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A Brief History
of Kremenets

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Kremenets from Ancient Times to the Holocaust–The Town, Its Landscape, People, and Way of Life–Jews in Kremenets–The History of Jewish Settlement–Kremenets and Its Cultural Influence on Jewish Life.

According to the origin of its name, Kremenets is a symbol of hardness. Kremen means flint, firestone. But the climate is anything but fiery, and the area is even designated as “the Switzerland of Volhynia.” There is a gentle peacefulness to the inhabitants, without a trace of bitterness, no jostling for power or authority; simple, pious, ready to perform a good deed at the drop of a hat, without ulterior motives: these were the characteristics of the Kremenetser folk.

The surrounding countryside has always imbued Kremenets with a natural charm. It is surrounded by mountains, always green in summer and snowy silver in winter. The town, nestled in a valley, has forever been enveloped in a web of dreams, shrouded in mystery. The mild air has always been filled with a melodic stillness, akin to the muted sounds of the brooks that are always slipping out of the mountain depths. The surrounding peaks never arrogantly held their heads up high, their summits were never strained toward the heavens, but always leaned on the stretched-out backs of the hills, as though trod upon by merry, spirited young people.

The town lived without commotion. Days began without haste, and the nights set in slowly. The sun itself was in no hurry to swallow up its beams, which slipped slowly and freely over the cobblestones, illuminating the whiteness of the walls or the bareness of the red ceramic tiles on the rooftops. Inside the houses, too, they were not hindered as they entered through the wide-open windows. It seemed as though the days in Kremenets were always longer than they were elsewhere.

The first voices to break through the stillness of dawn were those belonging to the “father and his three sons”–the kadushkes [barrels, or water carriers] on their way to the well to draw water in order to then fill the barrels of the houses. They earned more than water porters. One of them, Moshe, was even in the habit of lending out a small sum of money, with interest. He also bought a little house from Duvid the Scribe, who taught children to read and write in Yiddish and Russian. After their noise came a fresh echo from the awakening town: the racket of wheels clattering across the stone-paved Sheroka Street.

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This was the farmers arriving in town, their wagons laden with all manner of goods from the villages. The farmer women from the hills would come in with baskets on their shoulders filled with all manner of vegetables, giving off a fragrant rose scent. A play of color radiated across the spread of downy green and red radishes; washed and strung up onions with white fringes on their heads, which hung on the edges of the trough; and young red beets with their blueish roots nestled against the bundles of silver-gray fragrant lilac. God's bounty spread out in gentile baskets and troughs. Jewish children enjoyed the early morning before they had to head to cheder or school.

The morning prayers pouring from the open windows of the prayer houses mingled with the birds' hopeful twittering.

There was only one mountain where no one set foot, summer or winter. The Mountain of the Cross (the Kristova) was situated all alone between the narrow ravine of Mount Bona, which shone with glorious ease on one side, and highlands covered in orchards and gardens on the other side. The stony whiteness of the Mountain of the Cross lent a certain beauty to its notched back and the crumbled stairs that led up to the cross on the summit. At daybreak, the morning sun shone out from behind its back, greeting the slumbering bluish-gray hills and woods with a smile.

A nocturnal dreaminess still lingered on the trees the next morning as the farmer women arrived, making their way between the bulging orchard trunks, shaking down fat, juicy fruit. Even the dog Rabtshik, accompanying the woman who fed it, danced for joy as they poured plump, dark blue plums into the basket, along with bronze peaches, yellow parrot-plums, light yellow bell apples, sweet, winy, floury pears with red bellies, and Jerusalem apples, smooth and round, as charming as a child's head. Rabtshik would anticipate the moment the basket was about to overflow, and with a wag of his tail would spring forward to the low trees from which spread the fragrance of intoxicated gooseberries, short hairs sprouting over their striped-patterned skins. Rabtshik would dash through every corner of the orchard directing its owner toward the trees she should go to first.

Rabtshik would only free himself once he spotted Minke, the little gentile girl with the rod who drove the cows to the meadow for grazing before their first milking. Rabtshik would then leap like the wind and jump on Minke, licking her good morning, dancing in front of her as though he were the one guiding the cattle to their pasture.

In town, too, on Butcher Street, the barefoot Vasil, a peeled white stick in his hand, would drive the cattle from the Jewish houses uphill to graze them in the early morning. The voices of the water carriers, the kadushkes, which shattered the silence, now took on a different resonance. The dull clang of the tongues in the wooden bells around the cows' necks was a sound that announced that they were on their way to enjoy last night's dew and fill their udders with milk. Later, this same milk would be enjoyed in Jewish homes after the ritual handwashing and the blessings that followed. Some would greet the day with the first words of the morning prayer, while others did so with “a blessing upon you.”

On the Sabbath, the pious grove at the foot of the woods with the Polish cemetery resounded with music, with pleasant songs of praise for God's wonderful world. Shrubs and grass in the mouths of the soulful guests sang “The heavens declare the glory of God” [Psalms 19:2]. A pious Jewishness infused the air's rich scents with the flavor of song. And when an honest young couple met there in secret away from watchful eyes, their parents would also derive quiet joy from the idea that their children should enjoy the light of the firmament there, somewhere in a corner of that forest.

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The Mountain of the Virgins, crowned with old- and new-growth forest as well as farmers' cabins with gardens and orchards, would take longer to shake off its pleasant slumber. The young couples who would wander there on summer's evenings, often encountering there the first yawns of the dawn's rousing sky, would maintain the silence of the night's secret.

Only the stony Mountain of the Cross had not sampled the flavor of Jewish footsteps. The ordinary folks wove it into the legend of the Mezhirichi magid's grandson, R' Avremele, who was known as “the Angel.” The story goes that when the Angel came to visit Kremenets, he stayed at Moshe Velis's house, the front of which faced the aforementioned mountain. From that house he would only walk a few paces to the prayer house. The Angel lived in the low-ceilinged upper floor, in a room with only one window, which looked out toward the mountain. One morning, when the caretaker opened the low entrance door, he came to a dumbfounded standstill in the doorway. In fright he stared at the bent, twisted form with its head thrown to one side. The caretaker stood as though frozen to the spot and waited, waited, until the rabbi turned around. A deathly pallor spread over his face, and his deep-set eyes sank even deeper. Suddenly he heard a heavy sigh and the words: “Oy, oy, God almighty, Father in Heaven, how did it come to pass that such a lump of earthly flesh should have had such delusions of grandeur?”

From that day on, so the story goes, the Jews of Kremenets did not set foot on that mountain, even those who lived at its feet.

The castle, which had been razed by the Tatars, was later rebuilt, surrounded by thick rock walls, and ringed with cannons. Inside, on the Castle Mount, military barracks had been constructed, with warehouses for supplies: the builders had burrowed 14 fathoms into the rock to reach down to the water source to build a well. But they never succeeded in finishing the work.

The deep hole, which had been left open, later gave birth to legends.

Jews always called the hole “the Pit of Those Condemned to Die,” probably a reference to some folk legend. The Christians believed that the depths of that pit contained hidden treasures, and 12 caves that could be reached only once a year at midnight on Easter. When the church bells rang, the holy Virgin's figure appeared, adorned in white. In her mouth she held a key. At exactly midnight it was possible to take the key from her mouth and descend with it into the depths. With that key one could open the door to the chamber found in each of the 12 hidden treasure caves. The lucky fellow was then free to take everything he laid his eyes on, everything his heart desired. But he would have to carry it all back up and reach the edge of the pit before the first signs of the oncoming daylight. Otherwise his life was lost. The legend ends by saying that thousands of dead lie trapped in the pit. Jewish mothers would frighten their children by warning them not to approach the Pit of Those Condemned to Die, as there were always ghosts lingering nearby.

The truth is that during Queen Bona's residence, a tunnel had been dug from the innards of the castle connecting it to the western side of town, where the queen's fortune was hidden. By the end of the 19^th century, this underground passageway was uncovered by accident. One Sunday morning, on the market square where the village farmers would set up their full wagons, suddenly a horse and cart sank into a hole several fathoms deep. When the farmers, along with the town fire brigade, finally pulled the farmer and his horse back up, they suddenly saw the hidden passage that led to Mount Bona.

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The passage spanned the entire length of the town, to the former Lyceum and continuing all the way to Mount Vidomka on the other side.

The fall winds–which would lash the earth with thick sheets of rain, herding the yellow leaves in a lattice quadrille–did not have much power in Kremenets. They would appear first in late autumn, when the mountains had changed their appearance, veiled in a golden mantle of fallen blossoms from the surrounding trees. It was only after the Jews had finished reciting the prayer for rain, had beaten the willow twig, taken down the booths for Sukkot, and marked the arrival of the month of Cheshvan by invoking the words “dew and rain,” as printed in miniscule letters in their prayerbooks, that the sun felt the heavy rain clouds on it. Of all the streets and alleyways in that moment, it was only Sheroka Street that was still imbued with the odors of the villages, carried in on the farmers' faces as they came along the street, transporting the first fruits of their labor. Whole caravans of wagons stretched out, laden with sugar beets, coming to fill the train cars that would then take them to the sugar factories.

The thick rain clouds did not dare empty their watery bellies onto human heads. The beets still had to be brought in, after all, followed by the packed bales of fragrant hay, stacked many stories high, on top of the wagons, to the same place where gangplanks were waiting for them. Indeed, the “dew and rain” remained confined to the prayerbooks, allowing the town to continue bathing in the sun's rays until the Jews had supplied themselves with carts of firewood from the forest, for their winter furnaces. After that, no one was spared by the late fall. Heaven and earth alike swam and spun in the cold waves that poured down from the mountains into the town in the valley below.

Panoramic View of Kremenets

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Even the yellow autumn flowers in the windows of the Jewish homes hung their heads. A damp coolness fogged up and blinded the windowpanes. The wind blew trickles of rain in through the cracks in the window frames. Town and mountains alike were covered in a gray veil of constant evening. A gilded autumnal stillness lay over the town, a quiet that was occasionally broken by the barking of a dog hidden away in its kennel.

After a few days, caravans of wagons appeared once again on long Sheroka Street, this time filled with sacks of grain for the mills and with potatoes and autumn apples to be taken away to some location deep in central Russia. Soon after this, a war would be waged between the winds, as they rattled shutters, tore clumps of rotten debris from the rooftops, and toppled chimney tiles. This was how the white winter announced its arrival and drove away the crepuscular fall wind. But the winter behaved itself. Thoughtfully and with foresight it arrived on time, two weeks before Hanukkah, so that the Jewish children would have time to prepare their sleds, to go riding on their sleighs.

When did people first set foot in Kremenets? Some historians believe that by the fifth century there were already tribes of Slavic origin living there. They name the Dulakhs, Evilyans, and Buzhans, who were driven out by invaders from Asia.

The town's name comes from the word kremen, a type of flint mixed with crystallized chalk. To this day the soil outside the town is indeed covered in mounds of chalk.

In the village of Barsuki, 3-5 versts^[a] from town, two kurgans (graves) were discovered. Between Kremenets and Yampol, an area of about 20 miles, a farmer hit upon something large and hard while plowing his field. While trying to dislodge the plow, he sank down into a cavity. The locals began to dig around it, and they suddenly found a kind of coffin. It turned out there was a sort of walled tomb with a stone lid. When a commission of archeologists opened the tomb, they found three skeletons lying inside, two adults and A child. The floor of the tomb was made of thin stone, and there were stoneware vessels lying on the side. Further digging around the area uncovered vessels of a dark gray color.

According to archaeologists, the area had been inhabited since the Stone Age. All geologists consider the area to be an offshoot of the Carpathian Mountains.

Whatever the hypotheses about earlier periods, it is certain that the 9^th century marks the beginning of a stable settlement in the area, one that grew during the 10^th century. In 1841 Polish and also German coins from the 16^th century were found there.

We also find place names that indicate the presence of Jewish life there in earlier times, such as the village of Zhidnits.

In the beginning the population lived in the mountains. What would later become Sheroka Street in the valley was originally a confluence of the mountain waters that flowed into the Ikva (during World War I, the Ikva served as a natural barrier that curbed the advance of the German-Austrian army. There, three miles outside town, was the site of the Austrian-Russian front in 1915). From this earlier period a narrow stream remains, hugging the mountains toward the east, by the name of Potek (Potok in Russian). Once the river was called Stavok, which means fishpond, and it snaked around the valley along the length of the future town.

In the very early days the town was called Kremyanets, which remains its Ukrainian name to this day.

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The surrounding mountains, particularly Castle Mountain with its wooded fortress, protected the town from destruction during the frequent wars in the 13^th century. One sole open road to the south served the Hungarian Andrew Agorski during his conquest over Galicia and allowed him to take the town in 1226 when it was under the governance of Count Mstislav Udaley.

In 1240, the gruesome and formidable Batei the Tatar, who had marched through Kiev, Podolia, Volhynia, and Hungary, suffered a defeat at Kremenets. This is how he described his defeat: “Kremenets, the town of Danilov, I saw it but could not take it on account of the fortress.” A second Tatar, Kuremso, suffered the same fate as Batei when he tried his luck in 1255. Between the end of the 13^th and the beginning of the 14^th century, there were constant wars between the Poles and Lithuanians for hegemony over Podolia and Volhynia. In 1321 Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas conquered all of Volhynia, including Kremenets. When, in 1336, a settlement was reached between Poland and Lithuania, Galicia remained under Poland's control, while Volhynia was ruled by Lithuania.

In 1436 Svidrigaillo handed the town over to Wojtiurko along with the rights to collect tax for the town's needs. Taxes were collected from shops, slaughterhouses, bakeries, creameries, and goods warehouses. The same tax rights were later confirmed in 1442 by the new ruler, the Polish king Wladyslaw Jagiello. For a few dozen years the population had experienced peace, and they took advantage of this period of calm to achieve economic prosperity.

Later the town of Kremenets, along with all the surrounding areas, was completely ruined by the Tatars.

General View of Mount Bona

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The Polish throne went to Sigismund I, who had a particular interest in Kremenets, especially in rebuilding the ruins. He ushered in a new era in the inhabitants' lives. These changes also had an effect on Jewish life, which, as we shall see later, began at the end of the 14^th century.

No exact date is known for when Jews first settled in Kremenets. We are therefore obliged to rely on conjectures that nevertheless approximate the truth. We know, for instance, that persecutions against the Jews in Western Europe compelled the Jews to flee eastward, and along the way many settled in Galicia and Volhynia.

All researchers agree that the earliest Jewish settlement in Eastern Europe followed the trade routes passing from Hungary and Prague through Galicia on the way to Kiev. On the other side, the roads from the lands of the Khazars snaked their way through Volhynia, Lviv, Brody, and Tarnopol. These are all places not far from Kremenets.

There can be no doubt that by the late Middle Ages there were already Jews living in Kremenets. It is also important to investigate the old legend of generations long past concerning a small Jewish cemetery on a hill on the western side of town, where a Polish cemetery was later established. It is also important to repeat that the first residents of Kremenets lived in the mountains.

We have firm sources concerning Jews in Kremenets in the 14^th century. In Volhynian Notes (1809), Stepan Russov demonstrates that during Witold's war a number of the captured Tatars and Jews remained in Kremenets. Russov lists a series of ethnic groups that lived in Kremenets from the 14^th century onwards: Russians, Poles, Germans, Vlachs, Armenians, Jews, and Tatars. The same Russov wrote about Jews who spoke in a kind of broken German (Yiddish) and also used a second language (the Holy Tongue). They did not speak this language, but they knew its alphabet and could read and write in it. Very few Jews could use that language. He recounts that the Jews of Kremenets conducted trade with Poland via Brody and with Russia and the Near East via Starokonstantinov.

The fact that there is reference to Jews among the privileges granted to the residents of Kremenets by Svidrigaillo in 1428 is proof that Jews had already been living there before.

This undermines any doubts about the existence of Jewish settlement in Kremenets, even before the early 15^th century as expressed by historians Sh. Ettinger and Ch. Smeruk (Pinkas Kremenets, page 10), proving them to be entirely baseless, particularly when they themselves say later (page 12) that the Jews had earlier established significant trading relations with Kiev. And the great martyred historian Emanuel Ringelblum begins his monograph with the words: “The first signs of Jewish life in Kremenets date back to the year 1438” (see E. Ringelblum, Kapitlen geshikhte [Chapters of history], Buenos Aires 1953, p. 146).

In 1536 Sigismund I gave the town to his second wife, the Italian Bona Sforza. At that moment, the town came under the crown's jurisdiction and enjoyed all the same privileges as such large cities as Warsaw, Krakow, and so on. The residents became a little freer from the nobles ruling over them. Concerning the Jews, the trades and professions they were and were not allowed to practice became more liberal. Jews in particular were not spared the onerous taxes that the nobles had previously levied on them arbitrarily and at will.

The extent to which Jewish life in Kremenets stabilized at the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16^th century can be seen in the old names of two streets: Jewish Street and Grand Jewish Street (Ulica Wielka Zydowska). This was probably what remained of the central street that had been continuously inhabited almost exclusively by Jews. Only a handful of Christians, such as the pharmacist, the innkeeper, and one or two others, lived and worked there. After the Third Partition of Poland, this street was renamed Sheroka Street (Ulica Szeroka).

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By around 1530, there were Jews living on about 13 streets in Kremenets, on which they owned 48 buildings. We do not know how many individual Jews lived in those 48 buildings. We can surmise that there were probably over 300 Jews living there at the time. One must not assume that only the proprietors of the buildings lived there. We have information about two of these proprietors: R' Shmuel's house and the house of the judge and caretaker next to the prayer house on what was later referred to as Synagogue Street or simply the Alley.

In 1536 Queen Bona standardized the rights of the 10 guilds in Kremenets with the guild rights in the larger Polish cities. And so guilds were established for the trades of tailors, furriers, hatters, cobblers, tanners, bakers, and so on.

Jews already had a hospital with their own doctor. In 1546 Queen Bona had a separate hospital built for the Catholics, a Jewish hospital having already existed.

By that time, Kremenets was already a well-developed town of craft and trade. This can be seen in Sigismund II's decree (in 1556) declaring the town as the principal town in all of Volhynia for supplying the population and the army with salt. Being such an important product at the time, the salt trade had to be organized via government lease-holding contracts.

In 1552 there were 48 Jewish buildings. Historians estimate that the Jewish population of Kremenets then numbered 240 souls. But there is a document from 11 years later (1563) containing a list of all the streets where they lived. The document is called the “List of Those Places Occupied by Jews in Kremenets.” Jews lived on the following streets:

Street	Side	Name
Gorni	right	Sharke
		Jewish doctor
	left	Sore
		Sorka
		Imak
		Duvid
		Itske
		Shmuel Moiseyevitsh
Sredni	right	Leyzer
		Serke
		Kalman
		Liber
		Gitil (widow)
		Avraham
		Yehoshue Shifrin
		Chatskil
		Isatshke
	left	Avraham
		Serke
		Pesach
		Avraham
		Ovatie (Ovadye?)
		Yisrael
		Nisin
		Zilin (Zalman?)
		Evril
		Mordekhay Sore's
		Itsik Shkolnik
		“Vitoshin” (magid?)

On the left-hand side of that street lived a doctor.

Street	Side	Name
Zhidovska	right	Chayim
		Penis (Pensis?)
		Yisrael Kaplan
		Yakov
		Voltshek (Velvel)
		Duvid Kagan
		Yakov Duvidovitsh
		Mindel (widow)

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Street	Side	Name
Zhidovska	right	Chayim Abramovitsh
		Aharon Turtshin
		Yente
		Chayim
		Shmuel Leyzerovitsh
	left	Sore
		Beyle (doctor)
		Blay; this family survived up to the last destruction.
		Pintshik (Pinchas)
		Zisel
		Shmuel Mitnik
		Pesach
		Yekl (Yakul-Yakub?)
		Storozhan (maybe caretaker, watchman?)
		Shaul, doctor
		Toyve
		Doctor
Voskresenska	right	Lev (Leyb)
		Bogdan
		Meirke or Mordekhay
		Shmuel
	left	Ruvin
		Shtshenski
		Sore
		Beyle
		Ovel (Yoel?)
		Azriel
		Sorke
		Sore
Vesnevetska (Vishnevetska?)	right	Serke (Sore)
		Fendel
		Zundel
	left	Beyle
	After Potokom (Yatke Street)	Sore
Velikaya (the beginning)	right	Shimele's place (in later years, the marketplace)
	left	Avraham–3 gardens
		Shmuel
Khrusvitska	right	Avraham–4 gardens
		Beyle, doctor's wife
	left	Ovshiya (Yehoshe)

Missing here, for example, are such names as Yakov Feliksovitsh, who had a three-year lease and paid taxes to the castle for a beer brewery. This fellow appeared to have had close connections in government, as he had received leases, directly from the royal court, for three other properties outside town and four mills in the villages of Kokorov, Dunayevtsy, Sapanuv and Podlisets, as well as a license to catch fish.

In 1536, when Sigismund I ratified the Magdeburg Rights for Kremenets, there was a warning that “Jews inhabiting Kremenets were not permitted to avail of the privileges granted to the other inhabitants. Under no circumstances were they allowed to infringe upon the trade-privileges of the others.”

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In 1569, following ratification of the Union of Lublin, when the Lublin parliament incorporated the entirety of Volhynia into the Polish territories, Kremenets in particular became an important hub for the surrounding area. Kremenets was declared a crown city, incorporating dozens of villages, estates, and even towns, which would one day become famous, such as Sudilkov, Slavite (Slavuta), Polonnoye, Starokonstantinov, Zaslav (Izyaslav), and Lakhovtsy (Lekhovtsi)–all places where Jews lived and were active in the industries of fabric production, prayer shawls, Jewish printworks, and so on. Around Kremenets, smaller towns had also grown, which Jews had helped develop: Oleksinets, Kozin, Yampol, Katerburg, Shumsk, Vyshgorodok, Vishnevets, Radzivilov, Tshan (Teofipol), Berezhtsy, Pochayev, and so on.

In 1563, the already mentioned Sheroka Street became the central street, with 65 buildings. After the 12^th century, this street was a run-off valley through which the waters from the mountains would flow on their way to the River Ikva. “Jewish Street” numbered 53 buildings, and Mountain Alley (later Gorna), 13 buildings. A second alley, which would later be home to R' Yitschak Ber Levinzon, numbered 10 buildings. Jews owned various gardens, pastures, and storehouses for merchandise surrounding the town. This could be explained no doubt by the orders decreed by Queen Bona in 1536 that beer breweries were to be moved outside the town limits. It is possible that she did so with the intention of establishing an entry toll of 2 groschens a barrel.

The rise in the number of buildings, a sign of economic and political stability, led to an increase in tax payments. In 1578 each building paid 40 zlotys in tax, up from the previous rate of 3 and a half. The union of Kremenets with the crown state therefore meant that the town would be incorporated into the Volhynia voivodeship, whose seat was located in Lutsk. Even before the Union of Lublin, King Sigismund had been compelled to give in to pressure from the local Poles and curtailed the rights of Jews to be mandated with tax collection. He also forbade Jews from producing honey, which at the time was a highly prized commodity. But Sigismund was not able to maintain the prohibition for long, as it led to a deficit in tax income. In 1556, King Sigismund reinstated the rights of Jews to be licensed tax collectors. His motive was: “He who brings in the most revenue holds the right.” However, in 1564 he issued another decree. Not only honey production but also brewing would be restricted for Jews. Jews were also not permitted to have more than two taverns in town.

But it seems that the Jews managed to make do, and sometimes this led to competition between the Jews themselves. Sometimes they used Christian names to negotiate a license. In 1569, three Jews landed in court in Lutsk. Meir Chayimovitsh, a Jew from Pinsk who had settled in Kremenets, arranged with the judge himself, A. Beletski, to acquire the tax collection mandate. This happened after two other Jews (Avraham Moishovitsh and Pesach Moishovitsh) put themselves into competition against Zalmanovitsh and the judge, Semashko, came out in favor of Moishovitsh. Zalmanovitsh avoided bringing this matter to the Jewish rabbinical court and went instead to the high court in Lutsk. The castle court also held by the rule that he who brings in the revenue holds the right.

In the 16^th century, the Jews strengthened their position not just economically but intellectually, drawing toward them great men of that generation who played a major role in Jewish life, as will be discussed later.

In relation to the Years of Destruction^[1] 5408–5409 (1648–1649), we should make note of relations between Jews and Christians. There were even Jewish members in the Cossack formations. This is what we read in the Bach's [Joel Sirkis's] account (Dala 54):

“The honorable Yosef son of Moshe testified before the rabbinical court: when we townsfolk were in the army, there was a Jew by the name of Berke […] the holy man Aharon of Tishevits served in the cavalry, which fought against the Muscovite armies many times.

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The Muscovites were victorious. The Jew retreated, and they continued shooting from the forest. I saw the lances sticking out of his back. He slumped down on the saddle and attempted to hang onto the horse's neck by the hair. He was swaying to and fro, and in this way the horse carried him, and I watched him running in the middle of the troop. I was near him and saw vapor come out of his mouth as he sat on the horse. We then chased after the troop, and I saw his horse again, but he was no longer sitting on it, and the saddle was crooked. I knew the horse well. Later, the troop leader sounded the drums, and the troop scattered. When people asked for news of the war, many Cossacks said, woe be to God, the Jewish rider Berke had fallen. He had been hacked and stabbed to death with a bardiche. That day the Cossacks recovered Berke's personal effects, including his horse and that of a friend whom I did not know well. The centurion wanted Berke's personal effects, and the captain, though he also wanted them, brought the matter before the crown, and so it was declared that it would be best to burn the bodies of the dead. Thus I undressed Berke with my own hands and burned him. I attested to many Cossacks that I had taken him into a house to burn him and had burned him. Berke's personal effects were given to the captain. Afterward, I heard from one Cossack by the name of Khveder who later became a priest in Kiev, informing me that according to Thoman he had been there when a Cossack burned the body of a Jew named Berke. I know well that there was no other Jew named Berke in our troop other than the one I knew. Then a few days later, according to [Thoman?], there were more Cossacks who mourned Berke with the words: “Woe to the chivalrous rider Berke, who was slain, skewered with pikes, and hacked by a bardiche.”

We can see here that the Jewish masses cultivated a relatively friendly relationship with the Christian population. It seems that in Kremenets and the surrounding area, better relations reigned. When Khmelnytsky besieged the town, Jews and Christians alike put up a resistance that lasted for weeks. Jews in other places also put up a resistance along with the local population.

Even when Khmelnytsky had already penetrated deep into Poland, Kremenets did not fall. This was because the remnants of Wisniowiecki's defeated army gathered there, re- Colonel formed, and consolidated their defenses around the mountains in order to establish resistance from there. For six consecutive weeks, until December 20, 1648, the town defended itself. Khmelnytsky's Colonel Dzhidzhaly and his centurions left mass casualties there from their Cossack formations, mixed with Tatars. It was only after they had gathered fresh reinforcements, over 7,000 Cossacks and Tatars, that they entered the town via the path that led from Vishnevets.

Natan Neta Hanover speaks of a significant number of Jews killed in Kremenets, over 700 children alone. Allegedly the Cossack oppressor tormented his victims sadistically: taking a murdered Jewish child, killed with a ritual slaughterer's blade, hauling the body up on a skewer, and like a Vandal asking the crowd if the flesh was kosher or forbidden. They answered: Forbidden! And that Vandal threw the victim to the dogs. If they answered ‘kosher,’ he would hang the victim's body on the skewer and ask: ‘Who wants to buy kosher goat meat?’…”

R' Shalom Fayvish of Vienna says in Tit Hayavon [Deep mire] that the casualties in Kremenets numbered up to 800. In Tsuk Haitim [Stressful times], R' Meir of Szczebrzeszyn cites the number of murdered children as only 100.

