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Rabbis, Authors
and Religious Life

The Gorzd Rabbis

1. R. Leib Teitz.
2. His son R. Ber Teitz.
3. R. Boruch Beg.
4. R. Nachum Gutman, died in the year 5593 [1833]. (His great-grandchildren lived in Lordz.)
5. R. Yosele Shveksner.
6. His son R. Zev Yofe, died in the year 5608 [1848] during a great epidemic which claimed many victims. (According to a tradition, this Yofe family descends from the famous sage R. Mordechai Yofe, author of the “Levush,” and a chain of rabbis stretched over 12 generations in the family.
7. His son R. Moshe Yofe, 5608 - 5615 [1848 - 1855].
8. His son R. Yosef Yofe was a rabbi in Pokroi, Salant, Gorzd and finally in Manchester, England where he died in the year 5657 [1897].
9. R. Yitzhak Rabinowitz, known by the name R. Itzile Ponevezher, died in Ponevezh in the year 5688 [1928].
10. The rabbi and sage R. Shabse Aharon Shapiro, of blessed memory, a son of R. Moshe Shapiro (Rabbi of Riga and a grandson of R. Eizele Slonimer – R. Eizele Kharif.
11. R. Meir Levin, born 5653 [1893] Tsitubin. Killed Tammuz 5701 [July, 1941].

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In the community of Gorzd he was known by the name “R' Yankel der Rav.” So were called in Lithuanian towns outstanding scholars in Torah and piety, who were indeed certified rabbis but did not serve in the rabbinate.

My father zt”l refused to serve in the rabbinate and rejected offers that came to him from various communities, such as the communities of Poznah and Würzburg in Germany. Only in the years of the First World War he acceded to the request of Gorzd community leaders. He agreed to serve as rabbi and judge until the return of the Rabbi of Gorzd, R' Shabtai Shapiro zt”l. who left Gorzd and returned only after the war.

My father zt”l was born in 1880 in the town of Piask [Piaski in the Lomza region. In 1904, he arrived in Gorzd from Yeshivat Shveksna. At the head of this yeshiva stood R' Benzion Zev Krenitz and my father was one of his distinguished students. R' Krenitz was the

Breina Burshteyn		Rabbi R' Yakov Burshteyn

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the head of the yeshivah chose Yankel Schnadever (so he was named after the town he came from). Before that, my father studied at the Radin Yeshiva and was ordained there to the rabbinate.

As was customary in those days, my father was supported by his father-in-law and helped him in his shop, but he devoted most of the day to studying the Torah. He studied in the Beit HaMidrash with his friends: R' Shmuel Ben Zion Kretinger, R' Yakov Factor and R' Yosef Bloch. Several years later a yeshiva was founded in Gorzd, and it was headed by R' Aytzel Katz and my father.

He belonged to the Musar [ethical] movement in Lithuania, which was founded by R' Yisrael Salanter, and was a member of Talmud Torah HaGedola [“The Great Study of Torah”] founded by R' Simcha Zissel in the city of Kelme. For the High Holidays my father traveled to Kelme to pray there together with the members of Talmud Torah HaGedola.

Together with other homeowners my father founded Talmud Torah, a religious school for boys, in Gorzd. My father was involved in all community affairs and participated in its various activities. The family's livelihood was from a grocery store with a lot of help from my mother. In the last years of his life, he also engaged in the fur trade and was very successful in his work. This occupation caused him to travel to Germany, to the cities of Berlin and Leipzig. In every place, my father was respected and honored by the people he traded with.

When my father died in 1922, as a result of a train accident on the way to Memel, all the Jews of Gorzd, together with the family members, mourned him and felt great pain.

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The history of the Yaffe family from Gorzd was not written very easily. The sources of origin and family information were obscure to me, and I did not know the methods of historical research. Therefore, I must rely on little written documentation and memories regarding my family's past. I also express my deep gratitude to Mrs. Yehudit Leshem of Tel Aviv, for the considerable help she has given me. Her extensive knowledge of the subject was a valuable source of information for me.

This article, with everything missing in it, was written for two reasons: the first is the feeling that the family history should be documented in time, so as not to miss the opportunity that may be the last. The Gorzd community, whose few remnants are scattered throughout the world, occupies an honorable place in the history of Lithuanian Jewry, and we must not agree that its memory will be erased forever. The second reason is the hope that others will be able to fill the gaps in this modest article and correct everything that needs to be corrected.

The first connection between the Yaffe family and the holy community of Gorzd began in 1840, when Rabbi Moshe Yaffe, my great-grandfather, was appointed the town's' chief rabbi at a very young age. He was the son of R' Velvel of Shveksne [Švėkšna] and grandson of R' Yosef Yaffe also of Shveksne. He had one brother, R' Meir Yaffe, who lived in Slant [Salantai], and I heard that there was another brother whose first name I was unable to find out. He immigrated to the United States and his ties with the family in Gorzd were severed over the years.

R' Moshe Yaffe had five children. His eldest was R' Yosef Yaffe, who was born in 1845 and was destined to inherit his father's place as the Rabbi of Gorzd. Next came his sister, Liebe who married R' Zusse Zussmanovitch, a trader in Gorzd. It was reported that in the period before the First World War he succeeded in his business and was among the fairly wealthy people. However, his business collapsed due to the upheavals of the war. Libbe passed away in 1933. Several of her descendants, including great–great–grandchildren, are now living in Israel.

The third, R' Velve, had two sons and several daughters. One son, Gershon, immigrated to England and later to the United States, while the second, Baruch, lived in Telz [Telšiai]. R' Moshe-Hirsh Yaffe's fourth son lived in Plungiany[Plungė] and had no children.

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The youngest in the family, Leib, married Sheina Zussmanovitch, Zusse's sister. His eldest son, Velve, immigrated to the United States before the First World War, and lived in the state of Ohio until his death in 1965. Several of his brothers and sisters followed him to the United States.

Immediately after his marriage, R' Yosef retired and left to study the Torah at the Kollel in Eishishuk [Eišiškės], while his wife remained to live at her parents'

Rebbetzin Basha, wife of R' Yosef Yaffe		Rabbi Yosef Yaffe of Manchester

In 1885, his father passed away and R' Yosef was invited to fill his place in Gorzd. I heard that he pondered a lot before accepting the invitation. The Salant rabbinate was considered an extremely prestigious rabbinical position, and he accepted the position only due to family pressure, especially from his sister Liebe. After their father served as the Rabbi of Gorzd for such a long time (forty-five years), they asked that the chain will not be severed. In Gorzd, he had another son and daughter.

In 1893, he left Lithuania to serve as Rabbi of the Central Synagogue in Manchester, England, where he lived to the day of his death. He took with him all

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his family members except for his eldest daughter Hinde, who was married to Yakov Glick, and they remained in Gorzd.

However, R' Yosef Yaffe did not live long in Manchester, and he died there at an early age in 1897.

R' Yosef Yaffe was distinguished as a scholar and preacher. His published books are: Yosef Be'ur a commentary on Song of Songs which was published in Lithuania. Ha-Sekel we ha-Ye?er a poem written as a Bar–mitzvah present for a student and published in Manchester. Ahavat Zion ve Yerushalayim [Love of Zion and Jerusalem], a collection of assays and sermons that remained in manuscript and published in Manchester about sixty years after his passing,

He very active in the Hibbat Zion movement, and his death in 1897 accrued as he was preparing to participate in the First Zionist Congress in Basel.

R' Baruch Yaffe son of R' Velve		R' Velve Yaffe

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As mentioned, the family's history to this day cannot be encompassed in a few lines. The descendants of R' Moshe in Israel alone, must be counted in the hundreds, and they are scattered in universities, liberal professions, business, kibbutzim, etc. Many of his descendants are found in the United States, England, South Africa and Australia. Those who are known to me are too numerous to list by name, and there must be many more whom I don't know. I will only mention here three of R' Moshe's grandchildren who are still alive: Myer Yaffe [Jaffe], R' Yosef 's second son who lives in Australia, Martha (Michal) Fishman, youngest daughter of Leib Yaffe, who lives in the United States, and Mrs. Ida Frankenheim, daughter of Velve Yaffe, who resides in Tel Aviv.

