[Page 214]

[Page 226]

I encountered another type of old-fashioned apikoyres [freethinker, “heretic”] in that society – this time from a different sphere, from the world of the bes-medresh [study-house]. His name was Wolf Wisotski, also known as Velvel-Moyshe Aharons. He was a man of earlier times: a lamdn [Talmudic scholar] of the study-house, sharp of tongue and quick to argue.

He also knew mathematics and German, and was a fine medakdek [grammarian] in Hebrew. He served as a Gemara teacher and Hebrew instructor, and acted as gabbai [warden/administrator] of the first minyan [prayer quorum] in the devout Yekhiel Nekhes Bes-Medresh.

[Page 227]

But he would mock the Talmud and the Jewish religion with sarcastic expressions, even though he was still entirely immersed in the life of the bes-medresh.

Yet such types ⁽¹⁾ were always to be found in the Old Bes-Medresh. In the Talmud they are called shoneh u'parash [one who studies and then abandons], or hatsits u-nifga [one who peeks in and is struck]. This is the type of pious “bes-medreshnik” who, when he lapses into freethinking, lacking the knowledge and the firm grounding of a historical cultural development, comes into conflict between old and new views – and turns into a destructive upheavalist, a scoffer at the words of the sages, with whom the Talmud had already dealt.

Leon Rabinowish, a grandson of “Pichei Teshuvah”^[b], later editor of Ha-Melitz (a Jewish journal), was already a well-educated young man. At that time he served as tutor and educator for the children of Riga bank director Khvoles and also belonged “to that society, or circle” . But since he was not born in Białystok, he departed after a short time and had no further connection with Białystok.

To that circle also belonged several Hebrew teachers and maskilim. There may have been other such private circles, but they had no influence in the city.

Soon after, in the year 5642 [1882], when the society Chovevei Zion [Lovers of Zion] was founded – and it gained great importance after Rabbi Shmuel Mohilever became rabbi in Białystok – it absorbed the few Hebrew maskilim, the nationalists who were found in the city, together with their teachers.

Mendl Grave, I myself, and all of our maskilim who believed one should not break sharply with tradition, created a separate society, which remained among the people and did not separate itself from them. This society had a great influence in the city.

At the same time, there was in the city a group of maskilim, so-called European intellectuals, who created a separate sphere and circle. At their head stood the members of the large,

[Page 228]

ramified family of the wealthy Białystok notable Itshe Zabludowski ⁽²⁾, together with their followers.

This notable had four sons: David, Motye, Yeshayahu-Mikhl, and Meir, and daughters with distinguished sons-in-law: Eliezer Halbershtam, Meir Cohen, Sender Bloch, and Nachum Mintz. Among his daughters, Malka-Reyzl, the wife of Sender Bloch, stood out as a true woman of valor. She had many children, mostly daughters, and through them – distinguished sons-in-law.

Itshe Zabludowski and his sons, however, were quite simple Jews.

The younger generation of the family became the European intellectuals in Białystok, already more devoted to a European style of life and culture. Yet only a handful distinguished themselves in the sphere of cultural or economic achievement. But until the 1880s, before the newly risen wealthy Jewish merchants and textile manufacturers began to play a predominant role, they were the cultural trendsetters in the city.

Their children all studied in the Real School [a modern secondary school with a practical, non-classical curriculum], distanced from Jewish studies, and afterwards went on to complete their education in Russian and foreign universities. In the city they had followers and adherents among the more freethinking Jewish maskilim. The first, and perhaps the only, institution they created was the Khorshul [a reform synagogue with choir]; the Old Bes-Medresh and synagogue no longer suited their taste or their concepts.

Author's footnotes:

1. In the bes-medresh he was regarded as a freethinker. Once he came into conflict with Rabbi Yitzhak Khayim Lichtenstein, a pious scholar, about beginning the early morning prayer, since the time for reciting the Sh'ma had not yet arrived. He asked him: “From where do you know this?” He replied: “The sign, according to Rabbi Meir (Berakhot 9b), is until one can distinguish between a wolf and a dog. And I cannot distinguish between you (Velvl) and the dog.” Return
2. The lineage of the Zabludowski family is from Rozhinoy. There lived and traded, in partnership with local landowners, two brothers, Noach and David. Noach remained in Rozhinoy and became the progenitor of the Pines family (cloth manufacturers). David separated from his brother and went out to Zabludow, adopting the name Zabludowski. His sons Mikhl and Itshke moved on to Białystok. Itshke, the plain one, became wealthy in Białystok. The children of the other brothers were respectable, well-to-do Jews, branched out into various families. Return