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However, about Volhynia he says: “The whole country was shaken.” All of Volhynia, he says, was emptied of Jews. On Kremenets, he writes that it had become desolate, a swamp–“They destroyed it and made it barren.”

Gradually, Jewish life in Kremenets began to reestablish itself. In 1650, the Jews of Kremenets were granted a special privilege by John Casimir reinstating all their previous rights. This confirms perhaps that the Jews of Kremenets had taken part in the conflict against Khmelnytsky. And also that they had saved themselves from total annihilation.

In their fight against Poland, the Muscovites organized the Cossacks in 1660 and prepared them for a new attack on Volhynia. This was intended to divert Polish military forces from Belarus, but Poland, with the Tatar army's help, was victorious. In this way, Volhynia was spared a fresh bloodbath and would serve as a wealthy reservoir for supplying provisions.

At this time, the Jews of Kremenets appeared to increase their wealth considerably. We once again find R' Meir, who had previously fled to Kalusz. We also see the return of R' Yitschak Ozer (1655), who had figured as the delegate for all of Volhynia in the Council of Four Lands. R' Nachman Lifshit (named for his mother Lifshe, the daughter of the Kremenetser magnate R' Nachman Shrentsels) was also active there. In his endorsement to the book Shaare Tsion [Gates of Zion] (printed in Prague), he appears with the title “head of the rabbinical court of Kremenets, Kislev 5422 (1662).”

In Kremenets, as was the case in all of Volhynia, economic conditions for the Jews were much better than elsewhere. The Ukrainian historian S. Kucheba writes as follows about the economic and financial decline in Poland at that time, about the great poverty that reigned in the core of Poland, particularly affecting the Jews:

“The general economic situation, the downturn, greatly affected the Jewish population. Jews decamped to the villages to seek out a meager subsistence to live. They opened inns there. From then on, this kind of profession became a firm fixture of Jewish life. The Jewish communities were deep over their heads in debt. The comparative tax burden had to abate. Christians paid 7% of their income, foreigners and immigrant elements, 5%, and Jews only 3%.”

In Volhynia he saw an entirely different kind of Jew. He wrote as follows:

“They strove to widen their sources of income through the practice of new professions, professions that they had previously never touched. This led to the Christian practitioners of these same professions becoming afraid and turning against the Jews. They saw in them a fresh source of competition. They attempted to curb Jewish growth by establishing high guild rates to enter those trades.”

The importance of Kremenets, the stable economic position of the town, attracted personalities who ranked as the great men of their age to take up rabbinical positions in Kremenets. Already in the 16^th century the rabbinical seat of honor, the head of the rabbinical court, was occupied by a student of R' Moses Isserles and R' Solomon Luria, Mordekhay Yafe, the Baal Levushim^[2], a spiritual leader of his generation, whom the historian A. Gratz described as the founder of the Council of Four Lands.

R' Yitschak son of Duvid HaKohen, the son-in-law of Rabbi Meir of Lublin, taught Torah in a yeshiva for Jewish children (in 1573). In the 16^th century, the head of the rabbinical court was R' Avraham son of Yehuda Shats. While in Kremenets he wrote the influential holy book the Chavurei Leket [Current group], a commentary on the Prophets and Writings with a supplement in Yiddish. From the introduction we learn that he wrote the book in his old age, beginning it in Iyar 5355 (1595). During the same period, a friend informed him that a book entitled Ila Shelukha [A deer sent forth] had been printed dealing with the same topic, and he abandoned the work.

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But when he discovered that the contents of the book were in fact entirely different, he resumed his work, and he finished the treatise in the year 5357 (1597). That book served as a key for the contemporary Jewish student who wished to find a simple gloss for a given word. The Council of Four Lands granted its approval to print the book. It is unknown who financed the endeavor. The author himself was in no position to do so. This was clear when he wrote:

“I have enough troubles and headaches to dry out the marrow of my bones. My strength is waning. Material troubles in particular have me in dire straits; old age and fragility have caught up with me. I have decided to entrust it all to the public before I leave this world.” We can see here that he was a poor man, a sick and elderly man. But it seems that he was held in high esteem in Lublin, where the book was printed, particularly when the Council of Four Lands gave their approval and the book was printed in 5372 (1612).

Here are a few examples of words glossed by him, which we remember today, as our own teachers in cheder used the same interpretation as appeared in Avraham Chazan's commentaries:^[3]

Intellectual; plant stalks; pottery; deaf; sons of the daughters of Tslofchad; wildflowers; be sanctified; his lips, words; thunderstorm; prey; blade; leather bag; pole; hammer; his blessing. By teach Hebrew, he means to teach Hebrew words, but not the German language

We mention this in detail because the book–conceived and written in Kremenets, where there was a yeshiva at the time–gives us an indication of how Jews spoke at that time, and demonstrates that R' Avraham Chazan already had the general reader in mind. In his younger years, he himself researched and compared Avraham ibn Ezra's commentaries, Gersonides, and Duvid Kimhi to glean the interpretation of a given word. Incidentally, he writes that Rabbi Shimshon son of Betsalel encouraged him to write. It is said he even promised to help with the book's publication costs.

In Kremenets we meet the famous Baal Levushim, R' Mordekhay Yafe. Sh. Y. Fin writes about him in his Kirya Neemana [City of the faithful]. We also meet the religious philosopher R' Aharon Shmuel, son of R' Moshe Shalom, the author of the work Nishmat Adam [Man's soul], where he gives his thought process about the “essence of the soul,” human obligations, reward and punishment, and heaven and hell. The book, which first appeared in 1613 (5373), was reprinted five times. The second time, the book was printed in Zhitomir by the grandson of the Opatow rabbi, R' Meshulam Zusye son of Yitschak Meir; the fifth reprinting was undertaken by the Radzyn rabbi, R' Yakov Leyner, the author of Bet Yakov [House of Jacob]. On the title page of Nishmat Adam the author writes: “Written with the help of God, blessed be He, by the humble Aharon Shmuel, to my teacher and rabbi Moshe Shalom the righteous of Kremenets.” For over 300 years, that book kept the minds of rabbis and scholars busy. The Council of Four Lands decided to publish a version with translation, and among the authors of this volume, R' Mordekhay Yafe appeared with the title “Champion of the Exalted,” with the inscription “Blessings to the Champion of the Exalted, by permission of Yosef of Kremenets.” He was the author of Shaare Dura [Dura gates], printed in 5639 (1609).

The rabbinical chair in Kremenets was also taken by our teacher the rabbi, R' Liva of Prague, R' Shimshon son of Betsalel, who also served as the Kremenets representative at the Council of Four Lands. His signature also appeared on the Council's proclamation after the assembly in Jaroslaw (1656), where the sale of rabbinical positions for money was banned, as it was believed this practice would lead to the denigration of the status of the Jewish leadership.

In the 17^th century, the Kremenets rabbinical chair was occupied by great men and leaders of the Council of Four Lands. Here we encounter Rabbi Yakov Temerils-Ashkenazi, author of the Kabbalistic book Sifra Detsniuta [Book of humility]. This book was printed in Amsterdam in 5421 (1669). In 5408 (1648), the year after the Khmelnytsky massacres, Rabbi Yakov son of Yitschak was the head of the rabbinical court in Kremenets. He was one of the leading figures of the Volhynia area.

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We find his signature on Ir Binyamin [City of Benjamin], a commentary on the legends of the Mishna. There is also a hypothesis that grandfather of the renowned rabbi, Yehoshue Heschel son of Tsvi Hersh, served for a brief time as the head of the rabbinical court in Kremenets.

The roster of the great sages stretches on into the 18^th century. Among them is Rabbi Yochanen son of Meir, author of Orach Mishor [Path of righteousness], published in 5451 (1691). It appears that R' Yochanen later settled in Mezhirichi. This can be read in the seal of the rabbi of Kalusz, who after all the titles lists “the great, towering, champion Rabbi Yochanan son of Rabbi Meir of Kremenets, of blessed memory,” finishing with “resident of Mezhirichi.”

A figure whose importance in Kremenets spanned generations was Rabbi Yakov Yisrael Halevi, the magid, author of numerous holy books such as Shevet Meyisrael [A tribe of Israel], Agudat Azov [Bundle of moss], and Magid Mesharim [Preacher of straight things], printed in 5540 (1780). In his name a smaller synagogue was built adjacent to the Great Synagogue, which was in use up to the Holocaust and was referred to by the local Jews as the “Magid's Small Synagogue.”

Rabbi Duvid Tsvi son of the rabbi sage Arye Leyb was the head of the rabbinical court in Kremenets. Rabbi Yitschak son of Yakov Mayzlish, author of Likotei Shoshanim [Gathering lilies], wrote about him that his surname was Averbakh. This is what he writes in the aforementioned book: “R' Duvid Averbakh.” We also see his name on the seal of the sage Rabbi Fayvish Horvits. Inscribed on Rabbi Tsvi's tombstone are the following words:

“Died on 24 Tishrei 5551(1791), that woeful year when the righteous man of our generation passed, the wise and truly humble celebrated man, R' Duvid Tsvi of Kremenets and environs, son of the wise, celebrated Rabbi Arye Leyb of Stanislawow, of blessed memory.”

His father, too, had spent a long time as rabbi in Kremenets, and in his elder years he had moved to Stanislawow. He represented Kremenets at the Council of Four Lands. His name figured on the statute concerning the collection of money for the needy in the Land of Israel. He was also considered to have been well connected to the crown.

Previously, we mentioned Rabbi Yochanan son of Meir, the author of Orach Mishor. He was also a master of language who proofread many texts, correcting errors. He also left behind a book, the Mahadura Basra [The later edition], responsa on ritual questions. Later we shall meet his father, R' Meir.

We know very little about Rabbi Chayim son of Shmuel, head of the rabbinical court in Kremenets. But it is enough to mention the name Rabbi Shmuel (Shmelke), who was the head of the rabbinical court in Ostrog. The Jews there boasted about “Rabbi Shmelke's kloyz.” He was the son-in-law of Rabbi Chayim son of Shmuel.

Kremenets was also proud of the head of the rabbinical court Rabbi Issakher son of Rabbi Moshe Psachia, who was in Kremenets. In his book Makor Hachakhma [Source of wisdom], he is called a champion of the Torah. The book was published in 5368 (1607) with the seal of R' Solomon Luria.

In Kremenets we also encounter the name of Rabbi Moshe Charif, father-in-law of Rabbi Menachem (Monish) Mendel Margolis.

In the aforementioned Likotei Shoshanim, which is a collection of obituaries of great men, we find an obituary for Rabbi Tsvi Hersh Rokeach, who is referred to by the author as the head of the rabbinical court of Kremenets. The author's father, Rabbi Yakov, rabbi of Krakow, explains that the Kremenetser magid, R' Yakov Yisrael Halevi, was the son-in-law of Rabbi Mordekhay Mordush of Baumberg. He was the brother of the sage Rabbi Efraim Zalman Margolis. Rabbi Menachem Mendel's son, Rabbi Moshe, was the elected member for Kremenets in the Council of the Volhynia area and the representative in the assembly of the heads of the community. His name figures on a passage of the Jaroslaw Council, 5490 (1730). He was the grandfather of my mother, Rachel Leye Margolis. The author notes that the chief rabbi, Rabbi Shmuel, son of the rabbi and sage, R' Binyamin Volf, head of the rabbinical court of the holy community of Kremenets, died in 1801, and Rabbi Tsvi haLevi (the virtuous magid), in 1799. The Mordush family resided in Kremenets as recently as this century.

Among the roster of great figures who were active in Kremenets, it is only proper to include Moshe Katz, more commonly known by the name R' Moshe of Naral.

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He was born and raised in Kremenets, as is attested by his son, Rabbi Tovye the Doctor, himself a figure of world renown. In the preface of the book Ma'ase Tovye [Tovye's story], he recounts his entire lineage. He mentions his grandfather, R' Eliezer Velshes, son of the rabbi of Safed, R' Shalom. It is claimed that the family can trace its pedigree via a long line of Kohanim all the way back to Ezra the Scribe's era; for generations, the family had borne the nickname Manuskrivi, which means scribe. In the beginning of his Ma'ase Tovye, R' Tovye signs his name: “I, Tovye HaKohen Manuskrivi the Doctor.”

R' Moshe's father, R' Eliezer, had come from Safed to Volhynia in his youth in order to print the treatise of his father, the Kabbalist R' Eliyahu di Vidash. The book, entitled Reshit Chokhma [Spring of wisdom], came out in 5359 (1599). R' Tovye recounts that his grandfather, R' Eliezer, married in Kremenets and that he had a reputation there as a genius in mathematics and the science of healing. Moshe was the youngest of his three sons. He is said to have been born in 5358 (1598). In his youth he was a student of our teacher the rabbi R' Shmuel Eydels in Ostrog. Like his father before him, he was well versed in secular knowledge, too. His son, Rabbi Tovye, writes:

“My father Moshe preached Torah for many years in the holy community of Poland, but because of the oppressive disease and the sword that was raging in the region, he left there for the land of Ashkenaz, which is Germany. It was not many days before they sent sages and officers to Metz, a city and mother of Israel in Tsarfat, which is France, and they accepted him as their rabbi in Metz, and there he exercised his presidency. But unfortunately, he did not prolong his reign, and Moshe ascended to God.”

Moshe served as rabbi in Naral and fled from there–according to his son's account–to Germany during the days of Khmelnytsky. From there he continued to Metz, where he was taken on as a rabbi. According to other sources, he was in Krakow, where he developed a close friendship with Rabbi Yehoshue Heschel, the grandfather of the famous rabbi of the same name. R' Tovye avoids mentioning the details of the troubles his father experienced with his opponents in Metz. There was a law there that a foreigner could not be appointed rabbi without the crown's authorization. In the end, as R' Moshe himself tells it, his appointment in Metz was eventually approved by the authorities, bringing an end to the troubles he had had to endure throughout his rabbinical tenure. He tells the story of how he trembled with fear in the synagogue on the first day of Sukkot 5418 (1658), when King Louis' chancellor, the 14^th Count de Brion, visited Metz. The chancellor sent for the rabbi and two escorts. In the chancellor's name, the secretary asked them why they took it upon themselves to invite a foreigner as a rabbi without authorization. R' Moshe's heart pounded in fear. The chancellor noticed this and wasted no time in reassuring everyone that there would be nothing to fear, and he confirmed R' Moshe's rabbinical position then and there. He died a year later.

In the memorial book of the Metz community is written:

“The sage, the pious master, acknowledged man of God, head of the rabbinical court, our respected teacher and rabbi, Rabbi Moshe Yermye, son of Eliezer HaKohen, who devoted himself to Torah in Israel and raised students in Israel from the provinces of Poland, the lands, and he was also the head of the yeshiva here in the holy community of Metz. He also wrote some penitential prayers and elegies as well as ‘El Malei Rachamim’ [God, full of compassion]. Lag BaOmer 5419 [1659].”

This El Malei Rachamim, a lament for the massacres of Khmelnytsky, was found after he perished. Following the custom at the time, each line began with an enlarged letter of the author's name, forming an acrostic. The whole name reads: I am Moshe HaKohen^[4].

He left behind him the book, Birkat Tov [Good blessing], a collection of sermons and Bible commentaries with a supplement of his father's treatise entitled Keter Kehuna [Crown of the priesthood]. This work, along with a collection of correspondence, was later published by R' Tovye the Doctor.

As we have already mentioned, he did not have long to enjoy the honor of his official rabbinical position in Metz. He died in 1659, apparently in the month of Iyar 5419, as shown by the aforementioned inscription from the Metz memorial book, i.e., on Lag BaOmer.

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Following his father's death, Tovye was in Kremenets. The information that he was in Krakow was also accurate. His uncle R' Eliezer, named after his grandfather, lived there. After finishing his studies in Frankfurt, Tovye moved to Padua with a friend, where he attained the title of medical doctor. There they met the erudite R' Shlome Kunion, who was well known in Frankfurt and throughout Germany and Poland. Under his tutelage, Tovye studied philosophy and other subjects. He was hired to an academic post in the University of Padua. This same professor Shlome Kunion sang Tovye's praises.

From Italy, Tovye traveled to Constantinople. It is said that there he encountered Dr. Yisrael Kunion, apparently a relative of the Italian Shlome Kunion. Tovye became the court doctor to the sultan. It was while living in Constantinople that he wrote his book Maase Tovye in three parts.

R' Tovye felt overjoyed when, in 1711, he succeeded in publishing his father's works. A clue to this is found in his lines in the supplementary work, which followed the tradition of including his own name in an acrostic.

One can see he was enamored with the word tov, which figures in every line. In his old age he left Turkey and settled in Jerusalem. It seems symbolic that he returned to the land of his ancestors, where his grandfather Eliezer had died. Tovye died in 5489 (1729) at the age of 77.

The Jewish community in Kremenets had a very important place in the executive organs of Jewish life. Not only did it set the tone in the district council, which regulated all aspects of life in the surrounding towns, but it also had a representative in the Council of Four Lands itself.

Already in the second decade of the council's existence (in 1565) we find a council delegate from Kremenets, R' Avraham Shrentsel, attending the assembly in Gramnits. His name figures among the signatories of those resolutions alongside those of two delegates from the Chelm region, two from Lublin, two from Lviv, and two from Luboml. R' Avraham Shrentsel was the author of Eytan Haezrahi [Ethan the Ezrahite]. He was the son of R' Yosef son of Mordekhay Gershon (righteous Kohen) and the brother-in-law of R' Moshe Isserles, rabbi in Krakow from 5350 to 5351.

Before that time, we also meet a certain Rabbi Avraham, known as HRA”Sh, which stands for Rabbi Avraham son of Shprintse. His son R' Moshe, who later became rabbi in Shinove, brought out the first work on the Shulchan Aruch Orach Chayim^[5], the Turei Zahav, printed in 5352 (1592).

There is a hypothesis that the famous R' Yom Tov Lipman Heler, known as the Tosefet Yom-Tov, spent time in Kremenets during his wandering after being expelled from Prague. He called on delegates from Ludmir, Ostrog, and Lutsk and summoned them to Kremenets for an assembly in 5403 (1643) to strengthen the resolution banning the buying and selling of rabbinical positions.

The second representative for Kremenets in the council, after Avraham, was Rabbi Meir, father of the previously mentioned R' Yochanen, author of the Orach Mishor. He was the one who built the synagogue where he himself preached Torah. He seems to have been a wealthy man, and a generous one. Not only did he build the synagogue, but he also donated a great deal of wealth to the community.

The ban on trading rabbinical posts was once again reiterated in an assembly of the Council of Four Lands in 1556. Here we find the signature of the Kremenets delegate Rabbi Shimshon son of Betsalel, a brother of our teacher the rabbi Liva of Prague.

In a ruling from the same council concerning a matter in Brisk in the year 5416 (1655), we find the signature of R' Yitschak son of Ozer of Kremenets, representing the entire region of Volhynia.

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This same R' Yitschak son of Ozer appears again in 5447 (1687) among the leading sages of the Volhynia region–R' Tsvi Hersh of Lutsk, R' Volf of Ludmir, R' Shmelke of Ostrog, and our teacher the rabbi Yitschak Ozer of Kremenets.

In 1664 a disagreement was settled with the representative of Lithuania, and one of the signatories on the compromise was Rabbi Yakov of Kremenets. His name was also recorded on the permit issued by the Council of Four Lands to Rabbi Eliezer Shmuel of Opatow to print his treatise on Tractate Hullin.

In the 18^th century, too, the Kremenets Jewish community occupied an esteemed position in the Council. In the assembly of the Volhynia Jewish community in 5480, we meet the Kremenets delegate R' Moshe Menachem Mendel Margolis as the elected councilman for the Kremenets community. He also attended the council assemblies in 5491 and 5508.

Rabbi Arye Leyb son of Shmuel held an especially important position, even in relation to the crown. He was at the Jaroslaw Fair in 1739, where the council held a special gathering to deal with the issue of taxes. In 1750 King August III appointed him head of the rabbinical court, as well as treasurer of tax collection for all of Volhynia. His name, with his full title, figures on an authorization granted to the brothers Yakov and Yosef Profes giving them permission to print the six orders of the Mishna in Amsterdam (1751).

Arye Leyb seems to have been a well-known figure in the religious scholarly world. His signature on a book was something to be boasted about. Concerning the seal he gave for the book Mincha Chadasha [New afternoon service] it is written: “The seal of the man Ari Tsvi is alive, the famous old sage from 'Arye Leyb, may his lamp illuminate.' Head of the rabbinical court of Kremenets and provinces, may he build Zion and build her city, and his seed will inherit the land, today is Sunday, 15 Adar 5535 [1775].” His own signature is accompanied only by the words: “The holy Arye Leyb of the community of Kremenets.” His seal appears on many holy books. All of this is recorded in the annals of the Ostrog burial society. R' Arye Leyb's son, who was named Shmuel after Arye Leyb's father (R' Shmuel, head of the Kremenets rabbinical court, participated in the ruling of the Council of Four Lands in Jaroslaw, 4 Kislev, 5478), appears with the last name Averbukh on a document that a certain R' Moshe Yafe of Tiberias had acquired from the local Hasidim, granting him permission to collect aid for them. We have previously mentioned the name Duvid Tsvi Averbukh. It would appear that Shmuel was one of his brothers.

Also in terms of the general needs of the local community itself, the Jews of Kremenets were operating on a higher level. This can be seen in the actions of the previously mentioned R' Meir, who preached Torah in the synagogue built by his uncle Merkil. He supported many scholars and also lent money to the Council of Four Lands. He lived in Kremenets up to 5408. He succeeded in fleeing in time before the Khmelnytsky catastrophe, and he settled in Kalusz. The Kalusz annals include the following details from the time he lived in Kalusz until he moved to the Land of Israel:

“Meir of Kremenets, who fled to Kalusz in the time of the Evil Decrees, was the son of the Kabbalist R' Yitschak. He studied with scholars in the synagogue founded by his uncle, the magnate Merkil. Later he went to the Land of Israel with his wife. He spoke a great deal of his wealth. He also built a prayer house where he supported a number of great scholars. He lent a large sum of money to the leaders of the Council of Four Lands so that they could provide support for poor kinsmen and scholars, particularly kinsmen. He also stipulated that they should give a yearly sum to the poor of Jerusalem. His will was burned during a fire in Kalusz in 5437 (1677).”

In the early 18^th century we encounter a second Jew of a similar caliber who came from Kremenets, a certain R' Mikhel, who knew the value of providing for community needs via a regular revenue source. The following is what was said about this in 1724:

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“Concerning the 325 guilder (interest) that is owed to the Kremenets Jewish community. From the money left by R' Mikhel as an eternal grant for all students, we must pay: 325 guilders for the Kremenets community, not including the 72-guilder interest that must be paid to R' Mikhel's heirs who live in Kremenets. Together that makes 397 guilders. We, the leaders of the lands, pledge to pay the aforementioned sum every year, as was decided during the assembly of Jaroslaw, on this day, 21 Elul 5484 (1724). We declare that the aforementioned debt is valid in perpetuity and that the monies from the interest must be paid out every year to the Kremenets community without hindrance or delay, under pain of banishment for our Four Lands trustees. The verdict, which is in the Kremenets community's hands, has the same validity as if they had a guarantee from the Lands of 397 guilders each year. The second debt that remains to be paid to the Kremenets community in 5484 (1724), the sum of 197 guilders, must be paid in the coming years in two installments: 100 guilders in 5485 (1725), and the remainder in 5486 (1726). If this fails to occur, we will pay double. Whoever hinders or fails to implement this verdict will be excommunicated, and the Kremenets community will have the right to demand its annual payment from other leaders. As a mark of good intentions, we hereby sign in our own hands at the closing of the Holy Sabbath. 21 Elul 5484 (1724) in Jaroslaw.”

Almost a whole century after the years of the Evil Decrees, the Jews on the right bank of Ukraine (including Volhynia) struggled for their day-to-day existence. The Cossack areas of left-bank Ukraine were at war with the Poles in Lithuania and Belarus. Between these two conflagrations, the Jews in those areas were ruined. Volhynia and Podolia recovered. These lands served, incidentally, as the sole reservoir supplying the Polish armies. Jewish community life returned to normal. In the Council of Four Lands assemblies in 1655 and 1666, we see representatives from Kremenets, the aforementioned R' Shimshon son of Betsalel and R' Yitschak son of Ozer. In 1666 there was an assembly of leaders from Kremenets, Ludmir, and Lutsk, followed in 1987 by a gathering of the “Heads of the Volhynia Region.”

Another important figure in 18^th century Kremenets was Rabbi Yakov Yisrael, the magid who inspired the expression “Pearls come out of his mouth.” His son-in-law, R' Yitschak, writes in the preface to his book Likotei Shoshanim that he completed a manuscript of over 200 print sheets. Incidentally, we learn from him that in the 18^th century there was a yeshiva in Kremenets, which served as a center of Torah learning for the whole region.

At this time, Kremenets was a vital hub for many towns and villages. We can read in a document from the Kremenets administration, dated May 2, 1758, concerning a ruling by Rabbi Chayim Polonski (confirmed by the signatures of the elected members of the community council) about the transfer of 18 villages and other places under the jurisdiction of Teofipol parish (the Jewish name for Teofipol was Tshan) to demand taxes of the Jewish residents there. The same ruling was ratified the same year at the Volhynia council of Jewish communities, which took place in Korets and was once again confirmed by a government examiner. In relation to the council of Volhynia gathering in Korets, it is worth mentioning the following: it was decided that the Volhynia council's gatherings would take place in a different place each time. This was in the mutual interest of all places so that the larger communities would not dominate the smaller ones in the decision-making process. In 1758 the famous rabbis R' Arye Leyb of Kremenets and R' Shaul of Ludmir engaged in a feud with the leaders of Ostrog and Lutsk for overstepping their jurisdiction, and a special assembly was convened summoning representatives from all the towns of Volhynia to Rakhmanovka, where there was an accounting of several thousand guilders.

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At the beginning of the 18^th century, Kremenets suffered greatly under attacks from the Gontos bands, as did the whole region.

The Polish nobility had learned nothing from the Khmelnytsky massacres. Those peasants who were in a position to do so fled to the Zaporozhye region. In 1726, in Kremenets, the noble administrator Mikhail Podgorski confiscated the farmers' livestock and horses as a threat to prevent them from fleeing their homes.

In the early 18^th century, after Peter the Great recognized Volhynia as a Polish territory in 1711, the Polish noblemen returned to their manors, which they had abandoned during the Khmelnytsky years. It would appear that the economy of Kremenets was in a poor position during this period.

In 1764 a census of the Jews was carried out in the voivodeships of Podolia and Volhynia. The commission charged with conducting the census explained their main objective as follows: the government was interested, aside from collecting taxes, in learning from the census how to orient its politics with regard to the Jews themselves and to investigate their cultural influence on the neighboring peoples.

This census was of an entirely different nature from previous censuses, which were at best mere bureaucratic estimations. This time, the magistrates undertook to record everything. With this in mind, they threatened a fine of 200 guilders for anyone who did not come to register of their own free will.

