Now that we, the survivors, are living in Israel and enjoying our national freedom, we can truly appreciate the tremendous inner spiritual forces which imbued the hearts of our townspeople, living in harsh and hostile surroundings. These forces were given body and soul through the numerous institutions in the town.

At the top of the list were the synagogues, the heders and yeshivot. No Jewish boy in Tooretz was without at least a heder education. Many went on to the nearby Mir Yeshivah, wehre they took their main (and often only) meal at the table of the more prosperous families.

Mention should be made of the heder teachers, in tribute to their contribution to the spiritual wealth of the community: Hillel Zelikowvsky, Moshe Lubchansky, Yitzhak Sapozhnik, Shlomo-Hayyim Treyevitsky,, Yehuda Bunimowsky, Mordecai Ozhehowsky. The last four were of the more modern cast, and their curriculum included the Bible, Talmud, Hebrew language and grammar, along with modern grading systems. They also implanted the seeds of Zionism in the hearts of their pupils.

Tooretz had two synagogues - the small “New” Synagogue and the large old one (demolished and rebuilt between the two World Wars). Each one held services thrice daily, and in between young and old gathered for study of the Talmud or for reciting the Psalms. An assortment of cantors from among the inhabitants provided listening pleasure on the Sabbaths and holidays.

The public bath-house and ritual baths were widely used. The Hospitality Society was concerned with providing lodging and meals for important wayfarers and visitors, among them the itinerant preachers and the emissaries sent by the yeshivot to raise funds. The Society also saw to it that no traveler passing through Tooretz and having to remain there for the Sabbath should be without food and lodging. Gad Slutsky, the chairman of the Society, was always the first to invite a guest, at Friday night service, and thereby set an example for the others to follow.

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A Free Loan Fund, administered under the guidance of its chairman Yitzhak Sapozhnik, helped needy Jews with immediate financial problems. With the solidification of Polish rule, the community also established a bank (1926) to bolster economic activity. Interestingly enough, the initiator of this move was the Rabbi of Tooretz, Shmuel Markowitz, who understood the importance of economic development in raising the overall level of the community. Thanks to his efforts, the “Yekafa” Corporation in Wilno allocated low-interest funds (at times interest-free) to enable the bank to thrive. The bank began its operations in the home of Rabbi Markowitz and was later moved to Zalman Bernstein's home. Its directors were Yerahmiel Slutsky, Shlomom Sapzhnik, Arye Svirenowsky and the writer. The accountant was Bernstein, a thoroughly honest and dependable man of exemplary character and qualities. His son Zecharia, equally respected and dedicated, self-taught and highly intelligent, filled the post after his father's death.

The community had two hostels and several saloons, serving liquor and light meals to the peasants on market day (Tuesday); having disposed of their farm produce, they wound up the day's activities with a bottle of whisky and a meal.

During the winter season brisk business was done in grain, flax and flaxseed. About ten families engaged in the trade, buying flax and seed from the farms and selling them to the retail dealers. Several families leased fruit orchards. The four bakeries in the town were operated by the wives of the heder teachers, to supplement the family income.

Zionism was naturally much in evidence in the community. The first Zionist club was organized by Aharon Svirenowsky. Unlike other localities, Tooretz, in its Zionist endeavors, encountered no opposition from the pious, since, in fact, all the Jews of Tooretz were observant. Zionism in Tooretz began in 1925-26, and most of its work was to gather money for the National Funds. The young people saw in Zionism also a means of modernizing the community. their leading spirit was Uri Yitzhak Yalowsky, who also founded the Jewish library in town. The “Hashomer Hatzair” gained adherents, among them Nathan Litwinsky, Berl Treyevitsky, Yosef Harkavi and Berl Yoslavsky.

A change for the worse came with the rise of Nazis to power. Antisemitism raised its ugly head, and the atmosphere

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became laden with hatred for the Jews, on the part of the Byelorussian and Polish populations. The war brought an end to the Jews of Tooretz, except for the handful who escaped and fought with the partisans. The German brutality swept away this small but upright and noble community. May its memory remain forever.

After centuries of life as a small town, Tooretz felt the change wrought by the first World War, the new world which ended abruptly less than a quarter of a century later.

My own memories go back to 1904 and the Russo-Japanese War. Suddenly the streets of the town resounded with military men and vehicles, on their way to the distant front in Siberia. The Jews, fearful of a pogrom, barricaded themselves in their homes, for days on end.

Another event which shook the community was the Beilis trial. We all prayed that justice would be done.

Tooretz had no industry, except for one plant - Haike Litvinsky's soda water and cider factory. The “big business” people were Bashe Merke, who exported eggs, and Hanina Shonovitz, a “big time” horse dealer, with many land barons among his clients. The others were shopkeepers, grain dealers, and craftsmen.

Since most of the heder melamdim did not earn enough to support their families, it was unanimously agreed that certain concessions be given to their wives, such as the town bakeries and fabric shops.

The Russian revolution created a great stir in Tooretz, particularly among the young people. The yeshiva students tried to modernize Jewish life in the town, much to the consternation of their elders. Slowly the elements of an organized community began to emerge, until it was caught int he maelstrom of the Holocaust.

I have been asked to contribute to the material to be published in the Tooretz Memorial Volume. At this my memory went back 35 years, when I compiled a memorial volume of another kind for the dead of Tooretz.

This happened in the later 1930's. I came to Tooretz from Wilna on a holiday. As a graduate of the School of Technology, I was asked by Mr. Aharon Harkavi, then the secretary of the Tooretz “Hevra Kaddisha”, to draw up a map of the cemetery and compile a new register of the departed based on professional drawings. The existing register was not too exact; many graves had no tombstones, and a kinsman visiting from abroad often could not find the grave he was seeking, much to the embarrassment of the “Hevra Kaddisha”.

The Tooretz cemetery covered about eight acres. The sole access to it was by means of a narrow side trail which went up among thorns and weeds opposite the hosue of Malka Botwinick. There was no access from the road to Korelitz, since there the way was blocked by a steep hillock, while on the south the cemetery was bounded by the fields of the village of Likowitz.

No one knew the age of the cemetery, but the partly sunken tombstones in the northeastern corner were evidence that it was several centuries old.

I was intrigued by the proposal. It was challenging, and I accepted it on the spot.

The task was not an easy one. First I had to overcome the odd sensation of spending so many hours alone among the dead. From my childhood days I had an ambivalent feeling about the cemetery. I was shocked at the sight of a human body being lowered into the grave. But on Tish'a b'Av I loved to visit the cemetery; armed with a wooden sword, I felt a sense of bravery and national pride.

After the first day I became accustomed to the silence. I learned the truth in the adage, “There is nothing to fear from the dead. One must have fear of the living.” For about six weeks I crept about the ancient graves, carefully removing the soil from under the

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ancient stone - almost as if it were an archeological excavation. I located stones more than 150 years old. I identified names and dates, letter after letter, line after line. I checked my findings against the old “Hevra Kaddisha” register and felt highly gratified when they matched.

The pages of my new register soon became filled with names, some complete, others merely the first or the family names. Once the name was entered, I inscribed it on a marker and thrust it into the ground, so that none in the cemetery would remain anonymous. I also managed to glean quite a bit of history from the different versions of inscribing the tombstones, over the generations.

The cattle herders in the Likowitz fields followed by work with deep curiosity, not knowing what to make of a single Jew probing about the cemetery all day. At times they threw stones and tried to provoke me into a fight, but I paid them no attention.

When the undertaking was over I gave the register to Aharon Harkavi. I felt that I had indeed performed an act of “hessed shel emet”, and I have cherished the compliment a friend paid me, “You have given life to the dead”.

Who would have thought that so soon this remark would bereversed, that the Nazi hordes would, only a few years later, bring death to all the living in Tooretz!

