Jewish Religious Personnel in the Russian Empire, 1853–1854
281 RecordsName List · Russian Empire · Bessarabia
Background
This database is an index to Prof. Genrich Markovich Deych’s book Sinagogi, Molitvenne Doma i Sostoyashchie pri nikh Dolzhnostne Litsa v Cherte Evreiskoi Osedlosti i Guberniyakh Kurlyandskoi i Liflyandskoi Rossiiskoi Imperii 1853–1854 (Synagogues, Prayer Houses and their Employees in the Pale of Settlement and Kurland and Livonia provinces of the Russian Empire, 1853–1854), a 219-page Russian-language book printed privately in New York in 1992.
The book resulted from a request by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in St. Petersburg to provincial governors to identify synagogues and prayer meetings, the names, titles, and compensation of their leaders, and send this information to the Ministry. More than 4,000 individuals are listed in more than 900 communities.
The original material was taken from governors’ reports to St. Petersburg, prepared almost 150 years ago in a variety of scripts, many difficult to decipher. Where possible, Professor Deych provided alternate possible spellings, which are indexed separately. Titles are given in Cyrillic script, sometimes using a Russian word, but sometimes in Yiddish, Ukrainian, or Hebrew.
Fields Recorded
This index contains four data fields:
Readers should refer to Professor Deych’s book for additional detail: the year the individual took up duties, the congregation size, the office held, and the individual’s compensation.
Research Notes
Guberniya Codes
The following three-letter codes are used in this index:
Name Patterns
Some preliminary conclusions can be drawn from the data. Jewish surnames were not evenly distributed; some names concentrate in certain geographic areas and are almost unknown in others. The most common surname is Rabinovich (30+), followed by Levin and Gurvich (30), Kagan-Kogan and Shapiro-Shapira (23), Epshtein (19), Lerner (17), Feldman/Reznik/Kaplan (13), Bernshtein and Kats (11).
Given names are also unevenly distributed. Benyamin, despite its biblical lineage, does not appear once in Bessarabia, Vilna, or Vitebsk. The most common names appear in their Yiddish equivalents: Abram-Avrum, Gersh-Gershko, Leib-Leiba, Moishe-Moshka, and Yankel each appear more than 200 times.
Spelling Variations
It is wise to disregard vowels (Katz, Ketz, Kits, Kots, and Kuts likely being the same name) and search using Soundex alternatives. In addition, Deych’s typescript provides only a shade of difference between “l” and “p”, and between “z” and one of the Russian “e”s, so these should be added to the alternatives. Letters close in sound include: g/k/kh; ch/sh/shch; f/j/s/z/zh; m/n; b/d/p/t/v.
Limitations
Do not conclude that because an ancestor is not listed, they were not in fact officials. The listings vary widely: some list only one officer (rabbi, treasurer, or gabai), while others list up to ten. Congregations may have been omitted for any number of reasons. When a town is listed but no individuals, it likely means the guberniya official could not discover the names of the synagogue’s officials.
Note that boundaries of guberniyas were occasionally shifted over time. Users should be aware that a town may appear under an unexpected province.
Searching This Database
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Compiled December 1997 by Herbert I. Lazerow.
For questions, contact the JewishGen Bessarabia Research Division.