The census took place in Kremenets, as well as 48 small towns and 848 villages. According to the census, there were 5,346 Jews living in Kremenets, with 15,647 living in the surrounding areas.

Such a number for the town alone may seem fanciful; it is only a little more than the number we meet in the late 19^th century. But later, Zaslav with 2,047 Jews, Starokonstantinov with 1,319 Jews, Zbarazh with 610 Jews, Lakhovtsy with 590 Jews, Polonnoye with 581 Jews, and so on, were all integrated into the Kremenets district. These places alone add up to 5,147 Jews. There were also 14 more small towns: Oleksinets, Vishnevets, Vyshgorodok, Katerburg, Shumsk, Pochayev, Radivil (Radzivilov), Yampol, Kunev, Tshan (Teofipol), Volochisk, Sudilkov, and Lanovtsy.

The remaining Jews were spread out over more than 800 villages, farms, and other settlements.

The Jewish population in the second largest city in Volhynia, Lutsk, was not much larger: 23,322 in the whole district with 6,655 in Lutsk proper.

Two factors contributed to the migration of Jews from other areas to Kremenets. One factor: the desire to hide from the local census in order to avoid the poll tax. The second factor: the venomous incitement against Jews, blood libels in particular.

A flood of blood libel trials poured over the heads of the Volhynian Jews. The principal serpent spreading this venom was Bishop Ignats Soltek, who traveled around through the cities, towns, and villages spreading anti-Jewish agitation. In Kremenets, too, he made an appearance.

In 1747, with the authorization of Prince Sangoszko and the clergy, the Kremenets courthouse sentenced the victims of the blood libel in Zaslav.

The Jews of Kremenets suffered greatly under high taxes. This can be seen, incidentally, in the reciprocal lawsuits between the Jewish communities of Ludmir and Kremenets with Lutsk and Ostrog in the year 1758. In the records of the Kremenets administration, there is an entry from February 22 concerning a meeting held in Rokhmanov of rabbis from the largest four Jewish communities in Volhynia. The representatives of Ludmir and Kremenets brought forth their grievances against the cities of Lutsk and Ostrog, accusing them of tipping the tax balance in their favor. Such lawsuits occurred often in the courtrooms of the local nobility. The rabbinical courts also passed judgments on these transgressions. The Jews of Kremenets also suffered from the waves of denunciations that the Polish clergy leveled against them before the authorities, claiming that the Jews were the enemies of Poland.

It was at this time that the Jews rebuilt the ruined Great Synagogue, further provoking the ire of Catholic leaders.

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In the records of the Kremenets town book (number 1706, page 972, 1758), it says that Bishop Soltek complained about the Jews, those godless enemies of the kingdom, and that he dictated how they should build their synagogue. The record states:

“The Jews of the faithless people are not friendly to the Catholic church, to the suffering kingdom. Our spiritual leaders do not wish to destroy them, but to guide them back to God. We therefore allow them to rebuild their synagogue, the place of prayer that was there before but was destroyed in the times of turmoil. But they are forbidden from imitating the architecture of our churches as they have blasphemously dared to do in various locations. The roof must be flat. No cupola must be erected on top of it. The windows, rectangular, as they are in houses.”

And so on. In 1768 the council members in the voivodeships were given responsibility for monitoring the economy and finances. It was noted especially that

“the Jewish presence in towns is detrimental to the other inhabitants. They are in competition for their livelihoods. A higher tax quota was imposed on the Kremenets Jews than other communities. From the complaints at the abovementioned assembly, the delegates for Kremenets, Elye Moshkovitsh and Duvid Yankelevitsh, argued against those from Lutsk and Ostrog: they are going after our livelihood, they do not hold back from anything that could, God forbid, result in us innocents being led away in chains.”

In 1764, the government demanded a tax of all Volhynian Jews for two years of 10,000 guilders. It was discovered that two wealthy men from Dubno, R' Meir and R' Yermye, had appropriated 4,000 guilders for themselves from the collected taxes. The three Kremenets delegates in the commission set up to collect these taxes (R' Chayim, R' Mendel, and R' Leyb son of Shmuel) took it upon themselves to cover a portion of the tax debt, possibly 1,500 guilders, as well as all the expenses for the gathering, amounting to 326 guilders and 23 groschen. Incidentally, this R' Chayim was apparently the brother of the Dubno Rabbi Eliezer Ashkenazi, author of the book Damesek Eliezer [Damascus Eliezer]. There it is mentioned that R' Chayim was a chair of the Council of Four Lands.

In 1708, as the army marched through Kremenets in their march northwards, the Jews suffered greatly.

They continued to impose heavy taxes on Kremenets. It went so far that Kremenets, as well as Ludmir, requested a special meeting with government representatives for them to stand witness to the suits on account of the onerous taxes.

Concerning the Kremenets Jews' protests against high taxes, the town book notes on August 18, 1758 (issue 1705, registry sheet no. 192):

“On February 22, 1758, the renowned rabbis R' Leyb and R' Shmuel, trustees of the Volhynian region, came and requested that we witness their proposed declaration.

They declared: you will bear witness to what we will tell you and prove to you. It is known by all the people of our voivodeship, and it has also been proven to you, that Ostrog is the oldest and most important city in Volhynia, and that there are always dishonest people there, the kind who peddle liquor, who cause trouble, who speak out against the main communities in Volhynia and against the communities they are involved with, wishing to dominate them. They have constantly tried to compel us to provide cover and strengthen their influence. On their account we have been forced to appear in various places, in various cases negotiated in Jewish and aristocratic courts, which has cost us considerable expense.

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In all the time since we've had our functions taken away from us, there hasn't been a single year where we haven't had disputes on account of that city. Because of this we were compelled to call an assembly in Rokhmanov for all the towns and districts in Volhynia, asking that our grievances and calculations be heard: We made our calculations publicly in the presence of all and they were confirmed by the creditors who publicly acknowledged all interest thus far paid, the amount of which was in the thousands. The communal tax collected by Ostrog had doubled on account of their influence and intrigues. Now they are going out and making use of falsehoods, spreading rumors against us; they are attacking our livelihood and what little we have, they will stop at nothing, even if–God forbid–we end up in chains. In addition, they have caused us considerable expense in this council in Rokhmanov. They refused to include two sums of 38,000 in the calculations, and they pass over many additional thousands in silence. What sums they did acknowledge they agreed to pay in installments over 10 years, and they only agreed to a few dozen zlotys' interest. If we felt compelled to sign such an agreement, we hereby make you a witness and declare that we did not do so of our own free will. Our intention is that, if it be God's will, we will later file suit against them in the venue of their choice, be it before a Jewish rabbinical court, or before the court of the Polish nobility. We ask you to be our witnesses to all the agreements that will be made in their benefit, that we do not do so voluntarily and that we will later pursue the matter with them as well as with the city of Lutsk. They demand that we accept what they decide, and in an unjustified way they wish to squeeze everything from us, and this in a time when we are unable to defend ourselves. All these agreements have no legitimacy, and the time will come when they will have to answer before a Jewish or a Polish court.”

This document is signed by Volf, rabbi of Rokhmanov; Avremke Mordkovitsh of Ludmir, power of attorney of Marshalek of the Volyn Provincial Council; and the community heads of the towns of Ostrog, Ludmir, Kremenets, Dubno, and Kovel. It was published by the council trustees; the Kremenets rabbi, R' Leyb; and the Ludmir rabbi, R' Shaul; and ratified by the meeting in Rokhmanov.

Later in the same document:

“This document from August 18, 1758, was given to the famous rabbis. Namely: Rabbi Leyb of Kremenets and Rabbi Shaul of Ludmir, determined according to the resolution adopted by these rabbis during the assembly in Rokhmanov concerning the paying of debts on based on the assembled calculations and to whom they should be paid. We put together a plan for this that the debts would be covered and the tax would be due each year to the priests of Zamosc, to whom the Jewish community of Zamosc would also pay interest. The second debt, the sum of 15,000 owed to the Dominicans in Podkamien. As well as two other debts of 38,000 each, apart from the remaining unpaid sums from the tax collections of 1745 and 1756. To cover expenses a 10-year-long tax was decided from 1747 to 1757 with payments due each year. The aforementioned simple tax was defined to cover the war tax, Jewish poll tax, as well as other debts, the principal and the interest, as well as other expenses that were noted before the governor so that everything would be paid in one annual payment.”

Signed:

Moshke Mendilovitsh (chief), Volhynia Province
Shimon Shimonovitsh, Ostrog
Isa Yuzepovitsh, Ostrog

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Yakov Leyzerovitsh, Ostrog
Gyerz (Hersh) Duvidovitsh, Ludmir
Motshko (Moshko?) Yozipovitsh, Ludmir
Duvidko Yankelevitsh, Kremenets
El (Elye) Moshkovitsh, Kremenets
Leyb Leybovitsh, Kremenets
Shmuelke Shmeonovitsh, Dubno
Berke Lermiovitsh (?) Dubno and
Yos (Yosef) Izraelovitsh, Dubno.

“We, the community leaders of Kovel, having examined the calculations of the abovementioned rabbis, give our approval to all the above resolutions and we reinforce them with our signatures:

Yone Avramovitsh–Kovel,
Shalom Leyzerovitsh–Kovel.

Whereas we have today seen the accounting of the rabbis, namely: Rabbi Leyb of Kremenets and Rabbi Shaul of Ludmir, and they have included everything in it, as well as a detailed account of the day when they took over their functions, with detailed and clear evidence. Taking all this into account, and the judiciously proposed tax in order to fund the abovementioned ‘consolidation,’ which is recounted thoroughly and with clarity and in the Rokhmanov resolution, with all this in mind, we, the heads of the Ostrog community, from both sections of the town, giving our approval and agreeing to hold to all the points therein, do hereby sign:

Shakhna Mordkovitsh, Ostrog
Mendel Yankelovitsh, Ostrog.”

It would often happen that the Jews would in fact be ruined by court cases and attacks from Christian merchants. In 1759 such a case was brought against the Jews Binyamin and Volf Bunimovitsh, Avraham Leybovitsh, and Chayim Yosipovitsh, accusing them of borrowing a large sum of money from the nobleman Mikhal Daniletski. The Kremenets starosta, Jan Sangoszko, got involved in the matter and defended the Jews. In the end the highest tribunal in Lublin found in favor of the nobleman.

In 1777, the Polish noble court, in relation to a conflict between the Jews and Christians of Kremenets, took it on itself by its own authority to ignore the privileges granted to the Jews by the state. The court passed a verdict that the Jews were no longer allowed to live in Kremenets at all. The King's Council, however, overturned the verdict.

The matter even reached as far as the Polish Sejm. For three whole days they argued there about the trade rights of the Kremenets Jews. The deputy for Kremenets, Denisko, stood his ground firmly, defending the Jewish privileges.

Theses economic conflicts were followed in the 1780s by two large fires, which already affected the Jews in particular. Dr. Emanuel Ringelblum points out that the king himself–who in 1785 set up a commission to regulate the Jewish community's debts–understood the Jews' impoverished position, and in 1786 he issued a letter of protection for them against their creditors and also freed them of new taxes.

The local authorities, however, including the court, continued to persecute the Jews. They ordered the removal of 40 Jewish houses from around the market square: they did not allow Jewish tradesmen to build houses to replace those that had been burnt down.

The 19^th Century

Let us now take a look at the number of Jews in Kremenets according to the 1897 census. We must first note that, although this census was the first modern census of the population in Russia, it was not a complete one. For example, places with fewer than 500 inhabitants were excluded. The surrounding Kremenets district contained a great many such small settlements of fewer than 500 souls. There was also a tendency to underrepresent the numbers of Little Russian (Ukrainian) and also Jewish inhabitants. Consequently, the estimates that the population in all of Volhynia was 2,989,482 people, 395,782 of whom were Jews, i.e., 13.2%, are closer to the truth. The official census lists the population of Volhynia as 2,504,300, i.e., a whole 485,000 fewer souls.

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Since the 1764 census, the number of Jews in the Kremenets district had risen to 28,919. Quite simply, this can be explained in part by the fact that some of the 49 settlements belonging to the district in the 18^th century had been withdrawn, as can be seen in the following table (a few other smaller details are missing).

Place	Total Residents
Kremenets	7,340
Radzivilov	4,322
Vishnevets	2,980
Shumsk	2,268
Yampol	1,582
Pochayev	1,377
Vyshgorodok	1,078
Kozin	972
Katerburg	693
Lanovtsy	475
Berezhtsy	428

Ignored are such places as the farming estates of Antonovka, Plisk, and other smaller, scattered Jewish settlements.

Here is what the census tells us about Jewish professions.

Area	Artisans	Laborers	Students	Total
Kremenets	1,774	647	573	2,994
Zhitomir	4,192	2,893	1,496	8,581
Zvihl (Novgorod Volinsky)	2,584	1,067	1,157	4,808
Rovno	1,257	957	763	2,977
Zaslav	1,691	714	458	2,863
Lutsk	1,470	757	670	2,897
Ludmir (Vladimir)	1,982	519	894	3,395
Kovel	1,414	469	324	2,207
Ovruch	1,330	402	291	2,023
Alt-Konstantin (Starokonstantinov)	1,171	628	264	2,063
Dubno	1,326	569	459	2,354
Ostrog	729	419	302	1,450
	20,920	10,041	7,657	38,612

In 1894 another disaster occurred: the cholera epidemic, which came soon after a famine.

A correspondent wrote in the Bodoshtshnast newspaper: “Now all differences between the age-old poverty in Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, and the Kherson and Bessarabian governorates have been eliminated. Poverty has equalized everyone. Our intellectuals have a mission to establish specialized professional schools and also to organize such programs at religious elementary schools.”

In Kremenets Dr. Miron (Meir) Litvak took this work upon himself. Himself a tailor's son, Dr. Litvak popularized the idea of establishing a workers' cooperative, an artel, for craftsmen, and it seemed that the idea of cooperative work had reached Kremenets, too. In an article Dr. Miron Litvak justified his idea of an artel as follows:

“The Jewish craftsman lives in poverty, in the worst, unsanitary conditions. He spends his entire day in the suffocating atmosphere of his workshop.

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He generally lives in a basement apartment. His nutrition is exceedingly bad, he never gets enough rest, and works 18, 20 hours a day because he works for himself, and competition between the craftsmen leads to a lowering of the price for the finished article, which earns barely enough to cover a loaf of bread. There is no money to buy raw material, and so they are forced to turn to brokers, the kulaks, who provide raw materials and take a hefty commission for themselves. All this weighs on the unlucky laborer like a heavy burden, squeezing him so much physically that he is simply incapable of enjoying intellectual development.”

People had these dreary facts in mind as they were establishing the artel for craftsmen. The foundational charter was the following:

“One–all members of the artel enjoy equal membership status;

Two–the work shall be carried out in a communal workshop;

Three–The workday shall be no longer than 12 hours maximum;

Four–The removal of competition shall be accompanied by higher prices for the finished goods;

Five–Though the artel makes use of credit, it does away with the bloodsuckers and kulaks. Every penny shall remain for the workers alone;

Six–Because a certain percentage of income shall be put aside as insurance in the case of unforeseen needs, the artel shall ensure as much as is necessary to improve working people's material conditions.”

The general population in Kremenets amounted to 219,934 souls, of whom 26,965 were Jewish.

As an illustration of how the first collectivization ideas for physical work took root among the Jewish residents of Kremenets, we shall now discuss the scholarly family of Moshe Velis.

Velis, a Trisk Hasid who had dedicated many years to Torah study and religious service, was the principal jurist in a court of arbitration for resolving interpersonal conflicts in the business world. For this reason he was often invited to various towns and villages in the Kremenets area. From his outward appearance, with his sober attire, one could assume that he lived on his accumulated wealth. The truth, however, was that he was often short of money. His wife died young, and he had to take care of his three sons by himself. Once they had grown up, he started a business with them making paper bags. The bagmaker Moshe Velis's product sold well, though at the time it was not yet a widespread practice for shops to pack their wares in bags. His family made a modest living.

Moshe the Trisk Hasid's children would later move away and find their own paths. They no longer wore beards, but their father did not scold them. He made peace with the new times. This was a typical story for many other families.

The first attempt to create an artel was made in the late 1880s and early 1890s. It began with a hundred people: 20 master craftsmen, 50 journeymen, and 30 apprentices. They all worked in the same domain, manufacturing cigar holders out of reeds and rowan twigs. This production was very well developed in Kremenets. Cigar holders were exported over vast swaths of Russia and also abroad.

The Kremenets lathe workers were well respected, and they were even hired to decorate churches.

Before the artel was founded, each individual craftsman had to reach out to wealthy middlemen. The latter would bring wagonloads of raw materials and take a cut of the profits from the craftsman for administration, warehousing the materials, and extending credit.

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Additionally, they would take it on themselves to sell the finished products. With the founding of the artel, this whole system came to an end. What's more, even the apprentices would earn between 20 and 25 kopeks a week. In those days this represented a significant boost for their impoverished parents.

A bookbinding artel with seven craftsmen and apprentices was founded by Dr. M. Litvak. He had to overcome many obstacles because the owner of a shop that sold books and writing materials saw it as competition to his lucrative business. It turned out that while the bookbinders would charge customers 3 kopeks to bind a textbook, the shopkeeper would charge 8. At a rate of 300 bindings a week, after all expenses, the bookbinders would be left with 2 or 3 rubles a week profit, while the shopkeeper would take in a whole 15 rubles. But after overcoming all obstacles, the bookbinders' artel was founded on November 1, 1901. One of the workers at the artel, Avraham, became involved in revolutionary activity and for this reason was sent to Siberia.

The idea of founding artels rapidly became very popular in town. An artel of 21 carpenters was founded. The bookbinders' artel did not last long, however. This was on account of neglected relations among the workers themselves, a lack of discipline, and their elected leader's bad behavior. After a brief existence of only five months, the artel fell apart.

There was also an artel of hatmakers (furriers), but all the artels had a short-lived existence. To the credit of the Jews of Kremenets, however, we should acknowledge that this pioneering experiment with collective work was at this time an entirely rare phenomenon.

There were several dozen villages around Kremenets with Jewish inhabitants. Their exact number is unknown. We only know details about two of the largest villages, the information having come to us from the inhabitants' children and grandchildren who now live in America and Israel.

Once a week the village Jews would make the trip to Kremenets, where their relatives and friends lived. They would take their produce with them on market days. Apart from this, they came to Kremenets during the High Holidays or to mark the anniversary of a death, as the dead lay in the Kremenets graveyard. They also had to go to the town's ritual slaughterer for kosher meat, to the mohel for circumcisions, or to find a teacher for their children. The villages were generally a few versts from town, and so they were bound to the town, as an alcove is bound to a house.

The “large village” and the “small village”: that's what they called the two villages where Jews lived. The first families had settled there in the first half of the 19^th century. When the Jews were being expelled from the villages back then, these particular Jews were the ones who had not budged, probably because they worked the earth. During the Cantonist persecution, Jewish children fled there for protection. In the second half of the 19^th century, they remained untouched. By the end of that century, there were 15 families living there. They made their living from farming, working in orchards and fields. Their entire yield was brought into town each week. This was also how grown cattle, who no longer gave milk, would be brought in and sold to the Jewish butcher.

Let us pause here to tell the story of the oldest Jew in the village, who was born there in 1828. He lived 107 years and died in 1935. Moshe-Yosel was his name. As a boy he had studied Torah in Kremenets. Later he led his children, grandchildren, and all the surrounding villages in the ways of Judaism. He was a Radzyn Hasid and had a sky-blue thread woven into the fringes of his prayer shawl. For his three daughters, Gitil, Machle, and Chane, he chose refined husbands, learned men. He sent his only son, Mendele, to the best teacher.

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His wife, Miryam-Beyle, took good care of him so that he could spend as little time as possible working the earth or milking cows. In his younger years he would tend to the garden, feed the cows, horses, chickens, etc. Once the children were grown and grandchildren came along, Moshe-Yosel spent more time with his holy book. But he did not fully give up the good deed of feeding the silent beasts. Each day, after the ritual handwashing, he would spread out oats for the horses, as well as straw and bran for the cows in their wooden troughs. Meanwhile, Miryam-Beyle would prepare a warm glass for her husband when he returned from the stables to prepare for morning prayers. When Miryam-Beyle and the girls had set up the full earthenware jugs, filling them with milk to churn butter or make cheese or sour milk and cream, Moshe-Yosel would turn his attention to Chok Leyisrael^[6] [Law of Israel] or Eyn Yakov until the daylight began to wane. It was then that he would drink his hot tea with milk.

The first to wake was the gentile houseboy, Khvedko the shepherd. Khvedko was the one who helped Moshe-Yosel mix the oats and bran so the cattle would enjoy their fodder. That way they would be docile and willing to be milked. Khvedko was always accompanied by Moshe-Yosel's granddaughter Freyde. She felt like an adult, entrusted by her grandparents with the task of making sure that nothing violated the dietary laws during the milking process. From her Khvedko learned the rules of handling kosher food, that the bucket must be kept clean, and that immediately after the milking, the bucket had to be scoured and stored on its side for it to dry properly.

Khvedko watched as Moshe-Yosel washed his hands before every meal, and so Khvedko also washed his hands before eating, without knowing why. But he never crossed himself in Moshe-Yosel's house. He left things in the hands of Moshe-Yosel's God. Khvedko particularly enjoyed Jewish cooking. His whole life he harbored a deep love of kosher food. When Khvedko grew up and became a sotski (the elected leader over 100 households), he did not leave the Jewish house. In Moshe-Yosel's house Khvedko had become Judaized. He spoke to the cows and horses in Yiddish. When Khvedko carried water into the house, he knew that the barrel had to be covered afterward with the circular board. That way the water would be kosher for cooking.

Even the gentiles in the village showed great respect for Moshe-Yosel. Because Moshe-Yosel's house stood on the road between Kremenets and the towns to the south, it became a kind of guesthouse for travelers, and not just a tavern where farmers could while away the long winter's evenings. Moshe-Yosel and his modest wife were delighted whenever they had the chance to host a Jewish guest. Moshe-Yosel would say: “You never know how far you might stray from home, and that's why you should welcome guests with the same hospitality you would like to receive.”

Moshe-Yosel did not wish to speak gentile languages. He always said that “a gentile is an evil worm” and that his language is unclean. Of his sons-in-law, the one who stood out most was Moshe Hersh, the son of the Radzyn Hasid Duvid Yakov. Moshe Hersh's house was like a house of prayer. There were Torah scrolls, Bibles, and prayerbooks. The teacher, who was brought in from Kremenets, also taught the boys there. To be a teacher there one had to not only be good, but be a highly accomplished scholar, knowledgeable about even the very trickiest Talmudic questions. The teacher also had to teach the children how to write in Jewish languages, and also even beginners' Russian.

The week was over as soon as the smell of the Sabbath bread filled the house. Even the farmers could tell from the odor that the Jewish Sabbath was on the horizon. The farmers knew that for two whole days they dared not pass Moshe-Yosel's threshold; they would not partake of a glass of brandy or a bit of salted herring. But at the close of the Sabbath, their Sunday eve, they would enjoy all kinds of good things in his house: fish and some Jewish pastries.

Spirits would be high during the Sabbath days of summer.

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On the Sabbath, Moshe-Yosel would tell stories about the Ruzhin Tsadik, about the Rabbi of Przysucha, and other holy Jews. His son-in-law Moshe-Hersh would add a few corrections of his own.

On the High Holidays Moshe-Yosel would come with his son and son-in-law into town. He would also come to town to mark the anniversary of a death. They would stay in the houses of Leybele and Mendele the ritual slaughterers. He would pray with them in the Radzyn Synagogue. He was himself a Radzyn Hasid, and he would take in the teachings of the Radzyn rabbis that would be recounted at the table.

This was how they lived peacefully among the farmers until after World War I. None of the gentiles, who had benefited from the Russian revolution, changed their respect for the old man one bit, even during the lawless days of constant changes from one regime to another, of Petliura, the Bolsheviks, and the Poles. Even the young generation of gentiles did not lay a hand on “their” Jews. Different troops of soldiers came through the farmlands, yet Jewish life and property were spared there. The Jews lived peacefully with their non-Jewish neighbors, just as they did in the town of Kremenets.

This tranquil existence was shattered by the rising wave of Polish nationalism, which was loaded with hatred for the Jews. Life became hopeless. The younger generation was already feeling the draw toward the city. The large, wide-branching family tree, which in three short generations had taken root in the rural earth, had suddenly grown thin. The young people had left, some for America and some for Palestine. Miryam-Beyle died in the 1930s at a ripe old age, and after her in 1935, Moshe-Yosel was buried in Kremenets. He was accompanied by his only son, Mendel. No one else from the family remained.

Over the course of two dozen years, the Poles demonstrated an expertise for decimating and uprooting the Jewish population from their positions, reducing the Jews to the status of beggars, yanking the very food from their mouths.

Jews who had lived in the village peacefully for a century were now forced to beg their relatives in America for care packages or old clothes. Moshe-Yosel's daughter Machle wrote the following to her childhood friend in America:

“Just imagine the situation I'm in, Chave, send me a package. I'm not asking you to make any new clothes. I beg your forgiveness.”

Mendel, Moshe-Yosel's son, wrote to his niece Malke Rubinshteyn:

“We used to run a small shop from our home. Now that's over. The gentiles have set up their own store, and so if we could emigrate from the farmlands it would be a very good thing. But it's very difficult to travel to Palestine right now. If you can help me, you would be doing a double favor: for the living and for the dead, because Grandfather, God rest him, had asked to take care of the house.”

Sime Rachel Kleyner also wrote to the same Malke:

“Meir Leyb purchased a license to deal in grain in my name (as a widow). But in the end the starosta in Kremenets forbade it because I didn't have the right documents, i.e., the confirmation of my husband's death and proof of citizenship. These are tied up with significant costs. When my husband died they did not register it. Now we need to do it in the sąd okręgowy (district court) in Lutsk. The starosta won't allow commerce in grain. As a widow I have the right, but I'm missing the documents.”

Another writes:

“Ideally I would like to inform you about each of your relatives separately, but alas there is no good news to share. Our desperation is great. It is worse for the small children who have no future at all. Therefore, the best outcome for them would be if they succeeded in fleeing somewhere, to emigrate, even if they have to leave behind their parents without a means of survival.”

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Many of Moshe-Yosel's grandchildren left for Palestine. After he was widowed, they wanted to bring over their grandfather. But he was not destined to be buried in the Holy Earth. A year after his wife's death he also passed away, and his final resting place was in Kremenets.

Of the many villages around Kremenets, Antonovtse was the only village that provided a generous livelihood for both Jews and Christians. Antonovtse was known as zazhitotshnyj [prosperous]. When the Jews were expelled from the villages, Antonovtse was untouched. The gentiles of Antonovtse always stuck up for the Jews. The farmers there were busy all year round because the Jews knew how to exploit the natural resources in and around the village. The farmers were not employed merely for the summer plowing season. Come winter, they did not find themselves in a fix. In winter, the Jews felled trees in the large dense forest and thereby kept the farmers busy with their horses and carts.

“When you fell trees, splinters fall,” as the saying goes and they knew not to let the “splinters” go to waste, using them to supply the town with firewood aplenty. T They didn't even abandon acorns from oak trees, which produced flames that burned even the wet pieces of wood homemakers used to heat the ovens for baking challah for the Sabbath or to heat the furnace during winter.