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An exceptional figure walked in Gorzd for years, from 5682-1922 to the day of his passing, R' Moshe Markovitz, the Shoemaker-Bibliographer. Most of Gorzd Jews didn't appreciate the shoemaker's bibliographical work, who sat in his meager home hunched over his workbench mending shoes. He was deeply immersed in the books of sages and great Jewish scholars, and the history of their lives, as he wrote them in his book Shem ha-Gedolim haShlishi [“The Third book of the Names of the Great Ones”]. The Jews of our town mocked him and

R' Moshe Markovitz (Moshe'le der Mechaber)

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He was often seen in various places searching through books, and many times left for cities and towns near and far to seek rare books and details on their authors. He also traveled to rabbis and writers to present parts of his book to them and receive their consent, as was customary in those days. He also wanted to receive recommendations from them to generous and capable people who would help him to publish his book.

And so, the writer and historian, Zeev Yavetz, describes R' Moshe Markovitz, and his book, in his article in the newspaper Ha-Tsfira published in Warsaw, issue number 84 from 17 Iyar 5659, 27.4.1899, under the title “A poor and wise man.”

“The Jewish people in the Diaspora, a weak nation, within which are spiritual treasures, and distinguished people who seek and discover its treasures. Moshe Markovitz is one of these distinguished people.” The author, Yavetz, continues to describe Markowitz's appearance in these words: “His clothes are scanty, his hat is crumpled, his beard is black and tangled only giving a very narrow space for his face, he has beautiful eyes and a pleasant voice. Markovitz took out of a sack a package wrapped in pieces of leather and in them two manuscripts, his two books: one Shem HaGedolim haShlishi - Maarekhet Gedolim, and the second Shem HaGedolim haShlishi - Maarekhet Sefarim. And Markovitz told Yavetz: “I didn't write these with my own hand. I can read and only write a little. Others, mostly boys, do me a favor and write what I dictate to them. Now, I want to submit the manuscript for editing and printing.” And the author Yavetz summarizes his impressions in his article: “My eyes saw wonders in his books, mysteries were revealed to me, vast knowledge of the bibliography of recent generations.”^[b]

And in the newspaper HaMelitz, published in Peterburg, issue number 152 from 13 Av 5659 - 9.7.1899, the author Dov Karlinsky wrote an evaluation article on Markovitz and his book: “…the shoemaker, Moshe Markovitz, a native of Namukesht in Lithuania and resides in the city of Rasayn, Kovno [Kaunas] District. The evaluation of the author's work is not intended, God forbid, to condemn him, but rather to greatly praise him. “A man who makes his living sewing shoes, an uneducated man who doesn't even know how to read and write Hebrew properly, and yet, the spirit of God was upon him to compose a valuable and useful book.”

The author, Dov Karlinsky, turns to the readers of HaMelitz with a call: “Isn't it a wonder, dear reader?!… and he turns in his article to the generation's rabbis and scholars to

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lend a helping hand to the author Moshe Markovitz, so that he can submit the manuscript for editing and printing. Karlinsky also turned to the Jews of Rasayn in words of rebuke, not to let such a great man like him be forgotten and starving for bread: “R' Moshe Markovitz is one of the hard to find, and therefore they must pretend to be respectful. “And Karlinsky concludes at the end of the article: “The author Moshe Markovitz was diligent in his work, the sacred work, and found many things to add to the words of bibliographers who preceded him.”

R' Moshe Markovitz's book is a continuation to two bibliographic books with this name. One, Shem ha-Gedolim by R' Haim Yosef David Azulai, a native of Jerusalem (1724-1806), known by his nickname Hida. The second Shem ha-Gedolim he-Hadash by R' Aharon Walden who lived in Poland (1838-1912). Moshe Markovitz's book, Shem ha-Gedolim haShlishi, is a continuation and complement to the two that preceded it. Today, Markovitz' book is rare. Both editions are available at National Library of Israel next to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The first edition was published in Vilna in 5670 (1910), and a second, revised and completed edition, published in Kaiden [Kėdainiai] in 5692 (1932). In both editions only a small portion of the extensive material collected by Markowitz in manuscript was printed. In both volumes of the book. chapter one, Maarekhet Gedolim, about great Jewish scholars, sages and authors. chapter two, Maarekhet Sefarim, includes the names of books, their nature and content, and the place and year of their publication. In all of these, only the value of the letter aleph is given, and even then, only in part. Markowitz didn't have the necessary funds for the printing of the remaining chapters of the book, and most of the manuscripts were lost during the Holocaust years. According to the testimony of the researcher, R' Ben-Zion Eisenstadt (1873-1951), in his book, Dorot Acharonim [“Last Generations], page 226 in the section “Markovitz Moshe,” the manuscript of Shem ha-Gedolim haShlishi contained about twenty thousand names of authors and scholars with the titles of their books.

The first edition of the book from 1910, at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem, is in the “rare books” section. It is the copy that Moshe Markovitz held as his private property and used it for checking and completing. In it are many handwritten notes glued to the printed pages. For the discovery and acquisition of this copy we are grateful to the well-known bibliographer, Shlomo Shunami, from the Hebrew University

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in Jerusalem. In 1949, Mr. Shunami was sent of behalf of the university to Germany to search for spiritual treasures that the Nazis robbed from Jewish homes and various Jewish libraries throughout Europe. In the city of Offenbach near Frankfurt, at the warehouses of G Farben, the Nazi robbers collected hundreds of thousands of books. While sorting through the books, Mr. Shunami discovered the book Shem ha-Gedolim haShlishi. This is the book that was constantly in the hands of its author, as evidenced by the notes and comments in the margins of the book written in his handwriting. Apparently, when the Nazi soldiers arrived in Gorzd, they robbed the Jews of their books and transported them to the gathering location in Germany.

Apart from the book Shem ha-Gedolim haShlishi, there are other books written by R' Moshe Markovitz at the National Library in Jerusalem, and they are. “To the History of the city of Rasayn and its rabbis,” “To the History of the city of Kaiden and its rabbis,” and “To the History of the city of Novardok and its rabbis.”

In his book, “To the History of the city of Rasayn and its rabbis,” published in Warsaw in 5673 (1913) on page seven, Markovitz brings details about a special character from Gorzd. And so he writes there: And also lived in our city (Rasayn) the great genius, the accepted Hasid, the man of God, our teacher the rabbi Shmuel, called by all, Rabbi Shmuel Hasid zt”l. He was born in 5511 (1751) in the city of Gorzd in the District of Kaunas and passed away in our city in 5594 (1824)… and many followed in the light of his teachings, righteousness and piety. The aforementioned holy genius, our teacher and rabbi Shmuel Hasid, traveled to the Gaon^[1] Rabbenu Eliyahu z”l in Vilna twice a year, and the Vilna Gaon respected him and called him the “Zamuter Hasid.”

R' Moshe Markovitz was born in 5615 (1855) in the city of Nemoksht [Nemaksciai] to his father, R' Shlomo Zalman son of David of Nemoksht, and to his mother, Mrs. Ete daughter of Moshe Bialostocki of Rasayn. The father, who was initially a tailor and had no means of livelihood, moved with his family to a village and was a milkman there. Six years later, he fell ill and came to the city of Rasayn to seek medical help. He passed away there in 5624 (1864) at the age of about forty. His mother passed away there in 5653 (1893). Moshe Markovitz was eight and a half years old at the time of his father's death. Markovitz wrote these details in the introduction to his book, on page 18, of

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Title page of the book Shem ha-Gedolim haShlishi

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the second edition from 5692 (1932). And he continues there: I studied for three years at the Talmud Torah in the city of Nemoksht. Later, I was sent to the city of Rasayn and studied at the Talmud Torah there for three periods. At that time there was a great famine, and I had nothing to eat. Every day I had to go and ask for a slice of bread, and I always arrived late at the cheder. My rabbi kicked me out of the cheder in the middle of the study, and for three years I wandered around without any means of livelihood. I almost lost hope for my life, if my older brother hadn't come to my aid and taught me the craft of shoemaking. In this manner, the years of my youth passed through a long chain of many terrible troubles, poverty and hardship. With God's desire, I was able to buy books in Ivri Teitsch [Yiddish in Hebrew letters], and other useful books that developed my talents, and I came across the book, Shem ha-Gedolim by the great Gaon Haim Yosef David Azula z”l… Moshe Markovitz married his first wife at the age of twenty-three (and she nineteen) and lived with her for forty years. Every pruta [small coin] he earned in his work he spent on books, as he wrote in the introduction to his book. On page seventeen, Markovitz writes in the aforementioned introduction about the beginning of his writings… “But I can't write a single word (apparently, he meant clear writing (B .I). Therefore, I need to ask every day the children who studied a lesson in the large Beit Midrash to write a little for me. And that for seven or eight years, until time passed and my eldest son grew up and he started to write with me. Everyone in the town laughed a lot at me and said: he can write a thick book Shem ha-Gedolim haShlishi? until everyone saw that it was a big, thick book. Then, everyone was amazed at me and said: indeed, he has great knowledge.”

