time of its founding, its acknowledged leader and ideologue was Pinḥas Lubianniker (Lavon; 1904–1976), who established Gordonia after he left Ha-Shomer Ha-Tsa‘ir in disagreement with its ideological developments.
title: Gordonia
related: Bucovina
related: Galicia
related: Gordon, Aharon David
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: Hit’aḥadut
related: Land of Israel
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Ha-
related: Youth Movements
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Gutmann, Simḥah Alter
described at: Gutmann Simhah Alter
has abstract: (Ben-Tsiyon Gutmann; 1870–1932), Hebrew writer and educator. Known by his nom de plume S. Ben-Tsiyon (S. Ben-Zion in English sources), Simḥah Gutmann was born in Teleneshty, Bessarabia. Though he received a traditional heder education, Ben-Tsiyon was also exposed to Hebrew maskilic literature. His first story, “Mayn khaver” (My Friend), appeared in Yiddish (1899); he later translated it into Hebrew and published it under the title “Meshi” (Silk; 1902). His subsequent Hebrew stories appeared in prominent journals.
title: Gutmann, Simḥah Alter
alternative label: Simḥah Alter Gutmann
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Bessarabia
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Heder
related: Lewinsky, Elḥanan Leib
related: Moriah
related: Odessa
related: Ravnitski, Yehoshu‘a Ḥana
related: Shtetl
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Jewish Historical Institute
described at: Jewish Historical Institute
has abstract: (Żydowski Instytut Historyczny; ŻIH), research institute, archive, library, and museum in Warsaw. The Jewish Historical Institute grew out of the Jewish Historical Committee (Żydowska Komisja Historyczna), a Holocaust research body organized in Lublin in August 1944. Among the founders were Filip Friedman, Nachman Blumental, Józef Kermisz, and Abba Kovner. In December 1944, the commission became an agency of the Central Committee of Jews in Poland (CKŻP) and was renamed the Central Jewish Historical Commission (Centralna Żydowska Komisja Historyczna).
title: Jewish Historical Institute
related: Central Committee of Jews in Poland
related: Eisenbach, Artur
related: Friedman, Filip
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kovner, Abba
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Ringelblum, Emanuel
related: Warsaw

Jutrzenka
described at: Jutrzenka
has abstract: Periodical issued in Warsaw from July 1861 to October 1863 under the editorial direction of Daniel Neufeld. Its full title was Jutrzenka: Tygodnik dla Izraelitów polskich (The Dawn: A Weekly for Polish Israelites). Like its short-lived predecessors Dostrzegacz Nadwiślański (1823–1824) and Izraelita Polski (1830–1831), Jutrzenka envisioned a new “dawn” for Polish Jewry by promoting modernization in the spirit of the Enlightenment. It used the concept of “Poles of Mosaic persuasion” as a model for Polish Jews to follow, and encouraged integration into the larger society based on equal rights.
title: Jutrzenka
related: Dostrzegacz Nadwiślański
related: Gumplowicz Family
related: Kraushar, Aleksander
related: Neufeld, Daniel
related: Nussbaum, Hilary
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Reform, Religious
related: Warsaw

Kalmanovitch, Zelig
described at: Kalmanovitch Zelig
has abstract: (1881–1944), Yiddish linguist and translator. Born in Goldingen, Courland, Zelig Kalmanovitch (Yid., Kalmanovitsh) received a traditional education until the age of 15. In 1901, he passed the external examinations for a certificate of Russian secondary school education and subsequently studied humanities, primarily Semitic philology, in Germany. He was in Berlin from 1902 to 1905 and in Königsberg in 1909 and 1910. He then defended his doctorate in Petrograd in 1919.
title: Kalmanovitch, Zelig
alternative label: Zelig Kalmanovitch
alternative label: Zelig Kalmanovitsh
related: Courland
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Estonia
related: Folkists
related: Kaliningrad
related: Kletskin, Boris Arkadevich
related: Latvia
related: Lithuania
related: Mark, Yudl
related: Minsk
related: Panevėžys
related: Perl, Yosef
related: Riga
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Sutzkever, Avrom
related: Vilnius
related: Weinreich, Max
related: YIVO
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Kamenev, Iurii
described at: Kamenev Iurii
has abstract: (Lev Borisovich Rosenfel’d; 1883–1936), a principal leader of the Bolshevik party and the early Soviet government. Apprenticed in radical politics during his high school and truncated university careers, Kamenev was an early recruit to the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democrats (1904), growing close to Lenin during the revolutionary period 1905–1907. He spent the years of political reaction in emigration (1908–1914), where he and Grigorii Zinov’ev became Lenin’s most trusted lieutenants. As the more analytically and literarily inclined of the two, Kamenev collaborated with Lenin, editing a series of Bolshevik periodicals. A man of mild temperament, he avoided personal invectives and maintained good relations with political opponents.
title: Kamenev, Iurii
alternative label: Iurii Kamenev
alternative label: Kamenev
alternative label: Lev Borisovich Kamenev
alternative label: Lev Kamenev
related: Bund
related: Evsektsiia
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Trotsky, Leon
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Zinov’ev, Grigorii Evseevich
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Kasztner, Rezső
described at: Kasztner Rezso
has abstract: (Also known as Rudolf Kasztner; his Hebrew name was Yisra’el; 1906–1957), Zionist activist in Hungary during the Holocaust; later accused of collaborating with the Nazis. Born in Cluj (Kolozsvár), Kasztner worked for the leading Zionist newspaper of Transylvania, the Új Kelet (New East), between 1925 and 1940. A leader of the Zionist youth movement Aviva-Barissia during the 1930s when Transylvania was under Romanian rule, he became the secretary of the National Jewish Party in the Romanian Parliament. The president of this party was his father-in-law, Dr. József Fischer, head of the Neolog Jewish Community in Cluj. Kasztner moved to Budapest in 1940 after Hungary, an independent ally of Nazi Germany, annexed northern Transylvania. There he worked in the office of Keren Hayesod, and in 1943 became the deputy chairman of the Hungarian Zionist Association.
title: Kasztner, Rezső
alternative label: Kasztner
alternative label: Rezso Kasztner
alternative label: Rezső (Rudolph) Kasztner
alternative label: Rezső Kasztner
alternative label: Rudolf (Rezső) Kasztner
related: Auschwitz Protocols
related: Budapest
related: Cluj
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Slovakia
related: Transylvania
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Kolín
described at: Kolin
has abstract: Town in the Czech Republic, located 55 kilometers east of Prague. The earliest record of Jewish settlement in Kolín (earlier Nový Kolín; Ger., Kolin or Neu Kollin) dates from the beginning of the fourteenth century; a religious community and synagogue were probably active in the early fifteenth century. During the years 1541–1549 and 1561–1564, Jews were expelled from the town, but by 1574 some 33 Jewish men (and possibly families) lived there again. A communal record book, dating from 1598, has been preserved.
title: Kolín
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Charity
related: Czech Republic
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Petschek Family
related: Prague
related: Terezín
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Kotik, Yekhezkl
described at: Kotik Yekhezkl
has abstract: (1847–1921), Yiddish memoir writer and public activist. Yekhezkl Kotik was born in Kamenets Litovsk (Grodno [Hrodna] province; now in Belarus), to a well-to-do family of communal officials and leaseholders who had been town leaders for several generations. His father was a Hasid who had rebelled against his family’s Misnaged lifestyle. Kotik received a traditional education but in time also rebelled against his father’s legacy and rejected Hasidism. This intergenerational tension shaped and influenced the course of his life.
title: Kotik, Yekhezkl
alternative label: Yekhezkl Kotik
alternative label: Yeḥezkel Kotik
related: Autobiography and Memoir
related: Belarus
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haynt
related: Hrodna
related: Kiev
related: Lithuania
related: Misnagdim
related: Pogroms
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtetl
related: Warsaw
related: Yatskan, Shmuel Yankev
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Kushnirov, Arn
described at: Kushnirov Arn
has abstract: (1890–1949), Yiddish writer. Arn Kushnirov was born in Boyarka (known as Boyberik in Sholem Aleichem’s works), near Kiev, and worked in Kiev as a sales assistant in a grocer’s shop. Starting his writing career in 1909, Kushnirov and his friends Osher Shvartsman and Nokhem Oyslender planned to publish a poetry collection, but the project failed. After serving in the Russian army during World War I, Kushnirov joined the Red Army in 1920. That same year he met with success in publishing. In 1921, he edited Yugnt (Youth), which included the work of young Ukrainian Yiddish poets.
title: Kushnirov, Arn
alternative label: Arn Kushnirov
related: Bagritskii, Eduard Georgievich
related: Birobidzhan
related: Bronshteyn, Yashe
related: Cinema
related: Dobrushin, Yekhezkl
related: Emes, Der
related: Eynikayt
related: Gordon, Shmuel
related: Hofshteyn, Dovid
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Khashchevatski, Moyshe
related: Kiev
related: Lekert, Hirsh
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Oyslender, Nokhem
related: Shklov
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtrom, Der
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Vevyorke, Avrom
related: Yugnt

Leszno
described at: Leszno
has abstract: Town in the Wielkopolska province of Poland. Established by the Leszczyński family, Leszno (known as Lissa in Yiddish and German) granted its population civic rights in 1547. Jews were living in Leszno as early as the beginning of the sixteenth century; records indicate that they paid a coronation tax in 1507. Many Protestants, including Czech Brethren, settled there as well.
title: Leszno
related: Eger, Akiva ben Mosheh
related: Guilds
related: Labor Camps
related: Lithuania
related: Lorbeerbaum, Ya‘akov ben Ya‘akov Mosheh of Lissa
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Silesia
related: Trade
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw
related: Wrocław

Meisels, Dov Berush
described at: Meisels Dov Berush
has abstract: (1798–1870), Talmudic scholar and rabbi of the Jewish communities of Kraków and Warsaw. Hailing from a prominent family of Galician rabbis, Dov Berush Meisels grew up in Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi (Ukraine) before moving to Kraków in 1820, where he married Freydl Bornstein, the daughter of wealthy leaseholder Zalman Bornstein. With his father-in-law, Meisels founded a successful bank. However, his support for the failed Polish uprising of 1830 brought the business to the brink of financial ruin.
title: Meisels, Dov Berush
alternative label: Dov Berush Meisels
related: Dawidsohn, Ḥayim
related: Jastrow, Markus
related: Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw

Menaḥem Mendel of Kotsk
described at: Menahem Mendel of Kotsk
has abstract: (1787–1859), original and controversial Hasidic thinker and leader. Menaḥem Mendel (originally surnamed Morgenstern) studied in the yeshiva of Zamość, where his academic talents impressed his teachers and fellow students. He was attracted to Hasidism and found his way to the court of Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz (the Seer of Lublin; 1745–1815). There he also discovered a kindred spirit and mentor in Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Rabinowitz (the Holy Jew; 1766–1813) of Pshiskhe (Przysucha), and after the latter’s death he became a disciple of Simḥah Bunem of Pshiskhe (1765–1827).
title: Menaḥem Mendel of Kotsk
alternative label: Kotsk
alternative label: Kotsker Rebbe
related: Aleksander Hasidic Dynasty
related: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Izhbits-Radzin Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Passover
related: Piety
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Simḥah Bunem of Pshiskhe
related: Sokhachev Hasidic Dynasty
related: Vurke Hasidic Dynasty
related: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zamość

Menaḥem Mendel of Vitebsk
described at: Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk
has abstract: (1730?–1788), Hasidic leader and prominent disciple of Dov Ber, the Magid of Mezritsh. Considered an outstanding mystical figure in the world of Hasidism, he served as a spiritual leader in Lithuania and Belorussia and founded the Hasidic community in Safed and Tiberias. The writings of the Misnagdim associate him with Minsk, and Ḥabad sources call him Menaḥem Mendel of Horodok, but he is known primarily as Menaḥem Mendel of Vitebsk.
title: Menaḥem Mendel of Vitebsk
alternative label: Menaḥem Mendel
related: Avraham ben Aleksander ha-Kohen of Kalisk
related: Belarus
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Land of Israel
related: Lithuania
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Messianism
related: Minsk
related: Misnagdim
related: Shneur Zalman of Liady
related: Vilnius
related: Vitsyebsk
related: Zhytomyr

Natanson Family
described at: Natanson Family
has abstract: Polish family of bankers, philanthropists, industrialists and scholars.
title: Natanson Family
alternative label: Kazimierz Natanson
alternative label: Natanson
alternative label: Natanson family
alternative label: Natansons
related: Dickstein, Samuel
related: Industry
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Kronenberg Family
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Seminary
related: Tartu
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Oppenheim, David
described at: Oppenheim David
has abstract: (1664–1736), chief rabbi of Prague; bibliophile. Oppenheim was born in Worms, where his father, Abraham, was a communal leader. Samuel Oppenheim, financier and war contractor to Habsburg Emperor Leopold I, was his uncle. David Oppenheim’s teachers included, among others, Gershon (Ulif) Ashkenazi and Ya‘akov Sack (father of Tsevi Ashenazi, the Ḥakham Tsevi). In 1681 he married Gnendl, daughter of the court Jew Leffmann Behrens (Lipmann Cohen) of Hanover.
title: Oppenheim, David
alternative label: David Oppenheim
related: Ashkenazi, Gershon
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Heller, Yom Tov Lipmann
related: Land of Israel
related: Mikulov
related: Prague
related: Purim-shpil
related: Steinschneider, Moritz
related: Te’omim Family
related: Wrocław
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Oyslender, Nokhem
described at: Oyslender Nokhem
has abstract: (1893–1962), Soviet Yiddish author, critic, and literary scholar. Born into a timber merchant’s family in Khodorkov, Volhynia, Nokhem Oyslender received his secondary education in Kiev and studied medicine at universities in Berlin and Kiev. He served as a doctor in the Red Army between 1919 and 1922 while also publishing articles and short stories in Russian in army newspapers. His revolutionary enthusiasm found its expression in three collections of Yiddish poetry (1917–1922) and a collection of his civil war stories, Af lodemirer veg (On the Way to Ludmir; 1930).
title: Oyslender, Nokhem
alternative label: Nokhem Oyslender
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: Yiddish Criticism and Scholarship (Literary Criticism and Scholarship)
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Yiddish Poetry (Poetry)
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtrom, Der
related: Sovetish Heymland
related: Yiddish Theater (Theater)
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Painting and Sculpture
described at: Painting and Sculpture
has abstract: [This entry focuses on artists in Russian lands. For discussion of visual artists of other regions, see the biographical entries on those listed in the "Visual and Performing Arts" section of the Synoptic Outline.]
title: Painting and Sculpture
alternative label: art
alternative label: painter
alternative label: painting
alternative label: painting and sculpture
narrower: Jewish Artists in the “Great Utopia”
narrower: The “Other Art”
narrower: The Genealogy of Jewish Art in Eastern Europe
narrower: Vision in Time of Revolution
related: Al’tman, Natan Isaevich
related: An-ski Ethnographic Expedition and Museum
related: Antokol’skii, Mark Matveevich
related: Bałaban, Majer
related: Bakst, Léon
related: Belarus
related: Bihari, Sándor
related: Brodskii, Isaak Izrailevich
related: Ceremonial and Decorative Art
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Fal’k, Robert
related: Folk Songs
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Gintsburg Family
related: Gottlieb, Maurycy
related: Guilds
related: Haynt
related: Hirszenberg, Szmul
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Iudovin, Solomon Borisovich
related: Kaufmann, Izidor
related: Kiev
related: Kishinev
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Kultur-lige
related: Lesser, Aleksander
related: Levitan, Isaak Il’ich
related: Lissitzky, El
related: Lithuania
related: Mane, Mordekhai Tsevi
related: Memory
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Nossig, Alfred
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Passover
related: Pasternak, Leonid
related: Pen, Yehudah
related: Pilichowski, Leopold
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: Proverbs
related: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Rybak, Yisakhar Ber
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shtetl
related: Stage Design
related: Szyk, Artur
related: Trębacz, Maurycy
related: Tyshler, Aleksandr Grigor’evich
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Vitsyebsk
related: Warsaw
related: Yung-yidish
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Piotrków
described at: Piotrkow
has abstract: City roughly 16 miles (25 km) southeast of Łódź in central Poland, Piotrków was the capital of the Piotrków guberniia from 1867 to 1915. Founded in the twelfth century, the town was the site of the Polish Crown Tribunal between 1578 and 1792. Although Piotrków was granted the privilege de non tolerandis Judaeis (1487, 1569, 1628, 1673, and 1720), Jews settled with royal permission in its suburbs during the sixteenth century.
title: Piotrków
related: Łódź
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Aleksander Hasidic Dynasty
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Betar
related: Beys Yankev
related: Bund
related: Crafts
related: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Labor Camps
related: Maccabi Movement
related: Morgnshtern
related: ORT
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Po‘el, Ha-
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Radomsk Hasidic Dynasty
related: Sabbath
related: Shapira, Me’ir
related: Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Ha-
related: Shtern
related: Tarbut
related: Trade
related: TSYSHO
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Ponevezh, Yeshiva of
described at: Ponevezh Yeshiva of
has abstract: The Ponevezh yeshiva was founded by Yitsḥak Ya‘akov Rabinovich (Reb Itsele Ponevezher; 1854–1919) in 1908 in the Lithuanian town of Panevėžys (Rus., Ponevich). As a youth, Rabinovich had been a study partner of Ḥayim Soloveichik, later a rosh yeshivah in the Volozhin yeshiva. Rabinovich himself began his teaching career in 1889 at the Slobodka yeshiva. He remained there for five years but was not a firm believer in the importance of formal study of musar (ethics) and was uncomfortable with the school’s intense dedication to that area.
title: Ponevezh, Yeshiva of
alternative label: Ponevezh
alternative label: Ponevezh yeshiva
alternative label: yeshiva of Ponevezh
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Kahaneman, Yosef Shelomoh
related: Kook, Avraham Yitsḥak
related: Lithuania
related: Moscow
related: Musar Movement
related: Panevėžys
related: Rabinovich, Yitsḥak Ya‘akov
related: Rabinowitz-Te’omim, Eliyahu David ben Binyamin
related: Slobodka, Yeshiva of
related: Soloveichik Family
related: Telz, Yeshiva of
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: Wissotzky, Kalonymus Ze’ev
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Pshiskhe Hasidic Dynasty
described at: Pshiskhe Hasidic Dynasty
has abstract: Line of Polish rabbinic leaders. The Pshiskhe Hasidic dynasty emerged from the town of Przysucha (Yid., Pshiskhe), which along with Kozienice (Kozhenits) and Lublin became a major center of Polish Hasidism. Pshiskhe was a school as well as a dynasty. Its founder, Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Rabinowitz (or Rabinowicz; 1766–1814; known as the Holy Jew), introduced an elitist, rationalistic Hasidism that centered on Talmudic study and formed a counterpoint to the miracle-centered Hasidism of Lublin.
title: Pshiskhe Hasidic Dynasty
alternative label: Pshiskhe
alternative label: Pshiskhe (Przysucha) Hasidism
alternative label: Pshiskhe–Kotsk
alternative label: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak of Pshiskhe
related: Aleksander Hasidic Dynasty
related: Apt Hasidic Dynasty
related: Gdańsk
related: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Izhbits-Radzin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Lelov Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Mikulov
related: Opatów
related: Sabbatianism
related: Simḥah Bunem of Pshiskhe
related: Vurke Hasidic Dynasty
related: Warsaw
related: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz
related: Yisra’el of Ruzhin

Rumkowski, Khayim Mordkhe
described at: Rumkowski Khayim Mordkhe
has abstract: (1877–1944), Jewish leader in Łódź, Poland, during World War II. The German occupiers appointed Khayim Rumkowski Judenälteste (or Älteste der Juden; Eldest of the Jews) with total authority and responsibility over Łódź’s Jewish population. All contacts between Germans and the Jews were to be through him and him alone. The occupiers thus diverted Jewish rage from themselves onto the Jewish leader.
title: Rumkowski, Khayim Mordkhe
alternative label: Khayim Mordkhe Rumkowski
alternative label: Khayim Rumkowski
related: Łódź
related: General Zionists
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Killing Centers
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Vilnius
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Rybak, Yisakhar Ber
described at: Rybak Yisakhar Ber
has abstract: (1897–1935), painter, graphic artist, and sculptor; active in the Jewish art renaissance in Russia. Yisakhar Ber Rybak was born in Elisavetgrad, Ukraine. He attended art school beginning in 1907 and then studied at the Art Academy of Kiev from 1911 to 1916. In the summers of 1915 and 1916, he accompanied El Lissitzky on expeditions for the Jewish Historical and Ethnographic Society, copying tombstones in Orsha and culling folk-inspired prints, ceremonial silver objects, and synagogue wood carvings in Podolia and Volhynia.
title: Rybak, Yisakhar Ber
alternative label: Yisakhar Ber Rybak
alternative label: Yisakhar Rybak
related: Ceremonial and Decorative Art
related: Yiddish Literature (Children’s Literature)
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: Kultur-lige
related: Kvitko, Leyb
related: Lissitzky, El
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shtetl
related: Stage Design
related: Synagogue Architecture
related: Tombstones
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Schulz, Bruno
described at: Schulz Bruno
has abstract: (1892–1942), prose writer, literary critic, and artist. Born in Drohobycz, Galicia, to an assimilated, impoverished merchant family, Bruno Schulz studied architecture at the Lwów Polytechnic (1910–1914). During World War I, his family took refuge in Vienna, where Bruno briefly resumed his studies. In 1924, he began teaching handicrafts and drawing in a Drohobycz school. Schulz made his debut as an artist in the 1920s and as a prose writer in the 1930s.
title: Schulz, Bruno
alternative label: Bruno Schulz
related: Drogobych
related: Galicia
related: Kafka, Franz
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: L’viv
related: Vogel, Dvora
related: Warsaw
related: Wiadomości Literackie

Sexuality
described at: Sexuality
has abstract: As an aspect of Jewish life, sexuality is considered to be a male religious obligation (concerning ‘onah [sexual relations], procreation, and sexual satisfaction of one’s wife) and source of human intimacy and pleasure; as a metaphor it has even been applied to fulfillment of divine–human relations in mystical thought. In the modern era, the Jewish legal system and society began to compete with the free professions and the state to define terms of sexual legitimacy and deviance.
title: Sexuality
alternative label: sexual
alternative label: sexuality
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Amulets and Talismans
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Ba‘ale Shem
related: Demons
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Frankism
related: Galicia
related: Gender
related: Gintsburg Family
related: Gintsburg, Mordekhai Aharon
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Hirszowicz, Abraham
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: Kotik, Yekhezkl
related: Luria, Shelomoh ben Yeḥi’el
related: Magic
related: Marriage
related: Me’ir ben Gedalyah of Lublin
related: Misnagdim
related: Naḥman of Bratslav
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sabbatianism
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Servants
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Shomer Yisra’el
described at: Shomer Yisrael
has abstract: (Guardian of Israel), political and ideological society founded in Lemberg (Lwów) at the end of 1868 following the granting of freedom of organization in the Austrian Constitution of 1867. Among its founders were Filip Mansch, Ruben Bierer, Emil Bik, and Joseph Kohn; Salomon Buber was also a member.
title: Shomer Yisra’el
related: Assimilation
related: Buber, Salomon
related: Galicia
related: L’viv
related: Makhzikey ha-Das
related: Natanson, Yosef Sha’ul
related: Orenstein Family
related: Orthodoxy
related: Seminary

Shtrom, Der
described at: Shtrom Der
has abstract: Yiddish literary journal published in Moscow from 1922 to 1924. The Moscow School for Yiddish Printers, founded in 1922, issued all but the first February issue of Der shtrom (The Stream), which featured a cover designed by Marc Chagall. The journal’s motto cited the Kiev poet Osher Shvartsman, killed in action as a Red Army soldier: “but I can hear that under the cliff / a stream is running and flowing.” Although it was not an official organ of a Soviet organization, Der shtrom became the first Soviet Yiddish literary periodical. Its ideology was marked by the iconoclastic orthography introduced by Communist language planners, such as Ayzik Zaretski, in 1920.
title: Shtrom, Der
alternative label: Der shtrom
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Daniel, M.
related: Der Nister
related: Dobrushin, Yekhezkl
related: Emes, Der
related: Fefer, Itsik
related: Godiner, Shmuel-Nisn
related: Hofshteyn, Dovid
related: Kharik, Izi
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: Kipnis, Itsik
related: Kushnirov, Arn
related: Yiddish Literary Journals (Literary Journals)
related: Litvakov, Moyshe
related: Moscow
related: Oyslender, Nokhem
related: Persov, Shmuel
related: Royte Velt, Di
related: Ukraine
related: Vevyorke, Avrom
related: Zaretski, Ayzik

Sofer Family
described at: Sofer Family
has abstract: Hungarian Orthodox rabbinical family. Upon the death of Mosheh Sofer (Ḥatam Sofer, 1762–1839) of Pressburg (Bratislava), the community fulfilled his deathbed wish to have his eldest son, the 24-year-old Avraham Shemu’el Binyamin Sofer (also known by the German translation of his surname, Schreiber [“scribe”] and called Ketav Sofer; 1815–1871) appointed to fill his positions as rabbi and rosh yeshivah. Although Avraham’s mother was the daughter of the renowned Rabbi Akiva Eger of Posen, Ḥatam Sofer himself was quite the self-made leader, having stemmed from pious but not particularly distinguished Frankfurt lineage.
title: Sofer Family
alternative label: Shimon Sofer
alternative label: Shim‘on Sofer
alternative label: Simḥah Bunem
alternative label: Simḥah Bunim Sofer
alternative label: Sofer
related: Bratislava
related: Cluj
related: Eger, Akiva ben Mosheh
related: Galicia
related: Glasner, Mosheh Shemu’el
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Historiography)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Land of Israel
related: Makhzikey ha-Das
related: Orthodoxy
related: Poznań
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Sofer, Avraham Shemu’el Binyamin
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Spektor, Mordkhe
described at: Spektor Mordkhe
has abstract: (1858–1925), writer and editor. Born to a prominent family in Uman, Ukraine, Mordkhe Spektor received a traditional education, although according to his own account he preferred the outdoors over home and heder. As a teenager, Spektor met writers Yitskhok Yoyel Linetski and Avrom Goldfadn and began to read contemporary Yiddish Haskalah literature. At the age of 19, he moved to Odessa and became acquainted with the Jewish writers of that city.
title: Spektor, Mordkhe
alternative label: Mordkhe Spektor
related: Berkowitz, Yitsḥak Dov
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Haskalah
related: Haynt
related: Heder
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Kishinev
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Kultur-lige
related: Linetski, Yitskhok Yoyel
related: Moment, Der
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Odessa
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Pryłucki, Tsevi
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Ukraine
related: Uman
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw
related: Yud, Der
related: Zederbaum, Aleksander

Stage Design
described at: Stage Design
has abstract: Theater historians have often characterized the modern Yiddish theater as an entertainment form that has relied heavily on spectacular visual scenic design and grotesque renderings of the Jewish past. This characterization applies to many of the best-known Yiddish-language performances during what might be called its Silver Age (1918–1940) but does not accurately describe productions presented in its Golden Age (1876–1918) or the decades that preceded it.
title: Stage Design
alternative label: set designer
alternative label: stage design
alternative label: theater design
related: Al’tman, Natan Isaevich
related: Arnshteyn, Mark
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Fal’k, Robert
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Granovskii, Aleksandr Mikhailovich
related: Moscow
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Purim-shpil
related: Yiddish Theater (Theater)
related: Tyshler, Aleksandr Grigor’evich
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilner Trupe
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Weichert, Michał
related: Yung-teater

Suwałki
described at: Suwałki
has abstract: Town in northeastern Poland. Jewish residence apparently began in the nineteenth century when Suwałki experienced a period of substantial development. In 1808, there were 44 Jews living in the town, a number that had risen to 1,209 by 1827. In 1856, the community had grown to 6,407, and in 1897 to 7,165 (representing 40% of the total population). From the 1890s through the first decade of the twentieth century, the Jewish population increased again, reaching 13,002 in 1908 (56%). From 1897 to 1914, the town was the site of a substantial Russian garrison of some 10,000 soldiers.
title: Suwałki
alternative label: Suvalki
related: Biała
related: East Prussia
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Mohilewer, Shemu’el
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Przytyk Pogrom
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Tarbut
related: TSYSHO
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Tartu
described at: Tartu
has abstract: (Ger., Dorpat; Rus., Derpt, also Yurev [1893–1917]), Estonian city in the province of Livonia (Ger., Livland; Rus., Lifliandiia). Tartu has traditionally been an educational and cultural center, and after 1917 it was the second largest city in the Republic of Estonia. The city had a population of 100,800 in 2005.
title: Tartu
related: Estonia
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Lithuania
related: Lotman, Iurii Mikhailovich
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Transportation
described at: Transportation
has abstract: Jewish entrepreneurs and workers were concerned with various modes of transportation that navigated the great expanses of Eastern Europe began before the advent of the modern era. Widespread activity by Jews in domestic and interstate commerce led to an intimate knowledge of the passages and highways of Eastern Europe. The first Jewish merchants operated in groups and traveled in convoys, while simultaneously establishing inns, managing refreshment stations, and providing fodder for horses of other Jewish travelers. From this familiarity with travelers’ needs, the Jewish teamster was born. That Jews dominated this profession may be seen from the fact that the Hebrew word for coachman, ba‘al ‘agalah (Yid., balagole), was absorbed into a number of East European dialects.
title: Transportation
alternative label: carting
alternative label: transport
alternative label: transportation
related: Łódź
related: Bloch, Jan
related: Galicia
related: Gdańsk
related: Gintsburg Family
related: Industry
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kronenberg Family
related: Pale of Settlement
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poliakov Family
related: Riga
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw

Tushiyah
described at: Tushiyah
has abstract: Hebrew-language publishing house that was established in 1896 in Warsaw by Avraham Leib Shalkovich; it produced secular and cultural books until 1928. From its inception, Tushiyah (which may be translated into English as “insight”) had two main priorities. On the one hand it was ideologically committed to revamping the Hebrew bookshelf, and on the other, it hoped to run a self-sufficient commercial venture that could provide a livelihood for its owners and workers. Shalkovich, who was known by the pseudonym Ben-Avigdor, had brought changes to Hebrew publishing as early as 1891. In 1896, he gave up his managerial position at the Aḥi’asaf Press to set up Tushiyah, the first privately owned, modern secular Hebrew printing press.
title: Tushiyah
related: Aḥi’asaf
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Printing and Publishing after 1800 (Printing and Publishing)
related: Shalkovich, Avraham Leib
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Warsaw

Vinaver, Maksim Moiseevich
described at: Vinaver Maksim Moiseevich
has abstract: (1862–1926), lawyer, politician, and communal activist. Maksim Vinaver (also Vinawer) was born in Warsaw, and in 1886 he graduated with a law degree from Warsaw University. However, in 1889, the Russian government decided to prohibit Jews from becoming “legally registered” lawyers, which forced Vinaver to work for the next decade and a half as an assistant attorney in Saint Petersburg, where he became involved in the struggle for Jewish emancipation. With Baron Horace Gintsburg acting as a sponsor, Vinaver set up a defense bureau (with Oskar Gruzenberg and the Russian lawyers Vladimir D. Spasovich and Mironov), to represent Jews falsely accused of crimes.
title: Vinaver, Maksim Moiseevich
alternative label: Maksim Vinaver
related: Brutskus, Iulii
related: Crimea
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Gessen, Iulii Isidorovich
related: Gintsburg Family
related: Gruzenberg, Oskar Osipovich
related: Homel’
related: Kishinev
related: ORT
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shtetl
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Warsaw

Wiener, Meir
described at: Wiener Meir
has abstract: (1893–1941), Yiddish and German writer, critic, and literary scholar. Born into a middle-class family in Kraków, Meir Wiener (also known as Meyer Viner) grew up speaking Polish, Yiddish, and German. He attended a German gymnasium and was tutored at home in Judaism and Hebrew culture by Tsevi ha-Kohen Rapoport. Before the outbreak of World War I, the family moved to Vienna. Discharged from military service on health grounds, Wiener went to Basel and Zurich to study philosophy in 1915 but did not complete his degree. He returned to Vienna in 1919, and subsequently traveled intermittently between his family in Vienna and his editorial job in Berlin until 1925, when he joined the Communist Party of Austria and moved to Paris.
title: Wiener, Meir
alternative label: Meir Wiener
alternative label: Meyer Viner
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Aksenfeld, Yisroel
related: Communism
related: Ettinger, Shloyme
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Kvitko, Leyb
related: Yiddish Criticism and Scholarship (Literary Criticism and Scholarship)
related: Moscow
related: Mysticism and Mystical Literature
related: Hebrew Poetry (Poetry)
related: Prague
related: Royte Velt, Di
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Sovetish Heymland
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Ya‘akov Yosef of Polnoye
described at: Yaakov Yosef of Polnoye
has abstract: (d. 1783), rabbi and author of the first published Hasidic book. Ya‘akov Yosef of Polnoye (Pol., Połonne) served as rabbi of Shargorod, the second largest community in the Podolia region. In 1741, after coming under the influence of Aryeh Leib, the preacher of Polnoye, Ya‘akov Yosef began to adopt a pietistic, ascetic path of Hasidism, including seclusion for long periods and particular stringency with regard to the laws of Jewish ritual slaughter.
title: Ya‘akov Yosef of Polnoye
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Messianism
related: Misnagdim
related: Nemyriv
related: Sabbath
related: Shapira Family

Yisra’el Me’ir ha-Kohen
described at: Yisrael Meir ha-Kohen
has abstract: (1838–1933), prominent halakhic authority and Orthodox Jewish leader. Yisra’el Me’ir ha-Kohen (Kagan; original surname Poupko), who became known as Ḥafets Ḥayim after the title of his first book, was one of the major rabbinical authorities of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries and has been regarded as a paragon of piety.
title: Yisra’el Me’ir ha-Kohen
alternative label: Yisra’el Me’ir Ha-Kohen
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Belarus
related: Land of Israel
related: Lithuania
related: Orthodoxy
related: Piety
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Vilnius
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Aksenfeld, Yisroel
described at: Aksenfeld Yisroel
has abstract: (1787–1866), Yiddish playwright, novelist, and exponent of the Haskalah. Born in Nemirov (Nemyriv), western Ukraine, to an important Hasidic family, Yisroel Aksenfeld was brought up as a Bratslaver Hasid (he was personally acquainted with Reb Nosn, the Bratslav tsadik’s famous secretary) and was married at an early age into another family of Bratslav followers. The marriage ended quickly in divorce, a circumstance that changed the trajectory of Aksenfeld’s life and beliefs. He became a maskil and an enemy of Hasidism who studied foreign languages, mainly Russian and German.
title: Aksenfeld, Yisroel
alternative label: Yisroel Aksenfeld
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Bratslav Hasidism
related: Dress
related: Ettinger, Shloyme
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Linetski, Yitskhok Yoyel
related: Military Service in Russia
related: Nemyriv
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Proverbs
related: Riddles
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtetl
related: Ukraine
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Aleksander Hasidic Dynasty
described at: Aleksander Hasidic Dynasty
has abstract: The Aleksander dynasty, the second most important Hasidic dynasty in Poland after Ger, was based in the small town of Aleksandrów Łódzki, near Łódź. The founder of the dynasty was Shraga Feivel of Gritsa (Grójec), who moved to Aleksander after his teacher, Yitsḥak of Vurke (1779–1848), died at the end of Passover, 1848. Shraga Feivel died six months later on Shemini Atseret of 1848. His son, Yeḥi’el (1828–1894), did not wish to succeed him as rebbe, but became a close disciple of Menaḥem Mendel of Vurke (1819–1868), the son and successor of Yitsḥak of Vurke. After Menaḥem Mendel’s death, Yeḥi’el became a disciple of Berish of Biała (d. 1876) and was finally persuaded to become a rebbe in Aleksander only after Berish’s death, living on the stipend he received as rabbi of the town. Yeḥi’el’s teachings followed the Vurke emphasis on concern for the Jewish community, love of Torah, joy, and simple faith. He wrote no books, but his sayings were preserved in his son’s book, Yismaḥ Yisra’el (1911).
title: Aleksander Hasidic Dynasty
alternative label: Aleksander
alternative label: Aleksander dynasty
related: Łódź
related: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
related: Passover
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Vurke Hasidic Dynasty

Berkowitz, Yitsḥak Dov
described at: Berkowitz Yitshak Dov
has abstract: (1885–1967), Hebrew and Yiddish writer. Born to a working-class family in Slutsk, in the Minsk region, Yitsḥak Dov Berkowitz was an avid reader of Hebrew, Russian, and Yiddish literature. When he was about 15 years old, he began to write stories and recorded impressions for a private newspaper that he produced with his friends. His real literary career, however, began in 1903 when he was appointed to a teaching position in Łódź, and befriended the young poet, Yitsḥak Katzenelson. With Katzenelson’s encouragement, Berkowitz published his first Hebrew stories in the daily Ha-Tsofeh, and at the end of 1903 he won first place in a story competition held by that newspaper—an award that brought him overnight fame.
title: Berkowitz, Yitsḥak Dov
alternative label: Yitsḥak Dov Berkowitz
related: Łódź
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Childhood
related: Gnessin, Uri Nisan
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Katzenelson, Yitsḥak
related: Minsk
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Shofman, Gershom
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Slutsk
related: Stybel
related: Vilnius
related: Zeman, Ha-
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Birnbaum, Nathan
described at: Birnbaum Nathan
has abstract: (1864–1937), author and publicist. Born in Vienna to moderately Orthodox parents, Nathan Birnbaum (who adopted the pseudonym Mathias Acher) grew estranged from observant Judaism in secondary school, but unlike his peers who felt themselves thoroughly German, Birnbaum declared that the Jews themselves constituted a distinct nation destined to reclaim Palestine as its national homeland. In 1883, with Reuven Bierer (1837–1931) and Moritz Schnirer (1860–1942), he cofounded the academic fraternity Kadimah, an early Jewish nationalist society whose first members consisted mostly of Galician Jewish students studying in Vienna.
title: Birnbaum, Nathan
alternative label: Natan (Nosn) Birnbaum
alternative label: Nathan Birnbaum
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Buchach
related: Czernowitz Conference
related: Galicia
related: Orthodoxy
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Brăila
described at: Braila
has abstract: Port on the lower Danube, in Walachia (Romania); the town was called Braillago in the fourteenth century and was known as Ibraila while under Turkish rule from 1542 to 1828. The presence of Jewish merchants in Brăila was first documented in the seventeenth century. In 1828, there were 105 Sephardic Jews in the town. A cemetery opened in 1819, and a synagogue was built in 1820. After the town was annexed to Walachia in 1829, Ashkenazic Jews also settled in Brăila and their synagogue was founded in 1836.
title: Brăila
related: Banking
related: Benador, Ury
related: Crafts
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Industry
related: Pinsker, Simḥah and Lev
related: Romania
related: Sebastian, Mihail
related: Sephardim
related: Trade
related: Walachia
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Buhuşi
described at: Buhusi
has abstract: Town in the Moldavian region of Romania. Jewish settlement in Buhuşi (known in Yiddish as Bohush) dates from 1823; in 1831, the Jewish population was 32. The numbers continued to grow, totaling 537 in 1858 and 1,732 in 1899, representing 48 percent of the town’s population. Later, the numbers of Jews decreased (to 892 in 1910, due to emigration) but grew again: there were 1,419 in 1915; 1,972 in 1930; and 1,876 in 1941.
title: Buhuşi
related: Bucharest
related: Moldavia
related: Romania
related: Ruzhin Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Burgenland
described at: Burgenland
has abstract: Region of the federal state of Austria. Burgenland is bordered by the provinces of Lower Austria and Styria (west), Slovakia (northeast), Hungary (east), and Slovenia (south). The name Burgenland is a post–World War I invention that was officially adopted in 1922. Jews experienced a long, continuous history in the region, characterized by their adherence to religion and tradition.
title: Burgenland
related: Eisenstadt
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Orthodoxy
related: Slovakia
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Chess
described at: Chess
has abstract: European Jews knew of and played chess long before their arrival in Eastern Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Leading Polish rabbis, Mosheh Isserles in the sixteenth century and Avraham Gombiner in the seventeenth, explicitly permitted playing chess, including on the Sabbath, as long as money was not wagered on the outcome (Shulḥan ‘arukh, Oraḥ ḥayim, 338:5). There were also condemnations of chess, notably in Shevet musar, a very popular work of the eighteenth century that took a negative stance influenced by kabbalistic sources (chap. 42). Nevertheless, and particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, chess was widely played in Jewish households of various levels of observance and, often enough, by both sexes.
title: Chess
alternative label: chess
narrower: APPENDIX: PROMINENT JEWISH CHESS PLAYERS
related: Botvinnik, Mikhail Moiseevich
related: Gombiner, Avraham Abele ben Ḥayim ha-Levi
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: Money
related: Orthodoxy
related: Prague
related: Rostov-on-Don
related: Rubinstein, Akiba
related: Sabbath
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Tal’, Mikhail Nokhem’evich

Chwila
described at: Chwila
has abstract: Polish-language Zionist daily. Published in Lwów from January 1919 until September 1939, Chwila (Moment) was devoted to political, social, and cultural affairs. Initially edited by members of parliament Henryk Rosmarin and David Schreiber, the paper was later taken over by the Chwila Publishing Company. Its circulation reached 35,000 copies. An evening edition was launched in 1934, edited initially by Henryk Hescheles and later by Szymon Szpund.
title: Chwila
related: Agnon, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Assimilation
related: Bałaban, Majer
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Chess
related: Drogobych
related: Galicia
related: Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
related: L’viv
related: Manger, Itsik
related: Mieses, Matthias
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl
related: Reich, Leon
related: Roth, Joseph
related: Satire
related: Schiper, Ignacy
related: Schwarzbart, Ignacy
related: Singer, Bernard
related: Singer, Israel Joshua
related: Sommerstein, Emil
related: Szymel, Maurycy
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Ternopil’
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Dor, Ha-
described at: Dor Ha-
has abstract: Hebrew weekly. Ha-Dor (The Generation) was published beginning in 1901 by the Aḥi’asaf publishing house in Warsaw to address the growing needs of its Hebrew readership. It was also offered as an alternative to the monthly Ha-Shiloaḥ (also published by Aḥi’asaf), which at that time focused exclusively on Jewish matters in the spirit of its founder, Ahad Ha-Am.
title: Dor, Ha-
alternative label: Ha-Dor
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Aḥi’asaf
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Frishman, David
related: Gnessin, Uri Nisan
related: Gutmann, Simḥah Alter
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Efrayim Shelomoh ben Aharon of Luntshits
described at: Efrayim Shelomoh ben Aharon of Luntshits
has abstract: (1550–1619), rabbi, preacher, exegete, and moralist. Efrayim Shelomoh ben Aharon of Luntshits (Pol., Łęczyca) was a student of Shelomoh Luria. As a young man, Efrayim developed a reputation as an outstanding preacher. He lived for a considerable time in Lwów, where he served as rosh yeshivah, but also preached frequently in other towns, including Jarosław and Lublin (at meetings of the Council of the Four Lands). In 1604 he was appointed chief rabbi of Prague, where he served until a year before his death.
title: Efrayim Shelomoh ben Aharon of Luntshits
alternative label: Efrayim Shelomoh of Luntshits
alternative label: Efrayim of Luntshits
related: Horowitz Family
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Luria, Shelomoh ben Yeḥi’el
related: L’viv
related: Prague
related: Yafeh, Mordekhai ben Avraham

Engel, Yo’el
described at: Engel Yoel
has abstract: (1868–1927), composer, music critic, musicologist, and ethnographer. Born to a middle-class family in Berdyansk, Crimea, Yo’el (Joel; in Russian, Iulii Dmitrevich) Engel received a law degree from the University of Kharkov in 1890, but at the urging of Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky enrolled at the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied with the composer Sergei Taneyev (1856–1915). Upon graduation, Engel was offered a position as a music critic and editor at Moscow’s leading liberal newspaper, Russkie vedomosti, a position he held until 1918.
title: Engel, Yo’el
alternative label: Engel
alternative label: Yoel Engel
alternative label: Yoyel Engel
alternative label: Yo’el (Yoyel) Engel
alternative label: Yo’el Engel
related: An-ski Ethnographic Expedition and Museum
related: Crimea
related: Dybbuk, The
related: Folk Songs
related: Ginsburg, Sha'ul
related: Habimah
related: Khar’kiv
related: Moscow
related: Operetta
related: Purim
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Society for Jewish Folk Music
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Varshavski, Mark

Erik, Maks
described at: Erik Maks
has abstract: (1898–1937), Yiddish literary scholar and critic. Maks Erik (Zalmen Merkin) was born in Sosnowiec to a well-to-do family and received a Jewish and general education in Russian and Polish schools. In 1921, he completed Polish military service and began studying law. In the years 1922–1923 and 1925–1926, he taught Yiddish literature and Polish studies at Yiddish high schools in Vilna.
title: Erik, Maks
alternative label: Maks Erik
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Ettinger, Shloyme
related: Galicia
related: Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
related: Haskalah
related: Kiev
related: Kulbak, Moyshe
related: Literarishe Bleter
related: Minsk
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Tsinberg, Yisroel
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Ettinger, Shloyme
described at: Ettinger Shloyme
has abstract: (1803–1856), Yiddish poet and dramatist. Shloyme Ettinger was born in Warsaw into a distinguished rabbinical family. His father died young, and Ettinger was raised by his uncle Mendel Ettinger, a rabbi who knew German and who was uncommonly flexible about enabling his nephew to explore features of the Enlightenment.
title: Ettinger, Shloyme
alternative label: Shloyme Ettinger
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Haskalah
related: L’viv
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Purim
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Warsaw
related: Wiener, Meir
related: Zamość
related: Zederbaum, Aleksander
related: Zhytomyr

Familiants Laws
described at: Familiants Laws
has abstract: Legislation enacted in 1726 in Bohemia and in 1727 in Moravia and Silesia in order to limit the number of Jewish males permitted to live and marry in those jurisdictions. The maximum number of Jewish families was set at 8,541 for Bohemia, 5,106 for Moravia, and 119 for Silesia. Originally intended as a temporary measure, the Familiants Laws remained in force until 1848.
title: Familiants Laws
alternative label: Familiants Law
alternative label: Familiants laws
alternative label: familiant
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Crafts
related: Homberg, Herz
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Josephinian Reforms
related: Normalschulen
related: Prague
related: Silesia
related: Trade

Grossman, Vasilii Semenovich
described at: Grossman Vasilii Semenovich
has abstract: (1905–1964), Russian writer. Vasilii (Iosif Solomonovich) Grossman was born and raised in Berdichev, where his parents belonged to the assimilated Jewish intelligentsia. After graduating as a chemist from Moscow University, he worked in the Donbass (1929–1933), and then returned to Moscow. Beginning in 1934, he devoted himself to literature, becoming a member of the Writers Union in 1937.
title: Grossman, Vasilii Semenovich
alternative label: Vasilii Grossman
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Berdychiv
related: Black Book
related: Communism
related: Ehrenburg, Ilya Grigor’evich
related: Eynikayt
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Iampol’skii, Boris Samoilovich
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Moscow
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pogroms
related: Shtetl

Josephinian Reforms
described at: Josephinian Reforms
has abstract: The accession of Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II (1741–1790) as sole ruler of the Habsburg lands in 1780 ushered in a tumultuous decade of change. The enlightened absolutist emperor intervened in the internal affairs of his Jewish subjects on an unprecedented scale, with the intent of altering the contours of Jewish culture and society.
title: Josephinian Reforms
alternative label: Edict of Toleration
alternative label: Edicts of Toleration
alternative label: Habsburg reforms
alternative label: Joseph II
alternative label: Josephinian reform
alternative label: Tolerance Edict
alternative label: Toleranzpatent
alternative label: reforms
alternative label: reforms of Joseph II
related: Agriculture
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bratislava
related: Brody
related: Bucovina
related: Crafts
related: Familiants Laws
related: Galicia
related: Haskalah
related: Homberg, Herz
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: L’viv
related: Names and Naming
related: Normalschulen
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Silesia
related: Talmud Study
related: Transportation

Kacyzne, Alter-Sholem
described at: Kacyzne Alter-Sholem
has abstract: (1885–1941), Yiddish writer and critic; photographer. Born in Vilna to a working-class family, Alter-Sholem Kacyzne (Yid., Katsizne) attended heder and also a Russian-language Jewish elementary school. At 14, after his father’s death, he stopped his formal studies. Kacyzne was an autodidact and remained an avid reader not only of literature in Russian, Yiddish, and Hebrew, but also of Polish, German, and French works. For about 11 years, he lived in Ekaterinoslav, where he learned to be a photographer and was married.
title: Kacyzne, Alter-Sholem
alternative label: Alter Kacyzne
alternative label: Alter-Sholem Kacyzne
related: Bal-Makhshoves
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Dybbuk, The
related: Fraynd, Der
related: Ger Tsedek
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kiev
related: Kletskin, Boris Arkadevich
related: Literarishe Bleter
related: L’viv
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Photography
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl
related: Romania
related: Ternopil’
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: YIVO
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Khalyastre
described at: Khalyastre
has abstract: The major Yiddish cultural avant-garde movement in Poland between 1919 and 1924. Di Khalyastre (The Gang) brought together mainly poets, novelists, and artists who consciously participated in European expressionism as modern secular Jews but were also determined to construct a new lay culture in Yiddish. Its expressionist stylistics and themes distinguished it both from contemporary Soviet Yiddish culture and the New York Inzikhistn (“Inwardists”), yet placed it close to Central European aesthetics and cultural concerns. While shared aesthetic innovations distinguished the Khalyastre, ideological conflicts within the group eventually led to its dissolution.
title: Khalyastre
alternative label: Di Khalyastre
related: Łódź
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Adler, Yankl
related: Berlewi, Henryk
related: Broderzon, Moyshe
related: Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
related: Kacyzne, Alter-Sholem
related: Yiddish Literary Journals (Literary Journals)
related: Markish, Perets
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ravitch, Melech
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw
related: Weichert, Michał
related: Yung-yidish

Khazaria
described at: Khazaria
has abstract: The Khazar Empire (ca. 650–ca. 965/68), one of the largest states of medieval Eurasia, dominated a region from the Ukrainian steppes to lands approaching the Ural River and from the Middle Volga region to the North Caucasus and Crimea. Important segments of its population converted to Judaism in the mid-to-late eighth century. Khazaria’s ruling core of Turkic tribes stemmed from the Türk Qaghanate (qaghan “emperor”) centered in Mongolia and ruling a domain stretching from Manchuria to the Black Sea. The Türk Empire divided into eastern (552–630, 682–742) and western (552–659, ca. 690–ca. 766) halves for administrative purposes. The Khazar Qaghanate, apparently led by a breakaway branch of the Türk ruling clan, the Ashina, seceded from the fragmenting Western Türk realm around 630–650.
title: Khazaria
alternative label: Khazar kingdom
alternative label: Khazars
related: Ashkenaz
related: Conversion
related: Crimea
related: Karaites
related: Kiev

Kronenberg Family
described at: Kronenberg Family
has abstract: Polish bankers and industrialists, active in Warsaw in the nineteenth century. Samuel Eleazar Kronenberg (Lejzor Hirszowicz Kronenberg; 1773–1826), the patriarch of the family, had 13 children and founded the S. L. Kronenberg Bank. Originally from Wyszogród, Kronenberg was influenced by the Haskalah and attended the “German” synagogue on Warsaw’s Daniłowiczowska Street. In 1808, however, he broke with Jewish tradition, shaved his beard, and began to wear European-style clothing. On friendly terms with Poles from aristocratic families, he was allowed to live outside the Jewish district and belonged to the Masonic lodge, Bouclier du Nord. Eight of Kronenberg’s children survived, including five sons, but only the eldest, Ludwik (1783–1882), remained Jewish and was committed to his father’s synagogue. Ludwik Kronenberg worked as a banker and agent for the stock exchange.
title: Kronenberg Family
alternative label: Kronenberg
alternative label: Kronenbergs
alternative label: Leopold Kronenberg
related: Assimilation
related: Banking
related: Bloch, Jan
related: Economic Life
related: Epstein Family
related: Haskalah
related: Industry
related: Jutrzenka
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Warsaw

Letteris, Me’ir
described at: Letteris Meir
has abstract: (1800?–1871), Hebrew poet; editor and translator of poetry and dramatic works. Me’ir (Max) ha-Levi Letteris was born in Żółkiew, eastern Galicia, into a family of Hebrew publishers. His father also served as head of the town’s Jewish community for many years. After receiving a traditional education, Me’ir Letteris pursued general studies with a tutor, and in 1820 traveled to Vienna where he studied at the Academy of Natural Sciences for two years. Between 1826 and 1830, he was at the University of Lwów, and later attended the University of Vienna. Letteris earned his living in those years as a journalist, writing literary and dramatic criticism. At an older age (in 1844), he received a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Prague.
title: Letteris, Me’ir
alternative label: Me’ir Letteris
alternative label: Me’ir ha-Levi Letteris
related: Galicia
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Krochmal, Naḥman
related: L’viv
related: Hebrew Poetry (Poetry)
related: Prague
related: Satire
related: Smolenskin, Perets
related: Zhovkva

Levin, Yehudah Leib (poet)
described at: Levin Yehudah Leib poet
has abstract: (1844–1925), Hebrew and Yiddish poet and essayist. Yehudah Leib Levin (also known by the literary acronym Yehalel) was born in Minsk; his grandfather was a Hasidic rabbi. In 1862, Levin married and moved to the town of Puchowitz, where he resumed his religious studies and was drawn to Lubavitch Hasidism. However, he soon rejected his traditional upbringing.
title: Levin, Yehudah Leib (poet)
alternative label: Yehudah Leib Levin
related: Brodskii Family
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Kiev
related: Land of Israel
related: Lebensohn, Avraham Dov
related: Lieberman, Aharon Shemu’el
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Minsk
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Pogroms
related: Shaḥar, Ha-
related: Warsaw
related: Zhytomyr
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Lilienthal, Max
described at: Lilienthal Max
has abstract: (1815–1882), German rabbi, born and educated in Munich; famous for establishing modern schools for Jews in the Russian Empire. In 1839, Ludwig Phillipson, a moderate reforming rabbi and editor of the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums, recommended Lilienthal to serve as rabbi and teacher in the largely German-speaking Jewish community of Riga. Lilienthal’s role in establishing a modern school for Jewish children there came to the attention of the minister of education of the Russian Empire, Count Sergei S. Uvarov, who hired him in 1841 to serve as special adviser for Jewish affairs. Lilienthal’s mission was to replicate his Riga school throughout the Pale of Settlement, as part of Uvarov’s plan to “enlighten” the Jews of Russia by weaning them away from conventional Talmudic learning, introducing them to secular studies, and training them to become artisans. Although viewed traditionally as a malignant scheme aimed at converting Jews to Russian Orthodoxy, recent scholarship has argued that Uvarov’s plan was not, in fact, aimed at proselytizing, but was a small part of his overall goal to introduce Western-style and classical education throughout the Russian Empire. This plan, however, faced severe opposition from some top governmental authorities in Russia, and in many ways contradicted the basic ideology of Tsar Nicholas I, for whose regime Uvarov was a major theoretician, and which emphasized autocracy, Russian Orthodoxy, and Russian nationalism.
title: Lilienthal, Max
alternative label: Max Lilienthal
related: Conversion
related: Haskalah
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Riga
related: Russian Empire (Russia)

About this Article (Literary Journals)
described at: Literary Journals
has abstract: Emphasizing the role of literary journals in the development of Jewish literature in Eastern Europe, this entry includes two articles, on Hebrew and Yiddish literary journals respectively. For further discussion, see Hebrew Literature; Yiddish Literature; and Literary Criticism and Scholarship.
title: About this Article (Literary Journals)
alternative label: Literary Journals
alternative label: literary journals
related: Hebrew Literature
related: About this Article (Literary Criticism and Scholarship)
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Löw, Leopold
described at: Low Leopold
has abstract: (1811–1875), rabbi, historian, and Judaic scholar. Leopold (Lipót) Löw was the outstanding Reform rabbi of nineteenth-century Hungary. One of the first rabbis in Hungary to combine rigorous traditional training with a university education, he advocated religious, educational, and communal reforms in his manifold roles as preacher, polemicist, editor, scholar, and historian. He played an important part in the fight for Jewish emancipation and the Magyarization of Hungarian Jewry.
title: Löw, Leopold
alternative label: Leopold (Lipót) Löw
alternative label: Leopold Löw
alternative label: Lipót (Leopold) Löw
related: Arad
related: Assimilation
related: Ben Chananja
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Boskovice
related: Bratislava
related: Brno
related: Budapest
related: Chorin, Aharon
related: Eisenstadt
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Kolín
related: Löw, Immánuel
related: L’viv
related: Orthodoxy
related: Pápa
related: Prague
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Reform, Religious
related: Sabbath
related: Schwab, Löw
related: Ternopil’
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el

Medem, Vladimir Davidovich
described at: Medem Vladimir Davidovich
has abstract: (1879–1923), political leader; Marxist theorist; Bundist. Vladimir Davidovich Medem was the main theorist of the Jewish Labor Bund, in Russia and in the Bund’s early years in Poland, and arguably the party’s most famous and celebrated leader. Born in Libau (Liepāja, Latvia; then part of tsarist Russia), he spent most of his childhood and youth in Minsk. Medem’s parents had converted to the Lutheran Church, and his father, David Medem (1836–1893), was one of the first graduates of Jewish origin of the Russian Military Academy of Medicine. The young Medem grew up as a Christian surrounded by Christian people. Despite his later prominence in Jewish politics, as an adult Medem never found it necessary to convert to Judaism, as Jewish culture, not religion, was at the basis of his choice to join the Jewish nation.
title: Medem, Vladimir Davidovich
alternative label: Vladimir Medem
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Assimilation
related: Bund
related: Communism
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Kiev
related: Latvia
related: Liepāja
related: Mill, John
related: Minsk
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Warsaw

Medzhibizh
described at: Medzhibizh
has abstract: City in the Podolian region of Ukraine. Medzhibizh (Rus., Medzhibozh; Pol., Międzyboż; Yid., Mezhbizh) documents its history from the twelfth century, and the Jewish community’s from 1511. Located at the convergence of the Boh and Buzek Rivers and at the intersection of several trade routes, Medzhibizh, with its multiethnic population, was an important regional military, commercial, and administrative center from the sixteenth century through the early Soviet period.
title: Medzhibizh
alternative label: Mezhbizh
alternative label: Międzyboż
related: Apt Hasidic Dynasty
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Bund
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kahal
related: Kiev
related: Misnagdim
related: Pilgrimage
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: Sirkes, Yo’el
related: Ukraine
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Minorities Treaties
described at: Minorities Treaties
has abstract: Informal designation for a series of international agreements concluded following World War I. The Minorities Treaties were drawn up between the Principal Allied and Associated Powers (the United States, the British Empire, France, Italy, and Japan), on the one hand, and 14 newly created or expanded states in Europe and the Middle East (Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Iraq, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Turkey, and Yugoslavia), on the other hand, governing eligibility for citizenship in the latter states and granting citizens belonging to racial, religious, or linguistic minorities certain collective rights. Among the provisions granted by the treaties were the right to equal treatment and protection by the state for their members; to use minority languages for specified public purposes, including in courts and elementary schools; to establish and control educational, religious, and social welfare institutions for their groups; and to receive a proportional share of state expenditures for educational, religious, and welfare services.
title: Minorities Treaties
alternative label: Minorities Treaty
alternative label: minority rights
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Estonia
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Latvia
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: Silesia
related: Ukraine
related: World War I

Mir, Yeshiva of
described at: Mir Yeshiva of
has abstract: The Mir yeshiva was founded in 1815 by a wealthy householder, Shemu’el Tiktinski. It shared many of the characteristics of the Volozhin yeshiva, but there is no evidence of direct links between the two institutions. Granting subsidies to students so that they would not be dependent on the charity of householders, Tiktinski raised funds not only in Mir but also in the entire region. In directing the yeshiva, he was assisted by another rosh yeshivah, and a daily lesson in Talmud was the highlight of a student’s day.
title: Mir, Yeshiva of
alternative label: Mir
alternative label: Mir yeshiva
alternative label: Yeshiva of Mir
related: Kaunas
related: Musar Movement
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Slobodka, Yeshiva of
related: Vilnius
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Philanthropy
described at: Philanthropy
has abstract: Accompanying the classical version of charity—direct assistance provided by a person of means to a person in need, and the traditional and fraternal associations that addressed the various needs of the poor—there developed in East European Jewish society an extensive and far-reaching network of philanthropy. In this context, the term philanthropy refers to assistance provided to individuals, communities, or social and educational institutions by wealthy individuals above and beyond traditional communal frameworks.
title: Philanthropy
alternative label: philanthropists
alternative label: philanthropy
related: Agriculture
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Belarus
related: Bergson Family
related: Białystok
related: Bloch, Jan
related: Bobruisk
related: Brodskii Family
related: Charity
related: Daugavpils
related: Epstein Family
related: Gintsburg Family
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Hrodna
related: Jakubowicz, Yehudis Halevi
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Latvia
related: Lithuania
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Minsk
related: Money
related: Moscow
related: Natanson Family
related: Notkin, Nota Khaimovich
related: ORT
related: OZE
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Passover
related: Pogroms
related: Poliakov Family
related: Romania
related: Rosenthal, Leon
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Shklov
related: Shtadlan
related: Šiauliai
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Strashun, Shemu’el and Matityahu
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Zak, Avraam Isakovich
related: Zbytkower, Shmul

Pryłucki, Noah
described at: Pryłucki Noah
has abstract: (Noyekh Prilutski; 1882–1941), Yiddish scholar, journalist, and political leader. Noah Pryłucki was born into an affluent merchant family in Berdichev, Ukraine, but spent most of his childhood in Kremenets. Under the guidance of his father Tsevi, who was active in the Ḥibat Tsiyon movement and the Jewish press, he received both a general education in Russian state schools and a Jewish education at home. While still an adolescent, he began to write for Hebrew-, Yiddish-, and Russian-language Jewish periodicals.
title: Pryłucki, Noah
alternative label: Noah Pryłucki
related: Berdychiv
related: Czernowitz Conference
related: Folkists
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Yiddish (Language)
related: Lehman, Shmuel
related: Lithuania
related: Moment, Der
related: Perle, Yoshue
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Criticism and Scholarship (Theater)
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw
related: Weinreich, Max
related: YIVO
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Rivne
described at: Rivne
has abstract: City in Ukraine; capital of the Rivne region. Before 1793 and between 1920 and 1939, Rivne (Pol., Równe; Rus., Rovno) belonged to Poland. Its first Jews, and probably the town’s earliest organized Jewish community, appeared there in the mid-sixteenth century.
title: Rivne
alternative label: Rovno
related: Bund
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Ostrog
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Civil War
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Shtif, Nokhem
related: Tarbut
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Rostov-on-Don
described at: Rostov-on-Don
has abstract: Town on the Don River; administrative center of the Rostov province of Russia. In 1761, the Rostov fortress and settlement were founded, and the town gained official status in 1796.
title: Rostov-on-Don
alternative label: Rostov
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Anticosmopolitan Campaign
related: Banking
related: Crafts
related: Crown Rabbi
related: Doctors’ Plot
related: Evsektsiia
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Industry
related: Kultur-lige
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Pogroms
related: Poliakov Family
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Civil War
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Trade
related: Transportation
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Schorr, Mojżesz
described at: Schorr Mojzesz
has abstract: (1874–1941), historian, Semitic-language scholar, and rabbi. Born in Przemyśl, Galicia, Mojżesz (Mosheh) Schorr studied philosophy and history between 1893 and 1898 in Vienna at the University of Vienna and the Israelitisch-Theologische Lehranstalt. In 1897, he transferred to the University of Lwów and received his Ph.D. in history in 1898. Two years later he was ordained as a rabbi.
title: Schorr, Mojżesz
alternative label: Mojżesz Schorr
alternative label: Schorr
related: Łódź
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Historiography)
related: L’viv
related: Ostrog
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poznański, Shemu’el Avraham
related: Przemyśl
related: Warsaw

Shabetai ben Me’ir ha-Kohen
described at: Shabetai ben Meir ha-Kohen
has abstract: (ca. 1621–ca. 1662), author of Sifte Kohen (1646–1647); an important and influential halakhic authority known as Shakh. Shabetai was born in Amstibovo, Lithuania, to a well-known rabbinical family. His father and grandfather served as rabbis in important communities; his father-in-law was a wealthy grandson of Mosheh Isserles. Though he quotes his father, and less frequently his teachers—Yehoshu‘a Heshel ben Yosef of Kraków and Yehoshu‘a Heshel ben Ya‘akov of Lublin—it appears that most of his scholarship was independently acquired.
title: Shabetai ben Me’ir ha-Kohen
alternative label: Shabetai ben-Me’ir ha-Kohen
alternative label: Shabetai ha-Kohen
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: David ben Shemu’el ha-Levi
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lima, Mosheh ben Yitsḥak Yehudah
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Nemyriv
related: Pogroms
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Vilnius
related: Yehoshu‘a Heshel of Kraków

Shapira Family
described at: Shapira Family
has abstract: Hasidic leaders active in the field of publishing. Pinḥas ben Avraham Abba Shapira of Korets (Korzec; 1726/28–1790) was a charismatic Hasidic leader and a member of the Ba‘al Shem Tov’s (Besht’s) circle. Mosheh Shapira (1762–1838) established a publishing house, an enterprise that he shared with his sons Shemu’el Avraham Abba (1784–1863) and Pinḥas (1792–1872).
title: Shapira Family
alternative label: Pinḥas Shapira of Korets
alternative label: Pinḥas of Korets
alternative label: Shapira
alternative label: Shapira family
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Kiev
related: Land of Israel
related: Lithuania
related: Misnagdim
related: Moscow
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: Ostrog
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Romm Family
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shapira, Ḥavah
related: Shklov
related: Terezín
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Ya‘akov Yosef of Polnoye
related: Zhytomyr

Slánský Trial
described at: Slansky Trial
has abstract: An antisemitic show trial in 1952, involving high-ranking politicians of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Political terror was an inherent component of the Stalinist reign in Eastern Europe following World War II. While the first trials focused on political opponents of the Communists, the schism with Tito’s Yugoslavia (i.e., inside the Communist bloc), which started in 1948, led to a hunt for alleged enemies within the Communist parties and produced a series of trials involving Communist politicians in East European countries. The campaign was designed to demonstrate a widespread “imperialist” conspiracy within the Communist movements and to prevent any further disobedience in the Soviet bloc.
title: Slánský Trial
alternative label: Rudolf Slánský
alternative label: Slánský
alternative label: Slánský trial
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Communism
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Moscow
related: Prague
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Soviet State Yiddish Theaters
described at: Soviet State Yiddish Theaters
has abstract: Known by the acronym GOSET (Gosudarstvennyi Evreiskii Teatr), the Soviet State Yiddish Theaters were part of a network of state-subsidized theaters in the Soviet Union. At its height in the 1930s, the network included four major theaters in Ukraine, Belorussia, Birobidzhan, and Moscow, as well as some 15 minor theaters in smaller Jewish population centers.
title: Soviet State Yiddish Theaters
alternative label: GOSET
alternative label: State Jewish Theater
alternative label: State Yiddish Theater
alternative label: State Yiddish theaters
alternative label: state Jewish theater
related: Belarus
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Białystok
related: Birobidzhan
related: Dobrushin, Yekhezkl
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Granovskii, Aleksandr Mikhailovich
related: Hrodna
related: Kaunas
related: Kazakevich, Emmanuil Genrikhovich
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: Kishinev
related: Kultur-lige
related: Kushnirov, Arn
related: L’viv
related: Markish, Perets
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Odessa
related: Riga
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Ternopil’
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vevyorke, Avrom
related: Vilnius
related: Zhytomyr