Three Kremenets Jews, Shmuel the Yellow, Hersh Margolis, and Yankel Goldenberg, endeavored to wring every possible value from that forest. And it seems that the Jews of Podolia smelled from afar the healthy scents that wafted from there. Shalom Kahn of Tulchin vied against his neighbor from Kamenets-Podolskiy, who had the nickname “the Kamenetser broker,” but Shalom was more cunning, and he obtained rights to exploit the forest for 70,000 rubles.

These three Kremenets Jews, along with a whole apparatus of employees, inspectors, and tellers, set up the entire industry there. In this way, a sawmill was set up as well as a workshop for roof tiles. Jewish craftsmen from Kremenets and surrounding towns, as well as farmers from the village and also neighboring villages, were employed and provided with an ample livelihood. There were no rivalries.

The fruit from Antonovtse had a good reputation–¬–the apples, in particular, which were known as “Antonovkes.” “They melt in your mouth,” housewives would say. The farmers too would use the late summer apples, cooking them to make sour juice deserts. Or the Jerusalem apples, small and winey, which were fermented in barrels and exported all over the country. There was no shortage of hard liquor in the tavern, nor was there a lack of salted herring to nibble on after a glass of brandy. The locals would sit there alongside the police chief and happily while away the hours. They would ask the Jewish proprietors about world news. Spirits would be particularly high at the closing of the Sabbath, when their tumbler of brandy would be accompanied by some Jewish challah and a piece of fish. Even the farmers would come as guests, singing the praises of the Jewish housewives.

In Antonovtse, too, no gentile foot crossed the tavern threshold during the Jewish Sabbath. On Sabbath eve the tavern would already be unrecognizable. It would be transformed into a holy place where Jews prayed.

The farmers would also travel into town to take poultry to the ritual slaughterer and bring it back “kosher” to the Jews in the village. If there was a circumcision in the village, the mohel would be fetched from town. There were even some who brought gifts from town. If the gentiles celebrated a wedding, the Jews were obliged to attend as guests.

This village, perhaps the largest in the Kremenets area, was more Jewish than gentile.

Following the Third Partition of Poland, Kremenets found itself under Russian rule. The Jews of Kremenets suffered all the same changes and hardships as the other Polish Jews who were cut off from Poland, but this is not the place to discuss it.

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It seems that the Jews of Volhynia pulled through a little better than the others, that they quickly adapted themselves to the new situation, understanding how to maneuver in a timely way and find their place among the available possibilities.

For 1797, the new situation was reflected in the figures of the newly conducted census of the population. Indeed, the census was not a solid one. Each governor conducted his part alone. The counting was done by clerks who themselves were not very well versed in literacy or numeracy. Naturally, they mainly counted the “heads” of each family. This census was afterward completed in Petersburg by means of roughshod generalizations. In 1818 the senate again verified the numbers. Despite its flaws, the survey offers us a key to a broad picture of the Jewish population in Volhynia. This can be seen in the following table from 1800:

	Merchants Jews Non-Jews		Shopkeepers Jews Non-Jews		Handworkers Jews Non-Jews
Entire province	726	192	24,441	9,252	121,565	26,187
Kremenets district	33	17	2,400	1,604	?	?

Stepan Russov, who studied Volhynia after the French war and spent a whole year in Kremenets, writes the following in his Volhynian Notes:

“There were two peoples in Volhynia who never touched the plow–the Poles and the Jews. They dealt in holdings, their own and those of others. There were 2,225 such holdings in all of Volhynia; of the merchants and shopkeepers on Volhynia, 9,262 were Christian, and 24,597 were Jewish. In the Kremenets district there were two Jewish factory owners. No nation keeps their holidays and Sabbaths with as much holiness as the Jews; on Sabbath eve they light up their houses with as many candles as there are family members; young and old alike sing at the dinner table. An absolute peace reigns over their Sabbaths.”

The Volhynian Jews were also happier than their Lithuanian, Belarusian, and other counterparts, thanks to the fact that they had avoided the famine of 1800. Volhynia, in contrast to other regions, had exported food products to the affected areas. Another favorable influence were Aleksander's decrees annulling the rights of the Polish nobility to pass legal judgments on the Jews of their estates. At the same time, Jews saw the army's need for merchandise as war with France approached, and they set up factories for canvas and other materials. It was in this context that a Kremenets Jew by the name of Shteynberg opened a factory that employed 126 workers. He did not make use of workhands supplied by the nobility, but hired free people.

In 1828 Volhynian Jews possessed 28 factories. In Russia at that time, that industry was still in its infancy. But here Jewish productivity stood out as being particularly fruitful, just as it had under Polish rule. During the short period of only 14 years, 1828-1842, the Jews of Volhynia doubled the number of factories of all kinds–from 28 to 56. This represented about 24% of the 235 factories in the land. The 41 canvas factories owned by Jews were joined by two more, owned by the Kremenets Jews Averbukh and Bernshteyn. The Averbukh family was active in the textile business in Kremenets until the mid-19^th century.

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The author Mendele Mokher-Sforim represented the Jews of this time by depicting the figure of a poor wretch with an old nag. The truth is that Jews played an important role in the transport infrastructure in those years. But there were almost no means of transport available. A member of a special research commission investigating the state of transport complained that the miserable transport conditions had led to the disappearance of competition in the trade markets. In the large cities, trade was entirely in Jewish hands, as well as all the livelihood linked to the setting up of inns, taverns with surrounding courtyards. The Jewish coachmen with their wagons brought customers from the market towns into the cities and back again. In Kremenets alone there were half a dozen such Jewish inns.

Elsewhere we have discussed the Kremenets area's fertile soil. The Jews developed a series of small industry factories. Out of five lime-works factories, one of them was owned by the Jew Manus Perlmuter, while the others were operated by Jews as lease holdings. In the present century, too, brick production was in Jewish hands, of the Trisk Hasid Shlome, who was well known by the name Vapelnik.

Of the eight beer breweries, one belonged to the Jew Nachman Bat, while his son Velvel produced tallow candles. Incidentally, as a Radzyn Hasid, he built a Hasidic prayer house next to his courtyard. Besides the aforementioned canvas factories, glass, tobacco, raw fur processing, and fur trading were also Jewish professions. The Kremenets Jew Shmuel Mikhel dealt with glass; Lazer Halpern dealt with tobacco, while also sending beets for sugar production deep into the country. A few Kremenets Jews were also directly involved in the sugar production itself.

Wheelwright was another Jewish profession, as was the production of roof tiles.

Over 50% of the canvas factories in Russia were located in Volhynia–39 of 75. Of those 39, 8 were in Jewish hands, of which 2 were from Kremenets.

Out of the 90 tanners (leather production) in the country, 65 were in Volhynia, the majority in Jewish hands. Of the 23 iron foundries, 1 was Jewish (in Kremenets).

Czar Aleksander wanted to capture Jewish souls by opening elementary schools for Jewish children; at the same time he established the Society for Israelite Christians to promote conversion. At that time, the finance minister Cancrin, a major antisemite, won out over the position of Duke Galitsin, an adviser who had strongly promoted the conversion society. Cancrin argued that the Jews were not so easily fooled. He explained that “we can only tolerate that race in a reduced number; their proliferation is a misfortune; granting them equal rights with the native people would be a great error.”

The result of Galitsin's soul snatching is that they indeed managed to take in 300 souls. Soon after the end of the Franco-Russian war, Cancrin's harsh policies began with a series of expulsions of the Jews from the villages and areas that lay within 50 versts of the Austrian border. The Jews were driven out of those villages. The Jews of Volhynia and parts of Podolia were greatly affected. When Nicholas I ascended to the Russian throne in 1825, the persecutions were extended to the western provinces. Two years later, in 1827, he issued a decree ordering the recruitment of children as young as 12 for an entire 31 years of military service. This decree struck a blow to the very backbone of Jewish life. Not only were Jewish children dying, physically and, to a lesser extent, psychologically, but Jewish life in these places was completely demoralized.

Hired thugs, sadly notorious “snatchers,” abducted children from the helpless masses to sell them back to those who could pay the ransom. The required quota or recruits, designated by the term Cantonists, would be sent to the army.

During his journey to Viatka in 1835, the great fighter for a free Russia, Aleksander Gertsen, encountered a group of Jewish children who were being moved on foot from Perm to Kazan.

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The officer escorting the children told him that a third had already died en route and that by the time they reached their destination half of those who survived would also be dead. Aleksander Gertsen wrote:

“Unfortunate, unfortunate children! The 12- and 13-year-olds have managed to hang on as best they could, but the 8-year-olds! The blackest brush cannot depict such things on canvas: their deathly white lips, and the blue circles under their little eyes tell of their enfeebled state. Those unfortunate children, without a gentle hand, without a mother's consolation, frozen to the bone by the icy winds that cut through from the Arctic Sea. They have gone to their graves. I was choked up with tears.”

And how did the situation look in Kremenets?

Yitschak Ber Levinzon wrote a pamphlet, Abandoned World, in Yiddish. Normally he wrote in Hebrew, but in this instance he wrote in Yiddish so that everyone could read the horrors of the child abductions. There he depicts the atrocities committed by the “snatchers” and how the community synagogue protected the wealthy. In the wealthy households, they divided up the boys among several families, registering one boy for each, as an only son was exempt from conscription. And vice versa, they brought together several poor families and registered them as one big family with many sons. Families added a child from a poor family, and that poor child would take their own child's place, saving their own. All this was carried out formally, with a protocol and in the presence of witnesses. They even gathered 12 paupers, and the teachers, in the synagogue and had them swear on the Torah scrolls that the composition of the wealthy family was genuine, that the poor child was the wealthy man's son, and thus sent the child off, giftwrapped for Czar Nicholas. Lamentations, wailing, and weeping were heard from the poor helpless mothers: some fainted, but it was all to no avail. When someone tried to hide a victim, the powerful families hired strong men, “snatchers,” to deliver the victim to the authorities.

The Jews of Kremenets, like those of Volhynia overall, were relatively lucky. F. N. Diakov, the governor of Smolensk, Mogilev, and Vitebsk, wrote that the expulsions of Jews from the villages had flooded the western cities with poverty, and he demanded that these Jews be settled on free land. The gendarme colonel Drebush, an antisemite, also pointed a finger at the flaring poverty. He, however, suggested that the Jews be sent to Siberia. The report from the Volhynian governor Vasiltshikov to Petersburg strikes quite a different tone:

“The cities are overpopulated due to expulsions from the villages. This has led to greater competition for resources in the cities. The craftsmen are ready to do whatever it takes to earn a living. If the Jews were to be sent back to the places they came from, it would serve a double purpose: they would save their community organizations the headache of having to support the poor, and those same could be restored to their earlier situations; the craftsmen for their part would be able to satisfy the demand in all places; the number of workers would also increase if trade schools were opened for their children.”

In the 1830s-1840s, 39 Jewish agricultural colonies were established. In particular, downtrodden Jews from Lithuania and Belarus came to work the land. There was only one colony, known by the name “New Zhitomir,” made up of Volhynian Jews. About 5 versts from Kremenets, Jews settled in farming estates of various sizes.

The Kremenetser Yitschak Ber Levinzon was heavily involved in the project. He wrote memoranda and reports directly to the ministry explaining that the Jews would adapt to agricultural labor. In Kremenets, 36 families registered with him, the majority those that had previously been expelled from villages. It is very likely the matter did not progress much further and that they signed themselves up as a means of shielding their children from conscription.

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As soon as one of these families was registered for farm labor, it was already a protection against military obligation.

A Jew from Kremenets, under the pseudonym “Volyner,” described the matter thoroughly in a letter:

“One first had to prove that the local administration was letting any given Jew go of his own accord. This served as proof that they were free of tax. A young man who potentially fell into the category of recruit needed to bring two Christians to bear witness that he truly knew the business of working the land. Additionally, he would need a confirmation from the court to acknowledge the witnesses' oaths. Then a signature from the local police, which in turn would need to be authenticated by the higher police hierarchy in the provincial capital. Once all this was ready, it would be sent to the governor for confirmation. Finally, the governor would send the application to the minister in Petersburg. Quite often the small-town bureaucrat would make some error due to lack of literacy, and the whole process would have to be started from scratch. Before you knew it, the whole enterprise fizzled out.”

We can read about the situation in the 1870s in Y. D.'s correspondence in the Russian-Jewish newspaper Voskhod (1879):

“Kremenets, a peripheral, out-of-the-way town with a population of 20,000 souls, with over 8,000 Jews. Recently some have emigrated to America and Australia. Most of the Jews are shopkeepers, but there are also many craftspeople, such as tailors, carpenters, cobblers, turners. The latter are overloaded with work. They are always busy. They would earn a good living if they worked for themselves instead of working for others, for the kulaks. A whole class of ‘social parasites’ (idlers and dreamers) who drain the sap from the unfortunate working man, who is compelled to lower himself with an ingratiating smile before those who need a favor from them. Moneylenders and so-called intellectuals who read the Russian newspapers. There are also others whose families boast of prestigious rabbinical roots. They all live off the labor of others, from distributing the necessary materials that have to be processed, and then selling the finished articles on the market in such a way that the craftsman receives pennies for his work, and the cream remains with the benefactor. Earnings for workers reach up to three rubles a week, from which they must feed their families of six or seven people and sometimes more. It is often pitiful to behold the pale, emaciated, exhausted people, who must pay 15 kopeks for a pound of meat, and only the worst dregs at that, for they live from one loan to the next.”

The author describes the life of a nearby family, young parents, dying on their feet, because the 35-year-old breadwinner earns three rubles a week, while his benefactor, the man who loaned him the money to buy raw materials, who is at the same time the one who sells said materials, earns twice as much. People have no choice but to turn to such people because there are no organizations willing to provide the craftsman with cheap credit. This was the working man's situation, and also of those former Kremenets merchants who had fallen on hard times and still bore the prestige of their previous good standing. Here it is perhaps worth noting the two figures of Jewish speech related to Kremenets: “New Moon Kremenets” and “Filistranten Kremenetser.”

In Volhynia, the antisemitic movement was concentrated in the Holy Pochayev Lavra^[7], an Orthodox monastery situated 23 versts from Kremenets. In the monastery they printed antisemitic literature, including a dedicated newsletter, the Pochayevski Listok, which all the priests distributed on Sundays to the peasant population. Its main purpose though was to aid young priests and teachers in schools to “enlighten” the children about the “Zhids.”

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Under the name “Union of the Russian People,” one such antisemitic campaign was started in Pochayev by Abbot Vitaly and the monk Ilyodor, who was famous all over Russia for his crusades, accompanied by many rural members. On his way he spread incense and blessed the people with the cry “The Russian is coming.” In August 1906, in Pochayev, the first beginnings of an organized economic boycott against Jews emerged. A kind of credit union was opened for the peasants, with a cooperative store.

In Kremenets itself, and in the surrounding small towns, the Pochayev Lavra had no influence. Though Abbot Vitaly had a very loyal servant, Bishop Nikon, in the Kremenets Cathedral, the Christian population did not show any strong desire to boycott the Jewish shops. On market days farmers from the surrounding villages continued to bring their wagons laden with wares as always.

The 1905 revolution also went by peacefully in Kremenets. Among the 13 delegates to the Duma from Volhynia governorate was the Kremenets Bishop Nikon. Some Jews thought, wouldn't it be great to be rid of him in that way? And sure enough, it turned out that, by being in distant Petersburg, he did a favor for his beloved Kremenets.

In 1906-1907, when the Stolypin reaction was rampant throughout the country, Volhynia in particular stood out, thanks to the toxic antisemitic propaganda of the “saintly” Abbot Vitaly in the Pochayev Lavra.

In winter 1907 on Kremenets' Butcher Street, a melancholy atmosphere was spreading. Vasil, who worked for Noach the butcher, a notorious brawler, recounted what he had heard straight from Nikon's mouth on Sunday in the cathedral: that it was time to take revenge on the enemies of the czar and the Fatherland. That week Noach was busy sharpening the knives and cleavers. In the Butcher's Synagogue he would whisper with other selected brawlers such as himself: Yosel, Yankel, Leybtsi–Moshe Poyker's son–and Zelik, the tall, broad man whose very figure could inspire fear and exude an air that he was not to be messed with. Vasil was always on his guard, walking around among the farmers and taking the temperature. Butcher Street was preparing in secret, concealed from those around it. But, thankfully, everything passed peacefully. Mikite the bricklayer, the husband of Nastya the drunkard, after a few rounds of brandy with Vasil, told everybody that the peasants would not lay a finger on their “Jewish brothers,” and indeed that is how it came to pass.

The growth of the economy and industrial development in the country, the Russo-Japanese War, and the 1905 revolution led to major changes in the country's social and cultural life, particularly for the Jews.

The tendency increased for Jews to be drawn to crafts and to build extensive trade networks of finished merchandise deep into the country. This led to the establishment of a financial basis for credit, namely, a special bank.

The trade that grew the most was carpentry. Kremenets furniture was sold as far away as Warsaw and a great many other large cities in the Russian Empire. The cobblers, turners, and so on were similarly successful.

In 1911, the entire population of Volhynia was 3,980,400. In Kremenets district lived 238,484–16.5% of all of Volhynia. The town of Kremenets itself at the time had a population of 21,847 souls. Of that number 10,829 were Orthodox, 6,617 were Jewish, and 2,401 were Catholics.

What follows is a list of Jews who were active in those years in various professions. The list has been put together using information from the town archives and other sources.

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Shopkeepers

Flour and bread: Gitel Feldman, Sore Tabatshnik, Chaye Basis, Fayvish Moshe Kohen (from Berezhtsy), Itsi (from Berezhtsy), Simche (from Berezhtsy).

Grain shops (bran, millet, buckwheat, cereal, barley, groats, corn, wheat, oats, chopped straw, and others): Volf, with the nickname the Yellow; Ayzik Koyfman, his son Moshe; two grandchildren, Elye and Avraham (Mendele the ritual slaughterer's grandson, who died at the Germans' hands in Lodz).

Gastronomic articles and dried fruit: Rivke Averbukh, Chaye Basis, Brayne Binshtok, brothers Yisrael, Lozil, and Hersh Landsberg, Lazar Leviatin, Nachum Gokhberg, Simche Ginzburg, Nachman Trakhtentukh, Hersh Leviatin, Volf Shepetin, Gitel Gokhberg, Moshe Lis, Duvid Gunzburg, Hendel Kligman, Barukh Shtraykh, Tsirel Shtraykh, Brayne Groynem, Sheyndel Dermanski, Toyve Kamach, Chana Likht, Leyzer Ladvits, Nachum Maler, Merel Barukhin, Zalman Dobromil, Velvel Lerner, Yosil Etinger, Ite Milshteyn, Avraham Chazan.

Fancy goods: Moshe Benderski, Yitschak Poltorak, Shimon Biberman, Getse Klorfayn, Feyge Rish, Hersh Vitels, Aba Binshtok, Ester Krivin, Motye Shapoval, Miryam and Zalman Berger, Feyge Eydelman, B. Vaynshtok, Yankel Dobikirer, S. Frenkel, Yankel Barash, Toyve Goldenberg, Hendel Kligman, Chaye Kudish.

Various other stores: Ester Fuks, Aharon Tshatski, Tsirel Shtraykh, Mordekhay Sudak, Mikhel Rivtshin, Fishel Fishman, Toyve Goldenberg, Mirel Fuks.

Wine and other drinks: Pinchas Rom, Shlome Frenkel, Nachman Shepetin, Alter Efres, Chayim Lis, Avraham Shufman, Yosel Tshaytshenits, Moshe Milshteyn, Asher Vayslis, Asher Vaysberg. The latter also owned drive-in accommodations. The latter two also operated taverns.

Dry goods, cloth, decorative items: Mordekhay Shniter, Yenkel Kremenetski, Moshe Roykhel, Shlome Kroyt, Mordekhay Averbukh, Shlome Averbukh, Rachel Gun, Rivke Drobnes, Duvid Gorovits, Mikhel Koltun, Makhes Kodish, Yechiel Panakh, Berel Roym, Itsi Shkornik, Chane Erlikhman, Chane-Leye Fingerman, Leye Geyer, Ite Breytman, M. Borokhin, Yankel Kroyt, Zalman Dobromil, Yankel Breytman, Yankil Yospe, Nachman Lisi, Alter Efres.

Cotton for quilts, jackets, ropes: Itsi Bakimer, Toyve Bakimer, Moshe Gapun, Ester Brik.

Leather, secondhand boots: Brayne Binshtok, Rivke Averbukh, Meir Averbukh, Shalom Krivin, Sose Ginzburg.

Glass, mirrors, window frames: Tsipe Gertner, Shaye Beloguz.

Utensils, lamps, pots: Moshe and Yehudit Beloguz, Yenkel Beloguz, Shlome Grinberg, Toyve Margolis.

Cap and hat stores–men's: Shmuel Benderski, Shimon Benderski.

For women: Rachel Goldenberg, Menucha Gornfeld.

Hardware, cast-iron, garden and field implements: Hersh and Simche Blumenfeld, Zelig Oks, Shmuel Oks, Yose and Itsi Kitay, Simche Teper, Yenkel Gliklis, Sose Gintsberg, Simche Lerner.

Ready-to-wear: Aharon Fridman, Shalom Potikhe, Chaye Kleynshteyn, Ayzik Fridman, Avraham Feldman.

Old clothes: Shalom Hibelbank, Yosel Hibelbank (comb maker), Moshe Yospe.

Furniture: Yosel Berman (nicknamed spasiba za torah [thank you for Torah]), Aharon Berman (nicknamed fertel gor [quarter chicken]), Moshe Ayzenshteyn (nicknamed Butsi), Fayvish, Yuda-Leyb Ayzenshteyn, Simche Margolis, Yenkel Ginzburg.

Writing implements: Moshe Feldman, Ben-Tsion Gorenshteyn, Y. Bezdezhski (all also had lending libraries; Moshe Feldman also had Yiddish books and was the first to do so), Chayim Brauner, Yudel Lis, Yudel Poliok, Avraham Shufman.

Bakeries–confectionery: Shlome Breytman, Shmuel Gornshteyn, Leyvi Motshan, Shalom Motshan, Berel Brikman.

Secondhand tailors: Moshe Vizele's.

Tailors: Avraham (fur hats), Yuda Shrayer, Motye Khovis.

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Cabinetmakers: Elye (nicknamed meshtan), Ts. Fisherman, Aharon-Leyzer Ikhles, Elye Altman (who was also the Torah reader in the Old Synagogue), Mordekhay Barshap, Itsi-Yosi Yokels, Yenkel Berman, Simche Elyes, Ayzik Elye's son-in-law (nicknamed Der Dervorgener [the Choked] because he had a long, narrow neck), Shlome Mordush (nicknamed Farshtei [Understand]), Shia (nicknamed Lover, di Groyser [Big Laugher]) and Zelig (nicknamed Sheygets [gentile]).

Cutters: Tevel and Mekhel Ayzenshteyn, Yosel, Itsik Moshe's (Himel Ganav [Sky Thief]), Zundel (Tshuptshik [Thingamajig]), M. Deser, Shaul Yitschak's.

Wheelwrights, carpenters, shinglemakers: Shlome, Azriel, Avraham, Ayzik (di Ki [the Cow]), Hersh (Kop [Head]).

Woven goods: Shmay.

Shoes: Menashe Storazh.

Tinsmiths, metalsmiths, mechanics: Hershel Kharpes (Mints?), Moshe Brik, Luzer Brik, Shia, Yone Zeyger.

Glaziers: Gershon Sofer, Yosel Sofer, Dudye.

Painters: Shimon Chayim Karsh, Mendel Karsh.

Porters: Zalman, Shaul Kazaratski, Moshe (Hipsh [Nice]), Ruven (der Kleyner [the Small]), Fishel Aksel.

Water carriers: Motye, Yenkel, Chayim-Pinchas, Moshe, Benye, Vove, Shaykele (Parkh [Boil]), Shakhna, Itsikel, Moshe-Yosel, Hersh-Volf.

Water distributor: Motel Nudel (the only one).

Jeweler, watchmaker: Nachman Goldenberg, Duvid Goldenberg, Leyzer Vaksman, H. Perets, M. Kesler, Avraham Chisdis, Aharon Hokhgelernter, Leybele the ritual slaughterer's son.

Bricklayers: Avraham (Tsiske [Teat]), Ayzik (Storozh [Guard]), Chayim Leyzer, Chayim Yos.

Coachmen–horse and wagon owners: Avraham Barshap, Ezra Beznoski.

Drivers (for hire) : Shimele, Fayvel Beznoski, Yosel.

Greengrocers: Kalatelakhe (Colonel; nickname), Kadushkekhe (Barrel; nickname)

Butchers: Shimon (Shmoyte Pan [Master Flag]), his son Moshe, Beril and his sons Yosil Leybtsi and Mendel (all nicknamed Poyke [Drummer]), Zelik, Noach, Mendel Treybatsh, Meir (nicknamed Kaputine [Captain]), Moshe, his son (nicknamed Shive), Yenkel (nicknamed Goy [gentile]), Yankel (?) Tsvik.

Dough kneaders: Chaye, Hinde

Book peddler: Moshe

Shipping agents: Sh. Goldenberg, Y. Bershadski, Leyb Shumski, Yenkel Eydis.

Forest merchants: Meshulem Katz, A. Katz, Mendel Lashtshuver, Yenkel Shnayder's, Simche Kahan.

Insurance agents: Mikhel Shumski (Petersburg Life & Fire Insurance Society), A.Y. Zak (“Rus” Society), V. Gornfeld (Russian Transport Co.), Moshe Halperin (Russian Insurance Society), Ruven Goldenberg (Volga), Leybish Vaynberg (First Russian Co.), Moshe Eydelman.

Lumber and furniture materials: P. Y. Shnayder, Avraham Shepetin, Moshe Kapuzer.

Sawmill leasing: Miryam Berger, Zusye Gefilekhts, Duvid and Nachum Bat, Yisrael Barats.

Legal aid: Barukh Skhizh, Moshe Hindes, A. Bideker, Moshe Mes, Meir Yampol.

Manufacturers: Hersh-Mendel Roykhel (paper), Herts Frishberg (shoes), Chaskel Grishberg (shoes), Nachman Bat (candles, soap), Shlome Shteynberg (bricks, lime, tortoiseshell, Simche Grinberg (chalk factory).

Pelt dealers and possibly for bubbles (bladders?) : Itsi Bat, Yakel Shochet, Moshe (nicknamed Pliotke [Gossip]), Motye Shkudnik.

Druggists and pharmacists: Moshe Eydis, Asher Hindes, Leyb Milshteyn, Mordekhay Efros, Avraham Bisdes, Leye Rotenberg, Moshe Nofekh, Chayim Zigelboym, Azriel and Elye Yuzepov.

Barbers (also called shavers, or healers) : Efraim Sender Rozental, Feyge, Zelig Sondes.

Medical doctors and dentists: M. Litvak, A. Landsberg, Z. Sheynberg, G. Leviatin, Duvid Tabak, Meir Rofe, Chayim Rants, Shmuel Roytman, Ikhel Landesberg.

Healers (surgeons) : Avraham Lesman.

Tutors: Milshteyn, Nofekh, Shapiro.

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Teachers: Shakhna Buts, Shimshon, Shlome, Elye, Leyb Zeyger, Hersh Zigelbaum (from Berezhtsy).

Ritual slaughterers: Mendele Hokhgelernter; Leybele, his son; Duvid; Beril; Shlome; Yekil, his son; Chana, his son-in-law; Tsadok Yaspe.

