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I was about three years old when Rabbi Chorny Nabila (black and white in Ukrainian) came to our house to teach me. He placed in front of me a Siddur with large letters of the alphabet, and with a tatel (a sharpened toothbrush handle) that he held in his hand he showed me every letter in the Siddur. I remember that I did not want to learn, and I cried. To calm me down, the rabbi took a carob from his pocket and said that it was from the Holy Land. The carob calmed me down, and I agreed to learn. The second rabbi was Moshe Hannes. He also came to our home to teach me. The two rabbis taught at the children's homes since they did not have their own chadarim.

Avraham Lilka, who had his own cheder, was my first rabbi. The cheder was also used as a residence. It had a bed, cupboard and a pripetshik^[1] (hearth), on which his wife, Malka, prepared the meals and baked bread and challot for the Sabbath. The children sat around the table. During the rabbi's meals, we went outside to play or to relieve ourselves on the sewer. The rabbi brought us back by knocking on the window with the tatel. We came in the morning, went home to eat lunch and came back again. With him we learned to read and write in Hebrew, and also the Chumash, which was translated into Yiddish. There we studied together with girls.

At the age of ten, I moved to a teacher named Itzikel. We called

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him Her Lerer (Mr. Teacher). Itzikel was a more modern teacher. The children already knew Hebrew and a little Chumash.With Itzikel we also learned Rashi's commentary. He dictated to us and told stories. The stories were from Sefer haYashar [“Book of Righteousness”], from modern literature, legends, tales from One Thousand and One Nights, as well as stories and legends related to the holidays and festivals. All this he read to us in Hebrew with Ashkenazic pronunciation and in Yiddish translation. We also studied on the Sabbath. In the summer we studied Pirkei Avot [“Ethics of our Fathers”] and chapters of Psalms in the winter. We were busy on weekdays and also on the Sabbath. We did not have time for the games that we liked so much. The studies with the teachers were divided to “periods” that started twice a year, after the holiday of Sukkot and after Passover.

At the age of Bar Mitzvah, I moved to study with Yosel Yupiter. With him I studied abbreviated prophets' stories, grammar, Nevi'im [Prophets] and Gemara. According to his method, all subjects were learned orally. His method was simple: memorize the material at home until it entered your head. The next day the rabbi tested you. If you did not know the material by heart, you repeated and memorized it until you knew it by heart. At the end we knew our lessons by heart, but we did not understand anything.

The cheder was my second home. I spent a large part of my childhood there. The happy moments were connected to the holidays. Towards the holidays, we learned the appropriate prayers and engaged in special activities. For example, before Passover we learned the Haggadah, and toward Shavuot we learned Megillat Ester and Hakdamot. Lag BaOmer was the only holiday that we spent in nature. This was a particularly favorite holiday, because we got out of the gray routine of the cheder life. We began preparations a few weeks before the holiday. We learned all the blessings related to food, blessings related to nature, blessings we say when passing by churches or Christian cemeteries, and more. On the day of the holiday, we brought sweets, eggs and drinks, and sometimes also a bow and arrow, and left for a walk to “Mount Sinai.” Arranged in pairs, as the rabbi oversaw the order, we climbed a hill. There, at the top, we ate and said blessings. After eating, we became soldiers of Bar Kochba.

Another happy holiday was actually Tisha B'Av. In the cheder we studied the Book of Lamentations, which was read at the synagogue. The prayer was a sign of mourning, but the children picked piles of thorns and threw them at the worshippers in order to make them laugh and lift their spirits.

When the holiday of Sukkot arrived, the nut season began. In the cheder the rabbi repeated the holiday prayers and during breaks we played with nuts. On Hoshana Rabbah we went down to the bank of the Cheremosh River to pick branches for the Hoshanot prayers. When the winter got closer, the turn came for the holiday of Hanukkah. The little ones played with a dreidel and the older played cards. The dreidel game was associated with winning and losing. I often got rich, but sometimes I lost my Hanukkah money. The holiday was especially dear to me because of the donuts and the potato pancakes, which I loved to devour.