Mordecai Rosowsky, in his Selected Writings (Buenos Aires, 1947), left us an inkling of medical care as it existed in Tooretz late in the 19th Century.

It seems that, until modern times, Tooretz had no physician or even a “certified practitioner of medicine?. Still, no ailing person was without medical attention of sorts, provided by medical orderlies or amateurs, all of whom derived their medical lore from contemporary books, Healers of the Sick and The Popular Healer, as well as from periodicals, the Talmud and Maimonides.

In mid-19th Century, according to Rosowsky, the ministering medicine men in Tooretz were Haim and Velvl Yosha. They diagnosed

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the illness, wrote out prescriptions in Latin, charged for their services and ruled the medical roost. Their competitors were amateurs, like Itche Akiva and Meirim Lubetzky, who took care of the poor without fee; (they too wrote out prescriptions in Latin). At times the professionals and the amateurs would get together for consultation.

Toward the end of the century, a practitioner by the name of Kulik came to Tooretz. He was a freethinker, and his approach to healing was quite novel. He would chide the patient for trying to draw the family's sympathy, then tell a few anecdotes, at which the patient's mood would improve greatly. Kulik would then prescribe a few days in bed and tea with lemon every few hours. He wouldn't take money from his patients, and gained his livelihood from attending to the Polish noblemen in the area. He shunned pills and powders, preferring to let the body do its own healing with home remedies - cupping, tea and lemon, rest in bed, cold compresses for headaches, and above all, the enema.

Quack remedies were readily available: incantations against the “evil eye” for erysipelas or swollen lips. Fear was driven away by melting lead and divining the cause of the malady by the shape which the cooled lead would take. The Evil Spirit was driven out by special incantations muttered while the patient' head was wrapped in a blanket; his beating about wildly to avoid suffocation was proof that the Evil Spirit was making his way out from the body.

Kulik fought valiantly against these superstitions. He was especially wroth with the medicine men who victimized the ignorant peasant women and cheated them of yards of flax fabric.

In the 1890's, the health of Tooretz was in the hands of the medical practitioner Leibe, a quiet, easy=gong Jew, who made his rounds carrying with him tubes, a glass of water with floating leeches, and homemade powders stuck in his jacket pockets. he walked slowly, even to emergencies, because his paunch would not allow him to make fast progress. His remedies also included home cures: castor oil, the enema, cupping, and the like - for seasonal ailments. At other times, Leibe attributed the ailment to poor blood, and here he put the leeches to work. If this didn't help, he wold throw up his hands and advise the patient to go to a nearby Mir, which had two full fledged doctors. However, the trip was too costly for most of the town's inhabitants.

When Leibe departed this earth in 1907, the elders gathered

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to plan for a replacement. An advertisement to that effect was inserted into the local paper, and Michael Yossef Harkavy, the head of the town, was entrusted with interviewing the applicants.

The first applicant, a Jew from Warsaw by the name of Epstein, had a medical diploma, but his dress was shabby and unkempt, and he himself was moody and introverted, due (as was later discovered) to family troubles. Still, his very attitude was in line with the contemporary idea that the doctor must be stand-offish and rather ill-disposed toward his otherwise pampered patients. Epstein became the physician of Tooretz, and in time he much respected. The non-Jews paid him well for house calls.

Then Epstein ran into some bad luck. He fell in love with a Christian woman in her late twenties, and attempted to win her affection by depositing into her account all the money he had accumulated (800 rubles, according to the bank teller). No one knows what became of the money, but Epstein's wish didn't materialize. For a time Epstein lost all interest in everything and everybody. Finally he moved into the home of the pharmacist, ate better, and resumed his practice, mainly among the non-Jews, but now he drew closer to his own people and joined the “Young Men's Chess Club” in Pomerczyk's home. He was friendly with Yoske Hillels, also an eccentric; whenever Yoske fell ill, he would take all the medicines which Epstein prescribed for him, mix them all in his huge pewter tankard, and drink the mixture - this, he claimed, caused speedier recovery. He was caught in the second German roundup in 1941 and murdered, despite the strenuous efforts of many influential Christians to save him.

In the mid-1930's Tooretz gained a physician worthy of the name, Dr. Brakovsky of Baranowitz, one of the few Jewish graduates of a Polish medical school. dignified, courteous and friendly, he broke the tradition of aloofness which had always characterized the medical profession. He set up a modern clinic in Lipa Bernstein's house (after the police moved their headquarters to the home of the land baron Lipinski) and received patients in the afternoon after his house calls. His fees were moderate, and the poor paid nothing. Dr. Bratkovsky was also one of the town's largest donors to charitable causes.

He, too, saved many hundreds of non-Jews from death, but they couldn't save him when the holocaust cut him down.

Tooretz in its better days was a model Jewish Lithuanian community. It lived in an atmosphere of friendliness and mutual aid. there was hardly an untutored male in the town. This upbringing led to volunteering for public service, and the community institutions functioned in all cases of need - Passover help for the poor, hostels for the traveler, or a fresh horse for the drayman whose steed had outlived its years.

There was little time when the “have's” and the “have not's” in Tooretz looked askance at each other, but with the union of marriage between the Hanina and Yalowsky families, relations became much better. Tooretz was also fortunate in that its people were not zealots in their political thinking.

Except for the three general stores owned by Beilin, Perlman and Zackheim, trade in the town was skimpy, and its people had to work at several jobs in order to make ends meet. Yosef Yalowsky, the grocer, also stored eggs for the winter, leased fruit orchards in the summer, peddled notions in the villages, and even wrote mezzuzot and tephilin, all for the total income which hardly sufficed for his daily needs. Many a small merchant had to run sales on his wares in order to raise enough money to meet a note due. These sales undermined the economics of the town and caused some friction, to the point that the Rabbi was often called in to settle the disputes. The worst season was harvest time, when the peasants from the surrounding villages worked in the fields and didn't come in to shop in town.

In 1936 the Poles began setting up cooperatives and urging the non-Jewish inhabitants not to buy from Jews. The tax authorities also discriminated against the Jews, making their economic lot intolerable. Jewish tailors couldn't cope with ready-to-wear items brought in from elsewhere, and the shoemakers were also hit hard.

The great compensation was the Sabbath. The synagogues were filled with worshippers, eager to shed the pressures of the outer

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world. The spacious corridor was the favorite place for meeting friends and chatting. Reb Leib Pisotzner and Reb Moishe Yankelevsky, both witty and astute, were always in the center of the gathering. Yisrolik Yankelevsky, a brilliant young man with a fine voice, and Yom-Tov Litvinsky, the elegant elder, gave the congregation a treat whenever they were called to recite the Haftorah.

After the cholent, the older folks had their Sabbath nap and the young ones had their day. We strolled to the glade of the old pine trees near the boundary line of the land baron's estate (another glade was near the church). We played games, gamboled on the lawns, and enjoyed the clean air. at sundown, as our elders were escorting the Sabbath out with Psalms and prayers, we trudged back from our communion with nature.

All winter and into the spring, the streets of Tooretz were either covered with ice or were quagmires of mud. Winter was officially over when the loud-voiced Constable Bashtzet went from house to house with orders to clean away the last of the melting ice. This was also the sign for the groups of matzoh bakers to start working for Pesach. The wooden boards and rollers were taken down from the attic and given a planing down. The expert baker checked the hearth to see if it would withstand the weeks long fire.

The matzoh bakers were real professionals. Haim Yoslavsky, a cantorial buff would chant melodies from the repertoire of Yossele Rosenblatt and at the same time sling a dozen matzot into the oven in a single move. Most of the people awaited their turn and baked their own matzot which they then placed in wicker baskets or wrapped in white sheets which they stored away until the night of the Seder.

Of all the holidays, I particularly remember a certain Sukkot. Our sukkah was in the corridor; a section of the ceiling had been fashioned to fold over and back, revealing the sky above us. The streets were filled with the lights coming through on every side.