Trebitsch, Neḥemyah Naḥum
described at: Trebitsch Nehemyah Nahum
has abstract: (1779–1842), rabbi and Talmudic scholar. Born in Prague, Neḥemyah Naḥum Trebitsch was the only child of Seligmann Trebitsch, the prayer leader at Prague’s Altneuschul. After his father’s death, Trebitsch was brought up in the house of Ya‘akov Günsburg, who headed a yeshiva in Prague and sat on the city’s rabbinical court. Trebitsch received rabbinical ordination from Günsburg in 1811 and from Moravia’s chief rabbi, Mordekhai Banet (1753–1829), in 1816.
title: Trebitsch, Neḥemyah Naḥum
alternative label: Neḥemyah Naḥum Trebitsch
alternative label: Neḥemyah Trebitsch
related: Altneuschul
related: Banet, Mordekhai ben Avraham
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brüll, Jacob
related: Karlovy Vary
related: Neuda, Abraham
related: Prague
related: Prostějov
related: Reform, Religious
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Wiadomości Literackie
described at: Wiadomosci Literackie
has abstract: An extremely influential literary journal, Wiadomości Literackie (Literary News) appeared in Warsaw between January 1924 and September 1939 under the editorship of its founder, Mieczysław Grydzewski. Quickly outgrowing its French prototype Les Nouvelles littéraires, and evolving from a narrowly literary journal into a periodical covering a wide range of cultural, social, and political issues, both domestic and international, Wiadomości Literackie established itself as one of the most prestigious cultural institutions of interwar Poland. Although its circulation never exceeded 15,000 copies, its impact on the country’s literary, artistic, and intellectual elites can hardly be overestimated. Its standing was also enhanced by its annual literary awards, which successfully competed with state-sponsored prizes.
title: Wiadomości Literackie
related: Askenazy, Szymon
related: Belmont, Leo
related: Grydzewski, Mieczysław
related: Handelsman, Marceli
related: Hemar, Marian
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Słonimski, Antoni
related: Schulz, Bruno
related: Tuwim, Julian
related: Warsaw
related: Wittlin, Józef

Yehoshu‘a ben Aleksander ha-Kohen
described at: Yehoshua ben Aleksander ha-Kohen
has abstract: (1555–1614), rabbinical scholar and halakhic authority. Yehoshu‘a ben Aleksander ha-Kohen, also known as Sema‘ (an acronym of the title of his Sefer me’irat ‘enayim, which is a commentary to the Ḥoshen mishpat portion of the Shulḥan ‘arukh) and by the name Falk, was born in Kraków, where he studied under his cousin, Mosheh Isserles. Subsequently, he moved to Lublin to study under Shelomoh Luria. For a while, he served as a rabbi in Ludmir. He married Beila, a learned daughter of Yisra’el Edels, one of the leaders of the Jewish community in Lwów. (Beila Falk introduced two new rules regarding the lighting of candles on holidays; several prominent rabbis, including Yeḥezkel Segal-Landau, Ḥayim Yosef David Azulay, and the Ḥatam Sofer, endorsed her opinion as halakhah. After being widowed, she immigrated to Jerusalem.)
title: Yehoshu‘a ben Aleksander ha-Kohen
alternative label: Ya`akov Yehoshu‘a ben Aleksander ha-Kohen Falk
alternative label: Yehoshu‘a Falk
alternative label: Yehoshu‘a Falk ha-Kohen
alternative label: Yehoshu‘a ha-Kohen Falk
related: Horowitz Family
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Luria, Shelomoh ben Yeḥi’el
related: L’viv
related: Prague
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Volodymyr Volyns’kyi
related: Yafeh, Mordekhai ben Avraham
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Yung-Vilne
described at: Yung-vilne
has abstract: (Young Vilna) was a dynamic Yiddish literary group of writers, poets, and artists who came of age creatively in Vilna in the 1930s. The group was officially established on 11 October 1929 by Zalmen Reyzen, editor of the Vilner tog, under the headline “Young Vilna Marches into Yiddish Literature,” although a number of aspiring writers and artists had already begun gathering informally a few years earlier.
title: Yung-Vilne
alternative label: Yung-vilne
related: Bin
related: Grade, Chaim
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kaczerginski, Shmerke
related: Kulbak, Moyshe
related: Reyzen, Zalmen
related: Sutzkever, Avrom
related: Vilnius
related: Vogler, Elkhonen
related: Volf, Leyzer
related: Weinreich, Max
related: YIVO
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Zinov’ev, Grigorii Evseevich
described at: Zinovev Grigorii Evseevich
has abstract: (1883–1936), revolutionary and Soviet political figure. Grigorii Zinov’ev, known earlier as Ovsei-Gersh Aronovich Apfel’baum or Radomysl’skii, was born in Elisavetgrad, Kherson province, to the assimilated family of an owner of a small dairy farm. Zinov’ev joined the Rossiiskaia Sotsial-Demokraticheskaia Rabochaia Partiia (Russian Social Democratic Workers Party; RSDWP) in 1901. While studying at Bern University, he continued his involvement in revolutionary activities.
title: Zinov’ev, Grigorii Evseevich
alternative label: Grigorii Evseevich Zinov’ev
alternative label: Grigorii Zinov’ev
alternative label: Zinov’ev
related: Kamenev, Iurii
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Trotsky, Leon
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Zissu, Abraham Leib
described at: Zissu Abraham Leib
has abstract: (1888–1956), writer and journalist; Zionist political leader. Abraham Leib Zissu was born in Piatra Neamț, Moldavia, to a Hasidic family, and was familiar with traditional Talmudic and biblical literature. He made his debut as a journalist in the newspaper Egalitatea (Equality; 1914), and eventually edited, with M. Braunstein-Mebashan (Menaḥem Mendel Braunstein), the Hebrew review Ha-Mekits (1912). He contributed as well to the Yiddish language review Likht (1914) before turning to Romanian-language Jewish journalism.
title: Zissu, Abraham Leib
alternative label: A. L. (Abraham Leib) Zissu
alternative label: A. L. Zissu
alternative label: Abraham Leib Zissu
related: Aderca, Felix
related: Assimilation
related: Braunstein, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Bucharest
related: Călugăru, Ion
related: Cluj
related: Egalitatea
related: Filderman, Wilhelm
related: Fundoianu, Beniamin
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Ludo, Isac Iacovitz
related: Mântuirea
related: Moldavia
related: Piatra Neamţ
related: Revisionist Zionists
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Zweifel, Eli‘ezer
described at: Zweifel Eliezer
has abstract: (1815–1888), moderate maskil, Jewish studies researcher, Talmud teacher at the Zhitomir Rabbinical Seminary, and a prolific writer in Hebrew and Yiddish. Born in 1815 in Mogilev, Zweifel’s early marriage was a failure and for many years he wandered from community to community, earning a living alternately as a rabbi, melamed (Talmud teacher), and private tutor to students from wealthy homes. At the same time, he was caught up in a frenzy of reading and studying, particularly Hebrew and German works of intellectuals from Central and Western Europe. During his travels, Zweifel established contact with a variety of maskilim: while in Kremenets he met Yitsḥak Ber Levinzon, a leader of the Russian Haskalah movement in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, and in Odessa he met Betsal’el Stern, the principal of one of the first maskilic schools in the Russian Empire.
title: Zweifel, Eli‘ezer
alternative label: Eli‘ezer Tsevi Zweifel
alternative label: Eli‘ezer Zweifel
alternative label: Lazar (Eli‘ezer) Zweifel
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Krochmal, Naḥman
related: Levinzon, Yitsḥak Ber
related: Misnagdim
related: Odessa
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Seminary
related: Vilnius
related: Zhytomyr

Aḥi’asaf
described at: Ahiasaf
has abstract: Hebraist-Zionist publishing house. Aḥi’asaf was founded in Warsaw in 1893 by Hebrew writer and publisher Avraham Leib Shalkovich (known as Ben-Avigdor, who soon left to found the rival publishing house Tushiyah), Eli‘ezer Kaplan, and other activists of Bene Mosheh, a secret society within the Ḥibat Tsiyon movement devoted to the national-cultural revival ideals of Ahad Ha-Am. Ahad Ha-Am himself served as editor and exerted substantial ideological influence on the press. Aḥi’asaf is considered the first modern Hebrew publishing house—the first to solicit, publish, and distribute works of individual authors. Early successes gave way to relative inactivity after 1904, with a brief attempted revival by Zionist leader Ozjasz Thon in 1923.
title: Aḥi’asaf
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Bernfeld, Shim‘on
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Dor, Ha-
related: Feierberg, Mordekhai Ze’ev
related: Friedberg, Avraham Shalom
related: Frishman, David
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Klausner, Yosef
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: About this Article (Literary Journals)
related: Luaḥ Aḥi’asaf
related: Ravnitski, Yehoshu‘a Ḥana
related: Shalkovich, Avraham Leib
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Thon, Ozjasz
related: Tushiyah
related: Warsaw
related: Yud, Der
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Asif, Ha-
described at: Asif Ha-
has abstract: Annual Hebrew publication, issued between 1884 and 1889, and again in 1893. Ha-Asif (The Harvest) was published in Warsaw and edited by Naḥum Sokolow. The yearly journal focused on discussions and reviews of Jewish studies while attempting to avoid complete identification with the Ḥibat Tsiyon movement. Although Sokolow felt a certain ideological affinity with that movement, he stressed, in his introduction to the 1884 edition, that Ha-Asif was not established to fulfill the needs of any single party or the needs of the hour, but was aimed at the Jewish nation as a whole. Throughout its existence, the publication focused on Jewish history and historiosophy as the basis of nationalism, an approach emphasized by Sokolow in his major essays.
title: Asif, Ha-
alternative label: Ha-Asif
related: Frishman, David
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Gottlober, Avraham Ber
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Mane, Mordekhai Tsevi
related: Otsar ha-Sifrut
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Sokolow, Naḥum
related: Warsaw

Banet, Mordekhai ben Avraham
described at: Banet Mordekhai ben Avraham
has abstract: (1753–1829), chief rabbi of Moravia. Mordekhai ben Avraham Banet (Markus Benedikt) achieved great fame during his 40-year tenure (1789–1829) as rabbi of Nikolsburg (Mikulov), head of its large yeshiva, and chief rabbi of Moravia. Throughout his career, he dealt extensively with the revolutionary political, social, and cultural changes that were transforming the lives of his Central European Jewish constituency. Yet unlike the confrontational Orthodoxy initiated by his younger colleague, Mosheh Sofer (Ḥatam Sofer) of Pressburg (Bratislava), Banet’s religious philosophy reflected a more pragmatic traditionalism that rejected certain manifestations of modernity while acquiescing to others.
title: Banet, Mordekhai ben Avraham
alternative label: Mordekhai Banet
related: Approbation
related: Arad
related: Bratislava
related: Chorin, Aharon
related: Haskalah
related: Homberg, Herz
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Landau, Yeḥezkel ben Yehudah
related: Mikulov
related: Orthodoxy
related: Prague
related: Sabbath
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Brainin, Re’uven
described at: Brainin Reuven
has abstract: (1862–1939), Hebrew critic, biographer, short-story writer, and feuilletonist. Born in Liady, Mohilev province, Re’uven Brainin was part of a learned Jewish family, and he first intensely followed the route of traditional text study. At age 17, however, he was profoundly influenced by Haskalah texts, including Avraham Mapu’s Ahavat Tsiyon (The Love of Zion).
title: Brainin, Re’uven
alternative label: Re’uven Brainin
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Antokol’skii, Mark Matveevich
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Birnbaum, Nathan
related: Birobidzhan
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Haskalah
related: Hurwitz, Sha’ul Yisra’el
related: Luaḥ Aḥi’asaf
related: Mapu, Avraham
related: Shaḥar, Ha-
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Smolenskin, Perets
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul

Bratslav Hasidism
described at: Bratslav Hasidism
has abstract: A controversial Hasidic school, focused on the personality and teachings of Naḥman ben Simḥah (1772–1810), and named after the Podolian town of Bratslav, where he resided from 1802 until the last few months of his life.
title: Bratslav Hasidism
alternative label: Bratslav
alternative label: Bratslav Hasidic sect
alternative label: Bratslav Hasidim
alternative label: Bratslaver Hasid
related: Chernobil Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Kiev
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Naḥman of Bratslav
related: Natan Sternhartz of Nemirov
related: Perl, Yosef
related: Pilgrimage
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Savran-Bendery Hasidic Dynasty
related: Uman
related: Zeitlin Family

German Literature
described at: German Literature
has abstract: Between the Enlightenment and the Shoah, Jews living in Eastern Europe made contributions to German-language literature that by any measure must be considered significant to that tradition. Yet it is difficult to classify this contribution with a unified definition pertinent to the exercise.
title: German Literature
alternative label: German literature
narrower: Beginnings
narrower: Farther East
narrower: Jews in Eastern German Lands
narrower: The Habsburg Monarchy
narrower: The Range of Inquiry
related: Autobiography and Memoir
related: Balázs, Béla
related: Bar Kochba Association
related: Baum, Oskar
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Bergmann, Hugo
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brno
related: Brod, Max
related: Bucovina
related: Budapest
related: Celan, Paul
related: Chernivtsi
related: Communism
related: Czech Republic
related: East Prussia
related: Franzos, Karl Emil
related: Fuchs, Rudolf
related: Galicia
related: Gdańsk
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kafka, Franz
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kisch, Egon Erwin
related: Lithuania
related: L’viv
related: Maimon, Salomon
related: Mauthner, Fritz
related: Medzhibizh
related: Minsk
related: Moldavia
related: Ostrava
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pick, Otto
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Romania
related: Roth, Joseph
related: Salus, Hugo
related: Silesia
related: Slovakia
related: Ukraine
related: Weiss, Ernst
related: Wengeroff, Pauline
related: Werfel, Franz
related: Wrocław
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Gottlieb, Maurycy
described at: Gottlieb Maurycy
has abstract: (1856–1879), artist. Among the founders of modern Jewish art, Maurycy Gottlieb is prized in Poland as one of the most talented students of the great national artist Jan Matejko. Born in Drohobycz, Galicia (mod. Drogobych, Ukraine), Gottlieb was sent by his father to a German-language elementary school and to the Polish high school in his native city. Throughout his life German was Gottlieb’s chief language. His Jewish education was not extensive, though he attended heder.
title: Gottlieb, Maurycy
alternative label: Maurycy Gottlieb
related: Drogobych
related: Galicia
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ukraine

Kosov-Vizhnits Hasidic Dynasty
described at: Kosov-Vizhnits Hasidic Dynasty
has abstract: An extensive line of tsadikim of the Hager family, active from the end of the eighteenth century in Galicia, in Bucovina, and especially in Transylvania and Subcarpathian Rus’. Its descendants serve as rebbes to this day in Israel, the United States, and Britain.
title: Kosov-Vizhnits Hasidic Dynasty
alternative label: Kosov
alternative label: Kosov Hasidim
alternative label: Kosov-Vizhnits
alternative label: Kosov-Vizhnits dynasty
alternative label: Vizhnits
alternative label: Vizhnits Hasidism
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Borşa
related: Bucovina
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kolomyia
related: Land of Israel
related: Mizraḥi
related: Oradea
related: Siret
related: Subcarpathian Rus’
related: Suceava
related: Transylvania
related: Yeḥi’el Mikhl of Zlotshev
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Yisra’el of Ruzhin
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Lifshits, Khaye Malke
described at: Lifshits Khaye Malke
has abstract: (1880–1943), Bundist and Communist leader. Khaye Malke Lifshits (known variously as Ester; Ester Frumkin; Maria Iakovlevna Frumkina; and Ester Aronova) was the most prominent female leader of the Jewish Labor Bund in Russia (until 1921) and then a leader in the Evsektsiia (Jewish section) of the Russian Communist Party (RCP). In contrast to most other members of the Jewish revolutionary intelligentsia in Russia, Ester Frumkin receiveda strong Jewish education at home and was fluent in both Yiddish and Hebrew. Originally from Minsk, after graduating from high school in her hometown Frumkin continued her studies in philology and Russian literature at the Pedagogical University in Saint Petersburg.
title: Lifshits, Khaye Malke
alternative label: Ester
alternative label: Ester Frumkin
alternative label: Khaye Malke Lifshits
alternative label: Malke Frumkin
alternative label: Malke Lifshits
alternative label: Malke Lifshits Frumkin
related: Bucovina
related: Bund
related: Communist Party of the Soviet Union
related: Czernowitz Conference
related: Evsektsiia
related: Galicia
related: Medem, Vladimir Davidovich
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Soviet Yiddish-Language Schools
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vainshtein, Aron Isaakovich

Military Service in Russia
described at: Military Service in Russia
has abstract: When on 26 August 1827 Nicholas I (r. 1825–1855) issued his Ustav rekrutskoi povinnosti (Statute on Conscription Duty) making Jews in Russia liable to personal army service and canceling their prior privilege of providing money ransom instead of conscripts, he followed a policy consistent with European enlightened monarchies, which sought to transform “their” Jews from a medieval corporate entity into useful subjects integrated into the society with which Jews shared rights and obligations. Such was the pattern found in Austria under the reign of Joseph II (r. 1780–1790), who subjected Jews to the state bureaucracy; imposed upon them an obligatory German-based education; significantly expanded their residential, trade, and economic rights; and drafted them into the army.
title: Military Service in Russia
alternative label: Russian army
alternative label: cantonist
alternative label: cantonists
alternative label: conscription
alternative label: military draft
alternative label: military service
alternative label: service in the Russian army
related: Crafts
related: Galicia
related: Informers
related: Kahal
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: Moscow
related: Pale of Settlement
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Sabbath
related: Shtadlan
related: Trade
related: Trumpeldor, Yosef
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: World War I
related: Yisra’el Me’ir ha-Kohen

Panevėžys
described at: Panevezys
has abstract: Town in northeastern Lithuania, on the Nevėžys River; the town served as a district capital. From 1843, Panevėžys (in Jewish usage, variously Ponevezh, Ponivezh, or Ponevich) was included in Kovno guberniia. Jews began to settle in Panevėžys at the beginning of the seventeenth century and engaged mainly in trade and services to local residents. In 1857, approximately 3,500 Jews (60% of the total population) lived there; by the end of the nineteenth century the numbers had reached about 6,600.
title: Panevėžys
alternative label: Panev
alternative label: ė
related: Bund
related: Crown Rabbi
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Heder
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Kahaneman, Yosef Shelomoh
related: Kaunas
related: Lithuania
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Maccabi Movement
related: Misnagdim
related: ORT
related: Po‘el, Ha-
related: Rabinovich, Yitsḥak Ya‘akov
related: Rabinowitz-Te’omim, Eliyahu David ben Binyamin
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Trade
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Pápa
described at: Papa
has abstract: City in Veszprém county, Hungary. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Pápa was home to one of the largest and most important Jewish communities in Hungary. Situated favorably at the crossroads between north and south in Transdanubia, Pápa was designated as a “privileged market town” that belonged to a branch of the Esterházy family. Since before 1840 Jews were excluded from most of the “royal free or privileged cities,” it was in noble-owned, large market towns such as Pápa that they flourished. The population was primarily Hungarian with a sizable Calvinist and Lutheran minority alongside the Roman Catholic majority. The Pápa fair attracted merchants from the mercantile centers to the north and west—Pressburg, Györ, and Sopron—who bought up agricultural produce from the southern counties.
title: Pápa
related: Bratislava
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Löw, Leopold
related: Orthodoxy
related: Reform, Religious
related: Sabbath
related: Sofer Family
related: Tiszaeszlár Blood Libel
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Samizdat
described at: Samizdat
has abstract: (lit., self-publication), the publication and circulation of uncensored materials in the Soviet Union. Samizdat was not exclusively a Jewish phenomenon: Soviet dissidents of all nationalities had recourse to this mode of expressing nonconformity and disseminating ideas from the late 1950s until glasnost. Jewish samizdat—uncensored works on Jewish subjects, produced by Jews for a Jewish readership, and disseminated among Jews—included periodicals, pamphlets, and even books.
title: Samizdat
alternative label: samizdat
related: Assimilation
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Frug, Shimen Shmuel
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Jabotinsky, Vladimir
related: Leningradskii Evreiskii Al’manakh
related: Moscow
related: Riga
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Weizmann, Chaim

Schulman, Kalman
described at: Schulman Kalman
has abstract: (1819–1899), maskil and Hebrew writer whose work was significant in the development of modern Hebrew literature. Kalman Schulman was born to a Hasidic family in Stary Bykhov, in the Mogilev district of Belorussia. He studied at the Volozhin yeshiva for about six years, subsequently learning German and developing an interest in Haskalah literature. In 1843, Schulman settled in Vilna, joining that city’s circle of maskilic authors, especially Mikhah Yosef Lebensohn (Mikhal), with whom he shared a close friendship. From 1849 to 1861, Schulman taught Hebrew at the secondary school connected to the state rabbinical seminary. Later he devoted himself entirely to literary activity, receiving encouragement and support from Saint Petersburg’s Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia.
title: Schulman, Kalman
alternative label: Kalman Schulman
related: Belarus
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Land of Israel
related: Lebensohn, Mikhah Yosef
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Vilnius
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Shakhnah, Shalom
described at: Shakhnah Shalom
has abstract: (ca. 1495–1558), rosh yeshivah and rabbi in Lublin; chief rabbi of Poland. Shalom Shakhnah ben Yosef was born into one of the richest Jewish families of Poland. His father Yosef (Yoska) and grandfather Shakhnah were successful farmers of customs duties in Poland. After Yosef’s property was plundered, he moved from Lwów to Lublin in about 1504 and opened a moneylending business. After Yosef’s death in 1507, Shakhnah maintained the business, but subsequently turned to Torah study and a rabbinical career. Although he studied in Poznań and may also have spent some time in Ashkenazic yeshivas in northern Italy, his main teacher was Ya‘akov Pollak of Kraków. Shakhnah, who eventually directed a yeshiva in Lublin, was considered to be Pollak’s heir and successor and was a central figure among rashe yeshivot (heads of yeshivas) of Poland in the generation following his teacher, beginning in about 1522.
title: Shakhnah, Shalom
alternative label: Shalom Shakhnah
alternative label: Shalom Shakhnah ben Yosef
related: Ashkenaz
related: Councils
related: Helicz Brothers
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Luria, Shelomoh ben Yeḥi’el
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Pollak, Ya‘akov ben Yosef
related: Poznań
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Spektor, Yitsḥak Elḥanan
described at: Spektor Yitshak Elhanan
has abstract: (1817–1896), rabbi, leader of traditional Jewry in Russia, halakhic authority, and supporter of the Ḥibat Tsiyon (Love of Zion) movement. Yitsḥak Elḥanan Spektor served as rabbi in various communities in the Russia Empire, the most important of which was Kovno in Lithuania (1864–1896). He was considered a moderate in his halakhic rulings, devoting much of his decision making to finding dispensations that would permit ‘agunot (literally, “chained” women—the wives of missing or disappeared husbands) to remarry. Many of his responsa were widely regarded as authoritative.
title: Spektor, Yitsḥak Elḥanan
alternative label: Yitsḥak Elḥanan Spektor
related: Gintsburg Family
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Hildesheimer, Esriel
related: Katowice
related: Kaunas
related: Lipkin, Yisra’el ben Ze’ev Volf
related: Lithuania
related: Musar Movement
related: Pogroms
related: Poliakov Family
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia

Tarnów
described at: Tarnow
has abstract: Town in southern Poland, 72 kilometers east of Kraków. Tarnów was founded in 1330, and in the century that followed, Jews were allowed to settle there by its owner, the nobleman Jan Amor. The first privilege authorizing the establishment of a Jewish community was granted in 1582 by the town’s new owner, Konstanty Ostrogski, and was renewed by his successor, Władysław Dominik Ostrogski, in 1637. This privilege exempted the Jews of Tarnów from municipal jurisdiction, entitling them to engage in trade in their own buildings and shops and to distill and deal in alcoholic beverages. They were permitted to have 12 dwelling places on the “Jewish street” (ulica Żydowska). Jews were to pay taxes directly to the magnate and could establish a cemetery near the city. The municipality was responsible for securing the synagogue and cemetery from attack.
title: Tarnów
related: Brandstetter, Mordekhai David
related: Galicia
related: Guilds
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Industry
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ruzhin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Sandomierz
related: Sandz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Schiper, Ignacy
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Tavernkeeping
described at: Tavernkeeping
has abstract: Jews in Poland began leasing taverns and village breweries in the sixteenth century. This line of work developed rapidly, and by the second half of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there was a significantly greater proportion of Jews involved in activities related to the production and sale of beer and vodka than in other Jewish communities in Europe. According to the census of Jews in 1764–1765, about 80 percent of the Jews living in villages and about 14 percent of those living in towns and cities were involved in these activities. In Podlasie, Podolia, and Mazovia, innkeepers made up some 55 percent of the total Jewish population.
title: Tavernkeeping
alternative label: innkeeping
alternative label: taverners
alternative label: tavernkeeper
alternative label: tavernkeepers
alternative label: tavernkeeping
alternative label: taverns
related: Berdychiv
related: Credit
related: Economic Life
related: Galicia
related: Heder
related: Kaunas
related: Leaseholding
related: Lithuania
related: Passover
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Servants
related: Ukraine
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Tiszaeszlár Blood Libel
described at: Tiszaeszlar Blood Libel
has abstract: An accusation of Jewish ritual murder in the Hungarian village of Tiszaeszlár (before 1918, in Szabolcs county) led to the arrest, imprisonment, interrogation, and eventual trial of 13 Jewish defendants, April 1882–August 1883. The Tiszaeszlár affair began with the disappearance of a 14-year-old Christian girl named Eszter Solymosi on 1 April 1882. Over the next few days—partly in response to an ambiguous conversation that they had with one of the eventual defendants and partly inspired by their own preconceived notions—the girl’s mother and aunt came to the conclusion that she had been kidnapped and murdered by local Jews. At first, officials responded with incredulity to the women’s claims, advising them instead to “put such thoughts out of [their] mind[s].” Indeed, for several weeks the Tiszaeszlár affair was nothing more than a case of a missing person. Eventually, though, a series of factors led to a serious accusation of Jewish ritual murder.
title: Tiszaeszlár Blood Libel
alternative label: Tiszaeszlár
alternative label: Tiszaeszlár affair
alternative label: Tiszaeszlár blood libel
alternative label: Tiszaeszlár trial
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Blood Libels and Host Desecration Accusations
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bratislava
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kiev
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Sabbath
related: Ukraine

Vaysenberg, Itshe Meyer
described at: Vaysenberg Itshe Meyer
has abstract: (1881–1938), Yiddish prose writer. Itshe Meyer Vaysenberg (Isaac Meir Weissenberg), was born in Żelechów, Poland, into a working-class family. He attended heder and in his youth was a craftsman. In 1904, Vaysenberg published his first two short stories in Di yudishe bibliotek, edited by Y. L. Peretz. One of these stories, “Dor hoylekh vedor bo” (A Generation Comes and a Generation Goes), already heralded the place that Vaysenberg was about to occupy within Yiddish literature. He became a master of realistic descriptions of social tensions in the shtetl, even as he avoided open ideological commitment.
title: Vaysenberg, Itshe Meyer
alternative label: Itshe Meyer Vaysenberg
alternative label: Yitskhok (Itshe) Meyer Vaysenberg
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Bal-Makhshoves
related: Heder
related: Horontshik, Shimen
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: Lerer, Yekhiel
related: About this Article (Literary Journals)
related: Litvak
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Yiddish Prose (Prose)
related: Shtetl
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Volodymyr Volyns’kyi
described at: Volodymyr Volynskyi
has abstract: A city on the Luga River (a tributary of the West Bug), Volodymyr Volyns’kyi (Pol., Włodzimierz; Yid., Ludmir; Latinized as Lodomeria) is the district center of Ukraine’s Volyn’ oblast. An important regional center of Volhynia since the tenth century, it passed in 1319 to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, in 1569 to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and in 1795 to the Russian Empire. Between 1921 and 1939 it belonged to independent Poland.
title: Volodymyr Volyns’kyi
alternative label: Ludmir
alternative label: Vladimir
alternative label: Vladimir-Volynski
alternative label: Włodzimierz Wołyński
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Beys Yankev
related: Councils
related: Crafts
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: Heller, Yom Tov Lipmann
related: Karlin-Stolin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Leaseholding
related: Lithuania
related: Maiden of Ludmir
related: ORT
related: Pogroms
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Tarbut
related: Tombstones
related: Trade
related: Ukraine
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Angels
described at: Angels
has abstract: Jewish tradition considers angels to be messengers of God, but holds that they must not be substituted for God. Isaiah 63:9 speaks of the angel of God’s divine countenance—an important designation in Jewish mysticism that has variously been taken to mean the archangel Metatron, the Shekhinah (or immanent divine presence), or the redeeming angel and was understood by some to be an extension of God and a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. The Talmud (Ḥagigah 13b) declares that each divine angelic legion is formed of a million members, but that the legions themselves are numberless.
title: Angels
alternative label: angels
narrower: Ashkenazic Traditions
narrower: Folklore
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Folk Songs
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: Kiev
related: Magic
related: Mysticism and Mystical Literature
related: Proverbs
related: Sabbath
related: Shklov
related: Shtetl
related: Spira, Natan Note ben Shelomoh

Berlin, Naftali Tsevi Yehudah
described at: Berlin Naftali Tsevi Yehudah
has abstract: (1816–1893), head of the Volozhin yeshiva and one of the great Torah scholars of the nineteenth century. Naftali Tsevi Yehudah Berlin (known as Netsiv) was born in Mir (Minsk district) into a distinguished family of merchants based in Shklov. His father, Ya‘akov, was a wealthy textile merchant, who at the end of his life sold all his property and settled in Jerusalem. At the age of 14, Berlin married Rayna Batyah, the daughter of Yitsḥak, son of Ḥayim of Volozhin, founder of the Volozhin yeshiva. For many years Berlin studied on his own with great diligence, but his father-in-law’s family remained unaware of his promise as a scholar.
title: Berlin, Naftali Tsevi Yehudah
alternative label: Naftali Tsevi Berlin
alternative label: Naftali Tsevi Yehudah Berlin
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Epstein, Yeḥi’el Mikhl
related: Ḥayim ben Yitsḥak of Volozhin
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Land of Israel
related: Minsk
related: Passover
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Shklov
related: Soloveichik Family
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Cahan, Ya‘akov
described at: Cahan Yaakov
has abstract: (1881–1960), Hebrew poet and playwright. Born in Slutsk, Ya‘akov Cahan moved with his family to the vicinity of Łódź, where he was educated at a progressive Jewish school. Largely self-taught in world literature and Hebrew, he wrote poetry and criticism in that language at a young age, and also translated poems from German. Acclaimed for his style by Ḥayim Naḥman Bialik, Cahan earned his reputation as the most purely lyrical of modern Hebrew poets.
title: Cahan, Ya‘akov
alternative label: Ya‘akov Cahan
related: Łódź
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Jabotinsky, Vladimir
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Revisionist Zionists
related: Slutsk
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Central Committee of Jews in Poland
described at: Central Committee of Jews in Poland
has abstract: The most prominent official Jewish institution in Poland following the Holocaust, the Central Committee of Jews in Poland (Centralny Komitet Żydów w Polsce, CKŻP) attended to the needs of Jews from fall 1944 until 1950. It sponsored a variety of programs, providing food, shelter, education, medical assistance, cultural activities, and employment services and vocational training. The CKŻP also supervised the repatriation of Jews from the Soviet Union and assisted with legal emigration. A government-funded body, it was supported financially by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
title: Central Committee of Jews in Poland
alternative label: Central Committee of Polish Jews
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Berman, Adolf Abraham
related: Bund
related: Communism
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kielce
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: ORT
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Ha-
related: Smolar, Hersh
related: Sommerstein, Emil
related: About this Article (Sport)
related: TOZ
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw

Demons
described at: Demons
has abstract: In East European Jewish culture, the demon—variously referred to as ruaḥ (spirit), mazik (evildoer), ḥitson (the external one), and shed (demonic spirit)—embodied forces of evil. Jews imagined demons as various sorts of evil forces seeking to intrude into the Jewish realm to destroy the well-being of individuals. The early eighteenth-century medical doctor Tobias Cohen reported a widespread belief in demons among East European Jews, which he found unparalleled elsewhere.
title: Demons
alternative label: demons
related: Amulets and Talismans
related: Ba‘ale Shem
related: Circumcision
related: Heller, Yom Tov Lipmann
related: Horowitz Family
related: Magic
related: Mosheh Ḥayim Efrayim of Sudilkov
related: Shimshon ben Pesaḥ of Ostropolye

Elimelekh of Lizhensk
described at: Elimelekh of Lizhensk
has abstract: (1717–1786/87), Hasidic leader; founder of Hasidism in Galicia and Poland. The son of a wealthy village Jew in the district of Tykocin, Elimelekh was first drawn to Hasidism by his brother Meshulam Zusya (d. 1800), later of Hanipoli. The two were among the best known disciples of Dov Ber, the Magid of Mezritsh. During their early years they were said to wander together in self-imposed poverty, in order to partake in the exile of the shekhinah. Elimelekh was known for other extremes of ascetic practice as well, in contrast to some others of the Magid’s followers.
title: Elimelekh of Lizhensk
alternative label: Elimelekh ben Eli‘ezer Lipman
related: Apt Hasidic Dynasty
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Leżajsk
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Menaḥem Mendel of Rimanov
related: Menaḥem Mendel of Vitebsk
related: Pilgrimage
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Pshiskhe Hasidic Dynasty
related: Ropshits-Dzikov Hasidic Dynasty
related: Tykocin
related: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz
related: Yisra’el ben Shabetai of Kozhenits
related: Zhidachov-Komarno Hasidic Dynasty

Food and Drink
described at: Food and Drink
has abstract: The distinctiveness of East European Jewish foodways arises from local understandings of ritual requirements, the historical legacy of early Western Ashkenazic traditions, a symbiotic relationship with local culinary practices, regional variations specific to Eastern Europe, and the central role of Jews in the food and beverage economy of the region.
title: Food and Drink
alternative label: cooking
alternative label: food
alternative label: foods
narrower: Beverages
narrower: Bread and Baked Goods
narrower: Culinary Repertoire
narrower: Eating Out
narrower: Festive Fare
narrower: Hunger
narrower: Ritual Requirements and Customary Practices
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Ashkenaz
related: Assimilation
related: Bacău
related: Belarus
related: Brody
related: Chernivtsi
related: Chess
related: Christmas
related: Circumcision
related: Cookbooks
related: Courland
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kluger, Shelomoh ben Yehudah
related: Kol Mevaser
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lithuania
related: Minsk
related: Money
related: Opatów
related: Passover
related: Pigs
related: Pinsk
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Purim
related: Religious Year
related: Riga
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Rzeszów
related: Sabbath
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: Weddings
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zabłudów
related: Zamość
related: Zederbaum, Aleksander

Frug, Shimen Shmuel
described at: Frug Shimen Shmuel
has abstract: (1860–1916), Russian and Yiddish poet and essayist. Once considered a shining star of Russian Jewish literature, Shimen Frug is remembered now mostly as a Zionist sympathizer and an inspiration for the Hebrew-language writers Ḥayim Naḥman Bialik, Leib Jaffe (Leyb Yaffe), and Yosef Klausner. By contrast, Simon Dubnow viewed Frug as a singer of negativism and despair. Frug, in fact, was a loner who, in an age of ideologies, had no ideology, belonged to no group, and was deeply contradictory. While often seen as a sympathizer of Zionism, Frug held an equally powerful passion for Diaspora Jewry. Lauded as a great friend of Yiddish, in truth Frug was ambivalent at best, launching a cruel attack against the language in 1899. Finally, although he served Jewish causes with his pen, he ultimately sullied his own reputation by selling out his muse and writing for Saint Petersburg’s gutter papers, including some that were mildly antisemitic. In short, the image of the monochromatic lover of Zion, master of Yiddish, and even melancholic singer of the Jewish people needs revision.
title: Frug, Shimen Shmuel
alternative label: Shimen Frug
alternative label: Shimen Shmuel Frug
related: Aizman, David Iakovlevich
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Crown Rabbi
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Heder
related: Klausner, Yosef
related: Nadson, Semen Iakovlevich
related: Odessa
related: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Literature
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Voskhod
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Galaţi
described at: Galati
has abstract: Port city on the Danube River, located in the Moldavian region of Romania. Written records of Jewish settlement in Galați (Galatz) include information from the seventeenth century. The town’s oldest standing Jewish cemetery dates back to 1774, though earlier cemeteries apparently existed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Great Synagogue, mentioned in documents in 1780, was rebuilt in 1813. Galați’s communal register dates back to 1812.
title: Galaţi
alternative label: Galați
related: Banking
related: Bessarabia
related: Brociner Family
related: Charity
related: Crafts
related: Heder
related: Industry
related: Maccabi Movement
related: Moldavia
related: Passover
related: Pineles, Samuel
related: Pogroms
related: Romania
related: Trade
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Ginsburg, Sha'ul
described at: Ginsburg Shaul
has abstract: (1866–1940), founder and editor of Der fraynd; political and cultural historian of Russian Jewry. Sha’ul (Saul Moiseevich) Ginsburg was born to a wealthy merchant and industrialist family in Minsk. He received a Jewish education from private tutors and a general education at gymnasium and the law faculty of the University of Saint Petersburg, graduating in 1892. Ginsburg began his journalism career quite young as a correspondent for the moderate maskilic and proto-nationalist Hebrew newspaper Ha-Magid.
title: Ginsburg, Sha'ul
alternative label: Saul Ginsburg
alternative label: Saul M. Ginzburg
alternative label: Sha’ul Ginsburg
alternative label: Sha’ul Ginzburg
alternative label: Sha’ul M. Ginsburg
related: Folk Songs
related: Fraynd, Der
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Magid, Ha-
related: Minsk
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Voskhod
related: Warsaw

Halkin, Shmuel
described at: Halkin Shmuel
has abstract: (1897–1960), Soviet Yiddish poet. Born in Rogachev, eastern Belorussia, Shmuel Halkin was a cousin of the brothers Shim‘on Halkin, a Hebrew poet, and Abraham Halkin, a historian and Arabist. Shmuel Halkin later remembered his own father, an employee in a timber business, as a “man of solid Jewish knowledge, of clear sober mind, and of broad dreamy heart.” The youngest of nine children, Shmuel was educated by his elder brother, an enthusiast of Hebrew and Russian literature.
title: Halkin, Shmuel
alternative label: Shmuel Halkin
related: Belarus
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Eynikayt
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Gurshteyn, Aron
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Hofshteyn, Dovid
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Kiev
related: Litvakov, Moyshe
related: Markish, Perets
related: Mayzel, Nakhmen
related: Moscow
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Shtetl
related: Sutzkever, Avrom

Izraelita
described at: Izraelita
has abstract: Based in Warsaw and published between 1866 and 1915, Izraelita was the longest-lasting Polish Jewish journal. Published in the Polish language by Jewish reformers, the weekly initially described itself as a journal “for the study of Judaism”; later it broadened its self-definition to include “religious and educational” as well as “scientific, social, and literary matters.” Izraelita is recognized as an outstanding source on Jewish thought and modernization during a crucial period of Polish Jewish history. Established at the time of increased hopes for integration, Izraelita’s final years on the Polish cultural scene confronted a rising tide of nationalism and antisemitism, representing a crisis for integrationist Jewish circles.
title: Izraelita
related: Assimilation
related: Haskalah
related: Reform, Religious
related: Sokolow, Naḥum
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Killing Centers
described at: Killing Centers
has abstract: Camps created by the Nazis (at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka, Majdanek, and Chełmno) to murder Jews. As the slaughter of Jews in the Soviet Union got underway in the summer of 1941, primarily by firing squads, Nazi officials began to entertain different methods of murder for Polish Jewry and the remainder of European Jews. Firing squads were too slow, public, and costly, and took an emotional toll on some of the shooters. The initial planning of elements of Aktion Reinhard—a scheme to murder most of Polish Jewry—began during the summer of 1941, and construction of the Bełżec installations began in late October.
title: Killing Centers
alternative label: extermination camps
alternative label: killing center
alternative label: killing centers
related: Łódź
related: Aktion Reinhard
related: Białystok
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Radom
related: Slovakia
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw

Kulbak, Moyshe
described at: Kulbak Moyshe
has abstract: (1896–1937), Yiddish poet, novelist, and dramatist. Born in Smorgon near Vilna, Moyshe Kulbak was educated in a modern heder, in a Jewish Russian elementary school, and later in yeshivas. As a result, he acquired a deeper understanding of traditional Jewish culture than had most of his subsequent contemporaries in Yiddish poetry. During World War I, he lived in Kovno, where he began to write Hebrew poetry. He made his Yiddish debut in 1916 with a poem that was set to music and that became popular.
title: Kulbak, Moyshe
alternative label: Moyshe Kulbak
related: Belarus
related: Birobidzhan
related: Eynhorn, Dovid
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: Kaunas
related: Lithuania
related: Messianism
related: Minsk
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius

Litvak
described at: Litvak
has abstract: (pl., Litvakes), Yiddish term for a Jew of historical, or “greater,” Lithuania. The Litvaks’ territory of origin is significantly larger than the borders of both the independent Lithuanian Republic of the interwar period (1918–1940)—which did not include the center of Litvak culture, Vilna (Vilnius)—and the contemporary state of Lithuania. From a Jewish cultural and historical perspective, Lite (Yiddish for Lithuania; Heb., Lita) includes large swaths of northeastern Poland (notably the Białystok and Suwałki regions), northern and western Belarus (notably the Grodno [Hrodna], Minsk, Slutsk, Pinsk, Brisk [Brest Litovsk], Shklov, Mogilev [Mohilev], Gomel [Homel’], and Vitebsk [Vitsyebsk] regions), southern Latvia (notably the Dvinsk [Daugavpils] region), and northeastern Prussia (notably the region of the Baltic port city Memel [Klaipėda]). This expansive definition of Lithuania in Jewish historiography and culture corresponds roughly to the large territory under the jurisdiction of the Lithuanian Jewish Council (Va‘ad Medinot Lita), which governed Lithuanian Jewish communal affairs from 1623 to 1764.
title: Litvak
alternative label: Litvaks
related: Belarus
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Białystok
related: Brest
related: Councils
related: Daugavpils
related: Dress
related: East Prussia
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Folklore, Ethnography, and Anthropology
related: Food and Drink
related: Galicia
related: Galitsianer
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Ḥayim ben Yitsḥak of Volozhin
related: About this Article (Historiography)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Homel’
related: Hrodna
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kaunas
related: Klaipėda
related: Latvia
related: Lipkin, Yisra’el ben Ze’ev Volf
related: Lithuania
related: Mapu, Avraham
related: Minsk
related: Mir, Yeshiva of
related: Misnagdim
related: Musar Movement
related: About this Article (Music)
related: Piety
related: Pinsk
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Shklov
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Šiauliai
related: Slobodka, Yeshiva of
related: Slutsk
related: Suwałki
related: Telz, Yeshiva of
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Vilnius
related: Vitsyebsk
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Marriage
described at: Marriage
has abstract: The institution of marriage in East European Jewish society remained largely traditional until the early twentieth century but also reflected broader transformations in general society. In the absence of civil marriage in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and later in tsarist Russia, marriage belonged to the competence of the rabbi, who supervised wedding ceremonies and adjudicated divorce according to Jewish law. In contrast, following the Polish Partitions, the Habsburg Empire maintained an ambiguous separation of church and state in matters of family law. While the new marriage edict (16 January 1783) mandated civil unions and a German exam for all married couples, it allowed clergy to regulate divorces based on their own confessional laws. In the case of Jews, the rabbinic court upheld the requirement of a formal get (writ of divorce) even in cases involving male converts to Christianity. Despite the extension of the Toleranzpatent to Galicia in 1789, the majority of Jews evaded civil marriages and maintained traditional religious ceremonies for many decades thereafter.
title: Marriage
alternative label: marriage
related: Assimilation
related: Conversion
related: Galicia
related: Gender
related: Haskalah
related: Hirszowicz, Abraham
related: Kotik, Yekhezkl
related: Love
related: Misnagdim
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sexuality
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Weddings
related: Yikhes

Mayzel, Nakhmen
described at: Mayzel Nakhmen
has abstract: (1887–1966), editor, critic, and cultural activist. Born in a village estate near Kiev, Nakhmen Mayzel received a traditional education in his father’s home from private tutors until he was 17. His first story in Hebrew was published in 1905, and in the following years he contributed literary pieces and criticism to a variety of Hebrew periodicals in Eastern Europe. He considered moving to Palestine and taking up agricultural work.
title: Mayzel, Nakhmen
alternative label: Nakhmen Mayzel
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Bund
related: Haynt
related: Kiev
related: Kletskin, Boris Arkadevich
related: Kultur-lige
related: Literarishe Bleter
related: Markish, Perets
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ravitch, Melech
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Singer, Israel Joshua
related: Ukraine
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

OZE
described at: OZE
has abstract: Organization devoted to the promotion of health, hygiene, and childcare among Jews. Founded on 7 August 1912 in Saint Petersburg as the Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jewish Population, OZE (Obshchestvo okhraneniia zdorov’ia evreiskogo naseleniia; later, Obschestvo zdravookhraneniia evreev; OZE), is now based in Paris and is known as OSE (Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants) World Union. Its first chair was the physician and rear admiral Semyon A. Kaufmann. Among the committee's early members were prominent Saint Petersburg physicians, including Naum R. Botvinnik, Abram M. Bramson, Moisei M. Gran, Grigori I. Dembo, and Iakov B. Eiger. Other members were attorney Grigori A. Goldberg and transportation engineer Stanislav E. Weisblat.
title: OZE
alternative label: OSE
alternative label: Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Bratislava
related: Bund
related: Chernivtsi
related: Crimea
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Galaţi
related: Gdańsk
related: Health and Healing
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kishinev
related: Košice
related: Latvia
related: Lithuania
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Personal Hygiene and Grooming
related: Prague
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Civil War
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Saint Petersburg
related: TOZ
related: Transnistria
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: World War I
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Refuseniks
described at: Refuseniks
has abstract: A term referring to Jews who as of the early 1970s applied to leave the Soviet Union for Israel and were refused permission to emigrate. Often remaining refused for long periods—in some cases, nearly 20 years—the Jewish activists who were denied exit permits inevitably tended to have great impact on the broader Jewish national movement in the USSR. At the same time, some refuseniks had no involvement in the Jewish movement, and refusals were not necessarily linked to specifically Jewish activity.
title: Refuseniks
alternative label: Refusenik
alternative label: refusenik
alternative label: refuseniks
related: Belarus
related: Bessarabia
related: Bucovina
related: Estonia
related: Kiev
related: Latvia
related: Lithuania
related: Odessa
related: Migration since World War I (Population and Migration)
related: Subcarpathian Rus’
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Romanian Literature
described at: Romanian Literature
has abstract: The first Jewish intellectuals, writers, and journalists writing in Romanian, in the second half of the nineteenth century, came predominantly from Bucovina and Galicia. As they settled in Moldavia or Walachia, they brought along a heritage acquired in Hasidic families; and they knew Hebrew and Yiddish. Many of their earliest literary efforts were in those languages, but most integrated quickly, adopting Romanian for their journalistic and literary work even as they treated exclusively Jewish topics. This generation and the one immediately following included the first journalists and editors of Jewish newspapers, among them the scholar and publisher Iuliu (Julius) Yehudah Barasch (1815–1863) as well as the Schwarzfeld brothers. Many had a thorough knowledge of German culture and were among the first to translate German classics, particularly the writings of Heinrich Heine, into Romanian.
title: Romanian Literature
alternative label: Romanian literature
narrower: APPENDIX: JEWISH ROMANIAN WRITERS
narrower: Dilemmas of Double Identity
narrower: Jewish Romanian Writing after World War I
narrower: Modernism
narrower: The Communist Period
narrower: The Image of Jews in Romanian Literature
related: Adam
related: Aderca, Felix
related: Assimilation
related: Barasch, Iuliu
related: Benador, Ury
related: Bercovici, Israil
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Blecher, M.
related: Brauner, Victor
related: Bucharest
related: Bucovina
related: Călugăru, Ion
related: Carp, Horia
related: Celan, Paul
related: Cilibi Moise
related: Communism
related: Crohmălniceanu, Ovid S.
related: Dobrogeanu-Gherea, Constantin
related: Dorian, Emil
related: Fundoianu, Beniamin
related: Galicia
related: Gaster, Moses
related: Groper, Iacob Ashel
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: Iancu, Marcel
related: Iaşi
related: Kishinev
related: Ludo, Isac Iacovitz
related: Manger, Itsik
related: Mântuirea
related: Moldavia
related: Moscow
related: Mugur, Florin
related: Ornea, Zigu
related: Pals, Sesto
related: Peltz, Isac
related: Pogroms
related: Porumbacu, Veronica
related: Renaşterea Noastră
related: Revista Cultului Mozaic din R.P.R.
related: Ronetti-Roman, Moise
related: Săucan, Mircea
related: Schwarzfeld Family
related: Sebastian, Mihail
related: Shtetl
related: Shteynbarg, Eliezer
related: Transnistria
related: Transylvania
related: Voronca, Ilarie
related: Walachia
related: Wald, Henri
related: Werfel, Franz
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zissu, Abraham Leib

Schiper, Ignacy
described at: Schiper Ignacy
has abstract: (1884–1943), historian, political activist, and Sejm deputy. Energetic, creative, and imaginative, Ignacy Schiper (often spelled Schipper) was one of the leading Jewish historians of interwar Poland, a pioneer in Jewish economic history who based his work on extensive research in Polish and German archives. A prolific speaker and author who published primarily in Polish, Yiddish, and German, Schiper advocated a shift from traditional Jewish intellectual history to the secular socioeconomic and cultural history of the working Jewish masses.
title: Schiper, Ignacy
alternative label: Ignacy (Yitsḥak) Schiper
alternative label: Ignacy Schiper
alternative label: Yitsḥak [Ignacy] Schiper
related: Armed Resistance
related: General Zionists
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ringelblum, Emanuel
related: Tarnów
related: Warsaw
related: YIVO

Shalkovich, Avraham Leib
described at: Shalkovich Avraham Leib
has abstract: (1866–1921), Hebrew writer and publisher, known alternately by his pseudonym, Ben-Avigdor. Born in Zaludok, near Vilna, Shalkovich grew up in Zhetl, a village in the province of Grodno. Though he attended Lithuanian yeshivas, he became a maskil and subsequently traveled to Kovno, where he studied for his university entrance exams (though there is no evidence that he ever attended university). He was married to Tsiporah Blumgarten, sister of the Yiddish poet known as “Yehoyesh” (Solomon Bloomgarden).
title: Shalkovich, Avraham Leib
alternative label: Avraham Leib Shalkovich
related: Aḥi’asaf
related: Brainin, Re’uven
related: Goldin, Ezra
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Hrodna
related: Kaunas
related: Kishinev
related: Luaḥ Aḥi’asaf
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Rabinovitz, Aleksander Ziskind
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Silberbusch, David Yesha‘yahu
related: Tushiyah
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Shofman, Gershom
described at: Shofman Gershom
has abstract: (1880–1972), Hebrew writer. Born in Orsha (now in Belarus), Gershom Shofman was educated at heder and in several yeshivas. He also studied the classics of Russian and Hebrew literature and was especially captivated by the works of Mendele Moykher-Sforim. Orphaned during his childhood, Shofman grew up in poverty. The fearful circumstances of his youth left their marks in his stories.
title: Shofman, Gershom
alternative label: Gershom Shofman
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Belarus
related: Heder
related: Homel’
related: L’viv
related: Shalkovich, Avraham Leib
related: Stybel
related: Tushiyah
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Shomer
described at: Shomer
has abstract: (Pseudonym of Nokhem Meyer Shaykevitch; 1849?–1905), Yiddish author and dramatist. Born in Nesvizh, Lithuania, to a wealthy family, Nokhem Meyer Shaykevitch was traditionally educated. However, he also read secular literature, including Kalman Schulman’s Hebrew translation of Eugene Sue’s Mystères de Paris and Hebrew novels by Avraham Mapu. Teaching himself German from Moses Mendelssohn’s famous Bible translation, he also explored German and Russian literature. His pseudonym comes from the last letters of each of his three names.
title: Shomer
related: Bessarabia
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Frishman, David
related: Fuenn, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Lithuania
related: Mapu, Avraham
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Odessa
related: Pinsk
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Schulman, Kalman
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Vevyorke, Avrom
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Zederbaum, Aleksander

Shternberg, Yankev
described at: Shternberg Yankev
has abstract: (1890–1973), Yiddish poet, critic, and theatrical director. Born in Lipkan, Bessarabia, Yankev Shternberg attended heder and completed five classes in the Russian secondary school in Kamenets Podolski. From 1913 on, he lived in Bucharest, moving to Kishinev when Bessarabia became a Soviet territory in 1940. He was in Tashkent during part of World War II and in Moscow beginning in 1943. In 1949, he was sentenced, together with other Yiddish writers of Bessarabia, to 10 years in Stalinist camps “for Trotskyite and Zionist activity.” After his release in 1954, Shternberg lived in Moscow until his death.
title: Shternberg, Yankev
alternative label: Yankev Shternberg
related: Altman, Moyshe
related: Bessarabia
related: Broderzon, Moyshe
related: Bucharest
related: Chernivtsi
related: Dymov, Osip
related: Fichmann, Ya‘akov
related: Folks-shtime
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Heder
related: Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi
related: Kishinev
related: Manger, Itsik
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Moscow
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Yiddish Poetry (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Sovetish Heymland
related: Sutzkever, Avrom
related: Yiddish Theater (Theater)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilner Trupe
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Slutsk
described at: Slutsk
has abstract: Town in Belarus. The first evidence of Jewish life in Slutsk (Pol., Słuck) dates from 1583, when the town formed part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; its Jewish community was granted a formal privilege in 1601. By 1623, Jews owned 16 houses. Though affected by wars in the mid-seventeenth century, both the town and the Jewish community developed rapidly. In the Lithuanian Jewish Council, Slutsk, originally a satellite of Brisk (Brest Litovsk), became one of the five leading communities in 1691.
title: Slutsk
alternative label: Słuck
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Belarus
related: Berkowitz, Yitsḥak Dov
related: Brest
related: Cahan, Ya‘akov
related: Councils
related: Haskalah
related: Ickowicz Brothers
related: Misnagdim
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: Soloveichik Family
related: Soviet Yiddish-Language Schools
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Suceava
described at: Suceava
has abstract: Town in southern Bucovina. Scant documentation from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries indicates that Suceava (known also as Suczawa in Polish or by its Yiddish name, Shots) had a presence of Jewish merchants, doctors, and diplomats from Poland and Turkey. In 1707, Jews were granted permission to live in the town. When Bucovina was annexed to the Habsburg Empire in 1774, the Jewish population of Suceava was 203.
title: Suceava
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Beys Yankev
related: Bucovina
related: Bund
related: Câmpulung Moldovenesc
related: Crafts
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Heder
related: Leaseholding
related: Moldavia
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: Shapira, Me’ir
related: Siret
related: Trade
related: Transnistria
related: Youth Movements
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Telz, Yeshiva of
described at: Telz Yeshiva of
has abstract: The yeshiva of the Lithuanian town of Telsiai—or Telz, as it was known among Jews—had its beginnings as an initiative of some local scholars around 1870, but it became an institution of major significance when Eli‘ezer Gordon was appointed rabbi of Telz in 1883 and took over the direction of the yeshiva. Gordon was a creative organizer who sought ways to adopt modern methods in the service of what he saw as tradition. He was one of the first to call for an Orthodox Jewish press and for modern political organization in traditionalist circles.
title: Telz, Yeshiva of
alternative label: Telz
alternative label: Telz yeshiva
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Lithuania
related: Musar Movement
related: Shkop, Shim‘on Yehudah
related: Talmud Study
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Werfel, Franz
described at: Werfel Franz
has abstract: (1890–1945), writer. Son of a prosperous Jewish glove manufacturer, Franz Werfel was brought up in Prague, where he was friendly with Franz Kafka, Max Brod, Willy Haas, and other members of the Prague Circle. He initially found fame as an expressionist poet, first writing Der Weltfreund (The Friend of the World; 1911).
title: Werfel, Franz
alternative label: Franz Werfel
related: Brod, Max
related: Haas, Willy
related: Kafka, Franz
related: Kisch, Egon Erwin
related: Prague

Yafeh, Mordekhai ben Avraham
described at: Yafeh Mordekhai ben Avraham
has abstract: (1525 or 1530–1612), rabbi, Talmudist, and kabbalist. Born in Prague, Mordekhai ben Avraham Yafeh (or Jaffe; called Ba‘al ha-Levushim [Author of the Levushim], after the name of his works) moved as a boy to Poland, where he studied under Shelomoh Luria and Mosheh Isserles. It was probably under the latter’s influence that he took up the subjects of astronomy and philosophy. Yafeh also studied Kabbalah under Matityahu Delacrut.
title: Yafeh, Mordekhai ben Avraham
alternative label: Mordekhai Yafeh
alternative label: Mordekhai Yaffe
alternative label: Mordekhai ben Avraham Yafeh
related: Ashkenaz
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Gans, David ben Shelomoh
related: Hrodna
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Luria, Shelomoh ben Yeḥi’el
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: Prague
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Slonik, Binyamin Aharon ben Avraham
related: Tykocin
related: Yehoshu‘a Heshel of Kraków
related: Yehoshu‘a ben Aleksander ha-Kohen
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Yom, Ha-
described at: Yom Ha-
has abstract: Russia’s (and the world’s) first Hebrew daily. In 1886, Ha-Yom was founded, published, and edited by the veteran journalist and author Yehudah Leib Kantor, who felt a daily newspaper was necessary and possible in addition to the weeklies Ha-Melits (then published in Saint Petersburg) and Ha-Tsefirah (published in Warsaw). Ha-Yom was published in Saint Petersburg beginning on 31 January (12 February, according to the Gregorian calendar) 1886.
title: Yom, Ha-
alternative label: Ha-Yom
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Frishman, David
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Kantor, Yehudah Leib
related: Katzenelson, Yehudah Leib-Binyamin
related: Melits, Ha-
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Warsaw

Arad
described at: Arad
has abstract: Town in western Romania, in the Arad Plain on the Mureş River. From 1552 to 1687, Arad was claimed by the Turkish pashalik of Timişoara, and between 1687 and 1918 it was part of the Kingdom of Hungary in the Habsburg Empire and then of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The first documented indication of a Jewish presence in Arad dates from 1717 when the commander of the town’s citadel, Baron Ştefan Cosa, agreed to allow two Jewish families to settle there. In 1743, there were 6 Jewish families; in 1754 there were 24; in 1767, 17 families with 71 people; and in 1784–1785, 30 families with 152 people.
title: Arad
related: Banking
related: Chorin, Aharon
related: Crafts
related: Economic Life
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Industry
related: Jewish Congress
related: Kaufmann, Izidor
related: Leaseholding
related: Reform, Religious
related: Romania
related: Timişoara
related: Trade
related: Transylvania

Ba‘ale Shem
described at: Baale Shem
has abstract: Literally, “masters of [God’s] name” (sg., ba‘al shem); alternatively, ba‘ale shem tov, or “masters of good name.” The terms, which are often interchangeable, signify the ability to manipulate “holy” names, including both the name of God and those of angels, along with the names of Satan and evil spirits, in order to obtain practical results. Anthropologically similar to shamans, ba‘ale shem mediated between empirical reality and divine realms, between this world and the netherworld, and between spirits and living beings, employing both Lurianic and popular Kabbalah, magical remedies and mystical devices, local herbal folk remedies, amulets (Heb., kemi‘im; sg., kame‘a), and contemporary medical recipes to restore social order or provide personal security.
title: Ba‘ale Shem
alternative label: ba`ale shem
alternative label: ba‘al shem
alternative label: ba‘ale shem
related: Amulets and Talismans
related: Angels
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Dybbuk, The
related: Eybeschütz, Yonatan
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sabbatianism

Babi Yar
described at: Babi Yar
has abstract: Site of the murder of Kiev Jews by the Nazis in 1941. On 19 September 1941, the Germans occupied Kiev, after approximately 70 percent of a total Jewish population of 225,000 (as of 1939) had managed to flee. On 29–30 September, the eve of Yom Kippur, 33,771 of those who remained—mostly women, children, and the elderly—were murdered in Babi Yar, a ravine on the outskirts of the city. All in all, during the Nazi occupation of Kiev, an additional 70,000–80,000 people of various ethnic groups, mostly but not solely Jews, were killed there as well, but the locale became especially known for the first and largest aktion.
title: Babi Yar
related: Black Book
related: Ehrenburg, Ilya Grigor’evich
related: Kiev
related: Markish, Perets
related: Moscow
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Badkhonim
described at: Badkhonim
has abstract: Like many traditional societies, Jewish communities had their singers, popular writers, and entertainers. Such figures, known as badkhonim (sg., badkhn), appeared at domestic celebrations, primarily weddings or holidays such as Hanukkah and Purim.
title: Badkhonim
alternative label: badkhn
alternative label: badkhonim
alternative label: jesters
related: Barukh ben Yeḥi’el of Mezhbizh
related: About this Article (Dance)
related: Entertainers
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Ostropolyer, Hershele
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Purim
related: Sabbath
related: Tkhines
related: Tsunzer, Elyokem
related: Weddings
related: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Yisra’el of Ruzhin

Bal-Makhshoves
described at: Bal-Makhshoves
has abstract: (1873–1924), literary critic. Bal-Makhshoves (“Man of Thoughts”; pseudonym of Isidor [Yisroel] Eliashev) was born in Kovno, Lithuania, to a wealthy family. His father, Shloyme Zalkind Eliashev, had been a maskil in his youth, but after marriage reverted to religion, becoming an adherent of the Musar Movement. The dim, penitential sermons Bal-Makhshoves attended with his father as a child filled him with “gloom and terror,” stamping his personality with the pervasive melancholy that characterized him as an adult. This piety, however, was offset in the household by an open attitude to the learning of French, German, and Russian. At age 10, Bal-Makhshoves was sent to the Musar yeshiva in Grobin, from which he was expelled for heretical tendencies some two years later. A year or so afterward, his parents made the surprising decision to send him to high school in Switzerland.
title: Bal-Makhshoves
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Assimilation
related: Kaunas
related: Lithuania
related: Musar Movement
related: Piety
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Yud, Der

Braudes, Re’uven Asher
described at: Braudes Reuven Asher
has abstract: (1850–1902), Hebrew author. Active in various East European cities, including Vilna (his place of birth), Lvov, Kraków, Bucharest, and Odessa, and ultimately (after 1896) in Vienna, Re’uven Braudes edited Hebrew and Yiddish periodicals and wrote essays and articles, but is best known as the author of short stories and novels that earned him a reputation as one of the outstanding maskilic Hebrew writers of nineteenth-century Eastern Europe. He also published three stories in Yiddish, although his work in that language must be considered marginal to his overall literary output.
title: Braudes, Re’uven Asher
alternative label: Re’uven Asher Braudes
alternative label: Re’uven Braudes
related: Assimilation
related: Bucharest
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: L’viv
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Odessa
related: Pogroms
related: Reform, Religious
related: Shtetl
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Vilnius
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Chorin, Aharon
described at: Chorin Aharon
has abstract: (1766–1844), pioneer Reform rabbi. Aharon Chorin’s parents, Kalman Chorin and Schöndel, the daughter of Yesha‘yahu Donath of Boskowitz (Cz., Boskovice), engaged in modest petty trade, and moved to Deutschkreutz (Hun., Németkeresztur; Zehlemone) of Hungary’s “seven communities” in Burgenland in 1780. He attended the yeshiva at nearby Mattersdorf but spent his formative years in Prague during 1782 and 1783 studying at the yeshiva of Yeḥezkel Landau. Besides acquiring a first-class education in rabbinical literature, he became acquainted with other intellectual currents, such as the Enlightenment and mysticism.
title: Chorin, Aharon
alternative label: Aharon Chorin
related: Approbation
related: Arad
related: Banet, Mordekhai ben Avraham
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Boskovice
related: Bratislava
related: Budapest
related: Burgenland
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kerem Ḥemed
related: Kunitz, Mosheh
related: Landau, Yeḥezkel ben Yehudah
related: Löw, Leopold
related: Münz, Mosheh
related: Orthodoxy
related: Prague
related: Reform, Religious
related: Sabbath
related: Sabbatianism
related: Sátoraljaújhely
related: Schwab, Löw
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: Timişoara
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

David ben Shemu’el ha-Levi
described at: David ben Shemuel ha-Levi
has abstract: (Taz; 1586–1667), rabbi, author, and head of yeshiva. The life of David ben Shemu’el ha-Levi, better known as Taz (after the initial letters of his Ture zahav [Rows of Gold], commentary upon the Shulḥan ‘arukh), spanned the peaceful zenith as well as the violent decline of seventeenth-century Polish Jewry. He was witness to both the bloody uprising of Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi and the messianic aspirations of Shabetai Tsevi. In Taz’s lifetime the Shulḥan ‘arukh achieved recognition as the authoritative code of Jewish law. His renowned and oft-reprinted commentary on that work remains his principal scholarly achievement.
title: David ben Shemu’el ha-Levi
alternative label: David
alternative label: David ha-Levi
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brest
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: L’viv
related: Ostrog
related: Passover
related: Poznań
related: Sabbath
related: Sabbatianism
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Sirkes, Yo’el
related: Ternopil’
related: Ukraine
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Folklore, Ethnography, and Anthropology
described at: Folklore Ethnography and Anthropology
has abstract: Jewish folklore and ethnography emerged as a field of study during the nineteenth century. As early as 1823, Leopold Zunz, a founder of the Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Judentums, outlined what a future “statistics” of the Jews should include: religion, education, occupations, language, government, pastimes, old buildings, tombstones, and “die Tradition,” which included legend, fable, and anecdote. By 1918, in a posthumously published essay, British folklorist Joseph Jacobs explicitly identified Zunz’s statistical outline as the ideal protocol for a Jewish Volkskunde (folkloristics).
title: Folklore, Ethnography, and Anthropology
alternative label: folklore
alternative label: folklore, ethnography
alternative label: folklorist
related: Łódź
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Aksenfeld, Yisroel
related: Assimilation
related: Autobiography and Memoir
related: Bastomski, Shloyme
related: Belarus
related: Beregovskii, Moisei Iakovlevich
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Budapest
related: Cahan, Yehudah Leib
related: Cantors
related: Childhood
related: About this Article (Dance)
related: Dress
related: Druyanow, Alter
related: Folk Songs
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Ginsburg, Sha'ul
related: Globus
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture
related: Jewish Historical and Archaeographic Commission
related: Kaczerginski, Shmerke
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: Kotik, Yekhezkl
related: Lehman, Shmuel
related: Lilientalowa, Regina
related: Linetski, Yitskhok Yoyel
related: Lithuania
related: Maimon, Salomon
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Pipe, Shmuel Zaynvl
related: Proverbs
related: Pryłucki, Noah
related: Purim
related: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl
related: Ravnitski, Yehoshu‘a Ḥana
related: Religious Year
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Satire
related: Schiper, Ignacy
related: Shatzky, Yankev
related: Shklov
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtetl
related: Society for Jewish Folk Music
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Yiddish Theater (Theater)
related: Tombstones
related: Uman
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Weddings
related: Weinreich, Max
related: Wengeroff, Pauline
related: YIVO
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Folks-tsaytung
described at: Folks-tsaytung
has abstract: Yiddish Social Democratic newspaper published from 25 November 1921 to 26 September 1939 and from February 1946 to January 1949 in Warsaw. Folks-tsaytung (People’s Newspaper) was the central organ of the General Jewish Workers Union in Poland (the Bund) and the successor to the Bundist daily organ Lebens-fragen (Vital Questions). In 1923, it changed its name three times: to Di naye tsayt (The New Times), Unzer tsayt (Our Times), and finally Unzer folks-tsaytung (Our People’s Newspaper). As of 17 January 1926, it was called Folks-tsaytung (People’s Newspaper), and one day later it adopted the name Naye folks-tsaytung (New People’s Newspaper). It was permanently in opposition to the authorities, was confiscated dozens of times, and was suspended on 5–11 October 1932. It began as a weekly, and from 1922 to 1939 was published daily. During its postwar revival it appeared only once every three to four weeks. It had four through eight pages and an approximate circulation of 10,000 in 1929; 18,000 in 1935; 14,000 in 1938; and 4,000 in its last year. It was the last Jewish newspaper in Warsaw at the beginning of the Nazi occupation.
title: Folks-tsaytung
alternative label: Di folks-tsaytung
related: Bund
related: Eynhorn, Dovid
related: Jaszuński, Józef
related: Manger, Itsik
related: Perle, Yoshue
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ravitch, Melech
related: Shtern, Yisroel
related: Singer, Isaac Bashevis
related: Trunk, Yekhiel Yeshaye
related: Tunkel, Yoysef
related: Warsaw