Translator's footnotes:

1. Contents in [ ] are from the translator. Contents in ( ) are from the author. Return
2. This refers to Rabbi Abraham Hirsch Eisenstadt, author of the Pichei Teshuvah, the rabbinic commentary on the Shulchan Aruch Return

The Khorshul [a reform synagogue with choir] was a product of the early Haskalah movement. At that time, among the Jewish German maskilim, there spread the aspiration to replace the old synagogues and bote-medroshim with richer, more beautiful, more ornamented, and better-equipped synagogues, modeled after those of Western Europe.

To establish a Khorshul in Białystok, a group of maskilim who had traveled abroad took the initiative. They included:

[Page 229]

Getzel Zabludowski (son-in-law of Halbershtam); the pharmacist Vilbushevitsh; Dodye Micheles; David Perlis; Eber Volkoviski and his brother-in-law Kamenko; Kalman Baraks, the watchmaker and wit; Avraham Perelstein (Kvasnik); Sandak (his son-in-law); Yisroel Gershon Kaplan; David Perl (brother-in-law of Avraham Kvasnik); Lev Zabludowski, also known as Leybl Gruntshes; and Menakhem-Mendel Lemberg.

Leybl Gruntshes was the gabbai of the committee and its most active member. He was quite clever. Rabbi Lipele, a staunch opponent of the founding of the Khorshul, had him called to his side and asked him:

– “Why do you need a Khorshul? You are not such a great davener [prayer], and there is no lack of bote-medroshim and synagogues in the city.”

– “Do you understand, Rebbe,” Leybl Gruntshes replied, “Just as it is with eating, so it is with davnen. There are different natures: there are people with strong stomachs and great appetites, who can eat everything and digest everything. But there are also pampered, delicate people, with weak stomachs – God spare us – who have no appetite. For them one must prepare special tasty, appealing dishes, lighter and easier to digest; otherwise they will not be able to eat and digest. And so it is with davnen: our intellectuals have lost the appetite for prayer and cannot endure it in its raw state. One must also refine the praying a little, so that it becomes more pleasant and bearable; otherwise they will stop praying altogether.”

The first Khorshul was opened in a rented hall on Lipova Street (today Piłsudski), opposite Lemberg's house (today Gordon's). A cantor was brought down from Kiev together with four choir boys, who would take their meals in rotation at the homes of members of the new synagogue.

The Khorshul was very well received among the wealthy, intellectual circles, especially among the youth (for the “realists” a separate section was set aside, which was always full). The pious Jews even looked askance at the synagogue, but they did not interfere, since its founders had long been regarded by them as apikorsim [heretics] and freethinkers. All the more so because on Friday nights and Shabbats the bes-medresh crowd also came to hear the distinguished cantor, and even the police chief and officers would come to listen.

The Białystoker Khorshul gained a reputation throughout the entire region.

[Page 230]

The crowd in the Khorshul grew greatly, and it became necessary to rent a new, much larger hall on Market Street (today Koœciuszko Street), in Kuryanski's house. The Chanukkat ha-bayit (dedication ceremony) took place on the first of September, 1867. All the local dignitaries of the natshalstvo [municipal authorities] were invited. Rabbi Meir Markus delivered the opening address.

But on Simchat Torah, after the dedication, when the synagogue was packed to overflowing and the choir was singing beautifully, sudden shouting was heard, and stones began to fly through the windows. A great tumult arose, and one stone nearly struck the police chief. The entire marketplace filled with people. Chasidim came running from their prayer houses, all the windows were smashed, and a hail of stones began. The Police were called. Several of the troublemakers were caught and imprisoned, but at eleven o'clock that night they were released, because their wives had come crying and wailing.

On the following morning, during the prayers, the disturbances were repeated. Stones again flew, and on the street blows were dealt to the right and to the left. One of the attackers even struck the very gabbai, Getzel Zabludowski. Many of the troublemakers were imprisoned in the utshastok [police station], which at that time was located in the narrow Yekhiel Nekhes (Zhidovski) Lane, but they had to be released later because of the wailing of their wives^[1].