My brother Abraham and I must have shifted the ceiling section too much to one side. I was sitting near the house when the section suddenly slid down and came right at me. Fortunately, a pile of bricks on one side of me and the hedge along the property line of our neighbor, Hanina Izikowitz, caught the ends of the section as it came down in a crash that could be heard all over town. The family rushed out, sure that I was done for. The joy, as I crawled out

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from under the wreckage, was boundless. On the next day, in the synagogue, my father had me go up to the Torah and recite the “haggomel” prayer of deliverance.

The Torah sages, scholars, rabbis and magistrates whose names are associated with Tooretz and neighboring Yeremitz form one of the most glorious chapters in the history of their Jewish communities. While space does not permit detailed accounts of their lives and achievements, this volume would not be complete without paying them some of the tribute they deserve.

Known in the Lithuanian rabbinical world as r. “Berl Tooretzer”, he was born to a family of renowned rabbis extending over many generations and attained such excellence that he was considered as a replacement for Rabbi Kook as Chief rabbi of Tel-Aviv-Yafo, when Rabbi Kook became Chief rabbi of Eretz Israel. He wrote several commentaries on the Bible and Jewish law, but these were lost when the home of his son, rabbi Mordecai Gimpel Yoffe, went up in flames. He served his native town, then went on to Korelitz and other communities until his death in 1929. His sons, sons-in-law and grandsons became famous rabbi and magistrates, authors and community leaders.

Attended Mir Yeshiva. Was Rabbi of Tooretz 11 years (1872-1883). Author of Darchei Mordecai, which gave him prominence in rabbinical circles. The cost of publishing weighing heavily on him, he accepted the post of Rabbi of Lona (near Grodno), where the affluent Arkin family defrayed the expense. Among his writings are eulogies of great rabbis of the age.

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R. Yaacov Hayyim Meisel

Scholar and community leader in Tooretz, during last quarter of the past century. Member of Bakshtansky family, renowned among Russian Jewry for its prominence in rabbinical and community circles. Reprinted scholarly works which had gone out of print.

Attended Mir Yeshiva. Taken by his uncle, r. Abraham Shmuel, to Eishishok to serve as religious magistrate (dayyan), in this town of “perushim” (scholars who studied in seclusion), a post which he filled until his death in 1896.

Entered Volozhin Yeshiva at the age of 15. Began career as tutor in the home of a wealthy contractor, later was Chief Magistrate in Stoibetz. In 1849 became Rabbi of Minsk. Known far and wide for his preaching and his work in religious research. His two books were published posthumously.

The only son of Rabbi David Tebele, he served as Rabbi of Tooretz for a short period and later joined the rabbinate in Minsk where he was also active in the Mizrachi movement.

Born in 1809, he was one of the first student in Mir Yeshiva. Became Rabbi of Eishishok. Extremely poor, he was said never to have sat down at his table without a guest partaking of the meal.

In 1855, when he was the rabbi of Russeino community, a peculiar circumstance took place in his synagogue. The “Government rabbi” arrived early and seated himself in Rabbi Abraham Shmuel's place near the ark. The enraged congregation could hardly restrain itself. When the cantor returned the Scroll to the ark he neglected to recite the prayer for the welfare of the Czar and the royal family. The “Government rabbi” didn't notice the omission, but a veteran Jewish soldier was aware of it. He rushed up to the rabbi and berated him for overlooking the prayer. the rabbi began apologizing, but the soldier silence him with a smack in the face. In the midst of the uproar the police arrived and arrested the soldier for attacking a

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government official. The soldier kept shouting that he had served the Czar 25 years and wasn't going to allow this show of disrespect. The police officer didn't know what to do and referred the matter to the governor of the province. In the course of the investigation of the incident, the “Government rabbi” claimed that he had been sitting too far away to hear the cantor. The governor ordered that this rabbi should henceforth sit close to the cantor.

For almost a quarter of a century served as the emissary of the “General Committee for the R. Meir Baal Haness” institute in Jerusalem, for the central Lithuania provinces.

Descended from a long line of rabbis and known as an outstanding educator. While in Tooretz, he wrote the first of his three books, tracing the history of Torah in Lithuania through the generations of his own family.

Father and son belonged to a family of “mitnagdim” which fought the Hassidic movement. Rabbi Nahum became Chief Magistrate in Tooretz, which, under his influence, remained opposed to Hassidism during its entire existence. Rabbi Eliyahu Hayyim, who succeeded his father, wrote a handbook on kashrut and the laws of ritual slaughter.

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Rabbi Noah Rabinowitz

Known as a “Talmud child prodigy”, he studied in Volzhin and was a favorite of its headmaster, Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik. The latter took his disciple with him when he was appointed Rabbi of Slutzk. Prominent in Jewish historical research, he defended tradition against the inroads of the Enlightenment. As rabbi of Tooretz, he was among the first Zionists and worked to form the “Mizrachi”. He wrote three books of homiletics which served as models for the preachers of the day.

Born in Tooretz in 1820, he was known for his tremendous mental powers, being familiar with the entire field of Talmudic jurisprudence. His personality brought peace to the community, and many public institutions arose as a result.

Rabbi Yossef Yitzhak Rabinowitch

His patriarchal appearance, amazing scholarliness and good nature bring Rabbi Yitzhak Rabinowitch to mind as one of the greatest personalities in our town. Modesty was also among his noble virtues. When he was offered a post in a large city, he turned down the offer because he loved his community.

As a young lad, I always accompanied my father on his visits to the Rabbi for a chat on Torah matters. I used to watch him and often felt a desire to talk to him. One day I got up enough courage and confessed to him that on one occasion I had drunk milk after tasting meat, but the meat was less than an olive in size. At which the Rabbi smiled, looked at me with his wise eyes, and asked, “But did you remember to recite the benediction over the milk?”

One evening, as the Rabbi was taking a walk in the street, my mother spied him through the window. She asked my father to invite him in for a glass of milk (we had a cow). My father went out and extended the invitation. The Rabbi said, “Well, it seems that your wife wants to see how I make the bracha over a glass of milk.” He came in and drank the milk, much to my mother's joy.

When Rabbi Rabinowitch's house burnt down, he and the rebbitzin moved into our home and remained with us the rest of their lives.

Once, as I was reading a Hebrew novel, the Rabbi came up to me, looked through the book, and said, softly, “Leibe, why do you waste time on such books? This is good for” - and he recited

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the names of several maidens who regarded themselves as the town's aristocracy - “but you should read books of deeper content.” The Rabbi didn't moralize. He spoke quietly and in friendly spirit, and we didn't have to discuss the matter again.

Rabbi Rabinowitch was the spiritual leader of Tooretz from 1884 to 1919. His extensive writings were lost, except for the manuscript Birchat Yitzhak, which his son, Rabbi Shraga Feitl Rabinowitch, published in 1950 when he was Rabbi in Brooklyn, N.Y.

In addition to his greatness in Torah scholarship, my father, Rabbi Shmuel Markowitz, was a true community leader. In his home, all matters pertaining to the community were discussed, as well as the needs of the individuals. He made sure that the drayman whose horse died should be given the means to get a new one, so that the source of his livelihood would not be cut off. Or if someone was charged wrongly by the Government, my father would go to the county seat and not come back until justice was done. His influence in official circles made Tooretz the envy of many other communities.

Education, of the the adults as well as the young, was his prime concern. He founded the Jewish school in Tooretz, hand-picked the teachers, and brought with him from Wilno the textbooks in Hebrew subjects for the school. He tried to persuade the melamdim to join the school faculty, so that they shouldn't lose their livelihood. By placing a teacher in the Polish language on the staff, he made it possible for the students not to have to attend the government school.

