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Pokshyvnitza at the end of the 19^th century

I came into the world by being born in the small town of Pokshyvnitza. This is what the Jews called it although its actual name is Kopshyvnitza.

As my thoughts go back to it, I find memory returning as far pas as 1894. Vivid recollections remain of the local colour and lifestyle of my native shteteleh in that long bygone period. Let me then describe now this world of some of our grandparents and great-parents.

A part of Poland, Pokshyvnitza lies in the midst of a slew of other such shtetlach; to name a few: Tzosmer, Klymentov, Oshik, Plantsh, Stashek and Apt (where the Apter Rebbe lived; all names, here and further on, are spelled as they sound and not as they might appear in a gazetteer). In this period of time, the little town, located in the province (gubernye) of Radom, was under the rule of the tsarist Russia.

Poshyvnitza was on the border of Galicia. The dividing line between us was the Veisel Rive; and across the river, on the Galician side, was the little town of Shikev. Around our shtetl were many villages where Jews lived, having received the permission of the pritzim, the Polish landowners, to settle there, in the country.

Our little town was surrounded by water and tall hills and the roads that led to it were sandy and muddy. A wagon could sink down in them till the wheels were below ground level and it could hardly be pulled out.

There were two marketplaces in the shtetl: One, known simply as “the marketplace” was where Jews lived and had their small shops and stores. Around the other, called the p'shedmyeshtcha (the “suburb”), both Jews and Polish people lived as neighbours.

In Pokshyvnitz, there were, for example, Oshik Street, Apter Street, Beyss Medrash Street, Bud (bathhouse) Street, Shuster (shoemaker) Street, Meyer David's Street and Tzigelnya (brickmaking) Street. There were other, smaller streets and lanes as well but their names, by-and-large, I don't recall.

From two wells, the townspeople drew their water: one was in the “marketplace”; the other, in the “pshedmyeshtcha”. Among the other features of our little town, there was a Jewish graveyard, a Polish

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Cemetery, a mikveh (ritualarium), a beyss medra (local house of prayer and Torah study), a chassidim-shtybl (a house of prayer and study for those who followed the Chassidic way of life), a hekdesh (a poor-house where itinerant visitors and travellers could also spend the night). Then the little town boasted a burial society, a society (bikkur cholim) for visiting and attending the sick, a rabbinic authority to answer questions of law, two shochtim (ritual slaughterers), four butchers, a cantor, a shammash (caretaker of the local synagogue), a gabbai (its manager), a dozortza (caretaker of the synagogue's courtyard), three men's tailors and two women's tailors. The former, as I recall, were known as Yankel Shneider (“tailor”) – Berel Shneider and Pinchas Shneider, while the women tailors were two brothers: Berel and Peretz. As for shoemakers, there were Akiva Shuster (“shoemaker), Zusman and one known simply as “der shtumer shuster” (the mute shoemaker).

Above the whole town, two church spires rose high: one in the marketplace, the other near the flour mill. In addition to the mill, we had one medic (a feldsher, a kind of half-doctor), a slaughterhouse, four bakeries, a court house with its own administrative office; two water carriers (to get the water from the wells to individual homes), and three carpentry shops. Most of the local shoemakers were Poles. It was well known generally that if a non-Jew was an artisan, that meant he was a shoemaker.

Not far from the Jewish burial ground and the Polish cemetery, the Kshibevitz woods stretched away into the distance. At the outskirts of the town, we had the flour mill. And then there were the rows of tall, handsome trees and the dreamlike ponds with their fish. All this belonged to the Jewish landowner, Yoss'l Reb Yechiels (the son of Reb Yechiel). The land that led through these trees and ponds was the cherished place where Jewish boys and girls would go strolling in the summertime, so that no one would be able to watch them.

Fairly near the shtetl, there were also smaller water mills and windmills where the farmers in the neighbouring villages could get a few bushels of grain ground into flour. In the villages of Keshtyn and Tzishette, two kilometres from Pokshyvnitza, there were Jewish estates that belonged to the sons of Reb Yechiel Zinneman. Further away in the vicinity of our shtetl, we also knew of princely estates in the villages

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of Blonye and Lanye that were the property of Polish landowners. These Polish lords, however, leased their property to Jews and these Jews thus received from the tsarist Russian government, thanks to the influential efforts of the Polish lords, the right to live in the villages.

On the estates of the Polish landowners, the Jews who had leased them made their living from the dairy products they produced which they brought to our little town. Avigdor Himmelfarb, the merchant bought their butter and cheese and sent to products off to Warsaw and Lodz.

All the stores and shops in the little town were owned by Jews. There were four stores of farm produce – eight general food stores and four butcher shops, located indeed on Yatke (“butcher shop”) Lane.

Thursday was always market day and then hundreds of peasants began arriving early in the day with their horses and wagons. As the day went on, they invariably became drunk and fell to fighting with the townspeople. All week long, though, the townspeople kept looking forward to market day. For the peasants and farmers provided a good income as they bought all kinds of products and wares in the stores.

Wheat, vegetables, fruit, eggs and chickens were what the farmers sold in the (Jewish) “marketplace”. In the “p'shedmyeshtcha” there was a trade in horses, sheep, calves and pigs. Artisans from outside the shtetl also came down: Jewish tailors, shoemakers and cap-makers. So too, traders and dealers from all the surrounding little towns used to come.

Pokshyvnitza was surrounded almost enveloped by fruit orchards. Directly after Lag Ba-omer (about a month after Passover in May) Jews began leasing the orchards from the Polish landowners and farmers (agreeing on a flat sum to be paid for the right to harvest the fruit). These Jews we called sadovnikehs (“orchard men”). While the trees were only blossoming, their expert eyes could gauge how much fruit they would produce by the end of the summer.

The landscape of our shtetl was lovely. Girdling it all around were the beautiful green hills which sparkled like a rainbow with multi-coloured flowers that grew wild, and with fields of varied hue. Wherever you stood and looked, before your eyes was the panorama of the hills.

All the little brooks and streams flowed into the Veisel. As spring moved closer to summer, the month of May was particularly lovely. All

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the way from Warsaw and other large cities, people would come for the celebrations on the first of the month. There were no factories to pour any foul chimney smoke into the atmosphere. The air was fresh and clear. And at night, the little streets and lanes became wrapped in a trembling secretive darkness, undisturbed by electricity, of which the little town knew nothing yet. From the houses, the light of their kerosene lamps shone out. Only at the “p'shedmyeshtcha” was there the light of huge wax candles, kindled around the figure of the Christian “saviour” on the cross to quiver and flash in the dark; and here, Polish men and women used to come and sit, to sing together with religious ecstasy, their May songs filled with a melancholy yearning.

Then the beloved summer came and many people arrived from the big cities to spend their vacation time in Pokshyvnitza. The months of summer were the time of year when a brisk, lively trade in fruits and vegetables sprang up as they were taken to be sold in large cities. This was a business that had been started by a certain young man of Apt who married a young lady of Pokshyvnitza. Named Feivel Unger, he was, in fact, my brother-in-law. Before him, the practice of sending produce to Warsaw and Lodz did not exist.

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The epidemic in the shtetl

In the summer of 1895, a severe epidemic of cholera broke out in Pokshyvnitza as the dreaded illness became known at the same time through all of Poland. When the disease began taking more and more lives, the tsarist government issued a decree ordering the entire population out of the little town. Every last man, woman and child had to get out and move to hastily constructed huts in the nearby woods. In the little synagogues and churches, makeshift hospitals were set up. From all the neighbouring towns, doctors were brought in and help for the Jewish population began pouring in not only from all the nearby communities but even from distant towns and town lets.

The grisly epidemic kept spreading further and further, sowing its death and destruction. There was virtually no house or family that was not stricken by the calamity. Human beings were literally felled like flies. When a person left in the morning from his temporary home in the huts and in the evening he failed to return, it was taken for granted that he was either no longer among the living or in one of the makeshift hospitals.

Zissel Denemark, Hillel Shammash and Yechielleh, who comprised the chevra kaddisha (burial society) were kept busy day and night, trying to cope with the Jewish dead. Over every grave white-wash was poured. The sanitary regulations required it. So too were all the lanes and streets covered with white-wash. In that dreadful black period of time, Pokshyvnitza became literally cut off from the world. No one, except for police, doctors and nurses was allowed in or out of the shtetl. And the epidemic raged on through the summer until the High Holy Days came.

When the townspeople began to be allowed back into their homes, they found the floors covered with white-wash; so too the marketplace and the streets. As though a snow had fallen, all was white. It took two weeks until all the inhabitants returned from the woods. And only after four weeks were people allowed to come from other towns and cities.

When the New Year began on the Jewish calendar, Rosh Hashana was

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not a joyous holiday for the Jews of Pokshyvnitza. In many homes there was not enough food to eat. The rich and the poor shared what there was. But only in the synagogues, when we gathered for the prayers, did we fully realize who were missing – gone forever. The houses of prayer and study were half empty. Among the village people too who came into town for the High Holy Days, many were no longer there. These village Jews were always put up in Jewish homes in the town for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. That year, with so many gone in the cholera epidemic, the wails and cries of lament during the prayers were indescribable.

In Pokshyvnitza, it was a regular practice, each year, to spread hay on the floors of the synagogue for Yom Kippur; for the people wore no footgear whatever during the prayers. This time, the local authorities ordered the floors to be sprayed with acid and left without hay. It was a mournful holy day.

A few weeks later, however, people slowly began to become their old selves again and life gradually returned to normal. People began trading and doing business again and craftsmen and artisans went back to their work. From a host of towns and town lets, relief began arriving as in addition the Russian government provided major financial help to restore the economic life of the little town.

It was as if the shtetl was put back on its feet. It became animated again. Once more people were earning a living and slowly the dreadful tragedy began to be forgotten. With increasing frequency, there were simchos again: Jewish weddings, circumcisions, bar mitzvahs and so forth. In short, the shtetl came back to life.

So two years went by.

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The great fire

Then a new disaster befell our little town. Two years after the plague of cholera, the day after the Shavuos festival, a huge fire broke out and the voracious flames swallowed the entire town let. In addition to the houses, many children and adults were also consumed.

Once more, the inhabitants had to move to huts in the nearby woods as the enormous conflagration raged on for two whole weeks. Everything, everything went up in flame and smoke. The leaping tongues of fire and thick clouds of smoke could be seen from far away. Day and night the fire raged. No human being could go into the little town. The infernal flames and torrential heat made it impossible.

Not one house remained. Everything went with the smoke including the houses of prayer and study, the hekdesh (the Jewish poorhouse) and the mikveh (ritualarium). Even the wooden fence around the Jewish graveyard, located a full verst behind the town-let (about 2/3^rd of a mile) was burnt up.

When the two weeks were over and the fire ended, help began pouring in from Jews in other towns. It was the tsarist government, however, that provided the main major relief. From all directions, building materials arrived along with hundreds of construction workers and with a drive of energy the desolated shtetl began to be rebuilt. New houses were constructed in a determination to complete as many homes as possible before the winter set in. The main house of Jewish prayer and study was rebuilt too along with the poorhouse, the bathhouse and the mikveh. And the Jewish graveyard acquired a new fence to surround it.

The shtetl took on a new appearance as freshly built homes came on the scene everywhere. Life began to settle down once more to normal. In the new shops and stores, merchandise could be seen again as before the fire and Jews went back with enthusiasm into commerce and trade.

With the town-let built anew, life came back to it anew with fresh vigour. There is a Jewish saying that “after a fire, you get rich”. Some of the shtetl Jews built themselves walled houses of two storeys – a novelty in Pokshyvnitza, where all construction had previously been only with wood.

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So prosperity started to reign there. As in the past, every Thursday the markets did a thriving trade. The peasants brought in wheat, livestock and fowl. Jews bought and did business and earned their living. This single market day of the week provided many Jews with enough income for the whole week. Even the poorest people in the community stopped complaining about their lot. As one might say, peace and harmony reigned in the shtetl.

It should be noted that all the Jews in Pokshyvnitza followed the Chassidic way of life in their earnest desire to ensure a share of olam haba, a share of life in the paradise of the hereafter. The chassidim were of all kinds: devoted followers of a variety of holy rebbes. There were Gerer chassidim and Zhikover, Kuzmirer and Tornever chassidim. And now peace and harmony reigned among all.

After the tragic experience of the devastating fire, the town council called an assembly of the inhabitants, both Poles and Jews, with the purpose of organizing a fire brigade. Many young men, Jews and Poles, joined it voluntarily. From the government of the province, various machines and pieces of equipment arrived that would be useful in case of a conflagration. The station of the fire brigade was built near the church in the marketplace. There the exercises and drills took place to train the men in the proper ways to put out a fire. And as commander of the brigade, a young man named Yehuda Leib Rosenblum was appointed.

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When the festive days of Yom Tov arrived

Which Jew from Pokshyvnitza could ever forget it's Fridays? How could one not remember this day of the week that ushered in the Shabbos? At noontime and with only half the day gone, the entire shtetl, men, women and children, were already busy in a frenzy of preparations to make ready for Shabbos – the holy day of rest.

In the marketplace appeared the bedder – the bath-house attendant and in a high lilting voice, he would call out: “Yidn, in bud arein!” (Jews, to the bath-house!). Then the whole male Jewish population, old and young, would set off to this destination. The price was two kopecks but for the children it was free. The bedder gave every person a besom (a bit of a broom made of dry twigs tied at one end) and a small dipper. The besom was for rubbing and beating one's back until the skin turned a fiery red. The small dipper was for drawing water to pour over oneself.