Hannover, Natan Note
described at: Hannover Natan Note
has abstract: (d. 1683), chronicler of the Khmel’nyts’kyi uprising (gzeyres takh vetat). Presumably born in Ostróg in Volhynia, Natan Note (often Neta‘ or Nata) Hannover studied at the local yeshiva and then seems to have traveled across Europe as an itinerant preacher before marrying and settling in Zasław, Ukraine. He published a sermon from this period—presented in Kraków in 1646—in Sefer ta‘ame sukah (1652).
title: Hannover, Natan Note
alternative label: Natan Hannover
alternative label: Natan Note Hannover
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: Iaşi
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Ostrog
related: Purim
related: Shatzky, Yankev
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Uherský Brod
related: Ukraine
related: Walachia
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Homberg, Herz
described at: Homberg Herz
has abstract: (1749–1841), Bohemian maskil and author. Herz Homberg is known mainly for having been the government-appointed supervisor of the German Jewish school system in Galicia between 1787 and 1806. He fully endorsed the policy of enforced enlightenment of Jews and was one of the first to establish a pattern of maskilic cooperation with absolutist governments in Eastern Europe and denunciation of conservative Jewish opponents.
title: Homberg, Herz
alternative label: Herz Homberg
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bratislava
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kerem Ḥemed
related: L’viv
related: Normalschulen
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
related: Tsene-rene
related: Tugendhold, Jakob

Kaminski Family
described at: Kaminski Family
has abstract: Yiddish actors and theater directors. Ester-Rokhl Kaminska (1870–1926) and Avrom-Yitskhok Kaminski (1867–1918) were husband and wife; the most famous of their three children was their daughter Ida (1899–1980).
title: Kaminski Family
alternative label: Ester-Rokhl Kaminska
alternative label: Ida Kaminska
alternative label: Ida Kamińska
alternative label: Kaminsk
alternative label: Kaminska
alternative label: Kaminski
related: Łódź
related: Arnshteyn, Mark
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Hrodna
related: L’viv
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Pinski, Dovid
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtetl
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Turkow Family
related: Warsaw
related: Warsaw Yiddish Art Theater
related: Wrocław

Kook, Avraham Yitsḥak
described at: Kook Avraham Yitshak
has abstract: (1865–1935), rabbinic leader, halakhist, theologian, and mystic. Best known as the first Ashkenazic chief rabbi of modern Palestine and the major theologian of religious Zionism, Kook lived in Latvia and Lithuania before moving to the Land of Israel in 1904 at the age of 38.
title: Kook, Avraham Yitsḥak
alternative label: Avraham Kook
alternative label: Avraham Yitsḥak Kook
alternative label: Avraham Yitsḥak ha-Kohen Kook
related: Berlin, Naftali Tsevi Yehudah
related: Daugavpils
related: Eliasberg, Mordekhai
related: Haskalah
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Land of Israel
related: Latvia
related: Lithuania
related: Musar Movement
related: Orthodoxy
related: Panevėžys
related: Rabinowitz-Te’omim, Eliyahu David ben Binyamin
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Linetski, Yitskhok Yoyel
described at: Linetski Yitskhok Yoyel
has abstract: (1839–1915), Yiddish author. Born in Vinnitsa, Podolia (mod. Vinnytsya, Ukr.) to a father who was a rabbi and a devout Hasid, Yitskhok Linetski was a child prodigy. As he entered adolescence, he grew interested in the Haskalah, spending time in enlightened circles and reading secular books. Attempting to prevent what he saw as moral corruption, Linetski’s father married him at age 14 to a girl of 12; when Linetski convinced his wife to explore the Enlightenment, his father forced him to divorce her and, at 16, to marry a deaf, mentally handicapped girl, reinforcing Linetski’s hostility to traditionalist and particularly to Hasidic ways of life.
title: Linetski, Yitskhok Yoyel
alternative label: Yitskhok Yoyel Linetski
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Botoşani
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Kiev
related: Kol Mevaser
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Odessa
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Seminary
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Yiddish Theater (Theater)
related: Wrocław
related: Zederbaum, Aleksander
related: Zhytomyr
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Oradea
described at: Oradea
has abstract: City in western Romania, known in Hungarian as Nagyvárad or Várad and in German as Grosswardein. Oradea was part of Hungary until World War I and again between 1940 and 1944; it was the seat of the historical Bihar (Bihor) county. Jews were not allowed to settle within Nagyvárad’s city limits during the eighteenth century but were encouraged to settle in the adjoining district of Váralja, an independent community until 1848–1849, where they enjoyed the right to trade and acquire plots for houses. From the 1720s on, Jews were exempt from paying property taxes.
title: Oradea
alternative label: Nagyvárad
related: Assimilation
related: Budapest
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Mizraḥi
related: Orthodoxy
related: Romania
related: Trade
related: Ullmann Family
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Yiddish Poetry (Poetry)
described at: Yiddish Poetry
has abstract: The dynamic development of Yiddish poetry in Eastern Europe charts a complex interplay between ideological approaches, cultural factors, and literary models profoundly influenced by historic events. For instance, each generation of Yiddish poets had at its disposal the diverse forms of the Yiddish folk song with its broad range of themes and genres: love songs with their ostensibly naive language; lullabies sung largely in a mother’s voice; children’s songs; songs about soldiers and conscripts; songs about the underworld; ballads; and songs with religious, mystical content. However, Yiddish poets differ in the extent to which they used this creative source; this is one of the keys to understanding the changes in literary sensibilities and cultural attitudes.
title: Yiddish Poetry (Poetry)
alternative label: Yiddish poet
alternative label: Yiddish poetry
alternative label: poet
related: Łódź
related: Akselrod, Zelik
related: Badkhonim
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Broderzon, Moyshe
related: Bucharest
related: Chernivtsi
related: About this Article (Children’s Literature)
related: Der Nister
related: Ehrenkranz, Benjamin Wolf
related: Ettinger, Shloyme
related: Eynhorn, Dovid
related: Fefer, Itsik
related: Fininberg, Ezra
related: Folk Songs
related: Frishman, David
related: Frug, Shimen Shmuel
related: Galicia
related: Gebirtig, Mordkhe
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Ginsburg, Sha'ul
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Gordon, Mikhl
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Grade, Chaim
related: Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
related: Halkin, Shmuel
related: Haskalah
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Hofshteyn, Dovid
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: Imber, Shmuel Yankev
related: Katzenelson, Yitsḥak
related: Khalyastre
related: Kharik, Izi
related: Kiev
related: Korn, Rokhl
related: Kulbak, Moyshe
related: Kushnirov, Arn
related: Kvitko, Leyb
related: Lerer, Yekhiel
related: Yiddish Literary Journals (Literary Journals)
related: Love
related: Manger, Itsik
related: Markish, Perets
related: Minsk
related: Molodowsky, Kadia
related: Moscow
related: Naydus, Leyb
related: Operetta
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Ravitch, Melech
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: Romania
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Satire
related: Semyatitski, Khayim
related: Shtern, Yisroel
related: Shternberg, Yankev
related: Shtetl
related: Shteynbarg, Eliezer
related: Sovetish Heymland
related: Sutzkever, Avrom
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Tsunzer, Elyokem
related: Ulinover, Miryem
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Varshavski, Mark
related: Vogel, Dvora
related: Volf, Leyzer

Polish Literature
described at: Polish Literature
has abstract: This overview examines Jewish literary creativity in Polish, its historical and artistic roots, and its place in Polish literature. It focuses on those authors who defined themselves as Jewish by exploring Jewish themes: painting their own self-portraits as Jews, depicting Jewish social life and spiritual experience, and enriching Polish literature with forms, contents, and symbolism rooted in the Jewish tradition.
title: Polish Literature
alternative label: Polish
alternative label: Polish literature
narrower: Between the Two World Wars
narrower: POLISH WRITERS
narrower: The Long Shadow of the Holocaust
narrower: The Maskilim in Search of Integration
narrower: The Slow Beginnings
related: Appenszlak, Jakub
related: Assimilation
related: Autobiography and Memoir
related: Belmont, Leo
related: Brandstaetter, Roman
related: Brandys, Kazimierz
related: Brzechwa, Jan
related: About this Article (Children’s Literature)
related: Chwila
related: Cinema
related: Communism
related: Conversion
related: Czyński, Jan
related: Feldman, Wilhelm
related: Frankism
related: Galicia
related: Grydzewski, Mieczysław
related: Haskalah
related: Hemar, Marian
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Izraelita
related: Jastrun, Mieczysław
related: Jutrzenka
related: Kanfer, Mojżesz
related: Klaczko, Julian
related: Korczak, Janusz
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Kraushar, Aleksander
related: Lange, Antoni
related: Lec, Stanisław
related: Leśmian, Bolesław
related: L’viv
related: Nasz Przegląd
related: Nossig, Alfred
related: Nussbaum, Hilary
related: Opinia
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rudnicki, Adolf
related: Słonimski, Antoni
related: Słucki, Arnold
related: Sandauer, Artur
related: Schulz, Bruno
related: Seminary
related: Shmeruk, Khone
related: Stryjkowski, Julian
related: Szymel, Maurycy
related: Tuwim, Julian
related: Vogel, Dvora
related: Warsaw
related: Wat, Aleksander
related: Ważyk, Adam
related: Wiadomości Literackie
related: Wittlin, Józef
related: Wojdowski, Bohdan
related: Wygodzki, Stanisław
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Rzeszów
described at: Rzeszow
has abstract: (Yid., Rayshe, Reyshe), city in southeastern Poland. Founded in 1354, Rzeszów was a privately owned town until 1845. The first mention of Jews residing there dates from 1550. Rzeszów’s owners supported Jewish settlement, and by 1592, six Jews owned houses. Local Jews made their livings as traders and artisans. In 1648 the town’s Jewish population had risen to approximately 680, augmented by Jews fleeing westward from the Cossack uprising led by Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, 412 of the 473 merchants in Rzeszów were Jewish. By 1765, the number of Jews in the town had risen to about 1,200.
title: Rzeszów
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Przemyśl
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Słonimski, Ḥayim Zelig
described at: Słonimski Hayim Zelig
has abstract: (1810–1904), author of scientific texts in Hebrew; inventor; principal of the Zhitomir Rabbinical Seminary; and founder and editor of the journal Ha-Tsefirah (The Dawn). As was the case with many nineteenth-century maskilim, Ḥayim Zelig Słonimski had to rely on inner strength, curiosity, and self-motivation to make the transition from a cultural environment steeped in tradition to one based on a more modern Jewish ethos. The education he received in Białystok, where he was born, qualified him for a career in the rabbinate, but out of a desire to expand his intellectual horizons, Słonimski taught himself European languages and read their literature.
title: Słonimski, Ḥayim Zelig
alternative label: Ḥayim Zelig Słonimski
related: Białystok
related: Censorship in the Russian Empire (Censorship)
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Seminary
related: Sokolow, Naḥum
related: Stern, Abraham
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Warsaw
related: Zhytomyr
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Selbstwehr
described at: Selbstwehr
has abstract: Zionist weekly published in Prague from 1 March 1907 to 8 October 1938. Selbstwehr’s title, which literally means “self-defense,” was interpreted in the newspaper’s programmatic statement also to mean “self-help.” Communal administration was to be made democratic, and Jews were to be encouraged to stop hiding their Jewishness. In addition, Selbstwehr campaigned to have Jews recognized as one of the nationalities of the multinational Austro-Hungarian Empire. Zionist work was reported in great detail, as was news of the Jewish world and of local Jewish cultural activities. In its first years, Selbstwehr gave special emphasis to sports, which were to help in creating a new type of Jew.
title: Selbstwehr
related: Brod, Max
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Sport)
related: Weltsch, Felix
related: Židovská Strana
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Servants
described at: Servants
has abstract: Jewish employment of Christians as servants was widespread in Eastern Europe by the Middle Ages. From the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, most Jewish-owned businesses and leaseholds hired such servants, as did families and organizations at all levels of Jewish society. Indeed it was the rare Jewish family, including those in the lower social strata, that did not employ them.
title: Servants
alternative label: servant
alternative label: servants
related: Councils
related: Leaseholding
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Purim-shpil
related: Sabbath

TOZ
described at: TOZ
has abstract: The Towarzystwo Ochrony Zdrowia Ludności Żydowskiej (Society for Safeguarding the Health of the Jewish Population; TOZ) was established in Warsaw in 1921, when the Polish branch of the Saint Petersburg–based Obshchestvo Zdravookhraneniia Evreev (Society for the Protection of Jewish Health; OZE [later, Oeuvre de Secour aux Enfants; OSE]) united in a national organization. The objective of TOZ, which was funded by memberships, donations, and foreign Jewish philanthropies, was to look after the welfare and well-being of Jewish citizens in independent Poland, promoting their health and the health of their children.
title: TOZ
alternative label: Towarzystwo Ochrony Zdrowia Ludności Źidowskiej
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: OZE
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Warsaw
related: World War I

Timişoara
described at: Timisoara
has abstract: (Hun., Temesvár), city in the Bánát (Banat) region of present-day Transylvania, Romania, bordering the Balkan states. Temesvár was a significant settlement in the medieval Hungarian Kingdom; between 1552 and 1716, it served as a Turkish administrative center. The town was under Austrian rule until 1779 and subsequently was again part of the Kingdom of Hungary until 1918. It grew from three settlements (Inner City, Industrial City, and Joseph City); these historical developments had parallels in the local Jewish communities that had previously been independent.
title: Timişoara
alternative label: Temesvár
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Ashkenaz
related: Banat
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: Sephardim
related: Transylvania
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Yisra’el ben Shabetai of Kozhenits
described at: Yisrael ben Shabetai of Kozhenits
has abstract: (ca. 1737–1814), rabbinic scholar and Hasidic leader. Known as the Magid of Kozhenits (Pol., Kozienice), Yisra’el ben Shabetai was one of the founders of Hasidism in central Poland. Born in Opatów, the son of a poor bookbinder, he studied with Dov Ber, the Magid of Mezritsh, and later with Elimelekh of Lizhensk.
title: Yisra’el ben Shabetai of Kozhenits
alternative label: Magid of Kozhenits
alternative label: Yisra’el Hapstein
alternative label: Yisra’el ben Shabetai Hofstein
alternative label: Yisra’el of Kozhenits
alternative label: Yisra’el the Magid of Kozhenits
related: Amulets and Talismans
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: Elimelekh of Lizhensk
related: Galicia
related: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Karlin-Stolin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Levi Yitsḥak of Barditshev
related: Mizraḥi
related: Opatów
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
related: Shapiro, Malkah
related: Warsaw
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Zhidachov-Komarno Hasidic Dynasty
described at: Zhidachov-Komarno Hasidic Dynasty
has abstract: Galician Hasidic dynasty that flourished in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, during the third and fourth generations of Hasidism. Its tsadikim (lit., “righteous ones”), renowned for their esoteric learning and even purportedly for performing miracles, attracted many disciples. The dynasty continues to exist, primarily in the United States, although many of its members and leaders were murdered during the Holocaust.
title: Zhidachov-Komarno Hasidic Dynasty
alternative label: Komarno
alternative label: Tsevi Hirsh of Zhidachov
alternative label: Zhidachev
alternative label: Zhidachov
alternative label: Zhidachov Hasidim
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Mukacheve
related: Mysticism and Mystical Literature
related: Perl, Yosef
related: Sabbatianism
related: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz

Židovská Strana
described at: Zidovska Strana
has abstract: (Jewish Party), political party that represented the Jewish national minority in Czechoslovakia during the interwar period. The party was founded in January 1919 at the first gathering in Prague of Jewish nationalists in that country and was supported by Zionists from different branches (with the exception of Po‘ale Tsiyon), as well as by non-Zionist Jewish nationalists. Židovská Strana was opposed by members of the Czech Jewish movement in Bohemia and by the majority of Orthodox Jews in Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus’, who criticized the party’s Zionist orientation.
title: Židovská Strana
alternative label: Jewish Party
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bratislava
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Goldstein, Angelo
related: Kugel, Ḥayim
related: Margulies, Emil
related: Orthodoxy
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Prague
related: Silesia
related: Singer, Ludvík
related: Slovakia
related: Subcarpathian Rus’
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Amulets and Talismans
described at: Amulets and Talismans
has abstract: Items generally worn around the neck or on the wrist, meant to protect or aid those who carried or wore them. The Hebrew word for amulet, kame‘a, is evidently connected to the notion of tying or binding. Jewish amulets are usually comprised of texts (either letters or graphic symbols) that are inscribed on some sort of material; some may also contain plant matter or precious stones. For the most part, an amulet has a specific purpose: to ease childbirth, facilitate recovery from illness, improve one’s livelihood, and so on.
title: Amulets and Talismans
alternative label: amulets
alternative label: talismanic
related: Angels
related: Ba‘ale Shem
related: Eybeschütz, Yonatan
related: Magic
related: Poznań
related: Sabbath

Bałaban, Majer
described at: Bałaban Majer
has abstract: (1877–1942), historian and educator. Majer Bałaban was a founder and architect of modern Polish Jewish historiography and the first to synthesize both Polish archival sources and Jewish communal records and rabbinic responsa.
title: Bałaban, Majer
alternative label: Bałaban
alternative label: Majer Bałaban
related: Braude, Markus
related: Cahan, Ya‘akov
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Historiography)
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Schiper, Ignacy
related: Schorr, Mojżesz
related: Warsaw

Bar Kochba Association
described at: Bar Kochba Association
has abstract: A student organization that played a decisive role in shaping the Zionist movement in the Czech lands before World War I. The history of the group can be traced to 1893, when the Maccabi Association was founded at the German university in Prague.
title: Bar Kochba Association
alternative label: Bar Kochba
alternative label: Bar Kochba association
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Bergmann, Hugo
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brod, Max
related: Goldstein, Angelo
related: Herrmann, Hugo
related: Herrmann, Leo
related: Hilsner Affair
related: Kohn, Hans
related: Maccabi Movement
related: Margulies, Emil
related: Prague
related: Selbstwehr
related: Singer, Ludvík
related: Thieberger, Friedrich
related: Weltsch, Felix
related: Weltsch, Robert
related: World War I
related: Židovská Strana
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

About this Article (Children’s Literature)
described at: Childrens Literature
has abstract: This entry includes three articles on children’s literature in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Polish, respectively.
title: About this Article (Children’s Literature)
alternative label: Children’s Literature
alternative label: children’s literature
alternative label: literature

About this Article (Dance)
described at: Dance
has abstract: This entry comprises three articles on East European Jewish dance traditions. An Overview surveys historical attitudes toward dance, the social and religious contexts in which dancing took place, and notes some of the basic dance forms. Traditional Dance explores folk dance genres. Theatrical Dance focuses on the choreographic styles and forms of the Yiddish theater. For additional discussion, see Hasidism: Dance.
title: About this Article (Dance)
alternative label: dance
related: Dance (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Theater)

Dubno
described at: Dubno
has abstract: A town on the Ikva River (Pripiat’ basin), Dubno is the district center of Ukraine’s Rivne oblast. From the 1320s, it belonged to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and from 1569 to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. From 1795 it was in the Russian Empire and from 1796 served as a district center of Volhynia province. Thereafter, from 1921 to 1939 the town was within the borders of independent Poland.
title: Dubno
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Economic Life
related: Gottlober, Avraham Ber
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: Haskalah
related: Horowitz Family
related: Kranz, Ya‘akov ben Volf
related: Lithuania
related: Misnagdim
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rivne
related: Tarbut
related: Trade
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Youth Movements
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Hungarian Literature
described at: Hungarian Literature
has abstract: Magyar was not the first modern literary language of Hungarian Jews; few were conversant in that language before the mid-nineteenth century. Jews in Hungary had undergone an earlier stage of linguistic assimilation toward the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, shifting from Yiddish to German, the medium of instruction of the schools initiated by Joseph II (1780–1790), as well as the language of the kingdom’s more important trading centers populated largely by German burghers.
title: Hungarian Literature
alternative label: Hungarian literature
narrower: APPENDIX: HUNGARIAN WRITERS
narrower: A Defining Cultural Role: The Second and Third Generations
narrower: Flowering: The First Generation
related: Acsády, Ignác
related: Ágai, Adolf
related: Agnon, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Assimilation
related: Balázs, Béla
related: Ballagi, Mór
related: Beck, Karl Isidor
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Bíró, Lajos
related: Bródy, Sándor
related: Budapest
related: Conversion
related: Einhorn, Ignác
related: Fortunatus, Imre
related: Goldziher, Ignác
related: Hatvany, Lajos
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Ignotus, Hugó
related: Jászi, Oszkár
related: Kiss, József
related: Klausner, Yosef
related: Kóbor, Tamás
related: Kohn, Sámuel
related: Komlós, Aladár
related: Löw, Leopold
related: Magyar Zsidó Szemle
related: Makai, Emil
related: Molnár, Ferenc
related: Múlt és Jövő
related: Neustadt, Adolf
related: Oradea
related: Pap, Károly
related: Pápa
related: Patai, József
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Radnóti, Miklós
related: Saphir, Moritz Gottlieb
related: Scheiber, Sándor
related: Seminary
related: Szép, Ernő
related: Szerb, Antal
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Újvári, Péter
related: Vas, István
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Karlin-Stolin Hasidic Dynasty
described at: Karlin-Stolin Hasidic Dynasty
has abstract: The first Hasidic sect established in Lithuania, and one of the major protagonists in the historic feud between the Hasidim and their rabbinic opponents, the Misnagdim. The founder of the Karlin-Stolin dynasty was Aharon ben Ya‘akov (1736–1772), known by generations of his followers as Aharon ha-Gadol (Aaron the Great). A disciple of Dov Ber, the Magid of Mezritsh, he founded a Hasidic prayer house in Karlin, a suburb of Pinsk, in 1762, whose devotees disseminated his teachings throughout Belorussia and Lithuania, including in the cities of Minsk and Vilna. The rapid dissemination of Hasidism by the disciples of Aharon of Karlin is what initially aroused the ire of the establishment rabbis (eventually known as the Misnagdim) who, in the early 1770s, began a vociferous campaign against the “Karliners,” as Hasidim were often referred to in the early Misnagdic polemical literature.
title: Karlin-Stolin Hasidic Dynasty
alternative label: Karlin
alternative label: Karlin Hasid
alternative label: Karlin Hasidim
alternative label: Karlin Hasidism
alternative label: Karlin-Stolin
alternative label: Karlin-Stolin dynasty
alternative label: Karliner Hasidic dynasty
alternative label: Karliner Hasidim
related: Belarus
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Land of Israel
related: Lithuania
related: Luts’k
related: Maimon, Salomon
related: Minsk
related: Misnagdim
related: Pinsk
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sabbath
related: Shneur Zalman of Liady
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Volodymyr Volyns’kyi
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Kol Mevaser
described at: Kol Mevaser
has abstract: Yiddish literary and general-interest weekly published in Odessa from 23 October 1862 until 28 November 1872. Kol mevaser (The Herald) started out as a Yiddish supplement to the Hebrew-language newspaper Ha-Melits (The Advocate). From 20 May 1869 it was an independent “popular Jewish newspaper in the spoken tongue.” Its publishers were Aleksander Zederbaum, who also served as editor until the paper’s last years, and Aron-Yitskhok Goldenblum. The paper had more than 250 subscribers.
title: Kol Mevaser
alternative label: Kol mevaser
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Linetski, Yitskhok Yoyel
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zederbaum, Aleksander

Litvakov, Moyshe
described at: Litvakov Moyshe
has abstract: (1875/80–1939), Yiddish literary theoretician and critic. Moyshe Litvakov was born in the Ukrainian town of Cherkassy into the family of a melamed. He received a traditional Jewish education until the age of 17, gained an external gymnasium certificate, and attended the Sorbonne between 1902 and 1905. Litvakov returned to Russia after rejecting Ahad Ha-Am’s form of Zionism for Labor Zionism and becoming a founder of the territorialist Zionist Socialist Workers Party (SSWP). In 1907 he edited its organs Der nayer veg (The New Way), Dos vort (The Word), and Undzer veg (Our Way) in Vilna.
title: Litvakov, Moyshe
alternative label: Moyshe Litvakov
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Belarus
related: Ben-Adir
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Bronshteyn, Yashe
related: Communism
related: Der Nister
related: Emes, Der
related: Fareynikte
related: Gildin, Khayim
related: Godiner, Shmuel-Nisn
related: Hofshteyn, Dovid
related: Kiev
related: Kultur-lige
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Ukraine
related: Vilnius
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Love
described at: Love
has abstract: The concept of romantic love was seen as foreign in East European Jewish culture, a society that relied on arranged marriages and carefully separated the sexes in its religious and educational institutions. The critique of this attitude toward romantic love was fundamental to the project of modernizing traditional Jewish life. In Mendele Moykher-Sforim’s introduction to his fictionalized autobiography, Of Bygone Days, the writer lamented that his childhood and youth had failed to provide him with the ingredients of good literature:
title: Love
alternative label: love
alternative label: romance
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Agnon, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Baron, Devorah
related: Childhood
related: Dybbuk, The
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Psychoanalysis
related: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl
related: Rebetsin
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Magic
described at: Magic
has abstract: Magic is often defined as the exercise of control over nature with the assistance of unseen powerful forces. Belief in magic was an integral part of daily life in Eastern Europe, among Jews and non-Jews alike. Magic was expressed in Jewish life in a variety of ways: there were experts in the use of magic, known as ba‘ale shem (masters of the [Holy] Name); objects infused with magical powers (amulets); magical entities (demons); and literature devoted to magic, such as folk-remedy and charm literature. There was almost no facet of Jewish life that did not include some aspect of magic; and in certain matters, mainly related to health issues, magic was particularly important.
title: Magic
alternative label: Magical
alternative label: magic
alternative label: magical powers
related: Amulets and Talismans
related: An-ski Ethnographic Expedition and Museum
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Ba‘ale Shem
related: Chełm
related: Demons
related: Dybbuk, The
related: Eybeschütz, Yonatan
related: Golem Legend
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Koidanover, Aharon Shemu’el and Tsevi Hirsh
related: Names and Naming
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Prague
related: Shabetai ben Me’ir ha-Kohen
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el

Maimon, Salomon
described at: Maimon Salomon
has abstract: (1754–1800), maskil and philosopher. Salomon Maimon (Shelomoh ben Yehoshu‘a) was born and raised near Nieśwież in Poland–Lithuania (now Nesvizh, Belarus). He received a Talmudic education, married at 11, and soon began to work as a private tutor. Early in his life, he encountered Jewish mystical-pietistic movements, showed an interest in Kabbalah, and flirted with new Hasidism. Later, influenced by the philosophy of Maimonides (in whose honor he adopted a surname), he devoted himself to secular studies and began to lean toward skepticism.
title: Maimon, Salomon
alternative label: Salomon Maimon
related: Autobiography and Memoir
related: Belarus
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Kaliningrad
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: Silesia
related: Wrocław

Mukacheve
described at: Mukacheve
has abstract: Located in the present-day Transcarpathian oblast’ of Ukraine, the city of Mukacheve (Cz., Mukačevo; Hun., Munkács; Yid., Munkatsh) was the cultural and spiritual center of Jewish life in the historic region of Subcarpathian Rus’ (Ruthenia). A Hasidic center, it had the highest proportion of Jews among prewar Hungarian and interwar Czechoslovakian cities. Mukacheve is located in a region that changed hands politically several times after World War I. From the eleventh century to 1918, Subcarpathian Rus’ was part of the Hungarian Kingdom; thereafter it was part of Czechoslovakia (1919–1938), Hungary (1938–1944), Ukraine within the Soviet Union (1945–1991), and independent Ukraine (since 1991).
title: Mukacheve
alternative label: Mukačevo
alternative label: Munkács
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kugel, Ḥayim
related: Minsk
related: Orthodoxy
related: Pogroms
related: Subcarpathian Rus’
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Mysticism and Mystical Literature
described at: Mysticism and Mystical Literature
has abstract: In the period between the early thirteenth century and the mid-eighteenth century, East European acquaintance with and creativity related to Jewish mysticism reflected the impact of Jewish mystical traditions that had originated in other major centers of Jewish culture: Germany, Spain, Italy, and Safed. East European interest in mysticism began in Bohemia and moved slowly eastward until the mid-eighteenth century, at which point the center of creativity in Jewish mystical literature was the eastern part of the region under scrutiny. In Eastern Europe, a minor center of Jewish population in the first centuries of this period, Jews were more receptive to mystical traditions than Jews in other areas of Jewish settlement, and became much more creative, original, and influential at its end. This survey attempts to highlight some main topics of the diverse body of East European Jewish literature that is described in scholarship as (vaguely) mystical, flowering in the different provinces of East European Jewish settlement over six centuries.
title: Mysticism and Mystical Literature
alternative label: mystic
alternative label: mystical doctrines
alternative label: mysticism
related: Ashkenaz
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Brody
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Golem Legend
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Ḥayim ben Shelomoh Tyrer of Tshernovits
related: Ḥayim ben Yitsḥak of Volozhin
related: Horowitz Family
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: Kara, Avigdor
related: Kiev
related: Kloyz
related: Koidanover, Aharon Shemu’el and Tsevi Hirsh
related: Kook, Avraham Yitsḥak
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Land of Israel
related: Lithuania
related: Magic
related: Maimon, Salomon
related: Misnagdim
related: Mülhausen, Yom Tov Lipmann
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Shimshon ben Pesaḥ of Ostropolye
related: Shklov
related: Spira, Natan Note ben Shelomoh
related: Ukraine
related: Zhidachov-Komarno Hasidic Dynasty

Normalschulen
described at: Normalschulen
has abstract: Originally the name of comprehensive elementary schools with four classes and a teachers’ seminar, established in the capital city of each province of the Habsburg monarchy in the 1770s. The Normalschulen were distinct from smaller schools (with one to three classes) in towns and villages, known as Hauptschulen and Trivialschulen. The term, however, soon became a synonym for all public schools that taught a modern curriculum, with an emphasis on secular subjects, and that applied a method focusing on an understanding of the subject (Normalmethode) rather than on mechanical repetitions.
title: Normalschulen
alternative label: German Jewish school system
alternative label: Jewish German school
alternative label: Josephinian school system
alternative label: Normalschul
alternative label: Normalschule
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bucovina
related: Chernivtsi
related: Galicia
related: Haskalah
related: Homberg, Herz
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Perl, Yosef
related: Prague
related: Suceava
related: Ternopil’

Razsvet
described at: Razsvet
has abstract: Title given to four different Russian Jewish periodicals. The first Razsvet (Dawn) was a weekly published in Odessa from May 1860 to May 1861. The journal’s target audience was Russian maskilim, and its goal, in addition to spreading Haskalah, was to fight for emancipation.
title: Razsvet
related: Agriculture
related: Bogrov, Grigorii Isaakovich
related: Frug, Shimen Shmuel
related: Grünbaum, Yitsḥak
related: Haskalah
related: Jabotinsky, Vladimir
related: Khvol’son, Daniil Avraamovich
related: Levanda, Lev Osipovich
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Odessa
related: Pogroms
related: Rabinovich, Osip Aronovich
related: Revisionist Zionists
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Zederbaum, Aleksander
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Soloveichik Family
described at: Soloveichik Family
has abstract: The most prominent dynasty of rashe yeshivot (rectors of Talmudic academies) in modern times. This exceptional Lithuanian Misnagdic family has produced outstanding rabbinical scholars in every generation over the last two centuries. The family traces its ancestry to the close disciple of the Gaon of Vilna, Ḥayim of Volozhin, himself the scion of a long line of rabbis. Inspired by his master, Ḥayim established a yeshiva in 1802 in Volozhin, where he was rabbi. Although yeshivas had flourished in Eastern Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for various reasons they had all but disappeared during the eighteenth century. The yeshiva in Volozhin marked the beginnings of an efflorescence of Lithuanian yeshivas with which the Soloveichik family is so closely identified.
title: Soloveichik Family
alternative label: Soloveichik
alternative label: Yosef Dov Ber Soloveichik
alternative label: Yosef Dov Soloveichik
alternative label: Ḥayim Soloveichik
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Ashkenaz
related: Belarus
related: Berlin, Naftali Tsevi Yehudah
related: Brest
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Ḥayim ben Yitsḥak of Volozhin
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kahaneman, Yosef Shelomoh
related: Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi
related: Kaunas
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Lithuania
related: L’viv
related: Messianism
related: Mir, Yeshiva of
related: Misnagdim
related: Mizraḥi
related: Orthodoxy
related: Pinsker, Simḥah and Lev
related: Ponevezh, Yeshiva of
related: Slobodka, Yeshiva of
related: Slutsk
related: Telz, Yeshiva of
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Sutzkever, Avrom
described at: Sutzkever Avrom
has abstract: (1913–2010), Yiddish poet. Born in Smorgon’, a small industrial city southeast of Vilna, Avrom Sutzkever spent his early childhood in Omsk, Siberia, where his parents took refuge from the invading German armies during World War I. Following the death of his father, Sutzkever’s mother, Rayne, resettled the family in Vilna in 1921. Sutzkever attended local heders and the Polish Jewish high school Herzliah, audited university classes in Polish literature, and was introduced by a friend to Russian poetry. His earliest poems were written in Hebrew.
title: Sutzkever, Avrom
alternative label: Avrom Sutzkever
related: Bin
related: Black Book
related: Ehrenburg, Ilya Grigor’evich
related: Grade, Chaim
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Kaczerginski, Shmerke
related: Land of Israel
related: Memory
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Volf, Leyzer
related: Warsaw
related: YIVO
related: Yung-Vilne

Tombstones
described at: Tombstones
has abstract: East European Jewish tombstones follow the Ashkenazic pattern that was developed in Central Europe from the eleventh to the fourteenth century. Their most typical traits include vertical position (as opposed to Sephardic tombstones, which usually lie horizontally), rectangular shape, and the prominence of inscription fields. In addition to simple vertical slabs, pseudosarcophagi were popular in some localities in the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Beginning in the eighteenth century, some tombs of exceptional scholars, rabbis, or holy men were built with an ohel (lit., tent), a simple structure covering the grave (see image at right). Until the nineteenth century, all tomb inscriptions were written in Hebrew (with some Aramaic barbarisms in the epitaphs of learned elites), although many betray poor knowledge of the language. Hebrew inscriptions were written in square script. Cursive and semicursive script began to appear sporadically only in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and were used for the closing formula (or some part thereof) of the epitaph.
title: Tombstones
alternative label: tombstone
alternative label: tombstones
related: Łódź
related: Ashkenaz
related: Belarus
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brno
related: Buchach
related: Bucharest
related: Chełm
related: Eisenbaum, Antoni
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kolín
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: L’viv
related: Medzhibizh
related: Moldavia
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Przemyśl
related: Sephardim
related: Silesia
related: Ukraine
related: Wrocław

Tsene-rene
described at: Tsene-rene
has abstract: One of the most popular and influential books of East European Jewry—popularly known as the “women’s Bible.” Tsene-rene, composed by Yankev ben Yitskhok Ashkenazi of Janów, took its name from tse’enah u-re’enah benot Tsiyon (“Go forth and look, daughters of Zion”), a phrase from verse 3:11 in the Song of Songs. This phrase adorns the book’s frontispiece, following the actual title, The Pentateuch in the Language of Ashkenaz, with the Five Scrolls and the Haftarahs (the Five Scrolls [Heb., megilot] are Song of Songs, Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Esther, and Lamentations; haftarahs are prophetic portions read liturgically each week). This formulation gave rise to the mistaken conception that the book is a translation into Yiddish (called Taytsh, after the Yiddish word for German) of the biblical books that had become part of Jewish liturgical life. Actually, the book is a Yiddish adaptation of the texts, the nature of which varies from section to section.
title: Tsene-rene
related: Ashkenaz
related: David ben Shemu’el ha-Levi
related: Efrayim Shelomoh ben Aharon of Luntshits
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Sabbath
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh

Tykocin
described at: Tykocin
has abstract: Town in the Podlasie province of Poland; known in Yiddish as Tiktin. The first Jews settled in Tykocin in 1522 when the town’s owner, Olbracht Gasztołd, brought in 10 families from Grodno (Hrodna) and permitted them to build a synagogue, establish a cemetery, and practice their trades. In 1537, the original privilege was extended to grant juridical autonomy to the Jewish community. In 1542, ownership of Tykocin passed to the crown, with subsequent kings affirming and extending privileges for Jewish residents in 1576, 1601, 1639, and 1650. In 1661, Stefan Czarniecki assumed the post of starosta (district official), a title that after his death passed to the Branicki family and then to the Potocki and Rostworowski families.
title: Tykocin
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Beys Yankev
related: Białystok
related: Hrodna
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: Kaliningrad
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: Rivke bas Me’ir of Tikotin
related: Shemu’el Eli‘ezer ben Yehudah ha-Levi Edels
related: Tarbut
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Zabłudów

Weichert, Michał
described at: Weichert Michał
has abstract: (1890–1967), theater director, historian, critic, and communal activist. Born in Podhajce in eastern Galicia and raised in Stanisławów, Michał Weichert (Mikhl Vaykhert) received his education at heder and in Polish schools. He attended law and humanities programs at universities in Lwów, Vienna (receiving his J.D. in 1916), and Berlin; in the latter city, he studied avant-garde theater with Max Reinhardt. In 1918, Weichert settled in Warsaw.
title: Weichert, Michał
alternative label: Michał Weichert
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Heder
related: Ivano-Frankivs’k
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Literarishe Bleter
related: L’viv
related: Ostropolyer, Hershele
related: Stage Design
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Vilner Trupe
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Yiddish Actors Union
related: Yung-teater
related: Zeitlin Family

Babel, Isaac
described at: Babel Isaac
has abstract: (Isaak Emmanuilovich Babel’; 1894–1940), Soviet Jewish short-story writer and playwright. Isaac Babel was born in Odessa and brought up in the Russified middle-class family of a dealer in agricultural machinery. Odessa was then a thriving center of modern Jewish culture where writers such as Ḥayim Naḥman Bialik lectured and published. In 1916, Babel met Mendele Moykher-Sforim, the “grandfather” of Yiddish literature. Babel’s love of Yiddish is reflected in the subtext of his Russian prose, as well as in his adaptation of one of the popular folktales about Hershele Ostropolyer, “Shabos-Nakhamu” (1918). It was for love of Yiddish, not just want of money, that Babel wrote the screenplays of Sholem Aleichem’s Menakhem Mendl stories, Evreiskoe schast’e (Jewish Luck; 1925), and a novel, Bluzhdaiushchie zvezdy (Wandering Stars; 1926), and edited two volumes of stories by Sholem Aleichem in Shimon Hecht’s Russian translation (1926). The Zionist and Hebrew influences of his childhood had to be concealed after the Bolshevik Revolution, but the response of the post-Kishinev generation to pogroms and to the decay of shtetl life are evident in Babel’s first published story, “Staryi Shloime” (Old Shloime; 1913), which describes an old man’s suicide after his sons abandon Judaism under socioeconomic pressure.
title: Babel, Isaac
alternative label: Isaac Babel
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Kiev
related: Kishinev
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Ostropolyer, Hershele
related: Pogroms
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtetl
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Beys Yankev
described at: Beys Yankev
has abstract: The Agudas Yisroel network of schools for girls. The first Beys Yankev school was established in Kraków in 1917 by Sarah Schenirer, who sought to fight the spread of secularization and acculturation among Orthodox women—who until then had received no formal Jewish education. The institution, which achieved great success, was supported by Orthodox public figures and was adopted in 1919 by Agudas Yisroel. In 1922, Agudas Yisroel in Poland began to publish a Beys Yankev journal, which spread the idea of establishing girls’ schools to form a national network.
title: Beys Yankev
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Chernivtsi
related: Czechoslovakia
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lithuania
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: Schenirer, Sarah
related: Yisra’el Me’ir ha-Kohen

Bobruisk
described at: Bobruisk
has abstract: City in the Mogilev province of Belarus. Bobruisk was home to a Jewish population by the end of the sixteenth century. In 1765, 395 Jews were recorded as having paid a poll tax. Bobruisk was incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1793 and in 1808 had 504 Jews.
title: Bobruisk
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Belarus
related: Blood Libels and Host Desecration Accusations
related: Bund
related: Calendars
related: Fareynikte
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: Heder
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Liepāja
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Pogroms
related: Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Ha-
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Borokhov, Ber
described at: Borokhov Ber
has abstract: (also Borochov, Borochow, Boruchow; 1881–1917), pivotal thinker and scholar who in his short life of 36 years founded two distinct fields: Labor Zionism and Yiddish studies. He played the dual roles of theoretician and primary activist in both.
title: Borokhov, Ber
alternative label: Ber Borokhov
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Land of Israel
related: About this Article (Language)
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Ukraine
related: Vilnius
related: YIVO
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Childhood
described at: Childhood
has abstract: In the early modern period and even more intensely in the nineteenth century, the Jewish population of Eastern Europe grew at a rate faster than that of the non-Jewish populations. Demographers agree that this difference was a consequence, chiefly, of lower rates of infant mortality among Jews. The effect was a continually growing increase in the proportion of young people in the Jewish population. It can be hypothesized that in certain ways, the disparate ideological movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including Hasidism, the new style of yeshivas, the Haskalah and the Musar movement, all of which gained substantial energy and participation from young men under the age of 20, were a consequence of this demographic factor.
title: Childhood
alternative label: childhood
related: Ber of Bolechów
related: Berlin, Naftali Tsevi Yehudah
related: About this Article (Children’s Literature)
related: Guilds
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Heder
related: Hrodna
related: Koidanover, Aharon Shemu’el and Tsevi Hirsh
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lithuania
related: L’viv
related: Marriage
related: Musar Movement
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Toys and Games
related: Trade
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Youth Movements

Doctors’ Plot
described at: Doctors Plot
has abstract: Antisemitic campaign that unfolded in the Soviet Union between 1948 and 1953. The so-called Doctors’ Plot has historically been viewed as the culmination of the vicious antisemitic campaign undertaken by Stalin in the final years of his life. Stalin died before the last stage could be completed and since his death much speculation has grown up about his intentions, the extent of the action envisioned against the Jews, and the meaning of the episode in the context of the cold war.
title: Doctors’ Plot
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Ehrenburg, Ilya Grigor’evich
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Moscow
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Ehrenburg, Ilya Grigor’evich
described at: Ehrenburg Ilya Grigorevich
has abstract: (1891–1967), writer, journalist, and poet. Ilya Ehrenburg was born in Kiev. In 1895, his family was permitted to move to Moscow, where his father managed a brewery. Inspired by his older high school comrade Nikolai Bukharin, Ehrenburg was drawn as a teenager to the Bolshevik underground. Arrested in 1908, Ehrenburg spent five months in a tsarist jail before being released and permitted to travel to France.
title: Ehrenburg, Ilya Grigor’evich
alternative label: Ilya Ehrenburg
related: Black Book
related: Doctors’ Plot
related: Grossman, Vasilii Semenovich
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Kaganovich, Lazar’ Moiseevich
related: Kiev
related: Labor Camps
related: Land of Israel
related: Moscow
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Eisenstadt
described at: Eisenstadt
has abstract: City that since 1925 has been the capital of the Austrian federal state of Burgenland; before 1921, the city was under Hungarian rule and was known as Kismarton. Eisenstadt is also referred to as Ash, a Hebrew acrostic for Eisen Stadt.
title: Eisenstadt
related: Burgenland
related: Hildesheimer, Esriel
related: About this Article (Hungary)

Erter, Yitsḥak
described at: Erter Yitshak
has abstract: (1791–1851), Hebrew satire writer, physician, and a leader of the Haskalah movement in Galicia. Yitsḥak Erter was born in the village of Koniuszek in the Premishla (Przemyśl) district of Galicia, and grew up as a Hasid. At age 13 he married a rabbi’s daughter who died six months later. He was married again in 1806, also to the daughter of a rabbi (her name was Ḥayah Sarah) and he moved to his wife’s town of Wielkie Oczy where he was supported by his father-in-law. There, Erter formed a deep bond with the maskil Yosef Tarler (a probable later convert to Christianity), who introduced him to medieval Jewish philosophy and Haskalah literature.
title: Erter, Yitsḥak
alternative label: Yitsḥak Erter
related: Angels
related: Brody
related: Budapest
related: Galicia
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Letteris, Me’ir
related: L’viv
related: Mieses, Yehudah Leib
related: Orenstein Family
related: Przemyśl
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Satire
related: Schorr, Yehoshu‘a Heshel

Eynikayt
described at: Eynikayt
has abstract: The official newspaper of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the USSR, published from 1942 until the committee was liquidated in November 1948. Written in Yiddish, Eynikayt (Unity) produced its first issue on 7 June 1942. In its early stage, the paper resembled a bulletin and appeared just a few times a month. In September 1943 it became a weekly and from February 1945 until its last issue it was issued three times a week. The editor was the committee’s secretary, Shakhne Epstein, followed by G. Zhits, who took over the periodical when Epstein died in 1945. The major Yiddish writers of the Soviet Union served on its editorial board, including Dovid Bergelson, Shmuel Halkin, Leyb Kvitko, and Itsik Fefer. In particular, the poet Fefer contributed frequently; he tried to inspire readers to greater effort and encouraged those in Nazi-occupied territory to resist.
title: Eynikayt
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Ehrenburg, Ilya Grigor’evich
related: Fefer, Itsik
related: Halkin, Shmuel
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Kvitko, Leyb
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Fareynikte
described at: Fareynikte
has abstract: Jewish socialist party, formed in Russia in May 1917 after the February Revolution. The Fareynikte Yidishe Sotsyalistishe Arbeter Partey (United Jewish Socialist Workers Party; the party’s complete name) resulted from the amalgamation of two Jewish socialist parties that had emerged during the Revolution of 1905. The parties had come into being when a number of Po‘ale Tsiyon (Zionist socialist) groups distanced themselves from the authority of the Zionist Organization and adopted a separatist program in response to the Kishinev pogroms of April 1903 and the political furor over the Uganda Plan.
title: Fareynikte
related: Bund
related: Kiev
related: Kishinev
related: Komfarband
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Fuenn, Shemu’el Yosef
described at: Fuenn Shemuel Yosef
has abstract: (1818–1890), a leading figure of the Russian Haskalah. Shemu’el Yosef Fuenn (or Fünn) taught at the Vilna Rabbinical Seminary, was founder and editor of the journal Ha-Karmel, and was one of the leaders of the Ḥibat Tsiyon movement.
title: Fuenn, Shemu’el Yosef
alternative label: Shemu’el Fuenn
alternative label: Shemu’el Yosef Fuenn
related: Dik, Ayzik Meyer
related: Haskalah
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Karmel, Ha-
related: Katowice
related: Lebensohn, Avraham Dov
related: Levinzon, Yitsḥak Ber
related: Lilienthal, Max
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Schulman, Kalman
related: Seminary
related: Vilnius
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Ḥayim ben Yitsḥak of Volozhin
described at: Hayim ben Yitshak of Volozhin
has abstract: (1749–1821), Torah scholar and rabbi; founder of the Volozhin yeshiva. Ḥayim was born in Volozhin, where his father, Yitsḥak, was a community leader. Ḥayim studied with Refa’el ha-Kohen and Aryeh Leib, author of Sha’agat Aryeh. At the age of 19, he was introduced to the Vilna Gaon and became his disciple. Six years later, Ḥayim was appointed rabbi of Volozhin, and remained in that position until he died, with the exception of one year (1790), during which he served as the rabbi of Wiłkomierz.
title: Ḥayim ben Yitsḥak of Volozhin
alternative label: Ḥayim ben Yitsḥak
alternative label: Ḥayim of Volozhin
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Lithuania
related: Minsk
related: Misnagdim
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Talmud Study
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Klausner, Yosef
described at: Klausner Yosef
has abstract: (1874–1958), critic, researcher, and editor. Yosef Klausner was born in Olkeniki, near Vilna. In 1885, his family moved to Odessa and he became involved in the activities of the Ḥibat Tsiyon movement and in organizations promoting Hebrew as a spoken language. In 1893 his first publications addressed both topics—Zionist activism and the revitalization of Hebrew. He then wrote his initial work on literary criticism, on Yehudah Leib Gordon (1894). Between 1897 and 1902, Klausner studied at the University of Heidelberg, simultaneously establishing a reputation as an outstanding critic of renascent Hebrew literature.
title: Klausner, Yosef
alternative label: Yosef Klausner
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Land of Israel
related: Hebrew (Language)
related: Hebrew Criticism and Scholarship (Literary Criticism and Scholarship)
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Shneour, Zalman
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Vilnius
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Makhzikey ha-Das
described at: Makhzikey ha-Das
has abstract: (Heb., Maḥazike ha-Dat; Upholders of the Faith), an Orthodox ideological and political organization active in Galicia and Bucovina. After a year of difficult efforts, Makhzikey ha-Das received permission to be formally established in 1878. The primary motivation for the Orthodox to organize was the approval of a new kehiliah statute with a liberal spirit in the city of Lemberg (Lwów) in 1876. Initiated by Shomer Yisra’el—the organization of the liberal Jewish intelligentsia—this statute guaranteed control of the community council to members of means who also had secular education.
title: Makhzikey ha-Das
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Belz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Bucovina
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: L’viv
related: Orthodoxy
related: Seminary
related: Shomer Yisra’el
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Sofer Family

Pilgrimage
described at: Pilgrimage
has abstract: Throughout their history, East European Jews have participated in three types of pilgrimages: (1) pilgrimages to pray and petition at cemeteries in various localities of Eastern Europe; (2) pilgrimages by Hasidim to visit their sages, both living and dead; and (3) pilgrimages to the Land of Israel. After World War II, several of the traditional pre-1939 pilgrimages were revived, and various Jewish communities have embarked on new ones.
title: Pilgrimage
alternative label: pilgrimage
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Belarus
related: Brest
related: Czech Republic
related: Elimelekh of Lizhensk
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Land of Israel
related: Latvia
related: Leżajsk
related: Naḥman of Bratslav
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Slobodka, Yeshiva of
related: Slovakia
related: Soloveichik Family
related: Ukraine
related: Uman
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of

Pinski, Dovid
described at: Pinski Dovid
has abstract: (1872–1959), Yiddish prose writer and playwright. Dovid Pinksi was born in Mogilev, Belorussia, where he received a traditional and secular education and became acquainted with Russian literature and theater. At age 13, he moved to Moscow and tried his hand at writing in Russian. In 1890–1891, Pinski lived in Vitebsk and was active in the local chapter of Ḥoveve Tsiyon. A year later, on his way to Vienna, hoping to study medicine, Pinski stopped in Warsaw, where he met Y. L. Peretz. Pinski remained in that city from 1892 to 1896. His first pieces in Yiddish were marked by his close collaboration with Peretz and the latter’s circle, who were developing new and radical approaches to modern Yiddish literature in particular, and Jewish culture in general.
title: Pinski, Dovid
alternative label: Dovid Pinski
related: Belarus
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Habimah
related: Moscow
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Vitsyebsk
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Ruzhin Hasidic Dynasty
described at: Ruzhin Hasidic Dynasty
has abstract: Established by members of the Friedman family and consisting of several dozen rebbes (admorim), the Ruzhin (Yid., more properly Rizhin) Hasidic dynasty originated in the town of that name in Kiev province, Russia. It continued to flourish in Sadagora (Sadegere; in Austrian Bukowina) and had many offshoots in Galicia and Romania. In the 1870s, this branch of Hasidism and its unique approach to the religious life were the subject of a fierce controversy because of a ban pronounced on it by Ḥayim Halberstam of Sandz (Nowy Sącz) in 1869. The loyalty of thousands of Ruzhin Hasidim to their leaders was unaffected, however, and the ban’s purpose was not achieved.
title: Ruzhin Hasidic Dynasty
alternative label: Ruzhin
alternative label: Ruzhin Hasidism
alternative label: Ruzhin-Sadagora
alternative label: Ruzhin-Sadagora dynasty
alternative label: Sadagora
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Apt Hasidic Dynasty
related: Banking
related: Berdychiv
related: Bessarabia
related: Brody
related: Bucovina
related: Buhuşi
related: Chernivtsi
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kiev
related: Kosov-Vizhnits Hasidic Dynasty
related: Land of Israel
related: Makhzikey ha-Das
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sandz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Ukraine
related: Vaslui
related: Yisra’el of Ruzhin

Singer, Israel Joshua
described at: Singer Israel Joshua
has abstract: (1893–1944), Yiddish fiction writer. Born in Biłgoraj, Lublin province, Israel Joshua Singer was the second child in a family of Yiddish writers that included his elder sister, Esther Singer Kreitman, and his younger brother, Isaac Bashevis Singer. Singer spent much of his childhood in another small town, Leoncin, Warsaw province.
title: Singer, Israel Joshua
alternative label: I. J. Singer
alternative label: Israel Joshua Singer
related: Łódź
related: Assimilation
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Galicia
related: Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
related: Hofshteyn, Dovid
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Khalyastre
related: Kiev
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: L’viv
related: Markish, Perets
related: Moscow
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ravitch, Melech
related: Shtetl
related: Singer, Isaac Bashevis
related: Yiddish Theater (Theater)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Varshavski, Oyzer
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

About this Article (Sport)
described at: Sport
has abstract: To treat Jewish participation in sporting activities, this entry includes two articles. The first surveys the topic with attention to the relationship between Jewish sporting clubs and political organizations and youth movements. The second focuses on the particular situation of Jewish athletes under the Soviet sports system.
title: About this Article (Sport)
alternative label: sport
alternative label: sports
related: Youth Movements

Stybel
described at: Stybel
has abstract: Hebrew publishing house founded in Moscow in 1917 by the patron and literary enthusiast Avraham Yosef Stybel (1885–1946) and journalist Bentsiyon Katz. Literary critic David Frishman, whose aestheticist and westernizing Hebraism influenced Stybel, was editor in chief.
title: Stybel
alternative label: Stybel Publishing Company
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Cahan, Ya‘akov
related: Frishman, David
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Katz, Bentsiyon
related: Lachower, Yeruḥam Fishel
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Shimonovitz, David
related: Shofman, Gershom
related: Shoham, Matityahu
related: Stybel, Avraham Yosef
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Warsaw
related: Zeitlin Family

Thon, Ozjasz
described at: Thon Ozjasz
has abstract: (1870–1936), rabbi, sociologist, and political leader. Ozjasz (Yehoshu‘a) Thon was one of the main initiators and theoreticians of the Zionist movement in Poland. Born in Lwów, he received a traditional education. Thon was fascinated with the Haskalah and joined the Mikra Kodesh society in Lwów, which soon transformed itself into the first Zionist organization in Galicia, renamed Tsiyon.
title: Thon, Ozjasz
alternative label: Ozjasz (Yehoshu‘a) Thon
alternative label: Ozjasz Thon
alternative label: Yehoshu‘a (Osjasz) Thon
alternative label: Yehoshu‘a (Ozjasz) Thon
alternative label: Yehoshu‘a Thon
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Galicia
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: L’viv
related: Mikra Kodesh
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Silesia
related: Tarbut
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Uman
described at: Uman
has abstract: Established in the mid-seventeenth century in what is now Ukraine, Uman (Pol., Humań) played a prominent role in the economic and political life of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. When the Haidamaks, who were rebelling against the Polish authorities, attacked the town in 1749, many Jews were killed and their property was plundered. In the 1750s, Count Franciszek Salęzy Potocki rebuilt Uman as a commercial center and allowed some 450 Jews to reside there. Their newfound security was short-lived, however: in 1768, a reinvigorated Haidamak insurrection under the leadership of a Zaporozhian Cossack, Maksim Zhelezniak, devastated numerous Ukrainian towns and estates.
title: Uman
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Kiev
related: Naḥman of Bratslav
related: Pogroms
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Ukraine

Yisra’el of Ruzhin
described at: Yisrael of Ruzhin
has abstract: (1796–1850), Hasidic leader and tsadik. Famed for his eccentric personality, Yisra’el Friedman of Ruzhin (Yid., more properly Rizhin) presided over a Hasidic court whose opulence and wealth rivaled that of Polish nobility. The dramatic events in which he was involved—imprisonment on suspicion of aiding and abetting the violent murder of informers, flight from Russia to Austria—made him a legend in his own lifetime, revered by his followers but despised and ridiculed by his opponents, mainly maskilim. Descended from a distinguished Hasidic family (his great-grandfather was Dov Ber, the Magid of Mezritsh) that claimed descent from King David, and possessing exceptional religious charisma, sharp natural intelligence, and organizational talents, he was not only one of the most prominent and impressive Hasidic leaders in the period of the greatest growth of Hasidism, but also the founder of a new style of Hasidism known as the “regal way.”
title: Yisra’el of Ruzhin
related: Apt Hasidic Dynasty
related: Berdychiv
related: Brody
related: Buchach
related: Bucovina
related: Chernivtsi
related: Chernobil Hasidic Dynasty
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: Galicia
related: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Informers
related: Karlin-Stolin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Kiev
related: Kluger, Shelomoh ben Yehudah
related: Kosov-Vizhnits Hasidic Dynasty
related: Land of Israel
related: Levinzon, Yitsḥak Ber
related: Lithuania
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Perl, Yosef
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sabbath
related: Shakhnah, Shalom
related: Vurke Hasidic Dynasty

Approbation
described at: Approbation
has abstract: An approbation or haskamah (Heb., lit., “agreement” or “approval”; pl., haskamot) is an endorsement or expression of approval of the contents of a book intended for publication, usually placed near the beginning of the text. The practice of publishing haskamot arose from diverse and sometimes overlapping motivations notably as a consequence of efforts by Italian Jewish communal governments to avoid conflict with the church. There were independent motivations as well. Thus, some early haskamot sought to establish a form of copyright protecting the author or the printer. Haskamot endorsed and praised books and their authors, which increased their appeal to potential purchasers. Present from the beginning of printing in Eastern Europe, haskamot were the fruit of negotiations involving printers, authors, and endorsers.
title: Approbation
alternative label: approbation
alternative label: approbations
related: Haskalah
related: Ḥayim ben Yitsḥak of Volozhin
related: Landau, Yeḥezkel ben Yehudah
related: Levi Yitsḥak of Barditshev
related: Natanson, Yosef Sha’ul
related: Sabbatianism
related: Sandz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Shemu’el ben Yisakhar Ber Segal
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el
related: Yisra’el ben Shabetai of Kozhenits

Archives
described at: Archives
has abstract: Hundreds of state and local archives throughout Eastern Europe hold millions of documents that reflect the experience of Jews over many centuries. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and other East European Communist regimes, government archives became more accessible. Although it is true that numerous documents were lost during World War II, the documents that still exist are enormously rich and valuable. Particularly with the case of the former Soviet Union, the data remain largely unexplored by researchers interested in Jewish history.
title: Archives
alternative label: archives
narrower: APPENDIX 1: SELECTED PRINT RESOURCES
narrower: APPENDIX 2: SELECTED WEB RESOURCES
narrower: Archival Guides
narrower: Inventory and Other Projects
narrower: Libraries and Other Repositories in Eastern Europe
narrower: Libraries and Other Repositories outside of Eastern Europe
narrower: Private Collections
narrower: Resources for Genealogical Research
related: An-ski Ethnographic Expedition and Museum
related: Belarus
related: Bund
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Harkavy, Avraham
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Ivano-Frankivs’k
related: Jewish Historical Institute
related: Kiev
related: Kishinev
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lithuania
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Ostrog
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw
related: Wrocław
related: YIVO

Armed Resistance
described at: Armed Resistance
has abstract: The Jewish armed resistance movement during the Holocaust (1939–1945) was an unprecedented phenomenon. The enslaved Jewish population, facing annihilation, had no effective means to fight off their aggressors. Thus the Jewish armed underground organizations in dozens of East European ghettos did not see armed resistance primarily as a way to save lives. Instead, they sought what they regarded as the most honorable death possible. Even if their armed struggle was only symbolic, the Nazi murder campaign demanded active response.
title: Armed Resistance
alternative label: Armed resistance
alternative label: armed resistance
alternative label: resistance
related: Anielewicz, Mordekhai
related: Będzin
related: Białystok
related: Brody
related: Bund
related: Fareynikte
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kaunas
related: Killing Centers
related: Kovner, Abba
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Labor Camps
related: Land of Israel
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Minsk
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Revisionist Zionists
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Slovakia
related: Tarnów
related: Ukraine
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Youth Movements
related: Zuckerman, Yitsḥak

Botoşani
described at: Botosani
has abstract: Town in northeast Romania in the area of the former principality of Moldova; administrative center of the county that shares its name. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Jewish merchants were already present in Botoşani, (Yid., Botoshan), known for its fairs and located at the crossroads of economic routes from Poland to the Danube. Jewish numbers increased as a result of emigration from Galicia and Ukraine. This tendency was stimulated by the geographic location of the town, which permitted trade with both Bucovina and Bessarabia, as well as by the relative religious tolerance prevailing in Moldova.
title: Botoşani
related: Bessarabia
related: Bucovina
related: Crafts
related: Galicia
related: Haskalah
related: Industry
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: Trade
related: Transnistria
related: Ukraine

Broderzon, Moyshe
described at: Broderzon Moyshe
has abstract: (1890–1956), Yiddish poet and playwright. The son of a well-to-do businessman, Moscow-born Moyshe Broderzon and his family were among the Jews expelled from that city in 1891. His father moved to Łódź but Broderzon’s mother and the children went to Nesivizh (Pol., Nieśwież), her native town in Belorussia. In 1900, the family was reunited in Łódź. Broderzon studied accounting at a business school there and worked in that field for several years after 1907. He also wrote poems in Russian, though these pieces were not printed. In 1908, he began to write in Yiddish and published humorous skits in the Lodzer tageblat, under the pseudonym Broder Zinger.
title: Broderzon, Moyshe
alternative label: Moyshe Broderzon
related: Łódź
related: Adler, Yankl
related: Białystok
related: Dzigan and Shumacher
related: Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
related: Katzenelson, Yitsḥak
related: Khalyastre
related: Lissitzky, El
related: Markish, Perets
related: Moscow
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: Rybak, Yisakhar Ber
related: Singer, Israel Joshua
related: Soviet State Yiddish Theaters
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Tsharni, Daniel
related: Tunkel, Yoysef
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Yung-yidish

Credit
described at: Credit
has abstract: The role played by moneylending, relative to other Jewish occupations, fluctuated with the times in Eastern Europe. Until the middle of the fifteenth century, moneylending was by far the most dominant profession in which Polish Jews, for example, were employed, as members of the aristocracy would use the services of Jews as sources for both income and credit. The public’s attitude toward these lenders was ambivalent. On the one hand, lenders were always in demand, thanks to their ability to help those in need of a loan; on the other hand, they aroused feelings of tension and of discord by the very fact that they demanded repayments of loans, and profited by collecting interest (or, as it was sometimes disparagingly referred to, usury).
title: Credit
alternative label: credit
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Bessarabia
related: Bucovina
related: Charity
related: Galicia
related: Leaseholding
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Minsk
related: Money
related: Pale of Settlement
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shtetl
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Crown Rabbi
described at: Crown Rabbi
has abstract: (Rus., kazennyi ravvin; Yid., rabiner; Ger., Staatsrabbiner; Heb., rav mi-ta‘am). The crown rabbis of late imperial Russia held the government-mandated designation of rabbi, but their functions as record keepers, Russian administrative representatives, and sometimes Jewish communal (but secular) leaders belied the religious title. Historical research into Russian Jewry is still uncovering the precise nature of their leadership, in its variegated forms.
title: Crown Rabbi
alternative label: crown rabbi
alternative label: crown rabbinate
alternative label: crown rabbis
related: Haskalah
related: Hrodna
related: Ivano-Frankivs’k
related: Maze, Iakov Isaevich
related: Melits, Ha-
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Vilnius
related: Voskhod
related: Zhytomyr

Gans, David ben Shelomoh
described at: Gans David ben Shelomoh
has abstract: (1541–1613), chronicler, astronomer, mathematician, and teacher. David Gans was born into a well-to-do merchant family in Westphalia. As a youth he studied with Mosheh Isserles, the renowned head of the Kraków yeshiva. Gans moved to Prague in 1564, where he continued his studies with Sinai ben Betsal’el, the brother of Maharal of Prague, and was associated with the latter as well.
title: Gans, David ben Shelomoh
alternative label: David Gans
related: Approbation
related: Efrayim Shelomoh ben Aharon of Luntshits
related: Haskalah
related: Heller, Yom Tov Lipmann
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Prague
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Gender
described at: Gender
has abstract: The social and hierarchical construction of the differences between the sexes, gender is also a way of signifying relationships of power. Historically, gender has generally been perceived in binary terms, with masculine traits privileged over feminine ones. Every society is gendered, with different expectations for the social roles of members of each sex; gender prescriptions are also tied to social class, religion, and geographical location, and vary with time. Although gender prescriptions powerfully shape individuals’ behavior, social and economic needs often lead to a relaxation of sharply delineated gender norms.
title: Gender
alternative label: gender
alternative label: women
related: Beys Yankev
related: Białystok
related: Bund
related: Childhood
related: Death and the Dead
related: Dress
related: Fraynd, Der
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Guilds
related: Everyday Life (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Heder
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Hrodna
related: Kahal
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Luxemburg, Rosa
related: Maiden of Ludmir
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Philanthropy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ringelblum, Emanuel
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sabbath
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Schenirer, Sarah
related: Servants
related: Sumptuary Legislation
related: Talmud Study
related: Tkhines
related: Trade
related: Tsene-rene
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Yisra’el Me’ir ha-Kohen
related: Youth Movements
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture
described at: Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture
has abstract: A scholarly institution attached to the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and specializing in Jewish studies, the Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture (Rus., Institut Evreiskoi Proletarskoi Kul’tury; IEPK) was founded in 1929 as a reorganization of the academy’s Chair (Department) of Jewish Culture. The initiative for the creation of the chair had come from high party circles and was supported by UkrNauka, the government department that supervised the work of scholarly institutions in Ukraine in the 1920s and 1930s.
title: Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture
alternative label: Institute for Jewish Proletarian Culture
alternative label: Jewish Proletarian Culture
related: An-ski Ethnographic Expedition and Museum
related: Anticosmopolitan Campaign
related: Archives
related: Evsektsiia
related: Folklore, Ethnography, and Anthropology
related: Jewish Historical and Archaeographic Commission
related: Kiev
related: Liberberg, Yoysef
related: L’viv
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Shapiro, Moyshe
related: Shtif, Nokhem
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Spivak, Elye
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: YIVO
related: Zabara, Nosn

Kielce
described at: Kielce
has abstract: (Yid., Kielts), city in southeastern Poland. Until the end of the eighteenth century, Kielce belonged to the bishops of Kraków, who forbade Jews to settle there. The partitions of Poland brought the city under Russian rule. Although Kielce’s residents maintained contact with Jewish traders in neighboring towns, Jews were not allowed to settle. Nevertheless, beginning in 1833 Jews began to move into Kielce. By 1860, some 31 Jewish families, who formed a branch of the Jewish community of Chęciny, lived in the city. Two years later, Alexander II allowed Jews to settle freely in places previously closed to them, including Kielce. No large influx of Jews into Kielce occurred, however, until some decades later. In 1870, the Jewish population of Kielce numbered 992, though by 1897 it had risen to 6,137 (representing 30.2% of the city’s population).
title: Kielce
related: Łódź
related: Aleksander Hasidic Dynasty
related: Bund
related: Central Committee of Jews in Poland
related: Crafts
related: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Labor Camps
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: Prague

Kloyz
described at: Kloyz
has abstract: The Yiddish term kloyz (pl., kloyzn) is apparently derived from the Latin claustrum or clausum, which refers to a building or closed complex of structures connected to a monastery. The term first appeared in Ashkenazic culture in the sixteenth century and referred to a house where scholars assembled—a place of study intended for mature, adult male scholars. By the second half of the seventeenth century, there were kloyzn in many centers of both Western and Eastern Europe. The term had by then gradually come to refer to a private house of study, existing separately from the institutions of the community and financed by a patron or a wealthy family.
title: Kloyz
alternative label: kloyz
related: Approbation
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Brody
related: Councils
related: Gans, David ben Shelomoh
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: Land of Israel
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Medzhibizh
related: Minsk
related: Musar Movement
related: Opatów
related: Piety
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Sabbath
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zamość

Levi Yitsḥak of Barditshev
described at: Levi Yitshak of Barditshev
has abstract: (ca. 1740–1809), rabbi, Hasidic leader, and Jewish folk hero. Levi Yitsḥak ben Me’ir of Barditshev (Rus., Berdichev; mod. Ukr. Berdychiv) was a major figure within the circle of disciples around Dov Ber, the Magid of Mezritsh, and played a central role in the dissemination and defense of Hasidism in the third generation of the movement’s leadership.
title: Levi Yitsḥak of Barditshev
alternative label: Levi Yitsḥak
alternative label: Levi Yitsḥak ben Me’ir (later of Berdichev)
related: Berdychiv
related: Brest
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Mikulov
related: Misnagdim
related: Pinsk
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Purim
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Shneur Zalman of Liady
related: Ukraine
related: Ya‘akov Yosef of Polnoye
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el