His first wife passed away in 5678 (1919). Apparently, he arrived in Gorzd in 5682 (1922) and married Necha-Chasa, daughter of Avraham-Pesach Vinik, and a daughter, Rivka-Rachel-Leah, was born to them. When he arrived in Gorzd, Markovitz continued his bibliographical research steadily. His handwriting was very difficult to read, so he asked us, the boys, to write for him. I remember sitting at his shoemaking counter and writing things down on notes he dictated to me.

In Gorzd, Markovitz and his family also lived in poverty. Mr. Shlomo Shunami, from the Hebrew University, wrote about Moshe Markovitz's life in Rasayn in the newspaper Davar from 23.2.1976: “I would like to tell you what I have heard from a person who knew Markowitz face to face. The painter Yakov Steinberg who camped

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during the First World War in Rasayn, Markovitz's town, when he was an officer in the German occupation army. Markovitz's strange personality aroused his interest, and he visited his home from time to time. He said that poverty was evident in every corner of the house. On each visit, Markovitz's wife turned to him and begged him to influence her husband not to spend so much money on candles, because they didn't have enough money to satisfy their hunger. During the day he worked in the shoemaker's shop, at night he engaged in his history work, and his need for candles was great. Steinberg also said that the townspeople told him in secret that the shoemaker was one of the Lamed Vav Tzadikim that thanks to them the world exists, and, God forbid, not to tell Markovitz because it would cause his death.”

R' Moshe Markovitz passed away in the month of Nisan 5695-1935. His wife Necha-Chasa, and their daughter Rivka-Rachel-Leah who was born in Gorzd, found their tragic death in the hands of Nazi soldiers when they escaped from Plungiany [Plungė] where they lived in 1939-1941.

From the book, Shem ha-Gedolim haShlishi, that the author used and made corrections to

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Tziyun le-Nefesh Chayah^[2] [A mark to the living soul]

My honorable father, my splendor and glory, R' Slomo Zalman son of R' David, son of R' Tzadok Markovitz from the city of Nemoksht, passed away at the age of forty in the city of Rasayn in the year 5624, 14 Adar [21 February 1864], on the day of Purim, and he is buried at the Old Cemetery.

My honorable beloved modest mother Mrs. Ete, daughter of R' Moshe Bialostocki of Rasayn, passed away in Rasayn in the year 5653, on Rosh Hodesh Adar [17 February 1893], and she is buried at the New Cemetery.

A memento to my first wife, the honest woman Mrs. Zisla, who passed away in the year 5678 the 16 of Sivan [21 May 1918] at the age of 59 years. I was with her for forty years. She passed away and left me in distress. She was the daughter of R' Yakov Tuvia Zaks of the city of Krozh [Kražiai] who passed away in the city of Nemoksht in the year 5641[1880]. Was the son of the extraordinary and excellent rabbi, the tzadik our teacher the rabbi Tzvi Hirsh Zaks of the city of Krozh, a descended of the tzadik minister, R' Shneur, who was the Finance Minister in country of Hungary and was murdered on the sanctification of God's name. After his passing his sons began to sign themselves with their family name Zaks, abbreviation of Zera Kedoshim Shneur [the seed of the sanctified Shneur].

May their souls be bound up in the bond of life

A memento for their sons. My beloved father and mother had three sons:

The eldest, Meir Lib, was born in the year 5611 and lived in the city of Newark, he passed away in the year 5680.

I, Moshe, was born in the city of Nemoksht in the year 5615 and lived in the city of Rasayn, now I live in the city of Gorzd.

The youngest, Chaim Neta, was born in the year 5620 5611 and lived in the city of Newark, she passed away in the year 5682.

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I also set a blessing for my sons and daughters:

My son Yakov Tzadok resides in the city of Paris.

My son ,Shlomo Zalman Tuvia, now President of the Court of the community of Antlaiepte (Lita).

My daughter Chaya Tole and her husband Tzvi Hirsh Scher reside in the city of Paris.

My second daughter, Beila Mere and her husband Yehudah Leib Eles reside in the city of Newark.

I also bless my second wife, Necha-Chasa, daughter of R' Avraham Pesach Winik of the city of Gorzd who passed away in the year 5676, 9 Shevat [14 January 1916]. I have a daughter from her and her name is Rivka-Rachel-Leah.

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From the honorable famous Gaon ,our teacher the rabbi Yizthak Yaakov Rabinovich President of the Court of the Holy Community of Ponevez [Panevėžys], the bearer of this writing, our teacher the rabbi Moshe Markovitz of the city of Rasayn, is a man who enjoys the labor of his hand, the work of shoemaking, and yet his spirit carried him to write the book Shem ha-Gedolim with wonderful talent. It is a mitzvah to support such a man so that he can publish his book which is necessary for each of our people. And as proof, I signed Thursday 4 Elul in the year 5663 [27 August 1903], here in Ponevez.

Signed by Yizthak Yaakov, son of R' Shemuel Leib Rabinovich, residing in the aforementioned community.

From the honorable Gaon, our teacher the rabbi, Avraham Helir Rabbi of the Holy Community of Libave [Liepāja], author of the book Yefeh Nof about responsa, argumentation and interpretation of Shulchan Aruch.

Please see the good deed done by the dear man, our teacher the rabbi Moshe Markovitz, who gathered, like sheaves to the granary, all the important rabbis in our country and in other countries, and all their writings, both printed and in handwritten. He called them all by name and mentioned their companions for a blessing. It is fitting for each Jew, for whom the honor of the Torah is precious, to support his hands so that his book would be published, and I will also, without a vow, take one book when it comes out of the printing house. And as a proof I signed here, Libave, Parashat Vayera 5664 [November 1903].

Signed by Avraham, son of his master, father, teacher and rabbi, the righteous gaon, my teacher the rabbi Yechiel, zt”l, rabbi and judge here in Libave in the country of Courland [Latvia].

From the honorable famous Gaon our teacher the rabbi Moshe Shapira President of the rabbinical Court of the Holy Community of Riga, author of the book Pene Mosheh about Masechet Pesachim and the book Pene Mosheh about the Passover Haggadah. I will also get the book, Shem ha-Gedolim haShlishi, after its publication from the honorable author of this writing and I gave a deposit. And as a proof I signed on Monday 2 to the month of Tevet 5664 by the abbreviated era [21 December1903], here in Riga.

Signed by Moshe Shapira, residing in the aforementioned community.

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From the honorable great Gaon, our teacher the rabbi Eliezer Gordon. President of the Court and Rosh Yeshiva in the Holy Community of Telz [Telšia]. It is known that there is benefit in knowing the history of Jewish Gaonim, and famous Gaonim have already used the books that were written, and you have no greater proof than this that there is benefit in it. I only came to testify that in my opinion, our teacher the rabbi Moshe Markovitz of the city of Rasayn, has done more than famous people even though he is a craftsman and engaged in his craft when he wrote this book. It is very appropriate to support him so that he can bring it to the printing house. And as a proof I signed on Sunday 15 Tevet 5664 [3 January 1904], here in Telz.

Signed by Eliezer Gordon, residing in the aforementioned community.

Orginal footnotes:

1. All etchings attached to this article are courtesy of the management of the National Library in of Israel in Jerusalem. back
2. From Shem ha-Gedolim haShlishi 5692 (1932) edition. back
3. About the book Shem ha-Gedolim haShlishi by Moshe Markovitz. back

Translator's footnotes:

1. Gaon,/pl. Gaonim (lit. genius) - honorary title for a Jewish scholar who is noted for his wisdom and knowledge of the Talmud. back
2. Rosh Yeshiva is the title given to the dean of a yeshiva. A Jewish educational institution that focuses on the study of traditional religious text. back

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Chaim Shoys was one of the most significant sages of our generation. He appeared in our literary world over 40 years ago when he published his first scholarly work in Lebn un Wisenschaft [Life and Knowledge] (1910) about Eliyahu haNavi [Elijah the prophet]. Since then Chaim Shoys has gifted us with a large number of basic treatises and general works about Jewish history, Tanakh [the Hebrew bible] research and the Jewish way of life.