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I also have sad memories from the cheder. I was about five years old when the rabbi told us to inform the parents that we would be late, because we are putting the boy Fruim (Efraim) in the corner. The punishment was given to a boy who refused to come to the cheder. This practice was, in my opinion, fundamentally wrong. Well, during lunch break, the rabbi brought the boy from his house and stood him in the corner. When we returned in the afternoon, the boy was sad and depressed. He was dressed in an old, faded coat, belted with a sash, in his hand a stick and on his head a hat with feathers. When we finished school, the rabbi ordered us to sit on the benches, called the boy to come closer to him, and then the show started. Ephraim, repeat after me, “I swear by the Torah scroll that the liar would die.” “Repeat after me,” the rabbi ordered, and the boy repeated after him: “I swear I will not go to the cheder,” and the rabbi continued: “Gentile, you swear to no longer go to the cheder!!” And the rabbi gave the boy severe beatings with a whip. The boy cried and the rabbi repeated the oath several times: I swear by the Torah scroll… and so on until the sash opened, the stick fell from the boy's hands, and the feathers from the hat flew in all directions. Later, the boy understood the meaning of the oath and promised to go to the cheder. The rabbi returned the boy back in the corner, and we, the boys, were sent home. Before he sent us away, he said that he would send Ephraim to Egypt.

On the eve of circumcision, shortly before sunset, it was customary to invite boys to the home of a woman who gave birth to recite the Shema prayer. And why is that? Because thanks to them, and their pure prayer, the demons lurking around the child and his mother will be expelled. The rabbi arranged the boys in pairs. As he walked in the lead, he led us to the mother's house. At the entrance to her room everyone blessed: good evening to the mother. And later: As the number of nails on the roof, so the number of angels who will come to guard it. We repeated and said this three times. Then, we repeated the call, “Shadai Destroy Satan,” seven times. After these calls, the boys repeated after the rabbi: Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad [“Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is one!”].

The custom of Kriyat Shema before the circumcision is based on the belief that Satan is larking to every newborn from the moment of his entry into the covenant of Avraham Avinu. As we believed then, the Satan could be driven out by prayers and blessings from the mouth of a child.

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The Founding of Tarbut School in Kuty

There were always schools in the town. The Jews studied in government schools. They studied Polish, Ukrainian, and, until 1935, also German. Education was compulsory. From the age of six, boys and girls went to public school for seven years. The studies began at eight o'clock in the morning and continued until two o'clock in the afternoon. In the early afternoon, Jewish children attended Jewish schools, where they studied Judaic studies. Jewish education began at the age of three. The parents sent their children to chadarim where the teachers were called melamdim. The hours of study were many, from morning to the late afternoon hours, and also on the Shabbat. The girls went to a private Hebrew school, and there they learned Hebrew in Hebrew (not in Yiddish), in addition to the Chumash and Rashi. After a few years, the boys moved to study at the “advanced cheder.” There, they studied the Bible, grammar and Gemara. We had to know by heart the lessons we learned, with a Yiddish interpretation. At that time, my sister, Tova (Gitel), studied at a Teachers' Seminar in Lwow [Lviv]. When she returned home for the summer vacation, she was interested in me, and my brother Chaim, and was shocked to discover that we knew how to recite entire chapters but were unable to answer simple questions. She concluded that in the cheder they taught us to recite the material by heart, without understanding it, and without referring to modern commentaries. She turned to my father, who was religious, and explained to him that in order to earn knowledge, it is necessary to establish a modern Hebrew school.

Although my father was religious and did not want to harm the livelihood of the melamedim, he organized an action committee together with Avraham Tau. They hired a qualified teacher, rented a house, and in 1934 opened a Hebrew school, which was part of the Tarbut network. The number of students increased a year after the school opened. At first, we had only one teacher, named Shechter, from Chortkov. Later, additional teachers came, including Mrs. Stein from Kuty. In the school, boys and girls studied together, and the lessons were in Hebrew. With the entry of the Russians in 1939, the school was closed.

Studying religion in Poland was mandatory. Every morning the studies began with the Christian prayer: “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit…” During the Christian prayer in the classroom, the Jewish students honored it by standing. Twice a week we received a religious ordination: a Roman Catholic priest for the Poles, a Greek Catholic priest for the Ukrainians, and a Jewish teacher for the Jews.

