[Page 447]

In many of the artistic centers of the wider world I have met Jewish artists who have told me about the life and works of their teacher Yuri (Yehudah) Moiseevich Pen, the head of the art school in Vitebsk.

The first person from whom I heard about him was the artist Marc Chagall. In 1911 we were neighbors in La Ruche, that beehive of artists in Paris on the Passage Dantzig near the Porte de Versailles.

Yehuda Pen was born at the beginning of the 1870s [trans. note: Pen was born in 1854] in Novoalexandrovsk, in the Kovno Gubernia. He received a strictly religious education. From childhood on, he always followed his inclination to draw. People considered that sinful, but after much struggle he was allowed to enter the Petersburg Arts Academy and later to open his own art school in Vitebsk. Hundreds of young people studied in his school, among them many from the surrounding areas. Pen was very interested in the Jewish character, the Jewish environment, with Jewish customs, and especially with characteristically traditional Jewish picturesqueness. He created works such as “The Difficult Issue,” which shows a simple Jewish man who struggles over a sacred text, a Jewish woman with a Yiddish prayer book, so characteristic of our mothers and grandmothers. Pen's large painting “The Divorce” shows a whole gallery of different Jewish types in a dramatic scene of Jewish life. His painting “The Matchmaker” typifies his work, as do his paintings “In the Front Room of a Prince” and “A Letter to America”—and his characteristic “A Mother's Letter,” full of longing and loving sorrow. Open handles all of this in his realistic-romantic fashion.

[Page 448]

He knew how to work like a dedicated artist of his time.

The artistic world soon began to hear quite often about that Jewish place, Vitebsk—not only to hear but to see Vitebsk themes at art exhibitions, especially those of Chagall.

Our Jewish group in the Parisian art world derived great joy from the little shtetl motifs on the walls of the big-city salons. And Chagall was not the only Vitebsker in Paris. There wer also Abel Pann, Ossip Zadkine, Oscar Miestchaninoff. Each of them had his own style, and their works had nothing to do with Vitebsk, as if they had never been there. One cannot say that about Chagall and Yudavin. They would emphasize the little shtetl and even use the name Vitebsk in their titles.

It could be that sometimes Pann played with aspects of Vitebsk. But this did not amount to a characteristic expression. It was, in a certain sense, a faded reflection. Paris affected Pann far differently than it did Chagall.

Actually, Chagall was also influenced by the Parisian school, but far differently than the other artists from Vitebsk. Zadkine and Miestchaninoff had nothing at all to do with their home town, but in Chagall one can always find a certain nostalgia for Vitebsk. In Pann, only a pale reflection. But Zadkine and Miestchaninoff are far from those who remember their old home. They are artistic personalities who entirely freed themselves from anything like a Vitebsk motif.

Chagall did not only depict a type of longing. He celebrated, lamented, and, in a certain sense, even glorified. Just as Belz is in the popular song “Mein Shtetele Belz,” so was Vitebsk for Chagall.

In 1912 one could see in the Parisian “Fall Salon” Chagall's macabre conception in a painting with a remarkably mysterious atmosphere. There is a crooked street with a corpse in the foreground. Glowing lights twinkle around the dead man in the gray, crooked street. A fiddler sits on the roof of a house with a shoemaker's sign—one of those laconic signs: a shoe on a stick. A street sweeper sweeps the street, while frightened people run in panic…In Chagall's macabre conception of a dead man in a

[Page 449]

small-town street, the whole world could see a Vitebsk motif. The frightening detail on the crooked roof and the little street with the corpse, the grotesque Jew with the fiddle revealed a kind of paraphrase of what I later found in the Latgale shtetl of Rezekne where I happened to be in the 30s. I went there to examine a neglected Jewish spot—and I found there traces of a Chagallian source. I found there echoes of Chagallian Jews standing on the heads of other Jews. I even detected the Jew with the fiddle. I found skulls of clay figures stuck onto Latgale shepherds. There were horses with riders. Sometimes the rider was a little person with a large pipe, while sometimes riding on the horse was a dog or even a grotesque bird. And sometimes it happened that sitting on the little man who was riding the horse was a dragon. There were baked clay whistles that one could buy at the fairs between Rezekne and Vitebsk, which was not far from Latgale.