Luts’k
described at: Lutsk
has abstract: A city on the Styr’ River (a tributary of the Pripiat’), Luts’k (Pol., Łuck; Rus., Lutsk) is the administrative center of Ukraine’s Volyn’ oblast. Mentioned in the Ruthenian Chronicles of 1085, from 1320 it belonged to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, from 1569 to 1795 it was a district center of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and from 1796 of the Russian Empire. Between 1921 and 1939 it was the provincial center of Volhynia in independent Poland.
title: Luts’k
alternative label: Lutsk
alternative label: Łuck
related: An-ski Ethnographic Expedition and Museum
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: Karaites
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Kultur-lige
related: Lithuania
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Tarbut
related: Ukraine
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Moldova
described at: Moldova
has abstract: The Romanian name for the historic region between the Carpathian Mountains and the Dniester River, also known by its Russian name, Moldavia. The principality was divided along the Prut River in 1812, when Russia seized the eastern portion, Bessarabia; the western portion forms part of the modern state of Romania [see Moldavia]. Moldova became an independent state in August 1991, succeeding the Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldavia [see Union of Soviet Socialist Republics], which included Bessarabia and Transnistria. The latter region, dominated by a Slavic population, has been under the control of a breakaway government since 1990. (Transnistria is also the name given during World War II to a Ukrainian region to which many Jews, especially from Bucovina and Bessarabia, were deported.)
title: Moldova
alternative label: Moldavia
alternative label: Republic of Moldova
related: Bălţi
related: Bessarabia
related: Bucovina
related: Kishinev
related: Moldavia
related: Romania
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Tighina
related: Transnistria
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Operetta
described at: Operetta
has abstract: Modern Yiddish theater, as conceived by Avrom Goldfadn (1840–1908) in the 1870s, was above all a musical theater, and operetta was doubtless its dominant genre. This musical theater accommodated not only the tastes of the audiences but also the skills of aspiring performers—who, in the early years, joined theatrical troupes on the strength of their singing rather than their acting. As a central element of East European Jewish culture, music suffused everyday life—and Jewish musical culture was highly eclectic: it often appropriated and blended sacred and secular strains, Jewish and non-Jewish elements, and folk and art music. The Yiddish operetta was built on this musical culture and presented it in a new, theatrical form.
title: Operetta
alternative label: operetta
alternative label: operettas
related: Łódź
related: Chernivtsi
related: About this Article (Dance)
related: Galicia
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Kiev
related: L’viv
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Pogroms
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Songs and Songwriters
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Warsaw

Pinsker, Simḥah and Lev
described at: Pinsker Simhah and Lev
has abstract: Secular Jewish figures active in nineteenth-century Russia. Simḥah Pinsker (1801–1864) was an educator and translator of Karaite documents; his son Lev (often Yehudah Leib or Leon; 1821–1891) was a leader of the Ḥibat Tsiyon movement.
title: Pinsker, Simḥah and Lev
alternative label: Leon (Lev) Pinsker
alternative label: Lev (Leo) Pinsker
alternative label: Lev Pinsker
alternative label: Simḥah Pinsker
alternative label: Yehudah Leib (Lev) Pinsker
alternative label: Yehudah Leib Pinsker
related: Firkovich, Avraam Samuilovich
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Karaites
related: Katowice
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Ternopil’
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Hebrew Poetry (Poetry)
described at: Hebrew Poetry
has abstract: Hebrew poetry in Eastern Europe emerged in a direct line from works written at the end of the eighteenth century in German Haskalah centers where Hebrew literature had first taken form. Naftali Herts Wessely, the most prominent Haskalah poet in Germany, exerted a pronounced influence on the genre; his Shire tif’eret (Songs of Praise; first composed in 1789) was a large-scale poetical epic paraphrasing the life of Moses through the time of the Exodus from Egypt, and described the giving of the Torah.
title: Hebrew Poetry (Poetry)
alternative label: Hebrew poet
alternative label: Hebrew poetry
alternative label: poet
alternative label: poetry
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Bat-Miriam, Yokheved
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Braudes, Re’uven Asher
related: Cahan, Ya‘akov
related: Dolitzki, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Fichmann, Ya‘akov
related: Galicia
related: Goldbaum, Meshulam Zalman
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
related: Hame’iri, Avigdor
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kaminer, Yitsḥak
related: Karni, Yehudah
related: Katzenelson, Yitsḥak
related: Kishinev
related: Land of Israel
related: Lebensohn, Avraham Dov
related: Lebensohn, Mikhah Yosef
related: Lenski, Ḥayim
related: Lerner, Ya‘akov
related: Letteris, Me’ir
related: Levin, Yehudah Leib (poet)
related: Lithuania
related: Love
related: Lusternik, Malki’el
related: Mane, Mordekhai Tsevi
related: Mapu, Avraham
related: Parody
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Pomerantz, Berl
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shapiro, Konstantin Abba
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Shimonovitz, David
related: Shneour, Zalman
related: Shoham, Matityahu
related: Shtetl
related: Smolenskin, Perets
related: Steinberg, Ya‘akov
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Tuwim, Julian
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Shtif, Nokhem
described at: Shtif Nokhem
has abstract: (1879–1933), linguist, literary historian, and political activist. Born in Rovno (mod. Rivne) to a prosperous family, Nokhem Shtif received both a Jewish and a secular education. Even as a student at a Russian secondary school and, later, at Kiev Polytechnic University (where he was enrolled between 1899 and 1903), he continued studying religious and modern Hebrew literature. He was the cofounder of a Zionist student group, Molodoi Izrail’ (Young Israel), and also participated in the 1902 Minsk Zionist Conference.
title: Shtif, Nokhem
alternative label: Nokhem Shtif
related: Bal-Makhshoves
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Bund
related: Dik, Ayzik Meyer
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Ettinger, Shloyme
related: Folkists
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Gottlober, Avraham Ber
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture
related: Kalmanovitch, Zelig
related: Kaunas
related: Kiev
related: Kletskin, Boris Arkadevich
related: Liberberg, Yoysef
related: Linetski, Yitskhok Yoyel
related: Minsk
related: Pogroms
related: Rivne
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Vitsyebsk
related: Weinreich, Max
related: YIVO
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Yidishe Shprakh, Di
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Slobodka, Yeshiva of
described at: Slobodka Yeshiva of
has abstract: In about the year 1881, Natan Tsevi Finkel founded a novel type of yeshiva in Slobodka, a suburb of Kovno. This yeshiva quickly became well known, and after the closing of the Volozhin yeshiva in 1892, it acquired an even more prominent role among Lithuanian yeshivas. Finkel was a student of Yisra’el Salanter and an adherent of the Musar movement. This movement held that the study of Talmud had to be accompanied by the systematic study of ethics, and that the goal of yeshiva study was not only to produce trained Talmudists but also to turn out highly ethical young men. The approach appealed to many young people who were sensitive to the criticism of maskilim and other modernists who claimed that study in yeshivas meant investing one’s time in hair-splitting dialectics.
title: Slobodka, Yeshiva of
alternative label: Slobodka
alternative label: Slobodka yeshiva
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kaunas
related: Lipkin, Yisra’el ben Ze’ev Volf
related: Musar Movement
related: Spektor, Yitsḥak Elḥanan
related: Talmud Study
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Society for the Settlement of Jewish Toilers on the Land
described at: Society for the Settlement of Jewish Toilers on the Land
has abstract: (Vsesoiuznoe Obshchestvo po Zemel’nomu Ustroistvu Trudiashchikhsia Evreev v SSSR [All-Union Association for the Agricultural Settlement of Jewish Workers in the USSR], best known by its abbreviation OZET; Yid., GEZERD). Established in January 1925 in Moscow, OZET was headed by Iurii Larin (1882–1932) and his deputy Abram Bragin (1893–?). According to OZET’s charter, membership was open to individuals over 18 provided they had no criminal record as well as to groups with the exception of religious associations and political parties (e.g., He-Ḥaluts, Po‘ale Tsiyon). Initially, OZET’s main assignments were to publicize inside and outside the USSR the plans of Komitet po Zemel’nomu Ustroistvu Evreev (the State Committee for Settling Jews on the Land; KOMZET) to foster Jewish agriculture, and to collect funds for implementing those plans.
title: Society for the Settlement of Jewish Toilers on the Land
alternative label: OZET
alternative label: Society for Settlement of Jewish Toilers on the Land
alternative label: settle Jews on the land
related: Agriculture
related: Assimilation
related: Birobidzhan
related: Bragin, Abram Grigor’evich
related: Dimanshtein, Semen Markovich
related: Evsektsiia
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: Larin, Iurii Aleksandrovich
related: Moscow
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Tribuna
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Trotsky, Leon
described at: Trotsky Leon
has abstract: (1879–1940), revolutionary and central figure in Soviet and world communism. Leon Trotsky, originally Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was born in Kherson province, and was the son of a well-to-do tenant farmer who later became a major landowner. Trotsky received his earliest education in a heder, though he spent just several months there. After attending elementary school in Odessa, he graduated from secondary school in Nikolaev in 1896.
title: Trotsky, Leon
alternative label: Leon Trotsky
alternative label: Lev Trotsky
alternative label: Trotsky
related: Assimilation
related: Brest
related: Bund
related: Communism
related: Heder
related: Kamenev, Iurii
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zinov’ev, Grigorii Evseevich
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Vilner Trupe
described at: Vilner Trupe
has abstract: (Vilna Troupe), celebrated and critically acclaimed Polish Yiddish theater company. Soon after the Germans occupied Vilna in 1915, they lifted tsarist restrictions against staging Yiddish theater. With the support of local Jewish communal leaders and some German officers of Jewish origin, a group of young actors, primarily amateurs but including several professional performers from the Russian stage, decided to establish a purely literary Yiddish company. Only professional Yiddish actors could apply for a permit to perform Yiddish theater, so the group invited Matisyohu Kovalski (Koval; 1880–1936), apparently the only professional Yiddish actor then in Vilna, to join them.
title: Vilner Trupe
alternative label: Vilna Troupe
related: Łódź
related: Arnshteyn, Mark
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Berlewi, Henryk
related: Dybbuk, The
related: Dymov, Osip
related: Galicia
related: Golem Legend
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: Kaunas
related: Morevski, Avrom
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Nomberg, Hersh Dovid
related: Ostropolyer, Hershele
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Pinski, Dovid
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Romania
related: Rotbaum, Jakub
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtern, Yisroel
related: Shternberg, Yankev
related: Stage Design
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Vayter, A.
related: Warsaw
related: Weichert, Michał
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zeitlin Family

Blood Libels and Host Desecration Accusations
described at: Blood Libels and Host Desecration Accusations
has abstract: The blood libel was an accusation of Jewish “ritual murder,” which held that Jews kidnapped and murdered innocent Christians (particularly young boys) in order to make use of the blood of their victims for purposes of Jewish religious ritual. It had important historical and thematic connections to the accusation that Jews bought or stole consecrated Eucharist wafers (Hosts) in order to pierce them with sharp objects, thereby both desecrating them and subjecting them to torture. Both forms of anti-Jewish discourse derived ultimately from medieval Christian convictions that salvation could be obtained only through the blood of Christ.
title: Blood Libels and Host Desecration Accusations
alternative label: Blood libel
alternative label: blood libel
alternative label: blood libel accusation
alternative label: blood libel trials
alternative label: blood libels
alternative label: profanation of the Host
alternative label: ritual murder
related: Beilis, Mendel
related: Conversion
related: Councils
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Frankism
related: Hilsner Affair
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi
related: Khvol’son, Daniil Avraamovich
related: Kielce
related: Kiev
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Levinzon, Yitsḥak Ber
related: Lithuania
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Tiszaeszlár Blood Libel
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw
related: Wrocław
related: Zhytomyr

Circumcision
described at: Circumcision
has abstract: Popular customs and practices regarding circumcision (Yid., bris; Heb., berit milah) seem to have been fairly consistent within the East European Jewish community, both Hasidic and Misnagdic, although there were some regional variations as to details. Through out the days leading up to the bris, care was taken to prevent the demon Lilith from taking the child: schoolboys were brought to recite the Shema‘ prayer every night (for which they were rewarded with sweets), and amulets were placed in the room with the child. The night before the ceremony was to take place, a special vigil (vakhtnakht) was kept. Candles were lit throughout the house. After a special meal (se‘udah), the men present recited psalms and studied Torah until midnight. The ritual circumciser (mohel) who was to perform the ceremony would also be present and would sometimes leave his circumcision knife under the mother’s pillow. All would recite the Shema‘ before leaving.
title: Circumcision
alternative label: circumcision
alternative label: circumcisions

Dik, Ayzik Meyer
described at: Dik Ayzik Meyer
has abstract: (1807/14?–1893), the first professional and best-selling Yiddish author. Born in Vilna, Ayzik Meyer Dik (generally known by his pseudonym Amad) received a traditional Jewish education and married young, settling in the Lithuanian town of Zupran where he lived a rowdy life. (Although probably born in 1807, Dik himself gave the year 1814, perhaps to avoid military conscription.) When his first wife died childless, he married the daughter of a wealthy Hasid from Nesvizh (Nezyvius) who supported the couple despite Dik’s aversion to Hasidism. Dik considered both Hasidism and lack of Western education to be the most destructive influences on the advancement of the Jews of Eastern Europe.
title: Dik, Ayzik Meyer
alternative label: Ayzik Meyer Dik
related: Dress
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Parody
related: Romm Family
related: Satire
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Emes, Der
described at: Emes Der
has abstract: Yiddish social and political newspaper published from 8 March 1918 until 14 September 1938, first in Petrograd and then in Moscow. Known as Di varhayt (The Truth) until 7 August 1918, Der emes (The Truth) was the leading Yiddish newspaper in the Soviet Union in its day. It was at first the organ of the Jewish SDs (Social Democrats), Bolsheviks, and Leftist SRs (Socialist Revolutionaries); from 2 June 1918 of the Bolsheviks only. From 7 November 1920 to 9 March 1930 it was the organ of the Evsektsiia (the Jewish Section of the Russian Communist Party).
title: Emes, Der
alternative label: Der emes
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Bund
related: Dimanshtein, Semen Markovich
related: Dobrushin, Yekhezkl
related: Evsektsiia
related: Fefer, Itsik
related: Halkin, Shmuel
related: Kushnirov, Arn
related: Kvitko, Leyb
related: Litvakov, Moyshe
related: Markish, Perets
related: Moscow
related: Oyslender, Nokhem

Fefer, Itsik
described at: Fefer Itsik
has abstract: (1900–1952), Yiddish poet. Born in Shpola, Ukraine, Itsik Fefer was 12 years old when he began to work at a printing shop. In 1917 he joined the Bund and became a trade union activist. A Communist from 1919, he served in the Red Army. He began writing poems in 1918, and in 1922 joined Vidervuks (New Growth) in Kiev, a group of young Yiddish literati whose mentor was Dovid Hofshteyn. That same year, the appearance of Fefer’s small collection Shpener (Splinters) established him as a rising literary star. His poetry amalgamated the Kultur-lige poets’ revolutionary romanticism with the propagandist objectives of the workers’ movement.
title: Fefer, Itsik
alternative label: Itsik Fefer
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Birobidzhan
related: Bund
related: Der Nister
related: Hofshteyn, Dovid
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Kaganovich, Lazar’ Moiseevich
related: Kiev
related: Kultur-lige
related: Levitan, Isaak Il’ich
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtetl
related: Sverdlov, Iakov Mikhailovich
related: Ukraine
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Fichmann, Ya‘akov
described at: Fichmann Yaakov
has abstract: (1881–1958), Hebrew poet, critic, and editor. Born in Beltsy (Bălți), Bessarabia, Ya‘akov Fichmann received a traditional and secular education, and was well versed in Hebrew maskilic writing as well as Yiddish, Russian, and German literature. The rural landscape of his childhood village remained an integral part of his imagination for the rest of his life.
title: Fichmann, Ya‘akov
alternative label: Ya‘akov Fichman
alternative label: Ya‘akov Fichmann
related: Bălţi
related: Bessarabia
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: About this Article (Children’s Literature)
related: Odessa
related: Hebrew Poetry (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Stybel
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Warsaw

Grünbaum, Yitsḥak
described at: Grunbaum Yitshak
has abstract: (1879–1970), Polish Jewish political leader and journalist. Yitsḥak Grünbaum was born in Warsaw, received a traditional Jewish education, and graduated from a high school in Płońsk. He became an active Zionist during his years in high school. He opposed Herzl’s Uganda plan, and demanded that Zionists pay greater attention to the day-to-day needs of Diaspora Jewry and commit themselves to the struggle for civil and national rights in the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires. This view, known as Gegenwartsarbeit (work for the present), was incorporated in the Russian Zionist Federation’s Helsingfors Program (1906), of which Grünbaum was a major architect. He served as secretary-general of the Russian Zionist Federation (1908–1910), deputy editor of the World Zionist Organization’s Hebrew weekly, Ha-‘Olam (1909–1914), and editor of the Zionist daily Petrograder togblat (1914).
title: Grünbaum, Yitsḥak
alternative label: Yitsḥak Grünbaum
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Reich, Leon
related: Tarbut
related: Thon, Ozjasz
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Homel’
described at: Homel
has abstract: City in southeastern Belarus on the right bank of the Sozh River. The origins of Jewish settlement in Homel’ (Rus., Gomel’; sometimes Homiyah in Jewish sources) are obscure but date after the annexation of the town to Lithuania in 1537. Contemporary chroniclers first described the town in relation to the Khmel’nyts’kyi uprising in 1648, when many wealthy Jews from Ukraine fled to Homel’ for safety. The head of the fortified town allowed peasant rioters to massacre a large number of Jews. Poles reasserted their authority in Homel’ in 1665, and in 1765 the community reported 685 Jewish families.
title: Homel’
alternative label: Gomel
alternative label: Homel
related: Belarus
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Bund
related: Crafts
related: Evsektsiia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: Heder
related: Kishinev
related: Lithuania
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Trade
related: Ukraine
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Ivano-Frankivs’k
described at: Ivano-Frankivsk
has abstract: (Formerly Stanyslaviv; Pol., Stanisławów; Ger., Stanislau; Rus., Stanislav), city in Ukraine. Jews first settled in Stanisławów just after its establishment in 1654; provisions for the community’s autonomy were guaranteed by the town’s owner in 1662. By 1736, Jews constituted 1,470 of the town’s 3,321 inhabitants, working primarily as leaseholders, artisans, and merchants, the latter in competition with local Armenians throughout the Polish period. In 1772, the city was incorporated into the new province of Galicia in the Austrian Empire.
title: Ivano-Frankivs’k
alternative label: Ekaterinoslav
alternative label: Stanisławów
related: Braude, Markus
related: Charity
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Horowitz Family
related: Ukraine
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi
described at: Kamianets-Podilskyi
has abstract: (Pol., Kamieniec Podolski; Rus., Kamenets Podol’skii), city on the Smotrich River (a tributary of the Dniester) and district center of the Khmel’nyts’kyi region of Ukraine. In the 1430s the town passed from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to Poland; from 1569 to 1792 it was the center of the Podolia province of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, though in 1672–1699 it was the center of the Kamenets province of the Ottoman Empire. From 1793 it was the center of the Podolian region of the Russian Empire, and from 1920 of the Soviet Union.
title: Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi
alternative label: Kamenets
alternative label: Kamenets Podolski
alternative label: Kamenets Podol’skii
alternative label: Kamenets-Podolski
alternative label: Kamieniec
alternative label: Kamieniec Podolski
alternative label: Kamieniec–Podolski
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Birobidzhan
related: Bund
related: Crimea
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Frankism
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Gottlober, Avraham Ber
related: Guilds
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kultur-lige
related: Lithuania
related: ORT
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Russian Civil War
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Kerem Ḥemed
described at: Kerem Hemed
has abstract: Hebrew-language publication, issued between 1833 and 1843, and again in 1854 and 1856. A Haskalah periodical, Kerem ḥemed (Vineyard of Delight) was intended to be issued annually. Shemu’el Leib Goldenberg (1807–1847) edited the first seven issues, publishing the first two in Vienna and the next five in Prague. Shneur Sachs (1815–1892) edited the final two, printing them in Berlin after a long respite, and renaming the periodical Kerem ḥemed: Neta‘ ḥadash (Vineyard of Delight: New Seedling).
title: Kerem Ḥemed
alternative label: Kerem ḥemed
related: Erter, Yitsḥak
related: Galicia
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Krochmal, Naḥman
related: Lithuania
related: Perl, Yosef
related: Prague
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: About this Article (Russia)

Kletskin, Boris Arkadevich
described at: Kletskin Boris Arkadevich
has abstract: (1875–1937), Yiddish publisher. Born in Horodishche (now in Belarus), Boris Kletskin and his family moved to Vilna, the city with which his name would thereafter be associated. An only child of wealthy parents, he received a traditional religious education and was also tutored in secular subjects.
title: Kletskin, Boris Arkadevich
alternative label: B. Kletskin
alternative label: Boris Kletskin
alternative label: Kletskin
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Belarus
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Borokhov, Ber
related: Bund
related: Eynhorn, Dovid
related: Filologishe Shriftn
related: Folks-tsaytung
related: Hirshbeyn, Perets
related: Kacyzne, Alter-Sholem
related: Kalmanovitch, Zelig
related: Literarishe Bleter
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Nomberg, Hersh Dovid
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Printing and Publishing after 1800 (Printing and Publishing)
related: Ravitch, Melech
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: Reyzen, Zalmen
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtif, Nokhem
related: Singer, Isaac Bashevis
related: Varshavski, Oyzer
related: Vayter, A.
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: YIVO
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Yudishe Velt, Di

Parody
described at: Parody
has abstract: With the onset of the modern period, parody became a quantitatively significant component within the genre of Jewish satire. The genre of parody was used to comment on a wide variety of themes connected to Jewish life, including Hasidism, socialism, Zionism, and socioeconomic issues. The majority of Hebrew and Yiddish parodies produced in Eastern Europe were imitative, in that they borrowed structures and language from well-known texts in order to comment on or mock unrelated topics, and did not attack the original, structural works. One of the earliest known parodies to appear in Eastern Europe was the Sefer ha-kundes (Book of the Prankster; 1824), a comic manual for pranksters based on the style of the Shulḥan ‘arukh. Published in Vilna, and commenting on the number of young pranksters there, this book was banned by the administrators of Vilna’s Jewish community, who collected all known copies and burned them, leaving only a small number to survive.
title: Parody
alternative label: parodies
alternative label: parody
related: Ashkenaz
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Dik, Ayzik Meyer
related: Evsektsiia
related: Folk Songs
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Haynt
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: Kaminer, Yitsḥak
related: Levinzon, Yitsḥak Ber
related: L’viv
related: Minsk
related: Moment, Der
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Perl, Yosef
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Satire
related: Shaḥar, Ha-
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Songs and Songwriters
related: Trade
related: Tunkel, Yoysef
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Zhytomyr
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Prostějov
described at: Prostejov
has abstract: (Ger., Prossnitz), manufacturing town in the fertile Hána region of Moravia, in today’s Czech Republic. Known as Jerusalem of the Hána, the Prostějov Jewish community, which was founded in the second half of the fifteenth century by Jews who had been expelled from Olomouc (Olmutz) in 1454, remained the second largest community in Moravia until the second half of the nineteenth century, rivaled only by Mikulov (Nikolsburg).
title: Prostějov
alternative label: Prossnitz
alternative label: Prostĕjov
related: Ashkenazi, Gershon
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brno
related: Czech Republic
related: Frankism
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Krochmal, Menaḥem Mendel ben Avraham
related: Mikulov
related: Orthodoxy
related: Prossnitz, Yehudah Leib ben Ya‘akov Holleschau
related: Reform, Religious
related: Sabbatianism
related: Schwab, Löw
related: Steinschneider, Moritz
related: Subcarpathian Rus’

Radom
described at: Radom
has abstract: City in the Mazovia province of southeast Poland, established in about 1350. A reference to a “Jewish” street in the town comes from documents dated 1567. In 1724, a Jew was accused of blasphemy and burned at the stake, and Radom’s Catholic population subsequently obtained the privilege de non tolerandis Judaeis from the king, forbidding Jewish residence in the city. For breaking this prohibition, a royal court in 1746 fined Radom’s Jews 1,000 grzywien and ordered their complete expulsion. Jews soon managed to return, however, and established a community. In 1789 the town’s Catholic residents agreed to further Jewish settlement in exchange for a monopoly on trade in salt. At the time, perhaps 100 Jews resided in Radom, with approximately 300 others in nearby villages.
title: Radom
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Bund
related: Crafts
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Kielce
related: Mohilewer, Shemu’el
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Trade
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Shneour, Zalman
described at: Shneour Zalman
has abstract: (1886–1959), Hebrew and Yiddish poet and novelist. A scion of the Shneerson dynasty that has led the Lubavitch Hasidic movement since its inception, Zalman (Zalkind) Shneour was born to a middle-class, somewhat traditional family in the Belorussian town of Shklov, a center of Jewish learning, of Lubavitch Hasidism, and of the Haskalah. His childhood (which he colorfully evoked in his novella cycle Shklover yidn [Jews of Shklov; 1929]) was not a happy one. A recipient of a traditional heder education with the addition of some tutoring in modern secular studies (including Russian and modern Hebrew), Shneour became, from a very early age, an avid reader of Hebrew literature. This was definitely not encouraged by his parents, who wished to see him turn his attention to a practical career in commerce.
title: Shneour, Zalman
alternative label: Zalman Shneour
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Heder
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Sabbath
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shklov
related: Shneur Zalman of Liady
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtetl
related: Sokolow, Naḥum
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Tushiyah
related: Warsaw
related: Zeman, Ha-

Talmud Study
described at: Talmud Study
has abstract: The Talmud was a central focus of the education of males from the beginning of Jewish settlement in Europe. Boys generally began studying Talmud somewhere between the ages of 8 and 10 (occasionally earlier), after completing an elementary course in the study of the Torah, generally lasting three years. While most students completed their studies around the age of 14, the most promising students, if they had sufficient financial wherewithal, would go on to study in a yeshiva, sometimes for an extended period. As Jews began to move east in large numbers (starting at the end of the fifteenth century and extending into the early sixteenth), they brought with them the same commitment to the study of the Talmud; it was the central focus of all educational efforts, from the most elementary to the most advanced.
title: Talmud Study
alternative label: Talmud study
alternative label: study of Talmud
narrower: Opposition to Pilpul
narrower: Pilpul in Eastern Europe
narrower: Talmud Study after 1800
related: Ashkenaz
related: Babad, Yosef
related: Belarus
related: Berlin, Naftali Tsevi Yehudah
related: Brest
related: Efrayim Shelomoh ben Aharon of Luntshits
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Galicia
related: Gintsburg, Aryeh Leib ben Asher
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: Hannover, Natan Note
related: Heder
related: Heller, Aryeh Leib ha-Kohen
related: Horowitz Family
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: Karelits, Avraham Yesha‘yahu
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Landau, Yeḥezkel ben Yehudah
related: Lithuania
related: Lorbeerbaum, Ya‘akov ben Ya‘akov Mosheh of Lissa
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Luria, Shelomoh ben Yeḥi’el
related: Minsk
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Pollak, Ya‘akov ben Yosef
related: Ponevezh, Yeshiva of
related: Poznań
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
related: Rabinovich, Yitsḥak Ya‘akov
related: Riddles
related: Shakhnah, Shalom
related: Shkop, Shim‘on Yehudah
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Slobodka, Yeshiva of
related: Soloveichik Family
related: Telz, Yeshiva of
related: Vilnius
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Weizmann, Chaim
described at: Weizmann Chaim
has abstract: (1874–1952), chemist, president of the World Zionist Organization, and first president of the State of Israel. Born in Motol, Russia, Chaim Weizmann received a typical Jewish education from a private tutor (melamed) and later went to high school in nearby Pinsk. On graduation he went to university in Darmstadt and Berlin, receiving a doctorate from the University of Fribourg, in Switzerland, in 1898. Weizmann was initially a practical and cultural Zionist. At the Eighth Zionist Congress in 1907, however, he proclaimed a new position, known as Synthetic Zionism, a form followed in later years by many other East European Zionists. This new approach meant a pragmatic attitude toward the three classic trends in Zionist thought—political, spiritual, and practical—aiming to integrate all three while giving preference to the one or the other, according to circumstances. Cultural activities were particularly dear to Weizmann: in 1913, 1918, and 1925 he participated in steps that ultimately brought about the establishment of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and in the 1930s he initiated a scientific institute that later became the Weizmann Institute of Science in Reḥovot, Israel. Nevertheless, from 1917 on, Weizmann also embraced political Zionism.
title: Weizmann, Chaim
alternative label: Chaim Weizmann
related: Pinsk
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Autobiography and Memoir
described at: Autobiography and Memoir
has abstract: The general scholarly consensus has, until recently, held that autobiography is essentially foreign to the communal orientation of traditional Jewish literature and mentality. According to this school of thought, Jewish autobiography is viewed as an exclusively modern phenomenon deriving from those whose attachments to Jewish tradition have been attenuated or severed. The great majority of Jewish autobiographies of pre-Rousseauian origin are indeed best viewed as texts that include autobiographical elements, rather than as autobiography proper. A discussion of Jewish autobiographies must focus largely upon Hebrew and Yiddish texts because those written by East European Jews in German and the Slavic languages belong, with rare exceptions, more comfortably to the literary environment of those languages, rather than to the sphere of Jewish literature. The great exception is the first Rousseau-style autobiography of an East European Jew, Salomon Maimon, which was written in German. Maimon, however, was a trailblazer and, in his day, egregious in almost every respect; moreover, at the time in which he composed his autobiography, any form of secular literature in Hebrew, let alone Yiddish, was virtually nonexistent.
title: Autobiography and Memoir
alternative label: Memoirs
alternative label: autobiographical
alternative label: autobiographies
alternative label: autobiography
alternative label: memoir
alternative label: memoirs
narrower: Early Modern Autobiographical Texts
narrower: Postwar Period
narrower: The Early Twentieth Century
narrower: The Modern Period
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Agnon, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Assimilation
related: Babel, Isaac
related: Ber of Bolechów
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Buchach
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Childhood
related: Conversion
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Ehrenburg, Ilya Grigor’evich
related: Erik, Maks
related: Erlich, Henryk
related: Feierberg, Mordekhai Ze’ev
related: Gender
related: Gintsburg, Mordekhai Aharon
related: Gnessin, Uri Nisan
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Gottlober, Avraham Ber
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: Hannover, Natan Note
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Heder
related: Heller, Yom Tov Lipmann
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Historiography)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Kotik, Yekhezkl
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Lithuania
related: L’viv
related: Maimon, Salomon
related: Mandel’shtam Osip Emil’evich
related: Markish, Perets
related: Memory
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Naḥman of Bratslav
related: Natan Sternhartz of Nemirov
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Purim
related: Ravitch, Melech
related: Reform, Religious
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shtetl
related: Singer, Isaac Bashevis
related: Trunk, Yekhiel Yeshaye
related: Tsharni, Daniel
related: Warsaw
related: Wassercug, Mosheh
related: Wengeroff, Pauline
related: YIVO
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Yizker-bikher

Betar
described at: Betar
has abstract: Hebrew acronym for Berit Yosef Trumpeldor (Joseph Trumpeldor Alliance), a youth movement founded in Riga in 1923 by Aharon Propes. Conceived as a small-scale local organization, during its early years Betar’s ideological platform was somewhat vague, concerned chiefly with reviving the idea of the Jewish legions that had operated during World War I.
title: Betar
related: Bessarabia
related: Bucovina
related: Gdańsk
related: Jabotinsky, Vladimir
related: Latvia
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Revisionist Zionists
related: Riga
related: Romania
related: Trumpeldor, Yosef
related: Warsaw
related: World War I

Chełm
described at: Chełm
has abstract: Former Polish royal town, now in the province of Lublin. According to local tradition, the Jews of Chełm (Yid., Khelem) were granted their first privilege by King Władisław Jagiełło, though tombstones once thought to be from the fifteenth century are now considered of a later date. Hence, while earlier settlement is very probable, a Jewish community is known to have been in Chełm from the beginning of the sixteenth century; a synagogue functioned in 1580.
title: Chełm
related: Bund
related: Charity
related: Gdańsk
related: Golem Legend
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Schiper, Ignacy
related: Singer, Isaac Bashevis
related: Tombstones
related: Wise Men of Chelm
related: Wrocław
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Czernowitz Conference
described at: Czernowitz Conference
has abstract: The first international conference in support of the Yiddish language. An international conference on Yiddish language and its role in Jewish life was convened from 30 August to 4 September 1908 in Czernowitz, then capital of the Austrian crown province of Bukowina (now Chernivtsi in Ukraine). (Czernowitz was the German form of the city’s name used at that time; the Yiddish Tshernovits is increasingly used in scholarly literature on the conference.) Occurring at a time when more than a dozen other languages on three continents were also organizing their own “first” conferences (usually under non- or even antigovernmental auspices), the Czernowitz Conference was the brainchild of Nathan Birnbaum (1864–1937), a prolific, innovative, and peripatetic Jewish educator, essayist, philosopher, politician, and social organizer.
title: Czernowitz Conference
alternative label: Czernowitz
alternative label: Czernowitz Language Conference
alternative label: Czernowitz Yiddish Language Conference
alternative label: Czernowitz Yiddish language conference
alternative label: Czernowitz language conference
alternative label: Yiddishist Congress
alternative label: conference at Czernowitz
alternative label: language conference
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Birnbaum, Nathan
related: Bucovina
related: Bund
related: Chernivtsi
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Language)
related: Lifshits, Khaye Malke
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: Nomberg, Hersh Dovid
related: Orthodoxy
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Pinski, Dovid
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: TSYSHO
related: Ukraine
related: YIVO
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Dobrushin, Yekhezkl
described at: Dobrushin Yekhezkl
has abstract: (1883–1953), Soviet Yiddish literary author, critic, and scholar. Born in a village in Chernigov guberniia, Ukraine, to the family of a timber merchant, Yekhezkl Dobrushin received a private Jewish and Russian education at home. Between 1902 and 1909, he lived in Paris, where he studied law at the Sorbonne and was active in the socialist Zionist movement. After recovering from an illness that had confined him to bed for several years, he published his first collection of poetry and short plays, Benkende neshomes (Longing Souls) in 1912; other publications soon followed. In 1916, Dobrushin settled in Kiev and his articles and poetry appeared in various Hebrew and Yiddish periodicals. During the civil war, he edited and contributed to the publications of the Kultur-lige. In 1920, he moved to Moscow, where he coedited the magazine Shtrom and other Soviet Yiddish periodicals.
title: Dobrushin, Yekhezkl
alternative label: Yekhezkl Dobrushin
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Crimea
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Kiev
related: Kultur-lige
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Moscow
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Gnessin, Uri Nisan
described at: Gnessin Uri Nisan
has abstract: (1879–1913), Hebrew and Yiddish writer and translator. Born in Starodub, Ukraine, Uri Gnessin belonged to a generation of Hebrew writers who disagreed with the criticism of traditional Judaism by Haskalah writers. When Gnessin was nine years old, his family moved to Pochep, where his father served as the town’s rabbi (both Gnessin’s father and grandfather were Hasidic rabbis). Gnessin was a brilliant student, teaching himself Russian, French, German, and Latin as well as philosophy, history, and other nonreligious disciplines. At the Pochep yeshiva, he formed a friendship with Yosef Ḥayim Brenner, and together they edited a journal in which Gnessin published his first poems and feuilletons. At the age of 14, he was already writing reports from Pochep for the Hebrew daily Ha-Melits.
title: Gnessin, Uri Nisan
alternative label: Uri Nisan Gnessin
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Dor, Ha-
related: Goldberg, Leah
related: Haskalah
related: Kiev
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Nomberg, Hersh Dovid
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Sokolow, Naḥum
related: Spektor, Mordkhe
related: Yiddish Theater (Theater)
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Tushiyah
related: Ukraine
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zeman, Ha-

Horowitz Family
described at: Horowitz Family
has abstract: One of the largest and most prominent Ashkenazic families that has thrived since the fifteenth century. The Horowitz family is made up of Levites who took their name from the small town of Horovice in Bohemia; they dominated the Prague community in the sixteenth century and formed marriage alliances with other prestigious families. The Horowitz family preserved a tradition claiming that its roots went back to the so-called Golden Age of Jewish culture in medieval Spain; the name of Rabbi Zeraḥyah ha-Levi Gerondi (ca. 1115–1186) was sometimes specifically mentioned. They reached Eastern Europe after the expulsion from Spain, and produced numerous rabbis and leaders and, later, writers of the Enlightenment, scholars, musicians, and scientists. Karl Marx was one of its descendants.
title: Horowitz Family
alternative label: Avraham Horowitz
alternative label: Avraham ben Shabetai Sheftel Horowitz
alternative label: Horowitz
alternative label: Horowitz family
alternative label: Shabetai Sheftel ben Akiva Horowitz
alternative label: Shabetai Sheftel ben Yesha‘yahu Horowitz
alternative label: Yesha‘yahu Horowitz
alternative label: Yesha‘yahu ben Avraham Horowitz
alternative label: Yesha‘yahu ha-Levi Horowitz
alternative label: Yesh‘ayahu ben Avraham Horowitz
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Dubno
related: Epstein, Yeḥi’el Mikhl
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Land of Israel
related: L’viv
related: Ostrog
related: Piety
related: Poznań
related: Prague

Nasz Przegląd
described at: Nasz Przeglad
has abstract: Polish-language Zionist daily published in Warsaw. Nasz Przegląd (Our Review) published a total of 8,962 issues between March 1923 and September 1939, with circulation estimates varying from 20,000 to 50,000. The paper’s key executives included Saul Wagman, Daniel Rosencwajg, Jakub Appenszlak, and Samuel Hirschhorn.
title: Nasz Przegląd
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Appenszlak, Jakub
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Assimilation
related: Bałaban, Majer
related: Braun, Mieczysław
related: Folkists
related: Frishman, David
related: Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
related: Grünbaum, Yitsḥak
related: Hirschhorn, Samuel
related: Jabotinsky, Vladimir
related: Korczak, Janusz
related: Medem Sanatorium
related: Mieses, Matthias
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Przytyk Pogrom
related: Schorr, Mojżesz
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Singer, Bernard
related: Singer, Israel Joshua
related: Szymel, Maurycy
related: Warsaw
related: YIVO
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Nomberg, Hersh Dovid
described at: Nomberg Hersh Dovid
has abstract: (1876–1927), Hebrew and Yiddish essayist and short-story writer; political and social activist. Born in Mszczonów and raised in a strict Hasidic milieu, Hersh Dovid Nomberg moved to Warsaw at age 21 to gain a secular education; he settled there with the help of a socialist organization. Nomberg taught himself Russian, Polish, and German and experienced a philosophical crisis as a result of his encounter with Haskalah and European literature. Convinced that Orthodoxy was outmoded, he chose a bohemian lifestyle and left his wife and young son.
title: Nomberg, Hersh Dovid
alternative label: Hersh Dovid Nomberg
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Czernowitz Conference
related: Dor, Ha-
related: Folkists
related: Fraynd, Der
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Haynt
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Moment, Der
related: Nasz Przegląd
related: Orthodoxy
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: Reyzen, Zalmen
related: Riga
related: Criticism and Scholarship (Theater)
related: TSYSHO
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Yud, Der

Russian Literature
described at: Russian Literature
has abstract: Like secular Jewish literature, Russian literature invented itself relatively late. The eighteenth-century aristocrats who sought to create a national literature in Russian faced language problems (they spoke, by preference, French) and the necessity of imitating European models. The Russian apprenticeship, like the Jewish one a century later, ended quickly and permanently. By the early nineteenth century, Russian pupils had turned into masters whose works, no longer derivative, resonated across Europe.
title: Russian Literature
alternative label: Russian Jewish literature
alternative label: Russian literature
narrower: APPENDIX: RUSSIAN WRITERS
narrower: Attitudes toward Jews in Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature
narrower: Dissidence, Renewal, and Emigration in Late Soviet Jewish Writing
narrower: Early Soviet Period
narrower: From the 1930s to the Death of Stalin
narrower: Post-Soviet Jewish Literatures
narrower: Russian Jewish Writing from the Late Nineteenth to the Early Twentieth Century
narrower: Writers with Roots in the Early Twentieth Century
related: Aizman, David Iakovlevich
related: Anticosmopolitan Campaign
related: Assimilation
related: Babel, Isaac
related: Babi Yar
related: Bagritskii, Eduard Georgievich
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Black Book
related: Bogrov, Grigorii Isaakovich
related: Brafman, Iakov Aleksandrovich
related: Brik, Liliia Iur’evna and Osip Maksimovich
related: Brodsky, Joseph
related: Brushtein, Aleksandra Iakovlevna
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Chernyi, Sasha
related: Conversion
related: Daniel’, Iulii Markovich
related: Doctors’ Plot
related: Ehrenburg, Ilya Grigor’evich
related: Estonia
related: Frug, Shimen Shmuel
related: Galich, Aleksandr
related: Gershenzon, Mikhail Osipovich
related: Ginzburg, Aleksandr Il’ich
related: Ginzburg, Evgeniia Semenovna
related: Gorenshtein, Fridrikh Naumovich
related: Grossman, Vasilii Semenovich
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Iampol’skii, Boris Samoilovich
related: Il’f, Il’ia Arnol’dovich
related: Iushkevich, Semen Solomonovich
related: Jabotinsky, Vladimir
related: Jakobson, Roman Osipovich
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Kiev
related: Levanda, Lev Osipovich
related: Levin, Doyvber
related: Lipkin, Semen Izrailevich
related: Lissitzky, El
related: Russian Criticism and Scholarship (Literary Criticism and Scholarship)
related: Mandel’shtam, Nadezhda Iakovlevna
related: Mandel’shtam Osip Emil’evich
related: Markish, Perets
related: Markish, Shimon
related: Marshak, Samuil Iakovlevich
related: Memory
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Military Service in Russia
related: Minskii, Nikolai Maksimovich
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich
related: Pasternak, Leonid
related: Pogroms
related: Prague
related: Rabinovich, Osip Aronovich
related: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl
related: Razsvet
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Rybakov, Anatolii Naumovich
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Samizdat

Tuwim, Julian
described at: Tuwim Julian
has abstract: (1894–1953), poet, satirist, translator, and editor. Born in Łódź into an assimilated family, Julian Tuwim was the grandson of Leon Krukowski, the publisher of Dziennik Łódzki. In 1916, Tuwim moved to Warsaw, where he studied law and philosophy. One of the most popular Polish interwar poets, he belonged both to the innovative group Skamander, which helped revitalize Polish poetry after 1918, and to the prestigious literary circle around the journal Wiadomości Literackie. Successfully combining intellectual and popular literature, Tuwim excelled in several fields: he was an outstanding lyricist and political satirist, and he also wrote poetry for children, texts of songs, operetta librettos, theater adaptations, and texts for cabaret. After World War II, which he spent in exile in the United States, he returned to Poland in 1946.
title: Tuwim, Julian
alternative label: Julian Tuwim
related: Łódź
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Assimilation
related: Polish Literature (Children’s Literature)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Nasz Przegląd
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Turkow Family
related: Warsaw
related: Wiadomości Literackie

Zederbaum, Aleksander
described at: Zederbaum Aleksander
has abstract: (1816–1893), editor and journalist. Aleksander Zederbaum was born in Zamość, Poland. After marrying in 1835, he moved to Lublin, and then in 1840 to Odessa, where he initially worked as a bookkeeper. He soon became a tailor and opened his own shop. In Odessa, Zederbaum associated with local maskilim, was involved in community affairs, and helped to found a school for adults. With Aharon Yitsḥak Goldenblum, he founded Ha-Melits (The Advocate), the first Hebrew weekly periodical in tsarist Russia (eventually it became a daily). The first issue appeared on 11 October 1860, and Zederbaum remained as the paper’s publisher and editor for the rest of his life. In 1871, he moved with the editorial offices to Saint Petersburg.
title: Zederbaum, Aleksander
alternative label: Aleksander Zederbaum
related: Berdychiv
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Kol Mevaser
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Martov, L.
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Odessa
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Razsvet
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Zamość
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Communist Party of the Soviet Union
described at: Communist Party of the Soviet Union
has abstract: Jews played a prominent role in the Communist Party from its inception: it came into being as the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party (RSDWP) in 1903, becoming the Russian Communist Party (of Bolsheviks; RCP[b]) in 1918, the All-Union Communist Party (of Bolsheviks; AUCP[b]) in 1925, and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1952.
title: Communist Party of the Soviet Union
alternative label: Communist Party
related: Belarus
related: Bund
related: Evsektsiia
related: Gamarnik, Ian Borisovich
related: Iagoda, Genrikh Grigor’evich
related: Iakir, Iona Emmanuilovich
related: Kaganovich, Lazar’ Moiseevich
related: Kamenev, Iurii
related: Komfarband
related: Litvinov, Maksim Maksimovich
related: Lozovskii, Solomon Abramovich
related: Maiskii, Ivan Mikhailovich
related: Mekhlis, Lev Zakharovich
related: Mikhailov, Mikhail Efimovich
related: Mitin, Mark Borisovich
related: Moldova
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Radek, Karl
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Smushkevich, Iakov Vladimirovich
related: Steklov, Iurii Mikhailovich
related: Sverdlov, Iakov Mikhailovich
related: Trotsky, Leon
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zhemchuzhina, Polina Semenovna
related: Zinov’ev, Grigorii Evseevich

Daugavpils
described at: Daugavpils
has abstract: (Rus. and Yid., Dvinsk; Ger., Dünaburg; among Jews, also called Dinaburg), largest town in southeastern Latvia. Daugavpils, founded in the thirteenth century, became a district capital in the nineteenth century. Jews settled in the town in the mid-1770s. Throughout the nineteenth century and up to World War I, Jews constituted 50 percent of Dvinsk’s total population (increasing from about 1,500 persons in 1800 to about 56,000 by 1914). They lived mainly in the Altstadt, Plan, and Plezer quarters.
title: Daugavpils
alternative label: Dinaburg
alternative label: Dvinsk
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Betar
related: Bund
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Heder
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Latvia
related: Me’ir Simḥah ha-Kohen
related: Misnagdim
related: Mizraḥi
related: OZE
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Riga
related: Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Ha-
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Eybeschütz, Yonatan
described at: Eybeschutz Yonatan
has abstract: (ca. 1694–1764), one of the foremost and certainly the most controversial rabbinical figure of his generation. Born in Kraków, Yonatan Eybeschütz moved about 1700 to the Moravian community of Eibenschütz, where his father, Natan Note, was appointed rabbi. His father died within a year and the young orphan, who soon became widely acknowledged as a child prodigy, came under the wing of Me’ir Eisenstadt, the rabbi of Prossnitz (Prostějov). In 1711, Eybeschütz married into the Spira family, which held various rabbinical and lay leadership positions throughout the empire. Eybeschütz proved to be a very talented preacher, and was appointed to a position in Prague. Later he was chosen to head a private yeshiva.
title: Eybeschütz, Yonatan
alternative label: Yonatan Eybeschütz
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Landau, Yeḥezkel ben Yehudah
related: Messianism
related: Oppenheim, David
related: Piety
related: Prague
related: Prostějov
related: Sabbatianism
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Yehoshu‘a ben Aleksander ha-Kohen
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Gdańsk
described at: Gdansk
has abstract: (Ger., Danzig), port city, center of trade and industry on the Baltic. Gdańsk was a Hanseatic port in Royal Prussia and became the capital of Westpreussen (West Prussia) during the nineteenth century. From 1920 to 1939, it was known as the Danzig Free City (under the protection of the League of Nations), and since 1945, it has served as the capital of the Gdańsk Województwo in the Republic of Poland.
title: Gdańsk
alternative label: Danzig
alternative label: Gdánsk
related: Industry
related: Kielce
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: Terezín
related: Trade
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw
related: World War I

Heller, Yom Tov Lipmann
described at: Heller Yom Tov Lipmann
has abstract: (1578–1654), Talmudic scholar. Born in Wallerstein, North Swabia, Yom Tov Lipmann Heller was a disciple of Maharal of Prague. A member of the rabbinic court of that city from about 1598 to 1624, Heller held the posts of rabbi of Nikolsburg (1624–1625), Vienna (1625–1627), Prague (1627–1629), Niemirów (1631–1634), Włodzimierz (mod. Ukr., Volodymyr Volyns’kyi; 1634–1643), and Kraków (1643–1654).
title: Heller, Yom Tov Lipmann
alternative label: Yom Tov Lipmann Heller
alternative label: Yom Tov Lippman Heller
related: Bassevi of Treuenberg, Ya‘akov
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Liturgy
related: Luria, Shelomoh ben Yeḥi’el
related: Nemyriv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Singer, Isaac Bashevis
related: Sirkes, Yo’el
related: Ukraine
related: Volodymyr Volyns’kyi
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el

Kaliningrad
described at: Kaliningrad
has abstract: (Ger., Königsberg, Rus., Kenigsberg, Pol., Królewiec, Yid., Kenigsberg), former capital of the Prussian province of East Prussia, and today capital of the Russian-administered Kaliningrad District (Kaliningradskaia Oblast’). Its geographic proximity to Poland and Russia made Kaliningrad an important hub of trade between eastern and western parts of Europe and so it was home to a large number of East European Jewish merchants. It also served as an important conduit for connections between Central and East European Jewish society and culture.
title: Kaliningrad
alternative label: Königsberg
related: East Prussia
related: Haskalah
related: Hrodna
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Trade
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Katowice
described at: Katowice
has abstract: A Prussian town until 1921, Katowice (Ger., Kattowitz) is now the capital city of the southern Polish province of Silesia. Although Jews were noted in the region as far back as 1733, the first Jews to settle in the village itself arrived in 1825.
title: Katowice
alternative label: Kattowitz
related: Galicia
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Kielce
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Silesia
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Lebensohn, Avraham Dov
described at: Lebensohn Avraham Dov
has abstract: (1794–1878), maskil, biblical commentator, poet, and playwright. Born in Vilna, Avraham Dov Lebensohn (known by the pseudonym Adam ha-Kohen [also rendered Hakohen]) married a girl from Mikhailishok in northern Belorussia (now Mikaliskis, Lith.) when he was 13. He lived there for eight years, engaging in traditional religious studies but also teaching himself the Hebrew language and its grammar. In 1815, he moved to nearby Oshmyany, where he worked in commerce and continued to expand his knowledge of Hebrew. Known for his expertise in Jewish law, he was asked on occasion to join the local rabbinical court.
title: Lebensohn, Avraham Dov
alternative label: Adam ha-Kohen
alternative label: Avraham Dov Lebensohn
related: Fuenn, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Gintsburg, Mordekhai Aharon
related: Haskalah
related: Karmel, Ha-
related: Kerem Ḥemed
related: Lebensohn, Mikhah Yosef
related: Lilienthal, Max
related: Magid, Ha-
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Vilnius

Messianism
described at: Messianism
has abstract: The belief in a coming era of ultimate justice and world peace inaugurated by a redeemer who will liberate Jews from their exilic state, a principle of Jewish faith since classical times. Premodern expressions of Jewish messianism include analysis of classical prooftexts or astronomical portents to predict the date or contours of the messianic age; literary apocalyptic writings initiating spiritual, quasi-military, or political actions to pave the way for the messianic era; and fixing on a particular individual as the awaited messiah.
title: Messianism
alternative label: messianic
alternative label: messianic movement
alternative label: messianism
narrower: Early Modern Messianism
narrower: Medieval Messianism
narrower: Modern-Era Messianism
narrower: Sabbatianism in Eastern Europe
related: Ashkenaz
related: Avraham ben Aleksander ha-Kohen of Kalisk
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Berekhyah Berakh ben Yitsḥak
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bund
related: Communism
related: David ben Shemu’el ha-Levi
related: Eisenstadt
related: Eybeschütz, Yonatan
related: Frankism
related: Gans, David ben Shelomoh
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Heller, Yom Tov Lipmann
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Horowitz Family
related: Kalischer, Tsevi Hirsh
related: Kalisz
related: Kara, Avigdor
related: Kook, Avraham Yitsḥak
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Kremer, Arkadii
related: Land of Israel
related: Liturgy
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: L’viv
related: Malakh, Ḥayim ben Shelomoh
related: Menaḥem Mendel of Rimanov
related: Menaḥem Mendel of Vitebsk
related: Naḥman of Bratslav
related: Pinsk
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Reform, Religious
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sabbatianism
related: Satmar Hasidic Dynasty
related: Shabetai ben Me’ir ha-Kohen
related: Tarniks
related: Tsoref, Yehoshu‘a Heshel ben Yosef
related: Vilnius
related: Yehudah Ḥasid ha-Levi
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Ostrog
described at: Ostrog
has abstract: (Pol., Ostróg; Yid., Ostre), town on the Goryn’ River (a tributary of the Pripyat’), a district center of Ukraine’s Rovno region. From the 1320s, Ostróg was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and from 1569 it belonged to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. After 1793, it was in the Russian Empire, from 1796 a district center of Vohlin region; in 1921 it reverted to Poland and remained a part of that country until 1939.
title: Ostrog
alternative label: Ostróg
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: David ben Shemu’el ha-Levi
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Lithuania
related: Luria, Shelomoh ben Yeḥi’el
related: Passover
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Purim
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Shemu’el Eli‘ezer ben Yehudah ha-Levi Edels
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Tarbut
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Ravitch, Melech
described at: Ravitch Melech
has abstract: (Melekh Ravitsh; pseudonym of Zekharye-Khone Bergner; 1893–1976); Yiddish poet, essayist, playwright, and cultural activist. Melech Ravitch was born in Radymno, eastern Galicia, into a home where the main spoken languages were Polish and German. Ravitch received a secular general education, including business school, as well as a limited traditional Jewish education. Influenced by the Czernowitz Language Conference, he began to write in Yiddish; his initial pieces appeared in 1910 in Yiddish publications in Galicia. He lived in Lemberg and Vienna, where he worked in a bank, and during World War I served in the army.
title: Ravitch, Melech
alternative label: Melech Ravitch
related: Association of Jewish Writers and Journalists in Warsaw
related: Czernowitz Conference
related: Eynhorn, Dovid
related: Folks-tsaytung
related: Galicia
related: Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
related: Imber, Shmuel Yankev
related: Khalyastre
related: Literarishe Bleter
related: L’viv
related: Markish, Perets
related: Mayzel, Nakhmen
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Singer, Israel Joshua
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zeitlin Family

Sandz Hasidic Dynasty
described at: Sandz Hasidic Dynasty
has abstract: Led by the Halberstam family and including many dozens of tsadikim and subdynasties, the Sandz Hasidic dynasty was founded in the mid-nineteenth century in Nowy Sącz (Hasidim always refer to the place as Tsanz) in western Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Many offshoots of the dynasty are still active today.
title: Sandz Hasidic Dynasty
alternative label: Sandz
alternative label: Sandz Hasidim
alternative label: Sandz Hasidism
alternative label: Sandzer rebbe
related: Chernivtsi
related: Cluj
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Land of Israel
related: L’viv
related: Makhzikey ha-Das
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ropshits-Dzikov Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Ruzhin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Slovakia
related: Te’omim Family
related: Transylvania
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Yisra’el of Ruzhin
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Agnon, Shemu’el Yosef
described at: Agnon Shemuel Yosef
has abstract: (1888–1970), Hebrew writer; Nobel laureate in literature. Shemu’el Yosef Agnon (formerly Czaczkes) was born in Buczacz, a small town in eastern Galicia, then under Austro-Hungarian rule. He left his hometown permanently when he was 20, but Buczacz and Galicia had a place in his literary work for the rest of his life. “Although forty years had passed since Dr. Langsam had left his birthplace, he still talked about it all the time,” says Agnon, as if describing himself but referring to one of the characters in his novel Sipur pashut (A Simple Story; 1935).
title: Agnon, Shemu’el Yosef
alternative label: S. Y. Agnon
alternative label: Shemu’el Yosef Agnon
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Bader, Gershom
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Buchach
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kafka, Franz
related: Kloyz
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: L’viv
related: Misnagdim
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Shofman, Gershom
related: Stybel, Avraham Yosef
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

An-ski Ethnographic Expedition and Museum
described at: An-ski Ethnographic Expedition and Museum
has abstract: From 1912 to 1914, S. An-ski (Shloyme Zaynvl Rapoport) headed ethnographic expeditions to the Pale of Jewish Settlement. After a limited display of the expeditionary collection in 1914, it was exhibited at the Jewish Museum in Saint Petersburg, which opened briefly in 1917, and then again in 1923, only to be closed in 1929. In 2000, most of the remaining artifacts were located at the Russian Museum of Ethnography in Saint Petersburg, while most of the manuscripts and audio recordings were held in Kiev, at the Vernadskii National Library of Ukraine.
title: An-ski Ethnographic Expedition and Museum
alternative label: An-ski
alternative label: An-ski Ethnographic Expedition
alternative label: An-ski ethnographic expedition
alternative label: An-ski expedition
alternative label: Jewish Ethnographic Museum
alternative label: Jewish Ethnological Expedition
alternative label: Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Expedition
alternative label: S. An-ski
alternative label: S. An-ski’s Ethnographic Expedition
alternative label: S. An-ski’s expeditions
alternative label: ethnographic expedition
alternative label: ethnographic expeditions
alternative label: expeditions
narrower: Expeditions
narrower: Museum Exhibits
related: Amulets and Talismans
related: Dress
related: Engel, Yo’el
related: Folk Songs
related: Gintsburg Family
related: Gintsburg, Il’ia Iakovlevich
related: Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture
related: Iudovin, Solomon Borisovich
related: Kiev
related: Life Cycle
related: Luts’k
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Proverbs
related: Purim-shpil
related: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shtetl
related: Tombstones
related: Ukraine
related: World War I

Belz Hasidic Dynasty
described at: Belz Hasidic Dynasty
has abstract: A Hasidic sect originally located in the town of Belz (Pol., Bełz) in eastern Galicia. The Belz Hasidic Dynasty was founded by Rabbi Shalom Rokeaḥ (1783–1855), a devoted disciple of Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz, the so-called Seer of Lublin. Rokeaḥ established his famous court in Belz around 1817, attracting many followers from Poland, Galicia, and Hungary. He was known as both a miracle worker and a Talmudist, and maintained a close relationship with the Galician non-Hasidic rabbinate of his time. His everyday life was simple, and he was the first rebbe who did not dress in white (as was common for kabbalists and early Hasidic leaders).
title: Belz Hasidic Dynasty
alternative label: Belz
alternative label: Belz Hasidim
alternative label: Belz dynasty
alternative label: Belzer
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Budapest
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Makhzikey ha-Das
related: Mukacheve
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Ruzhin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Shomer Yisra’el
related: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Brod, Max
described at: Brod Max
has abstract: (1884–1968), writer and critic. Born into an assimilated German-speaking family in multiethnic, late-Habsburg Prague, Max Brod went through an ideological transformation in his youth from German liberal and Jewish assimilationist sympathies to Jewish nationalism and Zionism. In his own time the most productive and widely recognized member of the Prague Circle of German-speaking Jewish writers, Brod is remembered chiefly for his role in the preservation of the literary estate of Franz Kafka and the introduction of these modernist masterpieces to a broad public. While his literary production over his long life would range from fiction of many different styles to translations of opera libretti, philosophical tracts, art criticism, and memoir, this ideological commitment would remain behind most of his work.
title: Brod, Max
alternative label: Max Brod
related: Assimilation
related: Bar Kochba Association
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Habimah
related: Kafka, Franz
related: Prague
related: Selbstwehr
related: Werfel, Franz
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Buchach
described at: Buchach
has abstract: City in Ukraine. The first mention of Jews in Buchach (Pol., Buczacz) is from 1500; the population grew steadily thereafter, reaching a recorded total of 1,358 Jews in 1765. The town and much of its Jewish population survived the 1648 Ukrainian uprising relatively unharmed; the brief Turkish occupation of 1672 led to much heavier loss of life. In 1699, the Jews’ community privilege was confirmed by the town’s owner, the Potocki family, which granted them residential and occupational equality with Christian residents. Many Jews made their living from commerce, whether local, regional (with Kraków), or international (with the Ottoman Empire and Hungary). The cattle trade was particularly important. Other Jews were involved in the liquor business, fur, or in crafts. Not renowned for its Talmudic learning, Buczacz became a center of Sabbatianism in the mid-eighteenth century.
title: Buchach
alternative label: Buczacz
alternative label: Soviet Union
related: Agnon, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Bloch, Yosef Shemu’el
related: Crafts
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Makhzikey ha-Das
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sabbatianism
related: Trade
related: Ukraine

Cluj
described at: Cluj
has abstract: City in Romania, traditionally considered to be the capital of Transylvania. The Jewish presence in Cluj (Ger., Klausenburg; Hun., Kolozsvár; current official name, Cluj-Napoca) was first noted in a document dating from 1481 that referred to a conflict between Jews from Cluj and the powerful Haller family of Buda. One century later, in 1578, a Jewish presence at the Cluj fair was considered alarming by the authorities. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Jews were allowed to settle in just one town of Transylvania (Alba Iulia); hence, only during the age of Emperor Joseph’s II reforms (1780–1790) were there again indications of Jews in Cluj.
title: Cluj
related: Alba Iulia
related: Banking
related: Bratislava
related: Crafts
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Glasner, Mosheh Shemu’el
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Industry
related: Jewish Congress
related: Lichtenstein, Hillel
related: Romania
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: Tarbut
related: Trade
related: Transylvania
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Courland
described at: Courland
has abstract: (Ger., Kurland; Lat., Kurzeme), a historic and ethnographic area of west and southwest Latvia. The territory of Courland was conquered in the thirteenth century by the German Livonian Order. One-third of its territory (Piltene) went to the bishopric of Courland and two-thirds to the Livonian Order. In 1309, Jews were banned in the territories by Siegfried von Feuchtwangen, Grand Master of the Order. In 1561 a treaty between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Livonian Order ended Livonian independence; the document forbade Jews to settle in Courland or even to reside there temporarily for commercial transactions. The Duchy of Courland was dependent on the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth throughout its existence (1561–1795). Perhaps reflecting scattered and periodic Jewish residence, a series of laws to ban Jews from engaging in commerce was adopted in the Courland Landtag in 1692, 1698, and 1699. Only in autonomous Piltene, formerly ruled by the bishop, and, from 1585, by Poland, was Jewish residence officially permitted.
title: Courland
alternative label: Kurland
related: Jelgava
related: Latvia
related: Lithuania
related: Pale of Settlement
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Riga
related: About this Article (Russia)

Gottlober, Avraham Ber
described at: Gottlober Avraham Ber
has abstract: (1811–1899), maskil, poet, translator, historian, and publicist. Born in Starokonstantinov, Volhynia guberniia, Avraham Ber Gottlober married the daughter of a Hasidic family at the age of 14. With the encouragement and guidance of his father, and notwithstanding his attraction to Hasidism, he showed an interest in Jewish philosophical and Haskalah literature, along with Hebrew grammar, while still quite young.
title: Gottlober, Avraham Ber
alternative label: Avraham Ber Gottlober
alternative label: Avraham Gottlober
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Asif, Ha-
related: Assimilation
related: Berdychiv
related: Białystok
related: Boker Or, Ha-
related: Braudes, Re’uven Asher
related: Brody
related: Dubno
related: Frishman, David
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Karaites
related: Kishinev
related: Levinzon, Yitsḥak Ber
related: Magid, Ha-
related: Mandelkern, Shelomoh
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Mezhyrichi
related: Odessa
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Perl, Yosef
related: Pinsker, Simḥah and Lev
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Pogroms
related: Rivne
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shaḥar, Ha-
related: Smolenskin, Perets
related: Ternopil’
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Zhytomyr
related: Zweifel, Eli‘ezer

Karmel, Ha-
described at: Karmel Ha-
has abstract: Hebrew journal, published between 1860 and 1880. As Russia’s first Hebrew-language periodical, Ha-Karmel (Mount Carmel) was issued weekly in Vilna between 1860 and 1871, and monthly between 1871 and 1880. Supplements in Russian and German were included from time to time. Its editor was Shemu’el Yosef Fuenn.
title: Karmel, Ha-
alternative label: Ha-Karmel
related: Braudes, Re’uven Asher
related: Fuenn, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Gottlober, Avraham Ber
related: Haskalah
related: Kaminer, Yitsḥak
related: Kovner, Avraham Uri
related: Lebensohn, Avraham Dov
related: Proverbs
related: Reform, Religious
related: About this Article (Russia)

Katzenelson, Yitsḥak
described at: Katzenelson Yitshak
has abstract: (1885–1944), Hebrew and Yiddish poet. Born in Karelitz, near Minsk, Belorussia, Yitsḥak Katzenelson acquired his Hebrew education from his father, Ya‘akov Binyamin Katzenelson, a maskilic teacher and writer. From 1896, Katzenelson lived with his family in Łódź. His earliest Hebrew poetry was published in children’s newspapers beginning in 1899, and he quickly earned a reputation as one of the most prominent members of the generation of poets to be influenced by Ḥayim Naḥman Bialik.
title: Katzenelson, Yitsḥak
alternative label: Yitsḥak Katezenelson
alternative label: Yitsḥak Katzenelson
related: Łódź
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: About this Article (Children’s Literature)
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Hirshbeyn, Perets
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Minsk
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtetl
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Warsaw
related: Zuckerman, Yitsḥak

Krochmal, Naḥman
described at: Krochmal Nahman
has abstract: (1785–1840), leading figure of the Galician Haskalah; philosopher, biblical critic, and historian. Naḥman Krochmal was born in Brody; lived most of his life in Żółkiew (punctuated by a brief stay in Lemberg [Lwów]); and after a brief return to Brody, died in Tarnopol. He was an important influence on virtually all of the thinkers associated with the Haskalah in Eastern Europe, among them Shimshon Bloch, Tsevi Hirsh Chajes, Yitsḥak Erter, Yitsḥak Ber Levinzon, Me’ir Letteris, Tsevi Menaḥem (Hirsh Mendel) Pineles, Shelomoh Yehudah Rapoport, and Yehoshu‘a Heshel Schorr.
title: Krochmal, Naḥman
alternative label: Naḥman Krochmal
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Brody
related: Chajes, Tsevi Hirsh
related: Erter, Yitsḥak
related: Galicia
related: Haskalah
related: Letteris, Me’ir
related: Levinzon, Yitsḥak Ber
related: L’viv
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Schorr, Yehoshu‘a Heshel
related: Ternopil’
related: Zhovkva

Lefin, Menaḥem Mendel
described at: Lefin Menahem Mendel
has abstract: (1749–1826), maskil, author, and translator. Born in Satanów, in Podolia—a heartland of Hasidism—Menaḥem Mendel Lefin (also Levin) was a figure who linked the Haskalah between Western and Eastern Europe. Raised in a traditional Jewish family, Lefin was drawn in the late 1780s to Berlin, where he befriended Moses Mendelssohn and other maskilim. Unlike Salomon Maimon and Yitsḥak Satanov, two Polish Jewish contemporaries who also traveled to the West, Lefin returned to Poland and sought to further the ideals of the Enlightenment in a manner suited to East European Jews.
title: Lefin, Menaḥem Mendel
alternative label: Menakhem Mendel Lefin
alternative label: Menakhem Mendl (Menaḥem Mendel) Lefin
alternative label: Menaḥem Mendel Lefin
related: Brody
related: Feder, Tuviah
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Kahal
related: Levinzon, Yitsḥak Ber
related: Maimon, Salomon
related: Perl, Yosef
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Ternopil’
related: Warsaw

Lissitzky, El
described at: Lissitzky El
has abstract: (1890–1941), abstract artist and theorist, graphic designer, architect, typographer, photographer, and propagandist. El (Lazar [Eleazar] Markovich) Lissitzky was born in Pochinok, near Smolensk, Russia, and died in Moscow. He chose his name in imitation of El Greco and to affirm his new artistic identity. His artistic career can be divided into three overlapping periods: (1) Jewish, from 1915 to 1923; (2) Suprematist, from 1919 to the early 1920s; and (3) Stalinist, in the 1930s. The following overview emphasizes his first period, when he participated intensively in the Jewish art renaissance in Russia and played a significant role in its development (Soviet and Western critics typically discount the importance of his early work).
title: Lissitzky, El
alternative label: El Lissitzky
related: Broderzon, Moyshe
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Ehrenburg, Ilya Grigor’evich
related: Kvitko, Leyb
related: Moscow
related: Passover
related: Pen, Yehudah
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Rybak, Yisakhar Ber
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Tombstones
related: Vitsyebsk