The school had seven classes (from one to seven). There were two public schools, one for boys and one for girls. The separation was apparently due to religious reasons. In order to study

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at a high school we had to travel to far places such as Kolomyia, Stanislawow or Lwow. Children from wealthy families usually traveled.

The Christian children learned about the church's saints, Christian holidays, and Christian prayers. We were taught a little Jewish history from the book of the Jewish historian, Balaban.

During the breaks between regular lessons to religious lessons, the Polish and Ukrainian students attacked us for some reason, and fights began that often ended in serious injuries. We did not refrain from action and gave them back what they deserved. However, there were also cases when we had to run away from the classroom. Antisemitism began to take root at a young age, especially when they talked about Jesus and his brutal death on the cross.

I was ten or eleven years old. It was a spring day, Passover eve. My father already burnt the leavened food. We had vacation from school and played football in front of the house that we sewed from old rags. That day was “market day.” The gentiles from the nearby villages came to town for shopping and business. A gentile peasant approached our fence, and tied his beautiful and well-groomed horse. He did not ask for permission since he knew my father. The gentile fed his horse and headed for the market.

When we got tired of the game, we sat down on the grass. We talked about various matters, about school and the craft teacher, who suggested we make brushes for home use. We knew that we had to get beech wood slab, go to a carpenter to drill a hole in it, then go to Chaim the “brush maker” to buy horsehair and yarn, and bring everything to the craft class. Then an idea came up to save money, to cut off the horse's tail, which stood still, and share his hair. We decided and agreed. After the decision, the problems began: who would bring the numbers? And who would cut? It was decided that I would do it.

Without wasting any time, I entered our house, went to my mother's sewing machine, took out scissors and an old sock from there, and returned to my friends outside. My friends stood next to the horse, which was busy chewing the oats that its gentile owner had left for it.

Since the main work, meaning cutting hair, fell to me, I ordered my friends to move away. Only my cousin, Moshele, held the horse's harness, and I began the work. I cut the hair strand by strand, occasionally raising my head toward the Christian cemetery, from where the gentile had to return.

I managed to perform my role almost perfectly, except for the “stairs” that I left on the tail. Suddenly, one of my friends saw that the gentile was returning. Gripped by fear, we packed

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the hair into the old sock and fled. I hid in the cellar and from there I saw the gentile with the amputated leg, approaching his horse. He looked at it, cursed, and ran angrily to my father. After an argument, in which he threatened my father, the gentiles left the place. With fear and trembling I waited in my hiding place for what would come.

An hour later, the gentile returned with a policeman. The policeman had a rifle and a side bag containing the report notepads. The gentile showed the policeman the horse, then they entered our yard, and turned to my father. My father called me. Frightened, I came out of hiding, and we all sat down around the table in our house. My mother served light refreshments and then the questions began. It was a difficult day for me and my parents because Seder eve was approaching. I can't explain what I had gone through, because I was so depressed and in such a state that at night, at the Seder table, I couldn't ask the Kushiot [Four Questions].

Friday afternoon was dedicated to games. We lived on the edge of town and behind the house we had a field fenced with barbed wire. We grew vegetables like corn, potatoes, and alfalfa for the cows, and we also had fruit trees. As is well known, the agricultural work began in the spring and the harvest was in the fall. In winter, the ground was covered with snow. We came to play in the snow and slide with sleds.

And that's what happened. In the autumn, after we gathered the harvest, our parents allowed us to play in the field on the condition that we took the cows out to pasture. Of course, we invited our friends, who came willingly, especially since we promised to make a bonfire. We planned to roast the potatoes left over from the harvest. In the group there was a boy named Yuli (Yoel). He wore three pairs of pants because of the cold. We collected dried potato stalks and piled them into one large pile as fuel for the fire. The cold autumn wind did not stop us from undressing. Yuli also took off all three pairs of pants and placed them on the haystack. The children did not pay attention, brought more hay, and piled it until the pants were covered. The potatoes were roasted. We were cheerful and happy. In short - it was fun even though we turned black like chimney sweepers. Suddenly Yuli jumped up and asked about his pants. We started looking when he finally remembered that he had put them on the pile, which was already inside the fire. Someone brought a stick and took out the three pairs of burnt pants.

