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In Russian: Dunayivtsi, a town on the Tarnov River, 32 versts away from the county town, Nova-Ushytsya, and about 30 versts from the regional city of Kamyanets Podilskyy. During the rule of the Poles, in 1765, the town had a Jewish settlement of 1,129 people and in the immediate vicinity another 1,598. After the Heidemak attacks, the number of Jews in the area decreased and in 1775 it reached 884 in the town and 849 in the area. In 1784, the number rose again and reached 748 in the town and 1,221 in the surrounding area. About 3 years later, one must note, the number dropped again: 568 in the town and 1,133 in the surrounding area. With the annexation of Podolia to the Russian Empire after the division of Poland and as a result of the settlement of Germans in the town and in the surrounding area, a period of development and prosperity began. The general number of residents reached 11,000 and the number of Jews also rose. At the beginning of the twentieth century, there were textile factories, a place for dyeing cloth, a flour mill, two hospitals and general schools. In the area, there were many fruit gardens and a well-developed branch raising sheep.

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The city of Dunavitz (in the national language: Dunajewzi) was located on the slope of one of the flat mountains on the edge of the Carpathians at a distance of 40 kilometers from the regional city of Kamyanets Podilskyy and belonged to the jurisdiction of the district city of Nova-Ushytsya. It was divided into two: the old city and the new city. The latter stretched on both sides of the main road, which was an important transportation artery between the district city of Proskorov (= Khmelnytskyi) and Kamyanets Podilskyy, and was connected to the old city by a long street, the “Main Street,” which ran along the entire city and closed it off from end to end.

The old city included two large markets (the shop market and the cattle market), Butcher Street, Tailor Street, Synagogue Street, and several other streets and alleys. In the shop market were concentrated most of the wholesale and retail stores for food, for haberdashery, for manufacturing, for clothing and footwear, for household appliances and building materials, for furniture and more. In its center stood about 40 wooden huts, in which there were small shops for selling sewing notions, agricultural tools, foodstuffs, tobacco and more. For the most part, these huts were equipped with shutters that opened outward and some of the goods were placed on them for display. Behind the huts were located the Christian pork butchers who came there every day in their carts and sold their merchandise from there. On the days of the “fairs” (usually every Tuesday), the market-shops were filled with a lot of farmers who came from the surrounding area and brought in their carts the crops of their land for sale and bought the supplies they needed in return. In front of the huts, on a spacious lot, dozens of peddlers' and craftsmen's counters (tinsmiths, glaziers) crowded together, and the gentile women from the suburbs and nearby villages put on the ground for themselves the farm products they brought for sale: fruits, vegetables, dairy products, and the like. Not far from them were spread out the tent stores of the Katsafs who came from the interior of Russia and sold mainly “icons” and other Christian religious objects.

The livestock market, also large and spacious, was used to sell rough and fine animals and poultry. Most days of the week it was empty and deserted, but on the day of the “fair” it was crowded with many people and animals.

The houses in the old city were mostly one or two stories and resembled each other in their appearance and exterior structure. Not so the two churches, the Catholic and the Pravoslav, which shone, the first in the center of the shopping market and the second up the main street, and stood out for their size and their special architectural form. An ancient building with three floors and an arched passage, which stood on the border between the two

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markets and served as a kind of common house for many tenants, was also unusual in this sense. The Gentiles called the house “Ratosh” (council house, which apparently was used formerly for this purpose), while the Jews called it “History”(?).

The inhabitants of the old city, excluding the suburbs within its borders, were mostly Jews, with the exception of a few hundred gentiles, Poles and Ukrainians, who made a living in the city and lived at its edges.

The new city excelled with its straight and clean streets, with its beautiful houses sunken in the greenery of gardens of ornamentation and fruit, and all of it, with the exception of a large market with a Protestant church and a large German school in its center, was also a beautiful public garden, which the Germans, most of the inhabitants of this part of the city and its founders, planted and set aside for their own use only. Indeed, the main importance of the new city was in its industrial establishments: about 50 textile factories that employed and supported, either directly or indirectly, a large part of its residents.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, after Alexander I, the king of Russia, made a “holy alliance” with Austria and Prussia, many Germans immigrated to Russia and developed various industries there. According to what the elders of the city said, several families of these immigrants, weavers by profession, arrived in Dunavitz with their wives and children transported in carts drawn by dogs. They brought with them hand-operated looms, opened small workshops, and began primitive textile production. Over time, they brought steam-powered machines, established large factories, and turned the remote town at the edge of Podolia, which until then had barely made a living from handicrafts and small trade, into a place of important textile industry, the only one in all of Ukraine, competing with the production of the large industrial cities of Lodz and Bialystok.

During the First World War, the government expelled most of the Germans from the city, who were foreign nationals, to the interior of the country, from the machines of the factories it cast cannons and bullets and turned their buildings into barracks. This is how it destroyed the “Dunavitz textiles” industry by itself, which had served them to a considerable extent to clothe the army and whose lack was most felt during the war. Of course, this also had a negative effect on the economic situation of the entire city and led to considerable depletion.

The number of residents in Dunavitz was estimated at 15,000, of which about 10,000 were Jews and the rest Ukrainians, Poles, and Germans. According to what is recorded in the district archives, there were 1,129 Jews in the city in 1765, besides the Jews of the surrounding villages, who also belonged to the Dunavitz community. In the days of Bohdan Khmelnytsky when the Cossacks attacked the Jewish communities and carried out brutal pogroms there (decrees of 1648 and 1649), and after the massacre they carried out in Uman in 1768, many of the city's residents fled and only 484 people remained. Over time, their number increased and, according to a census conducted before 1900, there were 5,000 Jewish families in the city, including 800 artisans, 200 shopkeepers, 296 grain merchants, 200 textile merchants, and the rest small peddlers and merchants.

