History of Ivenets (Iwieniec)

By Shimon Oshrowitz/Ramat Gan

Iwieniec, in the region of Minsk, and the estate next to it belonged to the Solohov family. In 1810 both became the property of the Flevka family (according to Slownik Geograficzny, Warsaw, 1882).

At the end of the 19th century there were 288 homes in the town, mostly Jewish, who earned their living as small merchants and craftsmen. The Christian population was occupied mainly in manufacturing clay vessels such as jars, bowls and pots, and making clay tiles covered with a glossy colorful finish, used to decorate the heaters in the homes.

The town was run by a local government (Gemeine), which also encompassed 3329 villagers who lived in some 132 small villages in the area. This population was represented by 14 village heads.

Until 1868 there was a Catholic church in the town, which was founded in 1606, but after the Russian rule was established in the area, it began to restrict the Catholics and forbade them to maintain their church. A local Catholic who wanted to go to church had to walk 6 kilometers to the next town, Kamin.

The nobleman Dragonchev bought the land of the town and the "estate" at the end of the 19th century. He treated the Jews favorably. At the market square he built several stores and rented them out to shopkeepers, all Jews. The local Jews paid him also for leasing the land on which they built their homes. In the beginning of the 20th century they bought that land from him.

Until the beginning of the 20th century Ivenets was under the jurisdiction of the police in Rakov.

Through the town flows the Velma River.

According to the census of 1811, there were 169 Jewish men in the town.

In 1816-1819 there were already 825 Jews in the town, 463 men and 362 women (according to Veisrusishe Visenshafleche Academy, Minsk, 1930).

In 1847 there were 2342 Jews in the town. Fifty years later, in 1897, there were 1343 Jews, 50.3 percent of the total population of 2670 souls (Yevreiska Encyclopedia).

According to the census of 1921 conducted by the Polish government, there were 2226 residents in the town at that time, including 945 Jews, or 42.4 percent.

Anti-semitism piled economic and social difficulties on the life of Polish Jews, and caused the youth to leave the country. The main goal for this youth was the Land of Israel, but the restrictions on immigration caused young people to go wherever they could, so as to escape from Eastern Europe, where the hatred towards Jews grew day by day.

At the outbreak of the Russo-German war, on June 21, 1941, there were 330 Jewish households in Ivenets, totalling some 1200 persons.

The waves of hatred and the rivers of blood that flooded the world swallowed up this quiet town and wiped it off the face of the earth.

Only memories remain, and... a deep large common grave.

Of the 1200 Jews of the town, only 70 survived!

Ivenets, My Hometown,
at the End of the 19th Century

by Shlomo Bar Tzvi Milikovsky (1880-1955)

About the Author

Shlomo, the son of Reb Hirshel Malkes, the well known religious teacher of the town, was born in Ivenets.

He studied at the yeshivot and became a rabbi.

When he returned home, he devoted himself to education and became the first Hebrew teacher in the town and the entire vicinity. Shortly thereafter he moved to Minsk and continued to teach Hebrew to Jewish Maskilim [modern Jews].

In 1922 he emigrated from Russia to Poland with his wife, Shoshana, and from there he immigrated in 1925 to the Land of Israel. They settled in Tel Aviv, where Shlomo taught Hebrew and trained scores of Jewish Agency emissaries.

Reb Shlomo was an idealist all his life. He believed in people, and was gentle and good hearted.

At age 75 he was overrun by a motorcycle in the streets of Tel Aviv and was killed. He left two granddaughters (one, a Hebrew teacher, and the other a social worker), and two grandsons, who are officers in the Israel Defense Forces.

The late Dr. Aryeh Abramowitz, who was the director of the Hadassah Hospital in Tel Aviv, wrote in his memoirs: "I must mention those who spread the Hebrew culture and languages in the neighboring communities. Reb Shlomo Milikovsky of Ivenets taught me in his "reformed school" several sessions, and I owe the knowledge of the Hebrew language to him. He immigrated to the Land of Israel in 1925, and much to my regret he was hit by a motorcycle and died within a few hours.

"At our hospital, at Tel Aviv University, we have established a grant in his memory, which is given every year to a student who excels in Hebrew."

May his memory be a blessing.

Chapter One

The Town and its Occupations

The town was small and distant, far from the railroad and from the main roads of the region of Minsk, and located some 50 km from the city of Minsk.

It was surrounded by woods of pine, spruce and birch and fields where wheat turned green and yellow in the spring and summer, and in the wintertime were covered with white snow.

Northwest of the town ran a small river which turned the wheels of two flour mills, one north of town and one in the south end. The length of the town from northwest to southeast was about 1.5 km, but its width was only a fifth of its length.

In the center of the town was a square which served as the marketplace. It was surrounded with houses, and in the middle there was a long row of shops built of brick, which ran the length of the square on both sides. They were tiny shops, built by the owner of the land, and rented out.

All the shopkeepers were Jews, despite the fact that the local Catholic population was much larger than the Jewish. The Christians at that time did not engage in retail or trade. There were shops in the houses in addition to those that stood in the middle of the square, as there were in other towns in the area.

The shopkeepers, who rented those stores, had a tenure over the store. A Jew was not allowed to raise the rent paid to the owner so as to take over an occupied store. If anyone attempted such a thing, he would be ostracized and banished from the community, and no one would trade with him, which was worse than death. Therefore, stores were passed on from father to son and only rarely, when a shopkeeper left town or changed his occupation, would a store change hands.