In the bath-house it was very hot. A mist of steam always hung in the air. If a person could stand the great heat, he climbed up to the highest bench and there, in the thick cloud of vapour, he rubbed his back with the besom of dry twigs until the skin was as steaming as the air. In this way, he made his body all the readier to be cleansed and purified for Shabbos. Later, he would immerse himself in the bath-house mikveh to emerge a worthy Jew, spiritually cleansed and prepared for the holy Sabbath.

When the menfolk came out of the bath-house, their faces were a flaming red. They made their way home and there they put on their satin kapotehs (coat length jackets, Jewish “morning coats”) and their shtreimels (flat-topped Chassidic fur hats) or velour (Polish style) hats. I remember how old Dan the shochet (ritual slaughterer) used to come into the house of prayer with his shtreimel from which all the fur at one side had fallen out and wearing his zhupytzeh, his satin frock coat also frayed and threadbare that it reminded one of narrowly cut noodles. A Jew in the shtetl had such a frock coat made for him only when he married, and for the rest of his life, this was his garment for Shabbos. So Reb Dan, the shochet would remove his week-day kapoteh and put on his lamentable zhupytzeh in honour of Shabbos. Frayed and tattered though it was, it was still made of satin.

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Of all the Jewish festivals, the liveliest Yom tov in the shtetl was Pesach – the holiday of Passover. Directly after the Yom tov of Sukkos, the long hard winter set in, and it lasted until after Purim. The, with spring finally somewhere in the offing, the mild winds began blowing through Pokshyvnitza and we could start breathing the approach of spring in the air. The winter snows began to thaw. The plentiful supply of swamp and mud dried up. To ever window the oncoming spring nested up and one day, everything seemed as if new-born to welcome the mild and pleasant rays of the shining sun.

As for preparations for the great Yom tov of Pesach, they went on through the winter. Through the long evenings of the months of bitter cold, our mothers sewed shirts for husbands and children. When it was yet a good while before Pesach, the tailors and shoemakers became loaded with work. There was much to be done and everything had to be ready for the Yom tov, the inevitably approaching holiday.

On the first day of Pesach, after the festive meal, everyone, young and old, boys and girls went out walking on the streets displaying their new clothes. They strolled in the market square, on Apt Street and in the p'shedmyeschtcha (the “suburb” market square). In front of the little houses, tables and chairs were set out and there people sat, warming themselves in the pleasant sunshine and watching the new clothes of the young girls, the young lads and the children.

On chol hamo'ed, the Intermediate Days of Pesach, all shidduchim were arranged – matches (“marriage deals”) between the young people of the shtetl. In the little town there was a chazzan (cantor) named Reb Yerachmiel and it was he who attended to all the matchmaking. He went around through the shtetl with a large red handkerchief and this he brought to the father of the bride or groom-to-be. Once the father took a firm hold on the red cloth it meant that for his part the engagement became binding with hopes and wishes for good luck and good fortune from Heaven. The young girls and boys used to ask their mothers if Reb Yerachmiel had been to their homes for a visit, and if their father had taken hold of the red handkerchief; and if a girl's mother said “Yes”, the daughter would respond: “Mazal tov! I've become a

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kallah! (a bride-to-be). Sometime later the girl would ask her mother: “So who is the young man?” and the answer would be: “G-d willing, at the t'no'im (the official engagement) you'll see him, my darling”.

In these “intermediate days” of chol hamo'ed, parents of marriage-able young lads came in from other little towns as well to have a look at the young girls and to find out by the way, how large a dowry and how much kest (promised time in which the young could live with the girl's parents after marriage, at their expense) was available for the lucky young lad.

The chol hamo'ed days of Pesach were also the time of year for the melamdim (teachers) to arrange for pupils. They would go from house-to-house seeking to persuade the parents to send their children to them, each to his cheder, the little private school he maintained in his home. In the shtetl we had dardeki teachers who taught little beginners to read Hebrew and daven (say the prayers in the siddur, the prayer book); melamdim who taught chumash (the Hebrew Bible) and teachers of gemara (Talmud) for the boys as they grew older. In addition, there were those who gave regular shi'urim (lectures) in Talmud for the young adolescents in the beyss medrash (the house of prayer and study). Their fee for a z'man (a 'semester' lasting from Pesach to Rosh Hashana) was a hundred gilden while the dardeki (beginners) teachers took only ten gilden.

The dardeki teachers were known as Hershel the Lame and Big Hersh Leib. For the boys, learning chumash and gemara, there were the lame Zelig Leib son of Ydel Dan, Avromeleh son of Fishel, Chaim Meir son of Reb Leizer and Moshe son of Tanchum. For a z'man they were paid a fee of twenty gilden and sometimes even thirty.

Then there was a rebbetzin, a rabbi's wife named Leah who taught the young girls to read Hebrew. And there was a lerrer too, a “secular” teacher from whom we could learn to write Yiddish (in Hebrew characters), Polish (in Latin characters) and Russian (in Cyrillic characters). He taught both boys and girls, the boys in the late afternoon and evening, the girls in the daytime in the “private school” that he ran in his attic.

Some six weeks after Pesach when spring had blossomed into its full splendour, Lag Ba'omer arrived. For the “cheder boys”, this was the most

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wonderful holiday of the year. The melamed and his belfers (assistants) outfitted the youngsters with little swords and guns and marched them off to the nearby woods and hills beyond the little town and there the boys spent the day gleefully, well supplied with the tasty food that their mothers had given them. Toward evening, the youngsters went cheerfully home and the smaller children were brought to their parents riding on the shoulders of the belfers.

Then came Shavuos. For this Yom tov, the beyss medrash, our house of prayer and study, was decorated with branches of trees and in every Jewish home, little chestnut trees could be seen. It was a lovely holiday with such wonderful things to eat as flodn (fruit layer cake) and kreplach, with the cheese tastefully baked in their pockets of dough.

Hardly was the glorious springtime over, however, and the “three weeks” were upon us bringing their measure of sadness. No meat came into a Jewish home then, except for the holy Sabbath. And later came Tish'a b'Av, the ninth day in the Jewish month of Av.

How could any Jew of Pokshyvnitza ever forget Tish'a b'Av in that shtetl? Every one of us, young and old, wept over the destruction of our beyss hamikdash, our holy Temple, twice in the Jerusalem of ancient times. The cries of our lamentation could be heard from afar, as in our beyss medrash, kinos were murmured and chanted – the age-old dirges and poems of lament, gathered and arranged through centuries in an exile that had brought further destructions of their own.

Everyone sat on the floor. The kerosene lamps that usually lit up the synagogue now remained dark. Instead, each person held a tallow candle in his hand and this flickered and glowed as the kinos were chanted.

The mournful atmosphere lasted until the Sabbath that followed, Shabbos Nachamu. Then all the sorrowing vanished at once and the people became reanimated back to normal.

Before we knew it, the month of Elul began with the winds of the approaching new year already blowing, heralded by the call of the shofar sounded every morning in the house of prayer and study. This was the time of

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year when every Jew began trembling “like a fish in the waters”. It was no small matter that Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, the holy days of awe, were no so close at hand. People began making an account of the year that would soon be over, to reflect and consider what sins they had committed in the months gone by. The mood was sombre as their minds cogitated and their heart quivered.

Nor can I ever forget the first night of s'lichos, the penitential prayers in the very last week of the year that was ending. After Shabbos, just past midnight, the shammash went trudging through the little streets and byways of the shtetl, to knock on the shutters and sing out in a long mournful chant: “Yidn, shteit oyf tau s'lichos” (Jews, get up for s'lichos!).

The people would tear themselves awake and run in trepidation to the mikveh, to immerse themselves so as to come spiritually cleaner to these special prayers of penitence. And when the words of repentance were taken up by the worshippers, the sounds of supplication, pleading for Heaven's mercy, could be heard through the whole slumbering shtetl. Everyone was filled with anxiety at the thought of what might happen to him, Heaven forbid, in the coming year. In everyone's heart came a question that set it trembling! What sort of verdict will the Master of the world give me for my fate in this new year?

On Rosh Hashana itself, on those holy days of awe, the feelings became more intense. It seemed as if even the fish in their waters, large and small, had begun to tremble. Then the beyss medrash became filled to the brim by the village Jews who had come to spend the Yom tov in the shtetl – although a good many of them could not daven at all, being unable to read Hebrew.

In our little town there were people who held annual positions of honour, by firm precedent that had become tradition. Thus, a fine, worthy Jew named Jossl Reb Yechiel's son (son of Reb Yechiel), “inherited” from his father the post of baal musaf (cantor for the musaf services) on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. The fact was, though, that he had a very poor voice and the regular chazzan of the shtetl, Reb Yerachmiel, had to help him a great deal by singing along with him. This Yossl's father, Reb Yechiel Zinneman, had been the dayyan in the shtetl, the

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arbiter and judge for disputes and questions of Jewish law until a moreh hora'ah, a full-fledged rabbi and religious authority came to stay. Yossl himself lived beyond the little town, on a fine estate. All the sons of Reb Yechiel, in fact, were known as the Jewish p'itzim (the Jewish “Polish lords”), for they had become rich when they won the grand prize in the national lottery. When it happened, the news of their fantastic luck had resounded and run through the whole of Poland.

In trepidation and fear, we lived through the “ten days of penitence” that started with Rosh Hashana until Yom Kippur arrived – the holiest day of the year, when even young children fasted. As the day before Yom Kippur moved on toward evening, in the time before the solemn prayer of Kol Nidre was to be chanted in the synagogue, every Jew in Pokshyvnitza made peace with every other Jew. Even the bitterest enemies became reconciled until the whole community became one harmonious people. No one bore a grudge against anyone else.

The night of Yom Kippur, when Kol Nidre and all the prayers that followed were over, people remained the entire night in our beyss medrash. The floor was spread with hay so that during the prayers the people could stand barefoot, since no one put on shoes for Yom Kippur. And there, during the solemn night of this holiest day, t'hillim was chanted and said – the Book of Psalms – with great fervour and devotion in one earnest sentence of supplication after another, in one effort after another to win from Heaven a good, favourable verdict for the new year.

When ne'ilah, the final prayer services on Yom Kippur, was over, we knew that whatever had been written for us in Heaven, it was now signed and sealed. So life in the shtetl went back to normal and the routines were with us once more.

The night after Yom Kippur, with a good and hefty meal tucked under our belts after all that fasting, a tumult of hammering and banging began. The time had come for every Jew to get to work on his sukkah. The rich folk had theirs ready-made, standing sturdy from year-to-year, and needing only new greenery on top for a roof. The poorer people knocked boards and logs together. There was competition, though as everyone tried to build a better and handsomer sukkah than his neighbour.

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The youngster went out helter-skelter beyond the little town to cut branches and boughs for sukkah coverings, s'chach, and here too, there was rivalry and competition. It was almost a matter of life and death for every youngster to make his sukkah as attractive as possible, by decorating it on top with fruit and greenery.

Jewish homes began to be fragrant with the exquisite scent of the esrog (citron), the citrus fruit over which a blessing is said on the days of Sukkos. The rich Jews had their own esrogim and for the poorer folk, the shammashim (attendants, caretakers) of the synagogues would make the rounds with the “community esrogim” bought with public funds, and they would make sure not to miss any Jewish home so that all the women and children could say the blessing on the days of the Yom tov. The men said the blessing over the esrog every morning in the synagogue.

When Hoshana Rabba came, the last of the “Intermediate Days” of Sukkos, people went down to the little lakes beyond the town to cut willow leaves, hoshainos, since by tradition, five such leaves tied at one end have to be struck against the ground at one specific point during the morning prayers.

Two days later, the happy, wonderful day of Simchas Torah came into our shtetl. Before the hakofos started, the parading and dancing with the Torah scrolls in the synagogue, various chevras, small local societies, came together and held little feasts. They indulged themselves royally, enjoying such treats as roast goose (for which they waited a whole year) and beer from barrels standing at the side. Whiskey was also taken while the beer flowed like water. And there was dancing and singing and cavorting with the Torah. In a fine glow of intoxication, every chevra set out into the streets, dancing their way along to the house of prayer for the hakofos.

For this special occasion of the year, all the chassidim fitted themselves into the various shtyblach, the intimate Chassidic houses of prayer and study. And the happiest time of all came when the hakofos had to be handed out: when individual Jews were called to come forward and take each a Torah scroll in his hand, to march and dance with it. First to be called were the fine, worthy Jews of esteem and the men of wealth. Afterwards came the turn of the “middle class”, the householders

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with lesser income and finally, when the time came for the hakofoh to which the words to be chanted were “Ozer dallim hosh'ah na” (Helper of the needy, save us, we pray), the indigent people and the beggars were called.

With all the singing and dancing, the hakofos went on late into the night.

With Sukkos and Simchas Torah gone, the shtetl went back to its normal daily life, enwrapped in its simple innocent piety. Directly after Sukkos, the women began setting out geese in the courtyards, to putter and gad about happily and put on a bit of weight until they became hefty, substantial fowl that would give us a good supply of goose fat in honour of Pesach. The geese puttered around in the courtyards, pecking at the seeds that had remained in the ground since the summer and cackled with particular pleasure.

On the calendar, Chanukah came closer. The angry wind howled furiously at night as the frost put a thick coating of white over everything. The shochtim (ritual slaughterers) already became busy ending the lives of the geese and then the dead birds were left to become thoroughly frozen because afterwards, both the meat and the fat had a singularly better taste.