Cantors: Matus, Shlomele, Moshe, Nachman, Shlome Shochet, Abash Likht.

Ritual circumcisors: Mendele the ritual slaughterer, Leybele the ritual slaughterer.

Sextons: Mendele of the Great Synagogue, Aharon of the Radzyn Synagogue, Pesach of the Hasidic Synagogue, Motye of the Butchers' Synagogue.

Scribes, “writers”: Duvid Doyekop, Duvid Shrayber, Mendel Mis.

Newspaper vendors: Yisrael Barbas, Kalman Finkel.

Midwives: a total of eight; the Jewish ones were Zlate Bakst, Sheyndel Teper, Sore Yampolski.

Farming machinery: Velvel Ovadyes, B. Perelmuter, Avraham Vaynberg.

Fishing leases: Moshe Raykhman (also a miller).

Laundry/ironing: Simche Shvarts, M. Finkel.

Credit union (business loans) : chairman: D. Goldenberg, managers: Shmuel Geler, B. Skhizh.

Loan brokers: (nicknamed Shliselekh [middlemen]) Ayzik Krants, Elye Reznik, Ayzik Shlisele, Lipe Shternberg, Moshe Milshteyn.

Beverage producers (kvas, soda water) : Lipe Shternberg, Moshe Milshteyn.

Beer producers: F. Altman–25,000 barrels per year.

Printers: Ben-Tsayn Gornshteyn, Volf Tsvik.

Housemaster: Moshe Teper.

Teahouse and bar: Motye Shepsel, Asher Vaysberg, Manusovitsh.

Goose pluckers: Chaye (nicknamed di Plikerin [the Plucker]).

Prayer women in the cemetery: Leye, Leybeshekhe.

Mechanics: Shaye, Yone Zeyger, Avraham Brik, Leyzer Brik.

Chicken and egg dealers: Shepsel Goldenberg (bathhouse owner); Rachel fun di Gendz [from the geese]); Basye, her daughter.

Caterers: Hinde–baked confections of all kinds for circumcisions and weddings.

Feathers, rag dealers: (the latter called hantushniks, who exchanged rags for silver rings and earrings).

Bathhouse owner: Shepsel Goldenberg.

Leaseholders (contractors) : Chayim Bakimer (tax collector), Mendel Mandelkern, Mendel Lashtshever.

In May 1914 groups of strangers began appearing in the streets, gathering around Mountain of the Cross. They were secretly preparing weapons, but people explained it away as workers laying tracks for a new train line.

That summer, before the hot sunny days had even passed, the worldwide slaughter had begun.

The Russian armies were entirely victorious and succeeded in driving the Austrian forces as far as Krakow. There the enemy shielded itself inside the fortress, which the Russian forces besieged for months on end. Kremenets became a hub for delivering supplies for the army in Galicia. For months there was no fighting on that section of the front. The German army was still concentrating on the western front. The Jews of Kremenets supplied the nearby towns with livelihood for a whole seven months.

In July 1915 those seven months of plenty came to an end, and the months of exile began. At this time, the German armies, which had been pushed back from the Russian-Austrian front, began to triumph. Hundreds of Jewish families from the surrounding towns filled the roads in their sudden rush to find safety in Kremenets. At the same time, the Jews of Kremenets evacuated the town along with the local administration and moved somewhere deep inside south Russia.

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The Jews were also afraid of possible looting. The Jews of Kremenets were afraid that they, too, would fall victim to the atrocities carried out by Cossacks against the Jews of Galicia. But while the Russian armies were stationed in Kremenets, the Jewish soldiers were divided into their own separate formations to be sent to the Ottoman front. As they passed through, these soldiers warned the locals to protect themselves from the wild Cossack units when they appeared in town. As “luck” would have it, these fears did not come to fruition. Most of the soldiers passing through lay curled up in their wagons, not even looking out to see where they were. Yet the local Jews had prepared themselves to meet each oncoming soldier with gifts. In the central street, several of the large stores were filled with bread, tobacco, and other things to give to them as provisions. This is how things went:

On that Yom Kippur eve, one Jewish soldier broke off from his troop and made his way into an open shop with a cry: “Jews, rejoice! They are coming to you. Today or tomorrow your ‘liberators’ will arrive.” “They” in this case were the Germans. The Jewish soldier, a native of Riga, asked for civilian clothes, for he intended to stay. He did, however, warn about the few remaining Cossack forces, who would be passing through Kremenets during Yom Kippur. A few of the people busy in the shop, the author of these lines among them, rushed to the synagogues in the middle of Kol Nidre and begged the rabbis for permission for the bakers to spend all night baking bread and to send word to each family to bring flour to the bakeries. In the Hasidic synagogue, Yosel argued with the Petrikov Rabbi to grant permission. Overnight, provisions were prepared and distributed to several selected shops. The next morning, on the day of Yom Kippur, these few shopkeepers were the only living souls that the Cossacks saw. All the Jews were in the synagogues. The emptied streets looked like an abandoned ruin. The cold cords of rain, carried by gusts of strong wind, dispersed the fleeing groups of remaining Cossacks, who sought shelter under the eaves of the houses. In haste they grabbed bags of tobacco and bread from outstretched hands and hurried on their way. And thus the closing of the Yom Kippur services in the synagogues coincided with the final exit of the fleeing Cossacks.

For a while, the town was a no-man's land. The Austrian armies, assuming perhaps that the Russians had fortified themselves in the hills, did not dare enter the town. They remained three versts from town, on the other side of the Ikva River. The Russian army, for its part, retreated deep into the hinterland. There was a standstill along the entire front that lasted for several months.

Gradually, life returned somewhat to normal. A “citizens' committee” was formed with a priest at its head, taking the place of a “mayor” of the municipal administration. In place of police, a militia was formed under the leadership of the Hebrew teacher Y. Shpal (who later came to America). His Jewish helpers, with bands on their arms, kept order in the town. People's kitchens were also set up for adults and children especially for the newly arrived refugees from the surrounding towns.

Food for the population was sourced from the villages. Trade between Jews and gentiles resumed as in the old days. All the reserves left over by the retreating army were absorbed by the kitchens and hospitals. The priest used his influence with the Christian population to provide firewood. The only problem was that the town had been left without a doctor. Only the Jewish medic Duvid Tabak remained. It did not take long, however, for the situation to improve. The Russian army, under General Brusilov's command, was soon quartered somewhere southwest of Kremenets. Military divisions soon began arriving in town. The Red Cross also arrived, bringing a group of doctors who soon established first aid stations.

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The first Jewish aid committee, YEKOPO^[8], was set up in Kiev, and it sent its delegate, Rabitshev, to open a Kremenets branch. The committee contained the pharmacist Moshe Eydes (chairman), R. Goldenberg, M. Gorling, A. Fridman, M. Tshatskes, M. Eydelman, and Y. Kremenetski. Among the youth members were: Yone Grinberg, Ch. Gibelbank, Ch. Fingerut, M. Biberman, F. Eydes, and the author of these lines. The rabbis Shenderovitsh and M. Barats were coopted. They were needed to block the view of the prying eyes of the military authorities.

The military leaders not only left the unofficial mixed town administration undisturbed, but they even held it in high regard. The military counterespionage formations did not only discourage the spread of anti-Jewish propaganda, as had been the case in Lithuania and Galicia, but they even established contact with Jewish homes. The military high commandant was even a frequent guest in the home of the abovementioned Moshe Eydes. This “miracle” occurred in a town situated not far from enemy frontlines.

Several hundred children were taught in the building of the abandoned girls' gymnasium. Apart from two graduates, all the teachers were volunteers. Let us mention some who were later killed by the Germans: Yone Grinberg, a lawyer from Liege University; Chayim Gibelbank, student of the Kiev Institute of Commerce; Y. Lemberg, student; Tanye Rozenfeld; Manya Hofman and Gesye Leviatin, high school girls; Ch. Krusman, later a teacher in the TsISHO^[9] school in Lublin, who had arrived among the evacuees from Radzivilov; Frits (Efraim) Eydes, who died somewhere in Biro-Bidzhan; a woman from Lodz who had studied in a Moscow university and was a teacher for beginners; and two Bible teachers, of a modern bent, Berger from Berezhtsy and Vaysbalt from Radzivilov. All subjects except Russian language, geography, and Russian history were taught in Yiddish. A kitchen and dining hall for all the students were set up on the lower floor of the gymnasium building. With the return of the army and all its divisions, there were fears that the school would be liquidated, that they would surely requisition the building for military usage. There were even rumors that the school building would be converted to a hospital. But soon ideas formed of a possible way to save the school. It began when the priest from the town council sent word, via a special envoy, that the military commandant was preparing to visit the school. At an emergency meeting, the following plan was devised: on the day in question, the teachers would perform their job with enthusiasm and zeal. All subjects had to be in Russian: language, literature, geography, and history. Only a couple of the younger classes should be held in Yiddish, under the guise of zakon bozhi (religion), which Yosel Berger, with his lightly silvered black beard, would teach wearing a skullcap on his head. It would have to appear kosher in the eyes of the Russians from Moscow. In short, no stone should be left unturned. The representatives of the citizens' committee, decked out in their Sabbath best, decorated the meeting room, where the guestbook was opened on a pedestal, with a special note of praise from the priest prominently displayed.

At midday, the fateful hour arrived. In the yard, the priest's sled came through the wide entranceway, and the priest stepped out. From the other side, the commandant, his assistant, and a nurse from the Red Cross emerged. From the corridor they could hear the children's singing. After a polite welcome in the meeting room, the guests were brought to visit the classrooms. As the doors were opened, the guests were impressed by the children, who held their hands up high, eager to answer the teacher's questions. The whole class stood up. The nurse uttered the word “Continue,” followed a minute later by “Thank you, children.” The class for the very youngest pupils, the six-year-olds, had been deliberately left until last.

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“A very Jewish appearance, interesting,” the visitors said. The priest informed them that the children were learning “religious studies,” which impressed the visitors even more. They returned to the meeting room, where the visitors left some generous comments in the guest book. The commandant wrote: “A wonderful institution,” and after him the nurse wrote: “A miracle on a military front,” and with polite gratitude they said goodbye to the priest and the Jewish representatives. All of them let out a breath of relief, feeling that the school had been saved. At the moment they passed the corridor toward the exit, there was a sound of children's song: the music teacher was teaching them Hofman's Tales, and the sweet-melancholy tones of “Noch Vostorgav” (beauteous night) rolled pleasantly from the children's throats. “Where is that beautiful singing coming from?” the nurse asked. Hearing the answer, she turned to the commandant: “Let's go up to the young artists. It's incredible,” she could not help exclaiming enthusiastically. This cost the school a great deal of extra work. Later on they would have to teach the children a whole repertoire of Russian songs and organize a special musical evening for high-ranking military officials. The morning after the visit, the assistant commandant appeared, accompanied by the same nurse as before, this time with a special interest in finding out what the school needed. At that moment, the school activist Moshe Biberman tried, very delicately, to ask if it was true that the school was going to be occupied. The assistant commandant responded with surprise: “What on earth are you talking about? A wonder such as this!” Inquiring about the kitchen and dining room, the guests asked what supplies were needed. The only answer was: writing material for the children. The following day the school became rich with all sorts of paper, notebooks, pencils, pens, ink, and supplies for the kitchen, with special packages of sweets for the children.

“The miracle on the front” did, however, burden the teachers' collective with a difficult task.

The work was disturbed not by outsiders, but by their fellow Jews. The abovementioned aid committee, according to the ordinances from the Kiev delegate Rabitshev, needed to subsidize the school in the meantime until the OPE^[10] was informed about covering the expenses. That the rabbi had to oversee the accuracy of Jewish instruction in the religious lessons was self-evident. And, of course, the Zionists wanted more hours of Hebrew instruction, and also for it to begin from the first year of school. There were disagreements, with religion and bourgeois Zionism on one side and the stubborn school directors on the other. The teachers themselves, even the Hebrew teacher, stood their ground, but the treasury was in the aid committee's hands. Disagreements intensified. When the teachers did not give in, there were threats that the issue would be brought before the priest, the town's leader. In the meantime, the financial subventions were paused until a representative from OPE in Kiev could come and decide. The teacher Shimon Shpal, who also wore a militia armband, announced one day that the aid committee had decided to occupy the school. The children's parents stood by the teachers (in particular, Ikhel, butcher and choralist in the Great Synagogue should be remembered here). A group of outspoken Yiddishists gathered in Yeshaye Belohuz's house and decided to confront the Zionists when they appeared in the school yard. The Zionist Hebrew teacher did not bring any trace of this animosity into the school. On the contrary, he brought even more passion and enthusiasm to his lessons for the sake of learning. The Zionist teachers only made their position known with the arrival of the OPE delegate from Kiev, Yone Grinfeld, an outspoken Hebraist, a zealot like his colleague the OPE secretary, M. Vaynshelboym. Back in 1910 he had published a pamphlet about Hebrew and Zhargon [Yiddish].

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But being well-versed in pedagogy, and after becoming acquainted with the courses and the children's knowledge, he found himself with a dilemma. He attempted to “improve” the curriculum by adding more Hebrew lessons in the second year, but after long nights of debate in the pedagogical council, he returned to Kiev with no more than he had come with. As a young Zionist he could not condone the town committee's opinion, and so he reinstated the subsidy until the issue could be resolved in the OPE's high committee in Kiev in the presence of a school representative. The boss in Kiev, M. Vaynshelboym, reacted in his own way, by diverting the sending of funds to the school. The author of these lines was invited to Kiev. After long discussions there, the entire OPE committee eventually relented. From then on, the school budget was secure. In Kremenets, too, the opponents on the committee gave up their ambitions. Peacefully, and in the spirit of compromise, an open discussion about language and education prevailed.

But this fairytale did not last long. The temporary pause in hostilities on the Russian-Austrian front came to an end. In May 1916, General Brusilov launched another successful assault against the Austrian forces, who were driven out of Lviv.

The haphazardly gathered crowd of refugees gradually returned to their towns, just as those who had fled from Kremenets began to return from their wandering exile in deepest Russia. With them, those who had previously been the ruling class once again took charge of the town. The gymnasium owner had also returned, and the building had to be abandoned. During that time, the author of these lines found refuge in Petersburg.

The whole romantic weave that had developed around the school fell apart. The government required teacher training, while the OPE in Kiev cut its funding. The school itself, due to a shortage of suitable accommodation, was split between two locations, and the teaching had to be done in two shifts. A plan was hatched that A. Kretshmar, a qualified teacher, would come and take over the school and move it back to its old building. In secret, though, half the students would remain in the new building. In this way, the divided school remained in a four-room apartment until the outbreak of the March Revolution.

In the honeymoon period of the revolution, the whole way of life changed for everyone. The entire fabric of family relations was overturned. The home became like a kind of guesthouse. The street had swallowed up the young people and created a fault line in family life. This period of freedom awakened a kind of overflowing of energy, which was embodied in the founding of new pockets of societal, political, and cultural activity. Differentiated along ideological lines, the youth formed political grouping. Bundists, Zionists, Labor Zionists–later there was even a handworker group, organized with the Bund's help, with the name Folkspartay (People's Party). For the progressive youth, school activities ceased to be the only outlet for their energies. The school remained in the hands of the teachers and the small circle of activists around them. With time, however, new waves of people came from the big cities, from Kiev and Moscow, bringing fresh energies with them. A group of intellectuals, dedicated to the work of education, organized a youth club next to the school for pupils and a children's home for those children too young to go to school. At the head of this youth club was a Jewish student from Kiev, named Baron, from an anarchist Kiev family. In time the Zionist group set up a Hebrew children's home. Ordinary everyday Jews gathered around all these institutions, and in that way the ordinary folk took part in the revolution of freedom.

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They did this not for material enjoyment, but more out of a Jewish, people-of-the-book-esque tendency toward creative and cultural betterment.

This happy fairytale did not last long. The civil war that flared up all over Russia brought separatist elements in Ukraine to the surface. In the course of all these events, the Bolsheviks in Moscow signed a peace treaty with the Germans. This meant that what the Germans had struggled to achieve for decades, through fire and blood, had been given to them without their needing to waste a single shot. An independent Ukraine with the social-democrat Vynnychenko as a prime minister soon breathed its last on account of Kaiser Wilhelm's underground diplomatic coup, which in 1918 resulted in his vassal, Hetman Skoropadskiy, liquidating the young democracy.

In May 1919, Kremenets was occupied by the German military. April of that year was a historic month in the Jewish community's life. For the first time in history, there were elections in accordance with the constitution of the Ukrainian democratic parliament, which Hetman Skoropadskiy had not formally disbanded. The Jewish parties taking part in the elections were the Bund, General Zionists, Labor Zionists, and Folkspartay. On April 29, out of 17 council members, there were 11 Bundists, 5 Zionists, and one member of the Folkspartay. Elected were Avraham, nicknamed Farshteyn (Understand), a carpenter; Barukh Barshap, a tailor; H. Gelernt; Aharon Hokhgelernter; Y. Krusman, a teacher; Y. Fingerhut, a carpenter; Lione Grinberg, a lawyer; and one other. The Zionists were Aharon Fridman, a merchant; Binyamin Landesberg, lawyer; Shimon Shpal, a teacher; Meir Goldring, and others. Menashe the cobbler was from the Folkspartay. The community council and culture commission chairman was H. Gelernt. The chief secretary was Y. Krusman. The culture commission vice chairman was Binyamin Landesberg. Aharon Fridman was the community council assistant secretary. The culture commission chief secretary was Shimon Shpal. In the administrative office were L. Grinberg, chairman; Avraham the carpenter; and Y. Fingerhut. In the social-supply office were Aharon Hokhgelernter; Meir Goldring, the chairman; and one other person; and Barukh Barshap, Menashe the cobbler, and the Zionist councilors, whose names have escaped my memory. Let us here remember the names of those who were killed by the Germans: Binyamin Landesberg, Lione Grinberg, Aharon Fridman, Meir Goldring, and Y. Krusman in Lublin.

After constituting the council, ratified by the official administrative powers, the community budget was drafted and presented to the municipal self-governing body, which needed to include all the Jewish community's needs in its own budget. At that time, however, the German occupation forces had already completed the process of consolidating their power over all of Ukraine. The process began of dismantling all democratic-autonomous structures. In every governorate Kistiakowsky, Skoropadskiy's minister for the interior, installed governors with a “strong” hand. Kremenets shared the same fate. A series of arrests began targeting the Bundist council members all over Ukraine, including Kremenets. They did not arrest everyone initially, only certain individuals as a warning to forget about their barely worn freedoms.

In early July, the police chief made an appearance, accompanied by two armed Germans. After having his house searched, H. Gelernt found himself invited to visit the police station. At the same time, the community secretary Y. Krusman was also taken. H. Gelernt was invited into the German's office, where they assured him he had nothing to worry about and was free to go. At a specially convened council meeting, it was decided to protest directly to the minister for the interior in Kiev. As the Kremenets community was the first to take such a step, the Kiev Jewish community paid close attention to the intervention so that they would know what to expect and how to intervene for other cities should the same issue arise elsewhere.

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When the time came to meet with the representatives from Kremenets, the minister opened the door leading to his office and invited the visitors inside with exceptional politeness. During the conversation, which lasted 30 minutes and included a telephone call to the governor of Zhitomir, the main topic was whether the Bund had a Bolshevik inclination similar to the Labor Zionists, about whom he seemed to demonstrate a degree of familiarity. He raised this question with particular curiosity after his introductory conversation. When they responded to the minister's question with a question: if he was familiar with the articles that the arrestee Moshe Rafes had written in prison and published in the Folkstsaytung newspaper under the heading “On the Threshold of the Counterrevolution,” where he criticized Bolshevism, a playful smile played across the governor's face. With the words “a very interesting article,” the conversation came to an end.

This time, too, the police pitted themselves against the school, seeking to destroy it, not directly but circuitously. The school management was informed that the commander needed the building. This time, however, a miracle occurred, in the form of a newly joined pupil, a gentile of all people. It is well known that during the war the German army distributed a multilingual dictionary in Ukrainian, Belarusian, Yiddish, and German. It happened that one day a German officer paid a visit to the school. He stepped into one of the classrooms, where at that moment they were studying Yiddish. He showed a particular interest in the class, and he sought permission to visit again. After his second visit, he expressed a desire to attend the lessons regularly. In short, he essentially became a pupil.

It turned out that he was a teacher himself, somewhere back in Saxony, and he was fascinated by the mechanism by which a dialect can become its own separate, genuine language. A friendship formed, growing strong enough that during an invitation to drink beer in their club, he admitted to being a member of the German Socialist Party and a great admirer of August Bebel. He confessed that for him the war was toxic and that the Kaiser had lost the war. This student performed the “miracle,” which meant the school didn't have to worry about being bothered.

Little by little, the storms of time destroyed any prospects the Germans had of staying long term in Ukraine. The defeat on the Western Front brought about the German surrender and the November Revolution. Ukraine was taken over by Petliura's armed rabble. In Kremenets, partisan groups appeared in Haydamak costume and long braids. At the head of the municipal autonomous administration was the Ukrainian Social Democrat Tsitayev from Zhitomir. The police-force was taken over by a young, upstanding village starosta by the name of Koval. He had his own personal formation of village boys, deserters from the fallen Russian front. They were prepared to walk through fire for him. A special communication was issued to the population, outlining the restoration of all democratically elected administrative bodies.

In the town magistrate's meeting room, a triumphant holiday spirit reigned, in which brotherhood with the Jews was expressed. It felt like a repeat of the elation of liberation just as in the first days after the Russian revolution. The Jewish community prepared to outline its proposals, with the goal of being assured of the municipal budget, which was headed by the old liberal Kozinski. On top of this, the abovementioned police chief Koval, a Socialist Revolutionary, even invited the Bund to organize cooperatives.

This situation did not last long. The pogroms and massacres of Jews came. All of Ukraine was drenched in Jewish blood. When news of the massacres in Proskurov reached Kremenets, the rabbi announced a day of fasting. The Jews sank down into sorrow and fear. Petliura's government cabinet and general staff moved to Kamenets-Podolskiy, while in Kremenets General Chmolo and his staff appeared.

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Rumors spread through town that they were preparing to issue the call to start a pogrom. And sure enough, in D. Tsvik's printworks, the community chairman, accompanied by Y. Krusman and L. Grinberg, found the typeset text of just such a call, which was to be printed and displayed in every street. After coming to an understanding with Koval, the police chief, he telephoned to call a whole 200 of his loyal men from the surrounding villages. Under his orders, they were to protect the Jewish population from a pogrom. He paid a visit to the printworks to see the calls against “the Jew, Moshe Rafes, the enemy of the Ukrainian people” for himself. From there he went to General Chmolo. Along with two members of the Jewish community, Koval attempted calmly to persuade the colonel not to publish the proclamation. Koval endeavored to buy time, delaying by just one day to give his men enough time to reach the town. He returned the following day to speak with the colonel, this time accompanied by municipal head Tsvitayev (his men were already in position and had been given instructions). During this visit, he enjoined the colonel not only to refrain from publishing the proclamation, but also to move his forces outside town, or otherwise a bloodbath would ensue. The printer Tsvik, a Jew who had been under orders not to reveal anything to the Jewish community, was unexpectedly visited by a special courier sent by the colonel with the message that he should not publish the proclamation. The Jewish population emerged with not just their lives intact, but also their property. As a result they later reacted warmly to the call to contribute to the expenses of keeping Koval's men for several days.

It was only after the peace treaty in Riga, when all of Volhynia (apart from Zhitomir) was handed over to Poland, that an improvised census of the population was undertaken in 1921. The numbers were far from being even remotely accurate. At that time, so soon after finding themselves in a new state, many had registered themselves as ethnic Poles, and by the later census of 1931 they were gone.

To this day we do not know the exact number of murdered Jews in Volhynia, victims of those times. No thorough research has been carried out.

New Influences in Kremenets

The liberation from serfdom represented perhaps the closing chapter of feudalism in Russia and the eve of capitalism. With this came the impulse toward free initiatives in life: the advent of free thought. These developments also brought about great changes in Jewish life.

Working the land took on a romantic sheen in the eyes of the nascent liberal Russian intelligentsia. Jewish youth from wealthy bourgeois backgrounds also began sniffing around the fields, as well as picking up the cobbler's hammer and the carpenter's saw.

From the other side, the Jews in Volhynia were armored by the powerful emotional world of Hasidism. The Hasidic doctrine in Volhynia was a fundamentally different one from that in Poland. Volhynian Hasidism was an emotional one of the common folk. It was a yearning for mercy, woven up in mildness and humility, like the rich, gentle exterior nature of the Baal Shem Tov or Nachman of Bratslav. In Volhynia one did not see such heated animosity between the various rabbinical dynasties, which ranged from Ruzhin to Medzhibozh.

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In Kremenets, for example, one Hasidic synagogue could have Trisk, Chortkov, Ruzhin, Husiatin, and even Karlin and Korets Hasidim all under one roof. One exception were the Radzyn Hasidim, who had their own synagogue. Polish Hasidism was an intellectual Hasidism. Volhynian Hasidism was steeped in “the Almighty as the heart.” Polish Hasidism, on the other hand, was intellectual, of “Sinai and uprooter of mountains,” stemming from the Rabbi Itshe Meir, the “Iron Headed.”

Hasidism had a considerable influence on ordinary people, who found in it a spiritual refuge for their psyches, trodden down by the relentless economic troubles they faced. This can perhaps help explain why the great Jew of Kremenets, Yitschak Ber Levinzon, had to suffer a great deal of troubles while he was so well regarded elsewhere in Russia. Human reason, pure logic, was not suited to the brains of the common people, who sought to live a life steered by emotion.

In the end though, Levinzonian thought won out. The Kremenetser youth of the 1860s and 1870s were carried along with the new currents then pouring over the whole country. Young people had no difficulty finding their way in the world. In Kremenets there had already been a gymnasium since 1796, founded by the Polish intellectual Czacki. Several hundred students from various cities in Poland, including Vilna, studied in the gymnasium (later Lyceum). Aside from the humanities, German, English, and French professors also taught mathematics, physics, chemistry, science, topology, architecture, agronomics, and jurisprudence. There was a special place for botanical plants from all over the town.

Lyceum Building in Kremenets

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Czacki provided the Lyceum with a library of over 50,000 books in a variety of languages. The Lyceum also had a seminary for monks. Indeed, Yitschak Ber Levinzon often had arguments with them about historical, philosophical, and theological problems, and thanks to them he could make use of all manner of books they had in the library. After the Dwernicki riots were put down, the Lyceum was liquidated. It was revealed that during the Kosciuszko uprising, the school was the site of an underground organization of rebels. In 1833 everything was taken away from there and moved to the Imperial University of St. Vladimir in Kiev. In 1836 the building was converted into an Orthodox priest seminary and school, which existed until the beginning of World War I. Colloquially, the local people always referred to the place as “the seminary.” The large number of students also provided a significant source of livelihood for the town. Jewish youth had contacts with the seminarians, some of whom studied with young Jews voluntarily. The extent of the seminary's influence on the Jewish street can be seen in the enthusiastic greetings the Jewish cultural workers expressed in writing to mark the seminary's centenary. Here we present the text in Yiddish translation:

“A gift and message of support in the name of the Jewish community to the priest seminary (former: Lyceum) in honor of its centenary.