We tried to help Yuli. Because of his body size, we couldn't find a pair that would fit him. In this manner, with only a pair of torn underwear on his body, Yuli made his glorious journey to his home.

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Yuli Helped My Brother Chaim

Yuli had a good heart. He helped his friends. One day, on one of the Fridays, my brother Chaim - who was in the first grade - returned cheerful and kind-hearted. He turned to our mother, showed her his notebook and said happily: “Mother, I don't have to do my homework for Sunday.” “Why? Mother asked in surprise. “Mother, Yuli will do my homework.” Chaim opened the notebook and saw the letters, as they were copied with carbon paper.

Yuli 's father sat in the market near the city hall building. One day Yuli passed with his friends.

”Yuli, go home,” his father said to him. “Father, I don't want to.” And his father: “Yuli, go home!” And Yuli stood his ground. His father insisted, and Yuli also insisted. Finally, Yuli was fed up and said to his father: “Father, you think I don't know how to shout?” Yuli raised his voice throughout the market: “Father, I don't want to.”

A lot can be said about superstitions that were prevalent in those days. Here are some of them: When a person met a black cat on his way, it was considered a sign of impending disaster.

And one more: “They passed me empty.” As is well known, water was drawn from the well or from the stream. The water drawer walked with two empty buckets and returned with two full buckets. If the water drawer happened to cross your path carrying empty buckets, or an empty basket, this was considered a sign of bad luck.

Evil Eye: Every expression of joy and praise ended with the phrase “without the evil eye,” for fear of disaster. Many people kept a clove of garlic in their pocket against the evil eye. As protection against the evil eye, wax, accompanied by prayers that the “grandmothers” knew, was also poured. The religious went to the cemetery and prostrated themselves on the graves of the tzadikim.

Folk medicine was in the hands of women, “grandmothers,” who used medicinal plants and spells. It was also handed over by the barbers. The barber was called “doctor” by the people. The “doctors” applied leeches that sucked the blood, and they also specialized in applying cupping glasses against catching a cold. There were also licensed private doctors and health maintenance for the workers. There was no hospital in the town, and in difficult cases we had to travel to Kosow or Kolomyia.

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Gossip

There was no shortage of gossip in a small town like ours, which had few or no opportunities for entertainment. For men, there was a steam bath, or a religious bath, mostly on Fridays. For women, the bathhouse was open only twice a week. Gossip was mostly told in the bathhouse or in the synagogue. The women gossiped in the narrow streets, between the houses, or inside the houses, while they visited each other in their kitchen. A woman would tell her friend what the third woman was cooking, and who was going out with whom. Every event - small as big – was passed from ear to ear, or more accurately to say, from mouth to mouth. One of the most common stories is the story about Zayde Totkes^[2]: One evening a buyer came who wanted to buy a suitcase. “Come tomorrow?” Zayde asked. The buyer, who had to leave town in the morning, pleaded with the seller. Zayde took a lantern, put a candle in it, lit it, and went upstairs to the boydem (crawl space) where the suitcases were. He moved the square opening in the ceiling, climbed up, and began searching for the goods. The winter wind grew stronger and put out the candle. Slowly and in complete darkness, Zayde approached the opening, muttering to himself in a loud voice: “boydem, boydem, boydem.” The boydem ended and fell from the opening to the floor.

Barish the baker baked bread, delicious challot, rolls and buns. Once, it is said, a customer found a cockroach in the bread she had bought. She turned to Barish and demanded that he return her money or give her a loaf of bread. Barish refused. They decided to go to the municipal clerk, who deals with health matters. After the woman presented her claims to the clerk, she turned to Barish and asked what he had to say.

Barish turned to the complainant and asked for the “thing” she was holding in her hand. The woman, of course, gave her the “thing,” and Barish put it in his mouth, chewed it and swallowed it.

”What did you do, Barish, with the cockroach!” she asked in astonishment, and Barish replied:

”What! It was a cockroach! That's not true! It was a raisin!”