This interested me greatly. I began to look around. I discovered that the Latvian art department had assembled everything that could be found in the Latgale fields. I later sought out that department and explained what I thought about the whistles. They showed me a huge collection. They allowed me to choose ten of these clumsy but original examples. I brought them with me to Paris, and I often thought of them as characteristic examples of something that had influenced Chagall and Zadkine.

These two artists, you should know, were two very different personalities. But whenever they are set next to each other—how can one say it?—one can say that they had similar sources.

Actually, it is a little more complicated. But the figures of the Latgale shepherds underscore my idea.

Ossip Zadkine was a sculptor, draftsman, engraver, and water-color painter, a bold artist of great ability. He had a strong inclination to innovation. He was born in 1890. Around 1906 he came to England and studied in the London Regency Street Polytechnic. Later, in 1909, he was already in Paris. He spent a half year in the local art academy. In 1911 he began to exhibit in the Parisian “Fall Salon.” At that time Zadkine

[Page 450]

lived in La Ruche, a neighbor of Chagall. But they did not seem to come from the same city. I had then come to La Ruche and I remember it well. A year later, already in Jerusalem, Abel Pann told me that Zadkine came from Smolensk, but he also knew him from Vitebsk, where he grew up. Pann himself was from Kreslavke, born in 1883. His family name was Pfefferman. He came from Pen's Vitebsk art school via Odesa to Paris, where he took part in humorous journals and participated in various exhibitions. Around 1913 he came to Eretz Yisroel and became a teacher at the Bezalel art school. At the time of the First World War he was in America. He returned to Eretz Yisroel and settled there, where he produces lithographs, mostly on Biblical themes in Israeli styles.

At the same time, when Zadkine and Pann lived in Paris, another Vitebsker arrived—Oscar Miestchaninoff. Around 1911 he finished up at the Paris Art Academy and began to exhibit in Parisian salons. Miestchaninoff was not only a sculptor, he was also a true collector of art. He was among the first to recognize such artists as Chaim Soutine and Amadeo Modigliani.

Miestchaninoff was also greatly interested in older art and he owned fine examples of antique and characteristic examples of modern art. The fact that he was so interested in Soutine early in his career was fortunate for us, for it allowed him to collect a number of Soutine's early paintings.

Oscar Miestchaninoff was a gifted artist. His sculptures are in many museums. After 1944 he was in America. He was among those who took part in few exhibitions. He belonged also to the Jewish artists who were interested in the art center of the Jewish Cultural Congress in New York. He exhibited regularly in the annual show of the art center, which was founded in 1948.

The proclamation of the State of Israel and the revival of Jewish art in America were for Miestchaninoff signs of a Jewish renaissance.

I well remember that he could not rest until he had engaged me in a conversation about our shining artistic interests. And I remember, because it was interesting

[Page 451]

Shomo Yudovein—“In the Shtetl” (woodcut)

[Page 452]

from a variety of standpoints, and the opportunity was also interesting, because Miestchaninoff seldom showed his own feelings. He was more of the silent type. For me it was extraordinarily interesting to learn about the continuity of Jewish feelings in such an artist. I had often thought that Jewish feelings were entirely subsumed by international concerns. There were plenty of examples of this. This is not the place to discuss them, so I just want to underscore my happy surprise. And Oscar Miestchaninoff was the cause.

The writer Moyshe Broderzon used to tell me often about the artist Lissitzky, about whom he had beautiful, romantic memories. It was a great pleasure to hear how a writer received such joy from an artist.

Lissitzky's name was actually Lazar, but he used only the first initial of his Yiddish name, so he was known as El Lissitzky. He was born in 1891. He was a student of the Russian painter Malevich. Between 1922 and 1925 he lived in Germany and Switzerland. In 1925, together with the artist Hans Arp, he published an art book called “The –Isms of Art—1914-1925.” As one can see from the title, this was a work about the various “Isms” in art from 1914 to 1925. In this art book, he reveals his artistic self. There he stresses his constructive character, a kind of connection to architecture.

