title: Ulinover, Miryem

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.

text: Yiddish poet

text: Łódź

text: shtetl

text: Sholem Aleichem

text: Yiddish literature

text: David Frishman

text: Warsaw

text: Poland

text: Yankev Shatzky

text: Kadia Molodowsky

text: Beys Yankev

text: Vilna

text: Yitsḥak Katzenelson

text: Holocaust


title: Kerem Ḥemed

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).

text: Haskalah

text: Prague

text: Galicia

text: Hungary

text: Russia

text: Lithuania

text: Yitsḥak Erter

text: Yosef Perl

text: Naḥman Krochmal

text: Shelomoh Yehudah Rapoport


title: Goldstücker, Eduard

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.

text: Slovakia

text: Shomer

text: German literature

text: Prague

text: German literature

text: Holocaust

text: Czechoslovakia

text: German literature

text: communism

text: Prague

text: Czechoslovakia

text: Prague

text: communism

text: Franz Kafka

text: Franz Kafka

text: Prague

text: Franz Kafka


title: Agurskii, Samuil Khaimovich

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.

imgDesc: Letter from Samuil Khaimovich Agurskii to Kalman Marmor, 1926. From Samuil Khaimovich Agurskii in Minsk, USSR (now in Belarus) to Kalman Marmor in New York, 2 January 1926, about the excellent reception Agurskii's book has received in the USSR, where it is going into a second printing. He thanks Marmor for his offer to distribute the book in America but doubts that "Uncle Sam" will allow such a publication to be imported into the United States in large numbers. His only wish is that the book will help to spread communist ideology among the Jewish working masses. He describes the recent celebrations in the Soviet Union of two important anniversaries: the failed Decemberist revolt of 1825 and the Revolution of 1905. Yiddish. Typed, marked up for excerpting for publication. RG 205, Kalman Marmor Papers, F88/7362. (YIVO)

text: Communist Party

text: Grodno

text: Bund

text: revolution of 1905

text: Vitebsk

text: Moscow

text: Evsektsiia

text: Minsk

text: Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture


title: Iushkevich, Semen Solomonovich

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.

text: Odessa

text: Russian literature

text: Voskhod

text: Kishinev

text: Moscow

text: Saint Petersburg

text: Russia


title: Po‘el, Ha-

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.

text: sports

text: Lithuania

text: Riga

text: Zionist

text: Latvia

text: Poland

text: Po‘ale Tsiyon

text: Morgnshtern

text: Bund

text: Maccabi


title: Driz, Shike

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.

text: Kiev

text: Yiddish poetry

text: Poland

text: Moscow

text: Shmuel Gordon

text: Leyb Kvitko

text: children’s literature

text: Russia

text: Wise Men of Chelm

text: Genrikh Sapgir

text: Itsik Manger

text: Babi Yar


title: Lämmel Family

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.

text: Bohemia

text: credit

text: banking

text: shtadlan

text: Prague


title: Tsherikover, Elye

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.

imgDesc: Scholars at an international scholarly conference at YIVO, Vilna (now Vilnius, Lith.), 1935: Elye Tsherikover (seated, fourth from right), Simon Dubnow (third from right), Raphael Mahler (standing, second from right), and others. (YIVO)

text: Zionist

text: Odessa

text: Saint Petersburg

text: 1905 Revolution

text: Sh. Y. Abramovitsh

text: Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia

text: World War I

text: Tsukunft

text: February Revolution

text: Yitsḥak Grünbaum

text: Sha’ul Ginsburg

text: Kiev

text: Ukraine

text: pogroms

text: Simon Dubnow

text: Nokhem Shtif

text: Jakob Lestschinsky

text: YIVO

glossary:
diaspora
Protocols of the Elders of Zion


title: Kikoin, Isaak Konstantinovich

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.

text: Abram Ioffe

text: USSR

text: Moscow


title: Gershenzon, Mikhail Osipovich

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.

text: Kishinev

text: Moscow

text: Russia

text: Zionism


title: Asch, Sholem

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.

imgDesc: Sholem Asch (left) with literary critic Shmuel Niger and Niger’s brother, labor leader Borekh Vladek-Tsharni, place unknown, 1930s. (YIVO)

text: Poland

text: Włocławek

text: Warsaw

text: Y. L. Peretz

text: Der yud

text: Avrom Reyzen

text: Hersh Dovid Nomberg

text: Der fraynd

text: prose

text: Kraków

text: Shabetai Tsevi

text: circumcision

text: Land of Israel

text: language conference

text: Nathan Birnbaum

text: trade

text: shtetl

text: 1905 Russian Revolution

text: Yiddish literature

text: Saint Petersburg

text: Ukraine

text: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

text: Haynt

text: Pogroms

text: Lithuania

text: Shmuel Niger

text: Russian Revolution of 1917

text: piety

text: Hasidism

text: Isaac Bashevis Singer

text: conversion


title: Bally Family

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.

text: Walachia

text: Bucharest

text: Walachia

text: banking

text: Bucharest

text: Haskalah

text: Seminary

text: Bucharest

text: Passover

text: Romania

text: Bucharest

text: Iuliu Barasch

text: Egalitatea


title: Berdychiv

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).

imgDesc: Members of the Bene Tsiyon (Sons of Zion) society with visiting writer Sholem Aleichem (second row from front, fifth from left) and composer Mark Varshavski (third from left), Berdichev (now Berdychiv, Ukr.), 1900. (YIVO)

text: Ukraine

text: Zhytomyr

text: Kiev

text: crafts

text: kahal

text: Poland

text: Hasidism

text: Ba‘al Shem Tov

text: Russia

text: Odessa

text: Tuviah Feder

text: Chełm

text: Yitsḥak Ber Levinzon

text: Haskalah

text: Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh

text: Misnagdim

text: yeshiva

text: industry

text: charity

text: Bund

text: Russian Civil War

text: Kultur-lige

text: ORT

glossary: kahal tsadik Haskalah Misnagdim yeshiva mikveh


title: Heryng, Helena

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.