Footnotes

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The cheder of Yosel Yupiter was notable for two things that distinguished it from the other houses on Bazorwa Street - Market Street. On its front were two tall windows painted brown, like the color of bricks that had never been plastered, and the shouts that came through them into the street. And if we're talking about the street, then this street was no different from the rest of the city's streets. In the winter season it was covered with thick snow that reached up to a person's waist, or up to a small child's head. In the spring, melted snow water flowed through it. In the summer season it was completely dry, and in late autumn the mud tracks hardened and froze, until they were covered again with new snow. It was a relatively long street. It started at the stone wall of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Every year, in the middle of the month of May, the “Odpust”- a celebration in honor of the Christian saint, Anthony of Padua, was held under its auspices. Traveling merchants hurried and set up wooden stalls. They sold to the faithful toys, icons of saints, tubes shaped like snakes, sweets and pastries painted in all colors of the rainbow. This street was divided into four sections, as the number of streets that crossed its width. One from the Apostolic Church to the corner of Koshykreska Street (“The Baskets” ). The second, from Koshykreska to the corner of Biala Skornica (“The White Cows”). The third, from Biala Skornica to the corner of Stray Zakonina (“The Old Testament”). The fourth section from Stray Zakonina to Possa Street. Once, a narrow stream of water, which came down from the Oidiush Mountain, flowed through it. After being placed in concrete pipes, and covered with thousands of tons of soil, the Possa became Nowy Street (“New”), but among the Jews the name Possa remained.

The cheder of our teacher Yosel Yupiter was in the third section, the one between the corner of Biala Skornica to the corner of Stray Zakonina. We did not enter it from the street front, as was customary in other houses, but squeezed into it through a long, narrow courtyard. There were two rooms in his

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apartment. The big one served as a cheder and the second, which was called alkir , was used as the residence of our teacher's stepmother, a widow of about seventy, and her daughter Gitel, an aging virgin who was already in her forties. There was no great affection between the three of them. Not a day went by without the sounds of their quarrels bursting through the open windows onto the street. He cursed the two, and they cursed him with names that their memory is absent in the rebukes of the weekly Torah portions Bechukotai and Ki Tavo . Our teacher, who was enraged easily, replied in the same language. He opened his door but hesitated to cross the threshold. He shouted at his stepsister: “you, old virgin, an ancient box, the water in the Cheremosh will dry up and you will not see a groom.” To the old woman he shouted: “she is already close to the ground and still wants to control me.” The two opened the door, did not dare to cross the threshold, and shouted in a deafening voice: “Aha! vagabond, your wife ran away from you with another man.” This is to know: our teacher, who was about thirty-five years old, was divorced. When the voices fell silent, an oppressive silence reigned at home. But, in the end, they felt sorry for him, and through the door came the nasal voice of one of them: “maybe, Yosele, you will eat something? What should we bring you?” And he, as usual, relents, and orders a deep clay bowl filled with hot milk and floating breadcrumbs. “Just a moment, Yosele, the milk is already boiling on the stove.” Not a minute had passed, one of them carried the bowl with awe and reverence and placed it at the head of the table around which his students sat. Our teacher? Yosel? took a break, stopped teaching, sipped spoon after spoon, chewed the bread soaked in milk with his gold teeth, and emptied the bowl. “Do you want a little more, Yosele?” asked the old woman who came to take out the empty bowl. “Mother, save some for the evening,” he replied, and moved on to prodding the students who recited the lessons they had memorized yesterday.

The students came from good families. There was hardly a son of an ordinary Jew among them. They were all sons of merchants and wealthy craftsmen, some less and some more. He charged everyone for the “period” an amount equal to five dollars, good money of course, in the state money that was passed to the merchant. He spent some of the money on the Polish lottery named Dolorówka . They gave him an excuse to drop by Mr. Neuberger's shop every Thursday of the week and look through the newspapers that had come from Warsaw, to see if he had won or lost. Sometimes, when he had won, he returned with a happy face and good news in his mouth. “Mother, Gittel,” he opened the door and shouted into the alkir , “this week I won five zloty.'”

But not every week did he see a profit in his lotteries. In vain did he ran to Mr. Neuberger to see the Hayn?ige Nayes (Daily News). He read it back and forth. “No?” Mr. Neuberger asked him in German, “Maybe next week?” the man who owned the wholesale tobacco store added sarcastically. And so, a week went by, and a week came.