The happy holiday of Chanukah came and the lovely Chanukah lamps were lit. The youngsters played dreidle while for the adults there was a card game called oka (not unlike poker). The little ones were given Chanukah gelt to use in playing dreidle, winning or losing according to the letters on the spinning toy: nun, gimmel, hey, shin – that stood for ness gadol haya sham: “A great miracle happened there”. For the school children, Chanukah was as especially delightful holiday because it usually came at about the time the Polish people celebrated their great religious holiday of the winter, and then the children were free from their cheder studies (so that the 'saviour' of the non-Jews, born on this great holiday of theirs, would not gain for his soul the merit of Torah study by the Jewish children).

In the Jewish homes there was a happy Jewish holiday spirit. The housewives became busy rendering fat for Pesach and store it away. And for Chanukah itself, there was the delicious grievn (roasted cracklings)

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and the potato pancakes fried in oil. For these treats, we used to wait the whole year.

After the long winter, the first harbinger of spring, giving promise that the season of new growth was approaching, was the holiday of Purim. This was always a festive day of extraordinary happiness, especially for the children. On Purim night, the clamour of their “groggers” and noise-making contraptions spilled over from houses of prayer to fill the sleepy, snow-covered little streets. As the megillah of Purim (the Book of Esther) was read, the youngsters listened keenly with their groggers in their hands, waiting tensely, all keyed up. And when Haman's name was mentioned, all kinds of banging and clanging broke loose. The din was deafening.

Until nightfall and the reading of the megillah, everyone, old and young, spent the day before Purim, fasting since that day is always the Fast of Esther. So the time to eat came only after the megillah reading in the shul (the synagogue). Then everyone sat down to enjoy a hefty holiday meal. The meals were truly royal feasts, eaten at tables set and decorated for a festive occasion. And on those tables lay also copper coins, all prepared for the masked, disguised visitors that were expected at every home.

On Purim night, a burning candle hung on the outside of every door to light the way for the disguised and costumed children. They went singing gaily from one home to the next and at every stop, they called out happily: “Heint iz Purim, morg'n iz oyss; git mit mir a gorsh'n un varft mich aroyss!” (today is Purim, tomorrow it's not. Give me a penny and throw me out).

In the daytime, the people sent one another shalach-monos, Purim presents of tasty foods and edible treats. Through the shtetl, the children could be seen going to and fro, carrying the presents on plates covered with white cloths. And in every home, there was anticipation and excitement as the inhabitants waited to see what sort of shalach monos would arrive.

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The Rebbe Kuzmir

For three years, the Chassidic spiritual leader known as the Rebbe of Kuzmir, lived in Pokshyvnitza. Since, however, he came originally from Dombrova, Galicia, he was called the Dombrover Rebbe. His name was Reb Motteleh and he was from a distinguished line of forebears, being the son of the maggid (preacher – Rebbe) of Trysk. Above all, he was famed as a 'master of miracles' and it was said that he could drive out a dybbuk (a weird demon-spirit) from an insane person.

On Shabbos and Yom tov (the days of the Jewish festivals), the little town swarmed with chassidim devoted followers who came from other towns and cities in Poland and Galicia, to bask in his presence. These chassidim brought a good bit of prosperity with them. One house out of two turned itself into a little hotel, to provide the visitors with lodgings and food was provided for them generously. The Polish inhabitants also benefited from them in their earnings for they became wagoners and coachmen driving the chassidim back to their homes over greater or smaller distances when the visits were over. They would also provide the visitors with lodgings where the chassidim could sleep at night.

The davening (prayer services) took place not in the rebbe's beyss medrash alone but also in the spacious shed constructed next to it as the beyss medrash was simply not large enough to contain all the chassidim. Moreover, all the tables and benches in the beyss medrash were taken out to leave a maximum amount of space for the devout worshippers, and people sat on the floor.

Thus, Shabbos became a most special day in the shtetl for when it came, thanks to these lively people, there was Chassidic singing and dancing in the streets. The whole shtetl looked forward with eager anticipation to the holy day of rest as it brought true Sabbath pleasure.

The entire night and day before a Shabbos or Yom tov, the combination bath-house and mikveh was kept open so that all the chassidim could get washed and immerse themselves in the ritualarium. And especially festive was the holiday of Simchas Torah. Then the dancing went on through the entire night and the singing could be heard far beyond the boundaries

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of the little town. Even some of the Polish inhabitants used to come into the beyss medrash to listen and watch the ecstatic singing and dancing.

It might be needless to add that the shtetl's bakers generally had their hands full, working night and day to provide enough challos for all the chassidim. With all that, however, they could not meet the full demand for tasty braided white loaves for Shabbos and Yom tov and, additional bakeries opened. The water carriers were kept busy from early morning until late at night, bringing their brimming pails from the wells to all the homes. And here too, the regular team of workers was not enough so that new men took on the trade of water carrying.

As mentioned, a large shed was erected next to the beyss medrash and it was there that the Rebbe of Kuzmir took his meals on Shabbos and Yom tov so that he could prvveh tish, share his dishes of food with the chassidim, letting each one have a bit after he took the first piece, sing z'miros (Shabbath table songs) with the chassidim joining in the heart-warming melodies and “say Torah” – expound on Chassidic thoughts based on the words of the Written Torah and the teachings of the Sages. Of necessity, a full kitchen was also built as an adjunct of the shed.

For an ordinary Sabbath, about a hundred chassidim rode in from neighbouring communities. For Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the number was much larger, as chassidim came from great distances as well. Additional shochtim (ritual slaughterers) had to be brought in from other communities so that enough meat could be provided for all the visitors.

And so a few years went by until a large group of chassidim once came from the town of Kuzmir to ask the Rebbe to come to them for a Shabbos. The rebbe acceded to their request and presently went to spend one Sabbath in Kuzmir. During his stay there the chassidim asked him to remain for another Shabbos; and meanwhile, they decided among themselves to do everything in their power to make sure that he would not return to live in Pokshyvnitza any longer, but would settle with them and take on the title of Kuzmirer Rebbe.

When news of this reached Pokshyvnitza, the Jews of the shtetl demanded and begged of the rebbe to return to them. They pleaded with

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him not to ruin their little community by abandoning it for, as they showed him, thanks to his presence in Pokshyvnitza, the Jews who lived there earned a good livelihood. In reply, however, the rebbe could only point out that Pokshyvnitza was a little backwater shtetl, located in a forsaken, forgotten little corner of the world, far from any decent roads and this made it hard for the great number of his followers to reach him. So he would call for an assembly of all his devoted followers and he would let them decide on a place for him to live and where it would be convenient and easy for the great bulk of chassidim to come.

Among this rebbe's many followers, there were also a great number of chassidim from the town of Turna. They were adamant that under no circumstances should our Reb Motteleh come to be called the Pokshyvnitzer Rebbe: for this, they pointed out, could lead to bitter controversy since it was firmly established that the Turner Rebbe, Reb Yechielish, was already known as the Pokshyvnitzer Rebbe. So it was decided at the great gathering of Reb Motteleh's chassidim that he should remain in Kuzmir and take on the title of Kuzmirer Rebbe.

When the chassidim in our shtetl learned of this, they entered a state of total confusion. Even when the Polish inhabitants were told that the rebbe was preparing to leave Pokshyvnitza, they reacted with alarm and offered to put forward the money to build him a fine new home if he would consent to come back and stay. The finest members of the Jewish community, mean of wealth and standing, were sent to Reb Motteleh as a delegation to try to prevail on him to change his decision.

The rebbe's reply was firm and clear: He could not go against the wishes of his chassidim; and moreover, he wanted to avoid a bitter quarrel. So, finally, Reb Motteleh remained in Kuzmir and took on the title of Kuzmirer Rebbe. To the delegation from Kopshyvnitz and to the shtetl's entire community, he gave his fervent blessing and with that, the fine and worthy delegates of the community had to return without Reb Motteleh.

Since, in any case, our little town also had a good number of chassidim of his, they proceeded immediately to establish a “Kuzimerer shtybl” a house of prayer and study where they could worship in due

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veneration of him. It was located in the spacious house of Zanvil Zinneman, as he allocated for it the largest of the rooms.

Then, however, other such little centres of prayer, shtyblach, arose in the shtetl. We came to have a Turner shtybl, a Gerer shtybl, and a Zhikever shtybl. Late Saturday afternoon as all our devout Jews had their shaleshudess (the last of the three Shabbos meals), in their respective houses of prayer, the sweet Chassidic melodies would come streaming from the various shtyblach, merging into melodies as each shtybl had its own style and collection of melodies.

There was also a group that called itself the zolel-v'sovei-nikkehs, the 'gorging and guzzling society'. On Shabbos morning, their davening was over and done with by nine o'clock when the shtetl's chassidim were only setting out to their shtyblach for the prayer services. This 'society' had its place of meeting and prayer in the Yosef Pinchas Bakery, in the p'shedmyeshtcha (the suburb).

In spite of all this, an almost idyllic peace and harmony reigned among the Jews of the little town.

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Who should welcome Moshiach?

In the month of Kislov (around December), frost settled in and the little town became wrapped in snow. Far back in Cheshvan, the previous month, the people laid in a good supply of firewood, potatoes, onions and beets. The windows were sealed shut and the sides and open spaces were stuffed with absorbent cotton so that no malevolent wind could blow through.

The long winter nights used to find many a Jew of the shtetl in the beyss medrash, which then became a house of learning and study. Within it stood a large oven built of brick and around the oven long benches were placed so that people could sit and warm themselves. As the attendant in charge, the shammash kept throwing pieces of wood into the oven continually keeping the fire burning briskly. Since the beyss medrash was thus really warm and cosy, young adolescent Talmud students used to stay there late into the night studying away.

However, the seats 'up front' near the red-hot oven were always occupied by the batlonim, the 'idlers' who loved to sit and chat and who always seemed to have the time for it. It would be worth relating something of what went on among them there, near the burning oven.

The steady occupants of those seats 'up front' were Hershel the Lame, Yankeleh, Moshe Postrana, Yechieleh the Glazier, Yoel the Deaf, Moshe Plop, Shaya the water-carrier, Hillel Shammash, Nosson Dovid the water-carrier, Notaleh the cantor, Zelig Leib the Lame and a good many others whose names I cannot recall any more. Then there were those who only put an ear close to them to follow the stories they told.

At the time I have in mind, war was going on between tsarist Russia and imperialist Japan. So the batlonim (like good cracker-barrel philosophers or strategists) used to show on their 'map' - - the palm of the hand - - how the war was going on. The main 'map' was the hand of Hillel Shammash. It was generally he who calculated and reckoned how the battles on the various fronts were progressing and who would emerge the victor of the entire conflict. Moshe Postrana held a piece of chalk in his hand and he would mark on the oven the 'exact' position of the battle lines as they moved back and forth.

Once, as it happened during such a discussion, Hillel and Mosh

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flew into a violent argument over the outcome, sharply disputing who would win the war. Hillel proved, clear as the day, that Moshe did not begin to know what he was talking about, and Moshe shouted back that Hillel Shammash was only an idler of no account who should not meddle in such weighty affairs as war.

At this point the two lame 'members of the club', Zelig Leib and Hersel, suddenly sprang up and began shouting at the top of their lungs: “Let's rather talk about the new decrees against the Jews that this government has passed .. and maybe, better, when moshiach is going to come!”

So a heated discussion sprang up about the royal Messiah, firmly promised and firmly expected in sacred tradition. Just when was he going to appear to bring the Jewish people their full redemption, with a final end to all their troubles? Zelig Leib the lame showed how, by all the signs, moshiach had to come that very year; it could not be otherwise. As soon as the tsarist government's harsh new decrees against the Jews were put into effect, the Messiah would absolutely appear!

Now the other people in the beyss medrash, sitting at the tables and poring over their volumes of learning, caught wind of this 'messianic discussion' near the oven. So a large group gathered itself around the stove to listen and participate; and thus a new conversation and debate, far more spirited and heated, started up now on the all-important question of the exact time to expect the royal Messiah.

Suddenly, Zelig Leib spoke up: “Brother Jews, let's consider who will be among the first chassidim in our shtetl to go out and greet moshiach when he comes”. He paused a second. “Of course”, he concluded, “it will have to be the Kuzmirer chassidim”.

“Why?” people asked. “Because the Kuzimer Rebbe is the son of the Maggid of Trysk”. This was a full and obvious answer to him. “Directly after the Kuzmirer, the Gerer chassidim should mark; after the Gerer, the Zhiever and finally the Turner chassidim”.

Reflecting with satisfaction on this arrangement, Zelig Leib continued: “Now who will be the singers to go and greet the moshiach with Chassidic melodies ringing in their throats?” pausing a moment for

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a dramatic effect, he concluded majestically that the singers would have to be none other than Reb Yerachmiel and Nota the cantor; and the shtetl's young Talmud students would form the choir to accompany them.

Zelig Leib was given no chance to speak further for at this point, some lively quarrelling began. The Turner chassidim who were there sprang up in rage. How could Zelig Leib even suggest, they wanted to know, that the Kuzmirer chassidim were to be the first to go out and welcome the moshiach?

Non-plussed, however, Nota the cantor refuted their protest. He showed proof that the Kuzmirer chassidim came of a more distinguished lineage; from ore refined and renowned forebears than the followers of the Turner Rebbe did. His argument was convincing and the gathering in the beyss medrash became reasonably quiet once more.