Most of the stores were some kind of a general store. They would offer a great variety of items -- a barrel full of herring, a barrel of kerosene, oil jars, flax, smoking tobacco, mainly a cheap kind called mahurka, snuff, wooden pipes, bags with matches which were lit by rubbing against the package, or the wall of the oven, or the table, and which let off a bad smell of burning sulphur. There was also wax for softening stiff boots, and such items as needles and thread for sewing, various kinds of buttons, small kerosene lamps, small pocket knives in red sheaths, and much more. Most of this merchandise was intended for the farmers in the area, but Jews would buy it too. There were a few stores that specialized in textiles.

The market square was a starting point for the streets on all four sides. On some streets lived Jews, on some Christians, and on the main and longest street, Koidnovi, there were both Jewish and Christian homes, and it was easy to tell them apart, since the Christian homes had front yards with fences and gates, boasting cultivated gardens with lawns and flowers, while the Jewish yards were open and barren, and the pigs, roosters and hens of the neighbors made free use of them, and when they were chased away they would return after a few minutes.

All the houses were made of wood, since the surrounding forests provided plenty of cheap lumber. The Jewish homes were mostly of standard uniform style, of the same size and construction. Each house had a corridor without windows or a floor, through which was the entrance to the large living room. Next to it was a bedroom. In the kitchen, at the entrance to the living room, stood a large oven for cooking and baking, made of whitewashed bricks, and next to it a small oven which reached to the ceiling, covered with painted tiles of local production, which was used during the rainy season and in winter to heat the house. In the kitchen stood two tables which held cookware for milk and meat products respectively. On the wall there were shelves on which stood the glasses, bowls, plates, and cups, and in the grooves were the spoons and forks. The furniture in the main room, which was used as a dining room and the center of the house, was simple and made of wood -- a large square table, mostly painted red, with a checker board drawn in the middle for playing on Hanukkah. It stood next to the wall facing the entrance, and alongside it, attached to the walls, were long benches with back rests to protect the whitewashed walls from being soiled. A third bench stood along the table facing the entrance. In the next room, the bedroom, were wooden beds piled high with quilts and pillows which were handed down from generation to generation, and kept piling up. There were no amenities in the houses. One had to go to the well, usually located at a Christian's yard, to draw water, using a pail. Such were the houses of those who were well off. The houses of the poor were smaller and less comfortable. Most of the houses were new, and few were truly old, for we were often visited by the angel of fire, Sarfiel, causing several houses to quickly burn down, and then be replaced by new ones. When it came to fires, Ivenets was luckier than most of the other neighboring towns. In nearby Volozhin, when a fire started, the entire town along with its synagogue and yeshiva would burn. Several volunteers in our town would go from house to house and collect loaves of bread, load them on a wagon and take them to those who lost their homes, to tide them over until they could recover from the disaster. In Ivenets fires were better controlled because the Christian residents participated vigorously in putting them out. Nearly all the Jewish families had their own homes. There were very few who lived at someone else's home, even though new Jewish homes were not added to the town. This was not due to the young not fulfilling the commandment of "procreate and multiply." This commandment was fulfilled all the time, and there was much natural increase. Each family had four or five offspring. The reason was emigration, which started in my childhood and kept growing all the time.

I recall the Sabbath when emigration was the order of the day. It was the middle of winter, during the '80s of the last century. All the worshipers gathered early in the morning in the synagogue, including the ten heads of families who would leave in the evening after Havdalah* on their way to America. All the worshipers watched them with great pity and compassion. Everyone tried to imagine what he would feel like if he were in their shoes, having to leave his beloved wife and children, and go on such a long journey, across countries and across the great sea, arriving at a strange land without any relative or support, no friend or acquaintance, and look for a way to live. On this Shabbath the aliyot* to the Torah were not sold, but were given to those about to depart. One by one they were called to the Torah, and each received the Mi Sheberach blessing from the cantor, who concluded, "The Holy One Blessed Be He will save him from all trouble and hardship, and let us say, amen." The entire congregation responded to that amen. In the homes people spoke about it the entire day. The women commiserated with the wives of the immigrants, and some broke into tears. Most of those who left were tailors, who could not find work in the town, and had to travel to the neighboring villages. On Sundays they would get up early, and after prayers and a meager breakfast, they would take their tefilin* bag and put it in their satchel, along with a loaf of dark bread, a heavy iron and large scissors, and would go on foot to the villages, to their familiar farmers, for whom they would make garments for all the members of their families. During the week they never ate a hot meal or cooked vegetables. They would never touch non-kosher food. All they ate were potatoes they roasted themselves on the fire, at times a boiled egg, and the like. They would stay at the farmer's house all day and night, breathing the foul air and the smell of pigs. They did not always find work, and when they did, the pay was scant. Making a living was as hard as crossing the Red Sea. So when they heard the rumors that in America tailors were much in demand, they borrowed money for the trip by mortgaging their homes, and they left. After some three months the first letter arrived from a husband in America to his wife, in which he lets her know that he arrived unharmed in the "Golden Land," and became a presser, for which he earns 8-10 dollars a week, and he hopes to make more.

The family rejoiced with the letter, and particularly with the 25 dollars which they found inside the envelope. A few weeks later a second letter arrived, this time with 40 dollars, with a picture of the tailor dressed in a new suit and wearing an elegant hat, his beard trimmed, and his posture upright. As a result, his wife's status in the town grew higher, and the butcher became more attentive to her, whereas before he used to scold her when she asked for a bone, to give the soup some flavor, since the lungs she bought from him had no flavor. Now he gives her a choice cut, and says a pleasant goodbye when she leaves.