Chaim Shoys came from Lithuania. Born in Gorzd, Kovno gubernia [administrative division] in 1884. He received a traditional Jewish upbringing

Chaim Shoys

in kheder [religious primary school] and in the house of study. Little by little he became acquainted with the literature of the Enlightenment of that time and began to immerse himself in Tanakh. He then spent some time in Germany where he thoroughly studied scholarly biblical literature and in 1910 Chaim Shoys came to America; he began to work with several Yiddish journals and here fate threw a very different mission upon him.

It is necessary to specially say a few words; truly many of us already have forgotten how our Jewish-radical environment looked 30 to 40 years ago.

The great cultural revolution in our Jewish life, which took on such a stormy form on the threshold of our [the 20^th] century, actually created an abyss between the Jewish person of today and the Jewish world of the past. The war of light against darkness took a remarkable form. Everything that had a connection to the Jewish past, from the Shulkhan Arukh [Code of Jewish Law] to the Tanakh, was labeled as reactionary and darkness. True, in our beautiful literature, little by little a little tolerance was permitted. The romanticism of Hasidus arose and our artists also showed much understanding for the heroes of the Tanakh and the Agadah [legends]. Another climate reigned totally in our radical writing on current affairs. Here the war against the traditions had just ended and even those who did not carry on an open war could not unravel the Tanakh. The Tanakh entranced them. The wonderful personalities of the Khumish [the Torah] were dear and close to them. And yet how could a present-day person accept the Tanakh, the main foundation of Jewish tradition, while they continued to carry on such an embittered war with the old Yidishkeit [Jewish practices, customs and traditions]?

There was another reason that actually closed the approach to Tanakh for us. Every age has it own way of understanding and how to translate the past. We always

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studied the Tanakh with commentary, with Rashi, with the Enlightenment commentary of [Moses] Mendelssohn and so on. Our mothers had the Khumish, the Tsene uRene [Go Forth and See – the “woman's bible”]. We also cannot learn the Tanakh today without commentary. How do we create commentary for Tanakh for the Jewish person of our time? Chaim Shoys took upon himself this great, historic task.

Chaim Shoys was the only one who published a series of large, very thorough works about the Tanakh in Yiddish. It cannot be said that among us nothing was written about Tanakh. There were a certain number of earnest and original treatises. However, the majority of them dealt with sermons and I say it absolutely, not negatively. Sermons are an important matter. One may, of course, write about Tanakh as a reader, as a thoughtful reader. Chaim Shoys wrote about Tanakh as a teacher and he constantly demanded of his students that they become teachers. In essence, the principle difference between our cultural life of the past and our modern culture consists of this. The Jew of the earlier shtetl in Lithuania and Poland was a student, a scholar; today's Jewish person who is interested in our cultural matters is a reader. Chaim Shoys believed that a return to Tanakh means that we must again become a people of students.

Whoever has paged through the two volumes, Neviim [Prophets], which Chaim Shoys published, will immediately notice how much respect the author shows to the reader. He never requests that the reader rely on him, that he only believe his word, but he leads the reader into hidden rooms of scientific research. In addition to the original text with the Yiddish translation, each chapter has a separate introduction with a series of critical observations, where the more difficult passages of the text are interpreted and explained. There are very few books of this kind in Yiddish and as far as in the area of Tanakh,

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Chaim Shoys in any case was the first who elevated the Jewish reader to the level of a student.

His first great work that was published in book form came out in 1916 under the title, Biblishe Gezangen: Di Gezangen fun Khumish un Neviim Rishonim [Biblical Songs: the Songs from the Bible and Early Prophets]. This actually was the first original work (in book-form) about biblical research in Yiddish. Later, the author of the Biblishe Gezangen published a series of other works in the area of Tanakh and Jewish history. To his important studies belong the already mentioned two volume Neviim. Alas, the author was not destined to finish the planned great work.

Chaim Shoys was a follower of modern biblical research and his greatest accomplishment was that he made the better Yiddish readers acquainted with the world of Tanakh and with the problems of Tanakh as they are seen today. Because of this, he also heard many complaints and reproaches. It is my deepest conviction that in this regard his critics are entirely wrong. They simply did not appropriately think through the entire problem. They did not see the simple fact that for today's Yiddish reader, the Tanakh is a closed book if they do not make use of the results of modern biblical knowledge. It is very easy to criticize the so-called biblical criticism if one does not himself read the Tanakh. If one sits down earnestly and tries to absorb oneself in this or that book, then it becomes clear how difficult it is to understand a weekly section of the Torah or a chapter of the Prophets. The most fluent student of Tanakh is therefore thankful for each scholar, each researcher who helps him to understand the spiritual world in which the poets and thinkers of biblical times lived.

Chaim Shoys lived with the Tanakh; he could not rest if he did not understand a verse, if something was not clear to him

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he searched for an answer. He searched for it in old Jewish commentaries and he searched for it in modern biblical research. It is very different if one has little interest in the Tanakh, if one is, in the best case, not more than a reader. Then there are no questions and one does not look for an answer.

I could provide more and more such examples. It would be best to send the reader to the two volumes of Neveiim by Shoys. He [the reader] will then feel that it often becomes clearer when one becomes acquainted with the results of modern biblical research.

Not less important and worthwhile is the research by Chaim Shoys in the realm of the Jewish way of life, in addition to a series of articles and treatises in various periodical publications, which deserve particularly to be mentioned here: Dos Yom-Tov Bukh [The Holiday Book] that was also published in English under the title, The Jewish Festivals, and his The Lifetime of a Jew (alas, published only in English), where he dealt with Jewish customs in connection with the most important events in the life of the individual. The great significance of his work about the Jewish way of life is that the author gives us a picture of the historic road of our traditions and customs from ancient times right to the present day. I do not know of a more systematic work of this size in all of scholarly literature.

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Khayim Shoys was more than a Jewish historian. He was a survivor of Jewish history. He carried our history in his bones. He always uncovered something new, found a new wrinkle in it, taught a new lesson for our present time. That he knew Jewish history thoroughly and approached it with great scholarship goes without saying. But he understood that our history was so vast, so deeply Jewish and universal, that it was not sufficient to approach it in a scholarly way. It often happens that in a scholarly approach, Jewish history shrinks. It seems smaller than it actually is. “For Jewish history,” he often said to me, “one needs not only knowledge but also imagination.” Sometimes the Jewish historical imagination is truer than the historical facts. A people whose history was forged in the fire of responsibility grows beyond the dry facts. For our people, imagination is the historical reality. For such a people, facts are legends.

During the years when I assisted him with two books on prophets, I learned much from him. Mostly I learned from him. Since we were neighbors, it would happen that he would come to me with a bunch of documents, or I would come to him. When I came to him, he would rise from his chair at his large desk and meet me. I saw behind his thick glasses how his eyes were raised and, behind wisps of smoke, how they shone. His face was red, and it seemed as though I had interrupted a poet in the middle of writing a poem. At first I did not understand why he seemed so feverish, but

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that in his work he was shaping Jewish history, that for him, the process of writing Jewish history was a poetic experience, not less than that of a poet writing a poem.

It was a meaningful experience for me to see how he combined the bricks to construct his picture of Jeremiah. It took months. He first imagined each brick, and then, as he cemented them together, it was as if he sang a poem in the form of the prophet. He experienced creative joy as he saw the image grow, as the picture of a man became complete.

Verse by verse, he bore the image of Jeremiah. Line by line he made connections. Word by word he put it together. He recreated the prophet out of sorrow. He created his artistic biography and deeply humanized him, so that an image grew that was dramatic and lyrical, full of sorrow and suffused with human joy. A great work grew before my eyes. An artistic, historical building grew up before me–I marveled at the poet of Jewish history–Khayim Shoys.