All at once, though, a new difficult question arose: Jewish tradition teaches that when the Messiah comes, every Torah scroll has to be taken out of its aron kodesh in the synagogue and carried out in a parade to meet the royal Redeemer with proper reverence. So who should carry the sifrei Torah when moshiach came to Pokshyvnitza?

After due discussion and consideration, it was decided that the proper people would be David Reb Leizer's, Nota Reb Yossel's and others who observed the Jewish faith with unusually strict and scrupulous care.

With the matter of the sifrei Torah settled, the discussion returned to the general question of preparations to give the royal Messiah a regal welcome. Exactly what was to be done?

First of all, it was agreed they would all have to go to the mikveh and immerse themselves in its body of water, to become spiritually fit and ready for the stupendous occasion. Then everyone would have to put on white stockings (a mark of elegance and nobility among chassidim, worn with a form of Chassidic knickers that left them quite visible), and his kittel (the white robe worn by the devout Jew on Yom Kippur), and his tallis, his woollen 'prayer cape'. Only thus would the Jews of Pokshyvnitza be properly set to welcome moshiach.

This left a most serious problem, however: What were they to do when there were no white stockings in Pokshyvnitza? The people generally bound cloths around their feet and made do with that. After due consideration and debate, it was decided that the only solution was to

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Have new elegant ankle-length boots made for themselves.

Fine: but who should make such boots? Of course, in such a pious community there was no lack of devout, observant bookmakers and shoemakers, but, only the most pious and religious could be chosen. So a list began to be made aloud: Zusman Shuster (shoemaker) said t'hillim (recited the words of the Book of Psalms) when he worked at his boot-making. Mordechai Shuster spent the whole day davening (at prayer) and Akiva Shuster went every day to the mikveh. But there were others too: Rivkah's deaf son-in-law reviewed his mishnayos (study of Mishnah) by heart while he worked away at his boots. And there was one more, known simply as der toyber shuster (the deaf shoemaker). He, however, was disqualified: He did not know how to dave and, moreover, he had the defect of deafness so he could not be permitted to make boots for those who would have to go out singing and dancing to greet the Messiah.

The matter of boots having been dealt with, a heated discussion now arose about which street would be the right one for the royal Redeemer to arrive on. Should he proceed along Tzoysmer Street? Impossible! The execrated place of worship of the non-Jewish faith stood there. Likewise, Apt Street had a virtual cathedral, and Oshyk Street led to the Polish cemetery. So it was concluded that the most fitting and qualified route would be the Bath-house Street. There would moshiach come marching to raise them all to delirious happiness! To this they all agreed.

And with that, the debating and chatting and discussing all came to an end. Everyone went home with the satisfaction of knowing that a good piece of work had been well done. It would be a little easier for a while to wait for moshiach's arrival, a little easier to say every morning after davening, along with the other affirmations of belief: “I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah; and even though he may tarry, with all that I will wait for him every day, that he may come”.

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When the ark was built

It all happened before Purim. The heavens suddenly seemed to open up, driven by jags of lightning and the sky poured out steady rain for ten days. For the streets of Pokshyvnitza it might as well have been a flood, for at the same time, all the snows of winter began to thaw out their frozen deposits. The Veizel River, along with every other stream, creek and rivulet, amply overflowed. All the outlying villages were flooded and several houses were even swept along in the currents. People became cut off from the world.

And so it was that no one came into the shtetl and no one went out. All roads leading in and out were flooded into torrents.

Pokshyvnitza itself was located on a hill so its own inhabitants did not suffer so much. We could go in and out of our homes. Where was there to go, however?

Of course there was the beyss medrash. As the rains continued, the batlonim around the brick oven duly considered the matter and came to the firm conclusion that history was repeating itself. In Noah's time there had been a flood – this was common knowledge. Another was now on the way.

A sound conclusion it was, past any doubt. But now if another primordial deluge was on the way, how were they going to rescue themselves?

With their concerted cracker-barrel philosophy, the men around the oven could reach but one conclusion – an ark would have to be built. If an ark could save Noah, an ark would surely save them.

At this point, Itchallen Hitl-macher (Isaac the hatmaker) spoke up: “But rabbosai (my lords and masters), who is going to build the ark?” Yankeleh replied at once that the answer was simple: If Big Meir Dovid could build houses, he could just as easily build an ark. When Little Zisseleh the baker heard this, he had another question: “How many people will be able to fit into the ark?” And Hillel Shammash replied laconically that only fine, worthy people without any physical or spiritual defects would be admitted into it. The lame Zelig Leib leaped

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up: “What's this? You don't let me into the ark?” and the deaf Fishel likewise fumed and stormed at the thought of finding his way into the ark barred to him.

Within a moment, all the physically handicapped people in the beyss medrash were shouting and ranting in protest. Under no circumstances would they accept the idea that they were to be excluded. And so a sharp, stormy quarrel developed, the volume of sound soon becoming deafening.

There was no way of knowing to what dreadful lengths the quarrelling may have led had not the shammash banged the table loudly and called out at the top of his voice: “Quiet! The time has come to daven mincha”.

The afternoon prayers brought peace and quiet to the little synagogue.

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The demons who knocked on Abbeleh's roof

Like every shtetl perhaps, Pokshyvnitza had a crazy woman among its inhabitants named Sheyneh Matl. The wife of Eizik Shammash, she was not mildly or normally irrational, but severely deranged. As Eizik, the son of Hillel Shammash was also an indigent pauper, his condition was totally helpless, so the community decided to call a meeting and consider what to do about his demented companion in life.

The meeting was held and there the decision was duly reached to hire a coach and take the woman to the Rebbe of Ostrovtza so that he should drive the dybbuk, the evil spirit out of her. A special garment was prepared for her with the sleeves firmly sewn up, and in this, she was brought to the Ostrovtzer Rebbe. He, however, could find no way to drive the dybbuk out, and she had to be brought home with her condition unchanged.

What was to be done? Another meeting was called and again the matter was taken up – how to deal with this lunacy in their midst?

After due discussion it was decided to build a hut near the beyss medrash and cover the floor well with straw. In one wall, there would be a hole just large enough to let food be handed in. And this would become the “residence” of poor, benighted Sheyneh Matl. By pure good fortune, it was summertime then and she was able to stay there until the High Holy Days. The day before Rosh Hashana, by Heaven's mercy, her life ended and she was given burial at the edge of the Jewish cemetery, near the fence.

After the Jewish festivals, a few weeks went by and the month of Cheshvan came along with dark and rainy nights. And then it started. One night at exactly twelve o'clock, a sound of banging was suddenly heard from the tin roof of Abbeleh's store in the marketplace.

If anyone thought it was just a random occurrence, with some simple explanation, he had to think again. The banging on the tin roof was heard again every single night until fear gripped everyone in the shtetl. People were afraid to stick their noses out into the dark of night.

With their cracker-barrel wisdom, the batlonim (idlers) found an explanation for it as they sat around the oven in the beyss medrash]

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and cogitated. The dead, they announced, were walking around at this time of year through the streets and the marketplace.

As this 'explanation' was of no practical help, members of the community held a meeting in the beyss medrash to which the moreh hora'ah, the local rabbi and our authority on questions of Jewish law, came too. There, the practical question was taken up: What was to be done?

The gabbai stood up to speak. As an official of the beyss medrash (the warden), he gave it as his opinion that a burden of guilt lay on the community: It had not treated the deranged Sheyneh Matl properly or decently. Thus, after some further discussion, it was decided that the chevrah kadishah (the burial society), as the group that dealt with all details of burial of the dead, should go to the cemetery together with the moreh hora'ah and beg Sheyneh Matl's posthumous forgiveness for any and all wrongs that the community might have done to her during her lifetime. They were to beg her to go to her everlasting rest in the world of eternal peace, and she should not come to the shtetl any more to knock on Abbeleh's tin roof.

The decision was duly carried out and with an easier heart, the members went to their homes cheered by the thought that the little town would now have relief because Sheyneh Matl would no longer return to trouble them.

Night came again, however, and when the clocks showed twelve, the banging on Abbeleh's roof could be heard again, as loud and clear as ever. Patiently, the shtetl went about its business the next day but when the next midnight came, there it was yet again, the same banging and clanging and knocking, as loud as ever.

The next morning, the moreh hora'ah ordered the shammash to take his wooden hammer and tap on the shutters of every Jewish home, to call all the Jewish inhabitants to the beyss medrash. There had to be a full assembly of the community. So the shops and stores were closed, and the little town became filled with gloom, as though it were Tish'a B'av. In a while, just about all the Jews of Pokshyvnitza were in the large house of prayer, and they took to saying t'hillim (Psalms) together. After that was done for some time, it was decided that the entire assembly should go to the cemetery to Sheyneh Matl's grave and ask her forgiveness, and then they were to give her a stern decree not

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to return any more to knock on Abbeleh's roof. This they did and blew the shofar afterward.

Even the Polish townspeople were frightened by now. As the Jews left the cemetery, everyone went about in an atmosphere of gloom. All agreed that something evil was hovering over the little town and moving closer.

For two weeks, the atmosphere hung over the shtetl like a pall until the moon began shining at night, bright and clear in the winter sky.

Now just as the beyss medrash was the meeting place for the batlonim, the tea house of Yehuda Leib (the philosopher) was where the 'modern enlightened minds' of Pokshyvnitza used to gather. Yehuda Leib received Yiddish newspapers from the large cities with their 'advanced ideas', in his tea house, the bunch who gathered regularly would read them and discuss all the major issues and problems until they had the whole world figured out perfectly – upside down.

Well, one evening, when the moon was shining like a silver platter, the discussion turned to the mysterious knockings on Abbeleh's roof. All at once, a few of the young folk spoke up. Since the night was so brightly lit, they thought it would be a good idea to go and have a look. They wanted a chance to see for themselves just what was going on there.

So it was that four sturdy youths took stout sticks in their hands and slithered without a sound into the garden of Abbeleh's building. They made their way into the trees and there they stayed hidden, waiting patiently for midnight. As the hour of twelve came close, they caught sight of three burly Polish youths coming from a small street where no Jews lived. With them, the three had a sack full of stones which promptly, at the stroke of midnight, they began throwing onto Abbeleh's tin roof. In the night's absolute stillness, the stones were not only deafening but they also brought a powerful echo that followed immediately after each sound with a shattering effect.

The four sturdy young fellows (Yokl Meir Dovid's, Peretz Shneider, Big Nachman and Moshe Zelik's) sprang from their places of hiding and went to work with their sticks, as if determined to break a few bones.

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In short, the three scoundrels received a thorough thrashing that they remembered for a long time and from then on, no demons or evil spirits came to bank on Abbeleh's tin roof.

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Melamed Moshe Tanchen

Among the Jews of the shtetl, there was a melamed (teacher) named Moshe Tanchen and for better or worse, I was one of his small pupils. At this time of my life, special decrees of the tsarist government were in effect against the Jews, one of which made it forbidden for Jewish children to attend a cheder (a small private school run by a melamed). It amounted to a ban against any normal, standard Jewish education. And every month, a government official would come down from Tzoysmer to investigate if any such forbidden study in a cheder was going on. If a melamed was caught, he was punished.

On a day when this official appeared, the melamdim used to be notified so that they could take precautions. Once, Moshe Tanchen learned that this natchalstvo was in town, whereupon he told his pupils to go to the home of Zanvil Yossl's who lived on the second floor of a building in the market square. There we would do our studying that day.

In Zavil Yossl's home, we children were taken into a lovely spacious salon (parlour, drawing room), with a large shining mirror that reached from the ceiling to the floor. Facing the mirror, a large table was placed and at the table the ten of us sat down.

Breathlessly, Moshe Tanchen caught up with us and came into the room and a strange sight met his eyes. Instead of ten pupils, he now saw twenty. So he began shouting: “Who has played this trick on me? Who has given me ten more pupils?”

Perplexed, the children looked at one another and all around the room unable to understand what he was excited about. He, however, only shouted again: “Rascals! Why are you trying to play tricks on me?”

His raised voice reached Zanvil Yossl's and the owner of the home came in. “Moshe”, he asked, “What are you yelling about?

The melamed only repeated his argument that somehow a trick had been played on him. Ten additional pupils had been sent up.

“But Moshe,” answered Zanvil, “You have only ten here. What are you shouting about?”

“Well”, said the melamed, refusing to yield: “I see that you are

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also trying to make a fool of me and I won't let you!”

Finally realizing what the problem was, Zanvil took Moshe by the hand and together they counted. Only ten children and no more. Yet Moshe would still not relent: “So where do these other then come from that I see there sitting at the table?” Patiently, Zanvil led him to the mirror so that Moshe Tanchen could see for himself that it was only a reflection troubling him: “Take a good look, Moshe. They are only the same children that you know well”.

“Hu ha”, he exclaimed in astonishment. “Never in my life have I see such a big mirror”? And with that, mollified at last, he sat down to begin the lessons.

There was another interesting incident with my melamed. On a Saturday night in the winter, Moshe Tanchen went traveling by horse-driven wagon to Ostrovtza, the driver being Mottl Krovyegura who had two sons in addition to his two horses and wagon. Twice a week, Mottle drove his wagon out of Pokshyvnitza, taking merchandise and passengers and he brought it back carrying other merchandise. The first time he left was Saturday night, directly after Havdalah. When the ritual marking the end of Shabbos was over, he came to the market square to collect passengers and take orders for merchandise that the owner of the hops and stores wanted him to bring for the entire week – such products as flour, sugar, kerosene, salt, candles, herring and spices. This kind of expedition, going and coming, would take Mottel three days to complete.