Two years go by and finally she receives another letter, in which he tells her he is coming home from America. He is tired of wandering in America. The wife and the children are very happy, and wait impatiently for the head of the family to return. Finally he arrives, lugging a large suitcase with his clothes and with gifts for the wife and the children. "I will try my luck at home, perhaps I could use the few hundred dollars I brought with me to start some kind of a business. I am tired of the ungodly America where the presser must desecrate the Sabbath and work seven days a week." Six months later, having failed in several undertakings, his money is running out. He returns to America, and later his wife receives tickets for the entire family to join him. The house is sold, the family goes to America, and another Jew moves into the house.

The Christian and the Jewish residents of Koidnovi Street had large backyards. Jews would also use those yards as one of the sources of livelihood for their families. The children would collect horse manure and cow dung in the street near their home, and deposit it next to the garbage in the back of the house. In early spring, one or two weeks after Passover, they would engage a local farmer, who would come with his horse and wagon, take out the manure and spread it over the yard. Two days later he would return, mend the fence and plow the yard. Two weeks later he would plow it again. The members of the family would begin to sow. In a small section near the house they would sow cucumbers, onions, peas, beets, carrots, and other vegetables. On a larger portion of the yard they would sow potatoes. After the sowing the farmer would harrow the field, and this would be the end of his work. Weeding was done by the girls of the family. If it was a good year with rain falling in due season, one could start eating the new crop by Tisha B'Av.* Every day they would go out to the garden, pluck some fresh cucumbers and dig up some potatoes, which were eaten by the family. This continued until Slichot.* The rest of the cucumbers were pickled in a large wooden barrel down in the cellar. Potatoes, radishes, beets, and carrots were also taken down to the cellar, where they were kept in special bins, and were used all winter long, until Passover.

There was a cellar in every house at the end of the corridor which was used as a pantry for all sorts of food that could spoil, in the summer because of heat, and in the winter because of the cold. No one knew in those days about iceboxes or refrigerators, but ice was available even in the summer. Some people prepared in the summer all sorts of cold drinks, such as soda water, lemonade, and kvass.* They had deep pits in their yards covered with heavy tops, and they would cut blocks of ice in the winter from the ice cover over the river, and bring it in their wagons, put it in the pits, and it would last until the next winter. As a mitzvah,* they would give free ice to sick people.

The main source of income for the people of the town was market day, which was always on Sunday. Farmers from the neighboring villages and their wives would gather in the market square, arriving in their horse-drawn wagons or on foot, and would bring their produce to sell, while buying whatever they needed at the market. In the summer they would bring mainly eggs and poultry and produce. In the fall and winter they would bring rye, wheat, barley, flax, and seeds. The Jewish merchants would buy their grain which was ground in the local mills, and was consumed by the town. The flax and other seeds were sent to certain towns where they were sold as raw material for oil and fabric.

It was not easy for the Jewish merchant to buy produce from the farmer. The farmer always asked for a high price, which did not leave any profit for the merchant. Afraid that the farmer would go to his competitor, the merchant would bargain with him for a long time. Generally, the merchants treated the farmers fairly. These merchants had steady ties with well-to-do farmers. They would lend them money in the spring, and in the fall the farmers would pay their debt with their crops. These farmers did not inflate the price, and the Jewish buyers would take a decent profit without cheating the farmers.

Things were harder for the shopkeepers than it was for the merchants. If a farmer passed by a store, two shopkeepers would rush out and begin to pull his sleeve, each in the direction of his or her store. They would urge him, "Please, sir, come to my store, everything is cheap." The farmer would stop, puzzled, scratching his head, and would spit on the ground and shout, "What do these Jews want from me?" He would finally recover, go into the first store, and ask, "How much is the salt? And what about the tobacco?" Whatever the shopkeeper's answer was, he would reply, "It is too expensive, please make it cheaper and I will buy. "I can't," was the answer, "I swear to you I can't, I swear on my husband and children." The farmer would leave the store and go into the next one, where the same scene was repeated. He would go into several stores, and finally buy what he needed. Sometimes he would take something without paying, namely, steal, which meant a loss for the shopkeeper. But as hard as it was to sell, it was even harder to buy stock and get it to the store. The wholesalers were in Minsk, which was 50 kilometers away from Ivenets, and one had to find a wagon driver to go there.

There were three or four wagon drivers in the town who went regularly to Minsk. Each owned two wagons and three or four horses, and would travel to Minsk twice a week. The wagoner would tie baskets of eggs and poultry to the back of the wagon, which he took at his own expense to the city to earn some money. On the wagon were some empty barrels which were sent by the innkeepers to Minsk to be filled with beer. There were also packages belonging to the passengers who travelled to Minsk. They would crowd into the wagon like sardines, practically sitting on top of one another. They would go out in the evening. The horses would move slowly, and their owner did not make them go any faster. Late at night they would arrive at some inn, where they would stop. The wagoner would give his horses some hay, and would drink some vodka and munch on something. The passengers would go into the inn where they would drink tea and eat some of the food they had brought along on the trip. After about two hours, they would climb up on the wagon again, and continue to travel until they reached Minsk the next day at noon.

In the spring and summer the trip was not too difficult, since the ground was dry and the horses managed to somehow pull the wagon. But during the rainy season, when cold rain entered one's clothes and the road was muddy, the horses refused to move despite all the yelling and cursing and whipping they received from their master. When the road became steep, they stopped altogether. The passengers had to get off, and the men were asked to help push the wagon uphill. This occurred on the way to Minsk. But on the way back to Ivenets, it was twice as hard. Now the wagon was loaded down, and the passengers became assistants to the horses, as they spent most of the trip walking in the mud alongside the wagon and helping push it. The second trip, which took place in the middle of week, meant that one returned on Friday during the rains, and reached Ivenets at dark, as they used to say, just in time for "Lecha dodi,"* and sometimes even after the Sabbath eve meal.