He was by temperament a quiet man, withdrawn and careful in his speech, but when he encountered–in an article or an essay–historical inaccuracies, he became perturbed, and his voice would rise to a falsetto. He devoted most of his adult life to teaching others, but to students who were new to the study of history he was gentle. He did not argue with them. To the contrary, he took them by the hand in a fatherly way and led them with love through the plowed fields of Jewish history. People who were considered adept in history but who were actually blind interlopers in historical pages–

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such people he could not stand. To him it was as if they came into his garden with muddy boots. It happened that students who had tasted spoonsful of knowledge from him decided to become historians and writers of history. Khayim Shoys from the beginning nourished them. Then he experienced tragedy from those he had helped when boors took their places. He was so sensitive about such boors teaching the people that it often led him to become ill. He was in his character and in his attitudes a spiritual populist. Since he never throughout his life ceased to learn, he felt an inner responsibility to teach the people. His greatest pleasure was when he met with students and “said words of Torah to them.” Even greater was his pleasure in hearing students take up the Torah that he taught and become ready to learn “a page of history.” But he was not a teacher as we think of them. He was a transformer of Jewish people. His idea was that historical facts were no more than seeds from which a whole plant grew. And what was that plant? This all-embracing view of Jewish history, penetrating it, finding in it a sense that could show the way for Jewish people at all times. Therefore you detected this in his students; you recognized it as soon as you began to speak with him about matters related to Yiddishkeit and Jewish knowledge. He put his mark on students not only in knowledge–but also in spiritual understanding, even in how to lead one's life. You recognized his mark! His students are spread across the country, many of them already fathers and mothers of

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grown children, but they live with the spirit that he planted within them. He was their rabbi not only in the sense of a teacher–he instilled in them a fire, just as a Chasidic rabbi used to with his Chasidim. When I used to see how his students would surround him–both comfortably and with great respect–it was like a rabbi's tisch.

His “tisch” was prepared with good things–with older Jewish history, with new Yiddish, with halacha and aggadah, with Torah and prophets, with pulsing, modern Jewish life, even with sharp, bitter humor. And his tisch was set with friendliness, with much love, for people. In the last years of his life he suffered greatly, plagued by severe illnesses, but he appeared cheerful and did not show people his physical woes. Sometimes his look, behind his thick eyeglasses, wavered, and you could see that he was disoriented, but this lasted only a moment. He soon gained control over himself and looked at you with a mildness that shone through his thick glasses and warmed you. But that look was at the same time troubled, for not only was he suffering physically but also spiritually, and his spiritual woes were more severe than the physical ones. They were the sharp, piercing thorns on his road. He experienced a hidden tragedy that he bore with the dignity of a wise man. He was the first to spread Torah among worldly Jews in America. Over forty years ago he began to assume this responsibility–to spread Jewish learning both orally and in writing. He was the first to put together a Jewish folk history, which forty years ago opened the doors for ordinary Jewish people to come to the treasures of our past,

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which had been closed to them. He wrote the “Yom-Tov Book,” which remains to this day an important popular book–written for everyday people, but with historical erudition, well-written and basic. In his teaching, he had scores, even hundreds, of students who quenched their thirst at the well of his learning, which he revealed to them. But as time passed, the Yiddish circle became narrower and narrower. The years tired him, and his mission began to wane–not just for him but in the Jewish environment, which was his oxygen, his spiritual climate.

Once, when several former students came to his home, the fire of his belief was rekindled, but it did not burn for long, because he knew it was not the eternal flame of the Burning Bush but a fire that was burning out, that flickered capriciously, scattering sparks. Through his last years of loneliness and hidden despair, he wrote his two books on prophets, which gave him creative consolation, but until those books saw the light of day, he suffered greatly; and, when they did appear, he was tormented by doubt that they would reach the secular Jewish people for whom he had written them. He wrote his book “A Jew from Cradle to Grave” in Yiddish, but it appeared in English. To this day, it has not appeared in Yiddish. And it is one of the most interesting works of research in our literature–written in story form, full of vivid life and a deep look at our traditions.

He was lonely, as every creative Jewish person is lonely, but his loneliness was sharper because his creativity needed the air of the people for him to breathe. He took upon himself the responsibility of bringing knowledge to the people. During his first years in America he had an illusory people, but as years passed, even the illusion faded. He wrestled with te sorrow that diminished him. From his loneliness he tried to create

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a spiritual for himself in an attempt to fend off loneliness, but many times even this escape failed him–leaving him with naked, bitter, haunting loneliness.

But a metamorphosis occurred, when loneliness and suffering evoked in him a lyricism that he had not earlier evinced. When we look at the works that he wrote in his years of loneliness, we see a difference from earlier works. He became more of a singer than a teller. He immersed himself in the figures of an Isaiah or an Amos, a Jeremiah, a Micah that he created. He spoke eloquently when he described his birth city of Gorzd and the other Jewish cities and towns that he described. And his last, uncompleted work, “Return to Zion,” was also a characteristic product of human loneliness, even of bitter suffering.

He often argued with me that Jewish literature itself had a great advantage: its historical figures. “Why don't you write a great poem in which our historical heroes struggle?” he argued. And he painted for me moments in our history that were not only full of drama but also carried symbolism of eternity and the universal. The great Jewish drama, he said, is in our history.

“Why don't you write it?” I once asked him. He thought, then began to say something and then stopped. But I could feel what he did not say: he did not believe he had the artistic ability to create such figures. Yes, he had created, as I said, an Isaiah and a Jeremiah who were basically artistic creations, but that was history, not art. But he carried the dream of a great historical

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drama. If I am not mistaken, he even ventured on the drama of Ahab, but he stopped in the middle. But in his sadness, in his loneliness, he became lyrical in his historical work. He began to build historical structures, finely structured history, to sing out about historical Jewish heroes. As with all artistic people, his loneliness was a source of creativity, and his sadness made him more profound. The Yiddish language that at the beginning he wanted to use so simply that every Jew could understand it, in his loneliness he began to polish into an artistic instrument.

I worked with him on his two books about the prophets, and between them there was an interval of four years. Greater than that span of time was the stylistic difference, the linguistic leap, between the two books. In the first book, I had to struggle with him over a word–he wanted the simplest, even primitive word–so that everyone could understand–and I wanted him to use a more sophisticated word. He did not want in any way to depart from common language. Even in his translations of the biblical text he argued against polishing the language, making it poetic. But in the second book, I quickly saw a change in him. When he brought me the first chapter, I saw how he had begun to write differently. He still held, actually, that people had to understand, but his manuscript already breathed with artistic attention to the words. His style was more rhythmic. He no longer argued when I forbade a simple word instead of a more sophisticated one. Once, in dealing with a biblical text, I proposed a word that was strange to him, and he asked, “Is that Old Yiddish?” It was. He accepted it. When it came to putting words together to create a new nuance, he was happy. He occasionally dismissed the comprehensibility

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for the broader world. He took a new stance. He tried saying the new word in order to get its artistic sense.

But if I asked him here and there about a word, the change was up to him alone. It seems to me that he would not construct the figures of Isaiah and Jeremiah with such mastery if he had not changed. Even more, his ear began to hear the language of Gorzd, not just the language but the healthy, artistic, metallic ring of the language. He remembered scores of words from his birth town. That familiar language began to sing in him, and he tried to incorporate it in his writing. He hated, he said, journalistic language, which had cheapened Yiddish in America. He began to hear in himself the language of Gorzd and echoed it in the style of his last work. Loneliness elevated his writing.

He lived a hard life. He was never economically secure, especially in his last years, but he bore that hard life with the pride of a wise Torah student who is fully assured that he is gathering a rich spiritual legacy.

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Our father would often tell us various things about his birthplace Gorzd–about traditions, customs, personalities, and the ways of life in a small Lithuanian shtetl. This was a bit of Jewish knowledge that he wanted us to have. But he seldom spoke about himself except to illustrate a story or to explain a custom or if it related to some person and thus served as a pedagogical tool for teaching us.