In the 20s, Lissitzky devoted himself largely to graphics. He would ornament books, make posters, concern himself with typographical innovations, book displays, and photomontages. At that time Lissitzky issued “Pro dva kvadrata” [“About Two Squares”}, which was also published in Dutch. In modern art, the Dutch art movement was recognized as an important branch of abstract expressionism and of ultra-modernism in Constructivist Art. And Lissitzky must be considered a Constructivist. He can also be included in other “Isms” that have a connection with architecture.

Lissinsky is now in the Soviet Union. Also active there is Shlomo Yudovin, the graphic artist of remarkable works on Jewish themes.

Shlomo Yudovin was born in 1894 in Beshenkovitch, a small shtetl near Vitebsk. His parents soon moved to Vitebsk. From childhood on he showed a talent for drawing.

[Page 453]

Shlomo Yudovin—“A Funeral”

In 1913-1914, Yudovin participated in An-sky's folklore expedition. As part of that expedition he travelled to Jewish cities and towns and collected interesting material about Jewish life. The images he collected greatly influenced his important artistic work.

From 1916 until the present, one can see Yudovin's work in our important art exhibitions. And he uses interesting themes from Jewish life that adorn books by Jewish writers.

In 1918, after the Bolshevik Revolution, Yudovin returned to Vitebsk, where he remained for five years, in 1923. In 1919

[Page 454]

he organized in Vitebsk a special exhibit of Jewish folk art. In 1926 the Vitebsk city council published in White Russian an album, “Vitebsk in Engravings,” containing Yudovin's Jewish motifs.

In 1927, the Leningrad Art Academy invited Yudovin to participate in the exhibition that it had organized. Everyone considered his shtetls to be an important contribution.

Yudovin belonged to the modern graphic artists, who regarded their work with professional concern and used rich sentiment and clarity of form. His many works on Jewish themes show this very clearly. It is possible that Yudovin was perhaps for the most part the closest to the Vitebsk art teacher Pen.

Themes of Vitebsk can also be found in several other artists. But these are isolated themes, nothing more. Yudovin's woodcuts sharply portray the characteristic aspects of the city of Vitebsk, with its houses and its streets. Especially vivid are his portrayals of Vitebsk's Jewish characters. It was not for nothing that the critics said that his art carried a deep Jewish-national character.

In the last couple of decades, one could often see in various exhibitions in Amerioca the pictures of Binyamin Kopman. In these exhibitions one could see the interesting development of an aspiring artist. One could see the zig-zag path of a creative artist—from William Blake's biblical mythologizations of the Tanach to the romanticization of Daumier. And this was only one stage. Others came later, more zig-zags of creation in a sparkling era.

The artist Benjamin Kopman was born in Vitebsk in 1887. He grew up in Yekaterinoslav. Later, when he was 13, he returned to Vitebsk. He remained there a short time and then came with his parents to America. In the short time that he was in Vitebsk, he studied in Pen's art school.

In America, Kopman studied in the New York “National Academy of Design.” But he actually had nothing to do with the academic expectations of that institution. He was attracted to such artists as the French Expressionist Honore Daumier and the tragic Jewish Expressionist Chaim Soutine.

[Page 455]

Kopman had a restless intellect. His spirit could not be satisfied by his accomplishments. He would stop at one point, then change directions, all the while finding new outlets for his thoughts.

Kopman came to America in the first years of the current century. Modern art had not yet been Americanized. In 1913 there came something that could be considered an invasion of global modern art. This was the “Armory Show,” the ultra-modern exhibition in the armory on Lexington Avenue. The impression it made was remarkable and its influence was colossal—not only in New York, but in the furthest corners of America where there were influential artists.

And Kopman then lived in the mysticism of William Blake, of his “Anglicized” Bible—at least so it seemed to me when I first saw Kopman's paintings.

The group of painters from Vitebsk hold an important and prominent place in Jewish art. I seek artistic relationships among them. I think about their original influences. I find them in an original environment, the Vitebsk of their childhoods. Artistically their material is substantial. In a certain sense it was a good beginning for a creative continuation.