On days when the merchants did not have to travel to Minsk or hold a market day, when they looked for some peace and quiet, they would suddenly be assailed by the tax inspector. Each merchant had to pay a tax in Minsk and get a receipt stating that he had permission to deal in the items he had purchased for his store. But some items paid very high taxes, and the merchants avoided paying the tax for them. Therefore, when suddenly the merchants heard the bells of a carriage drawn by a pair clinging through the streets, they knew that the tax inspector, accompanied by the local policeman, had arrived, and a great panic broke out. The merchants and their families would rush into the store and begin to remove all forbidden merchandise and hide it in their homes, going back and forth several times, until finally all the "chometz"* was put away. Even then each merchant's heart raced as he was worried lest something would be found and he would have to pay a fine or spend some time in jail.

Not only the shopkeepers profited from market day. There were other Jews in the town who made their living on that day. Those were mainly the owners of the taverns. A farmer would not go back home from the market without first downing a few drinks of vodka and beer. Whether or not he had brought with him from home a loaf of bread and some pork, he would go into the tavern and besides beer and vodka would also buy a slice of white bread and a herring. He would sit there and drink in the company of his fellow villagers, or people from a neighboring village, and would talk shop, how much he sold or bought for, and as the conversation heated up he would keep ordering more drink, and by nighttime he would walk out drunk as a skunk, wading along, hardly able to find his wagon and climb into it, and kept whipping his horses, as the wagon crossed the town clanging and banging on its way back to the village.

At twilight, after the farmers were gone, the tavern owner would open the windows to air the place from the tobacco smoke and the bad odor left by the drunk farmers, count the money he had taken in that day, and his face brightened with satisfaction. He would pray enthusiastically and thank his Maker, who created farmers, and gave them a powerful desire to drink vodka so that the seed of Jacob the righteous could make a living.

Craftsmen also found a source of livelihood in the town. There were shoemakers who would make some pairs of boots from coarse leather for market day, to be sold to the farmers, and some kind of high shoes from the same leather for the farmers' wives. They would hang the footwear on both their shoulders and would circulate in the marketplace, looking for customers. There were also tailors who would make clothes from simple fabric, hang them on nails on one of the walls in the market, and would stand there, waiting to sell them to the farmers. There were also carpenters who built large wooden cabinets, with tin strips for support, fitted with lock and key, to be sold to the farmers who used them to keep their household items and their clothes. These coarse cabinets were placed in the middle of the marketplace on an empty lot, where the carpenters waited for their customers.

Besides the craftsmen there were also horse traders, who made their living on market day. The horse trader would appear at the market with his assistant, driving his wagon, to the sides of which were tied several horses. The horses were groomed, and their tails were tied in a wave, to make them appear younger and more alert. When a potential customer showed up, the horse had to be tried out. The assistant would mount the horse, take it to one of the side streets, and kick it slightly to make it gallop. The horse had been trained before, suffering many blows, to respond to this signal and break into the fastest gallop possible, using secret tricks taught to the horse traders by gypsies. The horse would run for its life, crossing the town in no time at all, and the farmer was ready to negotiate. The trader offered a price, and the customer countered. The two parties would look into each other's eyes and would start making new offers and counter offers. Finally the trader would grasp the farmer's hand and shout, this is the last price, take it or leave it. The farmer would agree, and the two would go into the tavern where the farmer treated the trader to a drink to seal the deal. In the course of the day the trader would make a few deals, each time doing the required drinking, and would return home at night properly drunk.

In addition to the income from market day, which might be termed internal income, since it was derived from the neighboring villages which formed one economic unit with the town, the town also had external sources of income, which came from the outside. These sources can be termed export income, which came under several categories. How can one speak of export from Ivenets? Near the town there was some kind of clay soil that could be used for making various kinds of pottery. The farmers would dig up this soil and bring it to sell to the potters, who would use their equipment to make such ware as cooking pots, jars, bowls, plates, cups, and toys for children. They would let these items harden in the kiln and pour over them a molten mixture of lead and other elements, and when these vessels were ready they were hard and had a shiny orange color. These pottery shops also produced tiles for building stoves for heating the homes in the wintertime. This craftsmanship employed both Jews and Christians. The pottery became well known in other towns and villages, and Jews would come with large wagons from far away and buy it, taking it back to their towns. The town had another export, more important than the pottery, namely, export of people. Nearly all the Christian residents of the town were expert masons, who could build stone and brick houses. In the spring they would scatter over the large cities of Russia and work in construction. Some of them were building contractors. Those were away all spring and summer, and came home in the fall. They would bring back the money they earned from their work, most of which found its way to the pockets of the Jewish shopkeepers, from whom the masons bought all they needed for their homes. During my childhood there were no Christian stores in the town.

In those days Jews and Christians generally lived in peace, or even in friendship, and there was no hatred and competition between them. Many Christians learned how to speak Yiddish, and when they dealt with Jews they preferred to speak in this tongue, to show how well they had mastered it. One could easily detect their non-Jewish pronunciation.

One time in one of the towns of the region of Vilna, called Dolhinov, a pogrom broke out during a market day. Several Jews were killed and some stores were pillaged. The news spread in the neighboring towns, and some farmers agitated and sought to do the same in Ivenets. The Jews of the town were scared. Subsequently, some leaders of the Christian community spoke out and said in public, do not touch our Jews! Anyone who touches them may pay with his life! People dropped the subject, and our Jews rested easy.