Our father's father was named Hirsch, and his mother was Rokhl-Roza. Grandfather Hirirsch was a mason who made brick ovens. He was a little wealthier than the general Jew in Gorzd, had a middle-class house with an entranceway, a large garden, and some livestock. The house was large, beautiful, and well-built, and it had polished floors. Our grandfather was quite smart, but he was not a great scholar. In his free time he would study mishnayos. He was by nature observant, but he was not a tzadik, and he had Enlightenment tendencies. His wife, Rokhl-Roza, was a simple Jewish woman who was distantly related to one of the Gorzd rabbis. She came from a family of wealthy silk and flax merchants. She was much more observant than our grandfather, and in the shtetl she was regarded as very righteous. They had flour children, two sons and two daughters. A son, Yankl, and a daughter, Henna, were older than our father, and a daughter, Sheyna, was younger. A fifth child, Binyamin, died from diphtheria at the age of three. When the child died, Grandfather Hirsch was beside himself with grief, but Grandmother Roza, who stood near the window, washed her hands with the dew

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on the window and innocently said, “Blessed is the true Judge.” The people of the shtetl were amazed at her righteous, simple acceptance of the divine decree.

When our father was born, the rabbis said to name him Khayim-Binyamin–Khayim, which means “life” and Binyamin after his deceased brother. Neither our grandfather nor our grandmother came from a distinguished pedigree, not from scholarly nor wealthy roots, but both were from middle-class, well-to-do families.

The town of Gorzd, where our father was born and passed his youth, is in Kovno Gubernia, about 10 or 12 miles from Memel, very near the Prussian border. Not far distant are the towns of Yakubovo, Kretinga, Palanga (which is now Courland), Koli, Plongian, and Telz. Gorzd then had a couple hundred families, mostly Jewish. Through Gorzd flowed the Minija River, on which people transported wood to Memel, where there were paper factories. Most of Gorzd's Jews were employed in jobs related to the river and to the wood. But of course there were also merchants, shoemakers, tailors, businesspeople, wagoneers, and so on.

Our father was born on 13 Adar 5644 [1884]. When he was three or four years old, he began to go to cheder. From the beginning he was a notable student with outstanding abilities to absorb and remember. He soon began to study Chumash, Tanakh, and Gemara. Our father once told us that by nine years of age he studied Gemara with Tosafos and Maharsham, and at eleven he studied “Shitah m'kuvetzes” [a sixteenth-century commentary on the Tanakh]. His teachers spoke about his remarkable abilities and always regarded him as superior to the other students. He did not demonstrate undue diligence. He was a real scamp, but he grasped things so quickly and, what is more important, remembered them so well that even without such diligence he learned more than the other cheder students. While he was still a young boy

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he began to read things that his rabbis would have decried as unkosher. He would study the Russian calendar that hung on his wall, and from that he learned all the names of the members of the czar's family and the names of all the czars from the middle ages until Nicholas II.

At his bar mitzvah, he of course made a speech in shul, and the whole town exclaimed about that speech. After his bar mitzvah, the three teachers from Gorzd and the rabbi, R` Shabtai, were out walking in the woods and talking. Our father's grandfather was behind them and heard what they were saying. At home, he said that they had been talking about the bar mitzvah boy and his speech. They could not believe that such a young boy could have so much knowledge and understanding. The rabbi himself said that Khayim-Binyamin would become a great person.

Our father studied in cheder until he was twelve and then with a rabbi in the beis-medresh. By that time he had already learned five or six tractates [of Talmud]. During his cheder years he also went for a couple of semesters to a private tutor, from whom he learned to write and read sophisticated Yiddish, German, and Russian. At 15, he imitated his older brother Yakov and began to study Tanakh and grammar from “Maslul” and “Moreh ha-lashon” [two Hebrew textbooks]. And then with great devotion he learned modern Hebrew. He read all the Hebrew literature he could find in his small town. His brother, who was a Hebrew teacher in Memel and who also learned German, taught him to read and understand German literature.

Our father once told us that when he began to read German, he got Schiller's play “Waldstein,” read it through, and was on his way. Through a correspondence course

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he learned German thoroughly and also got a basic knowledge of French and general studies. At the same time, he taught modern Hebrew to the children of Zionist parents. At the time of the conscription crisis, our father went to Germany to attend university, but due to a lack of funds, he had to be content with self-education. He lived in Frankfort-am-Main, Memel, and Wiesbaden, where he gave private lessons in Hebrew to some rich Russian Jews. That year in Wiesbaden greatly affected his development thanks to the royal library, where devoured a sea of books. When he returned home to Gorzd, he made his debut in A. Litvin's monthly journal “Life and Scholarship” with a translation of A. Doodle's pamphlet “The Religion of the Future.” Although he had earlier written poems in Hebrew, then in German, he saw that it was most logical for him to write in Yiddish. Thanks to Litvin's mentoring, he began to devote himself earnestly to literary work. In “Life and Scholarship” he published his first original work, “Elijah, the Prophet of Blood and Iron” (1912) and also poems in verse and prose. In January, 1910, he came to America. Until the spring of 1915, he lived in Chicago, where he gave Hebrew lessons and spent all of his free time studying biblical criticism and Semitic history. He would sit and study all day in the library of the Garnet Theological Seminary (Methodist), not far from Chicago. One of the works that he studied thoroughly, he once told us, was Stadae's “History of the People of Israel.” Stade was one of Wellhausen's most important students, and in this work he gave a thorough summary of biblical scholarship up to his time. Our father thoroughly studied this work and built on it the foundation for his

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remarkable knowledge of modern research in Tanakh.

Before that time he had published a number of articles on various topics in Jewish history. In 1915, he settled in New York. From 1918 until 1948 he was a teacher of Tanakh and Jewish history in the Jewish Teacher's Seminary. In 1924, he married his cousin Teyvl Koppel. In 1925, his son Amos was born, and in 1927 his daughter Miriam was born. For many years he collaborated on the “Forward.” Aside from his books, he published in the “Forward,” in “Der Tog,” and in various other journals over seven hundred articles and essays on widely different topics in Jewish history and culture. In 1948, the Shoys family left New York and settled in Los Angeles. Already in 1944, our father had his first heart attack, and from then on he was weakened. Especially during his last years in Los Angeles he could barely work and had to rest a lot.

Others have written about his most important works and his contributions to Yiddish literature and to the spreading of Torah among Jews. He died early on Sunday morning, at 7 a.m., on 28 Tishrei 5714 [1953].

Our father was dedicated and paid great attention to our education, both Jewish and general. We have many warm memories related to that. We recall, for example, how our father took us for the first time to the children's section of the city library on 42^nd Street. We could not write, but we had already learned to read big picture books for children. We were around four or five years old. Miriam can still picture how our father took her little hand in his and wrote her name with her on the library card. From that time on, our father brought books from that large library

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where he went so often for his own work, until we were old enough to go to the library by ourselves. We both remember how he would say about Miriam, “One cannot keep up with you. You swallow up the books.” It was a little hard for him to find books for us so often, because he would spend hours choosing appropriate things for us to read. Once, Miriam was sick in bed and had read what he called a “trashy novel.” When he was asked why he would allow a child to read a book that was meant for adults, he laughed and answered, “And if she reads and doesn't understand, will she have missed anything? If she doesn't read the classics before she's old enough to understand, that would be a loss, because she might not read them a second time.” And so it was. Our father had taught us that when a book was important, we should set it aside if we recognized that it was for grown-ups. Thanks to the atmosphere that he created, we retained a deeply rooted love for books.

People want to know: what was the magic that Khayim Shoys worked on his children that made them so eager to engage in Jewish studies? He was an exception among learned people with his success in teaching his own children. What did he do?

We think about this ourselves. What kind of an attitude did our father have toward us and what was his method for keeping our attention from one day to the next?

It is difficult to describe one's feelings toward learning when one was very young. At home, we all spoke only Yiddish. Our father would not answer if someone spoke English. He said that he did not care about English–English we would learn at school and on the street. His concerns were for Yiddish and Hebrew. Our daily studies

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were tightly bound up with the whole Jewish environment in which we lived. We seldom, for example, devoted any formal time to Yiddish literature. We both spoke and understood Yiddish perfectly. When we first started going to public school, our everyday language was Yiddish and we had a little difficulty with English. We both remember well the evenings when we would sit in the dining room after dinner and make a “dessert” out of a story by Peretz or Sholem Aleichem. We recall how we would roll on the floor laughing at “Mottle Peyse the Cantor's Son.” We had so much pleasure when our father told us that reading things in Yiddish would later in our lives be a natural and important thing. Our father would often present to us stories from the Midrash and Aggadah in Yiddish, and we were amazed at how he read the Hebrew words and out they came in Yiddish. For us, this was a kind of magic, and we had no idea, in fact, how much we actually learned in those warm, cozy evenings.