Purim-shpil
described at: Purim-shpil
has abstract: A skit or monologue performed, usually in the vernacular, in a domestic setting at the festive Purim family meal. The celebration of Purim, the Festival of Lots, is based on the biblical Scroll (Megilah) of Esther, which recounts how Mordechai and Esther prevented the massacre of the Jews ordered by Haman, minister of Ahasuerus, king of Persia. Various sources, particularly the Talmud (BT Meg. 7a–b, 9a; Sanh. 64b), mention entertainment at such celebrations associated with the reading of the Scroll of Esther, including pantomimes, parodies of liturgical texts, the custom of the carnival rabbi (Purim rov), and plays performed in the vernacular during the festive meal.
title: Purim-shpil
alternative label: purim-shpil
alternative label: purim-shpilers
alternative label: purim-shpiln
related: Badkhonim
related: Cantors
related: About this Article (Dance)
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Traditional and Instrumental Music (Music)
related: Operetta
related: Parody
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Purim
related: Seminary
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Zhytomyr

Ravnitski, Yehoshu‘a Ḥana
described at: Ravnitski Yehoshua Hana
has abstract: (1859–1944), Hebrew and Yiddish writer, editor, publisher, and educator. Yehoshu‘a Ḥana Ravnitski (Yoshue Khone Rawnitzki) was born in Odessa and received a traditional Jewish education in heder and yeshiva. After marrying, he lived from 1877 to 1887 in the nearby town of Mayak. There he taught himself Russian, French, and German.
title: Ravnitski, Yehoshu‘a Ḥana
alternative label: Y. H. Ravnitski
alternative label: Yehoshu‘a Ravnitski
alternative label: Yehoshu‘a Ḥana (Yoshue Khone) Ravnitski
alternative label: Yehoshu‘a Ḥana Ravnitski
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Fraynd, Der
related: Gutmann, Simḥah Alter
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Heder
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Lewinsky, Elḥanan Leib
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Moriah
related: Odessa
related: Proverbs
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shomer
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Yud, Der
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Reyzen, Zalmen
described at: Reyzen Zalmen
has abstract: (Reisen; 1887–1941), scholar of Yiddish language and literature, editor, journalist, and cultural activist. The brother of Avrom and Sore Reyzen, Zalmen Reyzen was born in Koidanov, Belorussia; he studied in a heder and at a Russian school. His father, a maskil, wrote poetry in Hebrew and Yiddish.
title: Reyzen, Zalmen
alternative label: Zalmen
alternative label: Zalmen Reyzen
related: Belarus
related: Erik, Maks
related: Filologishe Shriftn
related: Haskalah
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Historiography)
related: Yiddish Criticism and Scholarship (Literary Criticism and Scholarship)
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: Vayter, A.
related: Vilnius
related: YIVO
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Yung-Vilne

Shneur Zalman of Liady
described at: Shneur Zalman of Liady
has abstract: (ca. 1745–1812), Hasidic leader and founder of Ḥabad Hasidism, the branch promulgated by the Lubavitch movment. Shneur Zalman was born in Liozno (Liazna, Belarus); when he was about 20, he was attracted to Hasidism. He joined the bet midrash of Dov Ber, the Magid of Mezritsh, for a number of years, studied Kabbalah with him, and regarded him as his master. After the Magid’s death, Shneur Zalman became an associate of Menaḥem Mendel of Vitebsk, a senior colleague and teacher.
title: Shneur Zalman of Liady
alternative label: Shneur Zalman
related: Avraham ben Aleksander ha-Kohen of Kalisk
related: Belarus
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Conversion
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Land of Israel
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Menaḥem Mendel of Vitebsk
related: Misnagdim
related: Money
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Passover
related: Pinsk
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shklov
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Vilnius

Yiddish Theater (Theater)
described at: Yiddish Theater
has abstract: In premodern times, a variety of performers, including cantors, preachers, jesters, and instrumental musicians, engaged Jewish audiences. Amateur companies known as purim-shpilers staged skits around the holiday of Purim. But a professional Yiddish theater did not emerge until the nineteenth century.
title: Yiddish Theater (Theater)
alternative label: Yiddish theater
alternative label: Yiddish theaters
alternative label: theater
related: Łódź
related: Angels
related: Arnshteyn, Mark
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Badkhonim
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Białystok
related: Birobidzhan
related: Broderzon, Moyshe
related: Brody
related: Bucharest
related: Cantors
related: Chernivtsi
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Dinezon, Yankev
related: Dybbuk, The
related: Dzigan and Shumacher
related: Galicia
related: Gens, Jakub
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Ghetto Police (Ghettos)
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Granovskii, Aleksandr Mikhailovich
related: Habimah
related: Hirshbeyn, Perets
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Iaşi
related: Informers
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Kaminski Family
related: Kaunas
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kleynkunst
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Liturgy
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: L’viv
related: Manger, Itsik
related: Markish, Perets
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Minsk
related: Morevski, Avrom
related: Moscow
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Traditional and Instrumental Music (Music)
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Pinski, Dovid
related: Piotrków
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Preachers and Preaching
related: Pryłucki, Noah
related: Purim
related: Purim-shpil
related: Radom
related: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl
related: Romania
related: Romanian State Yiddish Theater
related: Rotbaum, Jakub
related: Rumkowski, Khayim Mordkhe
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shomer
related: Shternberg, Yankev
related: Shtetl
related: Songs and Songwriters
related: Soviet State Yiddish Theaters
related: Sutzkever, Avrom
related: Terezín
related: Transnistria
related: Turkow Family
related: Ukraine

Zamość
described at: Zamosc
has abstract: (Yid., Zamoch, Zamoshtsh), city in Lublin province. Founded in 1580 by Jan Zamoyski, Zamość became the principal town of his family estate. The first mention of Jews in Zamość dates from 1583; Zamoyski granted them a privilege of settlement in 1588. This privilege was for Sephardic Jews only, with the expectation that they would bring economic benefits—particularly trading contacts. The Jewish quarter was situated in the northwestern sector, where Jews were permitted to build a synagogue and a mikveh. The synagogue was built of brick in the Renaissance style between about 1610 and 1618.
title: Zamość
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Ashkenaz
related: Bund
related: Councils
related: Crafts
related: Credit
related: Czechoslovakia
related: General Zionists
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Luxemburg, Rosa
related: L’viv
related: Mizraḥi
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sephardim
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Trade
related: Warsaw
related: Zamość, Yisra’el ben Mosheh ha-Levi

Zeman, Ha-
described at: Zeman Ha-
has abstract: Hebrew newspaper. Published from 1903 to 1915, Ha-Zeman (The Time) was founded and edited by the journalist Bentsiyon Katz. Beginning publication in February 1903, during its first year it was published twice weekly in Saint Petersburg. At the end of 1903, the newspaper faced a financial crisis, and Katz enlisted the help of a wealthy Jewish businessman, Ya‘akov Eliyahu Rivkin, who accepted financial responsibility for issuing the newspaper and appointed his son-in-law, Feivel Margolin, as manager.
title: Zeman, Ha-
alternative label: Ha-Zeman
related: Baron, Devorah
related: Berkowitz, Yitsḥak Dov
related: Bershadsky, Yesha‘yahu
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Gnessin, Uri Nisan
related: Katz, Bentsiyon
related: Katzenelson, Yitsḥak
related: Kishinev
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shneour, Zalman
related: Tchernowitz, Shemu’el
related: Vilnius
related: Zeitlin Family
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties
related: Zitron, Shemu’el Leib

General Zionists
described at: General Zionists
has abstract: Party affiliated with the World Zionist Organization. When the World Zionist Organization was first established in 1897, it acted as one unified political body, based on the Basel Program that had been adopted at the First Zionist Congress that year. According to this program, the Zionist movement would be divided only into regional, not political, blocs; a mere few years later, however, the movement split into political parties, each one basing itself on an ideology other than that articulated in Basel. Consequently, the bulk of the movement was represented by international parties, including Po‘ale Tsiyon, Mizraḥi, the Radical Zionists, and the Revisionist Zionists.
title: General Zionists
alternative label: General Zionist
alternative label: General Zionist Federation
related: Akiva
related: Bessarabia
related: Bucovina
related: Galicia
related: Grünbaum, Yitsḥak
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Latvia
related: Lewite, Leon
related: Lithuania
related: L’viv
related: Mizraḥi
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Reich, Leon
related: Revisionist Zionists
related: Romania
related: Schwarzbart, Ignacy
related: Thon, Ozjasz
related: Transylvania
related: Warsaw
related: Weizmann, Chaim
related: Youth Movements
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Hildesheimer, Esriel
described at: Hildesheimer Esriel
has abstract: (1820–1899), rabbi and scholar. German-born Esriel (‘Asri’el) Hildesheimer set out upon his rabbinical career in 1846. By that time he had completed his training under the tutelage of Ya‘akov Ettlinger—the preeminent contemporary German Orthodox halakhist—and received a doctoral degree from the University of Halle. He spent the years 1846–1851 as secretary of the community in his hometown of Halberstadt before being appointed rabbi of Eisenstadt, the well-known Jewish settlement in the Burgenland section of western Hungary. There he founded and developed a famous post–primary school yeshiva that combined intensive Torah learning with a full range of secular studies.
title: Hildesheimer, Esriel
alternative label: Esriel Hildesheimer
alternative label: Hildesheimer
related: Assimilation
related: Burgenland
related: Eisenstadt
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Orthodoxy
related: Seminary
related: Spektor, Yitsḥak Elḥanan
related: Wrocław
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Jabotinsky, Vladimir
described at: Jabotinsky Vladimir
has abstract: (1880–1940), Zionist leader, founder of Revisionist Party. Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky was born in Odessa to an assimilated, middle-class Jewish family. He was educated entirely in Russian, and as a teenager spent two years in Bern and Rome studying law. Even before leaving Odessa, he had written poetry and articles for local liberal publications, and continued this work while in Rome. After his return to Odessa, he was the chief cultural correspondent for the prestigious Russian daily Odessa News, for which he wrote daily reviews of cultural events under the pseudonym Altalena.
title: Jabotinsky, Vladimir
alternative label: Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky
alternative label: Vladimir Jabotinsky
related: Betar
related: Bund
related: Land of Israel
related: Odessa
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Revisionist Zionists
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Ukraine
related: Weizmann, Chaim
related: Youth Movements
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Lipkin, Yisra’el ben Ze’ev Volf
described at: Lipkin Yisrael ben Zeev Volf
has abstract: (1810–1883), founder and leader of the Musar ethical movement. Known also as Yisra’el Salanter, Yisra’el ben Ze’ev Volf Lipkin was born into a rabbinical family in Zhagare, in the Kovno district. At a young age, he was sent to study Torah with the rabbi of Salant, Tsevi Hirsh Broyda. There, Salanter met Yosef Zundel, a close disciple of Ḥayim of Volozhin, and, through his influence, became interested in questions relating to moral improvement. In 1840, Salanter moved to Vilna, having been invited to serve as head of Rabbi Maila’s yeshiva. Soon thereafter he moved to Zaretcha, a Vilna suburb, where he taught Torah in the local bet midrash.
title: Lipkin, Yisra’el ben Ze’ev Volf
alternative label: Lipkin
alternative label: Yisra’el Lipkin
alternative label: Yisra’el Salanter
alternative label: Yisra’el ben Ze’ev Volf Lipkin (Salanter)
alternative label: Yisra’el ben Ze’ev Wolf Salanter
narrower: Period of Wandering: 1857–1883
narrower: The Musar Approach
narrower: The Musar Method: The First Stage (1845–1849)
narrower: The Musar Movement in Vilna and Kovno
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Haskalah
related: Hildesheimer, Esriel
related: Kaunas
related: Kloyz
related: Lithuania
related: Misnagdim
related: Musar Movement
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Seminary
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Vilnius
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Liturgy
described at: Liturgy
has abstract: The liturgy of East European Jewry, though by the twelfth century dominated by the overall prayer-book prototype bequeathed by the Babylonian centers, retained traces of the rites of premedieval Palestine along with those of early medieval Italy and Germany. In this way it differed from its equivalents in Spain and France, but the resulting variations were generally limited to rare occasions and special circumstances and concerned detailed wording within benedictions, such as the use of “Ve-te‘erav” in the Birkat ha-kohanim, or priestly benediction. This lyrical formulation (“May our plea be as sweet as once were our Temple offerings”), occurring in the third benediction from the end of the ‘Amidah (‘Avodah), had been part of the daily version of the central prayer service (‘Amidah or Shemoneh ‘esreh) in premedieval Palestine.
title: Liturgy
alternative label: liturgy
related: Ashkenaz
related: Belarus
related: Czech Republic
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: Hannover, Natan Note
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Lithuania
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Przemyśl
related: Romania
related: Sephardim
related: Slovakia
related: Spira, Natan Note ben Shelomoh
related: Ukraine
related: Zhovkva

Luria, Shelomoh ben Yeḥi’el
described at: Luria Shelomoh ben Yehiel
has abstract: (1510?–1573), rabbi, legal authority (posek), and head of yeshivas in Brisk (Brest Litovsk), Ostraha (Ostróg), and Lublin. In traditional literature, Shelomoh Luria is known by the acronym Maharshal or Rashal, and is most famous for his Talmudic commentary, Yam shel Shelomoh. Luria received his early education in Poznań at the house of his grandfather, Yitsḥak Klober. In his writings, Luria noted Ashkenazic customs and liturgical traditions that he had learned from Klober (Responsa, 64, and others).
title: Luria, Shelomoh ben Yeḥi’el
alternative label: Lurianic
alternative label: Shelomoh Luria
alternative label: Shelomoh ben Yeḥi’el Luria
related: Ashkenaz
related: Brest
related: Efrayim Shelomoh ben Aharon of Luntshits
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Ostrog
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: Prague
related: Sephardim
related: Shakhnah, Shalom
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Slonik, Binyamin Aharon ben Avraham
related: Yafeh, Mordekhai ben Avraham
related: Yehoshu‘a ben Aleksander ha-Kohen
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Maccabi Movement
described at: Maccabi Movement
has abstract: Zionist gymnastics and sports organization. The establishment at the end of the nineteenth century of a national Jewish gymnastic society in Europe can be explained as a reaction to mounting nationalism across the continent, with concomitant exclusion of minorities and heightened antisemitism. The Slavic Sokol (Hawk) gymnastics movement, founded in Prague in 1862, stood as a successful East European model to evoke national spirit on the athletic field.
title: Maccabi Movement
alternative label: Maccabi
alternative label: Maccabi association
related: Bar Kochba Association
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Karlovy Vary
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: L’viv
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: About this Article (Sport)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Money
described at: Money
has abstract: Money played a central role in the inner life and value system of the Jewish community as well as in its relations with the non-Jewish world. This was the case in part because Jewish status in Eastern Europe was predicated on Jews’ performance of commercial, managerial, and financial services, while Jewish autonomy required an elaborate system of internal taxation.
title: Money
alternative label: money
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Amulets and Talismans
related: Beggars and Begging
related: Charity
related: Circumcision
related: Death and the Dead
related: Dik, Ayzik Meyer
related: Efrayim Shelomoh ben Aharon of Luntshits
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Horowitz Family
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: Kahal
related: Kol Mevaser
related: Land of Israel
related: Life Cycle
related: Lithuania
related: Luts’k
related: Marriage
related: Piety
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Purim
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Ruzhin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Sabbath
related: Ukraine
related: Weddings
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Voskhod
described at: Voskhod
has abstract: Russian Jewish journal founded by Adolph Landau and published in Saint Petersburg between 1881 and 1906. Voskhod (Dawn) began as a monthly. After its first year of publication, a weekly entitled Nedel’naia khronika Voskhoda (Weekly Chronicle of Voskhod) was added. In practice the journal was edited inter alia by Shmuel Grusenberg, Simon Dubnow, and Yehudah Leib Gordon. In April 1899, Landau sold Voskhod to a “young men’s” group, which included Leon Bramson, the historian Saul Ginsburg, Matthew (Matityahu) Posner, Iulii (Julius) Brutskus, and others. In November 1899, both the weekly Voskhod and its monthly version changed their names to Knizhki Voskhoda (Voskhod Booklets). In 1901, the editorial board co-opted Maksim Vinaver and Leopold Sev (who from 1903 was for all practical purposes its editor in chief). The monthly journal ceased publication in March 1906, and its weekly supplement followed suit at the end of June of that year.
title: Voskhod
related: Brutskus, Iulii
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Ginsburg, Sha'ul
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Heder
related: Landau, Adolph
related: Pogroms
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Vinaver, Maksim Moiseevich

Yud, Der
described at: Yud Der
has abstract: Yiddish Zionist periodical. Launched by the Hebrew publishing company Aḥi’asaf in January 1899 to promote the political and cultural program of the newly founded Zionist Organization, Der yud (The Jew; pronounced Der yid) was edited in Warsaw but published in Kraków to avoid tsarist censorship. Under editor Yehoshu‘a Ḥana (Yoshue Khone) Ravnitski, it appeared bimonthly, then became a weekly by mid-November of that year, edited by Yoysef Lurie. The periodical served an appreciative readership in the absence of a Yiddish daily press and stopped publication in December 1902 when the Russian censor granted long-sought permission to Saul Ginsburg to start up the Yiddish daily Der fraynd.
title: Yud, Der
alternative label: Der Yud
alternative label: Der yud
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Aḥi’asaf
related: Arnshteyn, Mark
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Bal-Makhshoves
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brokhes, Rokhl
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Fraynd, Der
related: Frishman, David
related: Frug, Shimen Shmuel
related: Ginsburg, Sha'ul
related: Grünbaum, Yitsḥak
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Land of Israel
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Nomberg, Hersh Dovid
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Ravnitski, Yehoshu‘a Ḥana
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: Reyzen, Zalmen
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Steinberg, Yehudah
related: Varshavski, Mark
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Economic Life
described at: Economic Life
has abstract: The economic opportunities open to Jews of Eastern Europe over their history were limited by non-Jewish society—largely through legislation. Thus, in order to understand Jewish economic life, it is important to have a clear picture of the laws and regulations imposed by non-Jewish society. These were never monolithic and were often extremely complex. Consequently, economic success for Jews was often a result of the ability to maneuver between different—and sometimes contradictory—regulations in order to achieve their goals.
title: Economic Life
alternative label: economic life
narrower: Banking and Finance
narrower: Other Occupations
narrower: Production
narrower: Supply and Distribution
narrower: The Holocaust and After
related: Łódź
related: Agriculture
related: Banking
related: Becal
related: Bergson Family
related: Birobidzhan
related: Bloch, Jan
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brodskii Family
related: Budapest
related: Bund
related: Cantors
related: Councils
related: Crafts
related: Credit
related: Crimea
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Epstein Family
related: Fiszel Family
related: Fortunatus, Imre
related: Galicia
related: Gender
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Gintsburg Family
related: Guilds
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Industry
related: Josephinian Reforms
related: Josko
related: Kahal
related: Kalisz
related: Kornfeld, Zsigmond
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Kronenberg Family
related: Land of Israel
related: Leaseholding
related: Lewko
related: L’viv
related: Madarassy-Beck, Nándor
related: Minorities Treaties
related: Moldavia
related: Money
related: Natanson Family
related: Odessa
related: Orthodoxy
related: Pale of Settlement
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poliakov Family
related: Prague
related: Romania
related: Sabbath Rest
related: Shtadlan
related: Shtetl
related: Slovakia
related: Subcarpathian Rus’
related: Tavernkeeping
related: Trade
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Wawelberg, Hipolit
related: Weiss, Manfréd
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Manger, Itsik
described at: Manger Itsik
has abstract: (1901–1969), Yiddish poet, playwright, prose writer, and essayist. Born Isidor Helfer in the multiethnic city of Czernowitz (then capital of the Habsburg province of Bucovina; now Chernivtsi, Ukraine), Itsik Manger attended heder and later the Kaiser-Königlicher Dritte Staats-Gymnasium. When he was expelled for bad behavior, his formal education came to an end. By then, however, he had fallen under the spell of German Romantic poetry, and his knowledge of world literature was henceforth to be gleaned in German translation.
title: Manger, Itsik
alternative label: Itsik Manger
alternative label: Itzik Manger
related: Bucharest
related: Bucovina
related: Bund
related: Chernivtsi
related: Cinema
related: Ehrenkranz, Benjamin Wolf
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
related: Heder
related: Iaşi
related: Literarishe Bleter
related: Markish, Perets
related: Operetta
related: Oyerbakh, Rokhl
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Yiddish Poetry (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Purim
related: Purim-shpil
related: Rabon, Yisroel
related: Ravitch, Melech
related: Romania
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtetl
related: Shteynbarg, Eliezer
related: Singer, Isaac Bashevis
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Mapu, Avraham
described at: Mapu Avraham
has abstract: (1808–1867), key figure in the Russian Haskalah movement, and the first Hebrew novelist. Avraham Mapu was born in Slobodka (near Kovno) to a Misnaged family of Torah scholars, and the only formal schooling he received was a broad Jewish education that inevitably shaped his use of the Hebrew language. Later, though, he taught himself German, Latin, Russian, and French.
title: Mapu, Avraham
alternative label: Avraham Mapu
alternative label: Mapu
related: Haskalah
related: Kaunas
related: Passover
related: Hebrew Prose (Prose)
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Vilnius

Naḥman of Bratslav
described at: Nahman of Bratslav
has abstract: (1772–1811), founder of a unique school of Hasidic thought and practice; single master of the Bratslav (or “Breslov,” as pronounced by its members) Hasidic sect, which continues to flourish down to the present day. Naḥman ben Simḥah was the great-grandchild of Yisra’el Ba‘al Shem Tov (ca. 1700–1760), the first central figure of Hasidism, through the maternal line. His paternal grandfather was Naḥman of Horodenka (d. 1772), also a well-known figure in early Hasidic circles. As the offspring of such lineage, Naḥman, who grew up in the years when the new movement was just adopting a hereditary dynastic model, was expected to become a Hasidic leader. Naḥman at first refused, showing considerable disdain for the popular Hasidism of his uncle, Barukh of Mezhbizh (ca. 1750–1811), and others.
title: Naḥman of Bratslav
alternative label: Naḥman (Nakhmen) of Bratslav
alternative label: Naḥman ben Simḥah
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Bratslav Hasidism
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Kafka, Franz
related: Natan Sternhartz of Nemirov
related: Pilgrimage
related: Uman

Opatów
described at: Opatow
has abstract: (Apt), a town between Kraków and Lublin in Małopolska (Little Poland) dating back to the twelfth century. In 1502, Opatów was sold by the Lubusz bishops to noble owners, who permitted Jewish residence from 1538. Eighty Jews paid a poll tax in 1578, making Opatów one of the largest Jewish communities in central Poland. In 1618, Jews owned 60 of the town’s 185 houses, and sources mention a Jewish school and hospital. A separate Jewish district had probably been established by that time.
title: Opatów
related: Apt Hasidic Dynasty
related: Bund
related: Gdańsk
related: Kahal
related: Kloyz
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Me’ir ha-Levi Rotenberg of Apt
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Silesia
related: Tarbut
related: Warsaw
related: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz

Shaḥar, Ha-
described at: Shahar Ha-
has abstract: Hebrew monthly publication, issued between 1868 and 1884. Edited by author Perets Smolenskin, Ha-Shaḥar (The Dawn) was printed in Vienna. Twelve annual volumes were issued, the ninth and tenth of which appeared irregularly. The contents of the periodical, as stated by Smolenskin in an introduction, included articles on Jewish thought, history, and literature; prose, poetry, and essays; interpretations and explanations of biblical passages; news from Eastern Europe and the Jewish world; reviews of Hebrew books; and information about recently published books.
title: Shaḥar, Ha-
alternative label: Ha-Shaḥar
related: Assimilation
related: Boker Or, Ha-
related: Brandstetter, Mordekhai David
related: Braudes, Re’uven Asher
related: Dolitzki, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Frishman, David
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Gottlober, Avraham Ber
related: Haskalah
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Kaminer, Yitsḥak
related: Lebensohn, Avraham Dov
related: Levin, Yehudah Leib (poet)
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Mandelkern, Shelomoh
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Smolenskin, Perets

Tkhines
described at: Tkhines
has abstract: (Yiddish, from Heb. teḥinot, meaning supplications), private devotions and paraliturgical prayers usually in Yiddish, primarily for women, published beginning in the early modern period. Tkhines were written by both women and men, and the constant reprinting of tkhine booklets demonstrates the extraordinary popularity of the genre.
title: Tkhines
alternative label: tkhine
alternative label: tkhines
narrower: A Changing Role for Later Tkhines
narrower: Characteristics and Early History
narrower: Literary Setting
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Angels
related: Childbearing
related: Dubno
related: Galicia
related: Gender
related: Grade, Chaim
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Horovitz, Leah
related: Kranz, Ya‘akov ben Volf
related: Liturgy
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Piety
related: Prague
related: Sabbath
related: Slovakia
related: Sore bas Toyvim
related: Zhovkva

Weinreich, Max
described at: Weinreich Max
has abstract: (1894–1969), Yiddish linguist, literary scholar, and public intellectual. Born in Kuldiga, Latvia (then in Russia; Ger., Goldingen), Max Weinreich grew up in a German-speaking home and first took an interest in Yiddish as a teenager. His native region, Courland, had a large German population as well as a significant number of German-speaking Jews, although the historical language of the Jewish community was Yiddish. Weinreich attended Saint Petersburg University and did graduate studies in linguistics at Marburg University, where he completed his doctorate in 1923. His dissertation is entitled “Studien zur Geschichte und dialektischen Gliederung der jiddischen Sprache” (Studies in the History and Dialect Distribution of the Yiddish Language, published in 1993 with the title Geschichte der jiddischen Sprachforschung [History of Yiddish Linguistics]). In 1923, Weinreich also published his first book in Yiddish, based on his dissertation and titled Shtaplen (Rungs). It includes four essays on the history of Yiddish philology and literature.
title: Weinreich, Max
alternative label: Max Weinreich
related: Ashkenaz
related: Bin
related: Bund
related: Courland
related: Filologishe Shriftn
related: Latvia
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shtif, Nokhem
related: Szabad, Tsemaḥ
related: Vilnius
related: YIVO
related: Yidishe Shprakh, Di
related: Youth Movements

Hofshteyn, Dovid
described at: Hofshteyn Dovid
has abstract: (1889–1952), Yiddish poet. Born in Korostyshev, not far from Kiev, Dovid Hofshteyn was educated at a heder and by private teachers in Russian and Hebrew. His father, a forester, was a maskil; his mother came from the Pedotser-Kholodenko family of klezmer celebrities; and his sister, Shifra Kholodenko (1909–1974), was a noted Soviet Yiddish poet. Hofshteyn began writing poems at age nine, initially mostly in Hebrew, Russian, and Ukrainian, and his cultural experience in these languages influenced his Yiddish poetry.
title: Hofshteyn, Dovid
alternative label: Dovid Hofshteyn
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Eynhorn, Dovid
related: Fefer, Itsik
related: Heder
related: Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Kiev
related: Kultur-lige
related: Kvitko, Leyb
related: Litvakov, Moyshe
related: Markish, Perets
related: Moscow
related: Nusinov, Yitskhok
related: Oyslender, Nokhem
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Yiddish Poetry (Poetry)
related: Pogroms
related: Shtrom, Der
related: Ukraine
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Kalisz
described at: Kalisz
has abstract: Town in Wielkopolska province, Poland. Kalisz (Yid., Kulish) is considered to be the oldest town in Poland. Jews first settled there as early as the twelfth century, where they minted coins for the prince. In 1264, Prince Bolesław the Pious issued a privilege or charter for Great Poland’s Jews—the first document of its kind in the Polish lands—that became the basis for many subsequent royal privileges. In 1287, a well-organized Jewish community existed with a cemetery.
title: Kalisz
related: Łódź
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Broderzon, Moyshe
related: Bund
related: Crafts
related: Kielce
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Silesia
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Warsaw
related: YIVO
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Proverbs
described at: Proverbs
has abstract: Yiddish speakers had at their disposal a rich repertoire of proverbs. The term proverb (Yid., shprikhvort) in a narrow sense refers to complete sentences of anonymous origin that are used in conversation to comment, often metaphorically, on a matter at hand. An example is Patsh zikh nit in baykhele ven fishele iz nokh in taykhele (Don’t pat yourself in the belly when the fish is still in the stream; in other words, “Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched”). Related to proverbs are proverbial phrases, proverbial comparisons, and “winged words.”
title: Proverbs
alternative label: proverb
alternative label: proverbs
related: Bernstein, Ignatz
related: Money
related: Passover

Walachia
described at: Walachia
has abstract: Region of Romania, between the southern Carpathian Mountains and the Danube River. Walachia (Rom., Valahia, or Vlahia; known also as Țara Românească [Romanian Land]) is made up of two provinces: Muntenia (east of the Olt River) and Oltenia (west of the river). Until its political union with Moldavia in 1859, followed by an administrative amalgamation in 1862, Walachia was a principality that had been founded at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Its princes were vassals of the Ottoman Empire, to which it paid tribute beginning about 1417. The population spoke Romanian and practiced Greek (Romanian) Orthodoxy. Its capitals were Curtea de Argeş (fourteenth century), Târgovişte (fifteenth century), and Bucharest (Rom., Bucureşti; beginning in the sixteenth century).
title: Walachia
related: Ashkenaz
related: Bally Family
related: Barasch, Iuliu
related: Braşov
related: Bucharest
related: Conversion
related: Craiova
related: Dress
related: Focşani
related: Guilds
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Iaşi
related: L’viv
related: Me’ir Leib ben Yeḥi’el Mikha’el
related: Moldavia
related: Ploieşti
related: Reform, Religious
related: Romania
related: Sephardim
related: Transylvania

Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz
described at: Yaakov Yitshak Horowitz
has abstract: (The Seer of Lublin; 1745–1815), the most influential Hasidic leader in Poland and Galicia at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Though he did not found a dynasty, the majority of tsadikim living at his time in that region considered themselves to be his disciples.
title: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz
alternative label: Ya`akov Yitsḥak Horowitz
alternative label: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak
alternative label: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak of Lublin
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: Elimelekh of Lizhensk
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Horowitz Family
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Pshiskhe Hasidic Dynasty

Zhovkva
described at: Zhovkva
has abstract: (Yid., Zhovkve; Pol., Żółkiew; Rus., Nesterov between 1951 and 1992), town with a Jewish presence from the late sixteenth century; under Ukrainian sovereignty since 1991. Zhovkva was a private town in the Polish Commonwealth until 1772, when it became a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. From 1918 through 1939 it belonged to independent Poland and then was taken over by the USSR. From 1941 through 1944 it was occupied by Germany.
title: Zhovkva
alternative label: Żólkiew
alternative label: Żółkiew
related: Becal
related: Haskalah
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Printing and Publishing before 1800 (Printing and Publishing)
related: Sabbatianism
related: Tarbut
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Czech Republic
described at: Czech Republic
has abstract: On 1 January 1993, the Czech Republic came into existence as a successor state of Czechoslovakia. At the time, 10 Jewish communities existed on its territory with approximately 3,000 members, most of them living in Prague. Another 2,000 Jews were organized in different Jewish associations. The Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic estimated that approximately 15,000–20,000 Jews were living in the Czech Republic, most of whom were not registered with a formal Jewish community. Some of the communities were very small and had difficulty maintaining religious institutions without permanent rabbis.
title: Czech Republic
alternative label: Czech
related: Communism
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Orthodoxy
related: Prague
related: Terezín

Fraynd, Der
described at: Fraynd Der
has abstract: The first Yiddish daily published in the Russian Empire. Der fraynd (The Friend), issued between 1903 and 1912, was a harbinger of the new, secular Jewish culture that would sweep Jewish communities in the final days of the tsarist empire. Founded by Sha’ul Ginsburg (1866–1940) and run out of the capital city of Saint Petersburg until its move to Warsaw in the fall of 1909, Der fraynd helped reshape and redefine both popular and elite culture for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Yiddish-speaking (and reading) Jews in the Russian Empire and beyond.
title: Fraynd, Der
alternative label: Der fraynd
alternative label: Fraynd
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Białystok
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Cartoons
related: Frishman, David
related: Ginsburg, Sha'ul
related: Haynt
related: Moment, Der
related: Odessa
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Spektor, Mordkhe
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

About this Article (Historiography)
described at: Historiography
has abstract: To survey trends and motifs in the historiography of the Jewish experience in Eastern Europe, this entry includes four articles. Following a general overview, which focuses on scholarship in Poland and Russia, are separate articles on the Bohemian lands and Hungary. The last article treats historical writings by Orthodox Jews.
title: About this Article (Historiography)
alternative label: historiography

Kafka, Franz
described at: Kafka Franz
has abstract: (1883–1924), writer. A Jewish writer who was born and lived most of his life in Prague, Franz Kafka was one of the most important contributors to European modernist prose. All of his surviving fiction was composed in German, which must be considered his mother tongue, although he was raised in a multicultural environment and had a good command of Czech.
title: Kafka, Franz
alternative label: Franz Kafka
related: Baum, Oskar
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brod, Max
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Selbstwehr
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Weltsch, Felix
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Literarishe Bleter
described at: Literarishe Bleter
has abstract: Yiddish literary and cultural weekly periodical, published between April 1924 and June or July 1939. Literarishe bleter was the leading Yiddish literary publication in interwar Poland. With Warsaw suddenly bereft of Yiddish cultural periodicals and the appearance of a new Polish weekly, Wiadomości Literackie (which soon became Poland’s leading literary publication), a group of young Warsaw writers created the Yiddish weekly Literarishe bleter.
title: Literarishe Bleter
alternative label: Literarishe bleter
related: Bund
related: Communism
related: Haynt
related: Kletskin, Boris Arkadevich
related: Markish, Perets
related: Mayzel, Nakhmen
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ravitch, Melech
related: Singer, Israel Joshua
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Wiadomości Literackie
related: YIVO

Shtadlan
described at: Shtadlan
has abstract: The shtadlan (intercessor; pl., shtadlonim) was, ideally, a well-connected, culturally adept, linguistically capable person whose official function was to intervene on behalf of local and intercommunal Jewish communities and local and national officials on all matters that the local kahal (community board) and the intercommunal va‘ad (council) deemed appropriate. In the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, they were often retained by detailed contracts for periods of up to three years, earning handsome salaries and receiving generous indirect payments and expense accounts.
title: Shtadlan
alternative label: shtadlan
alternative label: shtadlones
alternative label: shtadlonim
related: Barukh ben David Yavan
related: Blood Libels and Host Desecration Accusations
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Councils
related: Frankism
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kahal
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: Warsaw

Singer, Isaac Bashevis
described at: Singer Isaac Bashevis
has abstract: (1904–1991), Yiddish writer; in translation, among the most widely read authors of the twentieth century. The son and grandson of rabbis on both sides of his family, Isaac Bashevis Singer was born to strictly observant parents in the village of Leoncin, near Warsaw. With the outbreak of World War I, his mother (from whose first name he later derived his pseudonym Bashevis) took her children back to the village of Biłgoraj, where her rabbi father ruled with iron discipline. There, in a place untouched by modernity, Bashevis, who was educated in traditional religious schools, acquired the profound knowledge of religious observances, folk customs, and rich range of Yiddish idioms that shaped his fiction. At the age of 17, he enrolled for one year in Warsaw’s Taḥkemoni Rabbinical Seminary, after which he taught modern Hebrew in private homes.
title: Singer, Isaac Bashevis
alternative label: I. J. Singer
alternative label: Isaac Bashevis Singer
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Demons
related: Globus
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Literarishe Bleter
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sexuality
related: Singer, Israel Joshua
related: Warsaw
related: Zeitlin Family

Anticosmopolitan Campaign
described at: Anticosmopolitan Campaign
has abstract: Euphemism for the victimization of the Jewish intelligentsia in the late Stalin years. The anticosmopolitan campaign did not commence as an anti-Jewish offensive, but rather as a concomitant of the policy of promoting “Soviet patriotism,” which in the immediate postwar years dictated the eradication of extraneous influences in culture and the reversal of the relative ideological relaxation of the war years. This trend was the other face of the isolationism the Soviet Union fostered as it instituted the Iron Curtain.
title: Anticosmopolitan Campaign
alternative label: anti-cosmopolitan campaign
alternative label: anticosmopolitan campaign
alternative label: anticosmopolitan campaigns
alternative label: cosmopolitanism
alternative label: cosmopolitans
alternative label: “anticosmopolitan” campaign
alternative label: “anticosmopolitism” campaign
related: Doctors’ Plot
related: Moscow
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Der Nister
described at: Der Nister
has abstract: (“The Hidden One”; pseud. of Pinkhes Kahanovitsh; 1884–1950), Yiddish writer. Der Nister was born in Berdichev, Ukraine, where he received a traditional Jewish education. In his adolescence he began reading Russian literature and studied secular subjects. His elder brother Aharon, who became a Bratslaver Hasid, had a significant influence on him; his younger brother, Motl (Max), became a sculptor and well-known art dealer in Paris.
title: Der Nister
related: Berdychiv
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Birobidzhan
related: Bratslav Hasidism
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Yiddish Literature (Children’s Literature)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: Kultur-lige
related: Mayzel, Nakhmen
related: Moscow
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Hebrew Poetry (Poetry)
related: Yiddish Prose (Prose)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shmeruk, Khone
related: Ukraine
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Habimah
described at: Habimah
has abstract: Hebrew repertory theater company founded in 1918 in Moscow and permanently reestablished in Tel Aviv in the 1930s. Habimah originated in the activities of Nahum Lazarevich Tsemakh (Heb., Naḥum Tsemaḥ; 1887–1939), a small-town teacher who assembled an amateur theater troupe that performed in Hebrew in Białystok, Vilna, and Warsaw from 1909 to 1914. In 1913 Tsemakh arranged for the publication of Hebrew translations of plays by Mark Arnshteyn, Osip Dymov, and Dovid Pinski. Trying to enlist the support of Zionist circles, Tsemakh had his troupe perform a Hebrew version of Dymov’s play Vechnyi strannik (The Eternal Wanderer) for the delegates to the Eleventh Zionist Congress in Vienna in 1913, but without result. When World War I began, the troupe fell apart. Tsemakh, who reached Moscow along with other refugees, reconstituted his group from old and new participants. In 1916, supported by Chief Rabbi Ya‘akov Mazeh (Iakov Maze), he successfully petitioned the municipal authorities to register it under the name “Habimah Jewish Dramatic Society.” Ha-bimah means “the stage” in modern Hebrew, but bimah also designates the central podium for reading Torah in a synagogue.
title: Habimah
alternative label: Habimah Theater
related: Arnshteyn, Mark
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Berkowitz, Yitsḥak Dov
related: Białystok
related: Dybbuk, The
related: Dymov, Osip
related: Evsektsiia
related: Katzenelson, Yitsḥak
related: Latvia
related: Lithuania
related: Maze, Iakov Isaevich
related: Moscow
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Pinski, Dovid
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Tairov, Aleksandr Iakovlevich
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Hebrew Theater (Theater)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Landau, Yeḥezkel ben Yehudah
described at: Landau Yehezkel ben Yehudah
has abstract: (1713–1793), halakhic authority, Talmudic scholar, and chief rabbi of Prague. Yeḥezkel (Ezekiel) Landau was born in the Polish city of Opatów into a prominent and wealthy family. He was educated by his father and by Rabbi Yitsḥak of Ludmir (Rus., Vladimir; now Ukr., Volodymyr Volyns’kyi). Shortly after his marriage at age 18, Landau entered the elite Brody kloyz, which was then the center of kabbalistic study in Poland, and remained there for 13 years. In Brody, he established connections with many leading scholars and mystics. In 1733, he also became the head judge of one of Brody’s four Jewish courts.
title: Landau, Yeḥezkel ben Yehudah
alternative label: Yeḥezkel (Ezekiel) Landau
alternative label: Yeḥezkel Landau
related: Brody
related: Chorin, Aharon
related: Danzig, Avraham ben Yeḥi’el Mikhl
related: Eybeschütz, Yonatan
related: Fleckeles, El‘azar ben David
related: Frankism
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Josephinian Reforms
related: Kloyz
related: Landau, Mosheh Yisra’el
related: Lithuania
related: Margoliot, Efrayim Zalman ben Menaḥem Manes
related: Normalschulen
related: Opatów
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Sabbatianism
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Volodymyr Volyns’kyi

Leaseholding
described at: Leaseholding
has abstract: The payment of cash for the use of property or monopoly rights, leaseholding was one of the most important Jewish occupations in Eastern and Central Europe from the Middle Ages. Its importance grew considerably in the early modern period: according to the Jewish census of 1764–1765 in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, more than one-third of employed Jews were leaseholders of various kinds. In the nineteenth century, the importance of leaseholding declined with economic modernization, but continued to be a principal source of income for Jews.
title: Leaseholding
alternative label: leased
alternative label: leaseholder
alternative label: leaseholders
alternative label: leaseholding
alternative label: leases
alternative label: leasing
alternative label: lessees
related: Agriculture
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Credit
related: Galicia
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Ḥazakah
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Industry
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: Money
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Tavernkeeping
related: Trade

Levinzon, Yitsḥak Ber
described at: Levinzon Yitshak Ber
has abstract: (1788–1860), thinker and teacher; considered by some as the father of the East European Haskalah. Born in Kremenets, Ukraine, where he received a traditional Jewish education, Yitsḥak Ber Levinzon (Isaac Baer Levinsohn; known also as Ribal) married a woman from the town of Radzhivilov in 1807 and lived there until 1812. He learned Russian, German, French, and Latin and served as an official interpreter for the Russian army.
title: Levinzon, Yitsḥak Ber
alternative label: Yitsḥak Ber Levinzon
related: Agriculture
related: Berdychiv
related: Bick, Ya‘akov Shemu’el
related: Brody
related: Erter, Yitsḥak
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Karaites
related: Krochmal, Naḥman
related: Lefin, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Letteris, Me’ir
related: L’viv
related: Mieses, Yehudah Leib
related: Nemyriv
related: Odessa
related: Ostrog
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Passover
related: Perl, Yosef
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Ternopil’
related: Ukraine
related: Vilnius
related: Zhovkva

Przemyśl
described at: Przemysl
has abstract: (Ukr., Peremyshl; Yid., Pshemishel), city in southeastern Poland. It is presumed that at the beginning of the eleventh century a Jewish trading post existed in Przemyśl. Larger groups of Jews settled in the town in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, and by the end of the fourteenth century a Jewish community had been constituted. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, this community numbered as many as 100 persons. A document from 1459 mentions a “Jewish” street in Przemyśl. Jews settled primarily in the northeastern part of the city, establishing a distinct quarter. They were involved in both local and long-distance trade, and also made their living as moneylenders and artisans, the latter maintaining their own guilds.
title: Przemyśl
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Bund
related: Guilds
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Labor Camps
related: Mieses, Józef
related: Mieses, Matthias
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (Russia)
related: Schorr, Mojżesz
related: Trade
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Russian Civil War
described at: Russian Civil War
has abstract: With the retreat of the German occupying forces at the end of World War I in November 1918, much of the former Russian Empire was plunged into the chaos of another war as several forces sought to consolidate control over its various territories. A good part of the western region, well behind the German front lines, managed to assert demands for local authority, resulting in the recognition of several independent states during the interwar period, including Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. To the east, however, military and paramilitary forces clashed in a civil war that lasted two years.
title: Russian Civil War
alternative label: Civil War
alternative label: Russian civil war
alternative label: civil war
related: Babel, Isaac
related: Communism
related: Estonia
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Latvia
related: Lithuania
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Russian Literature
related: Trotsky, Leon
related: Tsherikover, Elye
related: World War I
related: YIVO

Shklov
described at: Shklov
has abstract: (Bel., Sklou; Pol., Szkłów), district city in the Mogilev region, Belarus. Jews first received a charter to settle in Shklov in 1668. In the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Shklov became an important commercial center, where, in the words of a visiting diplomat in 1699, Jews were “the richest and most influential class of people in the city.” In 1746, the Shklov kahal briefly seceded from the regional council of Jewish communities (Va‘ad Medinat Rusyah), due to a dispute over its heavy tax burden. According to the Polish census of 1766, there were 1,367 Jews in Shklov, the same number as in Minsk.
title: Shklov
alternative label: Szkłów
related: Belarus
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Kahal
related: Land of Israel
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Minsk
related: Notkin, Nota Khaimovich
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shneour, Zalman
related: Smolenskin, Perets
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Subcarpathian Rus’
described at: Subcarpathian Rus
has abstract: (also Subcarpathian or Transcarpathian Ruthenia), administrative region in present-day Ukraine, known as Zakarpatska Ukraina. The area first functioned as such a unit at the end of World War I, when it became part of Czechoslovakia. Subcarpathian Rus’ comprised the historical counties of Ung, Ugocsa, Bereg, and the northern half of Máramaros in the prewar kingdom of Hungary. Until 1918–1919, Subcarpathian Rus’ belonged to the Hungarian part of the Habsburg monarchy, but in 1918–1919 it was annexed to the Czechoslovak Republic, where it remained until 1938–1939. In autumn 1938, the Hungarian kingdom annexed one part of the region; another section was autonomous until March 1939, when the Hungarians conquered it as well. Soviet troops overran the area in the fall of 1944 and arranged for its incorporation into the USSR as part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
title: Subcarpathian Rus’
alternative label: Carpathian Rus’
alternative label: Subcarpathian
alternative label: Transcarpathia
related: Agriculture
related: Banking
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bratislava
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Galicia
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Industry
related: Jewish Congress
related: Orthodoxy
related: Sephardim
related: Sighet Marmaţiei
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: Trade
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Uzhhorod
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

TSYSHO
described at: Tsysho
has abstract: Di Tsentrale Yidishe Shul-Organizatsye (Central Yiddish School Organization), commonly known by its acronym, TSYSHO or CYSHO, was established in Warsaw in June 1921. Led primarily by members of the Bund and Left Po‘ale Tsiyon, its founders sought to create a network of secular Yiddish schools under socialist auspices. Headed by the Bundist Beynish Mikhalevitsh, the first chairman of the organization, TSYSHO was administered by a central office in Warsaw and a central education committee in Vilna. The latter was largely autonomous and less politicized than the institutions in central Poland. The administration prepared curriculum outlines, chose or published textbooks, and compiled vocabulary lists to meet the needs generated by subjects being taught for the first time in Yiddish. The curriculum consisted of Yiddish language and literature, Jewish history and culture, the sciences, math, music, physical education, arts and crafts, and, for some, Hebrew. In addition, Polish language, literature, and history were taught in the Polish language.
title: TSYSHO
alternative label: CYSHO
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Białystok
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Bund
related: Czernowitz Conference
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Kazdan, Khayim Shloyme
related: Lifshits, Khaye Malke
related: Lithuania
related: Medem Sanatorium
related: Medem, Vladimir Davidovich
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Weinreich, Max
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Weddings
described at: Weddings
has abstract: Among the rituals of the East European Jewish life cycle, the wedding (Heb., ḥatunah; Yid., khasene) is the most elaborate. At its fullest, from the making of the match to the celebrations following the marriage ceremony, the process of getting married could extend over a period of years, gathering in intensity and peaking with the ceremony itself. The events associated with getting married were occasions par excellence for Jewish ceremonial creativity and artistic expression, including the central role of musicians, the badkhn (master of ceremonies and jester), and dance. The public character of the festivities was intended to make the marriage binding, not only in contractual but also in emotional terms, which accounts for the intensity of feeling (weeping before the ceremony and joyous celebration after) orchestrated by the musicians and badkhn.
title: Weddings
alternative label: wedding
alternative label: wedding ceremonies
alternative label: wedding customs
alternative label: weddings
related: An-ski Ethnographic Expedition and Museum
related: Badkhonim
related: Chełm
related: About this Article (Dance)
related: Demons
related: Dress
related: Dybbuk, The
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi
related: Kotik, Yekhezkl
related: Life Cycle
related: Love
related: Marriage
related: Memory
related: Traditional and Instrumental Music (Music)
related: Opatów
related: Painting and Sculpture
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Sumptuary Legislation
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Warsaw
related: Yikhes

Estonia
described at: Estonia
has abstract: State in the eastern Baltic region created in 1918 out of formerly Russian territories. Under Swedish rule from 1629 to 1721, when it was annexed to Russia, northern Estonia was part of the Duchy of Estland while southern Estonia was part of Livonia. In 1940, Estonia became a republic in the Soviet Union but was occupied by the German army from 1941 to 1944. It regained its independence in 1991.
title: Estonia
related: Bund
related: Courland
related: Crafts
related: Eisenstadt, Hirsch
related: General Zionists
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Industry
related: Kaunas
related: Kultur-lige
related: Labor Camps
related: Lithuania
related: Maccabi Movement
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Tallinn
related: Tarbut
related: Tartu
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
described at: Grinberg Uri Tsevi
has abstract: (1896–1981), Hebrew and Yiddish poet, essayist and journalist. Uri Tsevi Grinberg (or Greenberg) was a trailblazer of radical modernism in both Hebrew and Yiddish literatures, one of the leaders of the Revisionist Zionist movement (from 1930), and a member of the first Israeli Knesset.
title: Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
alternative label: Uri Tsevi Grinberg
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Galicia
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Imber, Shmuel Yankev
related: Jabotinsky, Vladimir
related: Khalyastre
related: L’viv
related: Messianism
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Revisionist Zionists
related: Sabbatianism
related: Shofman, Gershom
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Karaites
described at: Karaites
has abstract: The first testimony about a Karaite presence in the Crimean peninsula, dating to 1278, was supplied by the Karaite scholar Aharon ben Yosef (Ha-Rofe), who mentioned a dispute over the calendar between Karaites and Rabbinites (those who follow rabbinic tradition; also spelled Rabbanite) in Solkhat (Eski Krim). Karaites apparently migrated to the peninsula with the Tatar conquerors of Crimea in the mid-thirteenth century. The major centers of Karaite settlement were Kefe (Feodosiia), Solkhat, Chufut-Kale (or Chufut-Qaleh), Mangup, and, later, Gözleve.
title: Karaites
alternative label: Karaism
alternative label: Karaite
related: Crimea
related: Firkovich, Avraam Samuilovich
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kiev
related: Lithuania
related: Luts’k
related: Luzki, Simḥah Yitsḥak ben Mosheh
related: L’viv
related: Moscow
related: Panevėžys
related: Riga
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Trakai
related: Troki, Yitsḥak ben Avraham
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Labor Camps
described at: Labor Camps
has abstract: Installations established by the Nazi regime during World War II for exploiting forced laborers, including Jews. Forced laborers worked in hundreds of camps that were built individually or in clusters, usually situated next to concentration camps. Such was the case in Auschwitz, Stutthof, Gross-Rosen, Dachau, and Mauthausen. SS leader Heinrich Himmler was determined to concentrate Jews in closed camps in order to exploit the Jewish labor potential. An increasing dearth of available working hands prompted Hitler to decree in November 1941 that every person in occupied Europe could be subject to labor service.
title: Labor Camps
alternative label: Labor camps
alternative label: labor camp
alternative label: labor camps
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Killing Centers

Memory
described at: Memory
has abstract: Memory per se was not an operative category among East European Jews. Rather, in the premodern period, Jews had their master metaphors organized around saints, sanctuaries, and sacred times. In this way, each generation of Jews shaped the model life, the model community, and the model time. In periods of crisis, the function of Jewish memory was to transcend the ruptures of history. At such times, the precise levers of inner-Jewish transformation were the historical archetypes that embodied the covenantal relationship between God and Israel: God’s command of lekh-lekho (Go forth) to Abraham, the binding of Isaac, the Exodus, Sinai, the Mosaic curses, the destruction of the Temple, the Valley of the Dry Bones, the Battle of Gog, the Megilah of Purim. The chronicler, preacher, or synagogue poet could either invoke any of the relevant archetypes, reminding God, as it were, both of His promise and of Israel’s steadfastness in the past, or, more boldly, could provoke God’s response by throwing the present sacrilege in His face. “It is for Your sake that we are slain all day long,” says Psalm 44 (23–24), “that we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. / Rouse Yourself: why do You sleep, O Lord? / Awaken, do not reject us forever!” In the face of national catastrophe, the Jewish response is dialectical: the worse the present expulsion order, or massacre, or blood libel, the more it recalls the most sacrilegious event of the past.
title: Memory
alternative label: memory
narrower: Memory and the Model Person
narrower: Memory and the Model Place
narrower: The Liturgy of Remembrance
narrower: The Politics of Memory
related: Łódź
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Armed Resistance
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Ashkenaz
related: Autobiography and Memoir
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brest
related: Bund
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Dik, Ayzik Meyer
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Frankism
related: Fuenn, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Ger Tsedek
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Ginsburg, Sha'ul
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: Hannover, Natan Note
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Historiography)
related: Hrodna
related: Kacyzne, Alter-Sholem
related: Kaczerginski, Shmerke
related: Kahal
related: Katzenelson, Yitsḥak
related: Kipnis, Itsik
related: Kishinev
related: Kulbak, Moyshe
related: Landkentenish
related: Lekert, Hirsh
related: Levi Yitsḥak of Barditshev
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Manger, Itsik
related: Mapu, Avraham
related: Menaḥem Mendel of Kotsk
related: Misnagdim
related: Naḥman of Bratslav
related: Nemyriv
related: Odessa
related: Operetta
related: Parody
related: Passover
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Pilgrimage
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Purim
related: Purim-shpil
related: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl
related: Reyzen, Zalmen
related: Ringelblum, Emanuel
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sabbatianism
related: Schulman, Kalman
related: Shneur Zalman of Liady
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtetl
related: Singer, Isaac Bashevis
related: Sutzkever, Avrom
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Trunk, Yekhiel Yeshaye
related: Ukraine
related: Vilnius

Mikulov
described at: Mikulov
has abstract: (Ger., Nikolsburg), town in Moravia, in today’s Czech Republic. Mikulov was the largest and most important Jewish community in Moravia until the middle of the nineteenth century, and seat of the Moravian chief rabbinate from the mid-sixteenth century until 1851. The oldest written evidence of Jews in Mikulov dates from 1369, but the Jewish community was probably founded by Jews expelled from Vienna and Lower Austria in 1420. Additional Jews arrived after the expulsions from Brno and Znojmo in 1454.
title: Mikulov
alternative label: Nikolsburg
related: Banet, Mordekhai ben Avraham
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brno
related: Czech Republic
related: Familiants Laws
related: Galicia
related: Guilds
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: Heller, Yom Tov Lipmann
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Krochmal, Menaḥem Mendel ben Avraham
related: Oppenheim, David
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Silesia
related: Trebitsch, Neḥemyah Naḥum
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Moment, Der
described at: Moment Der
has abstract: Yiddish daily newspaper. Published between 11 May 1910 and 22 September 1939, Der moment was one of the two longest running and most important Yiddish daily newspapers published in Warsaw. Its founder and official editor was Noah Pryłucki (1882–1941), the son of Tsevi Pryłucki, who was founder and editor of the first daily Yiddish newspaper in Warsaw, Der veg (1905–1907); the elder Pryłucki was Der moment’s actual editor for most of its existence. In its first few years, the paper was nonpolitical, but displayed a pro-Zionist and antiassimilationist stand in line with the ideology of its columnist Hillel Zeitlin. Der moment was able to compete successfully with its rival Haynt (founded in 1908) because of such popular, prominent contributors and columnists as Mordkhe Spektor, B. Yeushzon (Moyshe Bunem Yustman), Yoysef Tunkel, and Noah Pryłucki himself.
title: Moment, Der
alternative label: Der Moment
alternative label: Der moment
alternative label: Moment
related: Folkists
related: Haynt
related: Jabotinsky, Vladimir
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: Perle, Yoshue
related: Pryłucki, Noah
related: Pryłucki, Tsevi
related: Revisionist Zionists
related: Segalovitsh, Zusman
related: Shneour, Zalman
related: Spektor, Mordkhe
related: Tunkel, Yoysef
related: Warsaw
related: Yustman, Moyshe Bunem
related: Zeitlin Family
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Ringelblum, Emanuel
described at: Ringelblum Emanuel
has abstract: (1900–1944), Polish Jewish historian, relief worker, political activist, and organizer of the underground Oyneg Shabes Archive in the Warsaw ghetto. Born in Buczacz, Emanuel Ringelblum moved to Nowy Sącz in 1914. Under the influence of two friends, Raphael Mahler and Artur Eisenbach (also to become noted historians) Ringelblum joined Po‘ale Tsiyon, moving to the Left Po‘ale Tsiyon after the party’s split in 1920. He played a major role in the organization’s cultural work, where his passionate devotion to Yiddish, dedication to the Jewish masses, and fascination with Jewish history all began.
title: Ringelblum, Emanuel
alternative label: Emanuel Ringelblum
alternative label: Ringelblum
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Archives
related: Buchach
related: Eisenbach, Artur
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Landkentenish
related: Mahler, Raphael
related: Oyerbakh, Rokhl
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Warsaw
related: YIVO
related: Zbąszyń

Sovetish Heymland
described at: Sovetish Heymland
has abstract: Yiddish literary and political journal published in Moscow from 1961 to 1991. A product of the post-Stalinist “thaw,” Sovetish heymland (Soviet Homeland) was created on the ruins of Soviet Yiddish culture silenced during the repression of the late 1940s. The title underlined continuity with the Moscow-based Yiddish literary periodicals Sovetish (1934–1941) and Heymland (1947–1948).
title: Sovetish Heymland
alternative label: Sovetish heymland
related: Altman, Moyshe
related: Beider, Khayim
related: Falkovitsh, Elye
related: Gordon, Shmuel
related: Gorshman, Shira
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Love
related: Moscow
related: Osherovitsh, Hirsh
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Rabin, Yoysef
related: Razumny, Mark
related: Rubin, Rivke
related: Shapiro, Moyshe
related: Shekhtman, Eli
related: Shraybman, Yekhiel
related: Shternberg, Yankev
related: Shtetl
related: Singer, Isaac Bashevis
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vergelis, Arn
related: Zabara, Nosn
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Dybbuk, The
described at: Dybbuk The
has abstract: (Yid., Der dibek; Heb., Ha-Dibuk), dramatic work by the writer, ethnographer, and revolutionary S. An-ski (Shloyme Zaynvl Rapoport) that became the most celebrated play in the history of both Yiddish and Hebrew theater. The Dybbuk was based on material An-ski collected on an ethnographic expedition he had organized through Jewish towns of western Russia just before World War I; he had originally written the play in Russian, then translated it into Yiddish. In fact, An-ski lost his Yiddish manuscript of Der dibuk when he fled Bolshevik Russia; he reconstructed it on the basis of Ḥayim Naḥman Bialik’s Hebrew translation, published in Ha-Tekufah (vol. 1) in 1918.
title: Dybbuk, The
alternative label: Dybbuk
alternative label: The Dybbuk
alternative label: dybbuk
alternative label: dybbuks
alternative label: the Dybbuk
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Habimah
related: Morevski, Avrom
related: Moscow
related: Operetta
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Purim-shpil
related: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Vilner Trupe
related: Warsaw

Ger Hasidic Dynasty
described at: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
has abstract: The Ger dynasty (also Gur), named for the town of Góra Kalwaria in the Warsaw district, had the largest following of any Hasidic group in central Poland until the Holocaust and to a large degree dominated Jewish religious life in the area around Warsaw for some 80 years. Ger was distinguished among Hasidic groups by its particular emphasis on traditional yeshiva-type study. Ger leaders were also known for their deep and visible involvement in political and public affairs.
title: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
alternative label: Ger
alternative label: Ger Hasidic dynasty
alternative label: Ger Hasidim
alternative label: Ger Hasidism
alternative label: Ger dynasty
alternative label: Gerer
alternative label: Gerer rebbe
alternative label: Gur
alternative label: Gur Hasidim
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Assimilation
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Land of Israel
related: Meisels, Dov Berush
related: Menaḥem Mendel of Kotsk
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Kvitko, Leyb
described at: Kvitko Leyb
has abstract: (1890 [or 1893]–1952), Yiddish and Russian writer. Born in Holoskovo, near Odessa, Leyb Kvitko lost both of his parents very early and was raised by his grandmother. At age 10 he began working as a quilter’s apprentice and lived briefly in Nikolaev, Odessa, and Kherson. He moved to Uman in 1915, and from there he sent several of his poems to Shmuel Niger, editor of the Vilna-based journal Di yudishe velt (The Jewish World), who rejected them as “worthless.”
title: Kvitko, Leyb
alternative label: Leyb Kvitko
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: About this Article (Children’s Literature)
related: Der Nister
related: Emes, Der
related: Fininberg, Ezra
related: Hofshteyn, Dovid
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Kaunas
related: Khashchevatski, Moyshe
related: Kiev
related: Kultur-lige
related: Litvakov, Moyshe
related: Markish, Perets
related: Moscow
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Odessa
related: Pogroms
related: Shtrom, Der
related: Ukraine
related: Uman
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Yudishe Velt, Di

Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl
described at: Rapoport Shloyme Zaynvl
has abstract: (1863–1920), Russian and Yiddish writer, ethnographer, and revolutionary activist. Shloyme Rapoport (known more commonly as S. [Semen Akimovich] An-ski) is most acclaimed for two Yiddish works: his play Der dibek: Tsvishn tsvey veltn (The Dybbuk: Between Two Worlds) and the Jewish Labor Bund’s anthem known as “Di shvue” (The Oath). He is also famous for landmark ethnographic expeditions that he led to Volhynia and Podolia in 1912–1914. Rapoport distinguished himself from other Yiddish writers of his generation by his successful career as a journalist in Russian, his intense involvement first with the Russian populist movement and then with the Socialist Revolutionary (SR) Party, and his professional interest in the social sciences. He was also known by the pseudonyms S. Vid’bin, Z. Sinanni, and S. Sinani.
title: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl
alternative label: An-ski
alternative label: S. An-Ski
alternative label: S. An-sk
alternative label: S. An-ski
alternative label: S. Z. Rapoport
alternative label: Shloyme Rapoport
alternative label: Shloyme Zaynvl Rapoport
narrower: Life
narrower: Major Achievements
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: An-ski Ethnographic Expedition and Museum
related: Assimilation
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Bucovina
related: Bund
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Dybbuk, The
related: Engel, Yo’el
related: Folk Songs
related: Galicia
related: Gintsburg Family
related: Habimah
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Heder
related: Iudovin, Solomon Borisovich
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ravnitski, Yehoshu‘a Ḥana
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Vayter, A.
related: Vilner Trupe
related: Vilnius
related: Vitsyebsk
related: Voskhod
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Revisionist Zionists
described at: Revisionist Zionists
has abstract: Political party, also known in Hebrew as Berit ha-Zohar; formally called the Union of Zionist Revisionists. The inaugural conference of the Revisionist Zionist party took place in Paris in April 1925, headed by Vladimir Jabotinsky. Though most of the delegates were local Zionists of Russian extraction who had been involved in Jabotinsky’s struggle to set up a Jewish Legion during World War I, a minority came from other countries.
title: Revisionist Zionists
alternative label: Revisionist
alternative label: Revisionist Party
alternative label: Revisionist Zionism
alternative label: Revisionist Zionist
alternative label: Revisionist Zionist party
alternative label: Revisionist party
alternative label: Revisionists
alternative label: Zionist Revisionism
alternative label: Zionist Revisionists
related: Betar
related: Białystok
related: Chernivtsi
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Jabotinsky, Vladimir
related: Land of Israel
related: Latvia
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Riga
related: Romania
related: Shaḥar, Ha-
related: Trumpeldor, Yosef
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Ha-
described at: Shomer ha-Tsair Ha-
has abstract: Zionist socialist youth movement. Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir (The Young Guard) educated and trained its members for immigration to a kibbutz in Palestine. The movement originated in Galicia—at that time a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire—a result of the merger of Tse‘ire Agudat Tsiyon, which was involved in the teaching of Hebrew, Judaism, and Jewish history, with Ha-Shomer, an amalgamation of scouting organizations that considered the distinct Palestine Ha-Shomer organization a worthy model to emulate. In 1916, at a meeting of Galician refugees from World War I in Vienna, the two groups officially united to form Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir.
title: Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Ha-
alternative label: Ha-Shomer Ha-Tsa‘ir
alternative label: Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir
alternative label: Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir
related: Anielewicz, Mordekhai
related: Beriḥah
related: Białystok
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kovner, Abba
related: Land of Israel
related: L’viv
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Youth Movements
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Cantors
described at: Cantors
has abstract: The cantor, or ḥazan, is (usually) the professional prayer leader in the synagogue. In addition to chanting the service, he—until modern times cantors were invariably male—also functioned as an intermediary for the Jewish community in their prayers.
title: Cantors
alternative label: cantor
alternative label: cantors
narrower: APPENDIX: CANTORS
narrower: Dissemination of East European Cantorial Music
narrower: East European Cantorial Music in the United States
narrower: Formation of an East European Style
narrower: Intersections between East and West
narrower: Meshorerim and the Choir
narrower: Musical Styles and Composed Music
narrower: Training and Duties
related: Ashkenaz
related: Berdychiv
related: Birnboym, Avrom Ber
related: Bratislava
related: Budapest
related: Folk Songs
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kiev
related: Kishinev
related: Lithuania
related: Liturgy
related: L’viv
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Passover
related: Piety
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rivne
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sabbath
related: Schorr, Barukh
related: Sirota, Gershon
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Musar Movement
described at: Musar Movement
has abstract: Educational movement and ethical program designed to promote and develop the teachings and practices introduced by Yisra’el Lipkin (Salanter; 1810–1883). Salanter’s broad notions for reinvigorating Jewish society gave way at the hands of his disciples to programs of educational reform within the circumscribed though culturally significant ambit of Lithuanian yeshivas, while his ideas gradually underwent dramatic reinterpretation and revision. Three schools of Musar had emerged by the close of the nineteenth century: the patient, pious self-cultivation of Kelem (Lith., Kelme), the near-humanist consciousness of Slobodka, and the ascetic radicalism of Novaredok (Nowógrodek; Novogrudok).
title: Musar Movement
alternative label: Musar
alternative label: Musar movement
alternative label: musar
related: Łomża
related: Finland
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Grade, Chaim
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Karelits, Avraham Yesha‘yahu
related: Kaunas
related: Kook, Avraham Yitsḥak
related: Lefin, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Lipkin, Yisra’el ben Ze’ev Volf
related: Lithuania
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Mir, Yeshiva of
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shkop, Shim‘on Yehudah
related: Slobodka, Yeshiva of
related: Slutsk
related: Telz, Yeshiva of
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Yisra’el Me’ir ha-Kohen
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Reyzen, Avrom
described at: Reyzen Avrom
has abstract: (1876–1953), writer, poet, and editor. Born in Koidanov, eastern Belorussia, Avrom Reyzen received a general and Jewish education. His father, Kalmen Reyzen, was a maskil and a writer, as were Avrom’s brother Zalmen and sister Sore. With the encouragement of Yaknehoz (pseudonym of Yeshaye Nisn Hakoyen Goldberg), Reyzen submitted articles to Dos Yudishes folks-blat in Saint Petersburg at the age of 13 or 14. He began to correspond with Yankev Dinezon and Y. L. Peretz, who published Reyzen’s poem “Ven dos lebn is farbitert” (When Life Is Embittered) in the first volume of Di yudishe bibliotek (The Yiddish Library; 1891).
title: Reyzen, Avrom
alternative label: Avrom
alternative label: Avrom Reyzen
related: Bal-Makhshoves
related: Belarus
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Bund
related: Czernowitz Conference
related: Dinezon, Yankev
related: Fraynd, Der
related: Minsk
related: Nomberg, Hersh Dovid
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Pinski, Dovid
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Reyzen, Zalmen
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shofman, Gershom
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Yaknehoz
related: Yud, Der
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Dov Ber of Mezritsh
described at: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
has abstract: (1704–1772), Hasidic leader. Dov Ber, the Magid (preacher) of Mezritsh (Pol., Międzyrzecz; mod. Ukr., Mezhyrichi), sometimes known as the “great Magid,” was the foremost leader within Hasidic circles after the death of the Ba‘al Shem Tov (Besht) in 1760. It was under Dov Ber’s leadership that the followers of Hasidism first came to see themselves as constituting a new religious movement and set out to preach and spread their teachings throughout East European Jewry. It is not known to what degree Dov Ber actually organized this process, but his leadership and teaching certainly provided the inspiration for it, both during his lifetime and afterward.
title: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
alternative label: Dov Ber
alternative label: Dov Ber, the Magid of Mezritsh
alternative label: Magid of Mezritsh
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Chernobil Hasidic Dynasty
related: Elimelekh of Lizhensk
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Ḥayim Ḥaykl of Amdur
related: Karlin-Stolin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Levi Yitsḥak of Barditshev
related: Lithuania
related: Maimon, Salomon
related: Menaḥem Mendel of Vitebsk
related: Mezhyrichi
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Shapira Family
related: Shneur Zalman of Liady
related: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz
related: Ya‘akov Yosef of Polnoye
related: Yisra’el ben Shabetai of Kozhenits

Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
described at: Mikhoels Solomon Mikhailovich
has abstract: (1890–1948), Yiddish actor, director of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater (Gosudarstvennyi Evreiskii Teatr; GOSET), and chair of the Soviet Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. Solomon Mikhoels (Shloyme Vovsi) was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Dvinsk. After receiving a heder education, he studied at a Realschule in Riga, the Kiev Commerce Institute, and, from 1915, at the law faculty of Petrograd University. In 1918, he enrolled in Aleksandr Granovskii’s Jewish chamber theater, which later became the Moscow State Yiddish Theater.
title: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
alternative label: Mikhoels
alternative label: Solomon Mikhoels
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Daniel, M.
related: Daugavpils
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Granovskii, Aleksandr Mikhailovich
related: Heder
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Kiev
related: Markish, Perets
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Riga
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Pinsk
described at: Pinsk
has abstract: City in southern Belarus. Pinsk’s Jewish community was founded in 1506 (and from ca. 1690 Pinsk was twinned with the town of Karlin) and was one of the five chief communities of “Lite” (Jewish Lithuania), extending its authority over at least 26 smaller Jewish settlements from the mid-sixteenth century until the abolition of Polish–Lithuanian Jewish autonomy in 1764.
title: Pinsk
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Belarus
related: Berdychiv
related: Bund
related: Crafts
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: General Zionists
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Kahal
related: Karlin-Stolin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Leaseholding
related: Levi Yitsḥak of Barditshev
related: Lithuania
related: Misnagdim
related: Mizraḥi
related: Philanthropy
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Revisionist Zionists
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Tarbut
related: Trade
related: TSYSHO
related: Ukraine
related: Weizmann, Chaim
related: World War I
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
described at: Rabbinic Literature
has abstract: To survey religious and scholarly writings by East European rabbis, this entry is divided chronologically into two articles, the first covering the period up to 1800 and the second from 1800 until 2000. For the role of the rabbi, see Rabbinate. For prayers and prayer books, see Liturgy; for sermons, see Preachers and Preaching. See also Talmud Study.
title: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
alternative label: Rabbinic Literature
alternative label: rabbinic literature
related: Liturgy
related: Preachers and Preaching
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Talmud Study

Sokolow, Naḥum
described at: Sokolow Nahum
has abstract: (1859–1936), journalist, writer, and Zionist leader. Born in Wyszogród, Poland, Naḥum Sokolow grew up in the town of Płock. He received a comprehensive Jewish education as well as a thoroughly secular one largely as a result of his own efforts. By 1874, he had published his first articles in the Hebrew press. After his marriage in 1876, Sokolow settled in the town of Maków, and that same year published articles on scientific subjects in the newspaper Ha-Tsefirah.
title: Sokolow, Naḥum
alternative label: Naḥum Sokolow
related: Asif, Ha-
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Izraelita
related: Land of Israel
related: Melits, Ha-
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Słonimski, Ḥayim Zelig
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Warsaw
related: Weizmann, Chaim
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Bet ha-Midrash
described at: Bet ha-Midrash
has abstract: (commonly bet midrash; Yid., besmedresh; lit., “study house”), a voluntary, public institute for Torah learning, functioning for generations within Jewish communities alongside the synagogue and, from certain halakhic standpoints, even surpassing it in preference and importance. Functioning mainly as a place of study, the bet midrash (universally referred to by East European Jews in its Yiddish form, besmedresh) has also served as an alternative place of worship due to the many hours students spend there. In fact, students in Eastern Europe often took meals there and slept on the premises—so that, unlike the synagogue, the bet midrash required a mezuzah. Yet as a community of learners whose daily routine is dictated by the requirements of study, the bet midrash has been an institution that is in essence the reverse of the synagogue, challenging it and offering a certain alternative to the fixed models of communal life.
title: Bet ha-Midrash
alternative label: Bet Ha-Midrash
alternative label: Bet ha-midrash
alternative label: besmedresh
alternative label: bet ha-midrash
alternative label: bet midrash
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Kahal
related: Kloyz
related: Medzhibizh
related: Poznań
related: Sabbath
related: Sabbatianism
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Brno
described at: Brno
has abstract: (Ger., Brünn), capital of Moravia, in today’s Czech Republic. The earliest evidence of Jewish settlement in Brno is a 1254 charter granted by Přemysl Ottakar II, Margrave of Moravia. This charter was renewed in 1268 and incorporated into municipal statutes in 1276. A charter from 1345 encouraged Jews—who were engaged primarily in commerce and moneylending—to settle in Brno.
title: Brno
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Boskovice
related: Czech Republic
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Feder, Richard
related: Gold, Hugo
related: Hickl, Max
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jüdische Volksstimme
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Councils
described at: Councils
has abstract: Two major types of Jewish regional councils existed in Eastern Europe. The first encompassed all the communities in any particular region or state, such as Great Poland, Lithuania, or Moravia; the second was the Polish Council, sometimes known as the Jewish Sejm (Pol., Sejm Żydowski), which represented Jews in each region of the Polish Kingdom. Jews referred to this latter formation as the Council of the Four Lands (i.e., the four regions of which it was originally composed). Jewish councils did not develop in other regions of Eastern Europe in this period. Attempts to establish Jewish councils and congresses in later centuries resulted only in the creation of short-lived bodies that lacked the influence and prestige of their predecessors.
title: Councils
alternative label: Council
alternative label: Council of Four Lands
alternative label: council
alternative label: councils
narrower: Characterization and Background
narrower: Regional Councils
narrower: The Council of Four Lands
narrower: The Decline and Disappearance of the Councils
related: Approbation
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brest
related: Chełm
related: Credit
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Economic Life
related: Frankism
related: Hrodna
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Kalisz
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: L’viv
related: Money
related: Ostrog
related: Pinsk
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: Przemyśl
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Rzeszów
related: Sabbath Rest
related: Sabbatianism
related: Sandomierz
related: Shtadlan
related: Slutsk
related: Subcarpathian Rus’
related: Sumptuary Legislation
related: Tykocin
related: Yehoshu‘a ben Aleksander ha-Kohen
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Dress
described at: Dress
has abstract: The determinants of Jewish attire, aside from those that affected everyone in the general society, included the requirements of halakhah, communal regulations, restrictions imposed by state and local authorities, and the influence of local non-Jewish communities. The most important factors observed generally were biblical law prohibiting mixing linen and wool in a single garment (Lev. 19:19; Deut. 22:11), known as shatnes (Heb. sha‘atnez), and the halakhic requirement that males wear prayer shawls (Yid., talesim; sg., tales; Heb., talit; Eng., tallis).
title: Dress
alternative label: clothing
alternative label: dress
alternative label: headgear
narrower: Men’s Clothing
narrower: Men’s Headgear
narrower: Women’s Clothing
narrower: Women’s Headgear
related: Aksenfeld, Yisroel
related: Galicia
related: Kotik, Yekhezkl
related: Lithuania
related: Passover
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Purim
related: Sabbath
related: Shpanyer Arbet
related: Sumptuary Legislation
related: Tykocin
related: Ukraine

Gintsburg Family
described at: Gintsburg Family
has abstract: Russian Jewish financiers, communal activists, and philanthropists. The three most prominent members of the Gintsburg (sometimes Günzburg or Guenzburg) family were Evzel’ Gavriilovich (1812–1878), Goratsii (Horace) Osipovich (1833–1909), and David Goratsievich (1857–1910).
title: Gintsburg Family
alternative label: David Gintsburg
alternative label: Evzel’ Gintsburg
alternative label: Gintsburg
alternative label: Gintsburg family
alternative label: Gintsburgs
alternative label: Goratsii (Horace) Gintsburg
alternative label: Horace Gintsburg
alternative label: Vladimir Gintsburg
narrower: David Gintsburg
narrower: Evzel’ Gintsburg
narrower: Goratsii Gintsburg
narrower: Rise of the Family
narrower: The Gintsburg Circle and the Legal Position of Russian Jewry
related: Antokol’skii, Mark Matveevich
related: Brafman, Iakov Aleksandrovich
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Gintsburg, Il’ia Iakovlevich
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Guilds
related: Kahal
related: Khvol’son, Daniil Avraamovich
related: Lithuania
related: ORT
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Philanthropy
related: Pogroms
related: Poliakov Family
related: Population and Migration before World War I (Population and Migration)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shtadlan
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Ukraine
related: Zak, Avraam Isakovich

Magid, Ha-
described at: Magid Ha-
has abstract: Hebrew weekly, published between 1856 and 1903. Ha-Magid (The Preacher) was the first Hebrew weekly newspaper, and in many respects its establishment marked the beginning of the modern Hebrew press. For censorship reasons it was published outside the borders of tsarist Russia (first in Lyck, Prussia, and after 1890 successively in Berlin, Kraków, and Vienna), but its contents were aimed first and foremost at the Russian Jewish reading public. Because of its broad content, however, it was distributed to many Jewish communities in Europe and beyond.
title: Magid, Ha-
alternative label: Ha-Magid
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Brainin, Re’uven
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Galicia
related: Haskalah
related: Klausner, Yosef
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Land of Israel
related: Melits, Ha-
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Sephardim
described at: Sephardim
has abstract: Sephardic Jews were a marginal element in Eastern Europe with the exception of Romanian lands, where because of their relatively larger numbers, they played a somewhat more significant role. Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the fifteenth century, and conversos leaving those lands in later periods, did not settle in Eastern Europe. Those who did move to the region did so after settling first in Ottoman or, much less often, Italian territories. Nevertheless, some Sephardim are established as having resided in various areas of Eastern Europe, arriving from the Balkans and other regions of the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Along with Iberian Jews, there were Italian, Greek or Romaniot, and Arabic- and Persian-speaking Jews who were often identified as Sephardim in Eastern Europe. In addition, Ashkenazic Jews sometimes married and assimilated into the group. (“Ashkenazi” became a common Sephardic surname.)
title: Sephardim
alternative label: Sephardic
alternative label: Sephardic Jews
related: Alba Iulia
related: Ashkenaz
related: Assimilation
related: Blood Libels and Host Desecration Accusations
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brăila
related: Bratislava
related: Bucharest
related: Budapest
related: Calahora Family
related: Chernivtsi
related: Crafts
related: Craiova
related: Crimea
related: Făgăraş
related: Galicia
related: Gdańsk
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Iaşi
related: Kahal
related: Karaites
related: Kiev
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Land of Israel
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Lugoj
related: L’viv
related: Moldavia
related: Piotrków
related: Ploieşti
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sabbatianism
related: Siret
related: Suceava
related: Târgu Mureş
related: Timişoara
related: Trade
related: Transylvania
related: Ukraine
related: Walachia
related: Zamość
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Smolenskin, Perets
described at: Smolenskin Perets
has abstract: (1842–1885), maskilic writer; founder and editor of the Hebrew journal Ha-Shaḥar (The Dawn); novelist and short-story writer. Perets Smolenskin’s writings attracted a wide and enthusiastic readership and influenced the consolidation of a nationalist Haskalah movement and Zionist ideology.
title: Smolenskin, Perets
alternative label: Perets Smolenskin
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Assimilation
related: Belarus
related: Boker Or, Ha-
related: Conversion
related: Gottlober, Avraham Ber
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pogroms
related: Reform, Religious
related: Romania
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shaḥar, Ha-
related: Shklov
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Zeitlin Family
described at: Zeitlin Family
has abstract: (Yid., Tseytlin), prominent writers and intellectuals in prewar Poland. The father, Hillel Zeitlin (1871–1942), was a thinker, journalist, and editor. His son Arn (Aharon; 1899–1973) was a prolific poet, fiction writer, playwright, essayist, and editor in both Hebrew and Yiddish. Elkhonen (Elḥanan; 1902–1942), Hillel’s younger son, was a Yiddish poet, critic, journalist, and social activist.
title: Zeitlin Family
alternative label: Aharon (Arn) Zeitlin
alternative label: Arn Zeitlin
alternative label: Hillel Zeitlin
alternative label: Zeitlin
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Autobiography and Memoir
related: Belarus
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Dor, Ha-
related: Folkists
related: Globus
related: Gnessin, Uri Nisan
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Haynt
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Homel’
related: Literarishe Bleter
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: L’viv
related: Moment, Der
related: Mysticism and Mystical Literature
related: Piety
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl
related: Shestov, Lev
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Shofman, Gershom
related: Singer, Isaac Bashevis
related: Yiddish Theater (Theater)
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zeman, Ha-
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Cinema
described at: Cinema
has abstract: Perhaps because the birth of cinema in the late nineteenth century coincides with the migration of Jews from the Pale of Settlement to the cities of Eastern Europe, newly urbanized Jews were prominent in the development of Eastern European cinema—if only intermittently as Jewish artists addressing Jewish themes or a Jewish public.
title: Cinema
alternative label: cinema
alternative label: film
alternative label: film industry
alternative label: films
alternative label: motion picture
alternative label: movie industry
narrower: APPENDIX: JEWISH FILM PERSONALITIES
narrower: After Communism
narrower: Early Cinema
narrower: Post–World War II Period
narrower: World War I and After
narrower: Yiddish Talkies
related: Łódź
related: Anticosmopolitan Campaign
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Babel, Isaac
related: Balázs, Béla
related: Birobidzhan
related: Bogrov, Grigorii Isaakovich
related: Bródy, Sándor
related: Communism
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Dybbuk, The
related: Dzigan and Shumacher
related: Ford, Aleksander
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Granovskii, Aleksandr Mikhailovich
related: Grossman, Vasilii Semenovich
related: Habimah
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Kaminski Family
related: Kiss, József
related: Kozintsev, Grigorii Mikhailovich
related: Lekert, Hirsh
related: Markish, Perets
related: Medem Sanatorium
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Odessa
related: Olbracht, Ivan
related: Operetta
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Riga
related: Romm, Mikhail Il’ich
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Schulz, Bruno
related: Shklovskii, Viktor Borisovich
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Shtetl
related: Terezín
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Trauberg, Leonid Zakharovich
related: Vertov, Dziga
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Frankism
described at: Frankism
has abstract: A Jewish religious movement centered on the leadership of Ya‘akov (Jakub) ben Yehudah Leib Frank (1726?–1791). The term Frankism was coined in early nineteenth-century Warsaw and was initially a slur directed at the descendants of Frank’s followers who converted to Roman Catholicism and attempted to conceal their background. It was only with the appearance of the first scholarly accounts of the movement in the second half of the nineteenth century that the term came to be used for the whole variety of phenomena connected by the authors to Frank’s activity. Sources from Frank’s era, however, provide several different perspectives. In Jewish accounts, his followers are normally not presented as a separate group but as an offshoot of preexisting heretical movements, most notably of Sabbatianism. The majority of Christian observers saw the Frankists as a Jewish sect opposed to the Talmud. The Frankists initially thought of themselves as a branch of Judaism opposed to the authority of the rabbis and rejecting some elements of rabbinic tradition. Subsequently, Frankists redefined themselves as a separate religious group, practically independent from hitherto existing forms of both Judaism and Christianity.
title: Frankism
alternative label: Frank
alternative label: Frankist
alternative label: Frankist movement
alternative label: Frankists
alternative label: Jakub Frank
alternative label: akub Frank
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brno
related: Brody
related: Buchach
related: Bucharest
related: Chernivtsi
related: Conversion
related: Dobruschka-Schönfeld Family
related: Eybeschütz, Yonatan
related: Fleckeles, El‘azar ben David
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi
related: Karaites
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: L’viv
related: Magic
related: Moldavia
related: Moscow
related: Pilgrimage
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Prostějov
related: Sabbatianism
related: Sephardim
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw
related: Wehle Family
related: Zhytomyr

Moscow State Yiddish Theater
described at: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
has abstract: One of the most famous and critically acclaimed Yiddish-language theaters in the world. The Moscow State Yiddish Theater (also referred to as MosGOSET or simply GOSET, from [Moskovskii] Gosudarstvennyi Evreiskii Teatr) was, in the words of the Yiddish literary critic and cultural activist Nakhmen Mayzel, “our greatest theatrical marvel.” Widely considered one of the best theaters in the Soviet Union, it was often heralded by the government as a model of Jewish cultural achievement under communism.
title: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
alternative label: GOSET
alternative label: MosGOSET
alternative label: State Jewish Theater
alternative label: State Yiddish Chamber Theater
alternative label: State Yiddish Theater
alternative label: Yiddish Chamber Theater
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Anticosmopolitan Campaign
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Belarus
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Birobidzhan
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Communism
related: Daniel, M.
related: Dobrushin, Yekhezkl
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Granovskii, Aleksandr Mikhailovich
related: Halkin, Shmuel
related: Land of Israel
related: Markish, Perets
related: Mayzel, Nakhmen
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Moscow
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Perl, Yosef
described at: Perl Yosef
has abstract: (1773–1839), educator, writer, and a central figure in the Haskalah. Yosef Perl was born in Tarnopol to a wealthy family. His father, Todros, was a wine merchant and for some time also leased the communal concession for the tax on meat. In his youth, much to the displeasure of his father, Yosef was attracted to Hasidism. He became a partner in his father’s business and later an independent tax farmer. On business trips to Vienna, Hungary, and Galicia he met many maskilim and was influenced in particular by those in Brody, especially Dov Ber Gintsburg. Perl was also inspired by Menaḥem Mendel Lefin, who for a time lived nearby.
title: Perl, Yosef
alternative label: Yosef Perl
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Beer, Peter
related: Ber of Bolechów
related: Brody
related: Crafts
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Industry
related: Land of Israel
related: Lefin, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Levinzon, Yitsḥak Ber
related: Naḥman of Bratslav
related: Natan Sternhartz of Nemirov
related: Parody
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Satire
related: Seminary
related: Ternopil’
related: Yisra’el of Ruzhin
related: Zhidachov-Komarno Hasidic Dynasty

Satire
described at: Satire
has abstract: The earliest stage in the development of Jewish satire is exemplified by the Purim play, based typically on subjects related to the biblical Book of Esther. In the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these plays were presented in a festive atmosphere of thanksgiving for the miracle of Jewish survival. In this spirit, Jews permitted themselves to poke fun at their humiliated persecutors. A limited time frame of one or two days annually at the holiday of Purim moderated the meanest of the satires, as did rabbinical supervision. Over time, however, the objects of satire shifted from gentile oppressors to Jewish communal leadership.
title: Satire
alternative label: satire
alternative label: satires
alternative label: satirical works
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Agnon, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Czernowitz Conference
related: Erter, Yitsḥak
related: Feder, Tuviah
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Hazaz, Ḥayim
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Linetski, Yitskhok Yoyel
related: Mapu, Avraham
related: Mieses, Yehudah Leib
related: Orthodoxy
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Perl, Yosef
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Purim
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Schorr, Yehoshu‘a Heshel
related: Singer, Israel Joshua

Berdychiv
described at: Berdychiv
has abstract: A city on the Hnylopiat’ River (Dnieper basin), Berdychiv (Yid., Barditshev; Rus., Berdichev; Pol., Berdyczów) is the district center of Ukraine’s Zhytomyr oblast. From 1569 it belonged to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; from 1793 the town was in the Volhynia province of the Russian Empire and from 1844 in Kiev province (district center from 1846).
title: Berdychiv
alternative label: Berdiche
alternative label: Berdichev
alternative label: Berdyczów
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Bund
related: Charity
related: Chełm
related: Crafts
related: Feder, Tuviah
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Industry
related: Kahal
related: Kiev
related: Kultur-lige
related: Levinzon, Yitsḥak Ber
related: Misnagdim
related: ORT
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Civil War
related: Ukraine
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zhytomyr

Chagall, Marc
described at: Chagall Marc
has abstract: (1887–1985), artist. Marc Chagall was one of the most prominent European artists of the modern age. To this day, the frequent exhibitions of his work in many countries continue to draw large crowds. His art is polyphonic, combining the formal concerns of several modernist trends with cultural representations and an interest in the fantastic and the grotesque. Chagall combined a variety of sources, including aspects of Jewish, Russian, and French culture and images from Christian art, in his own whimsical art, based on his reinvented biography.
title: Chagall, Marc
alternative label: Marc Chagall
related: Antokol’skii, Mark Matveevich
related: Bakst, Léon
related: Belarus
related: Fefer, Itsik
related: Heder
related: Khalyastre
related: Lissitzky, El
related: Literarishe Bleter
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Markish, Perets
related: Moscow
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pen, Yehudah
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shneur Zalman of Liady
related: Sutzkever, Avrom
related: Vilnius
related: Vinaver, Maksim Moiseevich
related: Vitsyebsk
related: Warsaw
related: YIVO
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
described at: Isserles Mosheh ben Yisrael
has abstract: (1520?–1572), rabbi and yeshiva head in Kraków, considered one of the greatest Ashkenazic legalists; known by the acronym Rema’. Mosheh Isserles studied with his father, a leader of the Kraków community, but his principal teacher was Shalom Shakhnah, the head of the Lublin yeshiva, who was the official chief rabbi of the district. Shakhnah was regarded as a rigorous legalist, and was given to using the convoluted method of argumentation known as pilpul in his teaching. According to a somewhat dubious tradition, Isserles’ first wife was Shakhnah’s daughter.
title: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
alternative label: Mosheh Isserles
alternative label: Mosheh ben Yisra’el Isserles
related: Ashkenaz
related: Gans, David ben Shelomoh
related: Horowitz Family
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Landau, Mosheh Yisra’el
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Luria, Shelomoh ben Yeḥi’el
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Shakhnah, Shalom
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Slonik, Binyamin Aharon ben Avraham
related: Yafeh, Mordekhai ben Avraham
related: Yehoshu‘a ben Aleksander ha-Kohen
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Newspapers and Periodicals
described at: Newspapers and Periodicals
has abstract: Jewish newspapers and periodicals have been published in the main three Jewish languages (Hebrew, Yiddish, and Ladino) and have also appeared in the primary languages of countries in which Jews have lived. The first Jewish newspaper, Gazeta de Amsterdam, was published in Ladino in Amsterdam (1674–1699). A short-lived Yiddish newspaper, Kurant, soon followed (1686–1687); however, other early efforts at news reporting in Yiddish did not succeed. In 1784, German supporters of the Haskalah movement created the Hebrew-language, largely literary Ha-Me’asef (The Harvester).
title: Newspapers and Periodicals
alternative label: journalism
alternative label: newspaper
alternative label: newspapers
alternative label: newspapers and periodicals
alternative label: periodicals
alternative label: press
narrower: Jewish Print Media in Other National Languages
narrower: Socialist and Revolutionary Periodicals
narrower: The Hebrew Press
narrower: The Yiddish Press
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Aḥi’asaf
related: Ba-Derekh
related: Bader, Gershom
related: Belarus
related: Belz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Ben Chananja
related: Bessarabia
related: Birobidzhan
related: Birobidzhaner Shtern
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Borokhov, Ber
related: Bratislava
related: Brno
related: Brody
related: Bucharest
related: Bucovina
related: Budapest
related: Bund
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Českožidovské Listy
related: Chernivtsi
related: Chwila
related: Communism
related: Curierul Israelit
related: Czech Republic
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Dostrzegacz Nadwiślański
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Egalitatea
related: Emes, Der
related: Erter, Yitsḥak
related: Eynikayt
related: Filderman, Wilhelm
related: Folkists
related: Folks-shtime
related: Folks-tsaytung
related: Fraynd, Der
related: Frimorgn
related: Fuenn, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Galicia
related: Ginsburg, Sha'ul
related: Gold, Hugo
related: Gorfinkel, Leyb
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Haynt
related: Hayoets
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Hickl, Max
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Iaşi
related: ‘Ivri, Ha-
related: Izraelita
related: Jutrzenka
related: Kantor, Yehudah Leib
related: Karmel, Ha-
related: Katz, Bentsiyon
related: Kaunas
related: Kerem Ḥemed
related: Kishinev
related: Kohen-Tsedek, Yosef
related: Kol Mevaser
related: About this Article (Kraków)

Terezín
described at: Terezin
has abstract: Town in the Czech Republic, 50 kilometers north of Prague. Terezín (Ger., Theresienstadt) was established in 1780 as a fortress town with a military garrison. Presumably, a small number of Jews (mainly soldiers and merchants) lived there from the town’s beginnings. A Jewish military doctor is mentioned in a record dating from 1836, three Jewish families lived there in 1843, and a prayer room was functioning by 1861. Jewish settlement reached its height in 1890 (with 222 persons, representing 3% of the total population). The local prayer society was connected to the religious community of Litoměřice (Ger., Leitmeritz). The cemetery contains about 90 Jewish graves, including those of residents, prisoners of war, and civilian refugees from Galicia and Bucovina from the World War I period.
title: Terezín
alternative label: Theresienstadt
related: Belarus
related: Bucovina
related: Czech Republic
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Estonia
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Latvia
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Riga

Charity
described at: Charity
has abstract: Providing assistance to the weak and needy is a religious and social tradition in the Jewish community. The attitude toward giving is rooted in the recognition that an impoverished person is an integral part of the local community and as such is bound by its norms; yet, all members of the community are entitled to a dignified existence. Poverty does not translate into exclusion from society and therefore does not grant the poor any special privileges with respect to conduct and acceptance of the community’s authority. For this reason, even those who receive assistance are not exempt from participating in communal efforts. Jewish halakhic principles hold that even a person maintained by charity is obligated to give charity.
title: Charity
alternative label: charity
narrower: Assistance for Nonresidents
narrower: Local Assistance
narrower: Sources of Funding, Collection, and Distribution
narrower: The Poor of the Land of Israel
related: Beggars and Begging
related: Circumcision
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Kahal
related: Koidanover, Aharon Shemu’el and Tsevi Hirsh
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Land of Israel
related: Money
related: Passover
related: Pogroms
related: Poznań
related: Purim
related: Sabbath
related: Servants
related: Vilnius

Folk Songs
described at: Folk Songs
has abstract: The Yiddish folk song was sung and disseminated by Jews primarily of Eastern Europe. It constitutes a lyrical reflection of the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of the Jewish people in Yiddish. The songs shed light on religious and secular practices and customs, holidays, and celebrations and convey personal insights into daily life and historical events. Manuscript collections of folk songs exist from as far back as the sixteenth century, although systematic collection and publication did not begin until the end of the nineteenth century.
title: Folk Songs
alternative label: folk song
alternative label: folk songs
alternative label: songs
narrower: Collecting Folk Songs
narrower: Origins
narrower: Songs of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
narrower: Structure and Poetic Devices
related: Bastomski, Shloyme
related: Beregovskii, Moisei Iakovlevich
related: Białystok
related: Broder, Berl
related: Cahan, Yehudah Leib
related: About this Article (Dance)
related: Ehrenkranz, Benjamin Wolf
related: Engel, Yo’el
related: Gebirtig, Mordkhe
related: Ginsburg, Sha'ul
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Gordon, Mikhl
related: Haskalah
related: Jewish Historical and Archaeographic Commission
related: Kiev
related: Kipnis, Menakhem
related: Kishinev
related: Krein, Aleksandr Abramovich
related: Lehman, Shmuel
related: Levi Yitsḥak of Barditshev
related: Liturgy
related: Love
related: Minsk
related: Money
related: Odessa
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Pipe, Shmuel Zaynvl
related: Pogroms
related: Pryłucki, Noah
related: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl
related: Religious Year
related: Riddles
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Sabbath
related: Sabbatianism
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Society for Jewish Folk Music
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Tsunzer, Elyokem
related: Ukraine
related: Varshavski, Mark
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Weddings
related: World War I
related: YIVO
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Yikhes

Guilds
described at: Guilds
has abstract: Merchants’ and artisans’ guilds were introduced into Eastern Europe during the thirteenth century by German immigrants. Taking their cue from West European counterparts, members of East European guilds sought to exclude Jews from the organizations. Despite such restrictions, Jewish artisans continued to work in trades; disputes subsequently erupted between Christian guilds and Jewish artisans.
title: Guilds
alternative label: guild
alternative label: guilds
related: Berdychiv
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Crafts
related: Kahal
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lithuania
related: L’viv
related: Mikulov
related: Moldavia
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Uherský Brod
related: Ukraine

Niger, Shmuel
described at: Niger Shmuel
has abstract: (1883–1955), literary critic. Shmuel Niger was born in Dukor, Belorussia, to Zev Volf and Brokhe Tsharni. His father, a fervent Lubavitcher Hasid, died in 1889, leaving Shmuel’s mother a widow with five sons (he being the fourth) and a daughter. Two of Niger’s younger male siblings achieved renown. Borekh “Vladek” Tsharni (1886–1938) became a leading socialist agitator and theoretician in Eastern Europe and the United States. Daniel Tsharni (1888–1959) was a celebrated Yiddish poet.
title: Niger, Shmuel
alternative label: Shmuel Niger
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Bal-Makhshoves
related: Belarus
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Der Nister
related: Erik, Maks
related: Eynhorn, Dovid
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Hirshbeyn, Perets
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kiev
related: About this Article (Literary Criticism and Scholarship)
related: Litvak
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Moscow
related: Naḥman of Bratslav
related: Nomberg, Hersh Dovid
related: Odessa
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shtetl
related: Tkhines
related: Tsene-rene
related: Tsharni, Daniel
related: Vayter, A.
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Wiener, Meir
related: YIVO
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Yudishe Velt, Di
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Piety
described at: Piety
has abstract: The complex of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors usually comprehended in the Hebrew phrase yir’at shamayim (lit., “awe [or reverence] of Heaven”) or the Yiddish word frumkayt, piety in Judaism is marked by a constant striving to live in God’s presence and to fulfill His will, both by conforming to the norms of strict Jewish practice and in terms of the inner direction of the heart. While there have been significant differences in the religious attitudes of Jews ranging across seven or eight centuries, across diverse subregions, and especially along the fault line of Hasidism and its opponents, some general characteristics of Jewish piety in Eastern Europe can still be described.
title: Piety
alternative label: pietism
alternative label: piety
related: Ashkenaz
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Death and the Dead
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Levi Yitsḥak of Barditshev
related: Life Cycle
related: Pilgrimage
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: Tkhines
related: Tsene-rene
related: Weddings

Poland before 1795 (Poland)
described at: Poland before 1795
has abstract: The seventeenth-century Hebrew chronicler Gavri’el ben Yehoshu‘a Schossburg characterized the historical status of the Jewish community in medieval and early modern Poland as “a delight to all the lands of the Exile for its Torah, honor and greatness” (Petaḥ teshuvah, 1651 4a). By the end of the seventeenth century, Polish Jewry had the highest number of Jews and the most individual communities of any Jewish population center; at least until the Shoah, the majority of Jews in the world could trace their ancestry to this region. Jews in Poland enjoyed extensive autonomy and collective economic prosperity, while developing sophisticated institutions of communal governance. Their rich cultural life included a complex infrastructure of religious and educational institutions, a wealth of significant additions to the Jewish library, and the cultivation and elaboration of received Ashkenazic and other traditions. Later generations have often regarded the precedents set by Polish Jewry in such areas as communal autonomy, education, halakhah, and Jewish self-definition as classic models.
title: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
alternative label: Poland–Lithuania
alternative label: Polish Commonwealth
alternative label: Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
related: Ashkenaz
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Ba‘ale Shem
related: Banking
related: Belarus
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Brest
related: Brody
related: Cantors
related: Charity
related: Councils
related: Crafts
related: Credit
related: Crimea
related: David ben Shemu’el ha-Levi
related: Demons
related: Dress
related: Dubno
related: Estonia
related: Fiszel Family
related: Food and Drink
related: Frankism
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Guilds
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Heder
related: Heller, Yom Tov Lipmann
related: Hrodna
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: Joselewicz, Berek
related: Kahal
related: Kalisz
related: Khazaria
related: Kiev
related: Kloyz
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Latvia
related: Leaseholding
related: Lefin, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Leszno
related: Lewko
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Luria, Shelomoh ben Yeḥi’el
related: Luts’k
related: L’viv
related: Magic
related: Mysticism and Mystical Literature
related: Opatów
related: Ostrog
related: Pinsk
related: Pogroms
related: Poznań
related: Przemyśl
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sabbath
related: Sabbatianism
related: Shemu’el Eli‘ezer ben Yehudah ha-Levi Edels
related: Shtadlan
related: Shtetl
related: Sirkes, Yo’el
related: Synagogue Architecture
related: Tkhines
related: Trade
related: Ukraine
related: Uman
related: Vilnius
related: Volodymyr Volyns’kyi
related: Wrocław
related: Yafeh, Mordekhai ben Avraham
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Purim
described at: Purim
has abstract: A minor Jewish festival observed annually on the fourteenth of the Jewish month of Adar (February or March in the Gregorian calendar), Purim (Pirem in Polish dialects of Yiddish) celebrates the survival of the Jews of Persia despite a plot to annihilate them, and is the only Jewish holiday originally established in the Diaspora. The biblical Scroll of Esther recounts the story, including details about the instigation of the plot by a villainous official, Haman, and the Jews’ successful turning of the tables against their enemies.
title: Purim
related: Charity
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: Kaunas
related: Medzhibizh
related: Money
related: Ostrog
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Purim-shpil
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Yizker-bikher

Transnistria
described at: Transnistria
has abstract: The name given by Ion Antonescu, Romania’s pro-German dictator, to the Ukrainian region between the rivers Dniester and Bug occupied following the German–Romanian attack on the Soviet Union of 22 June 1941. Between 250,000 and 300,000 Jews died there during the occupation. Many of the victims were deportees from Bucovina and Bessarabia; of the 147,000 Jews sent to Transnistria from these areas between 1941 and 1943, at least 90,000 died, the majority of typhus and starvation. The number of Ukrainian Jews who were murdered or died from disease in Transnistria from September 1941 to November 1943 ranges from 130,000 to at least 170,000. A large number of these were shot by Romanians, who executed 15,000–20,000 Jews in Odessa in October 1941 in reprisals for the blowing up of the Romanian army headquarters, massacred 43,000–48,000 Jews in the district of Bogdanovka, and handed several thousand others over to local German settlers, who murdered them.
title: Transnistria
alternative label: Transnistrian
related: Bessarabia
related: Bucovina
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Moldova
related: Odessa
related: Romania
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Folkists
described at: Folkists
has abstract: Political party that sought Jewish national autonomy in the Diaspora. Following the 1905 Russian Revolution, a small circle of public intellectuals organized under the leadership of the historian Simon Dubnow and Yisroel Efroikin to form the Folkspartey (Folks Party) in Saint Petersburg in 1906. The party, whose leadership also included Meir Kreinin, S. An-ski, Ya‘akov Ze’ev Latzky-Bertholdi, Nokhem Shtif, and Joseph Tschernikov, advanced a platform based on Dubnow’s doctrine of Diaspora Nationalism (autonomism) as expounded in his Pisma o starom i novom evreistve (Letters on Old and New Judaism; 1907).
title: Folkists
alternative label: Folkism
alternative label: Folkist
alternative label: Folkist Party
alternative label: Folkist party
alternative label: Folkspartey
related: Łódź
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Bund
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Hirschhorn, Samuel
related: Latvia
related: Latzky-Bertholdi, Ya‘akov Ze’ev
related: Lithuania
related: Moment, Der
related: Nomberg, Hersh Dovid
related: Pale of Settlement
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Pryłucki, Noah
related: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shtif, Nokhem
related: Szabad, Tsemaḥ
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Zeitlin Family
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

About this Article (Humor)
described at: Humor
has abstract: To treat genres of Jewish humor, this entry includes two articles, on oral and literary traditions, respectively. For further discussion, see Badkhonim; Cartoons; Parody; Purim-shpil; and Satire.
title: About this Article (Humor)
alternative label: Humor
alternative label: humor
related: Badkhonim
related: Cartoons
related: Parody
related: Purim-shpil
related: Satire

Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
described at: Judenrate and Other Representative Bodies
has abstract: Appointed by the Germans during World War II, a Judenrat (pl., Judenräte) was a Jewish council; an Ältestenrat (pl., Ältestenräte) was a council of elders. The activities of the Judenräte mark one of the most controversial issues of Jewish life during the Holocaust: some regard the councils as institutions that weakened the internal strength of the Jewish communities, while others claim that Judenräte helped the Jewish public carry on its struggle for survival.
title: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
alternative label: Altestenrat
alternative label: Judenrat
alternative label: Judenrat’s
alternative label: Judenrät
alternative label: Judenräte
related: Łódź
related: Barash, Efrayim
related: Białystok
related: Bratislava
related: Bucharest
related: Budapest
related: Czerniaków, Adam
related: Filderman, Wilhelm
related: Gens, Jakub
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Informers
related: Kaunas
related: Killing Centers
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rumkowski, Khayim Mordkhe
related: Slovakia
related: Stern, Samu
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

ORT
described at: ORT
has abstract: The Society for Handicraft and Agricultural Work among the Jews of Russia (Obshchestvo Remeslennago i Zemledelecheskago Truda Sredi Evreev v Rossii). In the late nineteenth century, a number of attempts were made by Jews in the Russian Empire to found organizations that could promote economic and occupational change for Jews. The tsarist regime was very wary about allowing the formation of an organization that promoted change, but various attempts were made to circumvent the legal restrictions.
title: ORT
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Birobidzhan
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
described at: Rapoport Shelomoh Yehudah
has abstract: (1790–1867), rabbi, Talmudist, maskil, and scholar of Wissenschaft des Judentums (Jewish studies). Shelomoh Yehudah Rapoport (known also by the acronym Shir) was born into a rabbinical family in Lwów. He received a traditional Jewish education and in 1810 married the daughter of Aryeh Leib ha-Kohen Heller, a famous Galician rabbinic scholar and author of Ketsot ha-ḥoshen (2 parts; 1788 and 1796).
title: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
alternative label: Shelomoh Yehudah Rapoport
related: Assimilation
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Galicia
related: Haskalah
related: Heller, Aryeh Leib ha-Kohen
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kerem Ḥemed
related: Krochmal, Naḥman
related: L’viv
related: Orenstein Family
related: Perl, Yosef
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
related: Seminary
related: Ternopil’
related: Zhovkva

Shiloaḥ, Ha-
described at: Shiloah Ha-
has abstract: Hebrew monthly. Ha-Shiloaḥ, published between 1896 and 1926, was the leading Hebrew-language literary journal at the beginning of the twentieth century. Founded by the Aḥi’asaf publishing house in Warsaw, the publication was predominantly inspired by its founding editor, Ahad Ha-Am, who had been appointed head of the institution in 1896. Ahad Ha-Am intended the monthly to serve not only as a vehicle to raise the national consciousness of the Jewish people, but also as a central platform for discussion and analysis on past and present issues relevant to Judaism. Its name refers to a river mentioned in Isaiah 8:6, “The waters of Shiloaḥ flow slowly,” characterizing the journal’s moderate temper.
title: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
alternative label: Ha-Shiloaḥ
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Aḥi’asaf
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Barash, Asher
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Berkowitz, Yitsḥak Dov
related: Bernfeld, Shim‘on
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Cahan, Ya‘akov
related: Feierberg, Mordekhai Ze’ev
related: Fichmann, Ya‘akov
related: Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
related: Gutmann, Simḥah Alter
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Kabak, Aharon Avraham
related: Katzenelson, Yitsḥak
related: Klausner, Yosef
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Hebrew Literary Journals (Literary Journals)
related: Nomberg, Hersh Dovid
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Rabinovitz, Aleksander Ziskind
related: Ravnitski, Yehoshu‘a Ḥana
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shneour, Zalman
related: Steinberg, Ya‘akov
related: Steinberg, Yehudah
related: Steinman, Eli‘ezer
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Tchernowitz, Ḥayim
related: Warsaw
related: Wissotzky, Kalonymus Ze’ev

Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
described at: Tchernichowsky Shaul
has abstract: (1875–1943), poet and translator. Sha’ul Tchernichowsky was born in the village of Mikhailovka (Tavria province), on the Russia–Ukraine border. His family was rooted in a non-Jewish environment and was also closely associated with the Haskalah and the Ḥibat Tsiyon movement. Tchernichowsky was first taught exclusively in Russian and only gained a Hebrew education after attending a local modern heder. According to his autobiography, he began to write creatively at the age of 12. Ultimately, he and Ḥayim Naḥman Bialik became the most influential poets of the period of Hebrew Revival.
title: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
alternative label: Sha’ul Tchernichowsky
alternative label: Sha’ul Tshernichowsky
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brainin, Re’uven
related: Finland
related: Haskalah
related: Heder
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Klausner, Yosef
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Hebrew Poetry (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Stybel
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw

Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
described at: Brenner Yosef Hayim
has abstract: (1881–1921), Hebrew writer. Yosef Ḥayim Brenner was born in Novy Mlini, a shtetl in the district of Chernigov, Ukraine, and murdered near Tel Aviv on 2 May 1921. From 1894 to 1897 Brenner studied at the Pochep yeshiva. Brenner then spent time in Białystok, returned to Pochep, and eventually went to Gomel to prepare for a gymnasium education, a goal he soon abandoned. Instead, he continued to study Hebrew literature and earned his income by teaching Hebrew. This period of his life is reflected in his first novel, Ba-Ḥoref (In Winter; 1904).
title: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
alternative label: Yosef Ḥayim Brenner
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Białystok
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Bund
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Land of Israel
related: L’viv
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: Shofman, Gershom
related: Shtetl
related: Stybel
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Dnipropetrovs’k
described at: Dnipropetrovsk
has abstract: Industrial city in eastern Ukraine. The Jewish community of Dnipropetrovs’k, a city with a population of more than 1,000,000, was in decline at the end of the twentieth century, but remained one of the largest in Ukraine. According to the 2001 population census, the “core” Jewish population was 22,000. The “extended” Jewish population (those meeting the requirements of Israel’s Law of Return) was estimated between 35,000 and 50,000.
title: Dnipropetrovs’k
alternative label: Dnepropetrovsk
alternative label: Ekaterinoslav
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Bund
related: Doctors’ Plot
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Industry
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pogroms
related: Society for the Settlement of Jewish Toilers on the Land
related: Trade
related: Ukraine
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Russian Revolutions of 1917
described at: Russian Revolutions of 1917
has abstract: In the Russian Empire, the year 1917 brought two revolutions, one that ended hundreds of years of tsarist rule and the other that inaugurated nearly three-quarters of a century of Bolshevik or Communist rule. Almost all Jews in the Russian Empire and abroad welcomed the first revolution, which came in February (new style, March), but initially, few were enthusiastic about the takeover of power by the Bolsheviks eight months later. Within weeks of the first revolution, on 22 March (new style, 2 April) the Provisional Government—in power until a Constituent Assembly could be called to determine the character of the successor Russian state—abolished all the legal restrictions on ethnic and religious communities, including Jews. For the first time since they had been admitted to the Russian Empire, Jews gained full equality with all other citizens. The tsarist regime had confined Jews to the Pale of Settlement and had severely restricted their opportunities in agriculture, the professions, military service, and education. It had completely closed off governmental and civil service positions to them, unless they agreed to convert to Christianity. During World War I the authorities had expelled thousands of Jews from their homes in the western part of the empire on the grounds that they might collaborate with the Central Powers invading from the west. Ironically, it was this expulsion that broke the confinement of Jews to the Pale, at least de facto, and brought large numbers of them to the interior of Russia. When the Provisional Government abolished the Pale de jure, large numbers of Jews made their way to the two capitals, Moscow and Saint Petersburg, as well as to other Russian cities and towns formerly closed to them.
title: Russian Revolutions of 1917
alternative label: 1917 Revolution
alternative label: 1917 Russian Revolution
alternative label: Bolshevik Revolution
alternative label: February 1917 Revolution
alternative label: February Revolution
alternative label: February Revolution of 1917
alternative label: February–March 1917 revolution
alternative label: October Revolution
alternative label: October Revolution of 1917
alternative label: Revolution of 1917
alternative label: Russian Revolution
alternative label: Russian Revolution of 1917
alternative label: revolutionary events of 1917
alternative label: revolutions
related: Agriculture
related: Borokhov, Ber
related: Bund
related: Communism
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Evsektsiia
related: Fareynikte
related: Folkists
related: Military Service in Russia
related: Moscow
related: Orthodoxy
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Russian Civil War
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Trotsky, Leon
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: World War I
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Sofer, Mosheh
described at: Sofer Mosheh
has abstract: (Schreiber; 1762–1839), rabbi and preeminent halakhic authority. Mosheh Sofer, who came to be known as Ḥatam Sofer, was born into a modest family in Frankfurt am Main. Early on, the gifted boy was taken under the wing of Pinḥas Horowitz (1730–1805), the rabbi of the community, head of its prestigious yeshiva, and one of the outstanding Talmudic scholars of his generation. He also studied several years at the yeshiva of Tevele Scheuer of Mainz. Even more significantly, Sofer became deeply attached to Natan Adler (1741–1800), a charismatic figure who gathered about him a pious circle of devoted followers. The unusual esoteric practices of this group drew the ire of the community, and Adler was threatened with a ban in 1779. It is ironic and revealing that the future conservative ideologue spent his formative years as a disciple of such an unconventional master.
title: Sofer, Mosheh
alternative label: Mosheh Schreiber
alternative label: Mosheh Sofer
alternative label: Ḥatam Sofer
related: Agriculture
related: Assimilation
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Boskovice
related: Bratislava
related: Burgenland
related: Circumcision
related: Eger, Akiva ben Mosheh
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Land of Israel
related: Lithuania
related: Passover
related: Prostějov
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
related: Reform, Religious
related: Sabbatianism
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Vilnius
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Ternopil’
described at: Ternopil
has abstract: (Pol. and Rus., Tarnopol), city in western Ukraine (previously in eastern Galicia). Tarnopol was founded in 1540 by the Polish governor, Grand Crown Hetman Jan Tarnowski. Jews settled there soon after its founding.
title: Ternopil’
alternative label: Tarnopo
alternative label: Tarnopol
alternative label: Ternopol’
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Babad Family
related: Babad, Yosef
related: Bund
related: Calendars
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Haskalah
related: Homberg, Herz
related: Kerem Ḥemed
related: Krochmal, Naḥman
related: Perl, Yosef
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Trade
related: Ukraine
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
described at: Berdyczewski Mikhah Yosef
has abstract: (1865–1921), writer and thinker. Mikhah Yosef Berdyczewski (or Berdichevsky) was born in Międzyboż (Medzhibizh), Ukraine, in the cradle of Hasidism, to a family descended from generations of rabbis. He received a traditional Hasidic education, and as the firstborn son was destined to inherit his father’s rabbinical title. Berdyczewski spent his childhood and youth in the town of Dubova near Uman, in a deeply religious and conservative environment. During his adolescence, however, the harmony between his beliefs and his ancestral traditions was undermined by his fascination with the Haskalah and his enthusiastic delving into its literature. As a result, he was forced to comply with his extremely religious father-in-law’s demand that he divorce his first wife.
title: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
alternative label: Mikhah Yosef Berdyczewski
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Lithuania
related: Medzhibizh
related: Odessa
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Shtetl
related: Stybel, Avraham Yosef
related: Ukraine
related: Uman
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: World War I
related: Wrocław
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

About this Article (Censorship)
described at: Censorship
has abstract: To treat the subject of censorship, this entry includes three articles. The first treats the period before 1800 and provides an overview of what might be termed “internal” censorship or “self-censorship” by Jewish authorities as well as a brief review of church censorship of Jewish writings in Eastern Europe. The second article treats government censorship in the Russian Empire, and the third, censorship in the Soviet Union. For discussion of haskamot, see Approbation.
title: About this Article (Censorship)
alternative label: Censorship
alternative label: censor
alternative label: censorship
related: Approbation

Ḥaluts, He-
described at: Haluts He-
has abstract: Zionist pioneering movement. Local pioneering groups had been founded from the earliest days of Zionist settlement activity during the First and Second Aliyahs (1882–1903; 1904–1914). However, larger regional and national frameworks appeared only from 1917 onward, the year of the Balfour Declaration, the Russian Revolution, and the emergence of newly established states in Eastern Europe. The founders of He-Ḥaluts believed that no political or propaganda accomplishment would benefit Zionism in the long run unless it were complemented by deeds of personal fulfillment, which became a primary objective in the organization’s overall ideology. In other words, to actually implement the principles of He-Ḥaluts, the individual was expected both to identify with the Histadrut (Labor Federation) and to live on a cooperative kibbutz in Palestine.
title: Ḥaluts, He-
alternative label: He-?aluts
alternative label: He-Ḥaluts
narrower: He-Ḥaluts and Youth Movements
narrower: He-Ḥaluts in Russia
related: General Zionists
related: Gordonia
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Ha-
related: Trumpeldor, Yosef
related: Ukraine
related: Youth Movements
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Vitsyebsk
described at: Vitsyebsk
has abstract: City in Belarus. The first reference to Jews in Vitsyebsk (more commonly known to Jews as Vitebsk) dates from the mid-sixteenth century. In 1627 a synagogue was built and in 1634, Jews received permission to engage in commerce, have their own cemetery and synagogue, and buy houses and land in the town. In the organizational structure of the council (Va‘ad) of Jews in Lithuania, the Vitebsk community was under the jurisdiction of the community of Brest. Starting in 1706 Vitebsk Jews began recording community activities in their own pinkas. In 1765 sources record 667 Jews and, in 1772, when Vitebsk was incorporated into the Russian Empire, 1,227. In the eighteenth century Rabbi Menaḥem Mendel (of Vitebsk) and Shneur Zalman of Liady lived in the city. Late in the century Vitebsk became a main center of Lubavitch Hasidism, although Misnagdim continued to live there alongside the Hasidism. Among its well-known religious leaders were Rabbis Yitsḥak Aizik Bogorad and Yekuti’el Zalman Landa. In the nineteenth century the Jewish population increased from 2,973 (40% of the total population) in 1808 to 33,455 (51%) in 1897.
title: Vitsyebsk
alternative label: Vitebsk
related: Belarus
related: Brest
related: Bund
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Commissariat for Jewish National Affairs
related: Councils
related: Evsektsiia
related: Fareynikte
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Heder
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Iudovin, Solomon Borisovich
related: Lissitzky, El
related: Lithuania
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Menaḥem Mendel of Vitebsk
related: Misnagdim
related: Moscow
related: Pen, Yehudah
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl
related: Shneur Zalman of Liady
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el
described at: Yehudah Leib ben Betsalel
has abstract: (d. 1609), rabbi and scholar, known as Maharal of Prague. Yehudah Leib (or Löw [Heb., Liva’]; Maharal is an acronym based on the honorific Morenu ha-Rav Liva’, “our teacher, the Rabbi Löw”) was respected as an important halakhist—he was cited as authoritative, for example, by Yo’el Sirkes in Bayit ḥadash—but his fame was the result of his theological works: he brought the medieval genre of exposition of agadah (nonlegal Talmudic literature) to its peak in early modern times. Maharal’s extensive output took different forms—straightforward commentaries on Talmudic legends; commentaries on specific religious literature (the Talmudic tractate Avot, the Passover Haggadah, the legends in Rashi’s commentary on the Torah); and other works organized by subjects, historical and ethical—yet he was always true to his own method of detailed analysis and exposition of the sayings of ancient sages. Working within this traditional model, which he perfected, he presented a unique worldview, one of the most creative and original systems of thought developed by East European Jewry.
title: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el
alternative label: Maharal
alternative label: Maharal of Prague
alternative label: Yehudah Leib
alternative label: Yehudah Leib (Löw) ben Betsal’el
alternative label: Yehudah Löw
related: Golem Legend
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Kook, Avraham Yitsḥak
related: Mikulov
related: Passover
related: Poznań
related: Prague
related: Sirkes, Yo’el
related: Tsadok ha-Kohen of Lublin

Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
described at: Lilienblum Mosheh Leib
has abstract: (1843–1910), Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian writer; maskil. Mosheh Leib Lilienblum was born in Kaidan (Kedainiai), Lithuania, where he received a Talmudic education. His father married him off at the age of 13 to a girl of 11, and he moved into his father-in-law’s house in Wilkomir (Ukmergė). In addition to his intense Torah studies, Lilienblum began to study medieval Jewish philosophy and was exposed to modern Hebrew literature. He began an association with the moderate Haskalah movement and published articles in the Hebrew press—specifically, Ha-Magid and Ha-Karmel. This change in Lilienblum’s faith and worldview (though he continued to live as an observant Jew) provoked persecution at the hands of the uncompromising religious authorities of Wilkomir.
title: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
alternative label: Mosheh Leib Lilienblum
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Braudes, Re’uven Asher
related: Gintsburg, Mordekhai Aharon
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: About this Article (Historiography)
related: Karmel, Ha-
related: Kol Mevaser
related: Land of Israel
related: Lithuania
related: Magid, Ha-
related: Maimon, Salomon
related: Mapu, Avraham
related: Odessa
related: Parody
related: Passover
related: Pinsker, Simḥah and Lev
related: Pogroms
related: Ravnitski, Yehoshu‘a Ḥana
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Shaḥar, Ha-
related: Ukraine
related: Zederbaum, Aleksander

Markish, Perets
described at: Markish Perets
has abstract: (1895–1952), Yiddish poet, prose writer, playwright, and essayist. Perets Markish was born to impoverished parents in Polonnoye, a town in Volhynia. He received a heder education and left home at a young age, working at various incidental jobs, including as a choirboy for a cantor. During World War I he was drafted into the Russian army. After his discharge from the military during the March Revolution of 1917, he settled in Ekaterinoslav.
title: Markish, Perets
alternative label: Perets Markish
related: Armed Resistance
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Dobrushin, Yekhezkl
related: Ehrenburg, Ilya Grigor’evich
related: Eynikayt
related: Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
related: Heder
related: Hofshteyn, Dovid
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Khalyastre
related: Kiev
related: Kvitko, Leyb
related: Literarishe Bleter
related: Markish, Shimon
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Moscow
related: Nusinov, Yitskhok
related: Yiddish Poetry (Poetry)
related: Pogroms
related: Ravitch, Melech
related: Shmeruk, Khone
related: Shtetl
related: Singer, Israel Joshua
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Varshavski, Oyzer
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zeitlin Family

Zhytomyr
described at: Zhytomyr
has abstract: City on the Teterev River (a tributary of the Dnieper); administrative center of Ukraine’s Zhytomyr oblast. In existence since the ninth century, Zhytomyr (Rus., Zhitomir; Pol., Żytomierz) was from the 1330s attached to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and from 1569 it was a district center of Kiev province in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. From 1793, it belonged to the Russian Empire, and from 1795 it served as a provincial center.
title: Zhytomyr
alternative label: Zhitomir
alternative label: Żytomierz
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Bund
related: Crown Rabbi
related: Gottlober, Avraham Ber
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Heder
related: Kiev
related: Lithuania
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Pogroms
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: Printing and Publishing after 1800 (Printing and Publishing)
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Słonimski, Ḥayim Zelig
related: Seminary
related: Shapira Family
related: Trade
related: Ukraine
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties
related: Zweifel, Eli‘ezer

Frishman, David
described at: Frishman David
has abstract: (1859–1922), Hebrew and Yiddish writer and editor, literary critic, translator, and poet. David Frishman was born to a family of wealthy merchants in Zgierz, near Łódź. When he was two years old, his family moved to Łódź, and Frishman received a private education that included traditional Jewish studies, French, and German. At 16, he published his first story (written at age 13), followed by poems, translations, and articles for various Hebrew newspapers and journals (Ha-Tsefirah, Ha-Shaḥar, Ha-Boker or). Frishman’s literary views were influenced by European early modernism. As a critic he greatly valued the aesthetic form, rejecting Ahad Ha-Am and Yosef Klausner’s idea that a good writer expresses the national spirit. However, Frishman’s own short stories are simplistic, didactic, and sentimental, in the vein of Haskalah literature. Some of them show the influence of fin de siècle neoromanticism.
title: Frishman, David
alternative label: David Frishman
related: Łódź
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Aḥi’asaf
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Boker Or, Ha-
related: Dor, Ha-
related: Dybbuk, The
related: Gnessin, Uri Nisan
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Haskalah
related: Haynt
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Klausner, Yosef
related: Hebrew (Language)
related: About this Article (Literary Journals)
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shaḥar, Ha-
related: Shofman, Gershom
related: Smolenskin, Perets
related: Stybel
related: Tchernichowsky, Sha’ul
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Warsaw
related: Wrocław
related: Yom, Ha-
related: Zeman, Ha-

Goldfadn, Avrom
described at: Goldfadn Avrom
has abstract: (1840–1908), playwright, theater director, poet, and impresario; considered the “Father of Yiddish Theater.” Avrom Goldfadn’s productions emerged during the period of the Haskalah movement in Russia and the cultural-nationalistic activities of East European minorities. The first director to create a viable Jewish national theater, Goldfadn built up an audience and initiated its members into Western aesthetics, secularism, and a modern Jewish consciousness.
title: Goldfadn, Avrom
alternative label: Avrom Goldfadn
alternative label: Goldfadn
related: Berdychiv
related: Bucharest
related: Ettinger, Shloyme
related: Gottlober, Avraham Ber
related: Haskalah
related: Iaşi
related: Kol Mevaser
related: Love
related: L’viv
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Operetta
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Purim
related: Purim-shpil
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shtetl
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zhytomyr

Gordon, Yehudah Leib
described at: Gordon Yehudah Leib
has abstract: (1831–1892), the most important Hebrew poet of the nineteenth century; leading figure of the Russian Haskalah movement. Yehudah Leib Gordon was born in Vilna in 1831 and started writing Hebrew poetry at a young age. He soon became close to the circle of maskilim in that city, a group that included Adam ha-Kohen (Avraham Dov Lebensohn) and his son Mikhah Yosef Lebensohn. Writers associated with this group sought to expand their poetic and literary work and commitment to the renaissance of Hebrew letters in an Enlightenment key.
title: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
alternative label: Yehudah Leib Gordon
related: Agriculture
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Crafts
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Land of Israel
related: Lebensohn, Avraham Dov
related: Lebensohn, Mikhah Yosef
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Lithuania
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Orthodoxy
related: Hebrew Poetry (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Reform, Religious
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Sexuality
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Vinaver, Maksim Moiseevich
related: Yom, Ha-
related: Zederbaum, Aleksander

Haynt
described at: Haynt
has abstract: Yiddish daily newspaper, published in Warsaw between 1908 and 1939. Haynt (Today) was one of the two longest running and most important Yiddish daily papers published in Warsaw in the early 1900s. In view of the success of the earlier popular and inexpensive Yiddish daily Idishes tageblat (1906–1910), its energentic editor, Shmuel Yankev Yatskan (1874–1936), founded Haynt with his associate publishers, brothers Noyekh and Nekhemye Finkelshteyn.
title: Haynt
alternative label: haynt
related: Frishman, David
related: Grünbaum, Yitsḥak
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Thon, Ozjasz
related: Warsaw
related: Yatskan, Shmuel Yankev
related: Yustman, Moyshe Bunem
related: Zeitlin Family
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Tarbut
described at: Tarbut
has abstract: A network of secular Zionist educational institutions that functioned in Poland in the interwar period; the language of instruction was Hebrew. The network operated kindergartens, elementary schools, high schools, teachers’ seminaries, and agricultural schools. Additionally it provided pedagogical courses, evening classes for adults, and lending libraries; and published pedagogical journals, educational textbooks, and children’s journals.
title: Tarbut
related: Evsektsiia
related: Heder
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Land of Israel
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Kahal
described at: Kahal
has abstract: An executive board that was chosen to run an autonomous Jewish community. A kahal served as a Jewish community council, or as a decision-making committee of a kehilah. Throughout the history of the Jewish Diaspora, even before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, the Jewish community was organized as a self-governing community, running its internal affairs according to its own laws, later codified as halakhah and continuously amended and supplemented by time-bound statutes and legislation known as takanot. This autonomy was not idiosyncratic or specific to Jews, but conformed to the basic organization of the premodern state, whether in ancient Rome, medieval Christendom, or Islam. This structure was also present in early modern Europe, in which society as a whole was divided into corporations and estates, including the nobility, the clergy, the peasantry, the townspeople, and the Jews. Each estate had its own specific code of laws, its own courts, and its own tax obligation and collection systems (or relief from such obligations).
title: Kahal
alternative label: kahal
alternative label: kahals
alternative label: kehilah
related: Brafman, Iakov Aleksandrovich
related: Cantors
related: Councils
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lithuania
related: Military Service in Russia
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Sephardim
related: Shtadlan
related: Trade
related: Ukraine

Volozhin, Yeshiva of
described at: Volozhin Yeshiva of
has abstract: For most of the nineteenth century, the Volozhin (Bel., Valozhyn) yeshiva was the most important institution of its type in Eastern Europe. It was founded around the year 1803 by Ḥayim ben Yitsḥak, the leading disciple of the Gaon of Vilna. Ḥayim ben Yitsḥak’s fame attracted many youths to Volozhin, and when the small town could no longer support so many students, he established a yeshiva that provided subsidies to students. His success at dispatching fund raisers enabled him to build a private study hall that allowed the yeshiva to be both financially independent and physically isolated.
title: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
alternative label: Volozhin
alternative label: Volozhin yeshiva
alternative label: yeshiva of Volozhin
alternative label: Ḥayim of Volozhin
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Berlin, Naftali Tsevi Yehudah
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Ḥayim ben Yitsḥak of Volozhin
related: Kook, Avraham Yitsḥak
related: Meisel, Eliyahu Ḥayim
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Soloveichik Family
related: Talmud Study
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Ba‘al Shem Tov
described at: Baal Shem Tov
has abstract: (Yisra’el ben Eli‘ezer, “the Besht”; ca. 1700–1760), healer, miracle worker, and religious mystic; leader of Hasidim in Międzyboż (Yid., Mezhbizh; mod. Ukr., Medzhibizh); recognized as founder of the modern Hasidic movement. Yisra’el Ba‘al Shem Tov was born in tiny Okopy Gory Świętej Trójcy (a town whose name means Hill Fortification of the Holy Trinity, referred to in Jewish sources as Okopy), a then recently civilianized military outpost near the southern border of Ukraine (then part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth). He spent his early life mainly in various towns of Podolia—one of which was the minor commercial center of Tłuste—finally settling in 1740 in the prosperous regional military, administrative, and trade emporium of Międzyboż (owned by the Czartoryski family), whose Jewish community was dominated by wealthy commercial families.
title: Ba‘al Shem Tov
alternative label: Besht
alternative label: ba‘al shem tov
related: Amulets and Talismans
related: Ba‘ale Shem
related: Barukh ben Yeḥi’el of Mezhbizh
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Kahal
related: Land of Israel
related: Lithuania
related: Medzhibizh
related: Misnagdim
related: Mosheh Ḥayim Efrayim of Sudilkov
related: Mysticism and Mystical Literature
related: Naḥman of Bratslav
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
related: Shapira Family
related: Ukraine
related: Ya‘akov Yosef of Polnoye

Birobidzhan
described at: Birobidzhan
has abstract: Territory in the far eastern reaches of the Soviet Union, designated in 1928 as the Jewish homeland and as a Yidishe Avtonomne Gegnt (Jewish autonomous region) in 1934. Yiddish was the territory’s official language.
title: Birobidzhan
related: Agriculture
related: Anticosmopolitan Campaign
related: Birobidzhaner Shtern
related: Crimea
related: Land of Israel
related: Moscow
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Evsektsiia
described at: Evsektsiia
has abstract: Jewish section of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Socialists viewed nations as ephemeral creations of the capitalist order, and expected them to disappear with the advent of socialism. Vladimir Lenin pointed approvingly to European Jews, who, in his view, had already begun assimilating into the nations among whom they lived. In 1913 Joseph Stalin argued that since Jews lacked a common territory, language, and economy, they did not constitute a nation.
title: Evsektsiia
alternative label: Evsekstiia
alternative label: Evsektsii
alternative label: Evsektsiias
related: Artels
related: Birobidzhan
related: Bund
related: Chemeriskii, Aleksandr
related: Commissariat for Jewish National Affairs
related: Communism
related: Communist Party of the Soviet Union
related: Dimanshtein, Semen Markovich
related: Fareynikte
related: Lifshits, Khaye Malke
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rafes, Moyshe
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Ukraine
related: Vainshtein, Aron Isaakovich
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Jewish Congress
described at: Jewish Congress
has abstract: Groundbreaking and contentious interdenominational conference that took place in Pest, Hungary, from December 1868 to February 1869. Having achieved a compromise with Austria that granted Jews independence in domestic affairs in 1867, the new Hungarian government sought to integrate Jews more completely into its general society. To this end, Jews were granted emancipation and the government worked with liberal-minded Jewish leaders to create a consistory-type, autonomous nationwide Jewish organization that could both regulate internal communal affairs and present a unified front in external relations.
title: Jewish Congress
alternative label: 1868–1869 Congress
alternative label: Congress of Jews
alternative label: Congress of Jews from Hungary and Transylvania
alternative label: General Congress of Jews
alternative label: Jewish congress
related: Eisenstadt
related: Hildesheimer, Esriel
related: Hirschler, Ignác
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Löw, Yirmiyahu
related: Orthodoxy
related: Sabbath
related: Seminary
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh

Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
described at: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
has abstract: (Gaon of Vilna; 1720–1797), Torah scholar, kabbalist, and communal leader. The Gaon of Vilna (known also by the acronym Gra, for Gaon Rabbi Eliyahu) was a spiritual giant, a role model and source of inspiration for generations, and the central cultural figure of Lithuanian Jewry. Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman was born into a rabbinical and scholarly family, and following a short period of study in a heder, studied Torah with his father. At age 7, he was sent to study with Mosheh Margoliot, rabbi of Keydan (Lith., Kėdainiai). Soon thereafter, he began to study on his own, and at 18, left Vilna to go into “exile”—a period of wandering through Jewish communities of Poland and Germany.
title: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
alternative label: Eliyahu
alternative label: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh
alternative label: Eliyahu, the Gaon of Vilna
alternative label: Gaon
alternative label: Gaon of Vilna
alternative label: Vilna Gaon
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Eybeschütz, Yonatan
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Ḥayim ben Yitsḥak of Volozhin
related: Heder
related: Lithuania
related: Misnagdim
related: Piety
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
related: Sabbatianism
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Vilnius
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Kultur-lige
described at: Kultur-lige
has abstract: (Culture League), general name of a number of cultural and social organizations formed in the 1920s and 1930s in Eastern Europe as well as in certain countries of Western Europe and the Americas. The Kultur-lige was founded in Kiev during the period of the Central Rada (the Ukrainian Council that declared an independent state in January 1918), early in 1918. Its aim was to promote the development of all spheres of contemporary Yiddish culture, including education, literature, theater, art, and music.
title: Kultur-lige
related: Łódź
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Bessarabia
related: Białystok
related: Bucharest
related: Bucovina
related: Bund
related: Chernivtsi
related: Crimea
related: Dobrushin, Yekhezkl
related: Evsektsiia
related: Fareynikte
related: Folkists
related: Hofshteyn, Dovid
related: Homel’
related: Hrodna
related: Kalmanovitch, Zelig
related: Kazdan, Khayim Shloyme
related: Kiev
related: Kishinev
related: Latvia
related: Lestschinsky, Jakob
related: Lifshits, Khaye Malke
related: Lissitzky, El
related: Literarishe Bleter
related: Lithuania
related: Litvak, A.
related: Markish, Perets
related: Maxy, Max Hermann
related: Mayzel, Nakhmen
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: About this Article (Music)
related: OZE
related: Painting and Sculpture
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Reyzen, Zalmen
related: Riga
related: Romania
related: Rostov-on-Don
related: Rybak, Yisakhar Ber
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shtif, Nokhem
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Yiddish Theater (Theater)
related: TSYSHO
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Vitsyebsk
related: Warsaw
related: Weichert, Michał
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Yung-teater
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Tsefirah, Ha-
described at: Tsefirah Ha-
has abstract: Hebrew newspaper. Ha-Tsefirah (The Morning or The Dawn) was the first Hebrew newspaper in Poland, founded in Warsaw and issued between 1862 and 1931. Ḥayim Zelig Słonimski established the paper as a weekly whose primary purpose was to report news concerning Jews and to provide popular articles about natural sciences and the latest inventions.
title: Tsefirah, Ha-
alternative label: Ha-Tsefirah
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Agnon, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Asif, Ha-
related: Baron, Devorah
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Braudes, Re’uven Asher
related: Censorship in the Russian Empire (Censorship)
related: Chess
related: Feierberg, Mordekhai Ze’ev
related: Fichmann, Ya‘akov
related: Frishman, David
related: Gnessin, Uri Nisan
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: Klausner, Yosef
related: Lachower, Yeruḥam Fishel
related: Land of Israel
related: Levin, Lipman
related: Lewinsky, Elḥanan Leib
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Słonimski, Ḥayim Zelig
related: Shimonovitz, David
related: Shneour, Zalman
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Sokolow, Naḥum
related: Steinberg, Yehudah
related: Tchernowitz, Shemu’el
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zhytomyr
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Agriculture
described at: Agriculture
has abstract: From their earliest days, a small proportion of East European Jews engaged in agriculture. Jews began to penetrate the region’s agricultural economy in the late sixteenth century. In particular, many Jews leased the great latifundia of Ukraine, paying noble landowners large sums that the lessees recouped by running the estates. In this way, some Jews became involved in agricultural management. From at least the sixteenth century, also, Jewish merchants and drovers in southeastern Poland were prominent in the cattle trade. They purchased oxen and other cattle, often in Moldavia, and drove them to major trade fairs chiefly in western German lands.
title: Agriculture
alternative label: agricultural
alternative label: agriculture
narrower: Russian Government Initiatives
narrower: Soviet-Era Colonization
narrower: The Impact of Ideology
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Belarus
related: Bessarabia
related: Birobidzhan
related: Bucovina
related: Crimea
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Galicia
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: Haskalah
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Kishinev
related: Leaseholding
related: Moldavia
related: ORT
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Civil War
related: Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Ha-
related: Shtetl
related: Society for the Settlement of Jewish Toilers on the Land
related: Tavernkeeping
related: Trade
related: Transylvania
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Crimea
described at: Crimea
has abstract: A peninsula in the Black Sea with a multiethnic population. Since 1992, Crimea has been an autonomous republic within independent Ukraine. Russia annexed the region from the Ottoman Empire in 1783. From 1921 it was an autonomous republic of the Russian SSR; it was transferred to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954. Jews have lived there since at least the first century CE, consisting of Karaite, Krymchak, and Ashkenazic elements. The Jewish population remained below 10,000 until the 1880s.
title: Crimea
alternative label: Crimean
alternative label: Crimean peninsula
related: Agriculture
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Ashkenaz
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Karaites
related: Krymchaks
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Civil War
related: Trumpeldor, Yosef
related: Ukraine
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Chernivtsi
described at: Chernivtsi
has abstract: City in southwestern Ukraine, lying on the Prut River. Chernivtsi (Rom., Cernăuți; Ger., Czernowitz; Yid., Tshernovits) is the current capital of the Chernivtsi region. The presence of Jews there was first mentioned in 1408. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the number of Jewish inhabitants increased significantly. During this period the Jews mainly spoke Yiddish and were active as traders. The kahal (community), led by an elected judge and a rabbi, enjoyed limited autonomy and the right to its own jurisdictions.
title: Chernivtsi
alternative label: Cernăuți
alternative label: Czernowitz
related: Assimilation
related: Bessarabia
related: Czernowitz Conference
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Ḥayim ben Shelomoh Tyrer of Tshernovits
related: Kahal
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Reform, Religious
related: Romania
related: Shteynbarg, Eliezer
related: Transnistria
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Lubavitch Hasidism
described at: Lubavitch Hasidism
has abstract: Branch of Hasidism founded by Shneur Zalman of Liady (ca. 1745–1812). The townlet of Lyubavichi (Yid., Lubavitsh; commonly, Lubavitch), some 50 miles west of Smolensk, was the center between 1814 and 1915 of the main branch of Ḥabad Hasidism (Ḥabad, or ḤaBaD, is an acronym for ḥokhmah, binah, da‘at—“wisdom, understanding, knowledge”). Shneur Zalman emphasized an intellectualist form of spirituality and a systematized version of the teachings of Yisra’el Ba‘al Shem Tov (ca. 1700–1760) and Dov Ber, the Magid of Mezritsh (1704–1772).
title: Lubavitch Hasidism
alternative label: Lubavitch
alternative label: Lubavitch Hasidic
alternative label: Lubavitch Hasidic movement
alternative label: Lubavitch Hasidim
alternative label: Lubavitch movment
alternative label: Lubavitcher
alternative label: Lubavitcher Hasid
alternative label: Ḥabad
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Avraham ben Aleksander ha-Kohen of Kalisk
related: Ba‘al Shem Tov
related: Belarus
related: Bund
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Charity
related: Chernivtsi
related: Communism
related: Czech Republic
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: Evsektsiia
related: Gans, David ben Shelomoh
related: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kaliningrad
related: Katowice
related: Levi Yitsḥak of Barditshev
related: Misnagdim
related: Moscow
related: Naḥman of Bratslav
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Purim
related: Riga
related: Romania
related: Rostov-on-Don
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shneur Zalman of Liady
related: Slovakia
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vitsyebsk
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zhidachov-Komarno Hasidic Dynasty
related: Zhytomyr
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Mizraḥi
described at: Mizrahi
has abstract: Orthodox Zionist movement whose name was derived from the words merkaz ruḥani (spiritual center), and whose slogan was “the Land of Israel for the People of Israel according to the Torah of Israel.” The movement advocated the realization of the Zionist vision and incorporated some of its modern and revolutionary characteristics. The adoption of Zionist ideology, however, was accomplished for the most part by denying its secular and innovative aspects, or by assigning religious interpretations to its basic tenets.
title: Mizraḥi
alternative label: Mizra?i
alternative label: Mizraḥists
related: Bessarabia
related: Bratislava
related: Brodt, Shemu’el
related: Bucovina
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Farbstein, Yehoshu‘a Heshel
related: Galicia
related: Hausner, Bernard Dov
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Land of Israel
related: Latvia
related: Lithuania
related: Moldavia
related: Nissenbaum, Yitsḥak
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Reines, Yitsḥak Ya‘akov
related: Romania
related: Rubinstein, Yitsḥak
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Slovakia
related: Transylvania
related: Tse‘ire Mizraḥi
related: Vilnius
related: Walachia
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Silesia
described at: Silesia
has abstract: (Pol., Śląsk; Ger., Schlesien; Cz., Slezsko), a region at the borders of Prussia, Saxony, Bohemia, Moravia, and Poland. Silesia was disputed territory from the tenth century. Around 990, it was separated from the Bohemian lands and became part of Poland. In the period of the regional fracturing of Poland, the majority of the Silesian princes accepted the sovereignty of the Czech king, which Kazimierz the Great eventually acknowledged, abdicating Silesia to Bohemia. The Habsburgs ruled it from 1526, and as a result of the Silesian Wars (1740–1763), the majority of its territory came under Prussian rule, with only the southeastern regions remaining in the realm of the Habsburgs. The latter region, Austrian Silesia—comprising the principalities of Teschen (Pol., Cieszyn; Cz., Těšín), Troppau (Pol., Opawa; Cz., Opava), and Jägerndorf (Pol., Karniów, Cz., Krnov)—remained under Habsburg rule from 1742 to 1918. After World War I, the Opava and Krnov areas of Austrian Silesia became part of Czechoslovakia, while the Cieszyn region was to be divided according to the results of a plebiscite, which never took place, however, due to the earlier annexation of the western part of this region by Czechoslovakia during the Polish–Soviet war in 1920. The remaining part of Cieszyn region, together with the eastern strip of Prussian Upper Silesia, became Polish and was made the Autonomous Silesian Voivodeship in 1922. This was enlarged with the annexation from Czechoslovakia of the western part of Cieszyn region in 1938. The majority of Upper Silesia and all of Lower Silesia remained part of Germany. After World War II, all of German Silesia was annexed to Poland.
title: Silesia
alternative label: Silesian
related: Łódź
related: Bass, Shabetai ben Yosef
related: Będzin
related: Biała
related: Bielsko
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Industry
related: Katowice
related: Kaunas
related: Kielce
related: Leaseholding
related: Orthodoxy
related: Ostrava
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Seminary
related: Tavernkeeping
related: Terezín
related: Tombstones
related: Trade
related: Warsaw
related: Wrocław

Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
described at: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
has abstract: An educational and civic association devoted to the acculturation of Jews in the Pale of Settlement, the Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia (known in Russian as Obshchestva dlia Rasprostraneniia Prosveshcheniia Mezhdu Evreiami v Rossii; OPE) was founded in 1863 during a period of liberalization. It remained active until it was forced to close in 1929 under the Bolshevik government’s program to abolish independent political and cultural institutions. The OPE experienced three phases of programming, reflecting the internal state of the Jewish community in Russia and adjusting to its changing relations with the Russian government.
title: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
alternative label: OPE
alternative label: Society for the Promotion of Culture
alternative label: Society for the Promotion of Culture (or Enlightenment) among the Jews of Russia
alternative label: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews
alternative label: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews in Russia
alternative label: Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment among the Jews of Russia
alternative label: Society for the Spread of Enlightenment among the Jews of Russia
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Ben-Ami
related: Brafman, Iakov Aleksandrovich
related: Bund
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Gintsburg Family
related: Heder
related: Hrodna
related: Kiev
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pinsker, Simḥah and Lev
related: Pogroms
related: Riga
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Vinaver, Maksim Moiseevich
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Youth Movements
described at: Youth Movements
has abstract: Jewish youth movements in Eastern Europe, particularly in the interwar period, achieved extraordinary strength, numbers, and influence as a result of a number of interelated contemporaneous factors, in addition to the particularly pressured conditions under which, for example, all of Polish Jewry lived. Factors included the tremendous expansion of state education (school attendance became mandatory in Galicia in 1867, and in all of Poland after World War I); the postponement of employment and marriage to a more advanced age; the new psychological and educational theories that recognized childhood and adolescence as stages of life with needs distinct from those of adulthood; and the undermining of traditional religious values, which in turn empowered young people to propose their own solutions to social and national problems.
title: Youth Movements
alternative label: Youth movement
alternative label: youth groups
alternative label: youth movement
alternative label: youth movements
alternative label: youth organization
narrower: Links to Larger Organizations
narrower: Major Movements and Subdivisions
narrower: Postwar Youth Movements in Poland
narrower: Youth Movements outside Poland
related: Łódź
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Akiva
related: Bessarabia
related: Betar
related: Beys Yankev
related: Bin
related: Bucovina
related: Bund
related: Childhood
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Dror
related: Folkists
related: Galicia
related: Gender
related: General Zionists
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Gordonia
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Land of Israel
related: Latvia
related: Marriage
related: Mizraḥi
related: Orthodoxy
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Revisionist Zionists
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Ha-
related: Silesia
related: Slovakia
related: About this Article (Sport)
related: Subcarpathian Rus’
related: Tarbut
related: Transylvania
related: Tse‘ire Mizraḥi
related: Tseirey Agudas Yisroel
related: Tsukunft
related: TSYSHO
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Weinreich, Max
related: Yugnt
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties
related: Zjednoczenie

Ashkenaz
described at: Ashkenaz
has abstract: The term Ashkenaz is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible in Genesis 10:3 and 1 Chronicles 1:6 as the dwelling place of a descendant of Noah’s son Japhet, ancestor of later Europeans. In Jeremiah 51:27 it seems to be part of Asia, perhaps Asia Minor, and is located northwest of Palestine. How the place name eventually supplanted earlier descriptive names for German-Jewish lands, such as the Rhineland (Rinus) or the lands of King Lothar (Lotir) is not clear.
title: Ashkenaz
alternative label: Ashkenazi
alternative label: Ashkenazic
alternative label: Ashkenazic Jews
alternative label: Ashkenazim
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: About this Article (Language)
related: Piety
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh

Brest
described at: Brest
has abstract: (also Brest Litovsk; Pol., Brześć nad Bugiem; Yid., Brisk or Brisk de-Lita [Brisk of Lithuania]), city now in Belarus. Located at the confluence of the Bug and Mukhavets Rivers, Brest was a district capital and a large commercial center. Jews settled in Brest at the beginning of the fourteenth century. In 1388, they received a privilegium (charter) from Lithuanian Grand Duke Vytautas. It repeated the terms of the Charter of Bolesław, granted to Jews in Poland a century earlier, and assured Jews of occupational freedom and communal autonomy, as well as security of life, limb, and property.
title: Brest
alternative label: Brest Litovsk
alternative label: Brest-Litovsk
alternative label: Brisk
alternative label: Brześć
related: Agriculture
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Belarus
related: Beys Yankev
related: Bund
related: Councils
related: Crafts
related: Folkists
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Kiev
related: Land of Israel
related: Leaseholding
related: Levi Yitsḥak of Barditshev
related: Lithuania
related: Luria, Shelomoh ben Yeḥi’el
related: Mizraḥi
related: Moscow
related: ORT
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Ha-
related: Shtadlan
related: Sirkes, Yo’el
related: Soloveichik Family
related: Tarbut
related: Vilnius
related: Wahl, Sha’ul
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Dubnow, Simon
described at: Dubnow Simon
has abstract: (1860–1941), Russian Jewish historian and ideologue of Jewish Diaspora nationalism. Simon Dubnow was born in Mstislavl in the Belorussian sector of the Russian Pale of Settlement to a religiously observant family; his father worked in the lumber business, a common Jewish occupation at the time. One of Dubnow’s brothers, Wolf, became a Biluist (a group of Russian Jewish youth who pioneered modern settlement in the Land of Israel) and emigrated temporarily to Palestine after the pogroms of 1881–1882. Their grandfather Bentsiyon was known throughout the region as an esteemed rabbinic scholar who taught according to the rigorous methods of the Gaon of Vilna.
title: Dubnow, Simon
alternative label: Dubnow
alternative label: Simon Dubnow
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Bund
related: Daugavpils
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Erlich, Henryk
related: Folkists
related: Gintsburg Family
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Land of Israel
related: Lebensohn, Mikhah Yosef
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Mapu, Avraham
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Riga
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Vilnius
related: Voskhod
related: YIVO
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Gzeyres Takh Vetat
described at: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
has abstract: Acronym referring to the “[Evil] Decrees of 1648–1649.” The Ukrainian lands were part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the first half of the seventeenth century. To the south, Crimea—a region bordering the Black Sea—was part of the Ottoman Empire and was populated largely by Muslim Tatars. Most of the land in Ukraine was owned by Catholic Polish magnates and nobles, while the peasants were mainly Eastern Orthodox Ukrainians. The urban centers were home to a mixture of Poles, Ukrainians, Jews, and members of other groups. In the southern parts of Ukraine were groups known as Cossacks. They were Orthodox Christians and mainly—but not exclusively—of Slavic origin. They were not farmers but maintained themselves sometimes by hunting and fishing, and largely by warfare and the spoils of war. The Crimean Tatars often attacked the Slavic peasants in the north, taking booty and slaves, and in return, the Cossacks did the same to the Tatars. In the course of time, the Polish crown began to employ the autonomous Cossacks for the defense of the region.
title: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
alternative label: Cossack uprising
alternative label: Gzeyres takh vetat
alternative label: Khmel’nyts’kyi massacre
alternative label: Khmel’nyts’kyi massacres
alternative label: Khmel’nyts’kyi rebellion
alternative label: Khmel’nyts’kyi uprising
alternative label: Khmel’nyts’kyi uprisings
alternative label: Khmel’nyts’kyi’ uprising
alternative label: gzeyres takh
alternative label: gzeyres takh vetat
related: Crimea
related: Hannover, Natan Note
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Nemyriv
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: Ukraine
related: Uman

Kishinev
described at: Kishinev
has abstract: Capital city of the Republic of Moldova. From the beginning of the sixteenth century, Kishinev (officially, Chişinău; Yid., Keshenev) was in the principality of Moldova (Moldavia), which was annexed to the Russian Empire in 1818 and called Bessarabia. In 1918–1940 and 1941–1944 it was in the Kingdom of Romania and, in 1940–1941 and 1944–1991, it served as capital of the Moldavian SSR. The earliest documentation of a Jewish presence dates to the beginning of the eighteenth century.
title: Kishinev
alternative label: Chişinău
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Belarus
related: Bessarabia
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Ḥayim ben Shelomoh Tyrer of Tshernovits
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Moldavia
related: Moldova
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: Passover
related: Pogroms
related: Romania
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Shternberg, Yankev
related: Transnistria
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: World War I
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties
related: Zirelson, Yehudah Leib

About this Article (Rabbinate)
described at: Rabbinate
has abstract: To survey the history of the rabbinate in Eastern Europe, this entry is divided chronologically into two articles, the first covering the period up to 1800 and the second from 1800 until 2000. For religious and scholarly writings by rabbis, see Rabbinic Literature; for the role of the rabbi’s wife, see Rebetsin; for government-appointed rabbis, see Crown Rabbi; for rabbinic education, see Seminary and Yeshiva; for Hasidic rebbes, see Hasidism.
title: About this Article (Rabbinate)
alternative label: Rabbinate
alternative label: rabbinate
alternative label: rabbis
related: Crown Rabbi
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Rabbinic Literature)
related: Rebetsin
related: Seminary
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
described at: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
has abstract: One of several Soviet anti-fascist groups formed after the Nazi invasion of the USSR in June 1941. On 24 August 1941, two dozen Jewish cultural figures, led by the Yiddish actor and theater director Solomon Mikhoels (1890–1948), issued an international radio appeal to Jews around the world to unite in the struggle against Nazi Germany. To allow Jews to appeal to their fellow Jews was an extraordinary step for the Kremlin. But Stalin understood the need for the regime to repair relations with the Western powers in the face of the German onslaught.
title: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
alternative label: Jewish Anti-Fascist League
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Babi Yar
related: Berdychiv
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Black Book
related: Crimea
related: Ehrenburg, Ilya Grigor’evich
related: Fefer, Itsik
related: Grossman, Vasilii Semenovich
related: Hofshteyn, Dovid
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kiev
related: Kreizer, Iakov Grigor’evich
related: Kvitko, Leyb
related: Lozovskii, Solomon Abramovich
related: Markish, Perets
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Moscow
related: Shtern, Lina Solomonovna
related: Yiddish Theater (Theater)
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Russian Revolution of 1905
described at: Russian Revolution of 1905
has abstract: During the Revolution of 1905, or, more accurately, 1904–1907, sizable sectors of the Jewish community in the Russian Empire entered the arena of national politics. The upheaval began in the fall of 1904, when public opinion turned sharply against the government in reaction to the ruinous defeats the country suffered in its ill-considered war against Japan.
title: Russian Revolution of 1905
alternative label: 1905 October Revolution
alternative label: 1905 Revolution
alternative label: 1905 Russian Revolution
alternative label: 1905–1907 Revolution
alternative label: Revolution of 1905
alternative label: Revolution of 1905–1907
alternative label: Russian Revolution
alternative label: Russian revolution of 1905
alternative label: revolution of 1905
alternative label: revolution of 1905–1907
related: Łódź
related: Białystok
related: Bund
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Moscow
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Pogroms
related: Population and Migration before World War I (Population and Migration)
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Telz, Yeshiva of
related: Vilnius
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zhytomyr
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Banking
described at: Banking
has abstract: From the beginning of Jewish settlement in Eastern Europe, moneylending and money dealing in its various forms represented—alongside commerce, tax farming, and leasing—a central area of their economic activities. Into the nineteenth century, Jewish entrepreneurs were typically involved in more than one of these areas. Furthermore, in the early modern period Jewish communities played a significant role in the monetary economy of Eastern Europe by borrowing from church institutions and the aristocracy. In the nineteenth century—considerably later than in Western or Central Europe—the whole of Eastern Europe witnessed the emergence of prominent figures who served, either primarily or exclusively, as private bankers. With the rapid spread of joint stock banks, such figures declined in significance by World War I. However, the proportion of Jewish capital in these public companies remained significant, and Jews continued to be prominent in the management of those company’s affairs.
title: Banking
alternative label: Bankers
alternative label: bank
alternative label: banker
alternative label: bankers
alternative label: banking
alternative label: banks
alternative label: finance
narrower: Early Modern Period
narrower: Middle Ages
narrower: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
related: Łódź
related: Agriculture
related: Berdychiv
related: Bloch, Jan
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Councils
related: Credit
related: Epstein Family
related: Fiszel Family
related: Galicia
related: Gintsburg Family
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Industry
related: Kahal
related: Kalisz
related: Kiev
related: Kornfeld, Zsigmond
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Kronenberg Family
related: Leaseholding
related: Lewko
related: Lithuania
related: L’viv
related: Madarassy-Beck, Nándor
related: Money
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Petschek Family
related: Pinsk
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poliakov Family
related: Poznań
related: Radom
related: Rosen, Mathias
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Trade
related: Ullmann Family
related: Vilnius
related: Wawelberg, Hipolit
related: Zak, Avraam Isakovich
related: Zbytkower, Shmul

Bergelson, Dovid
described at: Bergelson Dovid
has abstract: (1884–1952), Yiddish novelist and dramatist. Born in Okhrimovo, Ukraine, to a wealthy family, Dovid Bergelson received a traditional Jewish education in heder and a general education through private tutors. His parents died while he was a teenager and he was raised under the supervision of his older brothers. He settled in Kiev in 1903, where he remained with some interruptions until 1921; and in that city he was both a witness and a central participant in its transformation into an important center of modern Yiddish culture.
title: Bergelson, Dovid
alternative label: Dovid Bergelson
related: Birobidzhan
related: Evsektsiia
related: Eynikayt
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Heder
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Kiev
related: Kultur-lige
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Moscow
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shtetl
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vayter, A.
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Iaşi
described at: Iasi
has abstract: (Eng. and Fr., Jassy; Yid., Yos; Heb., Yas), town in Moldavia (northeastern Romania) on the Bahlui River; an important trading center with links to Bucovina, Bessarabia, Ukraine, and Russia; capital of the former principality of Moldavia (1565–1862). The largest and most important Jewish community of Moldavia lived in Iaşi. The presence of Jews was first documented in the late sixteenth century when Sephardic Jews arrived accompanying the new rulers appointed by the Turkish sultan. The oldest tomb inscription in the local cemetery probably dates to 1610.
title: Iaşi
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Banking
related: Bessarabia
related: Braunstein, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Brociner Family
related: Brody
related: Bucharest
related: Bucovina
related: Carp, Horia
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Crafts
related: Dress
related: Fundoianu, Beniamin
related: Galicia
related: Ghelerter, Litman
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Groper, Iacob Ashel
related: Guilds
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: Hannover, Natan Note
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Lippe, Karpel
related: Lithuania
related: Ludo, Isac Iacovitz
related: Manger, Itsik
related: Moldavia
related: Niemirower, Iacob Isac
related: Opatów
related: Orthodoxy
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Şafran Family
related: Schwarzfeld Family
related: Sephardim
related: Servants
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Sokolow, Naḥum
related: Taubes Family
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Trade
related: Transnistria
related: Ukraine
related: Walachia
related: Wexler, Max
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Yisra’el of Ruzhin
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties
related: Zissu, Abraham Leib

About this Article (Prose)
described at: Prose
has abstract: This entry includes articles on fiction writing and the development of the novel in Hebrew and Yiddish, respectively. For further discussion of works in those languages, see Hebrew Literature; and Yiddish Literature. For works by Jews in other languages, see Belarusian Literature; Czech Literature; German Literature; Hungarian Literature; Polish Literature; Romanian Literature; Russian Literature; and Ukrainian Literature.
title: About this Article (Prose)
alternative label: Prose
alternative label: prose
related: Belarusian Literature
related: Czech Literature
related: German Literature
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Hungarian Literature
related: Polish Literature
related: Romanian Literature
related: Russian Literature
related: Ukrainian Literature
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Asch, Sholem
described at: Asch Sholem
has abstract: (1880–1957), Yiddish novelist and playwright. Born in Kutno, Russian Poland, Sholem Asch was the youngest of his Hasidic parents’ 10 children. Traditionally educated and a talented student, he began teaching himself German with the aid of Moses Mendelssohn’s translation of the Bible. Since his parents disapproved of these secular studies, he moved in with relatives in a nearby village, where he became a Torah instructor and for the first time encountered the lives of Polish peasants. Relocating to the town of Włocławek, Asch earned his living writing letters for illiterate people, an experience he appreciated for the insights it offered into human needs and longings.
title: Asch, Sholem
alternative label: Asch
alternative label: Sholem Asch
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Birnbaum, Nathan
related: Circumcision
related: Conversion
related: Czernowitz Conference
related: Fraynd, Der
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haynt
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Land of Israel
related: Lithuania
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Nomberg, Hersh Dovid
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Piety
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Sabbatianism
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shtetl
related: Singer, Isaac Bashevis
related: Trade
related: Ukraine
related: Włocławek
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Yud, Der

Communism
described at: Communism
has abstract: Karl Marx and most of his followers considered ethnicity a construct of the ruling bourgeoisie in capitalist societies. Ethnicity was designed to divert the attention of the working class away from its economic and political grievances and focus attention on the identities and cultures that divided workers, rather than on the class interests that united them. Thus, the ruling capitalists were said to pit workers of one nation against those of another on the pretext that their primary allegiance should be to the nation, not the class. In World War I, French and British workers on one side, and German and Austrian workers on the other, tried to kill each other out of loyalty to their respective nations. Along with other socialists, Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, viewed this as a tragic strategic error that could occur only because of the shortsightedness and lack of class consciousness of the proletariat. As it matured and was educated by the “vanguard of the proletariat,” the more historically conscious intelligentsia that led the socialist movement, the proletariat would come to realize that its common interests transcended national borders and that all workers together should combat the exploiting capitalists, who themselves were a transnational class.
title: Communism
alternative label: Communist
alternative label: communism
narrower: Żydokomuna
narrower: Jews and Communism
narrower: Jews and Radicalism
narrower: The Post–World War II Era
related: Berman, Jakub
related: Bessarabia
related: Bucovina
related: Bund
related: Communist Party of the Soviet Union
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Economic Life
related: Estonia
related: Gamarnik, Ian Borisovich
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Iakir, Iona Emmanuilovich
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Kaganovich, Lazar’ Moiseevich
related: Kamenev, Iurii
related: Kun, Béla
related: Land of Israel
related: Latvia
related: Lithuania
related: Litvinov, Maksim Maksimovich
related: Luxemburg, Rosa
related: Medem, Vladimir Davidovich
related: Moscow
related: Pauker, Ana
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rákosi, Mátyás
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Jewish Congress
related: Slánský Trial
related: Sverdlov, Iakov Mikhailovich
related: Trotsky, Leon
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Youth Movements
related: Zamość
related: Zinov’ev, Grigorii Evseevich
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Conversion
described at: Conversion
has abstract: Jewish conversions to Christianity in Eastern Europe were infrequent in both premodern and modern times. Mass conversions to Christianity occurred at two intervals: to Eastern Orthodoxy during the Khmel’nyts’kyi uprising (1648–1649; gzeyres takh vetat), and to Catholicism by followers of Jakub Frank in the second half of the eighteenth century. Jewish and Christian sources suggest that individual conversions to Judaism also took place.
title: Conversion
alternative label: conversion
alternative label: conversionary
alternative label: convert
alternative label: converted
alternative label: converts
narrower: Christian Conversions to Judaism
narrower: Jewish Conversions to Christianity after 1772
narrower: Jewish Converts to Christianity in Pre-Partition Poland (before 1772)
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brno
related: Bund
related: Dubno
related: Ezofowicz Family
related: Frankism
related: Ger Tsedek
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: Helicz Brothers
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: Judaizers
related: Khvol’son, Daniil Avraamovich
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lithuania
related: Luria, Shelomoh ben Yeḥi’el
related: Luts’k
related: Medem, Vladimir Davidovich
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sabbath
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Moldavia
described at: Moldavia
has abstract: (Rom., Moldova), region of Romania. Moldavia was a principality founded in the middle of the fourteenth century. Its princes were vassals of the Ottoman Empire from about 1456 until Moldavia’s political union with Walachia in 1859, followed by an administrative union in 1862. Moldavia included Bucovina until 1775 and Bessarabia until 1812. The capitals were Câmpulung, Baia, Siret (fourteenth century until ca. 1380), Suceava (ca. 1380–1565), and Iaşi (1565–1862).
title: Moldavia
alternative label: Moldavian
related: Bacău
related: Bârlad
related: Bessarabia
related: Botoşani
related: Bucovina
related: Buhuşi
related: Câmpulung Moldovenesc
related: Chernivtsi
related: Crafts
related: Dorohoi
related: Dress
related: Focşani
related: Galaţi
related: Galicia
related: Guilds
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Iaşi
related: Kahal
related: Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi
related: Karaites
related: Kishinev
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Money
related: Piatra Neamţ
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: Roman
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Ruzhin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Schwarzfeld Family
related: Siret
related: Soroca
related: Suceava
related: Târgu Neamţ
related: Transylvania
related: Ukraine
related: Walachia

Poznań
described at: Poznan
has abstract: City in Wielkopolska province, Poland; known in Hebrew and Yiddish as Pozna and in German as Posen. Poznań’s Jewish community was one of the earliest to be established on Polish soil; the first reference to Jews living in the town comes from 1379. While tradition dates the town’s synagogue to 1367, there is no documented evidence of its existence until 1449 (the cemetery, however, was first mentioned in 1438). In the second half of the fifteenth century, a legend declared that in 1399 some Jews in Poznań had committed a Host profanation. The same period also saw the establishment of Poznań’s famed yeshiva, known as Lomde Pozna.
title: Poznań
alternative label: Posen
related: Eger, Akiva ben Mosheh
related: Haskalah
related: Labor Camps
related: Leszno
related: Orthodoxy
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Reform, Religious
related: Shtadlan
related: Yafeh, Mordekhai ben Avraham
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

World War I
described at: World War I
has abstract: Name generally given to the set of military conflicts during the years 1914–1918 that set the armies of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria (the Central Powers) against those of Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, the United States, and other countries (the Allied and Associated Powers, more commonly known as the Allies or the Entente). The geographical scope of the war, the sophistication of weapons employed by both sides, the human cost of the fighting among both soldiers and civilian populations—all of these were at the time unprecedented in the history of warfare, and during the subsequent two decades the experience of the war weighed heavily upon the thinking and behavior not only of political leaders but of virtually all who had been affected by it.
title: World War I
narrower: Hardship and Relief
narrower: Political Activity
narrower: Population Dislocations
narrower: Relations with the Central Powers
narrower: Revolution, Civil War, and Pogroms
narrower: The War’s Effects
narrower: The War in the East
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Assimilation
related: Belarus
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brest
related: Brutskus, Iulii
related: Buchach
related: Bucovina
related: Bund
related: Chernivtsi
related: Courland
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Dinezon, Yankev
related: Finland
related: Galicia
related: Hrodna
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kaunas
related: Kol Mevaser
related: Latvia
related: Lithuania
related: Luts’k
related: L’viv
related: Mizraḥi
related: Moscow
related: Orthodoxy
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Pinsk
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Silesia
related: Slovakia
related: Sokolow, Naḥum
related: Suwałki
related: Ternopil’
related: Transylvania
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Vinaver, Maksim Moiseevich
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Wrocław
described at: Wrocław
has abstract: Capital city of the province of Lower Silesia, in Poland. The first reference to Jews in the vicinity of Wrocław (Lat., Vratislavia; Ger., Breslau; Czech, Vratislav) dates to before 1153; the next citation is from the beginning of the thirteenth century. The oldest Jewish gravestone, dated 1203 (for David ben Sar Shalom), indicates that there probably was permanent Jewish settlement at that time. In 1267, a synod of bishops in Wrocław imposed limitations on the Jewish population, yet the restrictions were probably never implemented. The first privilege was granted in about 1273 by Duke Henry IV Probus, confirmed by his successor Henry V in about 1290 (neither has been preserved). At that time, Wrocław had the largest Jewish community in East Central Europe after Prague. The main occupations of Jews were moneylending, trade, and, marginally, artisanry.
title: Wrocław
alternative label: Breslau
related: Blood Libels and Host Desecration Accusations
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Haskalah
related: Kaunas
related: Kielce
related: Labor Camps
related: ORT
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Reform, Religious
related: Rotbaum, Jakub
related: Seminary
related: Silesia
related: TOZ
related: Terezín
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Trade

Transylvania
described at: Transylvania
has abstract: (Ger., Siebenbürgen; Hun., Erdély), a province in the western area of current Romania. There is archeological and numismatic evidence of the presence of Jews in Transylvania as early as the times of the Roman rule over Dacia (106–275 CE). The next known reference to a Jew in Transylvania dates to 1357. Until the beginning of the sixteenth century, Jews worked in the main Transylvanian cities (Cluj, Sibiu, Braşov) as tradesmen and creditors, acting as middlemen in commercial and financial relations with neighboring countries (Moldavia, Walachia, the Ottoman Empire, Poland, and Hungary).
title: Transylvania
related: Alba Iulia
related: Arad
related: Banat
related: Braşov
related: Bucovina
related: Cluj
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Moldavia
related: Oradea
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: Satu Mare
related: Sephardim
related: Sibiu
related: Sighet Marmaţiei
related: Tarbut
related: Timişoara
related: Ukraine
related: Walachia
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Khar’kiv
described at: Kharkiv
has abstract: In 1734, the Russian state permitted Jewish merchants to visit Kharkov (more properly Khar’kov; Ukr., Khar’kiv) to engage in retail and wholesale trade. Jewish residence in this city outside the Pale of Settlement, however, remained under strict control throughout the imperial period. In 1821, Jews lost their right to enter the city but regained this privilege in 1835 when the governor complained about the loss of more than 10 million rubles in trade revenue.
title: Khar’kiv
alternative label: Kharko
alternative label: Kharkov
alternative label: Khar’kov
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Borokhov, Ber
related: Bund
related: Der Nister
related: Evsektsiia
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: Hrodna
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Kvitko, Leyb
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Moscow
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pogroms
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Ha-
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Trade
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Sabbatianism
described at: Sabbatianism
has abstract: A messianic movement, established around Shabetai Tsevi (1626–1676), Sabbatianism (often Sabbateanism) erupted in the Ottoman Empire in the second half of the seventeenth century and spread widely among Jews in Europe, North Africa, and Asia.
title: Sabbatianism
alternative label: Sabbatian
alternative label: Sabbatian movement
alternative label: Sabbatians
alternative label: Shabetai Tsevi
narrower: After the Apostasy
narrower: Before the Apostasy
related: Berekhyah Berakh ben Yitsḥak
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Conversion
related: David ben Shemu’el ha-Levi
related: Epstein, Yeḥi’el Mikhl
related: Eybeschütz, Yonatan
related: Frankism
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: L’viv
related: Malakh, Ḥayim ben Shelomoh
related: Messianism
related: Mordekhai ben Ḥayim of Eisenstadt
related: Mosheh ben Aharon ha-Kohen of Kraków
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Prossnitz, Yehudah Leib ben Ya‘akov Holleschau
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Slovakia
related: Tsoref, Yehoshu‘a Heshel ben Yosef
related: Vilnius
related: Yehudah Ḥasid ha-Levi
related: Zhovkva

Industry
described at: Industry
has abstract: Imperial Russia and other areas of Eastern Europe did not become fully industrialized until the end of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, even in its earliest stages, Jews played prominent roles in industry. The two main reasons for this were first, the emergence of a Jewish bourgeoisie, some of whose members had accumulated vast wealth that to a certain extent was invested in industrial development; and second, the Russian government’s policy of seeking to transform the empire’s Jewish residents into contributors who would play a beneficial role in the Russian society and economy. During the first half of the nineteenth century, industrialization in the Russian Empire (which at that time included much of Poland) had begun at a sluggish rate. After the Crimean War (1855), however, production was financed by private wealth, under tight governmental supervision. Gathering speed under new conditions, by the 1880s and 1890s industrialization had advanced rapidly.
title: Industry
alternative label: industrial
alternative label: industrialists
alternative label: industry
related: Łódź
related: Belarus
related: Białystok
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brno
related: Brodskii Family
related: Brody
related: Bund
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Epstein Family
related: Hrodna
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kiev
related: Kronenberg Family
related: Natanson Family
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Philanthropy
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Sabbath
related: Silesia
related: Suwałki
related: Trade
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vitsyebsk
related: Warsaw

American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
described at: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
has abstract: The largest nonpolitical organization dedicated to helping Jews in distress all over the world. Generally known as the JDC or “Joint” and headquartered in New York, the organization (until 1931) was called the Joint Distribution Committee of (the American) Funds for Jewish War Sufferers. It was founded on 27 November 1914 with the aim of centralizing allocations of aid to Jews adversely affected by World War I.
title: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
alternative label: American Joint Distribution Committee
alternative label: JDC
alternative label: Joint Distribution Committee
narrower: Child Care
narrower: From the End of World War II until the Collapse of the Communist Bloc
narrower: Medicine and Sanitation
narrower: Reconstruction
narrower: Refugees and Emigrants
narrower: The Post-Soviet Era
narrower: The Soviet Union before World War II
narrower: World War II, the Holocaust, and Displaced Persons
related: Agriculture
related: Beriḥah
related: Bessarabia
related: Bucovina
related: Central Committee of Jews in Poland
related: Crimea
related: Czech Republic
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Doctors’ Plot
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi
related: Latvia
related: Lithuania
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: L’viv
related: ORT
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Refuseniks
related: Riga
related: Romania
related: Rosen, Mozes
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shtetl
related: Silesia
related: Slánský Trial
related: Slovakia
related: Subcarpathian Rus’
related: TOZ
related: Tallinn
related: Transnistria
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: World War I

Misnagdim
described at: Misnagdim
has abstract: (also Mitnagdim; Heb., opponents), common name for rabbinical opponents of the Hasidic movement, based largely in Lithuania, northern Belorussia, and northeastern Poland, that is, the territory inhabited by Litvaks (Lithuanian Jews). While the terms Menagdim and were first employed in defensive Hasidic writings from the 1770s to describe the rabbinical enemies of the movement, those opponents of Hasidism eventually came to embrace the appellation with pride. Over time, and with the growth of non-Hasidic and anti-Hasidic religious institutions—most notably the Lithuanian yeshivas and the Musar Movement—whose purpose was, at least in part, to counteract the rapid spread of Hasidism, the term Misnagdim took on a positive connotation among non-Hasidic Jews of northeastern Europe, and became almost synonymous with Lithuanian Jewry. (In contemporary Israel, the term Lita’im [Hebrew for Lithuanians] is commonly used instead of Misnagdim.)
title: Misnagdim
alternative label: Misnagdic
alternative label: Misnagdim;
alternative label: Misnaged
narrower: History
narrower: Theology
related: Ashkenaz
related: Assimilation
related: Belarus
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brest
related: Brody
related: Dov Ber of Mezritsh
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Frankism
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Ḥayim ben Yitsḥak of Volozhin
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi
related: Karlin-Stolin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Khelm, Shelomoh ben Mosheh
related: Landau, Yeḥezkel ben Yehudah
related: Lithuania
related: Liturgy
related: Litvak
related: Minsk
related: Mir, Yeshiva of
related: Musar Movement
related: Orthodoxy
related: Passover
related: Piety
related: Pinsk
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ponevezh, Yeshiva of
related: Prague
related: Reform, Religious
related: Sabbatianism
related: Sephardim
related: Shklov
related: Shneur Zalman of Liady
related: Slobodka, Yeshiva of
related: Telz, Yeshiva of
related: Vilnius
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Slovakia
described at: Slovakia
has abstract: [This entry treats the Jewish community of the current Slovak Republic since the 1990s. For earlier history of Jews in the region, see Czechoslovakia.] The Slovak Republic became an independent state in 1993 following the dissolution of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republics. Its constitution guarantees that the country will be a multicultural and multiethnic parliamentary democracy.
title: Slovakia
alternative label: Slovak
related: Bratislava
related: Communism
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Košice
related: Prague

Hrodna
described at: Hrodna
has abstract: City now in Belarus; also known in Polish and Russian as Grodno and in Yiddish as Horodno or Grodne. Grodno’s Jewish community, one of the oldest in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, existed as early as the fourteenth century. Its privilege, allegedly obtained in 1389 from Grand Duke Vytautas, was, however, a forgery dating from the early sixteenth century. The first Jews settled mainly in the western part of the town, near the Old Castle; ultimately their quarter expanded eastward and they also settled in districts owned by noblemen, outside municipal jurisdiction. By 1560, an estimated 1,000 Jews lived in Grodno, and by 1765 this population had expanded to 2,418.
title: Hrodna
alternative label: Grodno
related: Belarus
related: Białystok
related: Bund
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Lithuania
related: Misnagdim
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Shkop, Shim‘on Yehudah
related: Te’omim Family
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Yafeh, Mordekhai ben Avraham
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Reform, Religious
described at: Reform Religious
has abstract: The movement for religious reform in modern Judaism began in Central Europe around the beginning of the nineteenth century as a response to the confrontation between traditional Jewish thought and practices and the values and demands of a modernizing state, society, and culture. The transformations involved both new conceptions of Judaism that were thought to be more in harmony with idealistic philosophy and liturgical reforms motivated by both aesthetic and ideological considerations. From German-speaking Europe, Jewish religious reform spread eastward to Hungary, Bohemia, Galicia, Russia, and Poland. Although differing from German Jewry, where modernized forms of Judaism had become dominant by the second half of the nineteenth century, East European Jewries were to varying degrees also affected and divided by the trend to adjust Judaism to new realities.
title: Reform, Religious
alternative label: Reform
alternative label: Reform Judaism
alternative label: reform
alternative label: religious Reform
alternative label: religious reform
narrower: Bohemia and Moravia
narrower: Galicia
narrower: Hungary
narrower: Russia
narrower: The Twentieth Century
related: Łódź
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Approbation
related: Arad
related: Beer, Peter
related: Belarus
related: Birobidzhan
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bratislava
related: Brody
related: Budapest
related: Chorin, Aharon
related: Circumcision
related: Galicia
related: Gender
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kaliningrad
related: Kohn, Abraham
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Krochmal, Naḥman
related: Land of Israel
related: Lebensohn, Avraham Dov
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Lilienthal, Max
related: Liturgy
related: Lugoj
related: L’viv
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Misnagdim
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Orenstein Family
related: Orthodoxy
related: Perl, Yosef
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Purim
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Riga
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Federation (Russia)
related: Sabbath
related: Sabbath Rest
related: Schorr, Yehoshu‘a Heshel
related: Schwab, Löw
related: Seminary
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: Tallinn
related: Ternopil’
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Weddings
related: Wrocław
related: Zhytomyr
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Antisemitic Parties and Movements
described at: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
has abstract: Political groups seeking to limit the role of Jews in Central and East European states and societies emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century against the background of economic crisis, ethnic and political tensions, reaction to Jewish emancipation, and the increasing prominence of Jews in economic and cultural life. Such groups appeared first in Germany around 1880 and, shortly thereafter, in Austria-Hungary and elsewhere in Eastern Europe.
title: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
alternative label: Antisemitic
alternative label: Antisemitism
alternative label: antisemite
alternative label: antisemites
alternative label: antisemitic
alternative label: antisemitic movements
alternative label: antisemitic organizations
alternative label: antisemitism
narrower: After Communism
narrower: Before World War I
narrower: Between the World Wars
narrower: Under Communist Rule
related: Anticosmopolitan Campaign
related: Belarus
related: Bessarabia
related: Bratislava
related: Bucharest
related: Bucovina
related: Budapest
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jedwabne
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Kahal
related: Killing Centers
related: Kun, Béla
related: Latvia
related: Lithuania
related: L’viv
related: Minorities Treaties
related: Moscow
related: Pauker, Ana
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Slánský Trial
related: Slovakia
related: Tiszaeszlár Blood Libel
related: Transylvania
related: Trotsky, Leon
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: World War I

Brody
described at: Brody
has abstract: A town in present-day Ukraine, about 80 kilometers northeast of L’viv (Pol., Lwów). Brody (Yid., Brod) was founded at the ford over the Styr River (bród is Polish for ford) in 1586 by Stefan Żółkiewski. Jewish settlement began at the end of the sixteenth century and the local kehilah was subordinated to that of Lwów. In the early seventeenth century, an imposing masonry synagogue was built, generally referred to as Brody’s “old fortress synagogue.”
title: Brody
related: Bick, Ya‘akov Shemu’el
related: Councils
related: Crafts
related: Erter, Yitsḥak
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Kloyz
related: Kluger, Shelomoh ben Yehudah
related: Krochmal, Naḥman
related: Lefin, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Lithuania
related: Luts’k
related: L’viv
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Roth, Joseph
related: Schorr, Yehoshu‘a Heshel
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zhovkva

Melits, Ha-
described at: Melits Ha-
has abstract: Hebrew newspaper. Ha-Melits (The Advocate) was the first Hebrew-language weekly to appear in tsarist Russia. Between 1860 and 1870 it was published in Odessa, and in 1871 it was relocated to Saint Petersburg where it remained until its last issue in 1904. From 1883, the paper was printed twice weekly, and in 1886—to compete with the new Ha-Yom newspaper—it became a daily. Throughout its history it was forced to contend with a number of interruptions in its production, the longest of which lasted from 1873 to 1878.
title: Melits, Ha-
alternative label: Ha-Melits
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Agriculture
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Epstein, Zalman
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Kovner, Avraham Uri
related: Land of Israel
related: Levin, Yehudah Leib (poet)
related: Lewinsky, Elḥanan Leib
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Odessa
related: Paperna, Avraham Ya‘akov
related: Ravnitski, Yehoshu‘a Ḥana
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Yom, Ha-
related: Zederbaum, Aleksander
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

About this Article (Poetry)
described at: Poetry
has abstract: This entry includes articles on poetry in Hebrew and Yiddish, respectively. For further discussion of works in those languages, see Hebrew Literature; and Yiddish Literature. For works by Jews in other languages, see Belarusian Literature; Czech Literature; German Literature; Hungarian Literature; Polish Literature; Romanian Literature; Russian Literature; and Ukrainian Literature.
title: About this Article (Poetry)
alternative label: Hebrew poetry
alternative label: poet
alternative label: poetry
related: Belarusian Literature
related: Czech Literature
related: German Literature
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Hungarian Literature
related: Polish Literature
related: Romanian Literature
related: Russian Literature
related: Ukrainian Literature
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)

Russian Empire (Russia)
described at: Russian Empire
has abstract: To understand the complex history of Jews in Russia, one must begin with a fundamental distinction, often effaced in the historiography and popular memory, between Russia as a state—the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and since 1991, the Russian Federation—and the geographically much smaller entity of ethnic Russia. Until the 1720s, there were essentially no Jews in the Russian Empire except for travelers and migrant merchants, and the Russian state forbade Jews from settling in its interior, out of traditional Christian hostility.
title: Russian Empire (Russia)
alternative label: Russia
alternative label: Russian Empire
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Beilis, Mendel
related: Belarus
related: Bessarabia
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Bund
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Gender
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Ḥayim ben Yitsḥak of Volozhin
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Historiography)
related: Kahal
related: Karlin-Stolin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Kiev
related: Kishinev
related: Land of Israel
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Lipkin, Yisra’el ben Ze’ev Volf
related: Lithuania
related: Litvak
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Memory
related: Military Service in Russia
related: Misnagdim
related: Moscow
related: Musar Movement
related: Odessa
related: Orthodoxy
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Passover
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Pinsk
related: Pinsker, Simḥah and Lev
related: Pogroms
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: Poland from 1795 to 1939 (Poland)
related: Population and Migration before World War I (Population and Migration)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Smolenskin, Perets
related: Ukraine
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: World War I
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Bessarabia
described at: Bessarabia
has abstract: Historical name of the region between the Dniester and Prut Rivers and the lower reaches of the Danube. Today, most of Bessarabia is in the Republic of Moldova, with northern and southern districts in Ukraine. Before 1812 it was part of the Principality of Moldova and its southernmost district, Budzhak, was under direct Ottoman rule. Bessarabia was within the Russian Empire from 1812 to 1918, though from 1856 to 1878 Budzhak was under Romanian rule. Between 1918 and 1940 Bessarabia formed part of Romania; from 1940 to 1991 it was in the USSR.
title: Bessarabia
alternative label: Bessarabian
related: Agriculture
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Bălţi
related: Bund
related: Crafts
related: Gutmann, Simḥah Alter
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Industry
related: Kishinev
related: Military Service in Russia
related: Moldova
related: OZE
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pogroms
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Ruzhin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Soroca
related: Steinberg, Yehudah
related: Tighina
related: Transnistria
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties
related: Zirelson, Yehudah Leib

Crafts
described at: Crafts
has abstract: The crafts practiced by East European Jews in the medieval period were a direct outgrowth of Jewish ritual requirements, and therefore were protected by rights and privileges granted by monarchs and other rulers. Such crafts included those associated with slaughtering and baking (due to Jewish dietary laws); with textile manufacture and tailoring (due to the biblical prohibition against mixing linen and wool); and with hairdressing (due to religious restrictions on shaving beards). In 1389, the Grodno Jewish community was granted a charter in which the right of local Jews to “work in various crafts” was expressly guaranteed. Though special privileges granted by local authorities would, as a rule, only allow Jewish artisans to perform work for their fellow Jews, it was invariably the case that Jewish butchers, tailors, and barbers would cater to Christians as well. Moreover, reports from Lwów in 1460 make specific mention of Jewish artisans involved in work unconnected to Jewish ritual. They also mention that some of Lwów’s Jews were leather tanners and that this profession had been widespread among Jews from time immemorial.
title: Crafts
alternative label: craft
alternative label: crafts
alternative label: craftsmanship
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Artels
related: Beards
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bucharest
related: Bund
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Galicia
related: Guilds
related: Hrodna
related: Iaşi
related: Industry
related: Kiev
related: Leaseholding
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: L’viv
related: Minsk
related: Moldavia
related: Pale of Settlement
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Rzeszów
related: Slovakia
related: Subcarpathian Rus’
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw

Passover
described at: Passover
has abstract: (Yid., Peysekh; Heb., Pesaḥ), the eight-day holiday commemorating the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. The special dietary requirements of the holiday—the ban on leavened products and the need for matzo and other special foods—necessitated early planning. Sometimes goose fat was rendered on Hanukkah to be used for Passover; serious preparations for the holiday begin a month before, on Purim, with the collection of moes khitim (Heb., ma‘ot ḥitim;money for wheat), intended to help the poor pay for the special foods needed for Passover. Other preparations for Passover included whitewashing houses, painting walls, washing floors, and airing out clothes. Books, too, were aired out in the open. It was the season when new clothes and shoes were bought, to be worn during the festival.
title: Passover
related: Blood Libels and Host Desecration Accusations
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bratislava
related: Elijah the Prophet
related: Ettinger Family
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Land of Israel
related: Leszno
related: Lipkin, Yisra’el ben Ze’ev Volf
related: L’viv
related: Natanson, Yosef Sha’ul
related: Pogroms
related: Poznań
related: Purim
related: Sabbath
related: Sofer, Avraham Shemu’el Binyamin
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Po‘ale Tsiyon
described at: Poale Tsiyon
has abstract: In the early twentieth century, the Labor Zionist Po‘ale Tsiyon (Workers of Zion) organization evolved from various groups in Eastern Europe that followed the Labor Zionist teachings of Naḥman Syrkin and Ber Borokhov and the secular nationalism of Khayim Zhitlovski. Seeking to base Zionism on the Jewish proletariat, the Po‘ale Tsiyon rejected territorialism, Bundism, and assimilationist Marxism as solutions to the Jewish Question. Straddling the boundaries of revolutionary socialism and Jewish nationalism, the movement then experienced a large number of splits and disagreements over such issues as Palestine versus the Diaspora, Hebrew versus Yiddish, cooperation with nonproletarian Zionists, support for the USSR, and over whether pioneering zeal or objective historical conditions would serve to build a Jewish home in Palestine.
title: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Będzin
related: Birobidzhan
related: Borokhov, Ber
related: Brest
related: Bund
related: Chełm
related: Dror
related: Eisenbach, Artur
related: Gdańsk
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: Kalisz
related: Mahler, Raphael
related: Mandelsberg-Schildkraut, Bella
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ringelblum, Emanuel
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: TSYSHO
related: Warsaw
related: World War I
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Ahad Ha-Am
described at: Ahad Ha-Am
has abstract: (1856–1927), Zionist thinker. Born in Skvira, Ukraine, Ahad Ha-Am (born Asher Ginzberg; Heb., more properly Aḥad ha-‘Am, a pen name that translates as “One of the People”) was a Hebrew essayist of singular power and authority, a Jewish nationalist leader who publicly eschewed politics while seeking to fundamentally change the priorities of Zionism and, more broadly, the Jewish people as a whole. Although his impact on Hebrew culture was extensive, his political imprint was equivocal.
title: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Assimilation
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Krochmal, Naḥman
related: Land of Israel
related: Lewinsky, Elḥanan Leib
related: Odessa
related: Pinsker, Simḥah and Lev
related: Ravnitski, Yehoshu‘a Ḥana
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Smolenskin, Perets
related: Ukraine
related: Weizmann, Chaim
related: Wissotzky, Kalonymus Ze’ev
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Bratislava
described at: Bratislava
has abstract: (Ger., Pressburg; Hun., Pozsony; Yid., Preshborg), capital of the Republic of Slovakia. Situated on the Danube River at the crossroad of major highways, Pressburg was a gateway into the Kingdom of Hungary. Until the rise of Budapest in the nineteenth century, it was the most important commercial center of Hungary, as well as its capital, serving as the seat of the kingdom’s administration until 1784 and the site of the Diet until the Revolution of 1848.
title: Bratislava
alternative label: Pressburg
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Ballagi, Mór
related: Bettelheim, Sámuel
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Budapest
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Eger, Akiva ben Mosheh
related: Fleischmann, Gisela
related: Haskalah
related: Hildesheimer, Esriel
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Igra, Meshulam ben Shimshon
related: Jewish Congress
related: Land of Israel
related: Mizraḥi
related: Neustadt, Adolf
related: Orthodoxy
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Schlesinger, Akiva Yosef
related: Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Ha-
related: Shtadlan
related: Slovakia
related: Sofer, Avraham Shemu’el Binyamin
related: Sofer Family
related: Sofer, Ḥayim ben Mordekhai Efrayim Fishel
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: Tiszaeszlár Blood Libel
related: Uzhhorod
related: Weissmandel, Mikha’el Dov Ber
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Youth Movements
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

YIVO
described at: YIVO
has abstract: Founded in 1925, YIVO (Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut, or Yiddish Scientific Institute) became the leading institution for scholarship in Yiddish and about the history and culture of East European Jews and their emigrant communities.
title: YIVO
narrower: Finances
narrower: Origins and Founding
narrower: Postwar Adjustment
narrower: Scholarship in Times of Crisis
narrower: World War II
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: An-ski Ethnographic Expedition and Museum
related: Borokhov, Ber
related: Bund
related: Cahan, Yehudah Leib
related: Chagall, Marc
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Filologishe Shriftn
related: Folk Songs
related: Folklore, Ethnography, and Anthropology
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kaczerginski, Shmerke
related: Kalmanovitch, Zelig
related: Lestschinsky, Jakob
related: Lithuania
related: Mahler, Raphael
related: Minorities Treaties
related: Moscow
related: OZE
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Pogroms
related: Proverbs
related: Pryłucki, Noah
related: Reyzen, Zalmen
related: Ringelblum, Emanuel
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shtif, Nokhem
related: Strashun, Shemu’el and Matityahu
related: Sutzkever, Avrom
related: TOZ
related: Tsherikover, Elye
related: TSYSHO
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Weinreich, Max

Kaunas
described at: Kaunas
has abstract: City in central Lithuania. Part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1795 when it came under Russian rule, Kaunas (Yid., Kovne or Kovna; Pol., Kowno; Rus., Kovno; Ger., Kovne) was occupied by Germany during World War I, after which it served as the capital of Lithuania between 1920 and 1941. Occupied by the Nazis until 1944, Kaunas again came under Soviet domination until Lithuania regained its independence in 1991.
title: Kaunas
alternative label: Kovno
related: Bund
related: Gorfinkel, Leyb
related: Haskalah
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Labor Camps
related: Lipkin, Yisra’el ben Ze’ev Volf
related: Lithuania
related: Mapu, Avraham
related: Mark, Yudl
related: Musar Movement
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: Purim
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Slobodka, Yeshiva of
related: Solieli, Menaḥem
related: Spektor, Yitsḥak Elḥanan
related: Vilnius
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Youth Movements
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Riga
described at: Riga
has abstract: Capital of Latvia. Founded at the beginning of the thirteenth century, Riga was a member of the Hanseatic League. Jewish merchants became active in the city from the mid-sixteenth century, although opposition from local merchants forced them to live on the outskirts of the town. After the Russian conquest at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Jewish commercial activity expanded. The Jewish population continued to grow in both Riga itself and neighboring Sloka despite several expulsion orders, and Jews played a central role in economic and commercial life, engaging in trade, industry, and finance.
title: Riga
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Banking
related: Bund
related: Disenchik, Aryeh
related: Dubin, Mordekhai
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Folkists
related: General Zionists
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Heder
related: Industry
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Kantor, Yehudah Leib
related: Latvia
related: Lilienthal, Max
related: Lithuania
related: Mincs, Pauls
related: Mincs, Vladimirs
related: About this Article (Music)
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Revisionist Zionists
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Trade
related: Youth Movements
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Latvia
described at: Latvia
has abstract: State in the eastern Baltic region, created in 1918 out of the former Russian provinces of Courland (an autonomous duchy linked to Poland until 1795), Livonia (under Swedish rule from 1629 to 1721), and Latgalia (part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1772). Between 1940 and 1991, Latvia was a republic of the Soviet Union, regaining full independence with the breakup of the USSR.
title: Latvia
narrower: Early Settlement
narrower: The Interwar Years
narrower: The Postwar Period
narrower: World War II
related: Agriculture
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Betar
related: Bund
related: Courland
related: Crafts
related: Daugavpils
related: Dubin, Mordekhai
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: General Zionists
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Industry
related: Jabotinsky, Vladimir
related: Jelgava
related: Labor Camps
related: Liepāja
related: Lilienthal, Max
related: Lithuania
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Me’ir Simḥah ha-Kohen
related: Mizraḥi
related: Monuments and Memorials
related: Moscow
related: Pale of Settlement
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Revisionist Zionists
related: Riga
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Transportation
related: TSYSHO
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Ventspils
related: Youth Movements
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Bucovina
described at: Bucovina
has abstract: (Ger., Bukowina), a historic region in Eastern Europe, roughly encompassing the current region of Cernăuți in Ukraine and the area of Suceava county in Romania. In the Middle Ages, Bucovina formed part of the Halicz Kingdom and eventually was included in the principality of Moldova. The frontiers of the province were established in 1774 when, for strategic reasons related to the first division of Poland, the Habsburg army occupied more than 10,000 square kilometers of northwestern Moldova and, with the consent of the Ottoman Empire—the suzerain power at the time—annexed it in 1775 as the district of Bukowina.
title: Bucovina
alternative label: Bucovinian
alternative label: Bukowina
related: Assimilation
related: Bessarabia
related: Bund
related: Câmpulung Moldovenesc
related: Celan, Paul
related: Chernivtsi
related: Communism
related: Dorohoi
related: Ebner, Mayer
related: Filderman, Wilhelm
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Kosov-Vizhnits Hasidic Dynasty
related: Manger, Itsik
related: Moldova
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Rădăuţi
related: Romania
related: Ruzhin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Shteynbarg, Eliezer
related: Siret
related: Suceava
related: Transnistria
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties
related: Żydowska Partia Socjalno-Demokratyczna

Shulḥan ‘arukh
described at: Shulhan arukh
has abstract: A summary and codification of halakhah in brief and authoritative form, completed in Safed in 1563 by the Sephardic rabbi, Yosef Karo. First published in Venice in 1565 and reprinted many times in the succeeding decades and centuries, the Shulḥan ‘arukh is an abridgement and distillation of Karo’s Bet Yosef—commentary and glosses on the medieval code Arba‘ah turim by Ya‘akov ben Asher. As is the Turim, the Shulḥan ‘arukh is divided into four sections: Oraḥ ḥayim, on Sabbath, holiday and daily commandments; Yoreh de‘ah, on dietary laws and various other categories such as mourning and purity; Even ha-‘ezer, chiefly on marriage and divorce; and Ḥoshen mishpat, mainly on civil law.
title: Shulḥan ‘arukh
alternative label: Shulḥan `arukh
related: Ashkenaz
related: David ben Shemu’el ha-Levi
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Gombiner, Avraham Abele ben Ḥayim ha-Levi
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: Karelits, Avraham Yesha‘yahu
related: Lima, Mosheh ben Yitsḥak Yehudah
related: Luria, Shelomoh ben Yeḥi’el
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Shabetai ben Me’ir ha-Kohen
related: Yafeh, Mordekhai ben Avraham
related: Yehoshu‘a ben Aleksander ha-Kohen

Białystok
described at: Białystok
has abstract: Industrial city in northeastern Poland, Białystok (Rus., Belostok) sits nestled in a heavily wooded area that divides central Poland from Belarus and Lithuania. The town, originally founded in 1320, remained part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1795, after which it became part of Prussia. In 1807, Białystok was incorporated into the Russian Empire, and in 1921 it fell under the aegis of the Second Polish Republic. As it shifted between these regimes, Białystok grew into a multiethnic, industrial city, home to Poles, Russians, Germans, Lithuanians, and an unusually large Jewish population—both in absolute numbers and in its percentage of the total population.
title: Białystok
related: Belarus
related: Bund
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Industry
related: Lithuania
related: Mohilewer, Shemu’el
related: Philanthropy
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Tarbut
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: World War I
related: Zamenhof, Ludwik
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Ḥibat Tsiyon
described at: Hibat Tsiyon
has abstract: Established in Russia and Romania in the early 1880s when concepts promoting modern Jewish nationalism began to spread from intellectual circles to the masses, the Ḥibat Tsiyon (Hibbat Zion; Love of Zion) movement was a pre-Zionist Jewish nationalist movement; its followers were called Ḥoveve Tsiyon (Lovers of Zion). The founders of the movement were Perets Smolenskin, Mosheh Leib Lilienblum, and Eli‘ezer Perlmann (later Ben-Yehudah), who in the late 1860s and throughout the 1870s applied modern theories of nationalism to Jewish circumstances.
title: Ḥibat Tsiyon
alternative label: Ḥoveve Tsiyon
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Katowice
related: Land of Israel
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pinsker, Simḥah and Lev
related: Pogroms
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Smolenskin, Perets
related: Ukraine

Agudas Yisroel
described at: Agudas Yisroel
has abstract: (Agudat Yisra’el; Aguda[h]; Union of Israel) is a political movement of Orthodox Jewry, founded at a conference in Kattowitz (Upper Silesia; today Katowice, Poland) in May 1912. Subsequently, branches of the movement were established in most countries of Western and Eastern Europe, as well as in the United States and pre-state Israel. It was in interwar Eastern Europe, though, that Agudas Yisroel reached the pinnacle of its political achievement and institutional development. Hasidic rebbes in Poland and yeshiva heads in Lithuania legitimized the movement religiously, and their followers formed the bulk of its constituency.
title: Agudas Yisroel
alternative label: Aguda
narrower: Foundation of the Movement
narrower: Organizational Structure
related: Łódź
related: Bessarabia
related: Beys Yankev
related: Daas Toyre
related: Dubin, Mordekhai
related: Frydman, Aleksander Zysha
related: Galicia
related: General Zionists
related: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Grodzenski, Ḥayim Ozer
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Katowice
related: Kishinev
related: Land of Israel
related: Latvia
related: Lithuania
related: Mincberg, Leib
related: Mizraḥi
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Reform, Religious
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Schenirer, Sarah
related: Shapira, Me’ir
related: Shtadlan
related: Silesia
related: Trokenheim, Ya‘akov
related: Tseirey Agudas Yisroel
related: Warsaw
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Youth Movements
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties
related: Zirelson, Yehudah Leib

Seminary
described at: Seminary
has abstract: From the beginning of the nineteenth century, there were attempts to reform the training of rabbis and teachers in Europe. Such programs were conducted at seminaries that were modeled on elite state schools under Enlightened absolutism and on ecclesiastical seminaries, and combined traditional learning with the modern sciences; what was novel was the instruction in secular subjects as well as homiletics. The idea of rabbinical and teachers’ seminaries was developed by maskilim, under both the pressure and the protection of the state. At times there were also open-minded traditional rabbis and teachers among the founders of the seminaries, who intended to anticipate and moderate changes dictated by the state or by radical Jewish reformers.
title: Seminary
alternative label: Orthodox
alternative label: seminary
narrower: Breslau
narrower: Budapest
narrower: Vilna and Zhitomir
related: Bacher, Vilmos
related: Banat
related: Bánóczi, József
related: Beer, Peter
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Blau, Lajos
related: Budapest
related: Cantors
related: Eisenbaum, Antoni
related: Fuenn, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Goldziher, Ignác
related: Gottlober, Avraham Ber
related: Harkavy, Avraham
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Homberg, Herz
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Kahal
related: Karmel, Ha-
related: Katzenellenbogen, Tsevi Hirsh
related: Kaufmann, David
related: Kiev
related: Landau, Adolph
related: Lebensohn, Avraham Dov
related: Levanda, Lev Osipovich
related: Lieberman, Aharon Shemu’el
related: Minsk
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Riga
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Słonimski, Ḥayim Zelig
related: Sabbath
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Schulman, Kalman
related: Slovakia
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Stern, Abraham
related: Transylvania
related: Tugendhold, Jakob
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Wrocław
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zhytomyr
related: Zweifel, Eli‘ezer

Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
described at: Bialik Hayim Nahman
has abstract: (1873–1934), foremost modern Hebrew poet. Ḥayim Naḥman Bialik was born in the village of Radi, near the city of Zhitomir in Ukraine. After his father’s timber business failed, the family moved to Zhitomir when Bialik was about six years old. His father opened a tavern in a suburb but died after about a year. Because of her own poverty, his mother sent him to be raised by his grandfather.
title: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
alternative label: Bialik
alternative label: Ḥayim Nahṃan Bialik
alternative label: Ḥayim Naḥman Bialik
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Childhood
related: Estonia
related: Folk Songs
related: Frug, Shimen Shmuel
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Heder
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Jabotinsky, Vladimir
related: Kishinev
related: Land of Israel
related: Latvia
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Lithuania
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Moriah
related: Odessa
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: Ravnitski, Yehoshu‘a Ḥana
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shiloaḥ, Ha-
related: Ukraine
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: Warsaw
related: Zhytomyr
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Czechoslovakia
described at: Czechoslovakia
has abstract: A republic located in central Europe, Czechoslovakia was founded on 28 October 1918 as one of the successor states of the Habsburg Empire. It included the Czech lands (Bohemia, Moravia, and Austrian Silesia), Slovakia, and Subcarpathian Rus’. Following the signing of the Munich Agreement on 29 September 1938, Nazi Germany annexed the borderlands of Bohemia and Moravia (Sudetenland), which were populated mostly by Germans. The rest of the republic (minus regions annexed by Poland and Hungary) was called the Second Czecho-Slovak Republic. After the Nazi occupation of 15 March 1939, the Czech lands were transformed into Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia, with Slovakia becoming a semi-independent state. Following World War II, the Czechoslovak Republic was reestablished without Subcarpathian Rus’, which was incorporated into the Soviet Union. On 1 January 1993, Czechoslovakia was divided into two independent states called the Czech and Slovak Republics.
title: Czechoslovakia
alternative label: Czech
alternative label: Czech lands
alternative label: Czechoslovak Republi
alternative label: Czechoslovak Republic
alternative label: Czechoslovakian republic
narrower: Antisemitism
narrower: Culture
narrower: Demographic Structure
narrower: National Identity
narrower: Political Affiliation
narrower: Religious Identity
narrower: The Holocaust
narrower: The Postwar Period
related: Łódź
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Bar Kochba Association
related: Baum, Oskar
related: Belarus
related: Belz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bratislava
related: Brno
related: Brod, Max
related: Czech Literature
related: Czech Republic
related: Edelstein, Jakob
related: Feder, Richard
related: Fleischmann, Gisela
related: Fleischmann, Karel
related: Fuchs, Alfred
related: Fuchs, Rudolf
related: Galicia
related: German Literature
related: Goldstein, Angelo
related: Haas, Willy
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: About this Article (Historiography)
related: Hostovský, Egon
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jihlava
related: Jüdische Volksstimme
related: Kafka, Franz
related: Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi
related: Karlovy Vary
related: Killing Centers
related: Kisch, Egon Erwin
related: Kohn, Jindřich
related: Kornfeld, Paul
related: Košice
related: Kosov-Vizhnits Hasidic Dynasty
related: Kugel, Ḥayim
related: Labor Camps
related: Langer, František
related: Langer, Jiří
related: Lederer, Eduard
related: Maccabi Movement
related: Minsk
related: Mizraḥi
related: Mukacheve
related: Munkatsh Hasidic Dynasty
related: Orten, Jiří
related: Orthodoxy
related: Ostrava
related: Pick, Otto
related: Poláček, Karel
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Prostějov
related: Rakous, Vojtěch
related: Reform, Religious
related: Salus, Hugo
related: Sandz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Selbstwehr
related: Sicher, Gustav
related: Silesia