The reason for the peace between the two communities in those days was the following. Both had a common enemy -- the Russian government and people. The Russian government did not persecute the Catholics nearly as badly as it did the Jews. The Catholics could live anywhere they wanted and engage in any occupation, but they could not forget the fact that the Czarist regime occupied a large portion of Poland and subjugated its inhabitants, even taking away their houses of worship and turning them into Greek Orthodox churches.

There was another human export, strictly Jewish. Those were Jewish teachers who became accomplished and sophisticated, and could open their own little private schools [or cheder] in Minsk. They may not have been more knowledgeable than the poor teachers of Ivenets, but they earned more than the latter. There were also some store clerks from Ivenets who worked in the commercial establishments in Minsk, and sent money to their families back home. There were also Jews who worked in the lumber business, and were well paid. They lived in the woods and sent their wages to their families in the town. All this income was added to the financial balance of the Jewish community in our town.

Chapter Two

Customs and Societies In Our Town

The social and spiritual life of the town centered for the most part around the small synagogues [bes midrash]. There were two such synagogues in the town, an old and a new, but unlike in other towns, they were not next to each other, but at some distance. The old one was properly named the "old bes midrash," but the other, the new one, was not properly named, since even the old folks of the town hadn't been born yet when it was built. The new one was larger and better furnished than the old one, which stood at some distance from the Jewish homes and was surrounded by an empty field covered with weeds during the summer, where, in addition to goats and calves, the horse belonging to a book peddler, a friend of Mendele Mocher Sforim [famous Hebrew writer in Russia at the time], also grazed. This book peddler would visit the towns and sell Yiddish novels and story books at the synagogues. The new synagogue was closer to the homes, and even had an attached toilet. Most of the poor folks prayed in the old one, while the "balabatim" [better situated Jews] prayed in the new one, where they went every day to pray shachris,* mincha* and maariv.* There were two minyanim* for the morning prayer. The first consisted of workers on their way to work, who were in a rush to drive their wagons to the villages. Those rose early and finished praying before sunrise. The second minyan consisted of balabatim, shopkeepers and teachers, who were in no great rush. After the second minyan, most worshipers remained to study a page of Talmud,* or Mishna,* or a chapter of Psalms. People studied individually. In the new synagogue Talmud was studied in a group, along with the commentaries, lead by the town's rabbi, who would explain every difficult question. These students were members of the Hevreh Shas [Talmud society], and the ones who studied Talmud alone were also members of this group. They studied the same page of Gemorah,* but since they did not have a seat in the new synagogue, they studied alone in the old one. The seats in both synagogues were permanent, and were considered the property of the people who occupied them, which was passed down from father to son. When an owner of a seat had financial problems, he would either sell the seat or mortgage it until he was able to pay back.

But not all the seats cost the same. The seats at the eastern wall were the expensive ones, while the ones in the north and south cost according to their proximity to the east. When the morning prayer ended, the synagogue did not remain empty. Now the yeshiva boys, who each day ate at someone else's home, began to arrive. These boys enjoyed a special status in the town, not unlike university students today. Their mental energy invested in their studies was much esteemed, and both their general and religious studies were cultivated. They came mostly from neighboring towns, or were the dropouts from the nearby illustrious Volozhin Yeshiva, where the studies were too hard for them. At that famous yeshiva students did not eat "days," but had to be self-supporting, using money sent to them from home, in addition to a meager stipend given to them from the coffers of the yeshiva. If for some reason the money from home stopped coming, the student had to leave the Volozhin Yeshiva and go to a nearby town to "eat days." The boys were mostly between the ages of 18 and 20, and were able to navigate through the sea of the Talmud. They would study the Talmud wrinkling their foreheads, swaying back and forth, and chanting at their own pace and in their own individual style.

Besides the Hevreh Shas which studied Talmud, there were also Hevreh Mishnayos, which studied a chapter of Mishna between the afternoon and the evening prayers, sitting around the long table lit with a kerosene lamp. One of the artisans was an expert in Mishna, and he would explain the text to his friends. They would all listen in great attention. From time to time they would ask a question, and the speaker was never hesitant, but rather would also come up with some sort of an answer. On the Sabbath the lesson would take place in the afternoon before mincha. There was also a Hevreh Tehilim [Psalms study group]. Most of its members were common folks, who rose early to go to the synagogue, where a Jewish blacksmith with a large belly, who had committed the Book of Psalms to memory, would chant the verses, and the group would repeat after him with the same chant. They would keep chanting until they reached the verse "Happy are those who walk the right path," at which point they would all stop and go home to drink a home brew tea [tzikoria] which was kept in a large clay bottle in the stove, along with the cholent* stew for the Sabbath lunch. They would return to the synagogue for the prayer of shachris and musaf,* and would leave the short part from "Happy are those" to the end until after mincha, after which they prayed maariv.