In our daily lessons, of course, we learned Tanakh, grammar, and Hebrew. We were four or five years old when we began to learn from a Hebrew primer until we learned the letters. Then we began to study Tanakh in an abridged version. But it was not long until we used the full text with commentary by Sh. L. Gordon. We felt very grown up when our father would show us the interesting footnotes under the text. We would translate them into Yiddish. Our father thereby “shot two rabbits with one rifle.” We learned both idiomatic and literary Yiddish. Our father purposely used the long, colorful words of Yehoash's translation, words like “gottsfarchtikeyt” [Godfearing], “mutvilikeyt” [arbitrariness], and “niderrechtikeyt” [baseness]. We were always enchanted by their

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complexity when they rolled around in our mouths.

But we did not simply read and translate. Our father used to stop us to explain a verse, or part of a verse, that was unclear to us, We were accustomed to look at the footnotes. We would often lose our place because we were immersed in the footnotes and forgot where we were in the text.

We also recall the special edition of the Tanakh that our father used and would often allow us to use as a special privilege. The edges of the paper were tinged with gold. The book was bound with an empty page between every two printed pages, and on these empty pages our father had written his own notes and notes from the great biblical researchers and critics. We were quite young when we became familiar with the famous names in biblical scholarship. When we would stand enraptured before father's bookshelves, the names on the covers were our old friends.

Our father used other methods to make the material that we were studying clearer and more alive for us.

We both clearly remember standing in the great museum in New York, amazed before a mummy of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, excavated cherubim from Babylonia, and other surviving remnants of life from ancient times. We remember a trip that we once took to the Jewish Museum in Schechter's seminary and how amazed and trembling we were when we saw a medieval manuscript on whose bottom line could be seen the signature of the Rambam.

As we learned the history of the Jews in Greek and Roman times, we already had some knowledge about the lives of the Greeks and Romans. We at least knew all the names of their gods and goddesses.

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because our father had given us stories of Greek and Roman mythology that we had devoured. Our father also interested us in reading archaeological books about that era. As we read those books, we both thought, we both thought that we would become archaeologists, having seen so many things with our own eyes in museums. When our father spoke about discovered volumes of writings or of Egyptian hieroglyphics, we had concrete records of what he said. When he wanted to explain a geographic point concerning ancient Israel, he would quickly take out his large map of biblical lands and show us where he meant.

We also breathed in the atmosphere and the ways of life from the old country through the wonderful stories that our father told about his town. Our father's town was surely a town with the same type of people as all the other towns of Eastern Europe. But since we were children, we were sure that the people who lived with our father in Gorzd were exceptional because he did such a good job of picturing them for us. Even today we feel close to them, even though we never actually knew them. Such types as “Feyve the Tall,” “Tiny Elka,” and the Shabbos goy “Yona Kugel” we knew well. And about the surrounding Lithuanian peasants and princes with whom the Jews had some contact, our father would tell us stories that we listened to enthusiastically.

Our father was a remarkable combination of an Eastern European sage and a Western scholar. He was extraordinarily knowledgeable about Yiddishkeit and all of its manifestations He impressed more with his expertise, perhaps, than

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with his shrewdness. His memory was remarkably sharp until the last years of his life. We often saw evidence of what he said about himself, that when he read something, he remembered both the book and the side of the page it was on. He knew the Tanakh by heart. He was also remarkably knowledgeable about secular subjects. We were often amazed at how much more he knew about things that we had studied in university and that he had learned on his own.

In his personal life, he was a master of purity and accuracy. He always dressed well and he hated laziness, sloppiness, and inaccuracy in others. He never failed to keep his word precisely. If there was ever a time in his life when a lie would seem natural, he did not know how to do that. His honesty was unnatural. He was both stubborn and conservative. He hated lightmindedness. He had little interest in things of “this world”-his greatest pleasure was to read a book. He had a great sense of humor, and he was always full of stories, anecdotes, jokes, and proverbs for every situation. More than anything, he was a passionate and exasperated person. He could not bear opinions that were based on ignorance. His friends were mostly writers, scholars, intelligent people. But he could easily stop and converse with a simple Jewish woman in the street, for he truly loved everyone.

Despite his extraordinary memory and knowledge, in his writing he never relied on them. He would check and double-check every point. It often took him three days to write an article for a newspaper, but that article would be precise in every detail. He was very modest and he knew and acknowledged when someone was more competent in a matter than he was. For example

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in matters of style and idiom in Yiddish, he always consulted others. His respect for learning and knowledge was huge, and at the same time, he could not bear ignorance in people who made a show of their learning.

At home there was always a shortage of funds and worry for the next day, because our father barely made a living from his learning. And he knew that if it was not for our mother, there would be nothing to eat. He used to say that if someone gave other women three dollars, they would turn it into one dollar, but if someone gave Teyvel one dollar, she would turn it into three. He relied on our mother for everything related to our home–clothing, money, and household things. He never even bought a pair of socks without her.

Our father, a”h, was what Shechter once called “an eternal student.” The day before his death, he spent the whole day reading, and he died near his books. He truly lived what is said in Pirkei Avos: “Be among the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving your fellow human beings and bringing them closer to Torah.”

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I knew my husband, Shoys Leybe, who was born in Gorzd, a short time before the arrival of the Red Army in Kovno.

Leybe was a wonderful, capable, highly cultured person, gifted in various skills. Even in his earliest youth he showed skill in writing. He wrote beautiful love poems to a young woman in his town (though who knows if she ever received them?). Very early in his life he became interested in politics, and he also showed an aptitude for astronomy and languages. He had a perfect knowledge of German, Yiddish, Lithuanian, and Russian (which he learned during the war, and he even wrote articles

A group for the study of Esperanto

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in Russian). He learned Spanish at the time of the Spanish Civil War. (He knew both oral and written Spanish.) To these languages one must also add English and Esperanto. He was excellent at Esperanto. He also listened to radio broadcasts in Italian, French, and even Greek.

His chief calling was journalism. He had a quick pen and wrote a variety of articles on different subjects. In addition, he lectured on politics. He would write each of his articles in a couple of hours. It was his custom not to revise articles, not even to review his manuscripts, and he never deleted a sentence. He sent his articles to his editors just as he had written them. He always said with a smile that it is difficult to write the first sentence, but after that it becomes easy. He wrote mostly about politics, but one can also find articles by him on astronomy.

Before the war, he edited a popular evening newspaper in Yiddish, “The Evening Page.” In the columns of this paper, he mainly published his leftist opinions (in which he was greatly disappointed in the last years before he died).

This was a well-loved newspaper with a large circulation and a wide circle of readers. He was a gifted, skilled editor. He knew what his readers needed and wanted to read in the paper. (Along with the serious material, he also included a novel, “Baksha,” that appealed to the simple, hardworking readers, and later he also worked for the “Folksblat” as a journalist and later became an editor.

His happiest years of dreams and beliefs in the ideas of equality and freedom he devoted to two newspapers. After the war, he specialized as a journalist. As a

[Page 235]

writer and journalist, he focused more on form, style, and content. Leybe's articles were beautiful, interesting, and rich in content while at the same time they were easy to understand, just like his talks on political topics.

He was also a phenomenon in astronomy, very skilled in the foundations of that science. He wrote mainly about meetings at the university, and his articles on this subject were marked by deep analysis and knowledge.

In a simple, accessible, but knowledgeable way, he would describe the galaxies, distant planets, and stars as though he had been born on them, and he described how people measured their distance in light years.

Our three children, two sons and our oldest daughter, Ruth, would hear, with bated breath, his wonderful stories about the distant planets…

Leybe could always be seen with a book and with a pen in his hand. He would always write comments in his reading. I once painted him like this. (He sent me to learn how to draw when I was already the mother of three small children.)

Pen and book–these were his two most important “weapons.” He did wonders with them. (During his service in the Lithuanian army, before Smetona's time [Smetona was the first president of Lithuania.], a sergeant, wanting to admonish him for being a poor soldier, said, “You hold a rifle as if you were holding a pen!”

In his last years, Leybe wrote a novel in Lithuanian, “The Death of the Three Communards.” He wrote the novel on the basis of the memoirs of an old party man. Later he began to write a long novel about Smetona, but before he managed to finish the novel, the censor cancelled it because of certain subjects…

Right before his death, Leybe wrote the play

[Page 236]

“Zog nisht keynmol as du geyst dem letzten veg.” This play was performed by the Yiddish dramatic ensemble “Mir zeynen do,” directed by the well-known director Luria, in our home. He stars were Sharfshteyn, his wife Zina, and others.