Thursday was a difficult day for our teacher. He also had to prepare the snuff

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for the Sabbath. He crumbled the powder with his fingers, kneads it with cologne so that it would smell good and the “homeowners” in the synagogue would praise him for his handiwork. The entire room smelled of cologne, the students sneezed and blew their noses, some into handkerchiefs and some into their coats' sleeves. But there was still hope: what the students missed in class they would make up for during breaks. In the evening, he sat everyone down until ten o'clock and did not let them go until they had finished the entire weekly Torah portion, and Rashi until at least the third. Finally, tired and weary, and sometimes beaten on their feet on the leash, the boys were allowed to go home, some up to the city, and some down to the Dolina. It was not until around midnight that they went to bed, and how could they do so without preparing the homework assigned by the teacher at the Polish school for Friday?

Our teacher had an ingrained nature to define his students, like Rabbi Yochanan in his time, who counted the praises of his five students. But he, in his own way, classified them into three types: “The wise, or open-minded. The average, or closed-minded, who should not be approached with arguments, because they were born that way. And the last, the simple, in whom it is a shame to invest any effort.” It goes in one ear and out the other. “What can I do?” he thought quietly. “His father wants, with all his heart, that his son would be a responsible person, and besides: if I throw him out, the cheder will empty out and I would not be able to earn my living.”

He was satisfied with the wise students. What did he not teach them?! When they finished Chamisha Chumshei Torah , he dictated them the summary of Nevi'im [Prophets]:Yehoshua, Shoftim and Melachim, Yirmiyahu and Yechezkel, from his notebook. From his other twelve notebooks he dictated the rules of grammar, the seven basic conjugations on their various decrees. Lessons from the book “Native Tongue” in German, literature from the Enlightenment Period ,from Mapu to Berdyczewski. To some he taught a little “accounting” in German. He used a large tobacco trading house in Germany as a model and taught them bookkeeping using the double-entry system. To some he taught the reading of the Torah. He himself was Baal Koreh [cantor] and sometimes replaced R' Zeide Srul Freilech, who was a regular Baal Koreh in the Great Synagogue. “Tell at home to buy you the book Tikkun Torah from Mr. Shechter, in the bookstore across from the Polish school, and I will teach you to be Baal Koreh , he instructed a boy he wished to honor. The boy's family was happy. Someone ran to the bookstore and brought Tikkun Torah . The boy began to study the cantillation notes and prepare himself for the demanding role that requires remembering the cantillation notes of all the weekly Torah portions.

Of course, he prepared everyone, without exception, for their Bar Mitzvah. He taught them to put on tefillin and read the Haftarah . The students learned the lessons he dictated by heart, and the next day he tested them. He collected their notebooks, and the boys circled the table, round and round, repeating all the knowledge they had remembered. The boy who knew -received

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a new dictation. Did not know - had to repeat the lessons until he knew them well.

He spent many hours with the “medium,” and even forced the “wise” ones to help them memorize what they had learned and explain what was unclear.

The fate of the “ignorant” was particularly difficult. Insults, curses, and beatings were their lot. He called them in gentile names: “Semenko,” Hirtzko,” Lopown,” and others. “Your place is in Ukraine, with the Hutsuls not with the Jews,” he scolded them. “I feel sorry for your father who gave birth to a stupid and rude boy like you,” and immediately poured “chicken powder” down his throat, a powder to relieve headaches that attacked him out of excitement and anger.

The boys matured and left as teenagers. Tears welled up in his eyes as he parted from these boys, after all, they had been with them for three or four years. He got used to them, and they got used to him. New boys came to take their place, and when he met his graduates, he did not hesitate to approach them, ask and inquire about their well-being, although in a small city everyone knew about each other, and nothing was hidden from anyone.

In the years 5700-5701 (1940-1941), during the Soviet era, there were almost no students in the cheder. With no choice, our teacher Yosel started to work as an assistant accountant in one of the city's supply offices.

On the last day of Passover 5702, together with most of the city's Jews, he was trapped in the Aktion, and the house where the cheder was located was destroyed by an incendiary bomb thrown into it by the Nazis. Our teacher, Yosel Yupiter, his stepmother and sister Gitel, were murdered. Some say they were charred by the fire in a hiding place they dug for themselves under the cheder's wooden floor. Others say they were led to extermination in the Belzec extermination camp along with those who escaped from the burning houses.

May their memory be blessed.

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