As mentioned above, the industry, which was founded in the city, changed its economic system. Many of the Jews became close to the German industrialists, learned their trade from them, and worked in their factories as weavers, dyers, shearers (cutters of the wool from the hides), mechanics and more. They also served as clerks and suppliers who brought them the wool and other raw materials from the primary sources, such as Bessarabia, Crimea,

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Caucasus, and even Australia. Agile agents and merchants also arose who distributed the textiles all over Russia and found extensive markets for them. Over time, several Jewish factories were also established and a large part of the inhabitants of the old city actually participated in the development of the industry and lived off of it.

Besides those engaged in the industry, there were in the city various craftsmen and artisans (tailors, shoemakers, furriers, hatters, carpenters, blacksmiths, tinsmiths, goldsmiths, watchmakers, and others), merchants (mainly grain merchants for export), shopkeepers, clerks, pimps, moneylenders, and more. Compared to the other surrounding cities, the economic situation of Dunavitz was quite good and established and left its mark in all areas of life in the city.

As is known, Podolia was the cradle of Hasidism and the place of its first growth and flowering. Of course, this popular movement struck deep roots in Dunavitz as well and in the early days even made it an important center for it. In “The Book of Argument” of Rabbi Yisrael Leibel and in the anthology of documents, “Criminal Fracture,” from the period between

From views of the city (A)

Over the years, as everywhere else, different Hasidic sects arose in the city, each of which believed only in its own “Tzaddik” and criticized that of others, which led to quarrels and sometimes even hand-to-hand fights. In Dunavitz, there were the Hasidim of Sadigura, Husyatyn, Chortkiv, Zinkiv (these split into the followers of R. Moshe and the followers of R. Pinchas, his brother, and were hostile to one another) and more. The dedication and loyalty of the Dunavitz Hasidim to “their tzaddiks” is evidenced by the following incident:

In 1838, two Jewish whistleblowers (“mosrim”) who were bothering the surrounding Jewish communities a lot by reporting on them to the authorities were killed in the district town of Nova-Ushytsya. According to what was told, it was imposed

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upon one of them to be brought alive into the burning furnace of the bath house in Dunavitz and to be burned there. The authorities saw this murder as the work of the nearby communities and delivered community leaders to a military trial. The tzaddik, R. Israel of Ruzhin (Kyiv Region) was also imprisoned as a suspect of incitement to murder and was taken under heavy guard to the trial in Nova-Ushytsya. On the way there, he was brought to spend the night in one of the houses in the courtyard of the Pravoslav church in Dunavitz. What did the Hasidim of the city do? They put on shrouds and lay in ambush behind the tombstones in one of the cemeteries by the road that goes up to Nova-Ushytsya. The next day, when the guard with the prisoner passed near the place, the imaginary dead jumped out of their hiding place, attacked the guards with wild shrieks and screams, until they were frightened, left the prisoner, and fled for their lives. So the tzaddik was brought across the border to Austria, settled in Sadigura, which is in Bukovina, and founded the Sadigurite dynasty.

There were three rabbis in Dunavitz and each of them had his own circle of “householders” who seated him on the throne of the rabbinate and took care of his livelihood, even in a very limited way. In order to fill, even if only a little, the shortage of her home, the Rebbetzin would sometimes be forced to try her hand at small household trade, such as selling yeast and the like. Sometimes the rabbis would quarrel with each other over various religious questions and severe quarrels broke out between the people who shared their same ideas. It so happened that due to the matter of the “mikvah,” which was found to be illegal in the eyes of one of the rabbis and kosher in the eyes of the other, a great quarrel broke out between the Jewish residents and the whole city was in turmoil for an entire year. Similarly, each rabbi had his own butcher, only his butchery was faithful to the men of the rabbi's flock. Of course, this also caused quite a few divisions and conflicts in the city, in addition to those which came because of Hasidism and its sects.

The affairs of the community were managed by the gabbaim of the synagogues and its budget came from the meat and candle taxes. Besides a large general synagogue, small synagogues for artisans (tailors, cobblers), and “enclaves” for different Hasidim, there were several other public institutions in the city, such as: “Talmud Torah” for poor children, a shelter for the poor (“Hekdesh”), a bath house, “Bikur Cholim,” “Chevra Kadisha,” Chevra for Shas, a psalm reciting group, and a volunteer fire brigade company. The last was founded about sixty years ago after a big fire that broke out in the city and burned about 20 houses. With the funds received from the municipality and with various donations, the city purchased the necessary equipment and also built a large house in the city center with warehouses for the various fire fighting equipment and a large and spacious hall for meetings, lectures, plays, and the like.

The trade in the textiles of the local industry (“Dunavitz textiles”) brought those involved in it, the merchants and the traveling salesmen of all kinds, in close contact with the wider world and was an important factor in the spread of education in the city and in its cultural progress. There arose, in addition to the teachers and the “Cheders” of the old type, expert teachers of Tanakh, of Hebrew and its grammar, of the state language, and of general studies. Many of the children of the affluent and wealthy were even able to be accepted as students in the government high schools in nearby Kamyanets Podilskyy and to finish their studies there or be examined as externs.

When the Zionist movement began to spread among the Jews of Russia, Dunavitz claimed a prominent place. The best of the educated in it, led by those who later became known as long-time Zionist leaders: Yosef Blank,

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Elia Rubinstein (both dealers in “Dunavitz textiles”), Mordechai Rosen (writes articles in “Ha-Melitz,” “Ha-Tsfira,” and “Ha-Shilo'ah” and afterwards also in “Ha-Doar” in the United States). And many others founded the first Zionist association in the city of “Dorshei-Tsiyon” and developed many activities of great initiative and scope in all areas of the national revival. Information and Zionist propaganda were advanced, members were acquired for the Zionist Federation by selling membership certificates, donations were collected for the benefit of the settlement of Eretz Yisrael by the Hovevei Zion committee in Odesa, and quite a few shares of the “The Treasury of Jewish Settlement” were even sold. During the days of the Zionist congresses, the association would send a delegation and the account that it gave later in public brought the hearts of the residents even closer to the Zionist idea.