In addition to these religious societies there were also social aid societies. The first and most important one was the Hevreh Kadisha [burial society]. Man, after all, must die, and cannot take care of himself. Who would help him make the transition from this false world to the true world? Well, the Hevreh Kadisha. How did this society obtain the name Kadisha, which means holy? Who is to say! Perhaps because of the elaborate kiddush* it would offer at its annual party, during which much vodka was consumed. Or the great annual feast, similar to King Solomon's feast, as described by the poet Shneur? But the annual feast happened to take place during the week, in the middle of winter, without a kiddush. Incidentally, as a child I used to enjoy that meal, although neither I nor my late father were members of this society. This is how it happened: my grandmother was a gabbai (she died at 85), known today as a lay leader. In our town, which had different sources of livelihood, there were also some truly poor people. How could one let such people not have anything to celebrate the Sabbath, no candles, no challah, albeit a small one, not a morsel of meat, not even lungs or kishkes*? So grandmother would get up early on Friday, tie the bonnet on her head, and during the rainy season, when the streets turned into mud and slush, she would put on a man's boots, and would go from door to door to collect some coins and distribute them to the poor, so that they too may celebrate the Sabbath. She also belonged to the Hevreh Kadisha, and her job was to sew shrouds for the dead. She always had her own personal shrouds, which she kept in a large wooden crate in the attic, where the matzot for Passover were kept. When someone died on the first or second day of a holiday, the funeral would take place on the second day, and grandma would give her own shrouds for the departed. After the holiday she would go to the store and buy new fabric with the money she had received for the shrouds, and would summon her coworker, an old woman who used to consume snuff like a man. The two of them would sit down and cut the fabric according to size, sew it and drink some vodka, chewing on a piece of cake, and wishing each other a long life until the coming of the messiah. They would send those delicacies to grandma's house from the burial society, and of course her favorite grandson -- me -- would get his share.

The living spirit in this society was Big Yankl, who was tall, and Yankl the Shoemaker, who was a fast moving Jew who knew many stories and knew how to use them for any topic that came up, and knew how to switch from one story to another, combine them, get confused, and lose his train of thought.

Yankl was always willing to give a helping hand, console, encourage, and help people through time of trouble. Whenever a mishap befell the town, when a Jew became mortally ill, and his family tired of taking care of him, having lost sleep for several nights, Yankl would come and say, go to sleep, I will sit with him, I will take care of him and will give him his medicine, perhaps the Lord will have mercy and by morning he will recover. When the patient grew worse and the doctor and his family members began to give up hope, Yankl would come back, send the people away from the room, and would sit next to him and keep guard until he died. At that moment he would take a feather, put it to the person's nostrils, and when it failed to budge , he would go out and tell the family, give thanks to the Lord for he is rid of his suffering, and has reached his eternal rest. Do not cry or mourn, let us all go back to our duties, and we will soon return. He would come back with one or two of his colleagues, take the dead person out of bed and lay him on the ground and cover him with a black cloth, light candles for his soul and leave, while others came to do the other preparations. During burial, when the dead was brought to the cemetery and the grave was ready, Yankl would show up again, take care of last minute details, help his colleague lower the body into the grave, and make sure he lay properly in his grave. Thus, Yankl was all over the place, and never asked for recompense.

Next to Hevreh Kadisha came the Gmilat Hesed society [charitable society]. This group did not make much of an impact on our town. It would only lend tiny sums to the poor, two or three rubles, and would make them pay back 25 or 30 kopeks per week. Only the poorest of the poor were entitled to receive those loans. A shopkeeper who had to travel to Minsk to buy some stock and had cash flow problems, had to turn to Shemaya the moneylender (known as "Protzentnik"), and pay him high interest. Shemaya was an old miser, who lived in a nearby village where he leased cows from the lord of the manor, and sold the milk in the town. He had managed to save a few hundred rubles, and in his old age he became a moneylender. He would only give short-term loans, no longer than ten weeks, and he used the following method: If someone borrowed from him 10 rubles, he had to pay him every Sunday after the market hours one ruble and 5 kopeks, until he finished paying his debt, which made it half a ruble interest in the tenth week. If he loaned 20 rubles, one had to pay every week 2 rubles and 10 kopeks, and so on. If we figure it all out, we discover that he totalled 45 percent interest, and was making a very good living from lending money. He would spend all day in the synagogue, sitting in front of an open volume of the Talmud, smoking his pipe and snorting. All the Jews in town hated him for his usury and miserliness. He never gave a kopek for charity, and even we, the children, hated him. During school vacation when the yeshiva boys went home, he would sit alone in the synagogue and smoke his pipe, and we children would come and torment him. We did not do anything to him physically, but we would stand there and call out, Shemaya! and we would imitate his snorting. He would snort and fume and grasp his cane to hit us with. We would run around the bimah* several times as he chased us, until he grew too tired, and would go back to his seat and start cursing us, and so we would start again, imitating his snorting, until he stopped reacting. We too grew tired of this game and we turned to something else.

Each one of these societies had its own Sabbath. On that Sabbath they would divide the Torah portion of the week into small parts and call each one of the society's members to come up to the Torah. After the service all the members would gather at the society's chairman's house, where they would say kiddush and eat a meal which included eggs, herring, or calf jelly [psha].

The Talmud and Mishna societies should have set their annual celebration to Simchat Torah,* but since one is not supposed to mix one happy occasion with another, the celebration was postponed to Shabbat Bereshit, the day on which one starts reading the Torah again. The Psalms Society had its celebration on the first day of Shavuot,* on which King David [the author of the Psalms] died. These celebrations helped keep those societies together, and the meal of the Psalms society was the most lavish of all, not counting, of course, the meal of the burial society. The latter had cheese blintzes cooked in butter,and a kugel* floating in butter, and after everyone filled his belly there was no need to eat again that day.