He was deeply interested in the economic state of his flock. Realizing the need for a credit bank, he initiated action for its founding and was the first to contribute to its capitalization. Until the bank became self-sufficient, he directed its transactions, in his home.

It was to be expected that yeshiva students should knock on his door for Torah sessions. However, among his visitors were also many university students, home for the summer holiday, eager to absorb some of the Rabbi's worldly wisdom.

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Perhaps one of his greatest achievements was the respect which he gained for Torah and Judaism as a religious magistrate. He was fair in judgment and strict in the execution off the verdict. Even the non-Jews from neighboring towns and villages came to the “Rabbin”, who could neither be deceived nor deceitful.

Yehuda Treyevitsky: On a wintry Sabbath morning, after a heavy snowfall, Rabbi Markowitz was on his way to the synagogue, when the town commandant accosted him with the demand that the town's Jews should go out immediately and clear the streets. The Rabbi quietly told him that it was the Sabbath and Jews were not to do any work on that day, but that they would do the work on the following day. The commandant flew into a rage and pushed the Rabbi to the ground.

The Rabbi picked himself up, continued to the synagogue and spent the Sabbath as though nothing had happened. But right after Havdalla he went to Novogrudek to see the Governor. When the latter asked him for the purpose of his visit, the Rabbi said, “Your servant has insulted God's servant”. When the Governor learned about the incident, he shook with rage and told the Rabbi, “You may go back home. By the time you reach Tooretz, the commandant will no longer be there.” And he wasn't.

Yehuda Gesik: Rabbi Markowitz was often called by the great Torah authorities to use his effective personality to stem the tides threatening the existence of traditional Judaism. In the elections to the community agencies, he led the fight to safeguard the people's spiritual riches.

It was a long-standing tradition in Tooretz that Sabbath candles and yeast for the Sabbath “hallot” were purchased from the Rabbi, and for Passover all the “chometz” was sold through the Rabbi. This tradition not only added to the Rabbi's modest income, but also kept every family in town in personal touch with the Rabbi and his household.

Moshe Zinowitz: When the First World War broke out, Rabbi Markowtiz and his family fled to the interior of Russia. he was appointed Rabbi and school supervisor for the Jewish community of Bershansk. Among the friends he made during this period was Rabbi Meir Berlin (Bar-llan).

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As soon as the war was over, Rabbi Markowitz returned to Tooretz. The town was half in ruins. He quickly got in touch with townspeople in America and elsewhere, and soon the Jewish community and its institutions were restored. He then became active in the Yeshivot Committee, established in Wilno by the “Hafetz Hayyim” and Rabbi Hayyim Ozer Grodzensky. In 1929 he was sent to Germany on behalf of the “Hafetz Hayyim” Yeshiva in Radin. His visit to Frankfurt was a great event in the life of that important community.

Rabbi Shimon Yehuda shkop (born 1860, died 1940) was one of the great Torah luminaries of his generation. From his native Tooretz he went to study in nearby Mir, thence to Volozhin, where he developed the unique method of Torah study which soon became known worldwide as “Reb Shimon's method”.

At the age of 24 he was called by his uncle, Reb Eliezer Gordon (Reb Leiser Telzer), to teach in the Telshe Yeshiva, where he remained for the next 18 years. His book, Shaarei Yosher, setting forth his Torah study methodology, drew to his classroom the finest Torah students of the age. In 1907, he founded the Yeshiva Briansk and in 1920 he became director of the large “Shaarei Torah” Yeshiva in Grodno, established four years earlier, at the height of the World War (several local yeshivot were founded in those days because long distance travel was very difficult). He agreed to take this post because the yeshiva was in dire administrative straits. Rabbi Shimon invited known scholars to the faculty, and many students began streaming to Grodno. The political situation, however, grew worse, as a result of the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1920. Rabbi Shimon refused to leave, and soon normalcy returned with the signing of the peace treaty.

His teaching was as serene as it was thorough; he would repeat the point of law until everyone in the class had grasped it completely. Between formal sessions, he talked to his disciples about manners

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and morals, and implanted in them the tremendous love for study which remained with them all their lives.

In 1929 he went to the United States to Marshal help for the Yeshiva. Many hundreds of his former pupils rallied to his side. They furnished help for the Yeshiva, and also made possible the publication of his manuscripts.

Another of Rabbi Shimon's significant deeds was the establishment of a Yeshive K'tana ('small yeshiva') and the “Yavne” school to avoid having Jewish children attend secular and anti-traditional schools.

Rabbi Shimon was privileged to see many of his students serving as rabbis in some of the most important Jewish communities throughout the world. He died in Grodno on the eve of the disaster that was to overtake and engulf European Jewry. “Whenever I listened to his lecture,” said Prof. B.Z. Dinaburg of the Hebrew University, “I felt that he was opening my mind to thinking. For thousands of students he was a gifted pedagogue, as well as a noble and refined personality.”

As the scion of a long line of famous rabbis, Rabbi Yehuda Lubetzky was a child prodigy in Torah studies. He was not yet Bar-Mitzvah when he was ready to enter Mir Yeshiva, but the headmaster Reb Hayyim Leib Tiktinsky, would not admit him until he was 13 because the other students would have felt outclassed. From Mir he made the rounds of the other yeshivot, so as to become familiar with the teachings of the great Talmudic scholars of the age.

Married at the age of 16, Rabbi Yehuda tried his hand in trade but lost his entire capital (He attributed the loss to his having borrowed money at interest, on which he frowned in principle, and also to his having taken time away from the study of Torah). He now dedicated himself to study, to such a degree that he became anemic and had to go to Germany for treatment. The headmaster of Mir asked him to proceed to London and recruit help for the

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Yeshiva. Rabbi Yehuda agreed, but on his way he stopped off in Kovno to see the great scholar Rabbi Yitzhak Elhanan (Spector). When the two met, Rabbi Ytzhak Elhanan was amazed by the erudition of his young visitor.

Rabbi Yehuda kept a diary which reflects the joy he felt at meeting fellow-Jews in his course of travels. he visited community leaders, scholars and men of authority, and gave special attention to the clash of cultures between the Jewries of eastern and western Europe and the friction between newcomers and old-timers in the communities. He sharply criticized the modern religious and lay leadership, but bore great respect for the orderliness in which west European Jewry managed its affairs, even though he ascribed the disorderliness in eastern Europe to excessive zeal and enthusiasm.

Healed of his ailment, and after a successful tour of England on behalf of Mir Yeshiva, Rabbi Yehuda set about returning to Tooretz, via France. In Paris he met the great Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, who had come to the French capital to organized the community life of the Russian and Polish Jews; they had come to France to escape the hardships in their countries of birth. After the meeting, Rabbi Salanter suggested to the leaders of the community to invite Rabbi Yehuda to preach in their synagogue on the Sabbath. The audience was so impressed that Rabbi Yehuda was asked to become the spiritual leader of the community. At first he refused, but the growing tide of antisemitism in Poland, as well as the challenge of the opportunity to establish a strong Jewish community in France, persuaded him to bring his family to Paris and plunge into the work. By forming strong ties of friendship with key personalities, among them Chief Rabbi Zadok Katz of the Consistoire and Baron Edmund de Rothschild, he was able to influence the old time French Jewry to accept the newcomers into its midst.

The life's work of this remarkable scholar was his painstaking analysis of an ancient manuscript which he discovered in the collection of Baron de Ginsburg in Paris, written some five hundred years earlier. He proofread the manuscript, completed it, annotated and published it in three volumes in Paris, during 1885-1900. He wrote several other books.

In his will and testament to his congregation, written seven years (1905) before his death and about 24 years after his arrival

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in France, he asked the members to choose for their next leader a scholar of stature and to give him material aid as well as respect. He urged them to adhere strictly to kashrut, to build a synagogue of their own (but without an organ), to provide for the upkeep of the Talmud Torah (for which he had obtained a handsome contribution from Madam Wissotsky), to maintain the mikve and pure family life.