The Saturday night on which Moshe Tanchen travelled out, was very cold. Those who planned to ride with Mottel Krovyegura were encased in this overcoats with hoods, which they drew over their heads and tied so that only nose and mouth were barely left exposed, and thus they duly gathered in the market square. To get to Ostrovtza, Mottel would cover a distance of forty-two versts (about 28 miles). The way was all sand and mud and in the great cold of winter, it changed into clumps and clods of earth. Every two miles, Mottel stopped the wagon to let his horses rest and fee on the hay he gave them. And, according

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to custom, from time-to-time, they stopped at an inn to rest.

So it was that when the wagon halted at an inn, the passengers went inside to warm up, have a glass of hot tea and straighten out their poor bones after being cramped for hours, sitting on the hard boards of the wagon. When they had rested enough, they went back onto the wagon to ride on and thus, the whole journey went, both going and coming.

It was late at night when the wagon returned to Pokshyvnitza. In the total darkness, the little town lay sunk in deep slumber.

“Moshe”, said Mottel to the melamed, “you can get off now”. Moshe didn't realize, however, that they were back in the shtetl. “What sort of inn have we come to?” he said. Wishing to have some fun, Mottel answered laconically that he had to feed the horses. If Moshe Tanchen wanted, he added, he could settle down comfortably on the wagon bench and rest for a while until the horses finished their meal. Shivering with cold, Moshe found him puzzled, however: “But, how is it that there is such a large marketplace near the inn?” “This happens to be a large village”, replied Mottel.

Outside the vehicle, a bitter frost was raging and as he sat on the wagon bench, Moshe Tanchen's body was chilled to the bone. He longed for a glass of hot tea, to put the warming liquid into him. Outside, since Mottel had stopped here, there must be an inn. Yet, how could he expect to get a glass of tea there if he saw no lights shining to tell him that it was open? When he asked Mottel about it, however, the wagon driver replied: “Don't worry, Moshe. I'll knock on the door of the inn and they will open up for you. Come with me. We'll go together”.

Taking the trusting melamed by the hand, Mottel led him through the darkness to Moshe Tanchen's own home. He knocked on the door and a light went on within. And Moshe's wife opened the door and came out, holding a burning candle. At the sight of his wife, Moshe exclaimed in irritation: “Feigeleh, what are you doing here in this inn?” When she led him inside without a word, he took to shouting in earnest: “Tell me? Who brought you here to this inn?”

Poor Mottel kept trying to explain to Moshe Tanchen, over and

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over, that he was actually back in his own home – but all to no avail: “Go away, Mottel” retorted Moshe, “and stop trying to fool me. Why do you keep trying to convince me that I'm suddenly back in my home? What do you think I am? – a simpleton?”

Only when the wagon driver forced Moshe to take a good look at the table where he always sat with his drowsing pupils to give them their daily lessons, did the melamed begin to believe that his good wife, Feigeleh, was not rally in an inn, brought there to serve customers their tea, and so forth.

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Two weddings in the shtetl

One of the loveliest weddings we ever had in Pokshyvnitza was the occasion when Reuven Meir Zinneman (David Zinneman's son) was married. The shtetl never witnessed such a wedding before. It was happy, festive event for everyone, simply everyone. The whole little town, young and old, came alive for that wedding and really lived it up.

Well before the great event, talk about it was going on in Jewish homes. And why not, with the growing hustle and bustle? Tailors were brought down from Warsaw to prepare the wedding clothes and the bride's trousseau. As for the preparations for the festive meal, don't ask. In certain cool cellars, bottles of sparkling wine and liquor stood ready and waiting. When only days remained until the great event, mouth-watering aromas of baked cookies and roasted meats were wafted in the air. This was not going to be any minor happening, not with the entire shtetl due to take part, to say nothing of the guests expected from other towns, as well as a good number of Polish landowners and their wives.

The festivities of preparation took a full seven days – seven days packed with merry-making, singing and dancing, eating and drinking. Then the day of the wedding came. Every young fellow in the beyss medrash picked himself up and off they rode in coaches built for nobility, that were harnessed to lithe, swift, galloping horses. Their job was to greet the bridegroom and escort him to the shtetl. And with them went an ensemble of klezmorim, Jewish musicians who were expert in joyous Jewish folk music.

When this lively and colourful assemblage of vehicles and people arrived in the shtetl, all the adults and children, down to the last one, poured out into the streets. With clang and spirit, the coaches, carriages and phaetons arrived at the market square and drove seven times around the well. As the klezerim played happy marching music, the people who filled the square started to dance.

It was a warm sunny day in the summer and in the lovely weather, this rich Chassidic wedding brought in Chassidic rebbes from all over Poland. They were not the only 'imports', however. Into Pokshyvnitza came also a stream of penniless, indigent people and beggars from all

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parts and corners of the land, near and far. The attraction of seven days of feasting and eating free of charge was nothing to sneeze at; and in addition, the poor were given charity generously.

The groom stayed at the home of Zanvel Yossl's Zinneman, adjacent to the market place, while the bride was (of course) at the home of her parents. The Polish horsemen of David Zinneman's lordly estate gathered in the market square. In what must have been the fiery style of the Cossacks, they let loose with some shrill outbursts of whistling, cracked their whips in the air, and went into spirited, happy Polish folksongs. Then they switched to their harmonicas and whooped off into blazing and cavorting folk dances.

At this time, Pokshyvnitza still had no electric power so for this wedding, we depended on kerosene lamps and candles for its illumination. The whole shtetl was bathed in the light of the candles and lamps that people held in their hands. When someone needed a candle to see what was happening in the market square, he took one and went over to a windowsill to light it. And why not see what was happening with not one but two ensembles of klezmorim there to provide entertainment? – one from Apt and another from Klementov. One was playing now in the market square and the other in the house of the bride where the girls and the ladies were leading themselves a merry dance or two, or three. In the market square, the menfolk were going at it too.

Then there were the badchonim, the non-musical entertainers, who could make up a few hilarious rhymes at the drop of a yarmulke (Jewish skull cap), and when the time came, switch to a folksong in a soulful melancholy that brought tears to the eyes. We had two of them as well: one for the winsome bride and the other, a Chassidic type for the young handsome groom.

I don't think anyone who was present will ever forget how the bride looked that day of her wedding. There, on the young blooming face, was all the loveliness and charm of a truly Jewish bride. And the groom was everything one might expect to see in a true chassidisher chosson. His “crewcut hairdo” left locks growing only at the sides and his chin sprouted a young and growing bit of a beard. With his face of gentle innocence, he looked like the epitome of simple piety, free from the

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slightest taint of guilt, dressed as he was in the standard rabbinic garb.

I can still remember how the chosson (bridegroom) looked, sitting at the long table, with his friends and acquaintances seated all around, as he gave interesting explanation and thoughts (p'shetlach and vertlach) on points in the Torah. Learned Jews crowded together in the open doorway to listen. And beside him sat his father, the Vadislaver Rebbe, beaming with pleasure as the young groom expounded away. The chosson had been born in Vadislav from a long line of rabbis going back for many generations.

At last, the time came for badeckn di kalloh: for the groom to go to his bride and gently draw her veil of white lace down over her face. To a sad, soulful melody, the first badchon began singing to her about the road on which she was now embarking, in the continuity of Jewish life – its duties, its sorrows and rewards. And the women and young girls burst into tears and wept as they listened.

With the bridegroom back in his 'seat of honour', it was now time to sing to the chosson, and the parents, klezmorim and guests all went to attend. In skilful rhyme the Chassidic badchon wove suitable verses of the Torah into his stanzas, as he dwelt on the road that lay ahead for the young husband-to-be, with its coming trials and responsibilities. The groom took out a white handkerchief and covered his eyes (if tears came, let it be known only to him), while the klezmorim, in rhythm with the badchon, played soulful melodies as an accompaniment.

The time came at last for the young couple to be led to the wedding canopy. The night was well advanced when the ceremony took place near the beyss medrash. And the processions with groom and bride were unforgettable. In the lead went Eizik the shammash carrying as a lamp a glass container with many candles set aside to light the way. Then came the klezmorim, playing sprightly wedding tunes to set the mood. The parents of the chosson followed, each leading the young man with one hand and holding a candle in the other. In standard fashion, he was garbed now in a white robe, a kittle. After him came the bride let by her parents, as they too held candles in their hands. In standard fashion, her face remained covered by her veil. The whole assembly

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of guests now followed: men, women and children all holding candles, their glowing flames flickering and quivering in the summer night.

August learned rabbis surrounded the wedding, as the blessings were recited and the bridegroom duly crushed the small glass with his foot. According to our tradition, Hillel the shammash, now gave the bride her k'subah (marriage contract) announcing aloud to her in Polish what it was. And then everyone exclaimed: “Mazel tove!” The happy couple was showered with felicitations, good wishes and blessings, as the ensembles of musicians struck up their animated tunes and the assembled people took to dancing in the streets.

As for the bride and groom, they were taken to a private room now, in keeping with Jewish tradition and law, to be by themselves. Having fasted all day in spiritual preparation for marriage, they now had a chance to take food. First, however, the young man lifted the veil from the face of his bride and for the first in their lives they were able to see each other clearly.

In the market square, the crowded gathering went on dancing and even the Polish inhabitants joined in. Huge tables were set up and as people took their places, the food began to be served. The bride and groom and their families as well as the important people among the guests enjoyed their wedding meal in the bride's home.

All streets and roads leading to the market square were blocked off so that no vehicles could enter. Police had even been brought in from nearby Tzoysmer for the occasion to keep order.

It was a night that made history in Pokshyvnitza. Until darkness began turning grey, as the new day approached, the dancing and merry-making continued. Only when morning came did the celebration end. And then it remained the subject of conversation and talk long afterward, far beyond the boundaries of Pokshyvnitza.

For seven days, the wedding was celebrated, one festive meal following another in the observance of the traditional sheva brochos. And during all those seven days, all the paupers and beggars who had assembled from afar and wide received their fill of food and drink.

And so the wedding made local history.

For contrast, let me describe now another memorable wedding in the

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Shtetl – the poorest we ever had.

It was an accepted tradition that the community should not let young women simply go along until they were grey and withered. And the community, likewise, gave thought to young men who were not getting any younger with the years. The shtetl considered it a responsibility to get such people married.

Well, there was a young fellow in the little town named Leibish who was not overly bright, and as time passed, not overly young any more. Then there was an indigent girl who became, likewise, somewhat advanced in years. So the community came to the conclusion that it would be a good thing – a mitzvah – to make of them a married couple.

The match was duly arranged and a date was set for the wedding – a time between Purim and Pesach. This was all fine and good but money was needed for wedding expenses, and where was the money to come from? So it was decided to collect a bit of cash from the wealthier members of the community, and then everything could go ahead as planned.

Yet, what was really the good of a poor, dismal ceremony that satisfied the requirements of the Jewish law but did not have some proper lively music to put a bit of jollity into it? A little band of klezmorim was needed, only, the money was not enough to cover the cost. What to do?

Nu, to this question also an answer was found. Two young fellows in the shtetl, a pair of brothers named Yechezkel and Shmuel Goldman, knew how to play the fiddle, somewhat. So they would be the fiddlers at the wedding. But now, some good drumming was also needed. Thought was duly given to the matter and someone came up with the idea of bringing some large empty tin cans which could serve as the drums for the necessary rhythmic percussion. In addition, a few youngsters who could play little wooden flutes would be recruited. And so, all in all, there would be a right and fine ensemble.

On the day of the wedding, as luck would have it, it snowed heavily and everything in the shtetl soon seemed to be sinking in slush. Still, the ceremony would have to take place and two people would have to lead the bridegroom to the chupa (the wedding canopy), in accordance with tradition. For this task, the community appointed

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Big Meir Dovid and Little Itchallah.

Now the standard place where the canopy was always set up, was next to the beyss medrash. This day, however, the combination of slush and mud was waist high; hence it was originally planned to have the canopy set up right near the bride's home, although it was in the non-Jewish part of the shtetl, so that there would be no need to lead the bride and groom in the usual way through the streets to the beyss medrash. But a hue and cry arose in protest: Why make such an exception in this case? It would only put the bride and groom to shame, by giving them an inferior wedding ceremony.

In the end, the bride and groom were led all the way to the beyss medrash. In preparation, the young man put on tall boots and the young lady laced up a pair of shoes that reached to her knees and thus they were able to trudge through the deep wet snow that had turned brown.

As tradition required, first the bridegroom was taken to the chupah, his arms firmly held by Big Meir Dovid and Little Itchalleh, as they and the people who accompanied them held lanterns and candles, and the local makeshift 'musicians' or 'klezmerim' played. When they were fairly close to the beyss medrach, however, the bridegroom and his two unterfirrer (escorts) suddenly entered a very deep patch of snow and mud, without warning. Little Itchalleh lost his bearings and fell in, dragging the bridegroom with him and he, in turn, pulled Big Meir Dovid in after him. In slight hysteria, the people around them dragged them out and hustled them into the beyss medrash, where they did their best to clean off the mire and muck.

Then the bride was escorted to the wedding canopy, to the accompaniment of the same 'homemade' brand of music. When the ceremony was over, the people went into action with their merrymaking to bring some cheer into the poor and meagre ceremony.

As they both spoke about it, then and afterward, all agreed that there was a true cause for happiness in the wedding. First, two poor orphans became a married couple, and then, two miracles had occurred: (1) in the mikveh, when she was immersing herself in preparation for the happy event, the bride had slipped and fallen in and the woman in attendance had had to pull her out and save her from possibly drowning.