We also had in our town a Bikur Holim society [visiting the sick], which had its annual party on Shabbat Beshalach, in the middle of winter. It was done in honor of the biblical verse, "Any illness -- for I the Lord am your healer." The title Bikur Holim did not describe its work too well. Its members did not visit the sick, but rather helped poor people who got sick. If a poor person got sick and his family turned to the treasurer [gabbai] of the society, he would give them a note to take to the "trustee," or the bookkeeper, who would lend money for the sick person's medication and special food. The source of income of this society was not the contributions of the balabatim of the town, since they would hardly suffice, considering the number of poor people who got sick, but rather a fund that earned money from stores in another town, which some rich man had bequeathed to the society. There were two Jewish doctors in the town: One was young and newly-wed, known as "Baal Beit'l," and the other was called Yudeh. A Baal Beit'l was different from a baal beit [plural -- balabatim], in that the latter had an established family and a status in the community. But one should not deduce that the two were doctors with diplomas from some university. The word "university" was not known in the town, and no one knew what it meant. They became doctors because they had worked for other doctors who practiced before them, and so on all the way back to antiquity.

If someone took ill, the first to be summoned was Baal Beit'l. He was always quick to show up. He would check the patient's heart by touching it and would say, nu, let someone come to my house to get the medication which I'll prepare. He would not look at the coin that would be placed in his palm, and take it casually, like a donation rather than a fee. One did not take this doctor's expertise too seriously, and if the illness was serious they would invite Yudeh. The town considered Yudeh an accomplished doctor, and he himself acted as though he was trained in a great metropolis, such as Berlin. He did not tuck his pants into his boots, as did the town's folk, but let them come down over his boots, which were made of soft leather, always polished and shiny. He wore a short coat, and his overcoat had three overlapping layers in the back, similar to the coat worn by old Italian scholars. There were more rooms in his house than in the other Jewish homes. He was an aging gentleman, tall and dignified. His seat in the synagogue was near the ark, at the northeastern corner, while the rabbi's seat was opposite his on the southeastern side. That meant that his status was about equal to the rabbi's. His income did not come mainly from the Jews of the town, but from the lords of the manors in the area.

They used to tell in the town: When an Ivenetsian patient went to see a famous doctor in Minsk, the latter would say to him, why did you bother to come to me? You have an expert physician in your town, named Yudeh. Dr. Yudeh did not prepare the medication himself. He would ask for paper and pen, which was not always available, and had to be borrowed from a neighbor's house, and would sit down and write a note for Shmuel Moshe the Pharmacist. Yudeh did not look at the coin placed in his palm either. He did not take any money from a poor patient, and would even leave a coin at such patient's house. Shmuel Moshe also did not learn his trade at an official pharmacy, but rather taught himself by reading books. On the Sabbath, when Yudeh was not allowed to write notes, he would stop at Shmuel Moshe's house, and tell him what medication was needed and how much. Shmuel Moshe was a learned Jew, who always had the Mishna with Tiferet Israel in front of him, and even studied Medieval literature. If the patient needed external medicine, such as leeches or an enema, he would delegate the job to Shaul, Baal Beit'l's brother-in-law in the case of a male patient. To a female patient he would assign Hasya, Shaul's mother. Hasya would also attend to us, the children. She would come to us with her tools, and I remember how much I objected to having an enema given to me by Hasya. I knew that my friends would mock me afterwards and would call me "Kaneh Dudka.*"

If the illness got more serious and there were signs of danger, and in answer to the question -- how is the patient, Yudeh would say, all is in the hands of heaven, the family members would resort to their own radical measures. First they would go to the synagogue to recite Psalms. There they would pay some idle persons who knew the right Psalms for a sick person a fee to recite them, and would repeat them with great sincerity, and finally they would say the special prayer for the sick printed at the end of the book of Psalms. The women made their own contribution by entering the synagogue wailing and weeping, and would go up on the bimah and open the ark, where they would cry and plead in front of the Torah scrolls, asking them to intercede with heaven, and ask for a cure for the patient. After they finished their pleading before the scrolls, they would go the cemetery where they prostrated themselves on their relatives' graves and begged them to intercede on behalf of the patient with the heavenly court, and not rest until a favorable sentence was issued.

In those days one did not consider the dead removed from the affairs of the living. There was much evidence in those days that the opposite was true. The dead would visit the living, and their relatives' affairs were close to their hearts. They were willing to give them a helping hand in time of need. Everyone knew the story about that mortally ill person for whom there was no more hope, and as he was prepared to leave this world he fell asleep and in his dream he saw his father or grandfather who had died, and the latter said to him, I have brought you a herb from the other world, and I am putting it near your head under the pillow, and tomorrow they will put it in boiling water and you will drink it like tea, and you will recover. And so it was. The next day the patient looked better. They found the herb under the pillow and boiled it in water. The patient drank the brew, got up on his feet, and recovered. And of course everyone knew that the dead come to the synagogue after midnight to pray and to read the Torah. And once a person who prayed maariv in a synagogue fell asleep. The sexton did not notice him. He went out and locked the door. After midnight the dead gathered in the synagogue to pray. The man woke up and saw the place full of dead people, praying. He was frightened, and tried to run away. But when he reached the door he realized it was locked. So he had to remain in the synagogue and watch the dead praying. He soon realized they paid no attention to him, and so his fear subsided. After the prayer they took out the Torah scroll and started to read just like living people. Their gabbai noticed him, a living man from the false world, and called him to the Torah. He said the proper blessing before and after reading the Torah. The next day he told his story to the congregation at the synagogue. A day later he died in the afternoon. And then there was the story about Yushinka who hanged himself in the entrance to the old synagogue, and was properly buried outside the fence of the cemetery. Who does not know that the earth refused to accept him, and he can be seen wandering at the crossroads, and will not find rest until some zaddik* will take pity on him and pray for his soul, and only then the earth will accept him and let him find rest in it. As a child of ten I spent an entire winter having nightmares. What happened was this. Every evening that winter from 7 to 8 we could hear a voice coming out of the new cemetery outside the town, a voice of crying and wailing like a person pleading for his life: Oy, oy! It was an irritating voice, and it scared many of the adults who refused to leave their home in the evening. As a child, I was even more scared than they. When I came home in the evening from school at nine o'clock, I would take shortcuts and run through the yards, and burst into my house with my heart pounding.