[Page 468]

In the fall of 1909, just after I graduated from the pedagogy program in Grodno, I arrived

In Vitebsk as a teacher in the local Talmud Torah. This was a reformed Talmud Torah. That is, it was not like the old, traditional Talmud Torahs from the old style but a modern school with a broader program of Jewish studies. Such reformed Talmud Torahs were at that time in the larger cities, where the directorship was put into the hands of modern people. In Vitebsk, the new directors of the Talmud Torah were a banker, Finkelshteyn, whom we seldom saw at the school; three doctors—Neifach, Lieberman, and the well-known Zionist leader Dr. Bruk. I think there were others. Among them were Mrs. Bernshteyn. Her husband was an optician on the corner of Mohilever Street and Smolensker Road, near Lutshesse. Of course, these directors chose to change the old teachers and bring in modern studies and modern teachers.

When I arrived late in the fall, all of these changes had already been made, but the school still was not operating because of a cholera epidemic in the city. Actually it was not very severe, and it did not affect the more intelligent and cautious sectors, but since November the schools had been closed.

The Talmud Torah had two departments. The upper department was in the center with several overfilled classes and several teachers. In the first section, near the train station, was a department with two classes and two teachers. In the third section was a small Talmud Torah with one teacher for two classes. (Because of poverty, this is how it was often done.)

[Page 469]

The program of the Talmud Torahs was the same as in almost all elementary schools: first, Russian, arithmetic, and a bit of Russian history. Jewish studies had a much looser program: Chumash, Tanach, together with prayers, and often Hebrew, even taught in Hebrew. This depended on the teacher's ideology. The directors seldom interfered in programmatic matters. Yiddish was seldom taught—and then it was illegal. In the community Jewish schools, the war between the Yiddishists and the Hebraists was already aflame. In the Talmud Torahs, the war was not so severe. In the general studies we should also number studies of science, which the reactionary government regarded with suspicion and as useless because the progressive teachers (like the intelligentsia in general) saw in the spread of scientific knowledge a path to liberating the people. This is not the place to discuss the connection between knowledge and liberation, although for people in the Americas it could perhaps be new and interesting. But this was a fact: the popularization of scientific knowledge helped greatly in bringing about the revolution.

People introduced prayer to the Talmud Torah only at the end of 1912, against the will of the teachers. And this was actually the reason that the teacher Nigdin and I left in protest.

Among the teachers, two older ones remained from earlier: Briskin, a Jew with a large family and not much money, taught Chumash and general Jewish studies; the second was Dande. He taught only general studies—a Russified Jew, a former governmental rabbi. Among the younger ones, outstanding was Zalman-Avigdor Chrapkov, or Chrapkovski. He supported a large family of brothers and sisters along with a widowed mother. They lived in a basement apartment. He was very capable. He was cheerful and happy, full of jokes and artistic ideas. Many years later, I heard, under the communists he had become a great and widely known activist.

Of the other teachers, I will recall only Dande, an older Russified person, who had his “pedagogical principles”: the whole new pedagogy, which dealt with “development-shmevelopment,” was not worth a cone of gunpowder. A teacher should enter the classroom with a ruler in his hand so that the students could see it with their very own eyes—so that the teacher could have good discipline. That

[Page 470]

was the goal. The most important subject in learning is handwriting. If you teach a child good handwriting, he can become a bookkeeper. And what can you do with your “development-shmevelopment” if your students cannot even sharpen a pencil correctly? A good child always has his pencil sharpened evenly, with a sharpener—If you want to write a judgment, write with the edge. Understand?...

He taught me Torah very often and was proud of it. We encountered each other frequently in the small division, where he taught general studies as well as Jewish subjects. He had “good” discipline—the children trembled before him, and kept their heads down. Was he not correct about his pedagogy?

There was nothing outstanding about the other teachers—it was a time of general reaction. More interesting were some members of the directorate whom I knew. These were Mrs. Bernshteyn and Drs. Lieberman and Bruk. Mrs. Bernshteyn lived near the small division, where I taught two classes simultaneously and had terrible problems with discipline. Almost every day she would come to console me, to cheer me up, so that I should not take the problems to heart: never mind—others have it worse…She was generally cheerful, laughing. Often I would find on my table a book. The attendant would tell me: Mrs. Bernshteyn left it for you. Even today I am grateful—she made my difficult experiences easier in the first year of my teaching.