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And no mishap had occurred. (2) when the bridegroom and his escort of two unterfirrer had fallen into the deep muddy slush, he had come out unharmed, without any broken ankle.

Despite the circumstances, it was a happy and lively occasion. The fiddles played on until late into the night and the hoarse throbbing echoes of the drumming on the large tin cans sounded far away in the stillness of the night.

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When my brother pawned the “Jewish G-d”

My older brother, Schachne, was seventeen when he married. At twenty-one, the father of two children, he was called up to come and join the Russian army in accordance with the conscription law. Needless to say, my father paid the right amount of money in the right places, and my brother found himself untroubled by the conscription law.

A while later, however, some informer gave bad information to the wrong people about the entire commission in charge of conscription in Pokshyvnitza; and all the young men who had been exonerated from army duty were called up again. They were given severe prison sentences and after their release, they had to go into the Russian army for five years.

This programme, however, of a harsh prison term and five years of barbaric army service, was not at all suitable for my brother. He saw no other choice before him but to sneak across the border into Galicia. My father told him to make his way to the town of Zhikev and remain there until he could join him, and then the two of them would go and ask the Zhikever Rebbe what to do. When my father managed to get there and they went to talk the matter over with the rebbe, his advice was to go back to Pokshyvnitza for a few days and then to pack up and leave for America.

Money for such a long trip overseas, however, my brother did not have and neither was my father in any position to help him. But Shachne had an idea. From the farmers in the neighbouring villages, my father regularly bought up the crops of grain that they raised in their fields. It was my brother, though, who actually dealt with them and attended to the details, so the peasant farmers knew him well. Shachne had the idea that he could borrow enough among them to get him nicely and safely to America.

At night, he took a rowboat and worked the oars to get himself across the Veisel River and from the other side, he made his way to the familiar villages where he had often gone in the past to buy the harvested crops of grain. With him, he had the only thing he owned that had real value: his tallis for Shabbos, with the attoroh, the neckband

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Of pure silver thread sewn to it. As he put it on for prayers only on Shabbath morning, he decided he could get along without it in the foreseeable future.

The tallis under his arm, my brother entered the cottage of the rich young farmer Lukas; “Shachnel!” exclaimed the farmer at the sight of him. “What in the world are you doing here tonight?”

“It's something very important”.

“Well hurry up and tell me what it is. I'm very busy”.

“I have to borrow a hundred rubles – tonight”.

“All right”, replied Lukas the farmer, “but what kind of guarantee or collateral can you give me so that I can be sure I'll get the money back?”

“As security, you can have this”, and Shachne took the tallis out of its velvet bag. “This is the Jewish G-d”, he said blandly, pointing to the silver neckband without batting an eyelash, “something like an icon, if you know what I mean. By Jewish law, a 'Jewish G-d must not be left in a Gentile's hands, so as soon as you come into town on a trading day and let it be known that you have a 'Jewish G-d, the Jews will give you any amount you want”.

After talking it over with his old grandmother, Lukas took a hundred rubles out of a purse and gave it to my brother. That same night, he rowed his way across the Veisel River to Galicia and continued on until he reached America.

The next market day, Lukas the farmer came to town and went looking for my father. When he found him he took my father aside and told him he had an important matter to discuss. So they went together through the stores into my father's home and there Lukas took out a little package.

“I have the Jewish G-d here”, he said with a perfectly serious face. My father looked at him thoughtfully, wondering when and how had had gone off his mind. He kept his thoughts to himself, however, and replied calmly: “Show me what the Jewish G-d looks like and tell me who gave Him to you”.

“What do you mean, who? It was your son Shachne. He sold it to me!” And with that he took the tallis out of its velvet bag. My father recognized it immediately as Shachne's by the silver neck band and

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he listened attentively as Lukas related how Shachne had come to his cottage at night and sold it to him. Of course, this was not the strict truth. Shachne had not sold it to him but given it over as security for the repayment of a loan. Lukas, however, had no intention of giving up such a “valuable possession” for the mere return of his hundred rubles.

“Lukas” asked my father, “how much did you pay for the Jewish G-d?” Lukas didn't answer. “All right then, my father continued, “how much do you want for Him?”

“Give me five hundred rubles and you can have your G-d back”.

“That kind of money”, my father shrugged, “I don't have. It would be better for you to go to the rich Jews in town who have plenty of money. They're sure to give you the amount you want to redeem the Jewish g-d”.

With the prospect of a possible small fortune in the offing, Lukas lost no time but headed directly for Zanvel Zinneman's home. My father, however, could also act swiftly and in no time Zanvel knew the full details of what was afoot here. When the young Polish farmer knocked on his door, Zanvel was ready for him. He listened respectfully as Lukas repeated in strictest confidence his story about the “Jewish-Gd”.

With a perfectly serious countenance, Zanvel asked: “Well then, how much do you want for Him?”

“A thousand rubles”.

“That is a great deal of money”, said Zanvel. “I just don't have that much right now. Would you take five hundred?”

With the prospect of lovelier profits glowing in the farmer's mind, he heard nothing in Zanvel's offer to interest him in the slightest degree. Instead, he went to Zanvel's brother, Meir Dovid, to repeat his story in full detail, again in strictest confidence. Meir Dovid, however, had been told of the whole business in advance, at the same time as his brother.

“Nu”, asked Meir Dovid, “how much do you want then for the Jewish G-d?”

“Fifteen hundred rubles”, came the reply as Lukas's self-confidence and hunger for profit continued to grow.

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“For a sum like that”, said Meir Dovid, “we have to call a meeting of the richest Jews in Pokshyvnitza, to see how we can raise it. We will have to let you know when we have come to a decision”.

Lukas the farmer left Meir Dovid's home rubbing his hands together in delight and almost dancing with joy. In his imagination, he already saw all the acres of land he could buy once he had the money he demanded as the redemption price for Shachne's tallis. To the harnessed little coach here his grandmother sat waiting for him, Lukas didn't walk. He capered and ran for joy. “Would you believe it?” he called out to his grandmother. “Pinkov's son Shachne has made me rich. Rich, I tell you . . . It calls for a celebration!” So he went off to buy a bottle of vodka and returned to my father to have a good hefty drink with him.

The matter dragged on for months and the Jews of the shtetl had a delightful subject for conversation that left them holding their sides with laughter. Then Lukas lost patience and began threatening that he would go to the local rabbi and reveal to him the shameful, dreadful secret that he had the Jewish G-d in his possession and the rich Jews made not a move to redeem Him.

Exasperated at last beyond the hilt, he actually did as he had threatened. He went and told the rabbi. But the learned man knew all about it and he merely relied that there was nothing he could do: He himself had no money, being neither a merchant nor a businessman, and he only received a modest salary from the community.

So more time passed and passed until it began to dawn on Lukas the farmer that with this business with Jewish G-d, he had only been lulled and gulled and taken for a ride. Abashed and crest-fallen, he finally brought the tallis to my father again. In the meantime, we had received a letter from my brother Shachne, written and sent by him after his safe arrival in America; and in it he told us clearly that he had given the tallis to Lukas as security against a loan of a hundred rubles. So my father took a hundred rubles and gave it to the Polish farmer. And with that, the 'Jewish G-d' was 'redeemed' and the whole saga ended.

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Types, characters, incidents

1. Moshel Plop and his mare

In the shtetl we had a hard-working, toiling Jew named Moshe, quiet as a mouse. No one could ever remember having heard him talk. For some reason, he was generally called MoshelPlop. To earn a living, every Friday, he brought into town a wagon load of sand for Shabbos. Most Jewish homes in Pokshyvnitza did not have any proper flooring but made do with the dark hard earth on which the homes were built. In honour of the Sabbath, the homemakers used to sprinkle yellow-golden sand over the blackened earth to make a pleasant change from the dull and depressing weekday appearance. And it was Moshel Plop who drove his wagon from house to house to sell the sand.

To pull his wagon, Moshel had a poor and bedraggled mare that was nothing but skin and bones. This pathetic animal could barely drag along the rattling, rickety vehicle with its load of sand, and it was always hungry. Moshel Plop, though, never put a whip to its poor hide. Instead, he spoke to it in plan, simple Yiddish, encouraging it with such thoughts as: “Come, let's go a little faster”, and, “when we'll sell the sand, my dear little horse, I'll buy you a bit of hay”.

He gathered the sand beyond the little town, not far from the Jewish cemetery. On the way back, the road went uphill and Moshel would then pull the wagon together with the nag to help it. The poor mare seemed to be his best friend. In fact, he just about never sat on the wagon but always went with it on foot. If the poor creature took sick, Moshel Plop would go into the beyss medrash to say t'hillim to beseech G-d earnestly with the words of entreaty in the Psalms, to give his nag a complete recovery. After all, the creature was both friend and means of earning a living.

This then was our Moshel Plop.

The time came when a son of Shachne Zinneman, a grandson of Reb Yechiel's son Yossl, was to become engaged in the neighbouring town of Tzoysmer. So the members of the family went riding off to Tzoysmer in fine and princely coaches.

The engagement took place in good order. The t'no'im being

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Properly signed out and sealed and the next day, the visitors from Pokshyvnitza, who included the whole Zinneman family, started the journey back. How could anyone have foreseen the dreadful tragedy that occurred on the way?

Almost at all the entrance to the shtetl, it was necessary to cross the Zhekeh River by the bridge which spanned it. The coach that carried Yossl Zinneman and his wife Dvora with two of their grandchildren, started across the bridge as expected and then, suddenly, the cantering horses went wild. They began kicking out fearfully making the coach careen and slither in all directions. Try as he would, the driver could not control the horses with his reins. And Dvora was flung out of the coach, sliding helplessly into the river where she was drowned to death.

The whole shtetl was thrown into deep mourning. For a long time, the townspeople lived under the pall of terrible tragedy, unable to shake off the miserable mood.

There were certain young people in Pokshyvnitza who came to be known as the philosophers. They used to get together in the market square and look through spyglasses across the river, to see what was going on in Galicia. They were, principally, fellows named Yehudah Leib, Srolish (a distorted form of Yisroel) Rosenfeld and Baruch Yossl Zinneman. They could always be seen going around with their spyglasses with which they kept looking constantly at the sky.

When they say a rainbow, for them it was a sign of portending war. When a flock of black crows suddenly came flapping their wings through the market square, to them it meant that the coming market day would be a bad one, bringing little profit. On the other hand, if pigeons appeared, that was a sign that a good market day was to be expected.

A Polish young man named Podgursky also joined these “philosophers”. He considered himself a 'learned' gentleman, and even convinced himself that he was a bit of a medical doctor. Then, in time, another Pole joined the “philosophers”; a pharmacist who was generally known as the “hunchback”.

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4. Akiva the bankess …tter

tthe little town possessed a proper Jewish medic named Yozep. In addition, there was Akiva Fleck who considered himself a bit of a medic because he could shtell bankess: This meant that he owned a set of little glass cups of a special shape; and when a person's back hurt him, for example, Akiva would come with the cups, create heat in them, one at a time (as will be described below) and then place each cup on the person's back. From the heat of the flame, the cup created a suction and the whole array of cups on a bare back had a beneficial and healing effect. He was also a barber who gave haircuts to men and boys while his wife, Saraleh, dealt with the haircutting of the pious women on Fridays.

Once, it happened that Zanvel Zinneman's daughter, Kreindel, became sick during a period when she was nursing a child. Yozep the medic was called and he declared that should have bankess set on her chest. Without delay, Akiva Fleck was sent for and he set to work.

Following his usual procedure, Akiva held in one hand a stick with absorbent cotton wrapped about it (a sort of homemade large Q-tip). This he was to dip in alcohol and light from a burning candle, so as to put the flame briefly into each cup and then put it on the bare skin where it was needed. As he set the cups on Kreindel's chest, they made the breasts contract and their milk streamed directly into Akiva's eyes. Plainly and simply, he was momentarily blinded and instead of continuing to put the full flame of his stick into the cups to heat them, he set his beard on fire. In the instant before he could gain control of the situation, half his beard was burnt away while he was entirely flooded from the spray. The poor man did not know what to do with himself.

The whole town began talking about the bizarre accident that had befallen Akiva. It was mooted that the only explanation could be that Heaven had punished him for touching Kreindel's breasts.

Yet, what was Akiva to do? He could not go about in public with half his beard burnt and singed. It was decided to ask the local rabbi for a ruling on Akiva should do. The learned man told him to immerse himself in the mikveh seven times and then fast on Mondays and Thursdays for a number of weeks. As for the beard, he should tie it up in a knot.

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How should rabbinical grandchildren be supported?

Life in the shtetl, with its 175 Jewish and 275 non-Jewish families, flowed on in a serene and idyllic calm. The poor and the rich lived amicably together. There were good-hearted people who saw to it that the needy should be taken care of.

Among us, there were also rabbinical einiklach, grandchildren and great-grandchildren in family lines of distinguished rabbinic personages. Once they married and began having children, they needed some source of income. Yet, what were they to do? They had no aptitude for any business or craft. They could neither try their hand at trading nor attempt any kind of work, skilled or unskilled. So the difficult question arose: How were they to support themselves and their families.

The worthy members of the community decided to impose a tax on salt, kerosene, sugar, candles, challahs (the white loaves baked for Shabbos), and so forth. The tax money came in, the families in question were supported and everything was fine.