Rabbi Yehuda's brother, rabbi Nahum (called “the silvery Jew” because he was prematurely gray), was also a renowned scholar and of great help to his brother in his writings. He was a true love of Zion and corresponded with Rabbi Naftali Zvi Berlin (Hanatziv), headmaster of Volozhin Yeshiva, on laws relevant to farming in the Land of Israel. Although offered important rabbinical posts, he preferred to study. The family livelihood came from a fabric shop run by his wife and daughter. A son, Dr. Herzl Lubetsky, a lecturer in his alma mater in German until the advent of Hitler, fled to the United States. He visited Israel in 1970 and was commissioned by the Hebrew University to write a book on indemnities from Germany.

I spent but a month in that little town, Tooretz, in the home of the marvelous tutor whom my father had picked for me. But this was the first month which I spent outside my parental home. It was the only month I spent in a kind of dormitory with older boys, and I felt that this month - the last before my Bar Mitzvah - separated me from my childhood and my adolescence.

My father sought for me a tutor with worldly knowledge as well as Jewish erudition. He found such a person in the home of a wealthy tax collector, on an estate in one of the forests near Yeremitz, tutoring the children. The tutor was as familiar with Kant, Spinoza and Maimonides as he was with the Talmud and the commentaries. Besides, he was a consummate linguist, being fluent in Hebrew

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and Russian and German and French and Arabic. His library, purchased out of his income, was marvelous to behold. My father, on a visit to the estate for business reasons, met the tutor and decided he was the one. But how was this to be done?

Here fate intervened. While many matchmakers importuned the tutor to consider the wealthy bride each of them had to offer, the tutor fell in love with the housekeeper of the estate and decided to marry her, though she was penniless. He took his wife, rented a house in nearby Tooretz (my father helped him), and opened his doors to students. I was the first one.

First the tutor had to pass two tests. He visited my grandfather in the nearby town, and impressed him with his Torah knowledge. Then he came to our home on a Sabbath and amazed my older sister, also a fine intellectual, with this worldly erudition.

The tutor's house was long and low-ceilinged. Half of it served as the tutor's quarters and the other half was our dormitory. The hallway in between was the dining room.

Our tutor had a methodology all his own. The first hour, when the brain was at its clearest, was devoted to mathematics. He taught us how to calculate by using the Hebrew calendar, new moons and the like. He would ask us, for example, to reckon on the time of the new moon for August of 1492, when the Jews were expelled from Spain. Along with this we had a go at history and geography for an hour, after which we held our prayers, ate breakfast, and turned to the Talmud, which we learned according to a unique methodology, which covered the subject, in all its sources, rather than so many pages of the tome. When we studied homiletics he would bring forth books in other languages and find corresponding material on the same subjects.

We boys were much impressed by the love between our tutor and his wife. She was not highly schooled but had a natural good sense and grace, and her love for her learned husband matched his love for her. We regarded the “other half” of the dwelling as a sort of honeymoon cottage. Unfortunately, the older boys began referring to it with lewdness, totally out of place and uncalled for.

We didn't have much to do in Tooretz. Our days were full. But on the Sabbath we would go to the Great Synagogue, and there our tutor would present us to the elderly, fine looking Rabbi, for a brief oral examination of what we had learned during the past week.

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The only girl we knew was the daughter of the iron tools dealer, who came in the evenings for a lesson. As soon as she came into our classroom, all the boys became real gentlemen. The oldest among us walked her home in the snow, and the rest remained behind, envious.

When the month was over, my mother came to take me and the tutor to our home for the Bar Mitzvah. She saw the low ceiling and was afraid that it would cause a recurrence of my childhood headaches. She decided that I wouldn't go back to Tooretz until the tutor had changed his residence. I was glad. Despite the warmth that I felt in his home and the knowledge I had gained, the attitude of the older boys toward the tutor's wife spoiled it for me.

Footnote

1. Abridged from Kovhvel Boker (essays and reminiscence), Tel Aviv: Am Oved and Davar, 1950. Return

Reb Itche Sapozhnik, one of the best melamdim in the region, taught Torah in Tooretz for two generations. Too refined to follow the rule “spare the rod and spoil the child”, he had the knack of exerting discipline through persuasion even on the mischief-makers in the class. Many of the community's leaders in later years readily asserted that their success in their advance studies came from the training they had received from Reb Itche. He passed away in the last years of the First World War.

After the war, the movement to modernize Jewish education led, in Tooretz, to the establishment of a school with an adequate faculty which included Leib Sapozhnik, Yehuda Treyevitsky, Yitzhak Pupkin, Yaacov David Litvinsky, and the noted grammarian and Bible instructor from Mir, Reb Shlomo Hayyim Treyevitsky. The school was housed in Zalman Bernstein's spacious building. In 1924 several of the teachers retired, and the school went back to the “heder” type, with all its shortcomings. What was more, the school was moved to the women's gallery in the old synagogue, so as to save on rent. During the hot summer, it was almost bearable.

In 1925 Shlomo Hayyim Treyevitsky reorganized the school. Mordecai Orchowsky, his former competitor, taught Talmud. An hour

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of Polish study, as demanded by the Ministry of Education, was given by Marussia Bronowski. There were three classes, and, with only two teachers, each class did written work in rotation. The classes remained the same, advancing only in the amount of material learned, leaving the poorer students to shift for themselves.

In the evening, we would return to our homes, swinging our lanterns to light our way, as they cast streaks of light on the glistening snow. The fresh air added to the gay atmosphere, and often we would break into song, trailing in the air, until the last of us was inside his warm home.

Short, a small beard adorning his chin, with a prominent nose, he always looked serious, even when he smiled, but he had an amiable disposition, as befitted a scholar.

In his time he was considered to be a radical in the teaching field. He deprecated the old time Melamdim and their comparative ignorance of Hebrew grammar and Bible. He loved literature and Hebrew poetry, and often he would read to us chapters from works of Yehuda Leib Gordon, David Frishman and their contemporaries. Still, he was extremely traditional. Besides, he was a wonderful teacher. As we listened to his discussion of Pirkei Avot on hot Sabbath afternoons, we felt no envy toward those who were at that moment strolling out in the open air.

Bible study was his hobby, to the point that at time he ventured far afield in his interpretation of the prophets, applying their words to his ideas of values, reward and punishment, and the like. In his zeal for grammar, he would insist on reading the Talmud with the proper grammatical pronunciation.

Strangely enough, at first he looked askance at the professon, but at the prime of his work he managed to provide well for his 9 member family. He also volunteered to conduct a Mishnayot group of adults, between mincha and maariv.

As he advance in age, many parents withdrew their children in favor of younger teachers. Slowly his health worsened, and in time all his pupils left him. His life was all but ended when the Nazis took it, in the fall of 1941.

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In the Old World, where almost every Jewish lad attended one yeshiva or another, the tradition of learning produced many Torah scholars who did not turn to the rabbinate as a profession or source of livelihood. As a result, in every generation there was a large body of learned Jews, ballebottim, who lent the flavor of Torah life to their communities.

Reb Moishe Dobrochitzer of Tooretz was a fine example of the lay scholar. Ordained for the rabbinate, he chose to farm a leasehold for his livelihood, raised a family of a dozen children, well learned and behaved, and married them off to the finest families in town.

Other Jews took the middle course - not rabbis nor lay scholars, but educators, often specialized in certain fields of teaching. My father, Reb Shlomo Hayyim, taught Bible and penmanship, with a bit of mathematics. As he taught the Bible and quoted the Prophets, he would go into ecstasy, close his eyes, and declaim the passage with the fervor of an Isaiah.

Itche Shliyames taught Talmud and grammar. He was very serious about his profession and demanded - and received - close attention to the subject. His excellent method of explication attracted many students.

Hillel taught the young ones. He could hardly make ends meet, but on every Simchat Torah, wishing to make an impressive mi sheberach contribution, he would pledge to paint the synagogue, which he did, with consummate artistry, right after the holiday.

At one time Tooretz had a “city cantor” by the name of Plotkin, an excellent musician and interpreter of liturgy. Tooretz could not maintain him, however, and he went on to Bialystok. The town had to be content with baalei-tefiloh, “readers” familiar with the liturgy but not necessarily endowed with outstanding voices. Fortunately

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Tooretz had several such cantors: Reb Yudel the Hazzan's, avreml Lechowitsky, Boruch Lubetsky, Shlomo the blacksmith, and Yaacov Lubetsky. The latter was known for his tearful supplications, as he recited the prayers; people said that this was caused by the fact that none of his sons and daughters reached the wedding canopy.

Once my memory turns to Tooretz, my mind overflows with recollections of my home town and my heart is filled with longing - perhaps Tooretz, to me, is the story of my youth.

A small town with touches of splendor, shunting aside the less attractive aspects, the poverty and inertial, the fights over who was to get maftir. What I remember is the grove of old chestnut
trees, near the old churchman's home, the jasmine, the sunflower plants in the garden patches, the fruit orchards, the wildflowers, grazing land and the songs of the shipherds at dusk. I also recall the hard winters, the blizzards, the warmth inside the home, with every crack and crevice stuffed with rags to keep the warmth inside.

On the surface, Tooretz was a nondescript town, situated partly on a slope and the rest on level ground; low, wooden houses on both sides of the road, topped by the kretchmah, the remains of an old inn or fort (inhabited by demons, whispered the children). At the rise to the north was the synagogue, on a side street which provided good sledding in winter. Across the slope was the church and the proximity of the two houses of worship led to clashes between the Jewish youngsters and the Christian boys. The confrontations usually took place on the Sabbath toward evening.

The Sabbath, particularly the post-cholent hours, was the highlight of the week, spent in deep and relaxing slumber. Later in the afternoon, the men went to the synagogue for mincha and maariv, with Psalm reading or chatting (in the corridor) in between. The quiet was broken by the church bells, announcing the vesper service. As the Christian youngsters pass by on their way to

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church, they would taunt the Jewish boys by bending their fingers to resemble a sow's ear. At times this led to stone throwing. We charged at them, pelting them with stones, almost up to the church; at times they would come at us, and we took refuge in the corridor of the synagogue. By this time it was dark enough for the havdala and “good week” greetings.

Everyone and everything rested in Tooretz on the Sabbath, including the livestock. The horses, overworked during the week, gamboled about the pasture. It was also a great day for Hayyim'ke the tailor's goat. All week Hayyim'ke (he wasn't an inch taller than five feet) worked hard patching clothes. He and his family and the goat starved more than they ate. On Sabbath afternoon Hayyim'ke took his goat to the pasture, then led it back home to nibble at the straw roof.

Like many other towns, Tooretz had its self-hating Jew, Hadosh the pharmacist. One of his assimilationist manifestations was his refusal to speak in Yiddish. He never went to the aid of elderly Jewish women who came to the pharmacy (he was employed there) and had difficulty making themselves understood in Polish or Russian. He kept aloof from the Jewish community and never attended synagogue services. His cronies were Polish teachers, town officials and police officers.

Hadosh's isolation was most marked on the nights of the Seder and Kol Nidre. Hadosh stayed away, perhaps because Christian residents of the town would cluster about the synagogue windows outside and listen to the haunting melodies of the Kol Nidre prayers. He walked back and forth along the strip of sidewalk in front of the pharmacy, alone, fighting back every impulse to return to the fold.

With so many avenues for vocations and professions closed to them, the Jewish young people were forced into destructive idleness. Many of them were willing and ready to make their aliya, but Jewish entry into Palestine was limited to capitalists and students; all others had to undergo a five-year course of farm training and then await their turn. In 1937 we had a farewell party

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for our friend S.A. Turetsky (now a member of Kibbutz Tirat Zvi), on the eve of his departure for Eretz-israel. We siad our goodbyes and good wishes, but we couldn't keep the envy out of our eyes.

In 1935, in an attempt to stem the process of demoralization among the young people, a circle of young men, Tif'eret Bahurim, was founded. Its counselor was Zecharyahu Bernstein.

Although the association was officially under the aegis of Poale Agudat Yisrael, it was non-partisan and attracted young men of various colorations, the non-religious among them. The group met at the home of Malkiel Pomerczyk to play chess or watch the “champions”, Epstein and Plotkin, have a go at it. The young men also held Oneg Shabbat gatherings and listened to guest lecturers.

Bernstein was a remarkable personality. A nephew of Rabbi Shimon Shkop, he was self-taught in many fields (he was chief bookkeeper of the Tooretz Bank), and most of his free time was spent helping others, particularly the little man. Later he went to work in a Lodz textile mill. During the Nazi occupation he was placed in charge of the sewing department. He managed to take in more workers than necessary in order to gain them the tag of “Beneficial Jew”. He was taken to Auschwitz in one of the last roundups and there starved to death.

Most of us young people of Tooretz used to meet in the Beilin home. The youngest and oldest of the five children in the Beilin family were but ten years apart and had no difficulty understanding one another.

Our young people looked to the future and saw very little to encourage them. Schooling was highly regarded, but the means for it were very meager. Some of us went to school in nearby Yeremitz; since public transportation was non-existent, we walked the three miles back and forth, in good weather and bad. Many boys attended

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the Mir yeshiva. A few broke through into the open world and found their way to the university in Wilna - the Slutsky brothers, Akiva and Leib, (the latter a District Court magistrate in Haifa) and the writer. Gabriel Zagursky earned his Doctor of Divinity degree (Rabbi Dr.) in faraway Germany. My brother Eliezer acquired two Polish-French pocket dictionaries and went to study agronomy in Toulouse, in France.

The young people who stayed behind devoted themselves to the locl library and amateur theatricals. Among the actors and actresses were Sonya, Julia, David, Berl and Fania Litwinsky. Yeuda Heimowitz wrote lyrics and did stage settings. His leftist views put him in Grodno Prison for several years. He was one of the many talented young Jews whom the Holocaust swept away.

My father was descended from the Gaon Reb Gershon Harkavi (settled in Safed in 1819). His home in Tooretz was built and furnished in the popular style: the main room contained a plain white wooden table, set with benches around it; chairs, a buffet or any furnishings were unknown in those days. The bedroom had two beds and sacks of straw substituted for mattresses. The infants ere kept in wooden cradles; when these were outgrown they were passed on to a neighbor or anyone who needed them.

Father had a storage room which also served as a store to sell flour and cereals. Most of the customers ere Jews, and sales were highest on Thursdays, when the housewives came to buy flour for hallot. Before Easter many Christian villagers bought white flour for their holiday pastries. The income was never high. Mother was careful to buy no more than was necessary. She seldom bought fabric for a new dress. Father's Sabbath suit dated back to his wedding day. My later brother and I received cotton suits before Passover, and we knew how hard it was to earn the money which paid for them.

Community life was quite primitive and centered about the synagogue. Officially and formally, it enjoyed a kind of autonomy granted to the Jews in the small towns by grace of the Tzar. Known

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as the Meshtzenskaya Uprava, it was headed by a starosta (chairman), elected every three years. Its main purpose was to see that the Jewish residents had passports, but it also represented the Jewish community in its dealings with the town authorities.

In 1903 Father was elected to this post, and our home underwent complete change. Almost every evening the secretary (a wealthy local farmer) dropped in to check the incoming mail and reply in kind. Others came to get a passport or talk politics. My brother and I felt that Father's prestige had gone up, but Mother was not pleased. She had to clean up after the visitors, and even though she was patient she was also very frail. Her pride was a scroll, written by a scribe, delineating her descent from a long line of rabbis going back to the days of King David.