Dr. Lieberman was a man of rare religiosity. He would pray three times a day. On Shabbos he would visit the ill, which three rabbis gave him permission to do. On Shabbos he would go around with a non-Jew to whom he would dictate prescriptions. When he was in our neighborhood, he would come into my class, sit for a while, and have a friendly conversation, speaking Hebrew and assuring me that I was complaining for no reason: he saw that I really wanted to be a good teacher…

A man on even a higher level was Dr. “Zvi ben Yakov Bruk.” This was the name on the little plaque on his door. But we used to call him, in the Russian manner, Grigory Yakovlevitsh. At that time he had no family. For a long time,

[Page 471]

his mother had lived with him. She would beg him, “Hirsch, go eat”—not Grigory and not Zvi. He was one of the first Zionist activists in Russia, a constant attendee at Zionist congresses, a deputy in the first Russian duma (parliament). Along with all the other radical deputies who in Vyborg signed the proclamation to the population after the government had dissolved the duma, Dr Bruk did not dare to take part in the country's political life. Dr. Bruk only participated in community activities. He was especially involved in the literary community. This was a legal activity that had open lectures and meetings at the merchant's club. There were meetings almost every week. Bruk was the permanent presider. He was dynamic, impulsive, good-natured, funny, a master at discussions. Especially he got off badly with people who ruffled his ideology. I remember that once a Jew came, a writer in Russian, Okuniev, who wanted to flatter the community, He spoke sympathetically about those who “don't chase after gold coins,” who live together with their suffering people, and so on…I remember how Bruk gave him a piece of his mind: “We don't need Jews who come to compliment us.” He said it with such fire and heat! I remember that he had to read a lecture about Bialik. He asked me to come with him in the evening lest he forget a Hebrew word as he was preparing. I arrived before him. His large apartment was in turmoil: in one room there was a committee meeting, in a second room a play was being rehearsed, here people were having a discussion…Who had such a free and comfortable apartment as Dr. Bruk? When he finally came from his rounds, he barely asked to be left alone for an hour in his study.

He was skillful at sitting around with friends over a glass of coffee and telling jokes and Yiddish stories. One such story about the “Gelvaner (Gelvan—a little shtetl in Lithuania) with pointy heads and keen minds who wanted to create a “Fellowship of Watchmen for the Morning” I remember to this day. But for such lighthearted moments he had little time. We, a group of young men, would often come to him: we wanted coffee. He would excuse himself: he was too tired out, he had to rest. Take a fiver and go yourselves. “You don't need me, but I will pay. Take a fiver and go yourselves, in good health”…

[Page 472]

After working at school, I would often meet him as he rode in a droshky or a sled. He would always stop for a chat.

“Where are you headed, Doctor?”

“Where should I go? I go to their homes is where I go. But sit near me. We'll travel and talk. I'm lonesome.”

“Go on. You're tired out. I'll eat—” I would invite him, but it did not help.

“That's news, that I'm tired. I dare not eat when I'm tired, but if you'll go with me, you can rest before you eat.”

How could one refuse? On the way he was seldom in a good mood: “Such poverty! Such poverty! Since the rich don't call me, only the poor…When I come to a sick person, I don't know what to do first, to write out a cure or leave a ruble for bread or wood.”

And he often left both things for his patient, the prescription and the bread. On one cold, winter day I saw him traveling without his winter fur hat.

“Doctor, where's your hat? It's cold,” I said to him.

“I have such luck with poor people. Nu, early in the morning I've already been to a sick poor person who had nothing at all in his home. What could I do? I gave them my hat so they could pawn it. I'll go later and redeem it. What could I do?”

One time, traveling in his sled, he spoke in this way to his driver and told him where he was going, without getting a response. “It's always like this,” said Bruk, The Gentile drivers, when they drive me, are silent. They know that I give Jews an extra ruble.”

As we arrived, he paid the driver, who said, in Yiddish, “Thank, Doctor.”

“Ah, you actually are a Jew. So why so silent? I thought you were a Gentile.”        

“Don't think about it, Doctor. I'm a little deaf…”

“Well here's another ruble. Go in good health.”        

People in the city told stories about him, how he rescued a child who was suffocating from diphtheria by sucking out the mucus, and so on.

[Page 473]

One Friday evening I came to him about something. He was lying on a sofa, hardly breathing, gasping.