Then another rabbinical einikl married and he too had to be provided for. As usual when a problem of this kind arose, an assembly of the worthy members of the community was called. First it was made clear that the money gained from the special taxes would not be enough to cover the needs of the new family as well. So a lively discussion developed in search of a new source of income. In a while, the gabbai, the swarthy Yechiel, came up with a brand new idea.

The mikveh was located on the outskirts of the little town where non-Jews lived. When the pious women came out of the ritualarium, having been purified under Jewish law by their immersion, they were often met with a special plague: Polish youth, out for sport. These scoundrels, having nothing better to do, would deliberately touch the women – no more. But under Jewish law, the women were thus defiled again, and they had to go back into the mikveh and undergo another immersion. Sport – no?

The swarthy Yechiel's idea was simple and to the point. Near the mikveh, a booth should be erected, an enclosure with a hole cut out in it. In the booth, the newly married rabbinic einikl should sit during the required hours. As soon as a woman came from the

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the ritualarium, she was to touch him without delay. Under Jewish law this was enough. No young Polish hooligan could defile her after that. Gone would be the plague. Never more would a Jewish woman have to go back and immerse herself again because those young Polish skunks had their own idea of sport.

The idea worked fine and dandy. Near the mikveh, a booth was built with a right proper opening. There, the rabbinical einikl sat as required, his hand always at the ready to be touched by the good pious women immediately on their emergence into the outer world after their immersion. But near his hand stood a pushke, a nice old-fashioned charity box. And after touching the einikl's hand, the good pious women would drop a few kopeks into it.

From the steady flow of kopeks, the rabbinical einikl had a right proper livelihood and the community had a warm glow of satisfaction that a few thorny problems had been properly resolved.

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When Yossl Pandrik was born

Among the Jewish inhabitants of Pokshyvnitza, there was a poor widow who had three daughters. One married and the other two went to work as servants to certain rich homes.

The day came when one of the two servant girls became pregnant and gave birth to a boy. As the news spread slowly but insidiously, the tongues in the town began wagging and careening on wheels. One can only imagine the talking that went on. How? How could it be? How could an unmarried girl conceive and bear and illegitimate child? And then, needless to say, the central question became: Who was the responsible or irresponsible father?

Of course, the obvious thing to do was to ask the girl. She, however, had but one pitiful answer: She did not know. As far as she knew, she insisted, she had never had any improper relations with a man. So one way or another, a rumour began to waft through the town that another 'Yossle Pandrik' had been born, supposedly by 'immaculate conception'.

Finally, a circumcision took place and by then, even the non-Jews were talking about the matter. The sickly child lived a total of four weeks and then returned its soul to its Maker. So what should happen next? As time went by, a non-Jewish rumour began spreading among the Polish inhabitants that only one explanation was possible: The Jews had murdered the poor thing.

Rumours, like cancer, have a way of spreading. In a while the local authorities ordered the small body exhumed and examined, to determine if it had met a natural death or not. The results of the medical examination were clear, however. The death had been entirely natural. Yet, human nature being what it is, it took quite a while before the great big hullabaloo died down entirely and the shtetl settled back to some peace and quiet.

The ultimate mystery of the fatherhood, however, remained unsolved.

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Reb Chaim Meir, Nota Yossl's, and others

Inscribed in my memory, the scenes of our winter nights in the beyss medrash still live. When I close my eyes, I can see again the flashing kerosene lamps giving their light to the young students bent over their volumes of Talmud, working away at the age-old words of the gemara, chanting out the sharp discussions of the Sages of yore.

Older, aging Jews were there too, poring over the pages of Talmud. They would carry on keen discussions of their own, trying to fathom the meaning in behind and beyond the old divisions of opinion in the Talmud. And, to earn a better share in the world-to-come, the women who sat by day in the marketplace selling their wares, came to the beyss medrash at night to bring some frozen apples, so that the older men could refresh themselves in the midst of their study.

Among these older men was a learned Talmudist name Reb Chayim Meir. It was his practice to stay there, immersed in his learning until very late. By tradition, toward midnight, the shammash used to make the rounds in the shtetl, knocking on the shutters with his wooden hammer, calling out: “Yidn, shteit oyf tzu” (Jews, get up for) chatzos! Pious menfolk would then get up and come to the beyss medrash for tikkun chatzos, the special prayers in the middle of the night that lament over the destruction of the beyss ha-mikdash, the ancient Temple in Jerusalem, and entreat the Almighty to rebuild it soon. When they came to the house of study and prayer, they would invariably find Reb Chayim Meir still there, enwrapped in his study.

Another well-known character in the shtetl was a man called Nota Yossl's. He used to spend all day davening in his own world of prayer. He would pray with great intensity and concentration, with a fiery devoutness and passion, wrapped in his fervour. And then his voice could be heard over the entire shtetl.

Some men in the shtetl rose to the status of membership in a small group of 'newly rich'. Such people as Abbeleh of the produce store, Nechemya Gottlieb, David Schreibman, Mordecheleh Gluzman, Fisheleh of Blonya,

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and Shlomo Konyozh. They did not inherit wealth and they were not born into wealthy families. Their business affairs went well for them and they became rich.

My mother, Pearl (may she rest in peace), was quite an expert in setting dislocated limbs back in place. It was said of her that she had blessed and gifted hands and could do this better than the doctor. So, if anyone dislocated a hand or a foot (Heaven forbid), Pearl was sent for immediately. For the pure sake of a mitzvah, a good deed, without taking a penny of pay for it, she would set the limb back in place.

In the shtetl, there was also a man named Yidl Dan's. He was an expert at swabbing and painting swollen throats. So he too went often into Jewish homes and was warmly welcome for the relief that he was able to bring. And he too would take not a penny for his troubles.

In those years, family names were still not used in Pokshyvnitza. When a stranger came into the shtetl looking for someone whom he knew by a family name, he could find the name only in the town register. The Jews of the shtetl would never know whom the stranger meant because, everyone there, every man, woman and child, had their own peculiar appellations. Thus, we identified our local people, for example as: Blind Moshe, Deaf Yoel, Meir Dovid's, Channa Pinchasl's, Moshel Apter (from Apt), Big Nachman, Little Yankeleh, Swarthy Yechiel, etc. So one way or another, everyone had a cognomen instead of a family name.

Among its varied population, Pokshyvnitza had a midwife, an old Jewish woman of eighty, who was known as Simmeleh di heibam (Simmeleh the midwife). She had a shrivelled face and was bent over and hunch-backed, and she could hardly see.

Well, it once happened that Avrohom Lerrer's (teacher's) wife, Liba, who was about due to give birth, began to have labour pains. It was late at night and the pains became stronger and stronger. So Avrohom Lerrer went off to get Simmeleh as quickly as possible.

She came, entered and went to wash her hands. As it happened, the bucket of water from the well stood in a room where two young boys,

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children of the couple, lay sleeping in a large bed. When she was finished washing her hands, Simmeleh went to the bed, lifted the coverlet and said a brochoh (a benediction), and then added: “zo les zein mit mazl” (May it be with good fortune).

At that point, Avrohom Lerrer ran to her quickly to pull her away. “Simmeleh, excuse me”, he spoke softly in her ear. “My wife is in the other room. Here the boys are sleeping.

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When emigration began

In 1900, emigration from Pokshyvnitza to America began in earnest. Young men in the Jewish population left the home town and went off sailing across the sea.

For the older folk, the move was unthinkable. America was treif: a vile, un-kosher land where the sacred authentic Jewish religion could not survive. They opposed the move even by the young folk. But those who grew to adulthood and had to make a life for themselves, saw no clear path to a future in Poland. Jews were forbidden to live in the villages. Of shops and stores, there were already more than enough. Some places of business held a monopoly of liquor and tobacco and they were in non-Jewish hands. Jews seldom received any special privileges of concessions in the world of trade. Factories were unknown in Pokshyvnitza. The young men simply found no fields of activity or enterprise into which to put their bubbling dynamic energy.

Among the first to leave the shtetl were my brother Shachne (as related above), Berek Appelbaum, Yechezkel Perlman, Shmuel Denemark, Shmuel Goldman, Yisrolish Rosenbaum and a good many others – who all left their wives behind in Pokshyvnitza until, hopefully, they could establish themselves in the New World and send for their helpmates.

I came to America in 1906 and when I landed and started to walk on American soil, I found a good number of landsleit, natives of the shtetl, who had preceded me. And, with every year, our group of landsleit grew larger. All the immigrants from Pokshyvnitza kept together in a united group. For shaleshudess, the third meal on the Sabbath, in the late afternoon, all the landsleit located in New York City's boroughs of Brooklyn and the Bronx, used to get together, in conviviality. It was a time for nostalgic reminiscences about the old shtetl, and the exchange of news and greetings sent in letters from the home town. And then we also learned who had left America and sailed back.

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Hershel Shuster's basement

Our fellow-native Hershel Shuster (shoemaker) lived on Rivington Street in New York City and there he had his workshop in a basement. As fate or fortune would have it, that basement became a place of refuge for all the young folk from Pokshyvnitza. Especially the lonely young men who had left their wives behind, used to gather there. Our people would get together there after their working house to talk out the troubles that pressed down on their heavy hearts, console and comfort one another and in general, share their experiences in living and working in the New World. Above all, in the basement, the immigrants could always hear news that had recently been received in letters and to learn what was going on back there in the shtetl.

Slowly, with the passage of time, the menfolk began bringing their wives and children over to join them. The majority of the men had settled in New York's borough of Manhattan and after a few years of separation, loneliness and longing, they became reunited there with their families.

One of the first projects that the united group of immigrants from Pokshyvnitza undertook was to buy a large plot of land which could serve as a cemetery for the use of the members. In the new land, the group also had a sefer torah (a Torah scroll) written by a scribe in honour of the shtetl. And late Saturday afternoon, shaleshudess, the third meal, was always celebrated together and then the beloved niggunim of the old shtetl, the beloved Chassidic melodies, were chanted and sung.

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When rows of great controversy came

In 1909, news reached us Jews of Pokshyvnitza in America of a great and bitter quarrel that had developed in the shtetl. We learned how sons turned hostile to their fathers and fathers to their sons. They became enemies who would not sit down to a meal at the same table, because fathers and sons had taken opposite sides in the controversy.

Essentially, it was a quarrel between the shtetl's learned rabbi and Reb Naftolish and his followers.

So what was the furore all about?

There was a Chassidic rabbi (a rebbe) known as Reb Meirl of Zhikev (a small town in Galicia), and he had four sons, later known respectively as Reb Yehoshualeh, Reb Yechiel, Reb Ahreleh (from Aharon or Aaron), the Beitcher Rebbe and finally, Reb Osherl the Rimenever Rebber. Now, as these sons grew up, it became necessary to provide them with a livelihood – which meant a suitable Chassidic rabbinic position. So, the key question became: in which little town or shtetl to place them?

Reb Meirl had devoted followers in all the neighbouring little towns and shtetlach. He could simply take his pick. And so he began providing his sons with suitable positions. The oldest, Reb Yehoshualeh, he appointed his successor in Zhikev and the young man had no need to move. His future was assured. The second, Reb Yechiel was to become the rebbe or rabbi of Pokshyvnitza, by Reb Meirl's quiet decision. The third, Reb Ahreleh, was earmarked by his father for a shtetl called Beitch. And the fourth, Reb Osherl was assigned by his father to Rimenev.

Directly after the marriage of his second son, Reb Yechiel, Reb Meirl of Zhikev sent the young man to his chassidim in Pokshyvnitza to assume the position of rav (rabbi); and thus in all the surrounding shtetlach, he became known as the Pokshyvnitzer Rav.

For ten years, Reb Yechiel occupied the position without particular difficulties. Children were born to him. A son named Naftolish (Naftali) another named Alterl (Alter) and two daughters. Then, suddenly, the tsarist government issued a decree that all people who had been born in Galicia must leave Poland (since Poland was under Russian

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rule, while Galicia was part of Austro-Hungary. Reb Yechiel the Pokshyvnitzer Rav had no choice but to leave the shtetl and make his way back to Galicia where he settled in Turna. Despite all this, however, he continued to call himself the Pokshyvnitzer Rav.

Years went by, his children grew and the concern entered Reb Yechiel's mind: What was to be done for his sons to provide them with a livelihood? Where, in short, were rabbinic positions to be found for them?

So he recalled that by virtue of the past, he had a claim on Pokshyvnitza. And thus, in his mind, he decided that his Naftolish must become the rav in our shtetl, for since Naftolish had been born there, the tsarist authorities would not be able to expel him as an alien. So Naftolish settled in the shtetl and the Turner chassidim, devoted followers of his father, duly accepted him as their rabbi. And thus the bitter controversy began.

All the other chassidim, such as the Gerer and Kuzmirer and even the Zhiever (followers of Naftolish's grandfather) absolutely refused to agree to have Naftolish serve as Pokshyvnitzer Rav. They considered him simply unfit to hold the position. And they, therefore, went and appointed the moreh hora'ah, the one who served the shtetl as its religious authority, to be the rabbi as well.

Like an illness, the quarrel between the two sides spread more and more. It started with questions regarding kosher and non-kosher food. If Reb Naftolish decided that something was kosher, the moreh hora'ah ruled it was treif. This particularly affected the meat from animals that were ritually slaughtered, doubts arose when the lungs were examined. Time and again the butchers were left with their meat, unable to sell it as they fell victim to the controversy.

New shochtim (ritual slaughterers) and butchers were brought down who might remain unaffected by the bitter quarrelling. The Jews in the shtetl no longer knew what to consider kosher and what not. They began riding to other little towns to ask their questions of the rabbinic authorities there – only to be told by these authorities that they did not want to meddle in the controversy. They refused to render decisions on the questions of law, said the neighbouring religious authorities, because Pokshyvnitza had two rabbis to deal with them.