“On the distinguished day celebrating a hundred years of the Volhynian spiritual seminary's existence, permeated by a profound feeling of recognition for the institution, the Kremenets Jewish community considers it a duty to express the following brief expressions: as an educational institute for spiritual, moral knowledge, among other things, the Volhynian seminary obtained our sympathies as their educational influence also indirectly reached us too. It inspired in us an interest in knowledge and, through their teaching, they always helped us take the first steps on that path. Generations emerged from the darkness of ignorance thanks to the seminary's work. Another reason we send our most heartfelt greetings and best wishes to the seminary is because it provided the first light of Russian education; which gave rise to the best servants of the Orthodox church. With a crucifix in hand and the words of the Gospels on their lips, they sometimes calmed the angry masses, curbing their wildest instincts in life's harder moments.

“With deep recognition for all these achievements, we hope the seminary will continue to blossom in future; we pray to God that the seminar may continue to serve as it has done up to now, pointing toward goodness, endurance, and love of reason. As a token of deep feelings we have the honor of giving you a rare copy of the Holy Bible, which has spread God's light since the distant times of idolatry.

“Kremenets, September 28, 1896.”

Under this address were the signatures of the following 18 important personalities from the Kremenets community: Government Rabbi B. Kunin; M. D. Shumski; Dr. A. Landesberg; the pharmacist Y. Gindes; Ch. Landesberg (Dr. Landesberg's father); Hersh-Mendel Roykhel (grandfather of the former Israeli ambassador to the Soviet Union); Bunem Ovster; Zalman Raykes; and merchants N. Shepetin, Meir Bernshteyn, Yitschak Landsberg, Chaykel Bernshteyn, Hersh Frishberg, Sh. Barats, Shaul Rass, Hersh Prilutski, and N. Kamenetski. The abovementioned Bible, printed in 1578 in Hamburg, was donated by a Kremenetser Jew by the name of Holender. The wording of the greeting, it seemed, was not to the liking of the editors of the Niedielnaya Khronika Voskhoda, where it was sent to be published. The editors perhaps doubted that the Jews had written such a subservient message themselves detailing the good works wrought by the seminary with “crucifix in hand and the Gospels on their lips.”

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The editors asked Rabbi Kunin about this. In the same issue of the newspaper in which they printed the message, they also printed the rabbi's response, where he explained why the Jews of Kremenets had such high praise for the seminary. He explained that the Volhynian Spiritual Seminary had been “the first step on the path to enlightenment for us (the Jews), for which we are grateful.” From this fact it is clear that the relations between the different faiths in Kremenets were perhaps different than in neighboring places, such as Pochayev, for example. Perhaps the seminary truly did have an influence on the secular enlightenment of the young Jews of Kremenets.

It is worth remembering one of the signatories in particular: Hersh-Mendel Roykhel. He was a somewhat limited man when it came to the meaning of words, but he was an imposing, stately figure, a pious Jew who nevertheless showed no hint of disapproval for secular school teaching for Jewish children. There were many like him: wealthy men who hired tutors for their children.

These young people grew up to be doctors: the Tsukermans, who later practiced in Zhitomir, and the famous Dr. Tovye Hindes, who studied in the University of Kazan and later participated in the revolutionary movement. Years later he settled in Warsaw and was an active Zionist. His son, Mates Hindes, also followed him down this path, becoming a member of the Zionist central committee in Poland and the World Zionist Organization's general actions committee. His brother, Y. Hindes, became a pharmacist and lived in Kremenets. Meir Litvak, a tailor's son, was also a doctor. Arye Landesberg, whose father, Chayim, was a student of Yitschak Ber Levinzon, was also a doctor.

There was one victim, however, that the Jewish academic youth of Kremenets sacrificed on the altar of education, and that was Dr. Bat, who converted to Christianity and became the military doctor of Kremenets. He never became an enemy of the Jews and was always on friendly terms with the local Jews, but because of his conversion, parents later did not want to send their children to the state school.

The Jewish attitude toward trade schools also became quite open. In the 1860s there was a private two-year girls school for professional education in Kremenets, run by the Dudel sisters, graduates themselves. The school even received an annual subsidy from the OPE in Petersburg.

The first Zionist group, known as Chovevei Tsion [Lovers of Zion], included as members: D. Kohano and L. Rozental from Mezhirichi and Hersh Prilutski from Kremenets. Prilutski was joined, after finishing his doctorate in Kazan, by Tovye Hindes.

Kremenets then saw the founding of the third branch of the Chovevei Tsion movement (the first was in Odessa, and the second in Bialystok). When Tovye Hindes later left Kremenets to settle in Warsaw he also founded a branch of Chovevei Tsion there.

Hersh Prilutski, the son of Noach Prilutski from Dubno, who settled in Kremenets, was in those days a fabric wholesaler. But, bit by bit, he became entirely drawn into Chovevei Tsion. He would even travel around to promote it. He published articles in the HaMelits newspaper, and promoted his cause in the style of a preacher. In an issue of HaMelits from 1894 we read that he was invited to Dubno, where the wealthy Ruven Stol was holding a gathering at his house in celebration of Hanukkah. He had even sourced wine and fruit from Palestine especially for the occasion. A large crowd had come to hear Hersh Prilutski's speech about the historical meaning of Hanukkah. The correspondent, Pinchas Pesis, describes the scene, saying that as Prilutski painted a picture of the Jews' position in the world, many of the guests began to shed tears. He sums up the night saying, “Pearls poured from his mouth.”

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Both Toyve Hindes and Hersh Prilutski fought against the slander that the rabbinical world was spreading about the movement. A letter of protest from 1895 contained the signatures of R' Yitschak Elchonen Spektor, from Volozhin, and T. Hindes. Years earlier (in September 1889) Prilutski had published a sharp letter admonishing the Jewish fund collectors in Palestine, whose representatives spread slander about Chovevei Tsion.

Hersh Prilutski, Toyve Hindes, Meshulem Katz, Aba Tsukerman, and others spoke between themselves in a mellifluous, heightened register of the Holy Tongue. Eliezer Yospe wrote about this in HaMelits in 1860, saying, “in Kremenets they held a celebration for the ‘Federation of Clear Language’ founded by Hersh Prilutski, who gives himself over, body and soul, to spreading his passion for his people and language among the young folk.” He continues, saying, “until recently he was all on his own, until along came Dr. Hindes returning from his journey to the Land of Israel. Since then they have been working to spread the ideas of the Yishuv in the Land of Israel and love of the Hebrew language.” Yospe also says that for now “there are four or five such young enthusiasts who come together every week in one of their homes to speak together in Hebrew, or to read a book, a newspaper in that language.” We learn that in Bedrik's Kloyz they had a gathering to spread the word. At first, the pious Jews were against the idea of using a synagogue for such things, but they came to a compromise. That evening Hersh Prilutski spoke in Hebrew before a crowd of 20 young people, about love for the Jewish people and the Yishuv in the Land of Israel. Dr. Hindes, too, spoke in Hebrew about his impressions from his visit there. A guest from Brisk, by the name of Neyman, convinced him to speak in Zhargon (Yiddish) so that the others in the crowd should be able to understand.

Zalman Reyzen wrote about Hersh Prilutski in volume 2 of his Lexicon of New Jewish Literature. The Yiddish Scientific Institute–YIVO (New York) holds his autobiography (written in the ghetto in 1940), which contains many important details.

Toyve Hindes was younger than Prilutski by about 10 years (he was born in 1852). He was raised with the Torah, and apparently he caught the Yitschak Ber Levinzon bug, because he set off to study in the rabbinical seminary. From there he moved on to the University of Tartu and later Kazan University, where he studied medicine. In Tartu he organized a society for Jewish students to study Jewish history and literature. According to Prilutski, this was, thanks to the university administration, the first such society legalized in Russia. Prilutski added that wherever in the world he happened to live, he was actively working toward his Zionist ideals. In Kazan, Hindes was active among the revolutionary students. As a member of Narodnaya Volya^[11], he would travel around the villages in the distant southern regions of Russia, volunteering medical treatment to the peasants and spreading his revolutionary message. He was arrested and eventually expelled from the region. He finished his medical studies in Tartu.

When Toyve Hindes lived in Warsaw, he did not lose his connection to Kremenets. His brother, the pharmacist, still lived there, and he spent many summer months in his hometown. People used to tell the following story about him and one of his closest friends, a military veteran: every morning they would meet each other on the way to work. The friend was being pressured by his general to convert to Christianity. Not having the slightest religious inclination at all, this seemed like a comedy to him. If all it took was undergoing a ceremony with a priest, and in exchange he would receive a colonel's pension, what did he have to lose? Dr. Hindes found out about this and so he started avoiding him. He would pass over to the other side of the street so as not to have to see his former friend. This infuriated the freshly minted colonel. Once he left home earlier than usual and waited outside Dr. Hindes' door. When Dr. Hindes saw him, he turned his head and did not even respond to his good morning. It all culminated in an exchange of words. The friend called out: “I couldn't give a hoot about the conversion!”

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“Yes,” Hindes replied. “That's true. I know the Jews don't need to fear your conversion. But I know another thing too. My children will have troubles from your children, gentiles who will want to take revenge on them.”

He ended his bitter reproach with a reminder that this was why children were punished for their fathers sins. “I won't have anything to do with parents like that.” And with that, he turned brusquely away from his former friend.

Of the four doctors who lived in Kremenets, two were Christians, and two, Jewish. Aside from the convert, Bat, Dr. Litvak was the most respected among the common folk. His older colleague, Dr. Arye Landesberg, had also been born in Kremenets. His father, Chayim, had been a student of Yitschak Ber Levinzon and a member of his entourage. But Dr. Landesberg was a bird of an entirely different feather. He was a good-natured, simple man, but quite self-obsessed. He was a devoted Zionist, and in his old age he traveled to attend Zionist congresses, but in truth he was little more than a collector of donations, gathering money for the Foundation Fund and Jewish National Fund.

Dr. Miron Litvak was quite the opposite. He was dynamic in every aspect of his work. Already during his very first interventions on the job, he showed himself to be a fighter for socialist ideas. In 1890, it was his fate to find himself at the center of the struggle to save human lives. An epidemic was then raging. Day and night, the young Dr. Litvak threw himself into the work, visiting patients suffering the direst poverty and living in unsanitary conditions. He saved hundreds of lives from death. He was the only one who unfailingly treated poor patients for free. Often, when he appeared in the street, a poor mother would accost him, grabbing him by the sleeve and leading him to her hovel to examine her sick child while he was on his way to a wealthy patient. In such cases, his payment was no more than the satisfaction of performing a good deed. He would often, of his own accord, volunteer to return for a checkup. It wasn't just Jews who did not leave him in peace, but Christians, too. Even peasants from the surrounding villages would call him instead of Christian doctors. Little wonder, then, that the town's seminary school hired him, and not one of his Christian colleagues, as the school doctor. It was one of his life's priorities to improve working conditions in the medical profession. He published a special pamphlet, Zametki Vratsha–Notes from a Doctor–with instructions on how the public should behave toward doctors, and how doctors should behave toward them. He was a pioneer of socialized medicine.

Dr. Litvak was also active in other community matters. He was especially committed to the education of poor children in the Talmud Torah school, helping talented children get into general state schools, and so on. From another source we hear that he founded an artel for Jewish handworkers. He was fascinated by Zionist ideas, and he wrote a lot on the subject. But in his everyday life he was deeply dedicated to improving Jewish life there where they lived.

In 1904, during the Russo-Japanese war, out of all the doctors in the town, he was awarded the title of lieutenant colonel. The “Jew” in him felt conflicted about this, and it pained him and weighed on his conscience. At the time he noted to himself the words: “I am Jew after all: how did I find myself in the circles of Russian military doctors?” He opened his heavy heart–torn from having to be separated from the Jews of Kremenets, and especially his own family–to the Almighty in the Great Synagogue, where he prayed every Sabbath. The Jew in him whispered that he should keep a Jewish calendar, so that he could later keep track of the Sabbath and holy days while he was in distant Siberia, as a way of keeping him in contact with home in the town he was to leave behind. When he was in the military hospital in Khabarovsk, a city on the front, he was deeply affected by the tragedy of human death in general and by the senseless violence of war.

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His heart was further broken by the suffering of the maimed and wounded he witnessed in the hospital. He noted in his diary:

“The Siberian trains are constantly bringing victims from the battlefield in Manchuria, entire mounds of casualties. They rob you of your peace until you can't sleep at night. A whole human tragedy howls under your own roof, growing louder from each day to the next. As a doctor, I'm used to witnessing death. But no death has clawed at my heart like that dying soldier. His final pitiful glance pierced my heart, his last groan broke my spirit. It isn't the death itself, but the miserable loneliness of a dying soldier. There is no one to accompany him to the grave. I curse my own Jewish God”….

His calendar showed him that it was Passover eve. He became homesick: in his mind he compared the present slavery, cruelty, and human destruction with the Jews' fate. He sighed in a wordless reproach to the Jewish people for not finding a way to free themselves, as Moshe had done from the Pharaoh's enslavement, and find a way to the Land of Israel. On Yom Kippur eve he arrived at Irkutsk, where they had just finished building a prayer house. By the doleful tones of Kol Nidre he wept, connecting him to his family and acquaintances in Kremenets, who at that very moment were in the Great Synagogue, sighing from broken spirits, consoling themselves with the hopeful tone of “which will come to us for good.”

News of the revolution in European Russia wound its way to distant Siberia. The war was long over. Now he was sitting on the train that would bring him home to his family, his beloved Kremenetser Jews, the familiar streets, where, as he wrote in his diary, “each and every stone, each and every corner, every blade of grass, every sapling is imprinted deep in my heart.” The closer the train got to central Russia, the more unsettled his spirit grew. Rumors reached him of pogroms against the Jews: he, the Jew in the military coat, decorated with the epaulettes of a colonel, asked himself: “Was my home too pillaged and emptied? … Has my town, which has never known intercommunity hatred before, suddenly had to undergo such bitter trials?” …

He learned that one of the cities that had been hit was Zhitomir, where Jewish workers' self-defense groups held out for four hours in combat against the czarist-backed hooligans. Zhitomir was not far from Kremenets. The thought tormented him.

Luckily, his worries about Kremenets were in vain. The town residents had prepared a welcome party for him. With great fanfare he was escorted from the train station to his home. Sheroka Street was besieged by kith and kin for the length of the whole town.

He later encountered the same Kremenets warmth from the Kremenets diaspora in America when he visited there as an emissary from the Kremenets congregation. There, too, he was practically carried aloft by his fellow Kremenetsers. He died on September 6, 1932. His death inspired a genuine outpouring of sorrow from the whole community. On the day of the funeral, all life in the town came to a halt. Everyone escorted him to his final resting place: even the pupils from the Christian school followed his coffin. Dr. Meir Litvak left a testament, a wide-ranging document about the famous doctor, the text of which we will print in full in another section of this volume.

When, at the end of the 1880s, national sentiment toward the Land of Israel was awakening, the ideas of the Narodnaya Volya members already held sway, and they too seemed to have a foothold in Kremenets. In the early 1890s the Kremenets Narodnaya Volya member Avraham Aynbinder was arrested and deported to Siberia. Regrettably, it has not been possible to learn more details about him: the only thing that, according to rumor, the carpenter Benye Barshap remembered is that Avraham was married and had two children.

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His whole appearance, his pale face with his patchy beard, could never have allowed anyone to suspect that this shabby pauper had inside him the freedom movement's quiet, righteous fire.

At the end of the 1890s, when the Bund appeared on the scene, the youth of Kremenets flocked to the movement.

Geographically, Kremenets was out of the way; no agitators came there from the more central locations where the Bund was active. The name “Bund” arrived via two intellectuals, a teacher from the Jewish state school, Y. Berger, and the doctor, Mrs. Shklovina, Berish Perlmuter's daughter; and the midwife, Sore Yampolski. The teacher and Shklovina, whose husband was also a teacher, used their position, as well as the fact that they had students coming to their home to prepare for exams and higher studies, to spread propaganda. Shklovina was a Social Democrat, while Berger, who had graduated from the Vilna teacher's seminary, was a Bundist.

The young workers grouped themselves around the teacher Berger. In 1903 they succeeded in carrying out a carpentry strike to abolish working on Saturday evenings. The strike was organized by Benye Barshap, who himself worked in his father's carpentry business. The call to strike was decided by a group of workers who had gathered for Kiddush after the Sabbath prayers in Etel Manusovits's house.

This group of Bundists comprised Avraham Mordush; Barukh Barshap; V. Shvartsman; Isak Kremenetski; Sore the butcher's daughter and her sister Mindl, both milliners; Beyle the cigar-packer's daughter; Motye the Stammerer (his mother sold dried grain, siemetshkes, and burned coals); a cutter by the name of Deser; Shlome Fingerhut; and others.

A propagandist was dispatched from Zhitomir, the Bundist Zolotarev, who also established the clandestine nature of the work and the methods of spreading literature. Then it was also decided to organize a “Little Bund” made up of pupils from the town's schools. One of the first youth members, Henekh Kesler, recounts the following about the first steps of this work:

Yosel, one of Fayvish-Meir's sons, stopped him on the street on his way home from school and whispered to him that he wanted to see him on Friday evening after dinner. The meeting place, he said, would have to be kept secret. It was behind the Great Synagogue's blind wall, where a dark corner led to the fenced-off old graveyard, the surrounding darkness of which inspired terror. When Kesler heard that the youth would be the “avant garde,” he was enthusiastic about the task of spreading proclamations. Soon the little group had been put together. They would gather at a picturesque location on Mount Vidomka, with its fruit orchards and green woods where the locals went to walk each Sabbath. There, in a secluded corner, the youth group would listen to lectures on socialism and the Bund's role in Jewish life. On one occasion there was even a debate between a Bundist propagandist and a Zionist.

When the 1905 revolution broke out, the Zionists, led by Dr. Litvak, were the first to hold an open gathering in the Great Synagogue. When an opponent tried to speak after Dr. Litvak had finished, he was drowned out by the student Batler from Odessa, who sang Hatikvah to prevent him from speaking.

At that time Vladimir Jabotinsky paid a visit to Kremenets to agitate against the Bund and in favor of a Jewish “bloc.”

We can piece together some idea of the size of Bundist membership in Kremenets from the central committee accounts for September-December 1905, published in the Bundist Folkstsaytung on April 15, 1906:

Financial accounts for the period from September 8, 1905, to January 9, 1906, of the Kremenets branch of the Bund:

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Income–129 rubles, 77 kopeks
Expenses–146 rubles, 35 kopeks
Deficit–16 rubles, 58 kopeks

Given that fees were 5 kopeks a month, we can extrapolate that the Bund had a few hundred members in Kremenets.

But it wasn't just during the post-revolution honeymoon period that the Bund in Kremenets represented a powerful organizing force, but also during the times of mounting reactionary sentiment, when, in 1906, the czarist satraps drowned the revolution in a bloodbath. At two gatherings called by the Bund the following nakaz (injunction) was drafted for the S. D. faction in the Duma:

“We, the Jewish workers of Kremenets, numbering 150 individuals, carrying out our struggle under the Bund's banner, send our comradely greetings to you, representatives of the working class. Be courageous in your fight against the government of military courts and pogroms. We are ready to support you, with all our strength, in your struggle for justice, for a full amnesty, full political freedom, equality, and cultural autonomy for all peoples, land for the peasants, and an eight-hour workday and all other demands in aid of the class struggle. Comrades, knowing full well that the government will fight with all its power to prevent the present Duma–as it did the first Duma–from implementing these demands, we are prepared to fight alongside you, the S. D., to continue the struggle for a Duma capable of liberating all of Russia from the yoke of authority, and built on the foundation of secret and direct universal suffrage.”

From a report in the Folkstsaytung (July 1906) we learn that at a Bundist conference for Volhynia, which took place in Berdichev, the Kremenets branch of the Bund was represented by two delegates. According to the regulations, a delegate with voting rights was tasked with representing 50 members.

The reactionary turn in Russia also had an effect on the Bund's work in Kremenets. During that time, the Bundist activist Isak Kremenetski was arrested and sent to a military prison. While there, his ribs were smashed, and he remained an invalid for the rest of his days. Avraham Mordush left for America; the midwife Sore Yampolski was arrested and served eight months in jail; Yosel Funks (Potek) was exiled to Siberia for six years. Later he settled in Berdichev, where he committed suicide. Nevertheless, the work went on under the mantle of professional unions. Isak Kremenetski was freed from prison by his father, a prominent textile merchant. Isak quietly rose to become the organizer of the strikes then carried out by the menswear tailors, milliners, and retail employees. The milliners' strike lasted almost three months and was successful.

As in many other Jewish cities, political gatherings in Kremenets took place in synagogues, and specifically when Jews were gathered for prayer. Between morning and evening prayers a speaker would suddenly materialize behind the podium. Of course, ordinary Jews considered these interlopers to be insolent young men. The most insolent of all was Avraham Mordush. Whenever a Zionist speaker would attempt to take the stage, he would call out to his people and have him pulled down by the legs. But when the government rabbi B. Kunin would agitate in the Great Synagogue against “insolent youth” and for peace between states, then the Bundists would react differently. They would jump up on their seats and interrupt the rabbi's speech with a counter speech of their own. The crowd had been prepared in advance for a Bundist speech, as before the Jews came to pray, and the activists had planted printed leaflets in the lecterns with material sent from the Zhitomir branch. They also put up leaflets on the announcement board, knowing that it was forbidden to tear them down during the Sabbath.

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In 1907 the Bund organized a furrier strike. This can be seen by the ad printed in Folkstsaytung (no. 358, 1907) warning workers from other places not to come to Kremenets.

Even the cemetery was used as a venue for a general assembly. In Kremenets the gendarme Koval had his own Jewish stoolpigeon by the name of Kalman Finkel, though this was an open secret. In certain circumstances, if need be, for three rubles one could compel the gendarme himself to turn a blind eye, since he was a frequent guest of Moshe Benderski, the haberdashery merchant. But in those years one could not count on this when it came to organizing larger gatherings. One year, on Tisha B'Av, they organized a gathering in the cemetery. In Kremenets there was a long-standing custom for Jews to visit the cemetery on Tisha B'Av, dressed in rubber shoes (leather shoes were forbidden), to get things off their chest. On that day, the Bundists held a political assembly around Yitschak Ber Levinzon's grave, also stopping meanwhile at the graves of two of their fellow Bundists.

In Folkstsaytung (no. 408, 1907), K. Kremenetski recounts: “The Bund organizers held a large gathering in the cemetery on Tisha B'Av, in which several speakers gave lectures on the present political moment. The speakers made quite an impression.”

The failure of the 1905 revolution cost two lives in Kremenets: Velvel Shvartsman (Mekhel) committed suicide. Later Berel Feldman, one of Pesye the Mitshnitshke's (flour dealer's) sons, also left this world.

After the 1917 revolution, when Ukraine separated from Russia, elections were held for all the Jewish communities in Ukraine. In Kremenets the Bundists won the majority, 15 delegates of 29. The rest included 11 Zionists, 2 Labor Zionists, and 1 delegate for the Folkspartay.

The Great Synagogue

This is what they called the synagogue that stood in the center of town, otherwise known as the Old Synagogue. The story went, according to legend, that it had been built in the first half of the 18^th century. This can be seen in its gothic architectural style, which was being revived then. The windows and high walls were vertical and narrow, with a half-rounded vault at the top. Inside, the ceiling was vaulted diagonally, in the style of a cupola. There were two such windows on the eastern wall, with three windows on the northern and southern walls. The whole building was about 30 fathoms high on the exterior, with a ceiling 20 fathoms high on the interior, and a width of 20 fathoms across. High up on the western interior wall, stretching the length of the wall, was a carved stone railing: this was the gallery of the women's synagogue.

Several hundred people prayed in that synagogue. There was no cupboard of holy books there. Most of the furniture was composed of reading stands. There was only one long table with chairs in the northern corner next to the high wall. That is where the poorest members of the congregation would sit. The entrance to the synagogue was via a set of broad, white stone steps leading down to the floor. In the middle was a platform two yards high, with steps leading up to the lectern. In the east, the cantor's pulpit was located in an area a step down under the inscription: “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord” [Psalms 130:1]. Over the pulpit, a calligraphed shiviti^[12] adorned with lions on the sides, standing atop diagonal gold-colored pulpits.

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On either side of the shiviti, along its entire length, were various paintings. The shiviti was framed in a hand-carved silver mahogany frame. The colors would mingle majestically with the light from candles in two tall, gleaming brass candleholders, as well as the dancing flames of the high brass menorahs.

The Holy Ark shimmered on high in all its glory, entirely carved by hand. The tips of the widely spread cherubim wings reached up to the lowest part of the vaulted ceiling arches. The gilded beaks supported the carved crown from which two vertical stems descended on either side, along with one in the center. The broad green velvet curtain, with its golden tassel, covering the Holy Ark, and the reflection of light on the crystal transparency of the lamp garlands–all these elements together elevated the synagogue's majestic interior.

A paved courtyard of wide stone slabs led to the entrance. There were two entrances in the thick stone wall: one on the south side led to the women's synagogue. There was also a fenced-off corner where several sunken gravestones marked the place where, tradition had it, were buried two couples who had been killed by an epidemic on their wedding day.

In the synagogue's anteroom was the community-run Tailors' Synagogue. The southwest corner was used for reciting lamentations and performing the ceremony of releasing a man from the obligation of Levirate marriage. Such a case occurred at the beginning of our current century. The ceremony took place about an hour before morning prayers. In that corner a long sloping board was placed that reached to the ceiling, and in front of the board was a chair. The board was intended to serve as a separation between the living and the dead. The widow removed her brother-in-law's left shoe. The rabbi, R' Hertsele, placed two black candles on the pulpit. He was dressed in a long black coat. As he lit the candle, his lips moved as he swayed in place, bidding farewell to the deceased's spirit. After this he invited the widow to slide a kind of one-piece leather slipper onto her brother-in-law's foot. Her head was covered in a black shawl. To finish, the rabbi turned toward the board and asked for forgiveness. The woman repeated his words, accompanied by a fearful wail. The rabbi then called out, two times, the words: “You are permitted, you are permitted” and called on the congregation to say the morning prayer.

In that same room the renowned Torah reader from the Great Synagogue, R' Avrahamtse the Teacher, would read the week's Torah portion with the congregation every Sabbath afternoon as well as Alshekh's commentaries. In summer he would also read from Pirkei Avot [Sayings of the fathers].

Meanwhile, at the same time in the women's synagogue, Itke the slaughterer's wife would read out that week's Tsena Urena^[13] portion.

The synagogue courtyard is where all the wedding canopies were erected for the whole town. At funerals, the procession would pause at the same spot, to recite El Male Rachamim [God, full of compassion] (in Kremenets they would carry the body). And so it was, for generations, that life and death were sanctified beside the synagogue.

According to custom, no mezuzah hung by the synagogue entrance. The left-hand stone corner by the door was black from fingerprints in the shape of the letter shin, from everyone who touched and kissed it as they passed. The interpretation for this was that the shaday of the mezuzah should block the way for those ghosts who came each night to pray. And sure enough:

On a pitch-black Saturday night, in winter 1904 during the Russo-Japanese war, a whole street full of Jews were frightened by noises in the dead of night. At the time, many Jews had been taken away from their families to the military and sent to the front. They had not been heard from in months. Their families were convinced their bones lay somewhere, drowned in the waters in which the Japanese had sunk the Russian ships.