Education in the city was also given a distinctly Zionist-nationalist character. At the initiative of “Dorshei-Tsiyon,” a Hebrew school (the first in the city) was founded, whose curriculum included both Hebrew and general studies.

The influence of the Zionists grew, especially on the younger generation. A Zionist youth emerged imbued with a deep national consciousness, who saw their main role in reviving their people, their country, and their language. The “spiritual Zionism” of Ahad Ha'am also gained many supporters among them and the association of young Zionists, “Ha-Techiya,” headed by its founder's son, Rabbi Avraham Lerner (immigrated to Israel and died there during the First World War), advocated this method. Between the two associations, it is true, for a while there was a spirit of rivalry and bickering to a certain extent, but this only added energy and activity to both. Over time, several public and private schools for boys and girls were founded by the young Zionist businessmen, and the renewed Hebrew language (including speaking Hebrew) was the property of many. Hundreds of young people were diligent about reading the new Hebrew literature and the Hebrew newspapers of that time, “Ha-Melitz,” “Ha-Tsfira,” “Ha-Zman,” “Ha-Tsofe” and more, acquired many subscribers and readers among them. The monthly “Ha-Shilo'ah” had 35 subscribers in Dunavitz, which, according to its editor, Dr. Yosef Klausner, there was not as many as this number in any other city in all of Russia, except perhaps for Odesa (the city where the monthly was published) itself. Of course, the number of readers of “Ha-Shilo'ah” far exceeded that of its subscribers.

The organization “Pirchei Tsiyon,” founded in 1908

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In 1903, a large Zionist conference was held in Dunavitz and among the lecturers at it was the authorized member of the Zionist Federation, Menachem Sheinkin. The conference, held in a large hall and with a large audience, made a great impression on its participants and the name of the city became known as an important Zionist point.

Indeed, the nationalist-Zionist education, which opened the gates of its institutions to all strata of the people (there were also “Shabbat classes” for studying the weekly Torah for artisans out of a nationalistic-free viewpoint), brought a lot of praise. Over time, the city raised a whole generation of Jews of national standing who embraced the idea of redemption, including the writers: Dr. Yehezkel Koifman (author of “Gola ve-Nechar” and “Toldot Ha-Emunah Ha-Yisraelit”), Prof. Zvi Sharfstein (writer and educator), S. L. Blank (novelist), M . Michaeli (author for children and educator), L. Y. Riklis (writer and educator) and more.

Apart from the Zionist organizations, there were almost no other parties in the city. The “Po'alei Tsiyon” organization was called by this name only because its members were craftsmen without any connection or affiliation to the world party known by this name.

Neighborly relations between the city's Jews and the rest of its citizens were reasonably normal until the First World War. In particular, the closeness that arose over the years between the Jews and the German industrialists on the occasion of their trade connections should be noted. Many of the latter even adopted Yiddish and there were also among them those who knew how to write commercial notes in this language.

In 1903, after the pogroms in Kishinev, an anti-Semitic agitation was felt in the vicinity of Dunavitz and the firemen, most of them young men, ruffians and courageous, took the defense of the city upon themselves. And here at one of the “fairs,” when all the markets of the city were filled with lots of carts and peasants from the surrounding area, a fight broke out in one of the Jewish taverns between drunken Katsafs from the road construction workers there, and the voice came out as if they were shouting: “Beat the Jews!” (a known password for pogroms). Immediately the firemen's alarm was heard and they appeared on the spot with their equipment and their ears and showed their strength. A commotion and confusion arose, and the peasants were very frightened at the sight of the heroes wearing uniforms and copper helmets and they fled from the city. A legal complaint was later filed on the part of the authorities against the fire chief for the occurrence, but he was acquitted and the city returned to peace.

With the First World War, there was a change for the worse in the city's situation. The destruction of its industry by the military authorities (see section A), a wave of pogroms during the days of Petliura, which passed through several of the Jewish communities in Ukraine and did not skip that of Dunavitz, as well as the frequent regime changes from 1917 onwards - all these caused the diminution of both its material and spiritual strength. Many of its Jewish residents, especially the younger generation, left and immigrated to different countries, a significant part of them immigrated to Israel to share in building it. Nevertheless, the Jewish community of Dunavitz continued to exist, albeit in a poor way, until the Second World War came and brought the Nazi oppressor upon it as well. After several difficult edicts,

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there came brutal abuses and mass incarceration in the ghetto, as in the other cities and towns in the Ukraine, the “Final Solution”: some of the Jews of Dunavitz were shot and buried in one of its central markets, and most of them were executed outside the city and buried there in one large mass grave.

Thus was destroyed the Jewish community of Dunavitz, a prominent city in Israel, known for praise, both for its past in the field of the nation's tradition and for its actions towards its future.

1. With the kind permission of “Yad va-Shem,” the memorial authority of the Holocaust and heroism. Return

Our town was not busy, but life and movement flowed through it. There were a large number of people coming to buy or sell and a large number of people going out for business purposes. The one walking down the street - generally he has a goal and a purpose. In the town, there was also a stratum of affluent people who were not so careful with their pennies and their clothes were nice and their table was full and rich. The Jews of our city had additional sources of income beyond the usual sources in the Pale of Settlement. They supplied the German manufacturers with wool from Bessarabia, from Crimea, from the Caucasus, and even from abroad, from far away Australia. The plant fibers, jute, were brought from Nizhny-Novgorod and the dyes from Lithuania and Germany. At the railway station in Proskorov (= Khmelnytskyi), we loaded heavy freight cars and transported them by horses to our town. And the Jewish citizens of our city were also the traveling agents who passed through all the cities of Russia, far and wide, from city to city and region to region, to sell the product, either at the expense of the factory or at their own expense. Our agents also reached the interior regions of Russia and even cold Siberia. A guest who came to our city was recognized as a stranger, but no one was surprised by him and the stranger did not serve as a wall for conversation and they did not wait to hear from him unknown secrets.