“What's wrong, Doctor?”

“God finally sent me a rich patient and she turns out to be an idiot. I wrote her a prescription for iodine and she took the prescription and drank it all down at one go. I barely saved her. Who has the strength for this?”

“Nu, I'll come back another time. Rest.”

“No! I haven't seen a newspaper today. There's a new “Rezviet.” Read it to me.”

In Vitebsk there was a Yiddish theater. This was in the fall. Lipovski's troupe had played in a summer theater. Outside it was already pretty cold. But Bruk would go every evening to be in the theater, and not alone—our whole group of young men went at the expense of the wealthy man. He really was not wealthy, but he loved the fellowship.

His waiting room was interesting. He cured me. I had developed a nervous stomach from my discipline problems. Not wanting to take advantage of Bruk, who would surely not take money from me, I went to another doctor (Sheinis or Sheinin—I don't remember). As a treatment he told me I should have a cook and a nurse, and I should not work…As if! I sought advice from the best of my fellow teachers, from Chrapkovski. He persuaded me to go only to Bruk. I came for the first time to his waiting room, a room full of Jews who groaned and moaned from their woes. Near me on a round table lay a parchment with “A Song of Praise, to Zvi ben Yakov” in the style of a chapter of Psalms written by the well-known Hebrew writer Mordechai ben Hillel HaCohen when Dr. Bruk had left Gomel to come to Vitebsk.

There was no nurse there to receive the ill. The ailing themselves went in order. From his “cabinet” (in Russia, a doctor did not dare to have a sign or an office, only a “cabinet”) one could often hear how the doctor yelled at a patient, “Don't groan. I'm sicker than you are…” or “I've told you should say 'yes,' not 'oy.'”

He opened the door to the waiting room and saw me: “You, too? Just wait. I'll take you after everyone else.

[Page 474]

After a little wait, I entered his “cabinet.” He asked me to let him rest a bit, while we had a conversation: “How's your work? What do you have to say about this or that article?”

Only then did he consider me and say, “You were at Sheinin's? Did he say thus and so (as if he had been there)? A real wise man. You can't do what he said. Do you know what? I will heal you “in a woman's way.” Instead of compresses, wrap a towel around you…and so on…If that doesn't help you, I'll cure you in a medicinal way…”

Jews once had such doctors. In Tel Aviv there is, by the way, a side street that bears the name of Dr. Bruk.

In the work of directing the Talmud Torah, he seldom mixed in .

There were no great accomplishments in the pedagogical work in the Talmud Torah. But there were even fewer in the elementary school for Jewish children, although one of the best teachers was there, Yakov Gershteyn, who later was one of the pillars of the Jewish educational system in Vilna. The bureaucratic lackadaisical spirit brought no fresh winds, no modern pedagogical thought. In a sense, the Talmud Torah was much freer and more advanced: lackadaisical routine did not rule there, and the teachers had more freedom. The children were even allowed on a free Shabbos to come to their teacher and he would read to them a story by Sholem Aleichem! Not all the members of the directorship knew about such heresies. Perhaps not all the teachers did either—and certainly not the chief director.

How hard was the reaction to such small matters: the newspapers brought the news that Tolstoy had died in a dramatic way: an old man running away from home, he died in a small railway station. I decided in class, where I taught Russian, to tell my students about him and to read them one of Tolstoy's children's stories. But first, in the morning, an inspector was there. He wanted to observe an arithmetic lesson, so Russian would come later. After the lesson, we had a friendly talk, and I told him that in the next lesson I would present Tolstoy's death. He said to me:

[Page 475]

“There's no rule against that, but you are still young. Why should you being like this. Better to omit that…”

He wanted to keep me from making a mistake. This was at the time of the awful reactionary environment.