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And now it happened that the two ritual slaughterers, R' Mendele and his son, Leybele, were coming home from the slaughterhouse in the middle of the night. They passed the Great Synagogue; the street was pitch black. Only the flickering eternal light candle spread dancing shadows on one of the windowpanes. Leybele thought it was the flickering souls of the dead. He turned to his father with a quavering voice: “Do you hear murmuring in the synagogue?” His terror took ever greater hold of him. By the time he reached the street where he lived, he could no longer control himself and he fainted, falling into the icy snow. Mendele rushed over to the door and called out: “Come out and help my son into the house.” People emerged into the street, half undressed. The whole street was awake. When they had roused Leybele, he looked around with frightened glances, wondering where he was, and asked: “Have they returned to their peace?”

The next morning the town had gone topsy-turvy. Not far beyond the synagogue lived R' Moshkele, the “grandson” of R' Mordekhay'le the righteous. His servant reported that he was not concerned, that he heard such things every night. But R' Mordekhay'le, along with his usual entourage, reflected on the matter and, along with everyone, he decided that the spirits were not at rest and that they needed to be appeased. And so it was that on Monday a minyan was gathered. They studied portions of the Mishna until 12 o'clock, after which the minyan made their way to the synagogue. Before the caretaker opened up, he knocked on the door three times, calling out: “Spirits, a minyan of Jews are coming to appease you! Make room, be calm.” They entered the synagogue and, still walking, began to recite psalms. Collectively they intoned the Mourner's Kaddish.

The nimble, short-statured caretaker Mendele kept the Great Synagogue bright and clean. It was hard for him to wrap his mind around the idea of letting people stay in the synagogue after prayers were over, except for the anniversary of a death, when he himself would provide brandy and egg cookies to drink to the ascension of a soul. Mendele was on good terms with the spirits in his synagogue, as was Leybe-Shekhe the zogerke^[14], who would converse with them casually in her graveyard.

The Great Synagogue awakened awe in all those who passed through. On the nearby square where the farmers would stop with their wagons on market days, they never stood too close to the surrounding fence, out of respect. The Great Synagogue was also the only place where the cantor prayed with a choir.

People with connections to the authorities prayed in the synagogue. Official ceremonies were held there on certain dates, such as Czar Nicholas's coronation. On important occasions large gatherings took place there. In this way the constitutional declaration from the czar following the 1905 revolution was celebrated there. Singing “Hatikvah” and “Di Shvue” [The oath], Zionists and Bundists alike poured out into a street demonstration. Binyamin Yaspe, the son of Tsadok the ritual slaughterer, led it while singing “Hatikvah.”

The synagogue is no more, just as the Jews are no more. Their souls no longer have someone to pray for them. The souls have been silenced, just as their annihilated bodies have been silenced. May their souls be bound up in the bonds of life.

Generally, the Jews considered a butcher to be a hardened person, one who always worked with blood. And so the butcher was always held up as an example of a hardhearted person, who does not feel when another is in distress. They would say of such a person that he had “butcher's skin,” or “a butcher's pelt.” For someone who had no shred of sympathy at all they did not use the word–it was a Yiddish word after all–and instead called him a koyler, which meant a gentile soul who slaughters pigs. Butchers' Street was in reality not populated only by butchers. Behind the Butchers' Synagogue were people who cut shingle for roofs. A little higher up lived carpenters with their workshops. They would also bake matzos there for Passover.

The older generation of butchers, in addition to wearing beards and sidelocks, would also wear long traditional attire.

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They would be the first to wake the Almighty at dawn with their prayers in their little synagogue and keep Him busy between the two minyans' worth of prayer until the late morning hours.

The magidim, itinerant preachers who traveled from town to town, used to feel at home in that little synagogue. Week after week, between morning and evening prayers, there would be a magid preaching to a crowded room. Every evening two people would sit down at the end of the table not far from the entrance and put out a plate. Everyone who walked past would throw in a coin for the magid.

One of the most notable butchers of the older generation was Moshe “the drummer.” He was a learned man, and would always study a passage of Mishna or a sequence of Eyn Yakov before prayer. He was also a Torah reader at the synagogue. Moshe the drummer had always been a quiet man, modest in his words and treatment of others. His three sons, Yosel, Leybtsi, and Mendel, were exactly the same. All three were killed by a band of murderers in the forest while traveling from a fair and driving several head of cattle into town, tied to their wagon. The town was turned on its head. Mendele the ritual slaughterer came to pay his condolences to the bereaved father. He found him sitting on the mourning chair, engrossed in reading the Book of Job. Mendele attempted to sooth his pain, whereupon Moshe said to him: “I will repeat the words that you, R' Mendele, said to me when your only daughter, young Freyde, died–‘The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.’” “But where do you find the strength to quote the Book of Job after the tragic deaths of all three sons at once?” Mendele responded. “What of the widows and orphans?”

Another simple, honest man was the butcher Shlome, nicknamed “Mumbles.” He would speak a little too quietly, and it sounded as though he were mumbling. Or there was also Ayzik Treybatsher, whose profession was to remove the forbidden veins from glatt kosher meat. Even the bent Meir “Ditina,” who could barely speak Hebrew, found his true solace in the little synagogue. “Ditina” (child) was a nickname stemming all the way back to childhood, and indeed he lived like a quiet child. His back was bent owing to his specialized profession, assisting both the ritual slaughterers and the butchers in the abattoir. After the slaughter, Meir would crawl up to the ceiling rafters, where there were wheels with stakes. On these stakes they would hang the slaughtered livestock's two bound legs. Meir would turn the wheels by himself and pull up the animals with their heads hanging downward. Then the animal's lungs would be removed, which Meir would take into a separate room for the ritual slaughterers to inspect. Meir would inflate the lungs on a metal table by blowing into the throat. In this way the slaughters could see if there was an imperfection hidden in one of the folds, which would render the meat unkosher. After this Meir would remove the pelt from the hanging animal. This caused his spine to become bent. Meir would be the messenger tasked with informing a butcher if his animal was kosher or not. “A kosher soul,” the butchers would say of him. Because his son grew up as a true miscreant in the wild forest, the butchers took care of Meir, and along with Moshe Shive they helped him make ends meet.

The butchers had great respect for ritual slaughterers. They treated R' Mendele with fondness, and likewise later his son and replacement, whom they called by the affectionate diminutive Leybele. R' Velvele Zhiliver and the great rabbinical legal expert R' Hertsele did not make a decision without consulting him first. Even in interpersonal matters people would first ask his advice.

One day each year Butchers' Street would become festive, where friends and relatives would come to celebrate a kind of carnival. This was Simchat Torah. Mendele, himself a Radzyn Hasid, would gather his children at home. Then, he would go out with all the children, carrying Simchat Torah flags with candle-bearing apples attached on top. They marched down the whole street that led to the Radzyn Hasidic synagogue. They sang and danced to the refrain of: “Live and rejoice in the joy of the Torah. Honor the Torah.” Mendele would act childlike and call out: “Children, what is today?” And they would answer: “Simchat Torah: the rabbi commanded us to be merry all night long.”

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R' Mendele would then ask: “What do the holy sheep say?” Whereupon the children would respond: “Ba-a-a-a-ah!” They would sing “Little goaty, red oranges, all the little children are going dancing,” and they danced the whole way until they reached the Radzyn synagogue entrance.

Parallel to Broad, or “Sheroka” Street, as the town's central street was called, lay Butchers' Street. Three narrow alleys connected Sheroka Street to Butchers' Street, only one end of which, the north end, was inhabited by butchers, their shops forming an open-ended n-shape. This was also where the poultry slaughterhouse was located. Near the butcher shops was the Butcher's Synagogue, with its large yard out back, where the butchers would take the livestock they'd purchased before moving them to stables or straight to the abattoir on the outskirts of town. The east side of that street faced the Mountain of the Cross and was divided by a ditch through which the winding stream flowed before joining the Ikva River.

That part of the street was the liveliest, most bustling part of the Jewish quarter for the first half of every day, except the Sabbath. Every Friday the townsfolk passed through there on their way to the steam baths, to the bathhouse where the ritual bath was also located. But as soon as the dancing light from the Sabbath candles appeared in the houses, everything was shrouded in Sabbath tranquility.

The other end of the same street was inhabited by several rich families. The houses were called “yards”: Pinchas Ras's yard, Aba Tsukerman's yard, Meshulem Katz's yard, Hersh Mekhel's yard. The owners belonged to the Enlightened, intellectual class. Between the yards of Meshulem Katz and Pinchas Ras was a small, narrow alley leading to the well and a narrow footpath leading to Castle Mountain, which farmers used,. In the summer months people would go to the farmers in the evening to drink warm, fresh milk, served straight from the cow's udder into a glass, warm and foamy and entirely kosher, as they would take their own glass with them from home.

Behind Meshulem Katz's yard, surrounded by a fence, was Velvel Bat's yard. The entrance was via a narrow alley. At the side of Meshulem Katz's wall was a footbridge made of two boards for crossing over during the spring and fall when the middle was flooded with deep mud.

If the other yards had their own mark of prestige on account of their owners' prominence, Velvel Bat's yard had a prestige of another kind: that is where he built a small synagogue for the Radzyn Hasidim, who marked themselves out as eccentric with the blue wool woven into the fringes of their prayer shawls. The practical Rabbi Gershon Henekh used to stay at Velvel Bat's house when he visited. The town rabbi Velvele Zvihiler, a sharp-minded man, well-versed in religious teachings, would drop in to see the guest before his first visit with the local rabbinical authority. Velvel Bat's house would be teeming with people all week. In particular, people were eager to be there during the arguments those two “great minds” would hold concerning lofty matters. Ordinary Jews would come, day and night, with petitions for their rabbi. The Hasidim, meanwhile, spent the whole week in the foyer drinking brandy and eating egg cookies and a piece of herring, repeating the lessons they had learned from the rabbi during the Sabbath meal.

When old Velvel left for the next world, one of his sons, Itsi Bat, took over as the one who hosted all the various kinds of rabbis who would come to Kremenets. Although his brother Mordekhay, Velvele's eldest son, had deeper knowledge of the holy texts than Itsi, he had to cede this honor to Itsi on account of how busy he was with his work. On the street, as well as in the Hasidic Synagogue, people had more respect for Mordekhay. Even the children found him more approachable than Itsi.

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His ever-affable smile, and the fact that he always wore a long, clean robe, was always appreciated by everyone. His brother Itsi would wear a short jacket all week. Because he worked with fur and tallow for candle making, a lingering smell always followed him around. The members of his household were also cut from a different cloth. Mordekhay's wife, the short-statured, shortsighted Toybe, carried herself as quietly as a mouse. The same was true of their two grown daughters and their only son, Shakhna, who did not lose his temper like the other workers, even during the strike at the boot-stitching workshop, but behaved like a partisan for justice. People only had good things to say about his mother Toybe. Her daughters respected her and helped her with the housework. Itsi's household was the complete opposite of all this. His wife was entirely rural, always busy in the stables with livestock. She had grown up in a country inn by Antonovka, not far from Kremenets. She did not wear a wig, having kept her own hair, and looked like a blonde gentile. She also behaved like a village woman. Despite all this, she knew to cover her hair during the Sabbath and holy days when the house was full of Hasidim all day. It happened that the windows on the eastern wall of the synagogue looked out over their house. Itsi was even aware that those who stood by the eastern wall only faced out into his yard during the recitation of the Eighteen Benedictions, which were performed with closed eyes. Nevertheless, his wife made herself scarce and did not step across her threshold during these prayers.

In the synagogue, during prayers, the two brothers differed only in that Mordekhay prayed from memory, with the exception of the psalms during the High Holidays, while Itsi always used a prayerbook. Mordekhay would also sometimes consult the Mishna before praying, whereas Itsi never bothered. And yet, when the reader in the synagogue would end with the words “Be strong, be strong, and let us strengthen each other,” the two brothers' loud, strong voices would ring out with equal intensity. In the same way, their voices could be heard repeating the cantor's words “Who performed miracles for our ancestors in this place,” during the New Moon blessings or “May God renew us.” On Sabbath before the new moon, Itsi would sometimes invite those who had been praying to his corner of the eastern wall. So it was on that Sabbath when he and his brother Mordekhay were called to read from the Torah, on the eve of the week of the anniversary of their father's death. In the synagogue itself they drank to the ascension of the soul on the day of the anniversary itself, before visiting the grave.

And it came to pass that one day, when the butchers erected in their synagogue a new Holy Ark that the carpenter Itsi Yosi Yokel's had made, with special carvings done in accordance with his taste by the carver Duvid Deser. During the celebration, the butchers mentioned in passing that they should install a new Torah scroll. Slightly drunk, they suggested that they should go immediately to fetch Nachman the scribe and convince him to get started on this holy task. When Nachman the scribe entered the synagogue, he approached the Holy Ark, kissed the newly hung curtain, and wished them mazal tov. They served him a glass of brandy and something to eat. It had been many years since Nachman had put goose feather to parchment, except to write a mezuzah for a bar mitzvah or when someone was moving into a new home. His main source of income was as a cantor in the Hasidic Synagogue, where he would sing at the graveside during the anniversary of a death. In general his situation had been ruined by his son, an only child, who had left home to move to Odessa, where he became a pharmacist. Ever since he had left the fold, he had not come back to visit his parents. Nevertheless, the townsfolk had learned that Nachman the scribe's son now wore his hair long, shaved his beard, and had a pince-nez, all of which diminished his father's standing in the eyes of the religious world. Everywhere, that is, except for the butchers who saw him every day on Butchers' Street on his way to the ritual bath. They also knew that if Nachman the scribe was invited to sing while the rabbis celebrated their Sabbath feasts, it was a sign that he was an important Jew with a good soul.

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And so Nachman the scribe agreed to write the Torah scroll for them. That evening the butchers felt elated and happy, so much so that they did not even attempt to haggle over the fee. “Let's not speak of money,” they said. When the crowd went home, they accompanied Nachman the scribe to his home, and on the way they convinced him that he should put everything else aside and concentrate on writing the Torah scroll. “If you work fast,” they told him, “you will see that the butchers are no misers.”

It did not take Nachman long to prepare the parchment for his holy work. In two weeks they would need to celebrate the inscription of the first letter of Genesis. The honor of celebrating such a feast, with its considerable banquet, was given to Mordekhay, and it was held on the close of the Sabbath with a large meal. Aside from the fish, which Mordekhay's wife had bought on Sabbath eve and kept in a cold cellar during the Sabbath, they also brought meat that had been freshly slaughtered on the close of the Sabbath. Mordekhay's wife, Toybe, alongside her daughters, prepared all manner of meals and stews from the meat, fit for a butcher's table. Mordekhay's whole house appeared festive, as though decorated for a wedding dinner. One by one the guests arrived. Mordekhay himself laid out bottles of wine and brandy on the table. Sore, his youngest daughter, laid out the dishes. The last butcher to arrive was Noach the Brawler. He was entirely illiterate, and out of shame he never even came to pray.

Leybtsi, Moshe the drummer's eldest son, felt uneasy. As the synagogue's sexton it would fall to him to call on each person in turn with a cry of “Stand!” to inscribe a letter. He was keeping a watchful eye out for his two brothers, Yosel and Mendel, who had not yet arrived. He was too ashamed to consult his father himself. When his brothers finally arrived, he hurried over to them, took them aside, and explained what was bothering him. People could see the three brothers all standing there with long faces, as though worried. Finally, Yosel approached his father, spoke to him privately, then turned around with a smile on his face. He winked at Leybtsi, as though to say: it will all be fine. Their father would speak to the scribe himself and explain that he, the father, would have the honor of calling everyone to the scroll.

The sexton, Leybtsi, called over Aharon the caretaker and told him to open the bottles and make sure that only those who had already inscribed a letter should be given honey cake and brandy; and that only the very first, his father Moshe, should make the shehecheyanu blessing aloud: “… for granting us life, sustaining us, and helping us reach this day.” With difficulty Moshe pushed his way through the crowd toward the scribe to ask him to begin the inscription. Nachman the scribe soon took out the parchment sheet from its long, round sheath and spread it open on the tablecloth; he placed two goose feathers beside the opened inkpot; finally, he donned his wire-frame glasses and set to work. “Gentlemen,” he intoned in his cantor's voice, “It is time to begin. There is, praise be to God, quite a crowd here today, as it is written, ‘the people stood pressed together, yet bowed down and had room enough,’ just as in the Temple. But we shall clear a path toward the table when you are called. I now call upon R' Moshe to inscribe the first letter and then to call on each person separately to come up and do the same.” When Moshe took the pen in hand, he said the shehecheyanu blessing. Everyone raised their voices in an “amen.” Nachman the scribe pointed with the silver pointer to where Moshe should fill in the first three letters of the word, “the heavens: hey-shin-mem,” which if you read them backwards spelled out his name: Moshe. Moshe's eyes filled with joyful tears. The whole crowd was moved as he spoke in a choked voice. His three sons, Leybtsi, Yosel, and Mendel, rejoiced and added: “In our father's honor we donate 18 rubles. In the meantime the caretaker brought out two glasses of brandy and some honey cake for R' Moshe and R' Nachman the scribe. The scribe said the blessing over food aloud.

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Once again the crowd shouted “amen.” Moshe began by calling up the first Kohen.

“The first Kohen to have the honor of writing a letter is the distinguished R' Noach, who shall write the long nun.” Drenched in cold sweat, Noach began to make his way through the crowd, holding his son by the hand. Nachman the scribe understood how to place the thin goose feather between Noach's solid fingers and guide his hand over the shape of the long nun with its thin belly and its head. When the caretaker handed him the glass of brandy, Noach, the veteran drinker, let the drink go down the wrong way, such that he was unable to say the word “to life” without choking. He cried with shame. At this R' Moshe consoled him with the words: “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.”

Tovye Treybatsh entered with two large bottles of wine, and R' Mordekhay loudly greeted him with the words: “wine that gladdens man's heart!” Then turning to Moshe the drummer he said, “Give the man next to you a goblet of wine so he can drink a toast.”

Before handing out the meat, R' Mendele whispered to his neighbor Moshe, “‘Three who ate at one table and did not say upon it words of Torah’; God forbid, it would be a sin, especially at such a holy celebration.” Moshe understood Mendele's intention, and he had a word with Mordekhay, suggesting he tell those in the kitchen that they should wait before bringing out the meat. He told Noach to pour goblets or even glasses of wine, as they would soon hear words of Torah. With a trembling hand, Noach handed the goblets to the guests of honor, ashamed to make eye contact. Once he had poured everyone's wine, finishing up at the end of the table, he let out a heavy sigh and said: “Well, well, I have lived to see such an honor.” He whispered a secret in Leybush the butcher's ear: “In honor of the important guests, I'll donate another 18 rubles.” He then disappeared into a corner. Leybush called out aloud in his steely voice and informed the crowd that the bashful Noach was giving a donation of another 18 rubles, in honor of R' Mendele and R' Leybele.

Nachman the scribe once again drew out a tune, this time a Simchat Torah song. Mordekhay once again lost his composure and started to dance. Everyone stood up from the table and pushed it aside toward the wall. In a tangle of linked arms and shoulders, they joined in the dance, which was only interrupted when Noach rapturously called out: “I'll go and call the klezmer [musician]!”

And that is how the butchers of Kremenets wrote a Torah scroll. When they celebrated the same night a year later, the feast itself was also held in the Butchers' Synagogue, where the congregation moved in a procession around the pulpit, with R' Velvele, R' Hertsele, and the grandson of the Ruzhin rabbi, R' Moshkele, at the head of the procession. All the religious community functionaries celebrated along with the common folk, who were in seventh heaven.

It happened on a frosty winter's day in 1909–1910. Bedrik's Synagogue, with its polished wooden fittings, the Holy Ark, and all the holy books, all of it went up in flames. Jews risked their lives to save what they could of the Torah scrolls. Only small, singed pieces were salvaged from the fire and extinguished in the melting snow. Pieces of prayer shawls, too. These were used to wrap the scorched parchments.

The sexton, Aba Tsukerman, stood broken and bent. His usual bass voice caught on the words: “The crown is fallen from our head.” He wept bitterly. Jews knelt around the burnt Torah scrolls, covered with a white tablecloth. The whole town rushed to the burnt-down holy place.

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The rabbi's caretaker brought large earthen pots to collect the remnants of the holy scrolls. In the rabbi's house were gathered the judge rabbi Hertsele, the usual prominent figures, the scholars Yosel, Chayim Henekh's (Fridman), Moshe Velis, the usual arbitrator in religious disputes, Shlomele (Ditun), the scholars from the Hasidic Synagogue, Leybele the ritual slaughterer, and many, many more. A heap of holy books lay on the table as they argued back and forth about whether to set up a genizah, or a tomb …. Suddenly it became as quiet as a graveyard. From his secluded room the rabbi entered, dressed in a black cloth kaftan tied with a wide belt and with a fur hat on his head. His ruling was: the volunteers to build the genizah should take a bath of ritual purification. All the earthen pots for the parchments should be ritually cleansed, in an immersion of blessings. The day of the genizah was a public fast day. All the shops would have to be closed; Jews would have to put away their work. There should be a funeral procession leading the urns to the Great Synagogue. The rabbi would deliver a eulogy by Bedrik's Synagogue, while the judge would do the same by the Great Synagogue. The genizah pots should be carried on the boards used for the ritual purification of bodies. The purifiers should bath themselves first. The procession would stop at the prayer house by the Hasidic Synagogue, the Magid's Small Synagogue, and the Great Synagogue entrance. Each cantor would perform a eulogy by his holy place. The purifiers would have the honor of carrying the urns into the genizah. The Burial Society, after purification, were to prepare the genizah in the tomb of the righteous Rabbi Mordekhayle, next to his coffin.

On the day of the funeral procession, the whole town was shrouded in sorrow. The Christian neighbors hid themselves away out of fear. The Jews were truly mourning.

After the rabbi's long eulogy, when all moods were slumped and broken, a deathly pale man, Mates the cantor, appeared at the smoldering embers of the synagogue, with his disheveled head facing the synagogue's burned-out facade. He appeared to be fixing it with a reproach. No sooner had he painfully pronounced the three words: “El Malei Rachamim,” his voice roared. He produced quotations from the Book of Lamentations, wept by the words: “Cry, cry out in the night.” The tightly pressed crowd deafened the snowy air with their lamentations.

Then Mates the cantor let go of himself entirely, becoming lost in the sanctity of the moment, like all the gathered Jews of Kremenets.

After his eulogy, the Jews rushed toward the four piles on the ritual purification boards, on which they were carrying the parchment in the urns covered in a black cloth. Each wanted to at least touch the poles carrying the holy Torah to the world to come. Like a heavy avalanche, the crowd rolled behind the funeral procession, reciting psalms the whole way.

We will not list all the religious-school teachers in these pages. We must note that it was not the age of the pupils but the state of their knowledge that was important in determining their graduation from one teacher to another, higher, teacher.

There were four principal levels in the Jewish religious schools: (1) those beginning with the alphabet up to a page of Hebrew for children; (2) learners of the Five Books of Moses and interpretation of the psalms up to the introduction of Aramaic and the commentaries of Rashi; (3) the Talmud and Prophets; and (4) the Talmud and Tosafot as well as other commentaries and verses.

Only one teacher in Kremenets, Shakhna, would also teach a little Hebrew grammar to his pupils in the second level. The pupils even called him by his surname: Buts.

Dardiki means a small child, a child of preschool age.

At the age of three years, boys received their first haircut, and their hair was brought into school wrapped in a prayer shawl. After dipping into the first letter of the Book of Leviticus over honey cake and brandy, the child would be blessed by a second child, a Kohen, placing his 10 fingers on the child's head, stretched out like the forking branches of a young sapling. They then repeated the blessing “Mode ani” [I thank] with the child every morning during the ritual handwashing, until the child knew it by heart.

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The second word was pronounced with the emphasis on the first syllable. With the girls, they instead practiced the girl's blessing in Yiddish, which ended with the words: “May blessings and good fortune come to you and on your head, Amen.”

The assistant teacher would help the boy get dressed and say the blessing, and lead the boy into the cheder with the other children. He would also be careful not to mix up the prepared lunches the mothers had given him. He would also have to see to it that the child did not get weak with hunger, and to give him the lunch at the right time.

The Dardiki teacher, Leyb Rachele Kives (Akiva's) was born to work with such children. He never used a cane or a switch. He never lost his temper, never shouted. When he raised his pointer to a letter, asking: “What letter is this?” and answering along with the child “A-a-alef,” and again: “My dear boy, what letter is this?” and responding–“That is a b-e-ys.” He understood that he should not keep the child repeating letters for too long and asked: “You'll be a good boy, won't you?” and let the child go. The child soon rejoined the crowd of little ones playing noisily on the floor.

The rabbi's wife, Rachele Kives, did her work in the kitchen. From time to time she would come into the cheder when she heard one of the children crying, and she would lead the child back into the circle of other children.

The small children often played with buttons. The aim was to flick a button so that it hit against another button, pushing it until it moved into the goal area.

Another game they played was called “Turkish Nuts.” The rabbi's wife would place a saucer on the floor containing two hazelnuts. Each child was given a handful of hazelnuts, and the aim was to roll a nut so that it knocked one nut, and only one nut, out of the saucer. This game was dominated by the older boys, those four years and older. If you missed the saucer, then you were out and the next child would play. If the second player hit the target, he would also win the nuts used by the previous player. It sometimes happened that the children would be convinced to gamble their lunch on this game. When their mothers learned about this after the fact, the assistant teacher would get an earful.

Learning to read syllable by syllable (with diacritical markings) was not so simple. The children's heads were too low to even reach the prayerbook on the high table, no matter how much they tried to stretch their necks. The assistant teacher Leyvik (who became a milk merchant after his marriage) would tilt the prayerbook downward, while keeping it in contact with the edge of the table. But the child's eyes would wander, over the book or over the pointer. The assistant would shout: “Where are you looking? Repeat after me, alef and what's under the alef? A komets–o!”

Winter in the cheder was torture. Coats, hoods, and scarves lay in a pile by the kitchen. The only relief was when one child after another would be out sick with the cold and there would be fewer children in class. The assistant teacher would have to take up the burden of all this. He would go to the children's homes and teach them the alphabet there. The parents would beam with pride and interrupt the lessons, telling the assistant teacher: “That'll be enough for today.”

The preparations for Hanukkah, however, were a lively time. Distributing the Hanukkah dreidels to the children was entirely the assistant teacher's responsibility. He would order the dreidels from Yone the brass worker, the teacher's son. There were two kinds of dreidel: large ones and small ones. Rivalries would develop among the children out of jealousy, and in the end it was the assistant teacher who reaped the rewards when some of the children wanted to buy a second dreidel, a bigger one.

The holiday of Tu B'Shevat was not exactly plain sailing, though the vexations were not the assistant teacher's fault this time but the parents' fault.

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Along with the usual packed lunch (usually a light meal consisting of a piece of bread with an apple or another piece of fruit), they gave the children carob pods, dates, and figs. Those children who had full carob pods and big, juicy figs and dates would evoke the envy of the other children, who had only brought half or quarter carob pods and fewer, smaller dates and figs. But here the children solved the conflict by themselves: they shared the fruits with each other in a display of comradeship.

In summertime the cheder classroom was entirely empty. Leyb the teacher would have to come outside to call the pupils inside to sit at the table. But calling alone was not enough. He would have to go to the pupils' homes and drag them out by the collar.

The children had a wide variety of games to choose from. Aside from Griblekh, digging little holes in the ground and throwing nuts into them, there was “Soldier's March,” which involved making your own instruments out of paper, bugles in particular; as well as “Blind Man's Buff,” “Chase,” and “Pitball.”