The negotiations with the cities of the great country broadened the horizons of the educated people of our city and brought them to generosity and to activity. The citizens of our city were not so strict and precise in their zealousness and they were not killed for every old custom. The merchants and agents would wear semi-modern and modern clothes, hard and soft hats on their heads according to the fashion, use pince-nez spectacles with black ribbons, silk ribbons, hanging down to connect with the clothing. They read daily and weekly newspapers, mostly Hebrew and sometimes Russian, and knew what was going on in the world. During their travels, they would meet with the leaders of Judaism and its wheeler-dealers in Russia and talk with them. Therefore, our travelers and merchants were influenced by the movements and social currents that prevailed in our world at that time and, on their return, they would bring new ideas and preach to them. None of the young people in our town was forced to fight for an education, whether Hebrew or general - because it did not occur to anyone to interfere and to prevent, and the reader of Mapu and Smolenskin did not do his reading in secret and did not go up to the attic for that purpose. Newspapers and books were available and the parents also look favorably on them. Even the rabbi of the city, whose two sons were among the educated, did not prevent his sons from reading

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in the new literature and no one protested to the rabbi about letting his sons go to “bad culture.” We had teachers for Hebrew studies and also teachers for general studies who would prepare the youth to pass the Gymnasium exam. There was hardly a young man in our city from a good family and learned in Torah who has not read the new Hebrew literature. A guy with large sidelocks and dressed in long clothes was “not to be seen.” When Zionism spread in Russia, our town was the center for the whole area and voiced its opinion in the newspapers in due course and at times of disagreements and gained a reputation, and the leaders of the movement presented it as an example until it was considered to be the Jerusalem of Podolia.

In a part of the “new city” that was in our city, there was a special neighborhood, somewhat remote and isolated, where the factories and residences of their German owners were built. The houses on both sides of the road were the residences of the Russian clerks and of rich and affluent Jews, and in the “old city” there was the market, the tents of “Amcha” and their dwellings, mostly shopkeepers, grain merchants, craftsmen, and agents. Only a few of the rich and affluent lived in the old city.

In the German colony were the factories and residences of their owners and managers and clerks. This neighborhood excelled in splendor - in those days. The houses were not large, most of them one story, but their construction was solid and they shone with their whitewash and were sunk in the greenery of ornamental and fruit trees. In general, the complacency of well-informed and confident people was felt in that neighborhood. The buildings were separate, building by building by itself, with its yard and lot, with its beautiful roof and with the wide relaxing benches and with its fence and colorful flowers. From the glass

From views of the city (B)

As I strolled through those quiet streets, I brought to my mind the sight of the “old city” with its houses

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crowded together, leaning against each other, with their crooked walls and looking like they might fall, I compared before my eyes its narrow and polluted alleys, I remembered the great outcropping of dusty ground.

And not just the external purity. The life of the German community was organized and orderly.

They had a public garden where they gathered on their holidays and on summer nights to enjoy their time over rich food and a glass of beer talking, singing, and dancing. In our childhood days, we would stand outside the fence during such celebrations and watch what was going on with somewhat astonished faces. We saw robust and healthy men sitting with their wives, with broad shoulders and bulging breasts, in front of large and heavy tables, tables made of oak, eating fat sausages and drinking beer from large clay pitchers with moderation and deliberateness, and singing and enjoying the pleasures of the world. Who is the Jewish family man who will get up one evening and forget his worries and sit his wife to his right and they will drink beer or wine and open their mouths in song?

The Jewish community, large in number, had almost no public buildings, except for synagogues and various Beit Midrash - and even these were somewhat neglected and did not excel in splendor. Although there were quite a few educated people in our town, among them distinguished merchants who were members of the community, they did not have much influence on the administration of the community. Most of the townspeople - their public awareness was dormant. Who were the official community leaders? - These were the gabbaim of the prayer houses, diaspora Jews who lacked independence and had provincial ideas, without imagination, without courage. The community of Israel had a considerable income from the meat tax - and it was partly wasted and partly remained in the government treasury without use. Every year the gabbaim were called to a meeting to consult on the needs of the city and the meetings were in the presence of the chief of police. Then the gabbaim remembered poor needs: the roof of the prayer house that was leaking and in need of repair, the fence of the Beit Midrash that was broken, and the walls of the Beit Midrash that were prone to fall and required the support of girders, and the like. The sums allotted for the inspection of the houses were small, so the chief of police came and proposed to allocate large sums for general needs that did not fall within the scope of the concern of the Jewish community, such as for paving roads, for the construction of latrines in the open areas, and the like, and the real needs of the community, such as the education of the children of the poor and the treatment of poor patients - they paid no attention. The rabbis of the city, for example - and their number at my time was three - made a living with great difficulty from meager salaries and were in need of side incomes of low value and great shame, such as from the sale of yeast and from gifts from homeowners for holidays and festivals such as Hanukkah and Purim. Charitable institutions were at the bottom of the ladder. In the Talmud Torah for the children of the poor there was disorder and in the “charity hospital” the sick lay in neglect without good nutrition and without medical treatment. And the gabbaim who for the most part did not speak Russian properly and it was difficult for them to express their thoughts in the language of the state - sat in front of the clerk almost trembling, nodding their heads and not daring to oppose his suggestions.