Several years later, around 1872–1874, the synagogue was transferred into Itshe Zabludowski's Bes-Medresh on Yekhiel Nekhes Lane. The building had been erected by a wealthy Białystok notable in the year 5594 [1834] (as indicated on his tombstone, which bears the inscription Tzaddik ka-tamar [“The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree,” Psalm 92:13] and an engraving of this very building). At the outset it was a pious bes-medresh with many religious books, and scholars sat and studied there. Among them was the well-known R' Feivel the Chasid with his disciples.

But according to a decree of Itshe's heirs, all the books were removed: the better ones were sold to a Vilna bookseller, and the remainder were distributed among

[Page 231]

other bote-medroshim^[2]. The bes-medresh was then converted into a Khorshul, which exists to this day.

Until only a few years ago, the local Chevra Kadisha would not allow the funeral cart carrying a met mitzvah [a corpse that the municipality must bury at its own expense] to pass in front of the Khorshul, as if to distinguish it from a house of prayer – indeed, almost as if it were a church. But today it has been declared fully kosher, since the Białystoker Rav of the Jewish community, Dr. Rabbi Gedaliah Rozenman – a pious Orthodox Jew and a learned scholar – began to pray there and wrote in the local Yiddish newspaper that the Khorshul is entirely legitimate, like all other houses of prayer.

Because of a dispute over a cantor in the Khorshul – he was dismissed after being caught in a transgression – the cantor's faction established, on Lipova (Piłsudski) Street in Shabrinski's house, a second Khorshul under the name Adas Yeshurun, which existed for only about thirty years. Its cantor was Shpolanski, a great musician, and its gabbai was Shmuel Brumer.

Author's footnotes:

1. See the memoirs of Herman Perl in Białystoker Shtime, New York, June 1924, no. 9. Herman Perl was a son of Shloyme-David Perl, the brother-in-law of Avrahaml Perelstein. As a ten-year-old boy, he witnessed the disturbances at the founding of the Khorshul.
   According to Dr. Perelstein, the Khorshul was first located in the private apartment of the well-known lawyer Yosef-Yehuda Vaysberg [Weisberg], in Tiperman's house opposite the town clock. Afterwards it was housed in the front building of what is today the courtyard of the Artisans' School, in the premises where Sandberg's Jewish folk school was held. It appears that Herman Perl's account presents the overall picture much more accurately. Return
2. The Białystok founders of the Khorshul were maskilim am-ha'aretzim [enlighteners of limited learning, from a scholarly standpoint]. They did not realize how historically a library of books is connected with a synagogue. In the great Khorshuln of Western Europe, and even today in Warsaw, libraries have been established. The pre-war Białystok maskilim also dreamed of erecting a large new synagogue in the center of the city, together with a great scholarly library. Return

A picture of life gives us a history of a private quarrel that arose between a maskil, an apikoyrus and a zealous melamed. The quarrel was between the father of the present-day Dr. Perlsztajn, Avraham Perlsztajn, who was called Avrahaml Kvasnik (because he manufactured Petersburger Kvas [a fermented drink made from rye bread]) and a pious melamed of his brother-in-law Perl. The quarrel began in his brother-in-law's sukkah [structure built for use during Sukkos – the Feast of Tabernacles – in which a family eats its meals and may sleep]. The melamed reproached Avraham Perlsztajn for his heresy. [Perlsztajn] answered calmly. However, the melamed had offended the honor of his father, saying that his father also was an apikoyrus. Avraham Perlsztajn grabbed a bottle from the table at threw it and the melamed's head and wounded him.

There began a great commotion; the pious group was in a rage. In the morning because of this, Avraham Kvasnik was led to the Beis-Din [religious court] in the kehile-shtibl [one room religious community synagogue] in the synagogue courtyard. A large, explosive crowd, which shouted that the apikoyrus should be torn limb from limb, waited there for him. It smelled of deadly danger. At the last minute,

[Page 232]

the pharmacist, Wilbuszewicz, ran in with the police and with great effort Perlsztajn was freed from the enraged crowd.^[21]

Author's footnote:

21. See footnote 19. H. Perl also tells of this incident. Return

Translator's footnote:

1. Maskil – follower of the Enlightment; Apikoyrus – heretic, free-thinker or non-believer; melamed – religious teacher Return

« Previous Page Table of Contents Next Page »

  Białystok, Poland     Yizkor Book Project     JewishGen Home Page

Copyright © 1999-2025 by JewishGen, Inc.
Updated 25 Nov 2025 by OR