There were other games for older boys. A Bible play, as they call them now, one about the author of the Zohar, R' Shimon Bar Yochai, another about the destruction of the Temple, and yet another, a domestic social play.

A Game of Griblekh: Players dig a series of shallow holes, five or six in a row. The aim is to throw a nut so that it bounces from one hole into the next until it passes through all the holes and lands back out on the ground. If this fails, the nut is forfeited and stays in the hole where it came to rest. The next player must then try to be artful enough to knock this nut out of the hole along with his own.

Soldier's March: Players first stand in a line, two by two, matched up according to height, each pair separated from the next by a distance of one pace. The aim is to proceed at an exactly synchronized pace, starting with the right foot. If anyone falters or stumbles, then the whole game starts again from the beginning.

Blind Man's Buff: This game is played with two different variations. The first is played in a circle. The older children hold hands to form a circle. One child stands in the center and says: “Henge, shtenge, stupe, tsvenge,” and other such nonsense rhymes we can't remember. When the last word is spoken, whoever it falls on must go into the center of the circle. The child is then blindfolded. All the others must remain quiet. The blindfolded child needs only to touch one of the other players to be freed, and the child who has been caught takes the first child's place. It took skill and trickery not to be caught when the circle was so small. When getting close to the blindfolded player, it was necessary to crouch down low, without tripping over the blindfolded player, or else, easiest of all, to lean backward, but not too abruptly so as not to pull those on the opposite side straight into the seeker's hands. Often the seeker would fall over, stumbling over a hole in the ground. The game continued like this until the seeker finally caught another child and was freed.

The second variation of Blind Man's Buff was more straightforward. The same counting out rhyme as above is used to choose the “seeker.” The seeker's vision is impaired not by a blindfold this time, but by standing with his face up against a wall, closing his eyes, and counting to 10. The other players attempt to hide. Upon spotting someone, the seeker must run fast to the hiding place before the other player runs away.

Chase: The same procedure as above, but here the seeker must physically grab the other player. Both players must demonstrate skill in bending, twisting while running, as well as ducking and darting out of the way, at just the right moment. Meanwhile, the other players have left their hiding place, and some of them may even attempt to aid their companion by pulling at the seeker to distract them. Another version is called “Cat and Mouse,” a game of tag.

Sidre Shlach [Send orders]: This is a war game.

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All players are divided into two equally large teams of soldiers with a colonel at their head. At first both groups march together. While marching, the colonel takes the lead in front of each group. Tins and sticks serve as drums and cymbals, while willow barks are used as makeshift flutes; the swords are narrow pieces of wood tied with string, while their cockades are buttons stuck into their cap visors. Each military man's rank is indicated by the color of the button on his cap. Then suddenly a fight breaks out, sometimes over a falsely sung note in the military march, or one of the colonels capriciously attempting to have his group march in front. War is declared. The winners are those who can push their opponent from its position. The groups set themselves up. One from the offended faction begins the attack, crying out to his opponents: “Shlach–send out a spy from your side, a brawler.” The response would then come from the other side: “Shlach–you send someone first.” Then the first side would say, “My people are weak,” to which the response was: “My people are weaker.” Then the first would turn to his group and ask, “Who wants to be the first?” The spy brawler then had to rush at the opposing army, who stood with arms linked, and break through their defenses. Once the spy brawler from each side had broken through, they were taken hostage and escorted to the opposing colonel. That is when the great battle began, as the two armies fought each other to get back their prisoner. When one group was surrounded, they surrendered, and with that the game came to an end.

After graduating from the Dardiki teacher, the children moved to the next level of cheder, where they learned the Five Books of Moses and Rashi's commentary as well as parts of the high holiday prayerbook, psalms, and the Akdamut hymn for Shavuot. Teaching at this level were the teachers Meir the Hunchback and Yenkel Berezetser.

In Meir's class the children did not stay long, at most two semesters. It seems that it was not only the children who wanted to be out of there, but their parents also looked forward to it.

G. Gertsfeld wrote in an issue of Rassvet from November 1879 that though most people lived in poverty and in the sort of cramped conditions that usually lead to illness, it was not the case in Kremenets. “You have to go there in person to understand. The inhabitants live in hygienic conditions. There is no trace there of the kind of grime you'd find in Berdichev, Proskurov, Balta, and other such places. The streets in Kremenets are well paved. The whitewashed buildings are tidy and clean. The clean clothes of the Jews, and especially the women of course, are so impressive that they can hoodwink a visitor and hide the deplorable economic conditions that prevail there from them.”

None of this could be said of Meir's classroom, however. It was all though all the dirt from the entire town had somehow settled there. The cheder was in one room of his small, low hut. There was always a pale, sick child to be found in there. The hut stood next to a blind wall that entirely blocked the sunlight. All that misfortune piled up on that poor teacher.

To begin with the children would memorize only a few verses of a Torah portion, one section per student each week. Once they had memorized it all, they would recite the whole thing together in a chant, as a veritable choir. Childish voices rang out, and all the while childish imaginations pictured the legendary figures of the Bible.

Meir the teacher was not one to spare a slap when he found himself dealing with a dull-witted child, or when he had the impression, when everyone was reciting as a group, that one of them was merely parroting his neighbor, like a dummy. In those moments he would call up the suspect and force him to recite everything on his own. All the other children were moved by their shamed comrade's sobbing. Like all teachers of a certain kind, every Sabbath Meir would pay a visit to a different bourgeois household to examine his pupil there.

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Then the “dull-witted” child would stare at his teacher. When he stumbled over a word in front of his father, he would burst out crying in shame, whereupon the father would pacify the child and tell him to go outside to play. Meir was not by nature good at explaining things. His physical deficiency diminished the children's respect for him.

The teacher Shakhna, on the other hand, was cut from an entirely different cloth. He was even generally addressed by his surname: Buts. In this regard he was unique among all the major teachers. His own son, Mote, attended the Jewish four-year government school. Though he was a Radzyn Hasid–one of those who wore a blue thread woven into the fringes of his prayer shawl–he nevertheless cover his head not with a round velvet skullcap, but with a small, silk square one. He also saw to it that the hair on the front of his head should not hang over his broad forehead, but combed it backward over the rim of his yarmulke, like a kind of hidden brush cut. His alabaster white fingernails always gleamed as though polished. The long black string that hung down from his pince-nez lent him a certain aristocratic air.

He taught his students the Five Books of Moses in order, beginning with Genesis and finishing the year with Deuteronomy as well as Targum Onkelos^[15]. He did the same with the Prophets and Writings. Additionally, he taught the pupils the rules of Hebrew grammar. With the older students he even taught Ibn Ezra's commentaries. Along with grammar, he taught how to write in the Holy Tongue, particularly in a calligraphic hand. When he signed off a letter with the words “Beezres Hashem (with God's help),” the beys of the first word wrapped around all the other letters in a looping flourish. Shakhna already had pupils whom he trusted to help weaker pupils learn the material.

He was not very knowledgeable when it came to teaching a page of Gemara. He would only teach certain verses from two tractates. In his own copy of the Gemara he had notes in the margin explaining the texts. But these few verses of the Gemara were enough for his pupils to graduate and move on to an expert Gemara teacher. There were different levels of higher teacher: Elye, Mendele, and Avrahamtse. The latter was called, with more respect, R' Avrahamtse. Elye had inherited the cheder of his father, Shlome, who in his later years would spend all day sitting in the prayer house like the other idle men.

Just like his father, Shlome, whose left eyelids were fused together, Elye had a physical defect that made it difficult for him to speak clearly when he was explaining things. He was constantly smacking his lips. His voice was also low and deep, almost hoarse. These defects made it difficult for the pupils to understand their teacher. But he was adept at teaching a page of the Gemara without even having to look at the text. His students, already more knowledgeable than the others, learned to savor the greatness of memorizing something by Rabbi Shmuel Eydels. In his class the students were between 10 and 12 years old. They had to be able to recite the lesson as fluently as flowing water. Whenever a student grimaced on catching sight of Elye's blond goatlike beard, which would bend as he stretched and smacked his lips, he understood what the student thought of him. Elye thought the world of himself. As he saw it, his students were sharpening their intellects in his class. While examining students in front of their parents on Sabbath afternoons, Elye would sit by the table enjoying the glass of wine he had been offered, mumbling to the father telling him he should ask his child questions himself. A hidden smile of satisfaction would play over his silky, blond face when the child would answer something correctly. He would then add, “He'd know the material even better if he wasn't such an insolent boy.”

The teacher Mendele was at a higher level of learning. On account of his size and appearance, people called him by his diminutive. He was short not only in height, but all of his limbs were short, too.

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His head was the only normal-sized part of his body, but it tilted so sharply to the right that, together with the raised right shoulder, it appeared as though his head was fused to his body. Tiny, bent fingers poked out under his hands, and when they lay across a page of the Gemara, they resembled a chicken's feet. Particularly crippled were the fingers on his right hand. They could not even open wide enough to comfortably grasp the few patchy, dark brown hairs of his little beard. But when it came to teaching and his constant bouts of anger, he was great indeed. In this detail he had help from his wife, who was always angry. She, too, though taller than her husband, appeared short due to her bent head, which was supported by her left shoulder. When Mendele lost his temper, he would clamp his tightly tensed lips around the tip of his beard, biting it and growling through his nose.

His students were of bar mitzvah age. In his class they were expected to be able to answer a difficult question on a page of the Gemara, a sharp commentary from Tosafot [medieval commentaries], or the correct interpretation of a piece of Rabbi Shmuel Eydel's abridged writings. Mendele himself also had rabbinical authority. If the lesson took place in his home, he was weak when it came to the simple interpretation of a Biblical verse. He did not approve of simple interpretations. He was not a Hasid of any of the old rabbinical dynasties, but because he prayed in the Hasidic Synagogue, which was visited twice a year by the Kunev rabbi, Mendele would stay in Kremenets during his visits and be one of the rabbi's regular visitors.

The teacher R' Avrahamtse was a teacher on an entirely different level. His nickname was “the Torah reader.” His name would be uttered with great respect. His very appearance would add to this impression. His fine silver beard radiated majesty. His matte eyes gave off a gentle mildness that would blend with the soft controlled sound of his words. While reading the Torah, his eyes would glow with a kind of silvery gleam as he pulled his white wireframe glasses over them. His voice would take on an entirely different resonance. A pure, metallic voice would pronounce each individual word with sharpness and clarity. His “amen” alone was like the voice of a veteran cantor. He was the regular Torah reader at the Great Synagogue, where, in addition to the enlightened intelligentsia, ordinary people also prayed.

His wife, Freyde, also spoke softly and calmly. They did not have any children together, and he would always emphasize Rashi's words that “the principal descendants of the righteous are their good deeds.”

Avraham's class was made up of a select five or six pupils, children from important families. He further divided them into groups according to their competence and knowledge. He also taught adults. In this way he taught the weekly Torah portions, along with a little commentary from Alshekh to Shlome the baker and Shlome the clockmaker. He would use Alshekh everywhere he taught, such as his regular lessons every Sabbath afternoon with the porters, cobblers, pavers, and tailors. He did the same during the regular third Sabbath meal at the Radzyn Synagogue, where he would recite Torah; between the blessing over the bread and enjoying a little herring, he would again bring up the Alshekh commentaries.

He would only teach his students for a few hours, divided up over the day. He taught the first group in the mornings before prayers. Then he would go to the Radzyn Synagogue to pray, sometimes with a minyan, sometimes alone. The second group had class with him after lunch. In the evenings he would teach the two older students. His students used to say that he read a page of Gemara with the same drawn-out melody as when one read from a Torah scroll in the synagogue. During the month of Elul he would take his students through the whole prayer book for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Shemini Atzeret.

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Before reciting psalms himself, he would visit the ritual bath, after which he would drink a glass of tea with milk. His face radiated the very essence of Elul fear and trembling. Because he was the one who blew the ram's horn in both the Great Synagogue and the Radzyn Hasidic Synagogue, people heard him every day of that month blowing the shofar, using his own personal shofar.

His way of teaching was entwined with the Hasidic commentary, Toldot Yakov Yosef [History of Yakov Yosef], by Yakov Yosef of Polonnoye. He was saturated in the Toldot, as people said about him. There was also a connection to the Beit Yakov of the first of the Radzyn Hasidic dynasty. While teaching the abovementioned clockmaker, he indulged himself by teaching the Talmudic questions of the Tractates Keilim and Tohorot, by R' Gershon Henekh the Practical, as he was known.

Even the sharp-minded Shlomele Shenker, who prayed at the Butcher's Synagogue and would criticize all scholars with his sharp tongue, spoke of R' Avrahamtse with respect. Avrahamtse “did not just teach, but guided others in their learning.”

The teacher Shakhna Buts was one of the enlightened intelligentsia who, by implementing a new kind of reformed cheder, wished to bridge the divide between traditional Jewish education and state schools.

In Kremenets, a state school for Jewish children with 60 pupils had already opened back in the 1860s. Jewish subjects dominated the curriculum. It was essentially like a glorified Talmud Torah for poor children, because the only other subjects they learned were arithmetic and the Russian language. Even the enlightened intelligentsia did not seem to be in a hurry to entrust their children entirely to the public schools' hands. We can read in the HaMelits newspaper in 1894 (issue 200) that a reformed cheder was opened in Kremenets, made up of three classes. The correspondent signed the article Av. Livnim. We have ascertained that the author was in fact Hersh Prilutski, who was working there. He wrote, “The cheder is divided into three classes, following the model of a European school. For now there are only 34 pupils studying there. Because they attend a general school for the first half of the day, the teachers have decided that the hours for teaching Jewish subjects will be from 4:00 to 7:30 in the afternoon. Though these hours are minimal, the children have achieved a great deal during the first two months of the school's existence. The program of the curriculum is the Five Books of Moses with Rashi commentary, the Prophets and Writings, Hebrew with grammar, Jewish history, awareness of the Land of Israel, and Eyn Yakov. It is hoped that such reformed Jewish classrooms should answer the community's education problems in the best possible way.”

In the beginning of this century, a reformed cheder was established by a certain Yosel Burshteyn. Teaching there was also a veteran Hebrew teacher, Duvid Sireyski, who had moved from Bialystok. Young people would hire him for private Hebrew lessons. Another qualified teacher from the state schools, L. Shpal, also taught private lessons. On the eve of World War I a qualified teacher from Lutsk arrived and opened a preparatory school in which Shpal taught the young children their first notions of Hebrew.

Another such educational institute, where all secular subjects were taught alongside Jewish subjects, was the Talmud Torah for young children. The Talmud Torah had received a small subsidy from the municipal council and it operated under the auspices of Rabbi Kunin and a municipal council representative, Mikhail Shumski.

This modernization process of a purely traditional education model was undertaken thanks to the Chovevei Tsion, whose Kremenets branch had developed in tandem with the branch in Odessa. The head, and heart, of the Chovevei Tsion in Kremenets was Hersh Prilutski, whose father, Nachman, was a close friend of Yitschak Ber Levinzon.

In 1865 there was a two-year school in Kremenets with 32 pupils, more than in Lutsk, with only 21 pupils, and Dubno, with 26.

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By the end of the 19^th century there were several elementary schools in Kremenets. Two were entirely Christian, and a third was “neutral,” where Jewish children were also admitted. All were preparatory schools for the three-year “state school,” where lessons were taught in German and French. The state school was open to everyone and, indeed, over 50% of the pupils were Jewish.

We learned in a letter published in the Jewish-Russian magazine, Sion, in 1861 that on May 7 a government school opened in Kremenets, with 60 children enrolled. Apart from Russian and arithmetic taught in Russian, all the subjects were on Jewish topics. The Bernshteyn brothers (Y. B. Levinzon's friends), both merchants, provided for the school. “The Hasidim,” the article says, “demonstrate considerable resistance.” There was also a kind of boarding school for girls, where they learned handicrafts.

By the beginning of this century, there were the following Jewish schools in Kremenets: a three-year elementary school run by the qualified teacher Moshe Ber's (Moisey Borisovitsh) Goldfarb; a four-year state school run by the qualified teacher Kretshmar; and the private girls' school for handicrafts run by the teacher Rivke Dudel, which in the 80s became a two-year elementary school for Jewish girls.

Two higher schools were also opened, following an eight-year course: a trade school and a private girls' gymnasium founded by N. S. Aleksina.

On the trade school board were the Jews Moshe Ginzburg, Mikhel Shumski, and Azriel Margolis. The management board chairman was Shumski, appointed by the municipal administration. The majority of the board was made up of Christians, though the majority of pupils were Jewish children. These two higher schools also attracted many Jewish pupils from outside Kremenets, especially from small towns in the surrounding area. Thanks to the help of the abovementioned Jewish management board members, many pupils were also admitted from poor families without the means to pay the full fees. The same principle was practiced in the girls' gymnasium. In addition to the schools, there were a whole series of private teachers, so-called tutors, who taught Jewish children in their homes.

We know that there were opponents to such secular education, as demonstrated by an article in the Jewish-Russian periodical Rassvet from 1880 (page 1049) in which a certain A. Z. writes,

“In our town there lives a poor family by the name of Katz. Their young boy had already partaken of the Tree of Knowledge and wanted to continue his studies in the Zhitomir Institute. There was no money to pay the fees to attend the school in Zhitomir. The school director and several others raised the necessary funds to pay for it. When the boy was ready to set off, the neighbors, relatives in particular, caused a commotion. They claimed the boy was being led on the path to apostasy. They wrote a letter to the school director saying so many bad things about the boy that in the end the boy stayed home.”

M. Gertsfeld writes in the Rassvet in 1879 (Issue 14) that poverty among the Jewish population in Kremenets does not hinder the children's general educational success. Of 5,200 Jewish residents, 182 boys and girls attend the state school. Of the 7,500 strong Christian population, only 112 of their children attend school. Proportionally, that is 1 child for every 40 souls in the Jewish community, versus 1 child for every 67 souls in the Christian community. The same Gertsfeld was strongly influenced by the kind of Enlightened who hated the Yiddish language–“Zhargon” as they called it–and called for the learning of Russian. Indeed, he writes: “The Russian language is shoving aside Zhargon.”

From him we also learn of the first sprouting of secular education in earlier years. He writes, “The yearning in Kremenets toward general education dates back to the 1830s, when certain parents sent their children to study in the Lyceum.” He goes on to write about the later years: “A respectable percentage of the students in the Zhitomir rabbinical school are from Kremenets; nor is there a shortage of students from Kremenets in the gymnasiums or universities.

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There are 10 attending the middle schools and 5 in the higher schools.” As it happens, we know the names of those 5 students: Dr. Hindes, Dr. A. Landesberg, Dr. M. Litvak, and two of Aba Tsukerman's sons.

From the same M. Gertsfeld, we learn that the Jews of Kremenets were also busying themselves with training qualified workers. He writes, “In 1880 the state school opened a department to teach carpentry and locksmithing. The Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia in Petersburg funded this endeavor to the tune of 140 rubles a year. At a meeting the Jews of Kremenets decided that a further 450 rubles a year funding should be provided, to be taken from the community's tax income (from the tax on kosher meat).”

If the pious Jews of Kremenets continued to refrain from sending their children to the general school, or the special Jewish state school, they were nevertheless glad to ensure their children learned to write in Russian as well as in Yiddish. They entrusted their children to private tutors. And so, after cheder, little boys would go to Duvid “the Scribe,” and little girls would go to one of the two qualified public-school teachers, the Dudel sisters, particularly the eldest sister, Reveka.

Jews who came from out of town to Kremenets for alms did not have to worry about finding a place to spend the night. The Jews of Kremenets set up a shelter for poor travelers in the 1920s, while an earlier attempt to establish a special house to accommodate guests had been interrupted by the outbreak of World War I. The good deed of welcoming guests had always been a specialty of the miller Shimon Chayim. He had been a Zionist since 1905, when a large gathering sang Hatikvah for the first time in the Great Synagogue. It was he who later built the shelter.

But the Jews of Kremenets had always extended a warm welcome to poor strangers even before, by offering them a place of refuge in the prayer house. The houses of worship, with the exception of the Great Synagogue, were always open community spaces where people could spend the day, or the night, all year round, but especially in winter. The stoves would be lit from dawn until late into the night. Shopkeepers would drop in to warm up their bones a little by the stove; there would even sometimes be potatoes roasting inside. Market women, or butcher's wives, would come to gather hot coals to fill the braziers they used to keep warm outside or in the frozen butcher's shops.

Outsiders would come to town not just for a few days, but sometimes for weeks on end because the local Jews were so generous. Sabbath eve began for guests not on Friday, but on Thursday. Coins were prepared in advance. Even children would rush to their mothers asking for a coin to give to the paupers. It is no surprise, then, that they stayed longer in town and advised others to come to Kremenets after they had left. The week of Purim brought a veritable flood of such guests. They would walk around from house to house carrying baskets filled with small change, no doubt enough to last them until Passover, when they would return to their homes, back to their wives and children.

Of all these varied guests, one guest in particular stood out, as a proper guest and not just a seeker of alms. It was the Hasid who would come to stay with fellow followers of the same rabbi. He strode right into a Hasid's house and made himself right at home; they were followers of the same rabbi, after all! After staying like this for a few weeks, the Hasid would invariably be given a few rubles to send him on his way. In later years, when there was already a shelter for guests, they were not left to their own devices. After work, people would drop by to bring the visitors glasses of tea and something to eat, while also conversing with them for hours. A stranger could always find someone to talk to.

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The shelter was not run by official sextons but normal, everyday Jews, such as Shimon Chayim the miller, Toyve the bootmaker, Mendel Karsh, and Shlome Fingerhut–all handworkers who made their living from a miller's wheel or a carpenter's plane, whose hospitality and generosity was warmed by human sincerity and Jewish familiarity.

If one needed a funeral shroud for a poor dead man, or even someone to recite Kaddish for him if he had no male relations to survive him, or pots to boil water for the ritual purification of the body, or someone to perform the ceremony itself, to dress the body in shrouds and light an oil lamp in the house before the week of mourning, or even to arrange a minyan for the week, all of this was arranged by the Burial Society.

With the mountainous paths that led to the cemetery, strong people were needed to carry the body. The burial men were called “carriers.” People had great respect for the Burial Society. As Yosel the paver used to say, “They always let us in through the front door.” Indeed, the Burial Society had considerable influence. If a person who had never donated to the community needs during their lifetime died, then it was the heirs would have to pay for the deceased's failings.

In Kremenets they carried the body to the grave on their shoulders, on two long poles joined by four thickly woven canvas strips on which they laid a board, which was then decked with a sheet from the deceased's bed. Under the deceased's head they placed the pillow from his or her bed, and the body was covered in a black sheet with a white Star of David on top. The custom was to pause while carrying the body past any place of worship, especially if the deceased had prayed there while alive. They would put down the stretcher, and the cantor would come out and say a prayer for the dead. Each body, without exception, would be taken through the Great Synagogue courtyard, and the procession would pause in front of the entrance, in the same place where wedding canopies were erected. That spot was a symbol for the planting of new life to take the place of those who had passed on. It was the last stop and so here El Malei Rachamim was recited with deep sorrow.

From the synagogue courtyard to the graveyard, the route led through a narrow path. During rainy days it was a mass of soggy clay, and in winter it was treacherously slippery. The path led downhill and then uphill until it came to the cemetery vestibule, where the body was laid on a wide wooden platform. The building had been converted from a holy man's crypt to a public space. Inside, in a tall, wide tomb, lay the remains of Rabbi Mordekhayle, R' Nachman of Chernobyl's son. The tomb was filled with hundreds of papers: these were the handwritten petitions bearing his followers' names and wishes.

From this point until the grave, the body was entirely in the Burial Society's hands, with Moshe Yosel at its head–Yosel the paver, as he was called. On the platform, the funeral shrouds were opened, the deceased's hands were uncovered, and between the thumb and index finger a twig was placed; then the fist was closed and the pillow removed from under the deceased's head. The path to the grave was also uphill. They walked through headstones, the graveyard being so densely packed. But from the hut the way led through a narrow little path that followed the stone fence. Leaning against this was a narrow headstone slab and a piece of stone. According to the legend it was here that R' Avremele Hasid the “Angel” was buried. It is said that he requested his final resting place to be in a place where everyone would tread over him. Another variant said that during an epidemic, a dead man was placed on a wagon because people were afraid to touch his body, and the wagon tipped over at that exact spot and the body fell off.

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This was interpreted as a sign from above that the dead man should be buried there, realizing the words: “He will swallow up death in victory”–that the epidemic would come to an end.

In 1894 a cholera epidemic spread through Kremenets as it did through all of Russia. Children died like flies. The people wanted to beg forgiveness by erecting a wedding canopy in the graveyard. Everything was prepared, but everything was ruined by the government rabbi, who was meant to register the wedding. Without his document, the local rabbi was not able to perform the marriage. Consequently the whole ceremony fell through. (HaMelits, issue 200, September 1894)

Typical Home of the Jewish Poor in Kremenets

1. Years of Destruction refers to the Khmelnytsky Uprising. Bogdan Khmelnytsky led the Cossack and peasant uprising against Polish rule in Ukraine in 1648, which resulted in the destruction of hundreds of Jewish communities. Return
2. Literally, “master of clothing,” after R' Yafe's compendium of Jewish law, Royal Garments (Levush Malkhut). Return
3. What follows is a list of Hebrew terms with their Yiddish equivalents. The English translation is shown here. Return
4. In Hebrew, these initials are אמה. Return
5. The Shulchan Aruch (literally, “set table”) is a compendium of Jewish religious law. The first of the four parts is Orach Chayim (“Way of Life”): daily, Sabbath, and holiday laws. Return
6. Chok Leyisrael is a daily study program that includes one section each from the Torah, Prophets, Writings, Mishna (core text of the Talmud), Gemara (commentary and analysis portion of the Talmud), Zohar (a work of Jewish mystical thought), Halakha (Jewish law), and Musar (ethics). Eyn Yakov is a compilation of rabbinic homilies in the Talmud. Return
7. The Pochayev Lavra is a monastery of Orthodox Christian denominations in Pochayev. Return
8. YEKOPO stands for Yevreyskiy komitet pomoschi zhertvam voyny, or Jewish Relief Committee for War Victims, an organization formed in Russia after the outbreak of World War I. Return
9. TsISHO stands for Tsentrale Yidishe Shul Organizatsie (Central Jewish School Organization, founded in 1921 in Warsaw), which organized schools that taught in Yiddish and emphasized local Jewish culture. Return
10. OPE stands for Obshchestvo dlia rasprostraneniia prosveshcheniia mezhdu evreiami v Rossii (Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia). Return
11. Narodnaya Volya [The people's will] was a revolutionary socialist political organization. Return
12. A shiviti (literally, “I have set”) is a meditative ornate plaque for contemplation of God's name. The name and concept are based on the verse in Psalms 16:8: “I have set the Lord always before me.” Return
13. Tsena Urena, first published in the 16^th century, contains Yiddish adaptations of portions of the Bible. The title comes from Song of Songs 3:11: tse'ena ure'ena benot tsion (Go forth and look, daughters of Zion). Return
14. “Sayer,” the title given to the woman who recited prayers in the vernacular for women unable to read Hebrew. Return
15. Targum Onkelos is the primary Jewish Aramaic targum (“translation”) of the Torah. Return

Translator's Note:

1. 1 verst = 1.8 km, approximately 1 mile. Return

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