Father had several experiences indicative of the lowly state of the Jews in those days. One summer day a carriage stopped in front of our house and two men came in, one in the uniform of a Major in the Tzar's gendarmerie and the other in plain clothes. They demanded to see the passport register, and matched the register with a passport they brought with them. The document turned out to be a forgery, executed in the tenure of the preceding starosta. Said the plainclothes man (he was the assistant to the prosecutor), “He's lucky he's dead, otherwise he would rot in jail”.

On another occasion a telegram came from the police station of Ofula, a town near the Austrian border. It seemed that the police were detaining a Tooretz resident named Hanan Yoselevsky. he was arrested as he was about to cross the border into Austria. The instructions were to “wire back at once whether Hanan Yoslavsky has a police record or is awaiting trial and whether the passport is genuine.”Actually the arrested man was Hanan's older brother Herzl, who evaded conscription by using his brother's passport. In those days, photographs were not yet in use, and a general description of visible identification was enough. By chance, the secretary was in our home when the telegram arrived. he was against confirmation; on that very day he had seen Hanan Yoselevsky in the street. Father, however, refused to be party to the arrest and, on his own responsibility, wired back that the young man in question was under no legal stress and that the passport was genuine. Herzl was released and crossed the border. Later he manged to send a word of thanks to Father.

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On another day a young man, officially a Tooretz resident, came from around Pinsk for a passport. According to the authorities, every passport issued to Jews had to state that it was good only for the Pale of Settlement. When the young man saw this clause being stamped into the passport, he broke into a rage and wanted to know why he was being marked with a “yellow badge”. He then made the mistake of shouting at the secretary, “you will yet pay for the degradation of the Jews!”, at which the secretary returned, equally enraged, “If I hear another word from you I'll ask the police to arrest you on the spot!” Father quieted both of them. The secretary, he knew, was a reactionary and an ardent supporter of the Tzar.

The season of conscription - October - for the Tzarist army threw the entire town into a state of panic. All males, on reaching 21, were ordered to appear before the Draft Board. Military service meant four years in the army. Father had to spend an entire week with the Draft Board in Novogrudek, while the youths from Tooretz were undergoing medical examination. Because of the depressed state of the Jews, many of the prospective soldiers did everything they could to fail the medical test. Father said that whenever an emaciated looking young Jew appeared before the examiner, the latter would say, sarcastically, “Well, what's wrong with you? Hernia, running ears, poor vision, starvation?” But on one occasion, said Father, a bright and resourceful young Jew from Novogrudek appeared before the Board. He, too, was asked by the official how many days he hadn't eaten. It was that, said the youth, “I had a nightmare last night which unnerved me. I dreamt I was in St. petersburg, lodged in one of the fine hotels. In the middle of the night the police came and demanded to see my passport. When they saw marked in it that I was a Jew, they cursed me and arrested me because it was forbidden for Jews to be there. I argued that compulsory service in the army gave me the right to visit any place in the county, including St. Petersburg.” The official, his face red with anger, said, “In the army they'll cure you of such dreams.” To which the young Jew replied, “Do you think our situation now is very good?” I often though of these stories, after I had learned the meaning of antisemitism.

Among the frequent visitors in our home was Reb Hillel

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Zelikovsky, the heder melamed. He would drop in before noon when the samovar would still be on the table. “Nu, let us warm our insides a bit,” was his stock comment. Mother would give him tea and cookies. Reb Hillel accepted his miserable state like Job , without complaint, even though his wife was sickly and his son, Yosef, was an old recluse, always in a state of melancholia.

Another guest was Reb Moshe Rozowsky, a noble and gracious person, pious and scholarly, with an unusual sense of fairness, for which he was often called in to mediate complicated contentions. His son Mordecai became head of the Zionist organization in Buenos Aires.

The third visitor was an elderly woman whom we called Aunt Rivka. Her life was dedicated to the collection of contributions - money, clothing, or food - which she later distributed to the impoverished without anyone knowing who the recipients were. Mother supplied her with the names of the needy, and Aunt Rivka would slip into their homes by the rear door. Every Friday, at the break of day, she would tour the tomes for freshly baked hallot for the poor. All her children and grandchildren immigrated to America, where they all became active in charitable institutions. The oldest grandson, Louis Yalowsky (died recently) worked on behalf of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem even when illness laid him low. Another grandson, Sam M. Yalowsky, a manufacturer of women's wear, contributed, late in 1948, 40,000 uniforms for the Women's Corps, then in the process of formation; he is also one of the founders and main supporters of Boystown Jerusalem. The third grandson, Bernard, is active in Israel Bonds and the UJA in New York and an enthusiastic worker in his own community.

Father also conducted the registries of births, marriages and deaths. Since there was no doctor in Tooretz to establish the cause of death, Father used to note, for those who died after 60, “Old Age”. It should be noted that not having a doctor on the spot accounted for the high rate of infant mortality, tuberculosis, pneumonia and cancer. The only building for purposes of public health was the old bath house.

It broke out on the 9th of Ab, 1914, and immediately the Jewish communities in the lands belonging to the Czarist Empire - Poland, White Russian, Lithuania and the Ukraine - with their total population of six million felt its impact.

With the first victories of the Germans, the Russians forced the Jews to leave their homes, lest they spy for the enemy. This pretext turned the Jews into refugees. They and their families had to take to the roads, carrying with them all tha was left of their worldly possessions.

The Jewish communities farther away from the front at once organized relief committees for the refugees.

For a while it seemed that Torretz's Jews would share the same fate, but then the Russian forces dug in not far from neighboring Yeremitz. The Jews conducted their lives on a permanent war footing, but kept their wagons in readiness for flight.

the entire vicinity became a military compound of infantry, cavalry and artillery, mostly in the surrounding villages. Bridges were built and roads laid extending toward the front. The inhabitants of Tooretz suddenly found new sources of income, supplying provisions for the Russian forces.

Our family was always in the baking business. We received huge orders for bread, and our small bakery worked at fever pitch to fill them. The storekeepers also increased their business, and people forgot that we were only seven miles away from the front and the German artillery. Gradually a mode of co-existence was established between the residents and the soldiers; all had the feeling of being in the same boat. Jews were allowed to use the military roads all the way to the barbed wire barriers at the front itself.

As a young lad I was intrigued by the life of the soldiers in the trenches, how they faced the enemy, ready to kill without even knowing whom they killed. One late afternoon, when the soldiers had loaded their wagons with bread, my father told me to go along with

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them and deliver the shipment to the command at the front lines. I was overjoyed. I climbed up into the lead wagon, and by evening we reached our destination, right by the trenches. The entire area in the thick forest of “Duzhe-Polia” was crisscrossed with underground bunkers - actually large huts fashioned out of the trees in the forest. I found my way tot he quartermaster. He signed the delivery slip, and after a few friendly words, he allowed me to go up to the trenches about 200 yards behind the barbed wire stretching along the bank of the river.

I made my way cautiously. From time to time the darkness was split by a rocket, followed by a rattling of gunfire from both sides of the waterway. I reached the trenches. The shooting had topped. The Russian soldiers put their guns up against the trench wall and sat down on the hard earth. Until the next command was given to get up and fire, they played cards, smoked or chatted. I listened to them talk about the hardships which the war was causing to them and their families.

Years later, recalling what I heard that night in the trenches I understood how the handful of Communists were able to seize control of the Russian people. It was their slogan “No More Wars” that did it. The slogan was used by Leon Trotsky when he negotiated with the Germans in Brisk. When they refused to go along with the proposed terms, Trotsky coined another slogan, “No peace and no war”.

This happened right after the First World War, when the reorganized Polish army pursued the Bolsheviks deep into Russia.

They came to Tooretz with a small force. Two of them, military police, took over the administration of the town. To help them in maintaining order, they put together a militia unit of 21 local young men, Christians and Jews, and assigned them to various duties. Instead of arms, they were given arm bands and told to patrol the streets, in eight hour shifts.

One morning, Leibl Svirenovsky (died in Tel Aviv in 1975)

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and I went out for our shift. The two militia men whom we were to relieve handed us a paper which they asked us to sign. We were to maintain watch over 17 captured Bolsheviks. We found that 14 of them were villagers serving in the “Red Army” against their will. Two were vagrants picked up by the soldiers at the border. The 17th, on the other hand, was a Red Army general who was captured by the Poles when he “dropped in” to see his family before fleeing into the interior. The captives were being kept in a corral.

We refused to guard the prisoners unless we had arms and would not sign the paper. The men we relieved wouldn't transfer the assignment to us unless we signed. After some altercation, the two Polish M.P.'s were summoned, and they forced us to sign. Leibel and I then divided the roles; he would keep an eye on the “unimportant” 16, while I would guard the General. His name was Baraban. I felt that he wouldn't try to escape, since one of his legs was swathed with a rag and he was limping badly.

When word got to my people about my assignment, they sent messengers to caution me not to let the General out of my sight. He cooperated nicely, causing no trouble at all. Then came a convoy of soldiers and wagons to take the prisoners to the command headquarters in Novogrudek. When Baraban saw the convoy, he begged permission to go behind the corral to attend to his personal needs. I went part of the way with him, as a matter of esthetics. When I went to look for the General, he was gone, bandaged leg and all. I reported the bitter truth to the Poles. One of them slapped by face in anger. All of us ran to look for the escaped General in the wheat field on the other side of the corral, but he had vanished.

It looked as if I would be taken to Novogrudek for interrogation. The town was in an uproar. My mother began preparing my things for the trip. To our surprise, the convoy left without taking me along.

One of the militia men, a good-natured goy, explained the reason for my unexpected good fortune.

“If they would have taken him to Novogrudek, the General Staff would have known that a prisoner of the General's importance had been placed under guard of a young man who wasn't even given arms. The M.P.'s decided that it would be better to gloss over the who thing. That's why they left him behind.”

Later, when the Red Army drove the Poles all the way back to Warsaw, General Baraban set up his staff in Novogrudek. He often talked about his miraculous escape from the Poles. “A Jew from Tooretz let me go,” he claimed.

When the Russians came to Tooretz, they learned about the 21 militiamen. These young men were about to be arrested, when word came from General headquarters for the Russian forces to drop everything and join in the pursuit of the Poles. Other than the big scare, no damage was done.

Ours is a generation of passing fancies, of fleeting impressions. We would therefore do well to cast a look back to the generations before ours, to the people and their way of life, steadfast, spiritually strong, staunch of character.

Tooretz had such people, and while the memory is insufficient to do them honor properly, as much as we do know we should mention.

In his “Selected Works (Buenos Aires, 1947), Mordecai Rozowsky writes about his forebear, Reb Leizer Lubetsky, who was also my grandmother's grandfather, as well as the grandfather of Rabbi Shimon Shkop, head of the Grodno Yeshiva. Born early in the 19th century, Reb Leiser was a famed scholar, but his livelihood came from the fields and flour mill he leased from the landowners who held him in great esteem. He won them with his patriarchal appearance, lucid speech and delicate humor (a family trait). He was also a gifted artist, decorating the house furnishings and fashioning ornaments for the ark in the synagogue.

When addressing anyone younger, he always said, “my son” or “my daughter”, as he also called the maid, long in the service of the household. Once she chastised one of the children at which the youngster said, “You're only a servant”. Reb Leizer felt pained when he was told about it, “How can anyone call a Jewish daughter a 'servant'?”

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Reb Leizer's five sons were scholars too and their gatherings always turned into legalistic disputations. One of them, Reb Meirim, was deeply interested in medicine and subscribed to medical journals and publications. In those days medical science was practically unknown in the small towns, and Reb Meirim proved to be an outstanding analyst. When writing the prescription, he would note down in Yiddish the Latin name of the drugs he prescribed. He never accepted fees and devoted his medical knowledge only to the poor.

The oldest of the five brothers, Reb Mordecai, changed his family name to Zagursky, for reasons of military conscription, a usual phenomenon in those days. As the oldest son, he represented the family with dignity and graciousness. he died at an early age, and most of his children immigrated to America.

Moshe Rozowsky, the third son, (called Moshe Dobrochitzer because he leased the Dobrochitz estate, less than two miles away from Tooretz) was known as a skilled arbitrator in complicated disputes. His sayings and anecdotes became part of local folklore.

His role in public service was remarkable. he was excellent in debate, and on one occasion won a debate with the Polish scholar and professor in Oriental languages, Dr. Exwara Gnaiski, on the subject of belief in demons and spirits as reflected in the Talmud.

Reb Moshe loved to do the cantorial liturgy on the High Holidays and to read from the Torah, suiting the intonation to the theme of the passage.

Reb Heshil, the fourth son, was a fine scholar but also an intellectual. He subscribed to the Hebrew periodicals, Hamelitz and Hazefira.

Reb Itche-Akiva was even more interested in medicine than his brother Meirim. Even though he was a “competitor” of Hayyim-Velvl and Yasha, the town's medical men, they nevertheless called him in for consultation, as did the specialists summoned from out of town; the patients demanded it.

He was also an inventor. One of his inventions was an oven which retained the heat and gave better baking. The oven became known as “Reb Itche's Oven”. He was also skilled in watch repairing and taught the craft to his sons, who also turned out to be as manually adept as their father. Whenever they came home from

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the yeshiva for the summer vacation, they would join him in some construction work which added to the comfort of the house.

On one occasion, a Jewish farmer sent word to Reb Itche that a strong wind had caused his barn to cave in. Reb Itche was not strong physically, but he was always ready to help a fellow Jew. He went to the scene and was able to set the barn aright without dismantling it. he accepted no payment other than the farmer's gift of potatoes, a duck and a turkey for the holiday. The goyim also sought his advice and respected him greatly.

One Reb Itche intervened in a quarrel between two men and one of them shouted at him coarsely. When Yom Kippur came around, the man came to ask Reb Itche's pardon. “Why seek my pardon,” said Reb Itche, “when the Almighty will surely forgive you. He forgives so many odd people; why not you?”

On another occasion he was summoned to attend to a Jew who ate too much horseradish at the “Seder” and fainted. Reb itche brought him to, then said, “Did you ever see a Jew who is a glutton for horseradish? He is to take no more than an olive's size, according to the law. next time put a nail into his horseradish, so that he wouldn't swallow it so easily.”

Itche had five sons and one daughter. Two of them, Rabbi Yehuda and Reb Abraham, emigrated to Paris. Rabbi Yehuda was the chief Rabbi and spiritual leader of the Polish and Russian Jews in Paris. His brother, Rabbi Leizer, became Rabbi in Brighton (England), the other two brothers remained in Poland. Reb Hershel lived in Toorets and Reb Nahum, a renowned scholar, lived in Nowogrodek.

My grandmother Sheine, Reb Itche's only daughter, married Reb Mordecai Zagursky, and the two families were thus unified. Their two sons died while both were still adolescents, and my mother, Ethel, was now the sole surviving child. She was given a fine Hebrew and general education. Despite her delicate physique, she took over the management of our store when my father died, and often traveled in the cold of winter to neighboring towns for merchandise. With this, she kept house for her four children and saw to their education. Her sole reward was to look through the curtain in the woman's gallery and see us at prayer or discussing the weekly portion with the adults. She was 55 in the fall of 1941 when the Nazis murdered her and my sister Hanna in the second roundup in Tooretz.

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