But little by little, with the infiltration of the national idea, social awareness arose and criticisms were heard about the gabbaim and the community leaders who were neglecting the charitable institutions.

One of the signs of awakening in my town was the founding of the “volunteer fire company.”

The firemen's association in the German neighborhood had complete equipment, organized wagons and ladders and large rubber hoses and huge water barrels and axes and explosive devices. The firefighters were experts in fighting fire because from time to time they were given firefighting training. Wearing their uniforms and putting on their heads their copper hats

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and throwing the great jets of water - the terror subsided. But when a fire broke out in the Jewish streets and the bells of the prayer houses rang and alerted the townspeople - the German firemen would sit down considering as to whether it was worth it to them to go and they waited for the messengers and those who begged them to come and rescue them, and when they were so kind as to come out of the fire station and took their equipment with them - and arrived at the scene of the fire - they would do their work unhurriedly and with extreme restraint, as those enjoying the loss of the Jews' property. The residents of the town saw this and complained about the evil - but no one listened. Then the young people of Israel woke up, led by a young fighter and dreamer, Haim Hirsch Wissotzky, and founded a new firemen's association, in which there were strong young men, the sons of butchers and tailors and cobblers, strong-muscled and well-versed in work. They added some of the Ukrainian young men and, with the municipality's money, they built a large and spacious firehouse, bought all the equipment, and began to practice firefighting. From then on, the Jews were freed from the “kindness” of the Germans. And in the municipal fire station there was a large and spacious hall available for public meetings and celebrations, and the Jewish doctor, Dr. Marmor, tried and did allocate three thousand rubles a year from the meat tax money for the upkeep of the station and for the other needs of the association.

The foundation of the association was the first signal for the improvement of public affairs in the city. Then the Zionists, especially the younger ones, began to pay attention to the reform of education - and improved it. But this is a special case, a cautionary case in the history of the town.

Apart from the merchants and agents who were engaged in supplying the raw materials to the factories and distributing the textiles in the cities of the country - the rest of the townspeople were mainly engaged in trade and crafts, and the trade - was mostly insignificant. Except for twenty or twenty-five large or medium-sized stores, the rest of the stores were very poor, very small (four by four), and some were found in wooden huts that they put in the market place. The capital invested in these stores was very small - two or three hundred rubles, and even this was not the shopkeeper's property, but rather goods acquired on credit. The rest of the merchants were kind of peddlers - keeping their goods in their homes and taking them out in the morning to their territory on shelves in the market and in the evening, putting their goods either in baskets or in sacks and returning to their homes.

On most days of the week, the small shops were almost empty of people and there was a gap of time between customers and the shopkeepers sat idly in front of their shops and neighbors and agents and just idle walkers who were in the streets came up to them to chat about trivial matters and when the conversation flared up and its contents got lost, boredom and yawns would come. This hour of emptiness was fit for gossip, to discuss the state of the townspeople, who rises to greatness in commerce and who approaches bankruptcy, who - negotiates with faith and who - has fraudulent scales, who gets lucky with a decent match and who marries his daughter to a fool or a failure, who is deprived because of miserliness and who squanders more than a fifth on delicacies and sends his wife to abundant happiness and healing, and similar destructive conversations.

Because of the bad economic situation - the number of the poor was large even in our successful town - the competition was enormous and did not breed peace. There used to be about three hundred merchants in our town who would buy field grain from the farmers and sell it at a small margin to wholesalers who would export the wheat, rye, and buckwheat abroad. On market day, the farmer would bring his cart loaded with grains, vegetables, fruits, chickens, geese, swans, and eggs. Rows and rows of carts went by,

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one after the other. The grain merchants would gather at the market and ask the farmer, “What did you bring?” “How much does it cost?” And so on, and the farmer scratches his forehead, considers the matter, and it is difficult for him to come to a decision what to ask for and he does not want to sell until a second and third buyer comes before him and he hears their offers. What did the merchants who were eager to buy do? They outsmarted their competitors and went out of the city to the roads to greet the farmers and to buy their grain from them even before they entered the town. As such the competition began in the greeting of the farmers. Even the competitor went outside the city and went farther than his friend, the third came and went even further, so each tried to get ahead of his friend, and the farmer seeing this great eagerness became suspicious that all these Jews had eyes for his grain only to buy it from him at half the price. And the more the buyer raised his price, the more suspicious the farmer grew, and the more he pondered the Jew's intentions until he drove the buyer out of his sight and went to the market to see what he would get there. And if the merchant managed to buy a sack of rye or other grain on the way, he would load the sack on his shoulder and carry it to the wholesaler and sell it to him at a margin of pennies.

Mostly there were craftsmen in our town - about eight hundred in number - and from all professions. Tailors for men's clothes and tailors for women's clothes, shoemakers and carpenters, furriers, hatters and leather workers, also coopers, tinsmiths, and blacksmiths, house painters and sign painters, watchmakers and goldsmiths, bakers and bagel makers and apple canners - and every craft that had any demand whatsoever. They were artisans, but most of them could not earn the name artisan because they did not know their craft properly. Where did they learn from? There were apprenticeships with craftsmen, but at the beginning of their studies they were enslaved to two masters: the craftsman and his wife: carrying the food basket from the market, sweeping the floor, taking out the chamber pots, and doing other services

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that are important in and of themselves, but do not bring about progress in the craft. Their teachers and instructors were also not of the type of Bezalel ben Uri and their work did not earn the title of “work of art.” The demand for beautiful work was not very widespread because they did not value it nor could the majority of those who ordered it pay for it. Only the rich and affluent asked for nice and appropriate clothing and the majority of the community looks down on this and sees no fault in a lack of beauty. The main thing is “the purpose.” We don't sew a garment except to cover the nakedness of the body and to warm it when it's cold and we don't make a shoe except to protect the feet from harm, injury, and damage, and what is the problem if the garment is too big? I remember that my father owned a hat workshop and we had one worker, his name was Neta, a guy who depended on his desk and lived in one of our rooms in our house. And this guy was meticulous about his clothes: his robe was white and ironed, and before he went to bed he would straighten his pants and hang them on a hanger so that they wouldn't crease, and when he went out for a walk he would be dressed elegantly - and he would be a subject of laughter. Please see how this guy is adorning himself! And if the pants are wrinkled - what does that mean? Why all this hassle?

Apprentices and artisans were considered the elite of the city. The minority learn the craft of their forefathers and for them the saying is true: “The deeds of fathers are a sign to the sons,” however, most of them train in a different craft. For every craftsman felt the suffering of his art and the “distant fields looked green.” These apprentices well knew what was in store for them in the future so they would not be able to say, “My legacy was good for me,” but they would not hesitate on the question of what “the day would bring.” And since they knew that when they went out on their own after marrying a woman, they would taste the taste of poverty, they decided to enjoy life as long as it was in their hands. That's why the sound of happiness and the sound of joy was heard from the workshops, the voice of the apprentices singing holy songs and secular songs, songs of love and songs of ridicule, and telling jokes to each other, and laughter did not stop from their mouths all day long.

Those learning a trade did not hope for greatness, but their path was clear before them. This was not the way of the children of the house owners, the minority would study in the Beit Midrash and study the Talmud and the majority would study “Haskalah” at home, that is: they read the new Hebrew literature and learn the state language and secular knowledge from teachers or they learn by themselves and often go on trips and have bad conversations. Few have prepared for a certain profession, such as to engage in pharmacy or medicine or religion and law, and the majority just study because it is not good for a child from a good family not to study. When the boy reaches puberty, the matchmakers would come and present an “appropriate” match to his parents, and when the matter came to fruition, the father-in-law would set a dowry of several hundred rubles and guarantee maintenance for a year or two, and even more than that, each according to his status, until the newlywed man found his way in life. The groom took the girl as a wife for good luck, handed over the dowry in the hands of a “safe person,” and received interest. But the months of serenity or “honeymoon” passed quickly. The father-in-law promised what he promised on the basis of the saying, “Man Di-hiv Chai Yahiv Mazoni” (God who gives life will also give food), and waited for a miracle. The miracle did not happen, the saying was not confirmed. The young couple was a burden on the hard-pressed parents.

In the first days after the wedding, the newlywed groom would curl his clothes and his hair, go to the Beit Midrash, meet with friends and debate with them, and return to his baked bread and his poured glass, and the father-in-law and mother-in-law would treat him with respect and hide their distress from him and not talk about their worries in front of him. But the distress was not hidden in the dishes and the time came for it to be revealed, sooner or later, sighs and complaints about

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the hard times burst from the heart and entered into the heart of the newlywed yeshiva student. The foods that were given to him in abundance at first gradually decreased in quantity and quality and the time came when they stopped being nice to him, gave him a subtle or rough hint that he won't feel good at their expense. So the student was faced with a sharp question, the question of “what to do.” The one lost in the ways of life did not know where to turn. The choices were few: to take his money out of the hands of the “secure” and give it to the favored and the small traders at a high interest rate - and lose because who knows if they will succeed at repaying the loan; to partner himself with the merchant who needs money - and lose. All roads would lead to loss. And in the end, he was another one added to the congregation who prayed with conviction: Help the poor, please save!

A number of rich people made a living from interest businesses or mainly from interest. They would lend small sums, from fifty rubles to several hundred, to each person according to their worth, and the borrower undertook to pay the principal at fixed rates every week and to add the interest to it and to complete the payment of the entire debt within a year. Every Friday afternoon, men and women, boys and girls, would flock to the house of the lender to bring him the week's wages. The lender would sit in the courtyard next to his table, count the bills and coins with consideration and with great intent, as one doing the holy service, check and write in his notebook. These rich people who lend at interest reached the level of stinginess on the occasion of their rolling in pennies of interest. Like mice, they would lie on their dinars and some would deprive their souls of goodness. And there was one lender who was admittedly not one of the great rich who brought the degree of avarice to great perfection, and yet was not very successful. His body did not withstand the test and his soul swelled with hunger.

The relationship between neighbors and acquaintances was good in general. Every day the owners of the houses would meet in the prayer house and the Beit Midrash and spend an hour talking about the issues at hand and tell each other news about the affairs of the city and the world. In the winter, neighbors would enter one another's houses for a chat over a cup of tea. Every Shabbat and festival, relatives and friends visited each other, as well as on Saturday evenings. The Hanukkah holiday was a time for family celebrations. Then the woman would fry pancakes filled with porridge or potatoes, add a little fat to them, bring up the good cherry wine from the cellar, and the neighbors who are called or who come of their own accord, sit at the set table in the well-lit and well-heated dining room and eat and listen to the stories of the tales or the miraculous deeds of the Hasidim, and the soul is lifted and the hearts grow closer and friendship increases.

In those days of my youth, close to 1895, the custom of reading in a group spread. And the reason for this was the popular writer Shalom Aleichem, who brought the light of life and joy of heart to the sad dwellings of Israel. In those days, his monologues and short stories appeared in small pamphlets and were sold very cheaply, a pamphlet for an agora or five kopecks. These small pamphlets were disseminated to many. I remember that these pamphlets came to our store in packages of hundreds and the interested customers fought over them and they were sold in a few days. The pamphlets would be read at house parties and over every joke and conversation and idiom and quarrel between a woman with a tongue and a man with ideas, the company would burst out laughing and the listeners would praise the writer extensively.

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The regimen of life in our town was fixed and specific. All its inhabitants were enslaved to one tradition. They followed a paved path and held to accepted customs and a fixed practice without many changes. The year was divided into weeks, and the week into days, and the most beloved day was the Sabbath day, a day of pleasure - therefore all of the weekdays were subject to it and subordinate to it. When the woman went out to buy a chicken, even though it was Tuesday of the week, she did not buy the chicken or the goose for the weekday, but for the Sabbath.

The peak of pleasure for the youth on Shabbat was the trek. On Friday night, after the feast, on a moonlit night, the young men and women, even those who choose each other, went out to the road, which is the King's Road, beautifully dressed, each young man with his robe collar shining white and his eye-catching, colorful silk tie and his hair beautifully made and his pince nez on his eyes and his modern hat placed on his head in a foppish way, and every girl - her hair is washed and combed and her black mane shining with a silken luster and a light perfume emanates from her. And the young men and women join in groups of three, four, and five, and walk together and see what is in front of them and meet friends and acquaintances and ask how they're doing and talk pleasantly and with joy of heart. And immediately they move on to words of literature and wisdom. If boys, they will talk about the last poem and the last story and the last article in “Ha-Shilo'ah,” and if girls join them, the conversation will turn to Tolstoy and Turgenev and Dostoyevsky, and from them to Gorky and the other new writers who are opening new worlds and new types for their readers. The Friday night trek was second only to the big trek that took place the next day on Saturday in the early evening. So the road was blackened by the quantity of the trekkers. Not only the youth went out then, but also the owners of houses with their wives and every man who had not yet died created life in his soul. Overly worried merchants and shopkeepers, hard-pressed in their livelihood, apprentices in workshops, seamstresses who sit all day bent over their machines and their needles, cooks and maids who hear insults from the mouths of their mistresses - all of these dissolved the cares of their day and the wrinkles on their faces straightened and a cloud of grief rose from their eyes and they walked satisfied and with a feeling of affection and fondness and they felt the pleasure of the world and of life. A boy who came of age and wore an ironed gown and a hard collar and a colorful silk tie for the first time - he would look at the passers-by to see if they thought about him and his clothes and if they knew he was coming to take a place in the company of the adults. A girl who is coming to puberty, washed hair with a long braid and adorned with ribbon and an anxious heart - examines the passers-by with her eyes, the young people, to see who will notice her and give his opinion about her, and every look given to her - will arouse in her pleasant reflections. Young couples after their marriage show everyone the cuteness of their clothes and homeowners who are level-headed - talk about the affairs of the city and the state of commerce. The crowds get closer and closer, rows rise and fall, and elbow reaches elbow, and everyone feels that he is a part of the whole, that the bigger the crowd - the greater the confidence in the heart.

The young people, the members of the new generation, no longer differentiated so much between the holy and the profane. And they no longer believed that all the days of the week were created only to serve the Sabbath day. They seek the pleasures of life whenever they find them. Here comes a new baker and opened a new shop in the new city - a shop of sweet cakes, the likes of which can only be found in the large city, cakes made of layers and layers of chocolate and on top of them a kind of whipped egg yolk and a strawberry or cherry stuck in it. There are young people who come there every evening to eat and enjoy themselves. They do it almost modestly, first because there is extravagance in it and second because who will testify about

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the kashrut of the cakes? They enter at the hour of neither day nor night and from there they set out on the big trek, sometimes young men and maidens together, and they will go far to go outside the city. And the parents will no longer object, they close their eyes and will not see wickedness, if only they observe the condition of going with the daughter of a decent householder, according to his honor and the honor of his family and status. And there is that on a snow day, a frosty day, we, a group of young men and women, will rent a fancy snow cart drawn by brave horses and we will go on a journey of an hour or two on the patch of snow on the King's Road, the cold urging us on and strengthening us, and we are happy and rejoicing from so much joy and joie de vivre.

This is how old and new are used in a mix. The old order still rules and determines life, but a new custom is standing at its door and it creeps inside the house and stakes out its place. There is no great resistance and no outbreak and no rebellion. The young people live in peace with their parents and put on tefillin and pray,

A school for girls that was founded in 1902

In their physical development, the residents of the city as a whole, and the middle-aged and the very old in particular, were typical diaspora Jewish types: faltering in their gait, thin, stooped, and worn out. And two factors

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were the main points about this: most of them were tent dwellers and shop dwellers, scholars and businessmen, people with crafts that require constant sitting, such as tailors and cobblers - without physical exercise in the fresh air. Sport was “not to be found.” As a child - he would compete with his friends in a race, play the game of sticks - to throw a stick at a small twig placed on top of two separate stones from a distance without missing, swim in the river in the summer, and skate on the ice in the winter. But even in those childhood days, the game was a kind of sin, spending time without a “purpose.” A respectable Jew when he passed by and saw a child at his games - he would fulfill his duty and observe the mitzvah of “rebuke”; “You are a boy of five years and why do you spend your time in vanities?” And once the boy began to study Gemara - and the beginner was six or seven years old - everyone began to be strict with him and watch over him, and the opinion of the majority influenced the children to be ashamed of this stupid act, and when they succumbed to temptation - they would feel themselves to be sinners, playing and flicking their eyes back and forth lest an older person see them. And as he grew older - so did his seriousness, his awareness of his duty to engage in things of learning and purpose. After the days of marriage came the days of worry: the face was wrinkled, in the depressed mind thoughts run all day long to find a source of livelihood. Under the burden of the poor household economy, the newlywed fell and, in a short time, poverty left its mark on his face and body and made him “a broken Jew.”

And yet the youths were well developed. The desire for life worked. A good mother - her eye was watching over her son and daughter that they eat and drink, and pleasant friends sweetened life and introduced games and laughter and sometimes joy. But here came the twentieth year, the year of the crisis, and discriminated against the good-looking, well-educated and healthy-bodied young man. A twenty-one-year-old was obliged to serve in the army - unless he was the only son of his parents or was weak or had a disability and was not successful for war. There were few only sons - in those days people did not ask to know the secret of prevention. Sons were considered a blessing and not a curse and blessed was the mother who had many sons. But they didn't want to be inducted. And this is understandable; they trained in the army for three years - during this time the boys were torn from their parents, from their studies, from their businesses, from their training for life. Why would this young man go to do the work of the Russian army - out of loyalty to the monarchy? Out of feelings of gratitude for the decrees that the Evil Kingdom frequently brought upon Israel? Because of the restrictions that limited their places of residence and their occupations and their visits to schools? And what will the Jewish youth do in the army? He will be found among the sons of Israel-hating peasants who will abuse him and surrender to evil-hearted officials. And even the question of kosher food was not an easy question. To make oneself impure with pork and disgusting foods - both the parents and the sons despised it.

Therefore, the parents and sons looked for ways to get rid of this obligation. And the ways were different: a few months before conscription, the young men who were called to the army would join groups in order “to suffer.” They would eat less and when they did eat - they would choose foods that led to diarrhea, sleep less, spend entire nights in the Beit Midrash and friends' houses, without rest, in order to lose weight and reduce body weight. After a few weeks of hardship and self-denial, the face turned pale and resembled that of a dead person, and the young man was skinny and declining in life and swayed in his walk. But if a young man who was weak like that was not released completely and when he was tested, he was given an extension for a year, and after the end of the year, he was tested again and he was again given a one year extension and only in the third year, if they saw that his weakness was greater and he had no hope - they let him go. For three years

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the young man was tortured and austere until he undermined the foundations of his health for the rest of his life. He was released with a damaged stomach, weak nerves, and as a candidate for all kinds of diseases of exhaustion. “Happy” he married a wife like that and entered the war of life as a broken plow.

And worse was the situation of those who mutilated themselves. Some “experts” were found who knew how to inflict defects on healthy humans. Someone injected some kind of drug into the eye, which has put a cloud over it and the victim could not see. Someone dripped strong drugs in the ears and pierced the eardrum and an abscess that converged and leaked, and the hearing was disturbed and for every wind present and not present, the infected person would have a cold in his ear. Some would dislocate the leg from the knee and the guy become lame and a cripple, and some would have the “expert” cut the tendons of the arm and connect them to the joint and the guy couldn't stretch his arm. Some would inject the candidate for the army with various drugs and the drinker's face and eyes turned yellow as if struck by greensickness, and other kinds of deformities and diseases. Of course, the expert promised that the deformity was only temporary and that, after a short time, the cataract would disappear and the boy's vision would return as before, and the ear would heal and his hearing would return to normal, and the dislocated leg would return to its place and go straight, and the tendons of the arm would expand and the hand would be stretch out to receive and to work, and the greensickness would turn red-white - but the promises were not always fulfilled. And I have known such unfortunate people for the most part: the son of one teacher in our city whose hand was shortened and did not recover and out of no choice he also chose teaching for a living. And I also knew one of my relatives who became deaf because of the drugs they dripped in his ears.

The army doctors and the members of the commissions examining recruits knew about all these tricks, but they accepted bribes and turned a blind eye and the majority of those accepted into the army were the sons of craftsmen and poor people who were not afraid of this work. These were young men from the working class used to hard work, and they went

A school for girls that was founded by the Zionists in the city

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to serving in the army willingly. They hoped that they would eat there to satiety and that the government would provide them with good clothing, and that they would also find free hours to do whatever their heart desires after the work day. But these were very few and most of the young men of Israel tried to avoid serving the hostile government, and this effort increased the number of the weak and disabled.

The Jews living in the cities, without contact with nature, gave them the character of being powerless, fearful and afraid of every barking dog and every animal. Every gentile from the suburbs - he had a dog to guard his yard in case a stranger came in, but no Jew raised a dog in his house and the child who plays with the dog and caresses it - is a naughty child and it is a mitzvah to warn him and keep him away from this evil deed. The Jew was therefore always afraid and when he saw a dog approaching him, his face would turn pale and his heart would throb, and he would look for ways to escape from the evil animal and save his soul. Therefore, the farmer from the village and the Christian from the city treated the Jew as a weak creature and was not afraid to harm him.

And yet among the Jews there were mighty men of strength and men of arms who did not fear nor were they afraid to speak to an enemy at the gate. These were the craftsmen who worked with large and rough tools, like carpenters and beam sawers and woodcutters, butchers and cart owners, accustomed to outdoor life and walking on roads and knowing how to hold a whip and train horses. In particular, butchers acquired a reputation as strong men. They would split the thighs of oxen and cows with their axes on their anvils and hold a coil and a knife, and a drop of blood did not shake their nerves or squeeze their hearts and did not make them faint. And when there was a danger of rioting in Israel, such as on the day a fight broke out between a farmer and a Jew in the market, if the Jew accused the farmer of theft and the matter came to a fist fight or when the farmer accused the Jew of fraud and the fight broke out, and farmers gathered on market day to help their co-religionist and to beat the Jews, and the townspeople panicked and hurried to lock their shops and to lower the blinds on the windows - then the butchers came out of their butcher shops, armed with their axes, each one of them tall and with large limbs, and when they raised their tools above the heads of the quarreling men ready for war, wisdom came to the hearts of the farmers and they scattered, and the two disputants went to a respected Jew to bring before him the matter of their quarrel and the community was saved from bloodshed.

1. From the book “Dunavitz, My Native City,” published by the Bnei Dunavitz Aid Society (Podolia) in America. Return

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