text: Warsaw

text: Feliks Kon

text: Zygmunt Heryng

text: Łódź

text: Galicia


title: Refuseniks

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.

text: Soviet Union

text: emigrate

text: Ukraine

text: Belorussia

text: Lithuania

text: Latvia

text: Estonia

text: Transcarpathia

text: Bessarabia

text: Bucovina

text: Kiev

text: Odessa


title: Roman

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%).

text: Romania

text: Siret

text: crafts

text: Kosov Hasidim

text: Zionists

text: Horia Carp

text: M. Blecher

text: Soviet Union

text: Iaşi

text: Bessarabia

text: Botoşani

text: Transylvania

text: Brăila

text: Paşcani

text: Târgu Frumos

text: Transnistria

glossary:
Magid
Ḥoveve Tsiyon


title: Mapu, Avraham

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.

imgDesc: Avraham Mapu. Print by W. Boharski, Russia. (YIVO)

text: Haskalah

text: Kovno

text: Vilna

text: Hebrew prose

text: theater

text: Passover

text: Haskalah

glossary: Haskalah Torah maskil


title: Pomeranchuk, Isaak Iakovlevich

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.

text: USSR

text: Warsaw

text: Rostov-on-Don

text: Lev Davidovich Landau

text: Moscow


title: Hilsner Affair

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.

imgDesc: “Drowning Men Grasping at a Straw.” Humoristicke listy (Funny Pages), Prague, September 1899. Cartoon depicting Leopold Hilsner with Alfred Dreyfus, the French Jew convicted of espionage and recently pardoned by the French government, grasping at the straw of “denial” of guilt. (National Museum, Prague)

text: Bohemia

text: Tiszaeszlár

text: Hungary

text: Poland

text: Blood Libels and Host Desecration Accusations

text: Prague

text: Jihlava

text: Prague

text: Czechoslovakia


title: Jastrun, Mieczysław

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.

text: Warsaw

text: Holocaust

text: Artur Sandauer

text: assimilation


title: Ehrlich, Ludwik

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.

text: Tarnopol

text: Lwów

text: Poland

text: Silesia

text: Prague

text: Iaşi

text: Kraków

text: Gdańsk


title: Mendelson, Stanisław

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.

text: banking

text: Warsaw

text: Russia

text: Poland

text: assimilation

text: Lemberg

text: Zionism

text: Naḥum Sokolow


title: Katzenellenbogen, Tsevi Hirsh

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.

text: Vilna

text: Haskalah

text: Avraham Dov Lebensohn

text: Yeshiva

text: Yitsḥak Ber Levinzon

text: Russia

text: kahal

text: bet midrash

text: dress

text: seminary

text: Max Lilienthal

text: Russia

text: Saint Petersburg

text: kahal

text: Ha-Karmel

text: Bobruisk

glossary: Torah Haskalah Yeshiva kahal Talmud


title: Donets’k

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.

text: Ukraine

text: Russia

text: banking

text: Habimah

text: pogroms

text: industry

text: Rostov-on-Don


title: Zhemchuzhina, Polina Semenovna

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.

text: Ekaterinoslav

text: Communist Party

text: Kiev

text: Kharkov

text: Ukraine

text: Moscow

text: Solomon Mikhoels

text: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee

text: Doctors’ Plot

text: Moscow


title: Weinberg, Mieczysław

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.

text: Warsaw

text: Yiddish theater

text: Poland

text: Minsk

text: Solomon Mikhoels

text: Moscow

text: Y. L. Peretz

text: Shmuel Halkin

text: censorship

text: Julian Tuwim

text: Holocaust

text: Babi Yar


title: About this Article (Rabbinate)

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.

imgDesc: Nathan Ehrenfeld, chief rabbi of Prague, ca. 1890. (YIVO)

text: Rabbinic Literature

text: Rebetsin

text: Crown Rabbi

text: Seminary

text: Yeshiva

text: Hasidism


title: Jackson-Vanik Amendment

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.

text: emigration

text: Moscow

text: antisemitism

text: Soviet Union


title: Fuchs, Alfred

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).

text: Zionist

text: Prague

text: assimilation


title: Silberbusch, David Yesha‘yahu

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).

text: Galicia

text: Haskalah

text: Avrom Goldfadn

text: Kolomea

text: Perets Smolenskin

text: Ha-Shaḥar

text: Romania

text: Botoşani

text: Zionist

text: Galicia

text: Lwów

text: Ahad Ha-Am

text: Hebrew literature


title: Sobol’, Andrei

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).

text: Vilna

text: Zionist

text: Russia

text: Odessa

text: Moscow

text: Sholem Aleichem

text: theater

text: antisemitism

text: pogroms

text: Civil War

text: Bundist

text: Bal-Makhshoves


title: Tsevi Elimelekh of Dinov

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.

text: Hasidism

text: Elimelekh of Lizhensk

text: Shimshon ben Pesaḥ of Ostropolye

text: Zhidachov

text: Ropshits

text: Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz

text: Lublin

text: Menaḥem Mendel of Rimanov

text: Yisra’el of Kozhenits

text: Galician

text: Munkács

text: Hungary

text: geese

text: Munkatsh Hasidic dynasty

text: Haskalah

glossary: Magid Kabbalah Haskalah Torah Zohar Talmud


title: Molnár, Ferenc

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.

text: Budapest

text: Hungary

text: assimilation


title: Ioffe, Vladimir Il’ich

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.

text: Petrograd

text: Ḥayim Lenski


title: Donath, Adolph

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).

text: Moravia

text: poetry

text: Zionist politics

text: Brno

text: Lublin

text: Prague


title: Pick, Otto

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).

text: Prague

text: Max Brod

text: Franz Kafka

text: Franz Werfel

text: Willy Haas

text: František Langer

text: Czechoslovakia

text: Poland


title: Mincs, Pauls

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.

text: Daugavpils

text: Latvia

text: Riga

text: Saint Petersburg

text: Tartu

text: Estonia

text: Vladimirs

text: Soviet Union


title: Central Committee of Jews in Poland

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.

imgDesc: Members of the Central Committee of Jews in Bielawa, Poland, 1945–1946. Photograph by Bronisław Eidler. (YIVO)

text: Poland

text: Holocaust

text: Soviet Union

text: Lublin

text: Emil Sommerstein

text: Warsaw

text: Communist

text: Bundist

text: Po‘ale Tsiyon

text: He-Ḥaluts

text: Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir

text: Adolf Berman

text: TOZ

text: ORT

text: sport

text: Kielce

text: Hersh Smolar


title: Idishe Shtime, Di

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.

text: Kaunas

text: General Zionists

text: Riga

text: Frimorgn

text: Leyb Gorfinkel

text: Bal-Makhshoves

text: Jacob Robinson

text: Ruvn Rubinshteyn

text: Zalman Shneour

text: Ya‘akov Ze’ev Latzky-Bertholdi

text: Lithuania


title: Smolenskin, Perets

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.

imgDesc: Postcard celebrating Hebrew authors Perets Smolenskin (center) and (clockwise from top left) Shelomoh Mandelkern, Mordekhai Tsevi Mane, Avraham Ber Gottlober, and Avraham Shalom Friedberg. Publisher unknown, Russian Empire. (YIVO)

text: Ha-Shaḥar

text: Haskalah

text: Zionist

text: Belarus

text: yeshiva

text: Shklov

text: Lubavitch

text: Pale of Settlement

text: Odessa

text: Ha-Melits

text: Ha-Shaḥar

text: Russian Empire

text: Romania

text: antisemitic

text: pogroms

text: Hasidism

text: conversion

text: assimilation

text: religious reform

text: Ha-Boker or

text: Avraham Ber Gottlober

text: pogroms

text: Saint Petersburg

text: Moscow

glossary:
Haskalah
yeshiva
Pale of Settlement
maskil
Torah
Ḥoveve Tsiyon


title: Hazai, Samu

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.

text: Slovakia

text: Budapest


title: ORT

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.

imgDesc: Tailoring workshop sponsored by ORT, Sighet Marmației, Romania, ca. 1920s. (YIVO)

text: Russian Empire

text: Saint Petersburg

text: USSR

text: Birobidzhan

text: Poland

text: ghettos

text: Romania

text: Hungary

text: Ukraine


title: Gurin, Samuel

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.

imgDesc: Page from Divre yeme ha-benayim (History of the Middle Ages), by Samuel Gurin and Yitsḥak Reznikov (Kishinev: Yak. Shekhter and Sons, 1922). This Hebrew textbook was written by Gurin with Hebrew high schools in mind. (YIVO)

text: Estonia

text: Brest-Litovsk

text: heder

text: Warsaw

text: Bund

text: Bendery

text: Bessarabia

text: Romania

text: Ukraine

text: Tallinn

text: USSR

text: Russia


title: Shalnikov, Aleksandr Iosifovich

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.

text: USSR

text: Saint Petersburg

text: Moscow


title: Brik, Liliia Iur’evna and Osip Maksimovich

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.

imgDesc: Liliia Brik and Vladimir Mayakovsky in a film (since lost) written by Mayakovsky, Moscow, 1918. (hcb/ 360-berlin)

text: Moscow

text: Viktor Shklovskii

text: Roman Jakobson

text: Iurii Tynianov

text: Russia


title: Soloveichik Family

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.

imgDesc: Rabbi Ḥayim Soloveichik, ca. 1915. (YIVO)

text: Misnagdic

text: Gaon of Vilna

text: Ḥayim of Volozhin

text: yeshiva

text: Volozhin

text: Hasidic

text: Haskalah

text: Lithuania

text: Belorussia

text: Slobodka

text: Kovno

text: Mir

text: Telz

text: Slutsk

text: Ponevezh

text: Holocaust

text: Naftali Tsevi Yehudah Berlin

text: Warsaw

text: Lwów

text: Brest

text: Ḥibat Tsiyon

text: Lev Pinsker

text: Mosheh Leib Lilienblum

text: Zionist

text: Mizraḥi

text: Agudas Yisroel

text: Warsaw

text: Kamenets

text: Yosef Shelomoh Kahaneman

text: Orthodoxy

text: messianism

text: Ashkenaz

glossary: Gaon yeshiva Haskalah Talmud responsa Maimonides kolel halakhah


title: Fal’k, Robert

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.

imgDesc: Set design by Robert Fal'k for Mendele Moykher-Sforim's Kitser masoes Binyomin hashlishi (The Brief Travels of Benjamin III), produced by Aleksandr Granovskii, Moscow State Yiddish Theater, 1927. Oil on canvas. (GDC 989. 313889; © Federal State Institution of Culture "A.A. Bakhrushin State Central Theatrical Museum," Moscow)

text: Moscow

text: Marc Chagall

text: Natan Al’tman

text: Petrograd

text: Vitebsk

text: Kultur-lige

text: Moscow State Yiddish Theater

text: Y. L. Peretz

text: Mendele Moykher-Sforim

text: Habimah

text: Soviet Union

text: Yiddish theater

text: M. Daniel

text: Sholem Aleichem


title: Kaminka, Aharon

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).

text: Berdichev

text: Kiev

text: Esriel Hildesheimer

text: Sha’ul Pinḥas Rabbinowitz

text: Hebrew literature

text: Prague

text: Zionist

text: Russia

text: Romania

text: Drogobych

text: Land of Israel

glossary: Maimonides Talmud


title: Krochmal, Menaḥem Mendel ben Avraham

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.

text: Kraków

text: David ben Shemu’el ha-Levi

text: Yo’el Sirkes

text: yeshiva

text: Lublin

text: Moravia

text: Mikulov

text: Gershon Ashkenazi

glossary: responsa yeshiva get


title: Bernfeld, Shim‘on

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.

text: Galicia

text: Ivano-Frankivs’k

text: Ukraine

text: Ha-Magid

text: Land of Israel

text: Hebrew literature

text: Ahad Ha-Am

text: Ha-Shiloaḥ

text: Haskalah

glossary: maskil Magid Torah Haskalah


title: Barukh ben David Yavan

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.

text: Shalom Shakhnah

text: Kraków

text: shtadlan

text: Poland

text: Yonatan Eybeschütz

text: Sabbatianism

text: Lublin

text: Frankists

text: Saint Petersburg

glossary:
Talmud
Council of Four Lands


title: Steklov, Iurii Mikhailovich

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.

text: Odessa

text: Russia

text: Saint Petersburg

text: February Revolution


title: About this Article (Censorship)

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.

imgDesc: Shefa‘ tal by Shabetai Sheftel ben Akiva Horowitz (Bilzorka: Mordekhai, 1807). This kabbalistic work was issued by one of the many small presses that emerged in the Russian Empire in the late eighteenth century and  is  printed on the type of cheap, blue-tinted paper often used by indigent printers.  The stamp at center, right, indicates that the book at one time  belonged to the library of Yisroel Halevi Kitover, rabbi of Felsztyn (now Skelivka, Ukr.). (Bottom) Russian censor's stamp. (Top) Inscription by another owner of the book, "Moyshe of the village of Holvits" (Golevichi?, Bel.). (YIVO)

text: Approbation


title: Kaplan, Fannie Efimovna

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.

text: Moscow

text: Petrograd

text: Ukraine

text: Russia

text: revolution of 1905

text: Kiev


title: Siret

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.

text: Romania

text: Suceava

text: Moldavian

text: Bucovina

text: Galicia

text: Bucovina

text: Zionism

text: Craiova

text: Rădăuți

text: ghettos

text: Transnistria


title: Migration since World War I (Population and Migration)

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).

imgDesc: Refugees in a temporary shelter, Kishinev (now Chişinău, Moldova), ca. 1914–1917. On the wall is a poster for the Holland America Line, one of the steamship companies that carried European emigrants to the United States and elsewhere. (YIVO)

text: Holocaust

text: Russia

text: Poland

text: Romania

text: Lithuania

text: Pale of Settlement

text: Moscow

text: Saint Petersburg

text: Kiev

text: Odessa

text: Warsaw

text: Łódź

text: Lwów

text: Bucharest

text: Romania

text: Slovakia

text: Bratislava

text: Prague

text: Hungary

text: Budapest

text: Bessarabia

text: Bucovina

text: Soviet Union

text: Beriḥah

text: Czechoslovakia

text: Ukraine

text: Belorussia

text: Kiev

text: Minsk

text: Moldova

text: Odessa

text: Khar’kiv

text: Dnipropetrovs’k

glossary:
Pale of Settlement
Diaspora


title: Heryng, Zygmunt

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.

text: Warsaw

text: Saint Petersburg

text: Russia

text: Helena Kon (Heryng)

text: Feliks Kon

text: Poland

text: Maksymilian Horwitz


title: Eli‘ezer ben Yitsḥak

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.

text: printer

text: Prague

text: Lublin

text: Poland

text: Land of Israel

text: Sabbatians


title: Hirszenberg, Szmul

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.

imgDesc: The Sabbath Rest. Szmul Hirszenberg, 1894. Oil on canvas. Ben Uri Gallery, The London Jewish Museum. (Image courtesy Ben Uri Gallery)

text: Łódź

text: Kraków

text: Poland

text: Maurycy Gottlieb

text: Sabbath

text: Kishinev


title: Military Service in Russia

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.

imgDesc: Benjamin Freiman (right) from Marijampol (now in Lithuania), and another Jewish soldier in the tsarist army, Kronstadt, Russia, ca. 1890s. Photograph by U. Ia. Iakovlev. (YIVO)

text: Russia

text: trade

text: crafts

text: Pale of Settlement

text: informers

text: kahal

text: Poland

text: Sabbath

text: Kiev

text: shtadlonim

text: Moscow

text: Yisra’el Me’ir ha-Kohen

text: Vilna

text: Warsaw

text: Yosef Trumpeldor

text: Kiev

text: Kharkov

text: World War I

text: Galicia

text: February Revolution of 1917

glossary:
Pale of Settlement
kahal
Torah


title: Brodt, Shemu’el

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.

text: Zionist

text: Łódź

text: yeshiva

text: Mizraḥi

text: Agudas Yisroel

text: Agudas Yisroel

text: Poland

text: Yehoshu‘a Heshel Farbstein


title: Frankel, Leó

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.

text: Óbuda

text: Hungary

text: Hungary

text: Zionism


title: Weiss, Marcus Nissa

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.