The elementary school was a state school. It was supported by funds raised by the tax on kosher meat. All of the teachers were “institutionalists,” which means that they were all former students from the “Government Jewish Teacher Institution” in Vilna. That institution was supported by the government (with special Jewish funds) from 1873 until the evacuation of Vilna in 1915. The aim was to prepare teachers to Russify. In order to separate them completely from Jewish life, they were kept for five years in a closed dormitory. Of Jewish studies, they were given a little of the “ancient Jewish language” (Hebrew), but of course they were taught the “ancient language” in Russian, and they also learned a little of the “Bible.” Most of the graduates emerged, naturally, as bureaucratic Russifiers, although there were also a small number of exceptions. One such was the aforementioned Yakov Gershteyn. Some years later in the archive of the Teachers Institute, which was absorbed into the Vilna YIVO, I found a record of one of his transgressions: while he was in the Institute, he liked to bring together friends to sing “songs in jargon [Yiddish]”. But in the elementary school in Vitebsk he could not show his love for Yiddish. But when he came to the Literary Society, he felt far differently: he was tall, healthy, with a loud, clear voice, always happy, always good-natured…Later on I came to Vilna to work with him in the Teachers Seminar the whole time that I worked there. I never remember him being in a bad mood, unless someone from the large Seminar chorus, which Gershteyn led, sang a wrong note. In 1907 Yakov Gershteyn was arrested for taking part in the illegal teachers' meeting in Vilna. The teachers' conference continued its work in prison and there developed a resolution about a Jewish school in Yiddish. Yakov Gershteyn belonged to that order of men who did not know how to change. He died in the Vilna Ghetto in the same house where he was born and in which his mother was also born and died. Throughout his life, he never changed his ideas, and he always

[Page 476]

presented them with his smile, with his high, silver laugh that could make walls tremble. But in the Vitebsk elementary school, he could never show his attachment to Yiddish.

An opposite kind of person as the leader of the three-class Jewish folk school, Yunavitsch. His school—a cheerless building, with large inscriptions on the walls, verses from Chumash or from Tanach, all in Russian. He would speak only Russian, with true Russian expression, in the Muscovite style. He hated Yiddish the way a religious Jew hates pork. I remember that once he had invited us for a glass of tea: he had hears that we young teachers were hanging around with the Literary Society and that we often spoke Yiddish among ourselves… ”I can't understand that,” he said to us. An old-fashioned, marinated assimilator.

And this was not only in the time of the great dark reaction. At the same time, in the “underground” of Russian life, the coming revolution was being prepared.

In 1910, there were summer courses in Vitebsk for teachers, led by professors from Petersburg whom the Minister of Folk Education had chosen from the universities. How much courageous zest these couple hundred Russian teachers had and how much love for the people, for the simple peasant and for his soul, showed the beautiful, deep Russian intelligence. I remember even now, our intimate private conversations (there was barely a minyan of Jewish teachers) with a Professor Dushetshkin (literature), Moltshevski (chemistry), or Liovshin (history), and others. How much loyalty and love for the simple people they had! The worst impression was made on everyone by the apostate Shochor-Trotsky (mathematics). He had such fine phrases for one and all, and how deeply everyone hated him. There were a lot of Jewish apostates there…they are not worth remembering. At these same summer courses, I became friendly with a couple of teachers from the women's gymnasium at Aleksandra Varvorina. We often got together, especially in the laboratory of the physics teacher Vladimirov, from whom we learned so much. They were typical of Russian folk intellectuals—faithful, generous, regarding their work as a duty to. “sanctify the people.” Perhaps they sowed in us young Jewish teachers the seeds of faithfulness to our people and to their peoplehood.

[Page 477]

Forty-three years later we are a bit older, experienced in where the world is headed, having worked in all the countries where Jews live, but we cannot forget those first three years in Vitebsk—my first three years of teaching. Almost fifty years later I recall the streets of the city, I remember people, events, a great deal of hardship and also a little teacherly success. I remember our walks on the boat on the little Vitba River. I remember how we ran for tickets to see the first time a man flew in an airplane.

When I was young, starting as a Yiddishist, a true Yiddish school system was just a dream. Wherever and whoever took the first steps, hesitant first steps, then stronger, raging controversies over the language…

We saw such broad horizons for the future…Now…we look back—a sea of blood, killing, and destruction. Lives and dreams—all killed, and in a cold world from a cold Yiddishkeit one writes Yizkor Books.

  Vitsyebsk, Belarus     Yizkor Book Project     JewishGen Home Page

Copyright © 1999-2024 by JewishGen, Inc.
Updated 11 Jul 2024 by LA