Already ill and physically broken, Leybe attended the first performance, the premiere, in one of the largest halls in Vilna–in the great hall of the professional unions.

The contents of the play–the heroic battle of the rebels in the Warsaw Ghetto. The play was well-received by the overflowing crowd and was well directed. A splendid set, very professional; the play was presented with great emotion by the actors of the dramatic ensemble.

The play was presented in 1966 or 1967 (I do not remember exactly) and was performed only once, despite its great success.

Leybe's dream was to send the play abroad, knowing that in the Soviet Union it had no chance of being presented. He dreamed of giving it to Ida Kaminska, but that remained only a dream until he closed his eyes forever.

Leybe Shoys really loved his town of Gorzd. It was for him “the spring from which your brothers drew”--in the words of our great national poet Chaim Nachman Bialik. From the shtetl he drew inspiration for his creative works. It was the source from which he drew the strength to stand up against persecutions as well as the source from which he took so many stories and memories of his fine family from long ago.

He often told me about his family tree,

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how a distant ancestor managed to get to Gorzd before the time of Chmielnitzki, the time of the bloody pogroms of 5408 and 5409 [1660 and 1661].

That ancestor was called Eldad Horseshoe (thanks to a mark that a wild Cossack horse left on his face)…Leybe knew to tell about an ancestor who used to go through town in his underwear. He was a strange type–a hard worker, but he had the peculiarities of a philosopher. So, too, had his ancestor who was a mason and made ovens for the count. He had many secrets to reveal about the count's life at court.

His family had a family tree with many branches. Every generation added to the tree…until the Shoah.

Gorzd seemed like a huge cemetery right after the Shoah. There was slaughter everywhere. Bricks were here and bricks were there in the beautiful green grass.

This is how I first saw Gorzd: going through the destroyed streets of Leybe's home town and seeking with him a solitary memory–the porch of his father's house.

A tall young man with blond hair and glasses for his shortsighted eyes, looking for the past–in this way he engraved himself in my memory.

[Page 238]

Yudika was an interesting woman with dreamy eyes, often deep in thought and often with a loving smile on her lips. Thus I recall our Yiddish poetess Yudika.

I knew Yudika since I was a child, when she lived for a short time in Gorzd with her sister Bertha Friedheim before she emigrated to Canada. Rokh'le Friedheim was my friend and I was often her guest.

Yudika

Hearing Yudika read–that meant seeing before our eyes

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the people in the books come to life. On Shabbos evenings she would tell us stories…With bated breath, often trembling from fear, we would hear her stories about good and bad fairies, devils, and Roma, who would seize children…but her stories always had a “happy ending.” The good and noble would always triumph…and then we could breathe easy…Sometimes we acted out the stories and we became the characters.

Yudika would often read her poems to us, and we would memorize them.

Yudika was a lyric poet and certainly a person whom we proudly called a Gorzder.

[Page 240]

The courtyard of the synagogue and Beit HaMidrash [the House of Study] was a small area in itself. The Jews of Gorzd reached the town's holy places through three alleys: one alley led from the side of the market square, the second from the gesl [alley] side, and in the third walked the residents of the long street which was called Tamoczne Gas.

Beit HaMidrash resided in a respectable old house, and prayers were held there every day of the week as well as on the Shabbat and holidays. Beit HaMidrash was also a center for the study of the Torah. At the entrance to the corridor stood out the large water sink. From here an entrance led to large room called the shtiebel^[1] where, when necessary, a separate minyan was held. I remember the Holy Ark in the shtiebel where the small scrolls Torah were kept. These were parchment scrolls in the form of Torah scrolls. They contained the books of Nevi'im [prophets] and the haftara^[2] was read from them on the Shabbat. We, the children, were honored to carry these small Torah scrolls during the hakafot^[3] on Simchat Torah.

A few steps led from the corridor into Beit HaMidrash. On either side of the entrance stood two large stoves, as if they emphasized their great importance during the long winter season. Next to the stoves stood long tables with wooden benches on each side, on which poor passersby sometimes found a night's rest.

On the right side of Beit HaMidrash hall stood a long table with long benches next to it. Here sat the scholars of Gorzd for many hours, in the morning and evening, and studied the daily page in the Gemara and chapters of Mishnayot. Here was held the regular lesson on Halacha^[4] which was based on the book Magine Erets [“Defender of the Land” by Yosef Caro], as well as from other books on Halacha. On the wall, by which the students sat, were memorial plaques containing the names of scholars and the dates of their passing. On the anniversary of their death, the teacher said Kadish after them at the end of the lesson.

On the right side of Beit HaMidrash hall sat around a table the reciters of Tehillim [Psalms]. They gathered every Shabbat, between Mincha and Maariv [afternoon and evening] prayers, and recited chapters of Tehillim,

[Page 241]

“Tiferet Bachurim” in Gorzd at the Hannukah party

Beit HaMidrash was the life center of the townspeople. When the worshipers gathered for a prayer, they came early and discussed and argued about public problems and political questions. And after the heat debate, some of them also continued their arguments during and after prayer.

Public meetings were also held in Beit HaMidrash. I remember a large gathering in memory of Theodor Herzl z”l. The keynote speaker was the physician Dr. Oxman. He warmly praised the Zionist enterprise of the distinguished Zionist leader. The preachers, who traveled from city to city, also presented their sermons in Beit HaMidrash. I remember the pleasant sermons of the preacher Ziss, who was known by his nickname Meyn Teyere [my dear], because with these words he addressed his audience many times in his sermon. This preacher excelled at composing rhymes and decorated his sermons with them.

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One of the rhymes was:

Ale beyner shafn kraynk
un shpiln bankrot,
der beys-medresh-bank – gevin!
zayn banker iz Got.^[5]

In a time of distress, when a burning public question was up for discussion and the community leaders could not find its solution, those concerned with matter prevented the removal of the Torah scroll from the Holy Ark and delayed the reading of the Torah on the Shabbat. These energetic people didn't move from their place until the community leaders were forced to commit to solving the urgent problem immediately the day after the Shabbat.

The women's section was in the upper balcony, and a wooden partition, with round small windows, separated the men from the women. A separate entrance led from the courtyard to the stairs on which the women ascended to the women's section. Above this floor was the attic in which sacred books, that had been torn over time, were kept until they were brought for burial.

The synagogue had a completely different character. It was a new and relatively luxurious building. Prayers were held at the synagogue on the Shabbat and holidays, and only in the summer months because stoves were not built in it and it was very cold there in the winter. Occasionally, the cantor led the services accompanied by a choir. Meetings were held at the synagogue building only on special occasions. I remember such a public meeting in honor of the President of the State of Lithuania, Antanas Smetona, who visited Gorzd on his tour of Lithuania. The Hebrew school students stood in two lines, and the president and his entourage passed between them and entered the synagogue. One of the community leaders delivered a congratulatory speech in Hebrew and Dr. Eglshtein translated it into Lithuanian.

Near the two houses of worship stood the rabbi's house, a long and wide wooden house. I remember the years of R' Shabtai Shapira zt”l service, and his study room full of books where he received people. Sometimes, the community leaders gathered at the rabbi's house and consulted on public matters.

The square of the three buildings, the synagogue, Beit HaMidrash and the rabbi's house, was therefore the center of spiritual life Gorzd Jews.

Translator's footnotes:

1. Shtiebel (lit. “little room or house”) is a space used for communal Jewish prayer in contrast to a formal synagogue. back
2. Haftarah (lit. “taking Leave”] is a series of selections from the books of Prophets. The haftara reading follows the Torah reading on each Sabbath and on Jewish festivals and fast days. back
3. Hakafot (lit. “circlings”) refers to the celebratory processions on Simchat Torah when people dance with the Torah scrolls and circle the bimah seven times. back
4. Halacha is the collective body of Jewish religious law that guides daily life, encompassing rules for everything from diet and dress to ethics and prayer. back
5. Translation by Jerrold Landau:
   

   All banks just breed misfortune [literally: illness],
   And play at bankruptcy;
   but the Beis midrash bench [pronounced in Yiddish as bank] – remember?
   – its banker is G-d Himself. back

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