text: Hungary

text: Josephinian school system

text: Haskalah

text: Breslau

text: religious reform

glossary: maskil Haskalah Talmud


title: Literarishe Tribune

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.

text: Łódź

text: Warsaw

text: Piotrków

text: censorship

text: Poland

text: Soviet Union

text: Bund

text: Orthodox Jewry

text: newspapers and periodicals

text: censorship

text: Der fraynd


title: Rákosi, Mátyás

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.

text: Hungary

text: Budapest

text: Russia

text: Soviet Union

text: Moscow

text: Debrecen


title: Razsvet

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.

text: Odessa

text: Haskalah

text: Osip Rabinovich

text: Lev Levanda

text: Saint Petersburg

text: Aleksander Zederbaum

text: Grigorii Bogrov

text: Daniil Khvol’son

text: Shimen Frug

text: pogroms

text: Russia

text: agriculture

text: Mosheh Leib Lilienblum

text: Zionist

text: Yitsḥak Grünbaum

text: Vladimir Jabotinsky

text: Revisionist Zionist


title: Orgelbrand Family

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.

text: Warsaw

text: seminary

text: Poland

text: Tsene-rene


title: Passover

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.

imgDesc: Matzo cover made by May Szyster for her father, Ya‘akov Yisroel, Luboml, Poland (now Lyubomil, Ukr.), 1930. Embroidered: “Observe the Holiday of Matzos, Y. Y. Shuster, [in the year] 569.” (Collection of May Shuster Goodman, courtesy of the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.)

text: Purim

text: Yisra’el Salanter

text: Sabbath

text: Leszno

text: Poznań

text: Hungary

text: Moravia

text: Avraham Sofer

text: Pressburg

text: Galicia

text: Lwów

text: Mordekhai Ze’ev Ettinger

text: Yosef Sha’ul Natanson

text: Hasidim

text: Zionists

text: Land of Israel

text: Elijah

text: blood libel

text: pogroms

text: Holocaust

text: ghettos

text: Warsaw


title: Brauner, Victor

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).

imgDesc: Peisaj dobrogean (Dobrudjan Landscape). Victor Brauner, Bucharest or Paris, 1928–1937. Oil on canvas. (© 2006 Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York / ADAGP, Paris. Image courtesy of Mariuca Stanciu)

text: Piatra-Neamț

text: Bucharest

text: Ilarie Voronca

text: Marcel Iancu

text: Max Hermann Maxy

text: Romania

text: Adam

text: Moldavian


title: Stage Design

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.

imgDesc: Natan Al’tman’s set design for Le Trouhadec by Jules Romain, Moscow State Yiddish Theater, ca. 1920s. (YIVO)

text: Yiddish theater

text: purim-shpil

text: bet midrash

text: Avrom Goldfadn

text: Soviet Russia

text: Vilna

text: Warsaw

text: Moscow

text: Marc Chagall

text: State Jewish Theater

text: Aleksandr Granovskii

text: Natan Al’tman

text: Robert Fal’k

text: Aleksandr Tyshler

text: Vilner Trupe

text: Yung-teater

text: Mark Arnshteyn

text: Michał Weichert


title: Theben, Koppel

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.

text: Bratislava

text: shtadlan

text: Hungary

text: Bohemian lands

text: Yonatan Eybeschütz

text: Sabbatian

text: blood libels

text: Prague

text: Yeḥezkel Landau

text: Shelomoh Rosenthal


title: Birobidzhan

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.

imgDesc:
Birobidzhan,
  ca. 1930.

text: Soviet Union

text: agriculture

text: Pale of Settlement

text: Crimea

text: Birobidzhaner shtern

text: anticosmopolitan campaigns

text: Zionist

text: Moscow

text: Leningrad

text: Land of Israel


title: Uzhhorod

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.

imgDesc: Subcarpathian Rus', ca. 2000.

text: Ukraine

text: Subcarpathian Rus’

text: Hungary

text: Czechoslovakia

text: Mukacheve

text: Sephardic

text: Khmel’nyts’kyi rebellion

text: Galicia

text: Hasidim

text: yeshiva

text: Ḥatam Sofer

text: Orthodox

text: Pressburg

text: El‘azar Löw

text: Shelomoh Ganzfried

text: Shulḥan ‘arukh

text: Haskalah

text: Marcus Nissa Weiss

text: religious reform

text: seminary

text: industry

text: Zionist

text: Židovská Strana

text: ghetto

text: Soviet Union

glossary:
yeshiva
kolel
Shulḥan ‘arukh
Haskalah
Neolog


title: Târgu Frumos

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.

text: Moldavian

text: Romania

text: Iaşi

text: Taubes

text: Botoşani

text: Transnistria


title: Erdős, Pál

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.

text: Budapest

text: Pál Turán

text: Hungary


title: Iagoda, Genrikh Grigor’evich

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.

text: Moscow

text: Saint Petersburg

text: Iakov Sverdlov

text: USSR

text: Kamenev

text: Zinov’ev

text: Trotsky

text: Communist Party

text: Zionist parties


title: Bloch, Yosef Shemu’el

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.

text: Galicia

text: Makhzikey ha-Das

text: Buczacz

text: Kołomyja

text: Shomer Yisra’el

text: Żólkiew


title: Weiss, Ernst

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.

text: Brno

text: Moravia

text: Prague

text: Franz Kafka


title: Timişoara

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.