Hebrew Literature
described at: Hebrew Literature
has abstract: The tradition of Hebrew belles lettres in Eastern Europe began with anti-Hasidic satires by Galician maskilim in the 1820s and ended with desperate attempts to preserve the remnants of Hebrew literary activity in Poland on the eve of World War II. The intervening period witnessed 120 years of intense creative activity, during which modern Hebrew literature flourished in various geographic centers as a highly stratified and ramified system that laid the foundations of its canon.
title: Hebrew Literature
alternative label: Hebrew
alternative label: Hebrew literature
narrower: APPENDIX: HEBREW WRITERS
narrower: The Early Twentieth Century
narrower: The Galician Haskalah
narrower: The Generation of Transition (1880–1900)
narrower: The Interwar Years
narrower: The Russian and Lithuanian Haskalah
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Agnon, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Aḥi’asaf
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Asif, Ha-
related: Ba-Derekh
related: Barash, Asher
related: Baron, Devorah
related: Bat-Miriam, Yokheved
related: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef
related: Berkowitz, Yitsḥak Dov
related: Bernfeld, Shim‘on
related: Bershadsky, Yesha‘yahu
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Boker Or, Ha-
related: Brainin, Re’uven
related: Brandstetter, Mordekhai David
related: Braudes, Re’uven Asher
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Cahan, Ya‘akov
related: Childhood
related: Hebrew Literature (Children’s Literature)
related: Dolitzki, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Dor, Ha-
related: Erter, Yitsḥak
related: Fahn, Re’uven
related: Feierberg, Mordekhai Ze’ev
related: Fichmann, Ya‘akov
related: Frishman, David
related: Gintsburg, Aryeh Leib ben Asher
related: Gintsburg, Mordekhai Aharon
related: Gnessin, Uri Nisan
related: Goldbaum, Meshulam Zalman
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Gottlober, Avraham Ber
related: Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
related: Gutmann, Simḥah Alter
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Haynt
related: Hazaz, Ḥayim
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Kabak, Aharon Avraham
related: Kaminer, Yitsḥak
related: Karmel, Ha-
related: Katz, Bentsiyon
related: Katzenelson, Yitsḥak
related: Klausner, Yosef
related: Kolot
related: Kovner, Avraham Uri
related: Krochmal, Naḥman
related: Lachower, Yeruḥam Fishel
related: Land of Israel
related: Lebensohn, Avraham Dov
related: Lebensohn, Mikhah Yosef
related: Lefin, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Lenski, Ḥayim
related: Lerner, Ya‘akov
related: Letteris, Me’ir
related: Levin, Yehudah Leib (poet)
related: Levinzon, Yitsḥak Ber
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Lithuania
related: Luaḥ Aḥi’asaf
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Lusternik, Malki’el
related: L’viv

Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
described at: Abramovitsh Sholem Yankev
has abstract: (Mendele Moykher-Sforim; 1835–1917), Hebrew and Yiddish writer. Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh is acknowledged, almost universally, as the founder of modern artistic prose in Hebrew and Yiddish. Born to a middle-class family in the Belorussian town of Kapulye (Kopyl), he lost all familial support at the age of 15. After spending several years as a student at various yeshivas, he made an adventuresome, perilous trek south to Ukraine on foot and in the company of itinerant beggars, arriving in Kamenets Podolski in 1853, where he stayed for five years as a teacher and then as the son-in-law of a middle-class family. He cultivated the friendship of the few local exponents of the Haskalah (especially Avraham Ber Gottlober) and began writing on matters pertaining to education.
title: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
alternative label: Abramovitsh
alternative label: Mendele
alternative label: Mendele Moykher-Sfori
alternative label: Mendele Moykher-Sforim
alternative label: S. An-ski
alternative label: S. Y. Abramovitsh
alternative label: Sh. Y. Abramovitsh
alternative label: Sholem Abramovitsh
alternative label: Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh
related: Berdychiv
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
related: Bund
related: Crown Rabbi
related: Frishman, David
related: Gottlober, Avraham Ber
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi
related: Kol Mevaser
related: About this Article (Literary Criticism and Scholarship)
related: Messianism
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Odessa
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Prose)
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Satire
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Ukraine
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Zhytomyr
related: Zweifel, Eli‘ezer

About this Article (Ghettos)
described at: Ghettos
has abstract: To treat the Nazi ghettoization of Jews during the Holocaust, this entry comprises three articles. Establishment of Ghettos surveys the types of ghettos created and reasons for their creation; Life in Ghettos treats the ways in which ghettoized Jews organized and conducted their daily lives; and Ghetto Police describes the role that Jews played in the enforcement of ghetto regulations. For further discussion, see Armed Resistance; Holocaust; Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies; Killing Centers; and Labor Camps.
title: About this Article (Ghettos)
alternative label: Ghettos
alternative label: ghetto
alternative label: ghettos
related: Armed Resistance
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Killing Centers
related: Labor Camps

About this Article (Theater)
described at: Theater
has abstract: This entry surveys the history of East European Jewish theater, including the emergence of a Jewish theater audience; the rise of professional Jewish theater in Yiddish, Hebrew, and non-Jewish languages; Jewish theater’s social context; and amateur productions by schools, youth groups, and theater societies. It begins with an overview, which treats the historical development of Jewish theater, followed by articles on theater in Hebrew and Yiddish and continuing with articles on Jewish participation in the theater in Poland, Russia, Romania, and Hungary, respectively. The entry concludes with an article on criticism and scholarship, which focuses on the Yiddish theater.
title: About this Article (Theater)
alternative label: Theater
alternative label: theater
alternative label: theaters
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)

Bucharest
described at: Bucharest
has abstract: Capital of Romania. The first written reference to Bucharest (Rom., Bucureşti) is in a document dated September 1459, issued by Prince Vlad Țepeş (known as Vlad the Impaler) and referring to the “citadel of Bucureşti.” Situated in the south of Romania, Bucharest became, with occasional interruptions, the capital of Walachia as early as the sixteenth century. The town’s geographic location enabled it to expand by integrating and assimilating several villages, and it also experienced significant population growth during the eighteenth century. Given its economic importance, Bucharest attracted, besides Romanians from various regions of the country, a large number of foreigners, mainly from neighboring Balkan areas. Thus the city acquired a strong cosmopolitan character, with foreigners constituting approximately one-quarter of the population around the year 1800.
title: Bucharest
related: Adam
related: Banking
related: Barasch, Iuliu
related: Blank, Maurice
related: Curierul Israelit
related: Egalitatea
related: Filderman, Wilhelm
related: Galicia
related: Haskalah
related: Mântuirea
related: Me’ir Leib ben Yeḥi’el Mikha’el
related: Moldavia
related: Niemirower, Iacob Isac
related: Pogroms
related: Romania
related: Romanian State Yiddish Theater
related: Rosen, Mozes
related: Şafran Family
related: Sephardim
related: Shternberg, Yankev
related: Stern, Adolphe
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Transnistria
related: Ukraine
related: Walachia

Sabbath
described at: Sabbath
has abstract: The Sabbath was the focal point of the religious life of East European Jewry. Signs of its imminent approach were already evident in the frenetic activity that characterized Jewish households on Friday mornings and in the spare lunch eaten early on that day, so as to leave a good appetite for the sumptuous evening meal. Lunch was followed by the weekly visit to the bathhouse, “upon returning home from which it was customary to taste the fish that had been prepared for Sabbath,” according to memoirist Shemu’el Rappaport (Barukh, 1980).
title: Sabbath
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Bessarabia
related: Food and Drink
related: Galicia
related: Gutmann, Simḥah Alter
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Heder
related: Horowitz Family
related: Kiev
related: Lakhovits-Kobrin-Slonim Hasidic Dynasty
related: Luria, Shelomoh ben Yeḥi’el
related: Perl, Yosef
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Slutsk
related: Tkhines
related: Tsene-rene
related: Vilnius

Trade
described at: Trade
has abstract: Commercial activity was the mainstay of Jewish economic life in Eastern Europe from the medieval period until the mid-twentieth century. However, its significance went beyond the incomes that it brought to Jewish society and helped support not only individuals and families but also the communal infrastructure. For many centuries, non-Jewish authorities viewed Jews’ success in the field of trade as the very raison d’être for Jewish settlement in Eastern Europe. The support that trade brought Jews allowed them to overcome their neighbors’ attempts to exclude them from urban life. Trade was thus a political factor in Jewish social development. In addition, Jewish trading networks, important for economic success, helped strengthen ties between different centers and so contributed to the development of transnational elements in East European Jewish culture.
title: Trade
alternative label: trade
narrower: From the Partitions to World War I
narrower: The Early Modern Period
narrower: The Holocaust and Postwar Periods
narrower: The Interwar Period
narrower: The Middle Ages
related: Beggars and Begging
related: Berdychiv
related: Bloch, Jan
related: Brest
related: Brodskii Family
related: Brody
related: Bucharest
related: Budapest
related: Credit
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Dubno
related: Economic Life
related: Galicia
related: Gdańsk
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Gniezno
related: Guilds
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Iaşi
related: Industry
related: Kaliningrad
related: Khazaria
related: Kiev
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Leaseholding
related: Leszno
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: L’viv
related: Money
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: Prague
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shklov
related: Tavernkeeping
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Walachia
related: Warsaw
related: Wrocław
related: Yehoshu‘a ben Aleksander ha-Kohen

About this Article (Lublin)
described at: Lublin
has abstract: To treat the history of Jewish settlement in Lublin, this entry is divided into two articles, the first on the pre-Partition period and the second on the post-Partition period until the present.
title: About this Article (Lublin)
alternative label: Lublin

Pale of Settlement
described at: Pale of Settlement
has abstract: The territories of the Russian Empire in which Jews were permitted permanent settlement. Although large in size (approximately 472,590 square miles or 1,224,008 sq km), and containing areas of dynamic economic growth, the Pale (known in Russian as cherta postoiannogo zhitel’stva evreev; the English word pale was borrowed from the term applied to the area of English settlement in Northern Ireland, where the lands of the “wild Irish” were considered “beyond the pale”) was considered the greatest legal restriction imposed on the Jews of the empire.
title: Pale of Settlement
alternative label: Pale
alternative label: Pale of Jewish Settlement
alternative label: Russian Pale
narrower: Impact of the Pale
narrower: Modifications of the Pale
narrower: Origins of the Pale
narrower: Public Debate on the Pale
related: Belarus
related: Bessarabia
related: Courland
related: Crafts
related: Crimea
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Hrodna
related: Kaunas
related: Kiev
related: Lithuania
related: Minsk
related: Moldavia
related: Moscow
related: ORT
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Riga
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Servants
related: Trade
related: Vilnius
related: Vitsyebsk

Shtetl
described at: Shtetl
has abstract: The Yiddish term for town, shtetl commonly refers to small market towns in pre–World War II Eastern Europe with a large Yiddish-speaking Jewish population. While there were in fact great variations among these towns, a shtetl connoted a type of Jewish settlement marked by a compact Jewish population distinguished from their mostly gentile peasant neighbors by religion, occupation, language, and culture. The shtetl was defined by interlocking networks of economic and social relationships: the interaction of Jews and peasants in the market, the coming together of Jews for essential communal and religious functions, and, in more recent times, the increasingly vital relationship between the shtetl and its emigrants abroad (organized in landsmanshaftn).
title: Shtetl
alternative label: shtetl
alternative label: shtetls
narrower: After the Holocaust
narrower: Defining the Shtetl
narrower: Origins of the Shtetl
narrower: The Imagined Shtetl
narrower: The Transformation of the Shtetl: Poland and the Soviet Union
narrower: The World of the Shtetl
related: Łódź
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Aksenfeld, Yisroel
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Assimilation
related: Beggars and Begging
related: Belarus
related: Berdychiv
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Bessarabia
related: Birobidzhan
related: Bucovina
related: Bund
related: Burshtin, Mikhoel
related: Cinema
related: Communism
related: Dik, Ayzik Meyer
related: Dress
related: Economic Life
related: Evsektsiia
related: Folklore, Ethnography, and Anthropology
related: Food and Drink
related: Galicia
related: Gebirtig, Mordkhe
related: Gender
related: Guilds
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Industry
related: Kahal
related: Kharik, Izi
related: Landkentenish
related: Yiddish (Language)
related: Leaseholding
related: Linetski, Yitskhok Yoyel
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Memory
related: Money
related: Moscow
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Parody
related: Passover
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Population and Migration)
related: Proverbs
related: Przytyk Pogrom
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Russian Civil War
related: Sabbath
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Satire
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Subcarpathian Rus’
related: Tavernkeeping
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Tkhines

Belarus
described at: Belarus
has abstract: Established in 1991, Belarus (Yid., Raysn, Vaysrusland) is the successor state of the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, with the same borders. The Jews of Belarus belong historically to the branch of Jewry known as Litvaks, a group distinguished by language (the northeast dialect of Yiddish) and by certain cultural attributes. The first mention of Jews in Belarus came in the fourteenth century, when Grand Prince Vytautas of Lithuania granted charters to Jews in Brest (1388) and Grodno (1389). In the sixteenth century Belarus became part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Between 1624 and 1764 the majority of Jewish communities in Belarus belonged to the Va‘ad (Jewish Council) of Lithuania. In the mid seventeenth century, 80,000–90,000 Jews lived in the territory that is now Belarus. As a result of the partitions of Poland, Belarus became part of the Russian Empire.
title: Belarus
alternative label: Belarussia
alternative label: Belorussia
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Akselrod, Zelik
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Assimilation
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Bobruisk
related: Brest
related: Bund
related: Evsektsiia
related: Fareynikte
related: Gamarnik, Ian Borisovich
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Ḥayim ben Yitsḥak of Volozhin
related: Heder
related: Homel’
related: Hrodna
related: Karlin-Stolin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Kharik, Izi
related: Koidanov Hasidic Dynasty
related: Kulbak, Moyshe
related: Lifshits, Khaye Malke
related: Lithuania
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Menaḥem Mendel of Vitebsk
related: Minsk
related: Mir, Yeshiva of
related: Misnagdim
related: Pen, Yehudah
related: Pinsk
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Riga
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shneur Zalman of Liady
related: Shtern
related: Soviet State Yiddish Theaters
related: Tarbut
related: TSYSHO
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vainshtein, Aron Isaakovich
related: Vitsyebsk
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Sholem Aleichem
described at: Sholem Aleichem
has abstract: (Shalom Rabinovitz; 1859–1916), one of the founding fathers of modern Yiddish literature. A supreme Jewish humorist, Sholem Aleichem tapped into the energies of the East European, spoken-Yiddish idiom and invented modern Jewish archetypes, myths, and fables of unequaled imaginative potency and universal appeal.
title: Sholem Aleichem
alternative label: Mendele Moykher-Sforim
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Assimilation
related: Bal-Makhshoves
related: Berkowitz, Yitsḥak Dov
related: Crown Rabbi
related: Dik, Ayzik Meyer
related: Dobrushin, Yekhezkl
related: Erik, Maks
related: Frishman, David
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: Kiev
related: Linetski, Yitskhok Yoyel
related: About this Article (Literary Journals)
related: L’viv
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Niger, Shmuel
related: Nusinov, Yitskhok
related: Odessa
related: Oyslender, Nokhem
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shmeruk, Khone
related: Shomer
related: Shtetl
related: Spivak, Elye
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw
related: Wiener, Meir
related: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
related: Yud, Der
related: Zaretski, Ayzik
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Łódź
described at: Łodz
has abstract: (Yid., Lodzh), Polish city and industrial center about 100 km west of Warsaw. From a hamlet of 767 people, including 259 Jews, in 1820, Łódź grew over the next century to a city of 670,000, with a Jewish community of more than 230,000, the second largest in Poland. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Łódź was home to about 1 million people, fewer than 300 of whom were Jews.
title: Łódź
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Aleksander Hasidic Dynasty
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Assimilation
related: Bar Kochba Association
related: Belarus
related: Białystok
related: Braude, Markus
related: Broderzon, Moyshe
related: Bund
related: Central Committee of Jews in Poland
related: Cinema
related: Crafts
related: Dzigan and Shumacher
related: Folkists
related: Ford, Aleksander
related: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Heder
related: Industry
related: Jastrow, Markus
related: Kaganovski, Froyim
related: Kaminski Family
related: Katzenelson, Yitsḥak
related: Labor Camps
related: Lithuania
related: Litvak
related: Meisel, Eliyahu Ḥayim
related: Mincberg, Leib
related: Mizraḥi
related: Musical Education and Musical Societies
related: ORT
related: Orthodoxy
related: Oyerbakh, Rokhl
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Rabon, Yisroel
related: Rumkowski, Khayim Mordkhe
related: Singer, Israel Joshua
related: TOZ
related: Trade
related: Tuwim, Julian
related: Ukraine
related: Ulinover, Miryem
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
described at: Peretz Yitskhok Leybush
has abstract: (1852–1915), Yiddish and Hebrew poet, writer, essayist, dramatist, and cultural figurehead. Yitskhok Leybush Peretz was born to a prominent family in Zamość, a multiethnic Polish city ruled by Russia during his lifetime, and a stronghold of Jewish Enlightenment. Peretz’s father, Yude, was a merchant; his mother Rivke, who shared the running of their shop, bore nine children of whom Leybush, the second, was the oldest of three who survived into adulthood.
title: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
alternative label: Peretz
alternative label: Y. L. Peretz
alternative label: Yitskhok Leybush Peretz
narrower: At the Crossroad of Languages
narrower: Forging a Modern Literature
narrower: In Service of Cultural Autonomy
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Assimilation
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Bloch, Jan
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Czernowitz Conference
related: Der Nister
related: Dinezon, Yankev
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Frishman, David
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Kacyzne, Alter-Sholem
related: Klausner, Yosef
related: Land of Israel
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Nomberg, Hersh Dovid
related: Opatów
related: Piety
related: Pinski, Dovid
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl
related: Ravnitski, Yehoshu‘a Ḥana
related: Reyzen, Avrom
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sandomierz
related: Satire
related: Sholem Aleichem
related: Sokolow, Naḥum
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Trunk, Yekhiel Yeshaye
related: Vaysenberg, Itshe Meyer
related: Voskhod
related: Warsaw
related: Yud, Der
related: Zamość
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
described at: Yiddish Literature
has abstract: To survey the development of Yiddish literature in Eastern Europe from earliest times until the present, this entry comprises two articles. The first treats early (“Old Yiddish”) literature; the second treats Yiddish literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For discussion of the Yiddish language from a linguistic perspective, see the relevant articles in the entry Language. See also Printing and Publishing.
title: About this Article (Yiddish Literature)
alternative label: Yiddish
alternative label: Yiddish Literature
alternative label: Yiddish literature
alternative label: literature
related: About this Article (Language)
related: About this Article (Printing and Publishing)

Heder
described at: Heder
has abstract: (Heb., ḥeder; Yid., kheyder; lit., “room”), the most widely accepted and widespread elementary educational framework among East European Jewry since the Middle Ages. Study in heder was considered an integral part of the process of raising and socializing a Jewish child, including the inculcation of Jewish religious and cultural values through imparting basic knowledge of the canonical sources—Torah, Mishnah, Talmud—and of the liturgy. Pupils spent the entire day in heder, beginning with morning prayers, followed by study of various subjects, and ending with evening prayers. (In certain areas it was customary to give pupils a midday break of one or two hours.) Both boys and girls studied in many heders (Heb., ḥadarim), either together or separately. There were no criteria for acceptance to heder, and no consideration was given to disparities in the intellectual and cognitive abilities of the students.
title: Heder
alternative label: heder
alternative label: heders
narrower: Modernization
narrower: The Melamed
related: Galicia
related: Liturgy
related: Sabbath
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)

Minsk
described at: Minsk
has abstract: Capital of the Republic of Belarus since 1991. From the beginning of the fourteenth century, Minsk was part of Lithuania; from the mid-sixteenth century it belonged to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1793, the city was annexed to the Russian Empire and became the capital of Minsk province. From 1920 to 1991, Minsk served as the capital of the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR).
title: Minsk
related: Akselrod, Zelik
related: Anticosmopolitan Campaign
related: Belarus
related: Białystok
related: Brest
related: Bund
related: Councils
related: Crafts
related: Evsektsiia
related: Gintsburg, Aryeh Leib ben Asher
related: Guilds
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Industry
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Kharik, Izi
related: Kloyz
related: Kulbak, Moyshe
related: Leaseholding
related: Levanda, Lev Osipovich
related: Lithuania
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Medem, Vladimir Davidovich
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Misnagdim
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: OZE
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Shtern
related: Smolar, Hersh
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Soviet State Yiddish Theaters
related: TOZ
related: Trade
related: Trakai
related: Transportation
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vainshtein, Aron Isaakovich
related: Vilnius
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Assimilation
described at: Assimilation
has abstract: Although widely used in both scholarly writing and public life, the term assimilation, without modification or qualification, lacks critical rigor. Conceptually, it can encompass—and is often confused and conflated with—four analytically distinct changes in Jewish behavior and status in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: acculturation (the acquisition of the cultural and social habits of the dominant non-Jewish group), integration (the entry of Jews into non-Jewish social circles and spheres of activity), emancipation (the acquisition of rights and privileges enjoyed by non-Jewish citizens/subjects of similar socioeconomic rank), and secularization (the rejection of religious beliefs and the obligations and practices that flow from these beliefs). In Eastern Europe, as in Western Europe, these processes, while obviously influencing each other, operated in the end independently of each other. Thus, in most East European states, Jewish acculturation and secularization were well in advance of legal emancipation and social integration.
title: Assimilation
alternative label: Assimilationist
alternative label: assimilation
alternative label: assimilationism
alternative label: assimilationist
alternative label: assimilationists
alternative label: integrationism
narrower: Bohemia and Moravia
narrower: Elsewhere in Eastern Europe
narrower: Hungary
narrower: Poland
narrower: Russia
related: Banking
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brno
related: Bucharest
related: Bucovina
related: Budapest
related: Bund
related: Chernivtsi
related: Conversion
related: Councils
related: Credit
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Dostrzegacz Nadwiślański
related: Dress
related: Eisenbaum, Antoni
related: Gintsburg Family
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Industry
related: Izraelita
related: Jutrzenka
related: Kohn, Sámuel
related: Kol Mevaser
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Kun, Béla
related: Liturgy
related: L’viv
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Minorities Treaties
related: Moscow
related: Neufeld, Daniel
related: Nussbaum, Hilary
related: ORT
related: Odessa
related: Orthodoxy
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Rabinovich, Osip Aronovich
related: Razsvet
related: Reform, Religious
related: Riga
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Shtadlan
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Szabolcsi, Miksa
related: Walachia
related: Warsaw
related: World War I
related: Zederbaum, Aleksander
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties
related: Zjednoczenie

Land of Israel
described at: Land of Israel
has abstract: As early as the eighteenth century, Jews in Eastern Europe constituted the largest Jewish community in the world. By the early twentieth century, they were the absolute majority, and 90 percent lived in regions that had been part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth several generations earlier, or were among communities of immigrants created elsewhere by Jews from those regions. At the same time, only 0.3 percent of Jews worldwide lived in the Land of Israel (ca. 26,000 in 1881), though Jews of the Diaspora mentioned the Land daily in prayers and commemorated it in festivals and fasts.
title: Land of Israel
alternative label: land of Israel
related: Łomża
related: Ashkenaz
related: Belarus
related: Borokhov, Ber
related: Charity
related: Communism
related: Crimea
related: Galicia
related: Grinberg, Uri Tsevi
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Jabotinsky, Vladimir
related: Kahal
related: Kalisz
related: Yiddish (Language)
related: Lieberman, Aharon Shemu’el
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Lithuania
related: Menaḥem Mendel of Vitebsk
related: Misnagdim
related: Odessa
related: Orthodoxy
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pinsker, Simḥah and Lev
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: Revisionist Zionists
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Sephardim
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vitsyebsk
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Orthodoxy
described at: Orthodoxy
has abstract: Present-day Orthodox Judaism has a distinct and readily identifiable profile. It finds its expression in robust institutionalized forms such as nationwide organizations of synagogues, communities, and rabbis; schools and yeshivas; newspapers and other media; and even political parties in Israel and Hasidic townships in the United States that are self-designated as Orthodox. Orthodoxy in all its variety is characterized by a firm ideological stance, defining itself in relation to rival trends within Judaism. It implies more than an adherence to traditional forms of religious observance; rather, it is an ideology committed to the preservation of tradition. It is this conservative posture that lies at the very core of the self-definition of the modern-day Orthodox. As such, it is a relatively new phenomenon, a consequence of the challenges posed to tradition by modern ideologies. With the authority of tradition no longer taken as self-evident, it has had to be consciously defended and justified, augmented and amplified. Orthodoxy thus emerged in response to ideologies that challenged tradition and presented themselves as legitimate alternatives. It did not arise in the absence of ideological confrontation even where there was noticeable erosion of tradition associated with modernization.
title: Orthodoxy
alternative label: Orthodox
alternative label: Orthodox Jewry
alternative label: Orthodox Jews
alternative label: Orthodox Judaism
alternative label: orthodoxy
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Arad
related: Ashkenaz
related: Belz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Berlin, Naftali Tsevi Yehudah
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Bratislava
related: Brody
related: Budapest
related: Chajes, Tsevi Hirsh
related: Chorin, Aharon
related: Communism
related: Dress
related: Eisenstadt
related: Galicia
related: Ger Hasidic Dynasty
related: Grodzenski, Ḥayim Ozer
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Hildesheimer, Esriel
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jewish Congress
related: Kalisz
related: Katowice
related: Kluger, Shelomoh ben Yehudah
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Kunitz, Mosheh
related: Land of Israel
related: Landau, Yeḥezkel ben Yehudah
related: Lichtenstein, Hillel
related: Lithuania
related: Löw, Yirmiyahu
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Makhzikey ha-Das
related: Meisels, Dov Berush
related: Minsk
related: Misnagdim
related: Mizraḥi
related: Munkatsh Hasidic Dynasty
related: Pale of Settlement
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poznań
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Reform, Religious
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Sabbath
related: Sandz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Sátoraljaújhely
related: Schick, Mosheh
related: Schlesinger, Akiva Yosef
related: Seminary
related: Sephardim
related: Shomer Yisra’el
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Silesia
related: Sofer Family
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: Vilnius
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: Wrocław
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zhovkva
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Budapest
described at: Budapest
has abstract: After 1873, the capital of Hungary. Before they were united in 1873, the city’s sections of Buda, Pest, and Óbuda were independent towns.
title: Budapest
alternative label: Buda
alternative label: Pest
alternative label: Óbuda
narrower: Acculturation
narrower: Community and Religious Life
narrower: Early History
narrower: Occupations
narrower: Politics, Power, Antisemitism
narrower: Population
narrower: Postwar and Contemporary Jewry
narrower: Settlement and Residential Clustering
narrower: The War Years
related: Arad
related: Assimilation
related: Auschwitz Protocols
related: Ballagi, Mór
related: Belz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Bischitz, Johanna
related: Bratislava
related: Brody
related: Chorin, Aharon
related: Conversion
related: Crafts
related: Fortunatus, Imre
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Guilds
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Industry
related: Josephinian Reforms
related: Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi
related: Kasztner, Rezső
related: Kayserling, Meir
related: Kertész, Imre
related: Kiev
related: Kohn, Sámuel
related: Kun, Béla
related: Kunitz, Mosheh
related: Moscow
related: Múlt és Jövő
related: Münz, Mosheh
related: Normalschulen
related: Odessa
related: Orthodoxy
related: Patai, József
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: Rákosi, Mátyás
related: Reform, Religious
related: Reich, Koppel
related: Rosenthal Family
related: Sabbath
related: Sabbatianism
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Scheiber, Sándor
related: Schwab, Löw
related: Seminary
related: Slovakia
related: Sofer, Ḥayim ben Mordekhai Efrayim Fishel
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: Teichthal, Yisakhar Shelomoh
related: Tiszaeszlár Blood Libel
related: Trade
related: Ullmann Family
related: Vázsonyi, Vilmos
related: Vilnius
related: Warsaw
related: Wodianer Family
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Yitsḥak ben Mosheh of Vienna
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Bohemia and Moravia
described at: Bohemia and Moravia
has abstract: The lands of the Bohemian crown (also referred to as Bohemian lands or Czech lands) comprised the geographic regions of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia (after 1742, only the part of Silesia that remained part of the Habsburg domains). After 1918, these territories constituted the westernmost regions of Czechoslovakia; since 1993, they have formed the Czech Republic. The lands of the Bohemian crown were attached to the Přemyslid dynasty from roughly the ninth to the fourteenth century, and to the house of Luxembourg in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. In 1526, they passed definitively to the Habsburg dynasty (during the reign of Ferdinand I) where they remained for nearly 400 years, up to the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918.
title: Bohemia and Moravia
alternative label: Bohemia
alternative label: Bohemia, Moravia
alternative label: Bohemia-Moravia
alternative label: Bohemian
alternative label: Bohemian lands
alternative label: Bohemia–Moravia
alternative label: Czech lands
alternative label: Moravia
alternative label: Moravian
alternative label: Moravian and Bohemian
narrower: Cross-Cultural Relations, Conflicts, and New Directions
narrower: Enlightened Absolutism, Cultural Reform, and Emancipation
narrower: Jewish Settlement and Population Patterns
narrower: Moravian Exceptionalism: The Political Jewish Community
narrower: Rabbinic Culture and Institutions
related: Agriculture
related: Assimilation
related: Banet, Mordekhai ben Avraham
related: Bar Kochba Association
related: Bassevi of Treuenberg, Ya‘akov
related: Baum, Oskar
related: Beer, Peter
related: Bergmann, Hugo
related: Brno
related: Brod, Max
related: Českožidovské Listy
related: Crafts
related: Czech Republic
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Efrayim Shelomoh ben Aharon of Luntshits
related: Ehrenfeld, Nathan
related: Familiants Laws
related: Gans, David ben Shelomoh
related: Haskalah
related: Heller, Yom Tov Lipmann
related: Hilsner Affair
related: Homberg, Herz
related: Horowitz Family
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Ibrāhīm ibn Ya‘qūb
related: Isserles, Mosheh ben Yisra’el
related: Jihlava
related: Josephinian Reforms
related: Kafka, Franz
related: Kisch, Alexander
related: Kohn, Hans
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Krochmal, Menaḥem Mendel ben Avraham
related: Landau, Yeḥezkel ben Yehudah
related: Landau, Yisra’el
related: Lithuania
related: L’viv
related: Maisel, Mordecai
related: Mikulov
related: Normalschulen
related: Opatów
related: Oppenheim, David
related: Orthodoxy
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Prague
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Reform, Religious
related: About this Article (Relations between Jews and Non-Jews)
related: Sabbath
related: Selbstwehr
related: Silesia
related: Sofer, Mosheh
related: Trade
related: Trebitsch, Neḥemyah Naḥum
related: Weiss, Ernst
related: Weltsch, Robert
related: Werfel, Franz
related: Wessely, Wolfgang
related: Yafeh, Mordekhai ben Avraham
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el

Bund
described at: Bund
has abstract: Der Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund in Lite, Poyln, un Rusland (The General Union of Jewish Workers in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia), known simply as the Bund, was founded in Vilna in October 1897 by a small group of Jews who were profoundly influenced by Marxism. Led by Aleksandr (Arkadii) Kremer (1865–1935), their goal was to attract East European Jews to the emergent Russian revolutionary movement.
title: Bund
alternative label: Bundis
alternative label: Bundism
alternative label: Bundist
alternative label: Bundists
related: Łódź
related: Alter, Wiktor
related: Bessarabia
related: Bucovina
related: Erlich, Henryk
related: Evsektsiia
related: Folks-tsaytung
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Kossovskii, Vladimir
related: Kremer, Arkadii
related: Latvia
related: Lifshits, Khaye Malke
related: Lithuania
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Martov, L.
related: Medem Sanatorium
related: Medem, Vladimir Davidovich
related: Mill, John
related: Minsk
related: Morgnshtern
related: Moscow
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Portnoy, Yekusiel
related: Przytyk Pogrom
related: Rafes, Moyshe
related: Riga
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Tsukunft
related: TSYSHO
related: Vilnius
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties
related: Zygielbojm, Shmuel Mordkhe

Pogroms
described at: Pogroms
has abstract: In general usage, a pogrom is an outbreak of mass violence directed against a minority religious, ethnic, or social group; it usually implies central instigation and control, or at minimum the passivity of local authorities. The term came into widespread usage after the riots of 1881 and 1882 in the Russian Empire. While the standard Russian bureaucratic term for mass unrest was besporiadki (disorders), the occasional use of the word pogrom to describe the events of 1881 and 1882 popularized the term in the West. The Oxford English Dictionary records its first use in the Times of London on 17 March 1882 (“That the ‘Pogromen’ [riots against the Jews] must be stopped . . .”), defining the word as “an organized massacre in Russia for the destruction or annihilation of any body or class: orig. and esp. applied to those directed against the Jews.” In Soviet historiography, the word was applied to violence carried out by reactionary groups against opponents of the tsarist regime, and it thereby gained a political but lost a specifically “Jewish” connotation. In contemporary Russian, pogrom is used for violence directed against any ethnic group.
title: Pogroms
alternative label: pogrom
alternative label: pogroms
narrower: After the Holocaust
narrower: Pogroms in the Russian Empire
narrower: Wartime Pogroms
related: Bessarabia
related: Białystok
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brest
related: Bund
related: Christmas
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Galicia
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: Homel’
related: Hrodna
related: Kielce
related: Kiev
related: Kishinev
related: L’viv
related: Memory
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pinsk
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: Przytyk Pogrom
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Russian Civil War
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Smolenskin, Perets
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Odessa
described at: Odessa
has abstract: Founded in 1794 on land conquered from the Turks on the site of the Black Sea fortress town of Khadzhibei, Odessa received its name the following year. Within a few decades it was already a sizable city and soon commanded an international reputation as the preeminent Russian grain-exporting center. However, it would retain the aura of a new place: transitory, irreverent, neither cosmopolitan nor urbane.
title: Odessa
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Adler, Yankl
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Aksenfeld, Yisroel
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Assimilation
related: Babel, Isaac
related: Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
related: Brody
related: Cantors
related: About this Article (Censorship)
related: Circumcision
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Evsektsiia
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Humor)
related: Il’f, Il’ia Arnol’dovich
related: Jabotinsky, Vladimir
related: Kol Mevaser
related: Lewinsky, Elḥanan Leib
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Luxemburg, Rosa
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Traditional and Instrumental Music (Music)
related: Orshanskii, Il’ia Grigor’evich
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Passover
related: Pinsker, Simḥah and Lev
related: Pogroms
related: Rabinovich, Osip Aronovich
related: Ravnitski, Yehoshu‘a Ḥana
related: Razsvet
related: Romania
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Smolenskin, Perets
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Soviet Yiddish-Language Schools
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Trade
related: Transnistria
related: Ukraine
related: Utesov, Leonid Osipovich
related: Warsaw
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Kiev
described at: Kiev
has abstract: (Ukr., Kyiv; classical Heb., Kiyov), capital of Ukraine. Jewish settlement in Kiev dates to the first years of the city, in the ninth century, when it was the capital of Kievan Rus’ and an important stop on the trading route between Europe and Central Asia. Although sources are few, in the ninth century there were probably both Karaite and Rabbinite Jews in Kiev. The communities included branches of Byzantine Jewry as well as Khazars.
title: Kiev
alternative label: Kyiv
related: Anticosmopolitan Campaign
related: Babi Yar
related: Belarus
related: Bergelson, Dovid
related: Brodskii Family
related: Crafts
related: Der Nister
related: Doctors’ Plot
related: Dubno
related: Einsatzgruppen
related: Evsektsiia
related: Hofshteyn, Dovid
related: Industry
related: Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture
related: Karaites
related: Khazaria
related: Kultur-lige
related: Lithuania
related: Markish, Perets
related: Moscow
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Soviet State Yiddish Theaters
related: Trade
related: Transportation
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

L’viv
described at: Lviv
has abstract: (Yid., Lemberg; Ger., Lemberg; Pol., Lwów; Rus., Lvov; Latin, Leopolis), city in contemporary western Ukraine, about 65 km (40 miles) from the border with Poland. Jews lived in the city from the time of its establishment in the mid-thirteenth century; some, mostly merchants, were Sephardic residents who later mingled with Askenazic immigrants. In the mid-fourteenth century, after its conquest by King Casimir III, the town permitted Jews to establish a quarter of their own within the walls of a new section built by the king. Two communities thus coexisted: the original and the center within the new walls—known as the Vorstadt (suburban) community.
title: L’viv
alternative label: Lemberg
alternative label: Lvov
alternative label: Lwów
alternative label: L’vov
narrower: Independent Poland
narrower: Soviet and Post-Soviet Period
narrower: The Austrian Period
narrower: The Premodern Period
narrower: World War I
narrower: World War II
related: Agudas Akhim
related: Bałaban, Majer
related: Belz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Blood Libels and Host Desecration Accusations
related: Brody
related: Buber, Salomon
related: Chwila
related: Crafts
related: David ben Shemu’el ha-Levi
related: Dembitzer, Ḥayim Natan
related: Erter, Yitsḥak
related: Frankism
related: Galicia
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Homberg, Herz
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Karaites
related: Kohn, Abraham
related: Labor Camps
related: Makhzikey ha-Das
related: Mieses, Yehudah Leib
related: Normalschulen
related: Orenstein Family
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Reich, Leon
related: Reizes Brothers
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Shomer Yisra’el
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Trade
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Walachia
related: Zhovkva
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

About this Article (Kraków)
described at: Krakow
has abstract: To trace the history of Jewish presence in the city of Kraków, this entry is divided chronologically into two articles, the first treating the period through the Polish partitions and the second from 1795 until 2000.
title: About this Article (Kraków)
alternative label: Kraków

Romania
described at: Romania
has abstract: Spread over 237,500 square kilometers and counting 22 million inhabitants, modern Romania (Rom., România) neighbors the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine to the northeast, Bulgaria to the south, the Black Sea to the east, Serbia to the southwest, and Hungary to the west. This is broadly the area in which the Romanian people developed, after Dacia—as the region was known in antiquity—was conquered by the Romans in 101–106 CE. Several Judaic cult items and inscriptions date to the Roman period (first to third centuries), indicating the presence of Jews in the Roman legions camped there.
title: Romania
alternative label: Romanian
narrower: Culture and Education
narrower: Holocaust Period
narrower: Jewish Politics after World War I
narrower: Jews in the Old Kingdom (Regat)
narrower: Political Antisemitism in Greater Romania
narrower: Postcommunist Period
narrower: Relations with the Romanian Population
narrower: Romanian Jews after World War I
narrower: Social Structure and Domestic Politics
narrower: The Communist Period
related: Aderca, Felix
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Ashkenaz
related: Assimilation
related: Bacău
related: Bally Family
related: Banat
related: Banking
related: Barasch, Iuliu
related: Bessarabia
related: Blank, Maurice
related: Botoşani
related: Braunstein, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Brociner Family
related: Bucharest
related: Bucovina
related: Buhuşi
related: Bund
related: Cajal, Nicolae
related: Câmpulung Moldovenesc
related: Carp, Horia
related: Chernivtsi
related: Cluj
related: Constanța
related: Crafts
related: Craiova
related: Curierul Israelit
related: Dobrogeanu-Gherea, Constantin
related: Dorohoi
related: Ebner, Mayer
related: Egalitatea
related: Ehrenkranz, Benjamin Wolf
related: Filderman, Wilhelm
related: Focşani
related: Galaţi
related: Galicia
related: Gaster, Moses
related: Ghelerter, Litman
related: Goldfadn, Avrom
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: Halevy, Meyer Abraham
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Hayoets
related: Hebrew Literature
related: About this Article (Historiography)
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Iaşi
related: Industry
related: Kishinev
related: Land of Israel
related: Lavi, Theodor
related: Lippe, Karpel
related: Ludo, Isac Iacovitz
related: Mântuirea
related: Minorities Treaties
related: Moldavia
related: Moldova
related: Niemirower, Iacob Isac
related: Odessa
related: Oradea
related: Passover

About this Article (Holocaust)
described at: Holocaust
has abstract: To treat the history and experience of East European Jews during the Holocaust, this entry includes five articles. The first is an overview that provides context and defines the subject. It is followed by three articles that treat the creative work of Jews under Nazi occupation and in the camps: Holocaust Diaries, which examines personal written accounts; Art and the Holocaust, which surveys works in the visual arts; and Music and the Holocaust, which takes note of musical activity in the ghettos, partisans’ songs, and composers’ activity. The last article, Restitution, Reparation, and Indemnification, discusses the postwar efforts to seek return of Jewish property and reparations payments from European governments.For further discussion, see Armed Resistance; Ghettos; Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies; Killing Centers; and Labor Camps.
title: About this Article (Holocaust)
alternative label: Holocaust
alternative label: holocaust

Lithuania
described at: Lithuania
has abstract: Southernmost of the three Baltic states. The name Lithuania originally referred to a grand duchy established along the Baltic coast to the northeast of Poland around 1250. By the mid-fourteenth century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had expanded into a large state, including substantial territories that today are part of Latvia, Belarus, and Ukraine. In 1386, it was joined to Poland in a personal union; the same monarch occupied the thrones of the two states. In 1569, Lithuania confederated formally with Poland in the Union of Lublin, forming a state often called the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita). With the Polish partitions of 1772, 1793, and 1795, virtually all of the historic Lithuanian lands were incorporated into the Russian Empire.
title: Lithuania
alternative label: Lithuanian
alternative label: Lithuanian Republic
narrower: Early History
narrower: The Interwar Years
narrower: The Postwar Period
narrower: World War I
narrower: World War II
related: Agriculture
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Armed Resistance
related: Belarus
related: Beriḥah
related: Berlin, Naftali Tsevi Yehudah
related: Białystok
related: Bobruisk
related: Brest
related: Bund
related: Councils
related: Courland
related: Crafts
related: Daugavpils
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Estonia
related: Folkists
related: Gens, Jakub
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Ḥayim ben Yitsḥak of Volozhin
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Hrodna
related: Idishe Shtime, Di
related: Industry
related: Kahaneman, Yosef Shelomoh
related: Karmel, Ha-
related: Kaunas
related: Killing Centers
related: Klaipėda
related: Kovner, Abba
related: Kultur-lige
related: Labor Camps
related: Latvia
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Lipkin, Yisra’el ben Ze’ev Volf
related: Litvak
related: About this Article (Lublin)
related: Mapu, Avraham
related: Mark, Yudl
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Minsk
related: Mir, Yeshiva of
related: Mizraḥi
related: Musar Movement
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Panevėžys
related: Pinsk
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ponevezh, Yeshiva of
related: Rachmilewitz, Naḥman
related: Reines, Yitsḥak Ya‘akov
related: Revisionist Zionists
related: Riga
related: Robinson, Jacob
related: Romania
related: Rosenboim, Shimshon
related: Rubinshteyn, Ruvn
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Sabbath
related: Shabetai ben Me’ir ha-Kohen
related: Šiauliai

Saint Petersburg
described at: Saint Petersburg
has abstract: Founded by Peter the Great (r. 1682–1725) in 1703, Saint Petersburg is located at the northwest periphery of Russia, on the Gulf of Finland. In 1712, it replaced Moscow as the capital of the Russian Empire. Over the course of the next two centuries, Saint Petersburg was transformed into a grand metropolis and chief conduit of Western influence, the nerve center of Russia’s political, cultural, and economic life. During the late imperial period (1861–1917) the city’s Jews aspired to play an analogous role in the life of Russian Jewry.
title: Saint Petersburg
alternative label: Leningrad
alternative label: Petrograd
narrower: The Imperial Period
narrower: The Late Soviet Period and Beyond
narrower: Wars and Revolutions (1917–1945)
related: Łódź
related: Anticosmopolitan Campaign
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Assimilation
related: Banking
related: Belarus
related: Communism
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Finland
related: Frug, Shimen Shmuel
related: Gintsburg Family
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: Haskalah
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Kiev
related: Landau, Adolph
related: Leningradskii Evreiskii Al’manakh
related: Levanda, Lev Osipovich
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Moscow
related: ORT
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl
related: Refuseniks
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Samizdat
related: Shneur Zalman of Liady
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Tsinberg, Yisroel
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw
related: World War I
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zederbaum, Aleksander

About this Article (Yeshiva)
described at: Yeshiva
has abstract: This entry is divided into two articles, one treating the yeshiva in the period before 1800 and the other covering the following two centuries. The first article focuses on Poland, the location of the most significant yeshivas in the early period. For the period following 1800, in addition to the survey article here, see the entries on the individual Lithuanian yeshivas (for example, Ponevezh, Yeshiva of). For examples from other regions, see Bratislava and Sofer Family. For further discussion of religious education, see Bet Ha-Midrash; Heder; Kloyz; and Talmud Study.
title: About this Article (Yeshiva)
alternative label: Yeshiva
alternative label: yeshiva
alternative label: yeshivas
related: Bet ha-Midrash
related: Bratislava
related: Heder
related: Kloyz
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ponevezh, Yeshiva of
related: Sofer Family
related: Talmud Study

About this Article (Hasidism)
described at: Hasidism
has abstract: To treat the historical rise, beliefs, and practices of the movement known as Hasidism, this entry includes five articles. The first is a historical overview that describes the development of the movement and its geographic expansion from the late eighteenth century to the present. The second article surveys Hasidic teachings and literature. It is followed by a description of the distinctive features of everyday life among Hasidim and successive articles on music and dance in Hasidism. For further and related discussion, see also entries on specific Hasidic dynasties and leaders; Misnagdim; Mysticism and Mystical Literature; and Piety.
title: About this Article (Hasidism)
alternative label: Hasid
alternative label: Hasidic
alternative label: Hasidic Jews
alternative label: Hasidic movement
alternative label: Hasidic movements
alternative label: Hasidim
alternative label: Hasidism
related: Misnagdim
related: Mysticism and Mystical Literature
related: Piety

Prague
described at: Prague
has abstract: Capital of the Czech Republic. The city of Prague has the oldest Jewish community in Bohemia and is one of the longest enduring and most important Jewish centers in East Central Europe. From the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, Prague was one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe. The presence of Jewish merchants at Prague markets is mentioned in a report by the Iberian Jewish merchant Ibrāhīm ibn Ya‘qūb in about 970. Jewish settlement at the time was located near the prince’s marketplace in the area below Prague Castle (Suburbium Pragense). A second community, near Vyšehrad Castle (Vicus Wissegradensis), on the right bank of the Vltava (Moldau) River, is mentioned in a record of 1091.
title: Prague
related: Abeles, Shim‘on
related: Altneuschul
related: Avraham ben Avigdor
related: Banking
related: Bassevi of Treuenberg, Ya‘akov
related: Baum, Oskar
related: Beer, Peter
related: Brod, Max
related: Crafts
related: Czech Republic
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Dress
related: Efrayim Shelomoh ben Aharon of Luntshits
related: Ehrenfeld, Nathan
related: Familiants Laws
related: Gans, David ben Shelomoh
related: German Literature
related: Haskalah
related: Heller, Yom Tov Lipmann
related: Homberg, Herz
related: Horowitz Family
related: Ibrāhīm ibn Ya‘qūb
related: Josephinian Reforms
related: Kafka, Franz
related: Kara, Avigdor
related: Kisch, Egon Erwin
related: Landau, Mosheh Yisra’el
related: Landau, Yeḥezkel ben Yehudah
related: Maisel, Mordecai
related: Names and Naming
related: Oppenheim, David
related: Printing and Publishing before 1800 (Printing and Publishing)
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Slánský Trial
related: Subcarpathian Rus’
related: Terezín
related: Trade
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Werfel, Franz
related: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Yitsḥak ben Ya‘akov ha-Lavan of Prague
related: Židovská Strana
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Ukraine
described at: Ukraine
has abstract: Although Jews have had a long history in ethnolinguistically Ukrainian territory, by the turn of the twenty-first century only a small remnant of this once commanding population remained. In 2001, Ukraine had a population of 48 million, approximately 75 percent of which was of Ukrainian ethnicity, with a large Russian minority (some 21%, or 10 million). The exact number of Jews is a matter of some controversy: the 1989 census listed 487,300 Jews, but only 104,300 were recorded in the first post-Soviet census of 2001, a figure that is questioned by some but that certainly reflects the massive emigration of Jews in the 1990s.
title: Ukraine
alternative label: Ukrainian
narrower: 1881–1914
narrower: 1914–1939
narrower: 1944–1991
narrower: After 1991
narrower: History to 1881
narrower: The Holocaust in Ukraine
related: Agriculture
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: Babi Yar
related: Beilis, Mendel
related: Belz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Bratslav Hasidism
related: Bund
related: Chernobil Hasidic Dynasty
related: Communism
related: Communist Party of the Soviet Union
related: Dnipropetrovs’k
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Economic Life
related: Einsatzgruppen
related: Folkists
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Gzeyres Takh Vetat
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Karaites
related: Khar’kiv
related: Khazaria
related: Kiev
related: Lithuania
related: L’viv
related: Misnagdim
related: Moscow
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Pinsker, Simḥah and Lev
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Population and Migration before World War I (Population and Migration)
related: Revisionist Zionists
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Russian Civil War
related: Russian Revolution of 1905
related: Ruzhin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Tavernkeeping
related: Trade
related: Trotsky, Leon
related: Uman
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: World War I
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Haskalah
described at: Haskalah
has abstract: The Jewish Enlightenment, or Haskalah, was an ideological and social movement that developed in Eastern Europe in the early nineteenth century and was active until the rise of the Jewish national movement in the early 1880s. Its partisans were known as maskilim. In certain senses, Haskalah was an extension of the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment, but it was centrally concerned with Jews’ political status and their relationship to European culture. Essentially, Haskalah sought to exploit the new possibilities of economic, social, and cultural integration that appeared to become available to Jews in the late eighteenth century with the removal of legal discrimination.
title: Haskalah
alternative label: haskalah
narrower: Berlin Haskalah
narrower: Early Haskalah
narrower: Haskalah and Jewish Nationalism
narrower: Haskalah in Galicia
narrower: Haskalah in Russia
related: Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev
related: Banking
related: Belarus
related: Braudes, Re’uven Asher
related: Brody
related: Galicia
related: Gintsburg Family
related: Gordon, Yehudah Leib
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Hebrew Literature
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Industry
related: Kaliningrad
related: Kerem Ḥemed
related: Kovner, Avraham Uri
related: Krochmal, Naḥman
related: Lefin, Menaḥem Mendel
related: Levinzon, Yitsḥak Ber
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Lilienthal, Max
related: Lipkin, Yisra’el ben Ze’ev Volf
related: Lithuania
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: L’viv
related: Melits, Ha-
related: Minsk
related: Misnagdim
related: Musar Movement
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Parody
related: Perl, Yosef
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Rabbinate)
related: Reform, Religious
related: Riga
related: About this Article (Russia)
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Satire
related: Schick, Barukh ben Ya‘akov
related: Seminary
related: Shklov
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Smolenskin, Perets
related: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia
related: Talmud Study
related: Ternopil’
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Vilnius
related: Volozhin, Yeshiva of
related: Wrocław
related: Zamość, Yisra’el ben Mosheh ha-Levi
related: Zhovkva

About this Article (Hungary)
described at: Hungary
has abstract: To treat the history of Jewish presence in Hungarian lands, this entry includes three chronologically arranged articles. The first covers early history and Habsburg rule through the end of World War I and the dissolution of the empire; the second covers the interwar and Holocaust periods (1918–1945); and the last covers Hungary during the Communist and postcommunist eras.
title: About this Article (Hungary)
alternative label: Hungarian
alternative label: Hungarian lands
alternative label: Hungary

Galicia
described at: Galicia
has abstract: Region in southeastern Poland and northwestern Ukraine. Galicia existed as a crown land of the Habsburg Empire from the time of the first partition of Poland in 1772 until the end of World War I in 1918. (The name Galicia, or Galizien, was derived from Halicz, a city with nearby salt mines.) It included the districts of Zamość, Sandomierz, and Chełm until these were annexed to the Grand Duchy of Warsaw in 1809. During the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815), Austria gained back the regions of Tarnopol (Ukr., Ternopil’) to the east, which it had ceded to the Russian Empire in 1809, and Kraków to the west. Kraków itself gained the status of a free city and remained so until after the Polish uprising of 1846, when it became an Austrian territory.
title: Galicia
alternative label: Galician
narrower: From Annexation until Emancipation (1772–1867)
narrower: From Emancipation through the End of Empire (1867–1918)
related: Agnon, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Agriculture
related: Agudas Akhim
related: Banking
related: Belz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Birnbaum, Nathan
related: Bohemia and Moravia
related: Brody
related: Buber, Salomon
related: Buchach
related: Bucovina
related: Chajes, Tsevi Hirsh
related: Chełm
related: Crafts
related: Drogobych
related: Erter, Yitsḥak
related: Feldman, Wilhelm
related: Franzos, Karl Emil
related: Gottlieb, Maurycy
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Homberg, Herz
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Industry
related: Ivano-Frankivs’k
related: Josephinian Reforms
related: Kahal
related: Kiev
related: Kluger, Shelomoh ben Yehudah
related: Kohn, Abraham
related: Kolomyia
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Krochmal, Naḥman
related: Land of Israel
related: Letteris, Me’ir
related: L’viv
related: Makhzikey ha-Das
related: Meisels, Dov Berush
related: Mieses, Yehudah Leib
related: Mikra Kodesh
related: Natanson, Yosef Sha’ul
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: Normalschulen
related: Nossig, Alfred
related: Orenstein Family
related: Orthodoxy
related: Perl, Yosef
related: Po‘ale Tsiyon
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Rapoport, Shelomoh Yehudah
related: Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl
related: Reform, Religious
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Ruzhin Hasidic Dynasty
related: Rzeszów
related: Sandomierz
related: Sandz Hasidic Dynasty
related: Satire
related: Seminary
related: Shomer Yisra’el
related: Shulḥan ‘arukh
related: Ternopil’
related: Yiddish Theater (Theater)
related: Ukraine
related: Warsaw
related: World War I
related: Yisra’el of Ruzhin
related: Zamość
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties
related: Żydowska Partia Socjalno-Demokratyczna

Vilnius
described at: Vilnius
has abstract: (Pol., Wilno; Rus., Vilna; Yid., Vilne), capital of the republic of Lithuania. In 1323, Gediminas made Vilnius the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The city became part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569. It fell under the domination of the Russian Empire after the Polish Partition of 1795; in the interwar period (1920–1939) it was under Polish control. At the end of World War II it was the capital of the Lithuanian SSR until independence in 1991. The city’s large Jewish population and atmosphere earned it the nickname “the Jerusalem of Lithuania.”
title: Vilnius
alternative label: Vilna
alternative label: Wilno
narrower: Fifteenth–Eighteenth Centuries
narrower: Holocaust (1939–1945)
narrower: The Postwar Period
narrower: Under Russian Rule (1795–1914)
narrower: World War I and Its Aftermath
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: Blood Libels and Host Desecration Accusations
related: Bund
related: Charity
related: Councils
related: Crown Rabbi
related: Danzig, Avraham ben Yeḥi’el Mikhl
related: Dik, Ayzik Meyer
related: Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman
related: Erik, Maks
related: Estonia
related: Fuenn, Shemu’el Yosef
related: Gens, Jakub
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Gintsburg, Aryeh Leib ben Asher
related: Gintsburg, Mordekhai Aharon
related: Gozhansky, Shmul
related: Grade, Chaim
related: Grodzenski, Ḥayim Ozer
related: Guilds
related: Habimah
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Heder
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Kaczerginski, Shmerke
related: Kahal
related: Kantor, Yehudah Leib
related: Karmel, Ha-
related: Kovner, Abba
related: Kremer, Arkadii
related: Kulbak, Moyshe
related: Landau, Yeḥezkel ben Yehudah
related: Latvia
related: Lebensohn, Avraham Dov
related: Lebensohn, Mikhah Yosef
related: Lekert, Hirsh
related: Lima, Mosheh ben Yitsḥak Yehudah
related: Lipkin, Yisra’el ben Ze’ev Volf
related: Lithuania
related: Litvak, A.
related: Maccabi Movement
related: Martov, L.
related: Musar Movement
related: Natanson Family
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: Passover
related: Pogroms
related: Poland before 1795 (Poland)
related: About this Article (Printing and Publishing)
related: Rafes, Moyshe
related: Reyzen, Zalmen
related: Romm Family
related: Rubinstein, Yitsḥak
related: Russian Empire (Russia)
related: Schulman, Kalman
related: Seminary
related: Strashun, Shemu’el and Matityahu
related: Sutzkever, Avrom
related: Tarbut
related: About this Article (Theater)
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Vilner Trupe
related: Volf, Leyzer
related: Weinreich, Max
related: World War I
related: Wygodzki, Jakub
related: YIVO

Moscow
described at: Moscow
has abstract: Present-day capital of the Russian Federation, Moscow was capital of the Russian state from the end of the fifteenth century until 1712, and capital of the Soviet Union from 1918 to 1991. Jews were first mentioned in connection with Moscow in the fifteenth century. During the reign of Tsar Ivan IV (the Terrible; r. 1533–1584), Jews were forbidden to enter the region of Muscovy. They first appeared in Moscow during the Russian–Polish war of 1645–1667, some converting to Christianity and remaining in the city.
title: Moscow
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Braude, Markus
related: Doctors’ Plot
related: Dubnow, Simon
related: Economic Life
related: Emes, Der
related: Granovskii, Aleksandr Mikhailovich
related: Guilds
related: Habimah
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Kol Ya‘akov Yeshiva
related: Levin, Yehudah Leib (rabbi)
related: Lubavitch Hasidism
related: Maze, Iakov Isaevich
related: Medal’e, Shemaryahu Yosef Leib Iankelevich
related: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Moscow State Yiddish Theater
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Poliakov Family
related: Refuseniks
related: Russian Federation (Russia)
related: Russian Revolutions of 1917
related: Saint Petersburg
related: Samizdat
related: Shlifer, Solomon Mikhailovich
related: Soviet Yiddish-Language Schools
related: Stybel
related: Tsherikover, Elye
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
related: Warsaw
related: Wissotzky, Kalonymus Ze’ev
related: About this Article (Yeshiva)
related: Zionism and Zionist Parties

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
described at: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
has abstract: The October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution created the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, the RSFSR, as the successor state to the Russian Empire. In December 1922, by which time the Bolsheviks had in fact established control over the territory of the former empire (except those areas taken from it by the treaties that marked the end of World War I) their state became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), comprising four soviet socialist republics (SSRs): Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, and Transcaucasian (by 1936 there were 11 SSRs; the number eventually grew to 15). The USSR’s prime importance, however, was not its size—it was the largest country in the world—nor its considerable wealth of raw materials, but the nature of its regime. As the first Communist state, it preached, and sought to propagate abroad, an ideology that purported to have a message for the modern world, industrial and precapitalist alike. Its regime, therefore, served as a model or laboratory, whose policies and achievements were designed to serve as a stimulus for other countries the globe over.
title: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
alternative label: Communist Russia
alternative label: Soviet
alternative label: Soviet Russia
alternative label: Soviet Union
alternative label: Soviet regime
alternative label: USSR
narrower: Attitude toward Israel
narrower: Chronology
narrower: Conclusion
narrower: Culture
narrower: Jewish Identity
narrower: Leadership
narrower: Population
narrower: Relations with Society and the State
narrower: Religion
narrower: Social Structure
narrower: The Holocaust
related: Agriculture
related: Anticosmopolitan Campaign
related: Antisemitic Parties and Movements
related: Assimilation
related: Belarus
related: Bessarabia
related: Birobidzhan
related: Brik, Liliia Iur’evna and Osip Maksimovich
related: Bucovina
related: Cantors
related: Chernivtsi
related: Circumcision
related: Committee of Rabbis in the USSR
related: Crimea
related: Daniel’, Iulii Markovich
related: Doctors’ Plot
related: Dymshits, Veniamin Emmanuilovich
related: Evsektsiia
related: Gel’fond, Aleksandr Osipovich
related: Gezkul’t
related: Heder
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: Iagoda, Genrikh Grigor’evich
related: Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture
related: Ioffe, Abram Fedorovich
related: Ioffe, Vladimir Il’ich
related: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
related: Kaganovich, Lazar’ Moiseevich
related: Kamenev, Iurii
related: Kantorovich, Leonid Vital’evich
related: Kaunas
related: Khar’kiv
related: Kiev
related: Kishinev
related: Kol Ya‘akov Yeshiva
related: Kol’tsov, Mikhail Efimovich
related: Krein, Mark Grigorievich
related: Landau, Lev Davidovich
related: Latvia
related: Lifshits, Il’ia Mikhailovich
related: Lithuania
related: Litvinov, Maksim Maksimovich
related: Lozovskii, Solomon Abramovich
related: Marriage
related: Mekhlis, Lev Zakharovich
related: Minsk
related: Moldova
related: Moscow
related: Naimark, Mark Aronovich
related: Odessa
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Parties and Ideologies
related: Passover
related: About this Article (Poetry)
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Population since World War I (Population and Migration)
related: Refuseniks
related: Riga
related: Romania

About this Article (Russia)
described at: Russia
has abstract: To treat the history of Jewish settlement and cultural and political activity in Russia, this entry includes three chronologically arranged articles. Russian Empire covers the period from 1772, when the first partition of Poland placed a large Jewish population under tsarist rule, until the end of the empire in 1917. Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic covers the Soviet period, specifically within the Russian Republic itself, until the fall of the USSR in 1991. Russian Federation covers the post-Soviet period of the 1990s until 2000. For related discussion, see Pale of Settlement; Belarus; Ukraine; and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
title: About this Article (Russia)
alternative label: Russia
alternative label: Russian
alternative label: Russian Empire
related: Belarus
related: Pale of Settlement
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: Ukraine
related: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Zionism and Zionist Parties
described at: Zionism and Zionist Parties
has abstract: As a modern political movement, Zionism was created to achieve political independence for the Jewish people in the Holy Land. Although scholarly literature is divided about the exact origins of the movement, this summary begins with the history of Zionism from its roots in the Ḥibat Tsiyon period (1881–1897). This section is followed by an account of five additional stages of Zionist development and activity in Eastern Europe: the period of political growth from the First Zionist Congress (1897) to World War I; the interwar years; the Holocaust; the cold war era; and the fate of Zionism after the fall of communism in 1989 through the year 2000.
title: Zionism and Zionist Parties
alternative label: Revisionist Zionism
alternative label: Zionism
alternative label: Zionist
alternative label: Zionist Organization
alternative label: Zionist associations
alternative label: Zionist clubs
alternative label: Zionist group
alternative label: Zionist groups
alternative label: Zionist movemen
alternative label: Zionist movement
alternative label: Zionist movements
alternative label: Zionist organizations
alternative label: Zionist parties
alternative label: Zionist politics
alternative label: Zionists
alternative label: ionist associations
narrower: From the First Zionist Congress to World War I
narrower: The Interwar Years
narrower: Zionism after 1989
narrower: Zionism during the Holocaust
narrower: Zionism in the Age of Empires, 1880–1897
narrower: Zionism in the Cold War Era, 1944–1989
related: Łódź
related: Ahad Ha-Am
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Anielewicz, Mordekhai
related: Armed Resistance
related: Beriḥah
related: Berlin, Naftali Tsevi Yehudah
related: Berman, Adolf Abraham
related: Bessarabia
related: Betar
related: Białystok
related: Borokhov, Ber
related: Bucharest
related: Bucovina
related: Budapest
related: Bund
related: Communism
related: Courland
related: Czechoslovakia
related: Doctors’ Plot
related: Dror
related: Ebner, Mayer
related: Edelstein, Jakob
related: Eliasberg, Mordekhai
related: Focşani
related: Galaţi
related: Galicia
related: General Zionists
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: Gordon, Aharon David
related: Gordonia
related: Grünbaum, Yitsḥak
related: Ḥaluts, He-
related: Ḥibat Tsiyon
related: Hit’aḥadut
related: About this Article (Holocaust)
related: About this Article (Hungary)
related: Jabotinsky, Vladimir
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Kasztner, Rezső
related: Katowice
related: Kovner, Abba
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Kugel, Ḥayim
related: Latvia
related: Lilienblum, Mosheh Leib
related: Lithuania
related: L’viv
related: Memory
related: Minorities Treaties
related: Minsk
related: Mizraḥi
related: Mohilewer, Shemu’el
related: Moldavia

Warsaw
described at: Warsaw
has abstract: Capital of Poland from 1596 to 1794 and again since 1918. Warsaw’s importance in Polish and Jewish history is a relatively late phenomenon. For much of the Middle Ages, the Duchy of Mazovia, in which Warsaw was located, was a sparsely populated region, only loosely subject to the Polish crown. Warsaw itself was established in the second half of the thirteenth century on the west bank of the Vistula River.
title: Warsaw
alternative label: Adolf Abraham Berman
narrower: From 1864 to 1914
narrower: Jews in Warsaw during the Kingdom of Poland
narrower: The Nazi Occupation
narrower: The Postwar Period
narrower: World War I and After
related: Agudas Yisroel
related: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
related: Appenszlak, Jakub
related: Armed Resistance
related: Asch, Sholem
related: Assimilation
related: Association of Jewish Writers and Journalists in Warsaw
related: Bałaban, Majer
related: Banking
related: Beards
related: Białystok
related: Bloch, Jan
related: Bund
related: Communism
related: Conversion
related: Czerniaków, Adam
related: Eisenbaum, Antoni
related: Epstein Family
related: Folkists
related: Folks-shtime
related: Folks-tsaytung
related: Galicia
related: About this Article (Ghettos)
related: About this Article (Hasidism)
related: Haskalah
related: Haynt
related: Izraelita
related: Jastrow, Markus
related: Jewish Historical Institute
related: Joselewicz, Berek
related: Judenräte and Other Representative Bodies
related: Kaminski Family
related: Killing Centers
related: About this Article (Kraków)
related: Kronenberg Family
related: Labor Camps
related: Litvak
related: Maccabi Movement
related: Meisels, Dov Berush
related: Memory
related: Misnagdim
related: Moment, Der
related: Monuments and Memorials
related: Nasz Przegląd
related: Natanson Family
related: Newspapers and Periodicals
related: Odessa
related: Orthodoxy
related: Pale of Settlement
related: Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush
related: Pogroms
related: About this Article (Poland)
related: About this Article (Printing and Publishing)
related: Reform, Religious
related: About this Article (Relations between Jews and Non-Jews)
related: Revisionist Zionists
related: Ringelblum, Emanuel
related: Rosen, Mathias
related: Rudnicki, Adolf
related: Słonimski, Antoni
related: Schorr, Mojżesz
related: Seminary
related: Singer, Isaac Bashevis
related: Singer, Israel Joshua
related: Stein, Edmund
related: Polish Theater (Theater)
related: Yiddish Theater (Theater)
related: Tsefirah, Ha-
related: Turkow Family
related: Tuwim, Julian

About this Article (Poland)
described at: Poland
has abstract: To treat the history of Jewish presence in the Polish lands, this entry includes three chronologically arranged articles. The first covers early history through the third Polish partition in 1795; the second covers the period from 1795 to 1939, including the partition period, , and the interwar years; the last, "Poland since 1939," covers Poland during and after World War II and the Communist and postcommunist eras.
title: About this Article (Poland)
alternative label: Poland
alternative label: Poland–Lithuania
alternative label: Poles
alternative label: Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth