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Let me start by saying that this memoir will not be a complete survey, but rather the humble memories of an ordinary Jew. I begin with the period of the Russo-Japanese war.

Our town was in turmoil at the time. The Jews were divided in two groups: pro-Japan and pro-Russia. The old study house was an open forum, where heated debates took place. The information for these debates was taken from the Hebrew newspaper HaTsfira, which was published in Warsaw under the editorship of Chayim Zelig Slonimski (may he rest in peace), as well as the Yiddish Der Fraynd, published in St. Petersburg and edited by Asher Ginzburg.^[2] True, there were not many readers of either publication. But the “heavenly” Enlightenment, as it was sometimes known, had begun to have an effect on the town, and forbidden publications were secretly making the rounds. These included Avraham Mapu's Hebrew Ahavat Tziyon and Ashmat Shomron, Peretz Smolenskin's HaTo'eh BeDarchei HaChayim, and Kvurat Chamor, and Yoel Linetski's Yiddish Dos Poylishe Yingl. Professor Graetz's History of the Jews also began to appear in Hebrew, and, I believe in Yiddish as well.^[3] It appeared in weekly installments, which were avidly (and secretly) gulped down by our young people.

The Dreyfus trial and the Kishinev pogrom had a strong effect on the newly aware youth of the study house. They were beginning to be moved by a national consciousness, and a secret group was organized

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in order to spread new ways of thinking in the Jewish community at large. I, Leyzer Lofer, Shloyme Sharf, Leybl Gosker, and Leyzer Grinberg were among the first organizers of this group. We studied Maimonides and his philosophical works, including his “Guide to the Perplexed,” as well as Solomon Rubin, the modern Austrian commentator on the Talmud.^[4]

That was when the Bund began sending us its representatives, in order to organize a labor union for tailors' apprentices as well as seamstresses. They were the only labor unions in the town.

We also began to convince the young men from the study house to go to Warsaw and make a future for themselves, by learning a trade or becoming shop clerks. These attempts had results. Sometimes the young folks would be “spirited away” in the evenings from their parents..

The first enlightened Jews in Krasnystaw Standing (r. to l.): Sholem Zinger, Moyshe Shtitser, Dovid Boymfeld, Fayvl Boymfeld (Los Angeles), Leybl Lerman (Chicago), Fishl Helshteyn (Philadelphia), Yoysef Mayman (Winnipeg), Alter Hofman (New York). Seated: Berl Mayman (Winnipeg), Tsisvia Lope, Ben Tsukerman (Los Angeles), Itta Levkovitsh (Canada), Mordkhe Levkovitsh.

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The parents quickly figured out where their children were…

There were some tragic scenes, and those responsible soon found themselves in trouble.. Many people felt that taking a young man away from the Talmud and sending him to Warsaw was a terrible thing to do, even though the home was poor and one less person would have helped the others. When I tried to reassure the father of one of my friends by saying that his missing son was well taken care of, and would become a hat-maker, he said, “It would be far better for him to starve while studying Talmud than for him to desecrate Shabbat in Warsaw.”

The religious zealots of the town started an open war against the heretics, as they termed us. People were denounced for disseminating Bundist literature. One such denunciation even led to our brief arrest. This war, which was vitriolic, added excitement to our town.. One Shabbat, the Hasidim delayed the Torah reading until we “sinners” could be excommunicated and thrown out of the study house.

Over time, we gained some support from the “ignoramuses,” the term the Hasidim used for peddlers and artisans. These groups began to understand what we were doing, and were won over to our side in the fight against fanaticism and darkness.

Zionism, which had just begun to appear in the town, did not have a great effect on our young people. This was because the movement was elitist, weak, and did not penetrate the smaller towns of Poland.

The Jewish population of Krasnystaw, which numbered about 250, consisted of members of various Hasidic sects, many artisans, a few wealthy people, very little industry, as well as some government suppliers and lumber merchants. There were also the usual religious functionaries: the ritual slaughterer, rabbi, expert in Jewish law, melameds, synagogue managers, and scribes. Their economic situation was always poor. The slaughterers subsisted by collecting the government tax on kosher slaughtering.^[5] The rabbi and legal expert barely made enough money to survive. The yeast-selling concessions yielded very little. However, there were heated arguments about the religious functionaries. Factions in the town supported different candidates for the position of rabbi. The meetings about the collection of money to supply the poor with matza on Pesach (Passover) were also fiery. The “middle class” demanded that the flour for Pesach be heavily taxed to help the matza fund.

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However, such taxation always produced the opposite results. The poor, who had large families, used proportionally more flour and matza than the rich; they couldn't afford such “luxury” items as meat, fish etc. and hence consumed large amounts of matza. Thus, they paid their taxes, and the rich paid less into the fund.

This, more or less, was our life in the town until 1907, when I left Krasnystaw and emigrated to America.

The new winds of change that were sweeping Europe at the time, as well as the influence of various ideologies – the “isms” – affected our young people. They were aroused by movements such as Po'alei-Tsiyon, the Bund, Territorialism, and the like.^[6] Over time, the young folks broke completely free of religious Orthodox, and joined movements that were suited to their economic conditions.

Emigration from the town steadily increased, although the older generation viewed it unfavorably, especially emigration to America. Ever-intensifying anti-Semitism also strongly influenced the Jews' efforts to emigrate in order to improve their material conditions.

Translator's footnotes:

1. The Haskalah (literally, “wisdom”, “erudition” or “education”), often termed the Jewish Enlightenment, was an intellectual movement among the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. It arose as an ideological worldview during the 1770s and ended around 1881, with the rise of Jewish emancipation in Europe. Return
2. HaTsfira (from the Aramaic word ‘tsafra’, meaning “morning”) was the first Hebrew newspaper, beginning as a weekly in Warsaw (1862), then relocating to Berlin and finally returning to Warsaw as a daily. It appeared until 1931. Der Fraynd (‘the friend’) was the first Yiddish daily in the Russian Empire (1903-1912). The text erroneously states that Asher Ginzburg was the editor; the editor was Shaul Ginzburg. Return
3. These influential works marked the beginning of the Jewish Enlightenment. The first four novels, in Hebrew, and the last novel, in Yiddish, were published during the second half of the 19^th century. The historian Heinrich Graetz's monumental work was published between 1853 and 1870, and was soon translated into Hebrew and Yiddish. Return
4. Solomon Rubin, 1823-1910. Return
5. A ‘ritual slaughterer’ or Shochet is an expert in the Jewish religious laws governing preparation of kosher meat. The tax was imposed on kosher meat in Poland during the 18^th- 19^th century. Return
6. Territorialism was a Jewish movement in the early 20^th century that sought to find an alternative territory to Palestine for the creation of a Jewish state. Return

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Krasnystaw was not large, compared with its “sister cities” of Chelm, Hrubieszow, etc. However, it differed from them in the proportion of Jews in the population, which was smaller than in the above-mentioned towns. Yet Krasnystaw was famous for its beauty, cleanliness, and its nice, honest, quiet people. As the saying goes, “Don't look at the jar but at what's in it.”^[1]

The town consisted of two large squares, one inside the other. I term the inner square “the first.” The first square had beautiful stone houses, three or four stories tall, with nice paint outside. There was a very beautiful park in the town center, with pedestrian paths. The park center had a lovely, artistic bower, where the army band would perform in the summer almost every evening between 6 and 10.

City Hall was prominent in the cityscape, crowned by the town clock at the top of its tower. The streets of the first square intersected with the streets of the second square at the corners of City Hall. This was a lovely area, though not as beautiful as the first square. The entire town was paved, with a broad sidewalk that extended from the houses to the middle of the street. The sidewalks were lined with trees, most of which had been planted by the town. Gutters separated the sidewalks from the road. All the paved surfaces were slightly sloped, to facilitate water flow

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into the two rivers that surrounded the town. There was never any mud in the town, even after the heaviest rainstorms; it always looked freshly washed. The town overlooked the rivers, and everything poured into the rivers.

Just outside town, on the way to the Lublin road, there were beautiful large and small houses. These included small palaces and private homes, as well as government buildings, such as the court, post office, bank, county offices, government schools, and a high school. The area was also the location of the jail and the army barracks.

All these structures occupied a fine, large area.

The three main roads (to Zamość, Rejowiec, and Lublin) endowed the town with beauty, movement, and liveliness.

The loveliest road, that to Lublin, stretched for several miles outside the town and was flanked by trees. Pretty courtyards and various fruit orchards filled the road with fragrance. Meadows, as well as high, imposing, high mountains circled the rivers, and pine forests were nearby. All these features affected the life and character of the town and its population, especially the Jews. The phrase “Jews live on air,” meaning without land, was never as apt as for the Jews of Krasnystaw…

Hassids of all the sects of Poland were common in all the towns of the area, as they comprised most of the Jewish population. This was also the case in Krasnystaw. However, the Hassids of Krasnystaw were unusual: they were less pensive, less preoccupied and less bedraggled. On the contrary: they were neat and well-dressed as they walked in groups through the promenades of the town park, without gesticulating or grimacing. Their conversations were wide-ranging, and covered Hassidism, Talmudic debates, Kabbala, philosophy, Hassidic tales, politics, and local as well as world news. These conversations sometimes extended until dawn; people forgot to eat supper and even neglected to join evening prayers. It was almost morning when some of them gathered near a tree for evening prayers. All this took place quietly, with no fuss, without arguments or squabbles. People were calm, quiet, and respectful towards each other.

This general feeling of peace between the Hassidic groups was aided by the presence of the two study houses that were relatively far from the current beautiful city center. They had replaced the older institutions that had served the earlier Jewish population, but the one closest to the Jewish center had burned down. At this time, the Turisk Hassids, who constituted the majority of the Jewish as well as the Hassidic population, were also

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the wealthiest in town. They built themselves a large stone structure in the center of town to serve as their synagogue. After the conflagration, this synagogue became a study house for all the local Jews. People had to tolerate each other's customs, and respect each other's leaders. People even listened to tales of the other group's miracle worker. Thus, a wide-ranging Hassidic “family” was formed. Young men as well as older study house regulars sat together and studied in company. The charming, inspiring voices of these students could be heard throughout the vicinity of the study house. It became famous in the region thanks to its devoted students, who were well educated in both Hassidic and worldly topics.

All this came to an abrupt end during 1904-1906, when the Enlightenment began to spread. That period deserves at least one dedicated chapter.

Translator's footnote:

1. A quote from Mishna Avot 4:20 (“The Sayings of the Fathers”): “Looks can be deceptive.” Return

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In 1908, a group of Krasnystaw natives visited me in my modest apartment in the Bronx, New York. Among them were my friend Max Kohn, who was known in our town as Mordkhe-Peysekh of Kosyan, a village near Krasnystaw.

Max bashfully took a letter out of his bag, a letter from a Krasnystaw native living in the Jewish settlement of Lipton, Saskatchewan, in western Canada.^[1] His friend, Mendele Shifer, wrote that Jews in western Canada were farming on the 160 acres of arable soil granted free of charge to each Jewish family by the Canadian government. Certain conditions were attached to this grant: each person who received land had to live there for at least six months out of the year, and farm at least ten acres. People who adjusted to these conditions for three years were granted title to the land, and became citizens.

Reading between the lines of this letter, it was clear that the information was propaganda. The writer wanted to sell his farm, and therefore painted a rosy picture of life in Lipton, the new land of milk and honey, in the midst of the Canadian prairie. However, we young and inexperienced Jewish idealists, fresh from Poland, did not notice this.

We discovered many drawbacks to America. Jewish immigrants experienced the sweatshops, peddling, the tumult, and the stresses of striving for money.

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Radicalism, whose adherents were led by Binyomin Faygenboym, as well as the Yom Kippur “balls” of the so-called freethinkers, who actually thought of nothing at all, were depressing for such young Jewish immigrants as us, who came from the small towns of Poland.

Therefore, as we talked in my apartment, we developed a detailed plan for a cooperative settlement. We resolved to flee New York and become physical laborers in Canada. Max Kohn

was given the task of writing to Mendele Shifer and asking for more information.

We soon left for Winnipeg, the gateway to western Canada. When we arrived, we were met by an immigration official who had been notified by telegram that we were coming. He greeted us in Yiddish, and led us into a lovely, well-kept, warm immigrant facility that was run by the government. Our group of six was immediately heartened: it was no small thing to be greeted by Mr. Goodman, an official representative with a rosette on his uniform, who spoke a sweet Yiddish. He looked us up and down with his penetrating gaze, and told us that Lipton was about five hundred miles from Winnipeg, and that before leaving we should meet with Mr. Hefner, the ICA representative, who would best advise us how to proceed.^[2] He himself was very skeptical of our plans. Looking at us again, he said in a fatherly tone, “Children, stay in Winnipeg. You'll find it much easier to settle in.” My wife agreed with Mr. Goodman, and tried to convince us to settle in Winnipeg, among other Jews. But the four of us from Krasnystaw did not want to change our plans. We decided to meet Hefner, the ICA representative; and then would proceed to Lipton regardless of any difficulties he might create.

It was November, 1908. The winds in western Canada were fierce and the cold increased day by day. We visited Mr. Hefner, who greeted us warmly. He was a veteran settler, originally from Russia, who had a large farm in Canada. He considered us, and said, “Children, you're naïve. You'll be miserable, soon grow disillusioned, and abandon the land. It's not suitable for you.” He smiled, and turned to me, saying, “Young man, show me your hands.” As he looked at my hands, he added, a bit sarcastically,

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“Your hands were meant for turning the pages of the Talmud, not for agricultural work.” However, we dug our heels in and would not give up on our plans.

We left Winnipeg two days later, and arrived in Lipton on Nov. 15. The town numbered about 200 residents, forty or fifty of whom were Jews.

We met with a Jewish shopkeeper who had connections to the Jewish settlers. This was Moyshe Baldan, a wise and educated man from Bessarabia. He took pity on us, and advised us to return to New York if we could afford it, or to Winnipeg. The brutal life on the prairies was not suited to Jews, especially for those who had come from New York. He invited us to supper, and during the meal recounted the history of Jewish settlement in western Canada. He was very knowledgeable, as he was one of the first Jewish settlers who had arrived from Bessarabia after the Kishinev pogrom.^[3]

In 1903, the JCA, together with the government of Canada, funded 200 Jewish families from Romania and settled them in the area of Lipton, Cooper, and Deysert, Saskatchewan.^[4] The newcomers were not suited to farming; they were mostly Jews who had specific occupations. “Aunt JCA” wanted to turn them into peasants, but had forgotten to supply them with specifically Jewish institutions such as a shochet, a mohel, a melamed, a mikvah, etc.^[5] The Christian manager, McNab, was not familiar with the needs of a Jewish community, nor was he interested in them. Once, when he received an order for Passover matzah, the matzah arrived on the second day of Shavuot…^[6] The Jewish farmers from Romania, who respected the anniversaries of their deceased relatives, requested a delivery of memorial candles. McNab brought in a wagon full of candles.

Moyshe Baldan reported many such tragicomic incidents, in order to discourage us from going to the village. We spent the night at his home. The next morning, we saw several Jewish settlers who came to buy some goods at his shop. They looked at us with a mixture of disdain and pity. “Well, guys,” one of them called to us, “if you want to become miserable, come with me. I'll take you to Mendele Shifer.” It was midnight before we arrived at Mendele Shifer's place, whose letters had inspired us to become settlers. We woke him up. His house was filthy, as he lived alone; his wife and children were still in Poland. We were extremely hungry and tired after our journey. He offered

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my wife his bed for a rest, and we men sat down at the table to talk. But my wife was unable to touch the squalid bed, and sat at the long table with us to discuss practicalities.

Mendele asked us to talk quietly, because the children – his students – were asleep under the table. It became clear that, besides a farmer, he was also the melamed, and the letter-writer for the Jewish farmers, men and women, who could not write in the local language.

Our spokesman Max Kohn, asked him, “How is it possible? Where is your decency? How could a man like you exaggerate so much? How could you have written that the land was free, supplied with geese, hens, ducks, cows, and horses – and the upshot is a big nothing?”

“Yes,” Mendele Shifer answered calmly. “All these good things are available. There is enough land, but it is a thousand miles away. There are geese, ducks, hens, cows and horses here, but they're owned by the German settlers who arrived ten or fifteen years ago… On the other hand, we JCA-supported folks are having a hard time. I did not tell any lies…I believed that at least one of you would have several thousand dollars, and I would sell my farm and go home to my family in Poland, in Tomaszow-Lubelski. But don't despair: you will all find jobs with the Jewish settlers here…”

During this conversation, we noticed a sausage hanging in one of the corners. We stared at it hungrily. I had stayed silent until then, but now my hunger compelled me to speak. “Reb Mendele,” I turned to him, “How about some food?” I pointed at the sausage. Reb Mendele stroked his black beard with its silver strands, and responded in a chant like that of Talmudic scholars: “Children, the sausage is for Shabbat. Go to the garden and dig up the radishes that I planted last spring.”

Needless to say, no one slept that night. We all felt duped, but no one said a word. We had no choice but to hire ourselves out to a few of the Jewish settlers as laborers. My wife and I hired ourselves out to a Romanian Jewish farmer named Zelik Yoyneh for three months, in return for one hundred dollars.

The Romanian Jews had been living on their farms for many years, but had not amounted to anything. Their young folks had left for the big cities to work or study, and the members of the older generation gradually left their farms. Only a few had stayed on the land, prospered, and become rich.

The Baron's support of Jewish farmers seemed to be cursed. All the JCA officials

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were assimilated Parisian Jews, who treated our Jews with condescension and hostility. They had not made sure to meet the spiritual needs of the settlers, and treated them like stepchildren. Therefore, the colonists did not trust them, and cheated wherever possible.

One of the settlers had a photograph of a group of settlers with the Canadian Minister of Agriculture, standing in a freshly plowed field. The settler was proud of the picture, and told me that he had waited to plow those four acres until the photograph was taken.

The Jews had more spiritual needs than other peasants, needs that are vital. If the JCA administrators had understood, the results would have been much better. However, they did not, or could not, understand. The land was unyielding, and the officials of the JCA – no less so.

We Jews were still the People of the Book. Economic development must go hand in hand with spiritual development; that is a prerequisite for successful settlement. The best example of this is in the Land of Israel.

It is therefore not surprising that most of the settlers eventually left their farms. We immigrants from Krasnystaw were among them. Regardless of our steadfast idealism, we had to return to our towns, which promised a better spiritual existence.

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Translator's footnotes:

1. Jews lived in this village, but were not a majority. Return
2. The Jewish Colonization Association (JCA or ICA)), was an organization created in 1891 by Baron Maurice de Hirsch. Its aim was to facilitate the mass emigration of Jews from Russia and other Eastern European countries, by settling them in agricultural settlements on lands purchased by the committee in North America (Canada and the United States), South America (Argentina and Brazil) and Ottoman Palestine. Return
3. The pogrom that started on Easter Sunday, April 19, 1903 in modern-day Chi?inau (Yiddish Kishinev), Moldova, is considered a major event in modern Jewish history. 49 Jews were killed, 92 were gravely injured, a number of Jewish women were raped, over 500 were lightly injured, and 1,500 homes were damaged. Return
4. The writer mentions two other settlements in Saskatchewan, which I have not been able to identify, and have transliterated their names from the Yiddish. Return
5. A shochet or ‘ritual slaughterer’ is an expert on Jewish laws governing what is kosher and prepares kosher meat. A mohel performs the Jewish rite of circumcision. The melamed is a teacher of Jewish subjects for school children. A mikvah is a ‘ritual bath’ used to fulfill Jewish obligations for ritual purity. Return
6. The holiday of Shavuot (Yiddish: Shevues) is seven weeks after Passover. Return

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