imgDesc: Neolog synagogue, Timişoara, 1906. (Centrul pentru Studiul Istoriei Evreilor din Romania)

text: Banat

text: Transylvania

text: Romania

text: Hungary

text: Sephardic

text: Ashkenazic

text: Moravia

text: Jewish Congress

text: Orthodox

text: Zionist

text: Antisemitism

text: Poland

glossary:
Talmud
Neolog
Status Quo


title: Groper, Iacob Ashel

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.

text: Walachia

text: Moldavia

text: Mihăileni

text: Bucovina

text: Iaşi

text: Bucharest

text: Yiddishist Congress

text: Czernowitz

text: Ḥayim Naḥman Bialik

text: Y. L. Peretz

text: Romania

text: communism


title: Tsene-rene

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.

imgDesc: Tsene-rene. (Slavuta and Lemberg, 1848). (YIVO)

text: Ashkenaz

text: Efrayim of Luntshits

text: Lublin

text: Kraków

text: David ben Shemu’el ha-Levi

text: Shulḥan ‘arukh

text: Sabbath

text: Hasidism

text: Haskalah

glossary:
Torah
Talmud
Rashi
Naḥmanides
Shulḥan ‘arukh
haftarah
Haskalah


title: Jihlava

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).

text: Moravia

text: Czech Republic


title: Shatzky, Yankev

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.

imgDesc: Yankev Shatzky (second from right), in army uniform, and his brothers, Warsaw. (YIVO)

text: Warsaw

text: YIVO

text: theater

text: Poland

text: Lithuania

text: Ukraine

text: heder

text: Marceli Handelsman

text: Natan Hannover

text: gzeyres takh vetat

text: Holocaust

text: yizker-bikher

glossary:
heder
gzeyres takh vetat


title: Disenchik, Aryeh

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.

text: Zionist

text: Riga

text: Betar

text: Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky

text: Revisionist Zionism

text: Latvia

text: Haynt

text: Agudas Yisroel


title: Tamares, Aharon Shemu’el

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.

imgDesc: Postcard from Aharon Shemu’el Tamares to Ḥayim Tchernowitz, n.d. From Aharon Shemu’el Tamares in Milejczyce to Ḥayim Tchernowitz in Odessa, n.d., about a pamphlet he has prepared that includes essays on subjects related to Judaism, including Zionism. The pamphlet has been with the publisher Yehoshu‘a Ḥana Ravnitski for more than half a year but is still unpublished. Tamares suspects that this is because Ravnitski is a Herzlian Zionist, whereas the essays in the pamphlet promote the Ḥibat Tsiyon movement. He asks Tchernowitz to recommend a printer/publisher in Odessa. Hebrew. RG 107, Letters Collection. (YIVO)

text: Grodno

text: Kovno

text: Volozhin yeshiva

text: Białystok

text: Zionist

text: Ha-Melits

text: Brest

text: Ḥayim Naḥman Bialik

text: Sabbath

text: Passover

text: Ha-Tsefirah

text: Kolot

text: Fraynd

text: Beilis

text: Warsaw

text: Folkist

text: Agudas Yisroel

text: Der yud

text: Ḥayim Tchernowitz

text: yeshiva

text: seminary

text: Odessa

glossary: Kolel yeshiva


title: Radom

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.

imgDesc: Rabbi Yeḥi’el Kestenberg (in fur hat) gesticulating toward a group of orphans, Radom, Poland, 1923. The rabbi may have hoped that the photograph, possibly taken by an American visitor, would reach potential benefactors. (Forward Association / YIVO)

text: Poland

text: trade

text: crafts

text: Shemu’el Mohilewer

text: Zionist

text: Agudas Yisroel

text: Bund

text: Po‘ale Tsiyon

text: ghettos

text: Kielce


title: About this Article (Humor)

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.

imgDesc: “Long live laughter! Long laugh life!” Polish/Yiddish poster. An appearance by Yoysef Tunkel (Der Tunkeler), along with singer Anna Wysok, “the sweetheart of Warsaw,” in Kutno, Poland, 1925. Printed by J. Keltera, Warsaw. (YIVO)

text: Badkhonim

text: Cartoons

text: Parody

text: Purim-shpil

text: Satire


title: Eisenstadt

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.

imgDesc: Private synagogue established in Eisenstadt in the late seventeenth century by Shimshon Wertheimer, a prominent court Jew. Today, the synagogue is part of the Austrian Jewish Museum. (Austrian Jewish Museum, Eisenstadt)

text: Burgenland

text: Hungary

text: Esriel Hildesheimer

glossary: Talmud Torah


title: Mikhoels, Solomon Mikhailovich

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.

imgDesc: Solomon Mikhailovich Mikhoels presiding over a reading at the Moscow Yiddish Theater, ca. 1930s. Photograph by D. Sholomovich, Press Photoagency. (YIVO)

text: Moscow State Yiddish Theater

text: Dvinsk

text: heder

text: Riga

text: Kiev

text: Aleksandr Granovskii

text: theater

text: Moscow

text: Avrom Goldfadn

text: Sholem Aleichem

text: Mendele Moykher-Sforim

text: Dovid Bergelson

text: Perets Markish

text: M. Daniel

text: USSR

text: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee

text: Minsk


title: Bikhowsky, Elisheva

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.

imgDesc: Hebrew poet and novelist Elisheva Bikhowsky (seated, second from right) and her husband Dr. Shim‘on Bikhowsky (seated, center) in a group portrait on the eve of the couple’s departure for Palestine; Mielnica, Poland (now Mel’nytsya-Podil’s’ka, Ukr.), 1925. (YIVO)

text: Russia

text: Moscow

text: Yosef Ḥayim Brenner

text: Uri Nisan Gnessin

text: Zionism

text: blood libel

text: Kishinev


title: Berkowicz, Yosef

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.