People discussed this matter at the synagogue and came up with several interpretations. One said it was a gilgul [a soul that came back in another body]. Another countered that a gilgul mixes among people rather than mess around at a cemetery, and this was the wailing of a dead person which the earth rejected. After many theories were advanced and none accepted, the Hevreh Kadisha decided the riddle had to be solved. They resolved to send a delegation to the cemetery to investigate the matter. A group of brave souls was selected, men who came in contact with dead bodies and were not easily scared by them. They gathered at the end of the Sabbath, ten in all, at the old synagogue, all dressed in short sheepskin coats and leather caps with ear covers and leather gloves, armed with thick clubs and with a large glass lantern in a wooden frame, with a lit candle. They started out for the cemetery, and could hear the wailing all the way there. But lo and behold, as soon as they arrived at the cemetery the voice stopped. Well, they decided, the dead saw the delegation coming up, was scared, and stopped wailing. They went back without solving the mystery, and only at the end of winter it was discovered that the sound was made by some bird. A farmer who lived near the cemetery, named Shmultzenovitch, shot that bird with his hunting rifle and killed it.

The dead were not the only mystery that stirred up the public and gave it a topic for interesting discussions, which made people's hearts tremble. The other exciting topic of conversation was demons. While it is true that the great Maimonides had ruled that there are no demons, and while all the students of Torah admired this great genius and philosopher and agreed with the dictum that "From Moses to Moses there has been none like Moses" [from Moses in the Torah to Moses Maimonides], the ruling regarding demons was not accepted by all. First, there are many stories in the Talmud about demons and the tricks they play on mortals, and even advice on how to deal with them. And second, there were too many stories that confirmed their existence, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that they existed. One such story had to do with a certain butcher who returned to his home on Friday night after midnight in his winter wagon. The butcher was very disappointed, because he had spent all day Thursday in the neighboring villages looking to buy a bull and was not able to. The farmers had gone mad -- they asked prices which were out of the question. The ride on the hard winter ground was easy. The moon and the stars glittered in the dark sky. The butcher leaned on the side of the wagon, wrapped in his coat. The horse trotted along. Suddenly the horse stopped and refused to go on. Nu! Nu! the butcher called out angry and bitter. May all my nightmares happen to you! You too are against me! He whipped the horse once and twice, but to no avail. He then realized something was wrong, and got off the wagon to take a look. He saw a big bound calf lying on the road. What is this? he wondered. How did the calf get here? Did it fall off some farmer's wagon? It would have made a noise and the farmer would have noticed it. No, it had to be Elijah the Prophet. He saw my misery, and gave me this present. He tried to lift the calf and put it on his wagon, but couldn't. He tried a few times, and finally he spit into his hands and, making a supreme effort, he lifted the calf and hoisted it onto the wagon. He climbed into his wagon with a song in his heart, and started to speculate about the weight of the calf, and the amount of kosher meat he would be able to get out of it, and how much he stood to make. He whipped his horse and rushed back home. He knocked on the window and called out to his wife. Wake up, Devorah, come and help me bring in the calf I have brought. But, ho! As soon as they turned to the calf it stood up, clapped its two front legs, and flew up to the sky. Well, was this a demon or what? The other proof was the story about a child, about five years old, who left his parents' home and got lost in the streets until he reached the bath house at the bottom of a hill. The door to the bath house was open, and so he went inside to check out the place. Yankl was in the bath house, and did not see the boy walk in. When Yankl finished his work, he went outside and locked the door. The child remained inside the bath house, which did not have a mezuzah.* They looked for the child all that day and night, and could not find him. They thought he had drowned in the river, and gave him up as the yearly victim claimed by the river. The next day they found him in the bath house, dead. The demons had tortured him all night until he died, and Yankl the Bath house keeper would never again go inside without first knocking on the wall with his cane and shouting, get out of here, rascals, or I will do you in by pronouncing the Ineffable Name, and only then would he go inside, certain that the demons would not harm him. Yankl threatened the demons with the Ineffable Name, but he had as much idea of what that name was as a rooster could recite the Shema.* Yankl was a very old man who wore his sheepskin winter and summer. He had bushy eyebrows over angry eyes, and despite his advanced age his hair and beard were dark. He sat in the far corner of the synagogue near the furnace, next to Raphael Heltz, who was known as Raphael the Deaf.

Raphael Heltz was a potter all his life. He had his own kiln, and in his old age he stopped working and lived with his son, and would spend morning and evening in the synagogue, sitting next to the furnace with an open Chumash* with Rashi* commentary. He only studied Rashi, and he considered himself a great scholar. His right hand had two fingers missing, which he must have chopped off to escape serving in Czar Nicholas's army. He would brag about the fact that his knowledge was greater than Yankl's, and would mock the latter by saying, Come here, Yankl, see what Rashi is saying. Yankl would look at him with his angry eyes and retort, Here you go again with your damned jokes, a plague on you! And a plague on your father's father! Don't be angry, Yankl, he would reply calmly, if you are not interested in Rashi, please tell me when this year will BHB VYKNHZ occur? I am not sure, Yankl would say, somewhat mollified, I didn't study in my youth. But my Pinyeh (his grandson) is now studying from a Talmud volume that is much bigger than your Chumash.

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