text: Warsaw

text: Berek Joselewicz

text: Russia

text: Poland


title: Edelstein, Jakob

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.

imgDesc: Both sides of a 20-kronen note printed for use in the Terezín concentration camp, 1943. At lower right is the signature of Jakob Edelstein, the Czech Zionist leader who was appointed by the Nazis to serve as the head of the Jewish administration in Terezín. (YIVO)

text: Terezín

text: Galicia

text: Brno

text: Brno

text: Zionism

text: Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir

text: Prague

text: František Weidmann

text: Poland

text: Terezín


title: Hebrew Prose (Prose)

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.

imgDesc: Title page of Mistere Pariz (Paris Mysteries), translated by Kalman Schulman (Vilna: Romm Press, 1858). This Hebrew translation of Eugène Sue’s Mystères de Paris enjoyed great popularity and was reprinted many times. (YIVO)

text: Galicia

text: Hebrew literature

text: Haskalah

text: Hasidic

text: parody

text: Yosef Perl

text: satire

text: Tarnopol

text: Ba‘al Shem Tov

text: Yitsḥak Erter

text: Menaḥem Mendel Lefin

text: Tarnów

text: Lithuania

text: Avraham Mapu

text: Land of Israel

text: Kalman Schulman

text: Eli‘ezer Zweifel

text: Avraham Dov Lebensohn

text: Avraham Uri Kovner

text: Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh

text: Mordekhai Aharon Gintsburg

text: Mosheh Leib Lilienblum

text: Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh

text: Perets Smolenskin

text: Re’uven Asher Braudes

text: Yehudah Leib Gordon

text: Mordekhai David Brandstetter

text: Ayzik Meyer Dik

text: Avraham Ber Gottlober

text: Leopold Kompert

text: Yiddish literature

text: Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh

text: Avraham Leib Shalkovich

text: Yesha‘yahu Bershadsky

text: Y. L. Peretz

text: David Frishman

text: Mordekhai Ze’ev Feierberg

text: Mikhah Yosef Berdyczewski

text: Ḥayim Naḥman Bialik

text: Simḥah Alter Gutmann

text: Aharon Avraham Kabak

text: Asher Barash

text: Yehudah Steinberg

text: Yitsḥak Dov Berkowitz

text: shtetl

text: Yosef Ḥayim Brenner

text: Uri Nisan Gnessin

text: Gershom Shofman

text: Ya‘akov Steinberg

text: Devorah Baron

text: Ya‘akov Rabinowitz

text: Haskalah

text: Poland

text: Tsevi Zevulun Weinberg

text: Re’uven Fahn

text: Russia

text: Tsevi Hirsh Preigerzon

text: Holocaust

text: Ḥayim Hazaz

text: Gershom Shofman

text: Belorussia

text: Warsaw

text: Vilna

text: Odessa

text: Shemu’el Yosef Agnon

text: Buczacz

glossary: Haskalah tsadik maskil


title: Taubes Family

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.

text: Galicia

text: Romania

text: Iaşi

text: Moldavia

text: Lwów

text: Hungary

text: Vaslui

text: Bârlad

text: Bucharest

text: Focşani

text: Botoşani

text: Czechoslovakia

text: Mizraḥi

text: Zionist

text: Bucovina


title: Friedberg, Avraham Shalom

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.

imgDesc: Tombstone of Avraham Shalom Friedberg, Warsaw, ca. 1903. At top, engraved on the open book, is verse 5 from Psalm 137, “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.” The volumes depicted on the tombstone bear the titles of the writer’s works, and underneath the clasped hands is Friedberg’s pseudonym, “Har Shalom.” Photograph by Helios. (The Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem)

text: Grodno

text: Lithuania

text: Russia

text: Brisk

text: Berdichev

text: Kishinev

text: Kalman Schulman

text: Avraham Ber Gottlober

text: Shemu’el Yosef Fuenn

text: Avraham Mapu

text: Kovno

text: Warsaw

text: pogroms

text: Ḥibat Tsiyon

text: Saint Petersburg

text: Ha-Melits

text: Ha-Tsefirah

text: Aḥi’asaf

glossary: Talmud Naḥmanides


title: Lusternik, Malki’el

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.

imgDesc: Malki’el Lusternik in the resort town of Zakopane, Poland, ca. 1930s. (Asher Barash Gnazim Institute, Tel Aviv)

text: Zionist

text: Łódź

text: Gordonia

text: Berl Pomerantz

text: Tsevi Zevulun Weinberg

text: Poland

text: Warsaw

text: Opatów

text: Land of Israel

text: Julian Tuwim

text: humor


title: Kloyz

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.

imgDesc: Jewish communal buildings near the railroad tracks, including (from right) the kloyz, synagogue, “old” bet midrash, “new” bet midrash, and Talmud Torah, Iwie, Poland (now Iwye, Bel.), ca. 1920s. (YIVO)

text: Lublin

text: Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el

text: Prague

text: Poland–Lithuania

text: Land of Israel

text: bet midrash

text: yeshiva

text: David Gans

text: Prague

text: gzeyres takh vetat

text: Poland

text: Poland

text: Lithuania

text: Poland

text: Lithuania

text: Minsk

text: Lithuania

text: Brody

text: Medzhibizh

text: Opatów

text: Poland

text: Poznań

text: Poland

text: Prague

text: Brody

text: Opatów

text: Minsk

text: Brody

text: Zamość

text: Brody

text: piety

text: approbation

text: Sabbath

text: Opatów

text: rabbinate

text: approbation

text: Brody

text: councils

text: Musar movement

glossary:
Torah
yeshiva
gzeyres takh vetat
Kabbalah
Musar


title: Gershuni, Grigorii Andreevich

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.

imgDesc: Grigorii Andreevich Gershuni in prisoner’s clothing, during his period of exile in Siberia, ca. 1905. (YIVO)

text: Kaunas

text: Lithuania

text: Belorussia

text: Moscow

text: Finland

text: Russia

text: Khar’kiv

text: Saint Petersburg


title: Nomberg, Hersh Dovid

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.

imgDesc: Hersh Dovid Nomberg (left) with Vilner Trupe actor Chaim Sznejer, Warsaw, ca. 1920s. (YIVO)

text: Hasidic

text: Warsaw

text: Haskalah

text: Orthodoxy

text: Y. L. Peretz

text: Avrom Reyzen

text: Sholem Asch

text: Der yud

text: Ha-Dor

text: Riga

text: Vilna

text: prose

text: Zalmen Reyzen

text: Yosef Ḥayim Brenner

text: Hebrew literature

text: Czernowitz

text: Der fraynd

text: theater critic

text: Haynt

text: Poland

text: Folkspartey

text: Der moment

text: Nasz Przegląd

text: TSYSHO

glossary: Haskalah Yeshiva


title: Jutrzenka

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.

text: Warsaw

text: Daniel Neufeld

text: Dostrzegacz Nadwiślański

text: Hilary Nussbaum

text: Aleksander Kraushar

text: Ludwik Gumplowicz

text: Poland

text: religious reform


title: Rotholc, Stanisław

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.

imgDesc: Stanisław (Shepsel) Rotholc (left) with two other athletes at a sporting event, Poland, 1930s. (Archiwum Dokumentacji Mechanicznej)

text: Warsaw

text: sports

text: Shtern

text: Po‘ale Tsiyon

text: Poland

text: ghetto police


title: Voronca, Ilarie

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).

text: Brăila

text: Romania

text: Bucharest

text: Victor Brauner

text: shtetls

text: Moldavia

text: Marcel Janco (Iancu)

text: Victor Brauner

text: Max Hermann Maxy

text: Marc Chagall


title: Elijah the Prophet

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.

text: proverbs

text: Passover

text: circumcision

text: ba‘al shem

text: Hasidic

text: charity

text: folk songs

text: Ignatz Bernstein


title: Berdyczewski, Mikhah Yosef

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.

imgDesc: Title page of Maḥanayim (The Two Camps), by Mikhah Yosef Berdyczewski (Warsaw: Tushiyah, 1900). (Ginze Mikhah Yosef, Holon, Israel)

text: Medzhibizh

text: Ukraine

text: Hasidism

text: Uman

text: Haskalah

text: Volozhin yeshiva

text: Lithuania

text: yeshiva

text: Bet ha-midrash

text: Odessa

text: Ahad Ha-Am

text: Ha-Shiloaḥ

text: Hebrew literature

text: Russia

text: shtetl

text: Breslau

text: World War I

text: Avraham Yosef Stybel

text: pogroms

glossary:
Haskalah
yeshiva
maskil
Torah
Bet ha-midrash


title: Bal-Makhshoves

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.

imgDesc: A gathering of Jewish intellectuals in Kulautuva, Lithuania, 1920 or 1921. Those identified in the photograph include journalist Reuven Tsarfat (2, in fedora); Bal-Makhshoves (4, wearing white boater); Dovid Bergelson (6, on ground with his head on his neighbor’s knee), his wife (10, seated, second from left), and son (5, small child to Bergelson’s left); Zelig Kalmanovitch (7, with striped tie, center); Jakob Lestschinsky (8, to Kalmanovitch’s right); and Nokhem Shtif (9, to the left of Bergelson’s wife). (YIVO)

text: Kovno

text: Lithuania

text: Musar Movement

text: piety

text: yeshiva

text: Warsaw

text: Der yud

text: Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh

text: assimilation

text: Yiddish literature

text: Sholem Aleichem

glossary: maskil Musar yeshiva Diaspora


title: Ashkenaz

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.

imgDesc: Title page of Seder tefilot ke-minhag ashkenaz u-polin (Order of the Prayers According to the Custom of Germany and Poland), by Rabbi Ya‘akov ben Yitsḥak Ashkenazi of Janów (Amsterdam, 1751). This book, first published in 1590, was written especially for women and included the complete text of the Tsene-rene, a popular Yiddish adaptation and paraphrase of the Pentateuch, haftarot, and megilot. (YIVO)

text: Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth

text: Yiddish

text: Hasidism

text: piety

text: Mosheh Isserles

text: Shulḥan ‘arukh

glossary:
Rashi
Talmud
Torah
Shulḥan ‘arukh


title: Killing Centers

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.

imgDesc: A mobile gas van used to murder Jews at the Chełmno death camp being examined by reporters, Poland, ca. 1945. Photograph by Nachman Zonabend. (YIVO)

text: Soviet Union

text: Aktion Reinhard

text: Poland

text: Łódź

text: Lublin

text: Galicia

text: Radom

text: Warsaw

text: Białystok

text: Bohemia-Moravia

text: Slovakia


title: Tsimbl

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.)

imgDesc: Kapela Żydowska (Jewish band).  Painting by Kolodorfer. Poland, late nineteenth century. Watercolor. The young boy (3rd from right) plays a tsimbl. (Moldovan Family Collection)

text: Belorussia

text: Galicia

text: Holocaust

text: Ukraine

text: Poland

text: Lithuania

text: Hungary

text: Lwów

text: Bohemia

text: Latvia

text: Romania

text: Vitebsk

text: Marc Chagall

text: Hungary

text: Iaşi


title: Lánczy, Leó

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.

text: banking

text: Hungary

text: transportation

text: Budapest