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Matters went so far that whole families became bitter enemies, because one family went under the authority of one rabbi and the other family recognized the other. One family would no longer visit the other and would not consent to any marriage between the two. Grown sons would not eat at their fathers' meal tables and vice-versa. Even actual fighting with fists broke out and some would inform on others to the governmental authorities.

Those who gave their allegiance to neither side would simply go and buy their meat in other shtetlach.

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I return home

In 1911, I sailed back to Pokshyvnitza for Pesach, wanting to spend Passover with my family, especially my father, who had become very ill. After three weeks of travel, I arrived in the shtetl only to find that my father was no longer among the living.

After I recovered from the loss, I eventually went to the beyss medrash. The very first time I appeared there, my melamdim, those who had given me my education in my early years, came over and asked, point blank, to which side (in their confounded controversy) I wanted to belong to. One of them, Avremeleh Fishel's, casually remarked: “Shmuel, you're not allowed to eat anything in your mother's home. Her food isn't kosher. But it's all right to eat at your brother Shabsai's table. His food is kosher”.

At that, a second melamed from my past spoke up: “Don't you listen to this goy (Gentile) here. Your mother is a tzadeikis, a good pious woman. Her whole life is kosher and fine”.

“Look”, I turned to answer Avremeleh Fishel's: “If the food there was always kosher enough for my mother and my father, may his soul rest in peace, it's most certainly kosher for me”. And with that, my die was cast. I was on the side of the moreh hora'ah, as my father, peace on his soul, had been. With me, I had Feivel Unger and Avremeleh Citrin. And my brother Shabsai was on the side of Reb Naftolish.

I remained in the shtetl until after the yamim noraim (the days of awe that began with Rosh Hashanah and ended with Yom Kippur). The reason was that I had received orders to present myself to the local Russian authorities, for conscription into the Russian army. Had I left to escape the order, my mother would have had to either pay an enormous fine of 300 rubles or have the family home confiscated. Through a proper intermediary, however, the entire group of local authorities were bribed, and I was declared free of army duty.

To go back in time a bit, as I wrote, my arrival in the shtetl had been in time for Pesach. As I also wrote earlier, the Intermediate Days of Passover (chol hamo'ed) were the height of the shidduch season, when marriages were arranged in the shtetl. So I came into the picture,

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And a suitable young lady was suggested to me. Who was the shadchan (the marriage arranger, the matchmaker)? – the moreh hora'ah himself – my rabbi. The young lady was very pretty. The two families found that they liked each other and with mazel (Heaven's smiling good fortune), the shidduch went ahead.

Unfortunately, the shtetl's bitter controversy lived on. Even the non-Jews began taking sides. The water-carriers too were unable to stay clear of it. Nosson Dovid, the water-carrier, was in the camp of the moreh hora'ah and so he refused to carry water to the home of anyone on the opposing side. On the other hand, Shaya, the water carrier, was on Reb Naftolish'side and he would not deliver any water for those who were loyal to the moreh hora'ah.

The bakers also divided into two hostile sides. Zissel the baker, Yosef Pinchas's of the suburb and Zundel the baker on the street of the beyss medrash, were all allied with Reb Naftolish. Pinchas and Meirl the bakers in the marketplace and Nachman the baker, were on the side of the moreh hora'ah.

Every Friday it was the custom for every household to place its pot of tcholent (partly cooked chicken and/or meat with potatoes, beans, barley, etc.) in the oven of a baker. These huge ovens could accommodate the pots of all the families; and as they remained hot through the Shabbath, every tcholent could simmer and stew until it was ready to be eaten hot at the meal on Shabbos morning.

With the controversy raging, each family brought its pot of tcholent only to the oven of a baker with whom it was allied and the pot was then shoved far within, out of reach of intruding hands. The great fear was that there might be a mix-up of pots, whereupon a family might get a tcholent belonging to people of the other side of the controversy – whereupon, they would have to believe that they ate treif, non-kosher food.

The ultimate development came, perhaps, when even the two lunatics of the shtetl, Mattisl and Nosson, chose sides. They used to get into fights and scuffles in the marketplace, shouting at the top of their lungs to each other: “You scoundrel! You just gorge yourself on treif food!”.

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Attempts were made to settle the quarrel and bring peace to the shtetl. Rabbis of other towns came and bent every effort to find a solution to the rancorous, ruinous controversy – but all to no avail.

Shortly after the festival of Shavuos, I married and Ruchoma Goldman became my wife. Naturally, guests from both her side and mine came to the wedding. There was no social mixing between the two sides, however, and they sat at separate tables. My brother Shabsai devoted to Reb Naftolish, took a piece of cake and would not put anything else into his mouth. Under no circumstances would he eat our “treif food”.

In January 1912, I sailed back to America with my little family, which by now consisted of my wife and a child. The quarrel in the shtetl still burned on in all its heat; and so the situation continued until the outbreak of World War I. That put an end to the whole business.

Since the little town is located across the river from Galicia, it was at the very border of Austria and it came under heavy fire, mercilessly. Many Jews were conscripted into the Russian army while others fled deeper inland. Under the bloody conditions of war, the quarrel that had raged for years was stilled at last.

During the years of the world conflict, the moreh hora'ah left the shtetl and went to live with his father, a Chassidic rabbi; and when that rebbe died, the moreh hora'ah, became his successor. Thus, Reb Nafotlish was left the undisputed rabbi in Pokshyvnitza.

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Relief activity by the landsleit

The bloody battles at the war fronts finally came to a halt and the war ended in 1918. Jews who had fled from Pokshyvnitza began to return to the half-ruined shtetl.

About the, letters began reaching the shtetl's natives in New York in which the needy Jews back home, fallen now on hard and bitter times in the aftermath of the war, asked for help. The response of the immigrants from Pokshyvnitza was to interest themselves immediately in the harsh fate of their fellow-Jews back home. An assembly was called of all the people of Pokshyvnitza and the response from those who came was warm and gratifying, showing a readiness to do everything possible.

At the assembly, an appreciable amount of money was raised and it was decided to continue such united action to enable Jewish life to be rebuilt in the old shtetl. For this purpose, a relief committee was formed and this committee sent funds regularly. As life in the little town gradually returned to normal, the shtetl people in America resolved to establish there a proper Torah school and a g'millas chesed, a free-loan fund, to be maintained by us. All the landsleit, even those who were struggling to support themselves, extended their help to their fellow-Jews in Pokshyvnitza.

Our organization was not alone. In general, throughout America, a massive campaign began to provide relief for the impoverished, suffering Jews of Europe. American Jews came generously to the aid of their brethren overseas.

We stayed in regular and unbroken contact with the relief committee in Pokshyvnitza that took charge of distributing the help we sent. They sent us lists of people who found themselves in especially difficult circumstances; and for them, used to send special relief funds.

In 1925 and 1926, a new wave of migration from Pokshyvnitza to America began. There were those who brought whole families with them.

Let me insert something of my own experiences in the migration. After my wedding, I remained in the shtetl for another six months. For this period of time, my wife and I rented an apartment from Rachel Leah

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Zinneman, which was right next door to her dwelling. It happened that the walls between the two apartments were quite thin and from the conversations between Rachel Leah and her husband, that we could not help overhearing, it became clear to us, soon enough, that they were in the strong grip of indigence. Financially, they were in trouble and were desperately looking for some way of help for their rather large family.

On a certain evening, shortly before we were due to leave for America, there was a knock on our door and in walked Rachel Leah herself with a worried look on her face. There obviously was something she wanted to tell us, but try as she would, she could not begin to put into words.

“Rachel Leah”, we asked her, “what has happened? Has anything bad befallen you, Heaven forbid?”.

With our encouragement, she began at last to get her words out: “My dear, dear children, I have an earnest request to make of you. Could you help me perhaps and take my son Yechezkel with you to America?”.

It was my wife who answered: “For such a tzadeikis (pious good woman) as Rachel Leah, we are prepared to do anything”.

She then assured us that she would write immediately to her father, Abraham Lerrer Goldman, who was already in America, asking him to send a ticket for the ocean journey. As for the rest of the expenses, we told her that we would cover them.

In about five weeks, the travel ticket arrived from America and Rachel Leah's son, Yechezkel, set off with us for the New World. The happiness and joy of the pious, good-hearted Rachel Leah at the arrival of the ticket, and mainly at the fact that her son would be traveling with us, was indescribable.

In general, I can only state that as we made ready to depart, the door to our home hardly closed. Parents came, one after another, to ask us to take children of theirs own along.

When Yechezkel Zinneman arrived in America, he did not put his relatives back home out of mind. On the contrary, starting in 1920 and continuing into the thirties, he brought members of his large and wide-branching family, who numbered in the dozens, to the United States.

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Thus, they escaped the gruesome fate of other Jews in the shtetl who were ruthlessly wiped out by Hitler's organised murderers.

The natives of Pokshyvnitza in America began to grow in numbers. The families they raised on the American shore grew larger. Many young men came into the ranks. And thus the relief committee was able to broaden its activities, as the added members began contributing their share.

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After the Second World War

In 1939, World War II broke out. The German beasts of Satan began conquering the towns and cities of Poland and the blood bath of their mass executions made nightmare a reality. Hundreds upon hundreds of communities, millions of Jews in the cities and towns, were gruesomely put to death by the Nazi murderers and their devoted helpers in the lands of conquest. And the shtetl of Pokshyvnitza did not escape this barbaric fate.

As the war went on in the years of 1939 to 1945, like all the Jews in America, we were cut off from any contact with our brethren in Eastern Europe. No news of any kind reached us from the Jews in the shtetl. Yet, no one could begin to imagine the enormous destruction that befell them in which everyone and everything was erased from earth by the inhuman enemy.

As soon as the war ended, the American landsleit of Pokshyvnitza turned to Hias, the Jewish immigrant aid society and the Joint, the central relief agency for Jews in Europe, and asked them to help in finding out if any Jews of the shtetl had been left alive. In the Jewish newspapers of Poland, we published advertisements announcing that we were seeking landsleit and relatives who came from the little town.

In time, responses began to arrive from many Jews of Pokshyvnitza who had become scattered not only throughout Poland but even in Switzerland, Italy, Czechoslovakia, France and the Soviet Union. Whoever applied to us, received aid in return. Many of the surviving families who were living in countries of the free world, were brought to America with our help. From all the communist countries, however, Jews were not permitted then to emigrate to the United States.

Let me relate now an experience of my own:

At the time the war and its nightmares broke out, my sister Chana's son, Nota Unger, was living in Tzoysmer and there, he was on very friendly terms with a Polish medical doctor. When the Nazi murderers began imprisoning the Jews behind the ghetto walls, Nota went to his good friend the doctor and begged him to take charge of his

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Two children, a boy and a girl. With their own parents, he saw no hope for the two little ones. Perhaps under the doctor's care, such as it might be, they would stay alive. “If we survive”, said Nota, “my wife and I, you will be paid well for your trouble. On this I give you my word. If not, here you have the address of my uncle in America, Samuel Kozinsky. You can write to him and he will pay you fairly”.

The doctor took the children but was frightened to keep them with him. The discovery of Jewish children in his home could cost him his life. So he hit on a way out: In his home, there was a Polish servant girl who came from a village. She had a brother who made his living as a sheep farmer. The good doctor thereupon told the Polish girl a tale, that in his wild wayward youth, he had begotten two children out of wedlock and now he had to take care of them, and alas, he wanted no one to know anything about it. Could the girl's brother, the sheep farmer in the village, take care of them perhaps? He, the doctor would pay her brother well, by the week.

The young farmer agreed without any hesitation and with him, the children stayed until the war came to its end. By then, Nota and his wife were among the six million whom the Nazi heroes had sent to their eternal reward. The Polish doctor checked and ascertained that they were gone from this world.

So the day came when out of the blue, I received a letter from him. And I learned that my nephew Nota Unger had left two children with him for safekeeping. He wrote in detail what steps he had taken for their welfare – that he had placed them in the care of a sheep farmer in a village. The boy, he wrote, had fallen ill and died but the girl was alive and well. He asked me to come and take the child and to pay him 1800 dollars for her upkeep through the years.

In the meantime, thanks to my searching for survivors through the Jewish press in Poland, I received word from the daughter of a sister. I had not known of her and she had not known of me. I wrote to her the whole story of my nephew Nota's surviving daughter and asked her to make a trip and see the child and to verify if she really was Nota's little girl.

Without delay, she went to see the Polish doctor who, as it

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happened, she knew personally. At the first sight of the little girl, she recognized immediately that this was indeed Nota's child. As soon as she wrote me this, I sent her 1800 dollars, so that she could pay the doctor and take charge of the child.

The changeover in the little girl's life was fraught with drama. When my sister's daughter wanted to take her and leave, the six-year old child wept and wailed and struggled with all her strength to remain where she was. She shouted and screamed that under no circumstances would she go to live with the zhids, the vile, accursed Jewish people. She had to be torn from the doctor's home by force. In my niece's apartment in a new development area, she continued to weep and storm without a stop, screaming that she wanted to go back to her “father and mother” in the village.

My niece realized that if she let the child continue like this, out of her great pining and longing for the people and life she knew, she would quite certainly get sick. She telephoned the medical doctor in Tzoysmer and asked him to get in touch with the sheep farmer in the village and tell him to come to her home in the development area, and find some way to quiet the little girl. Whatever expenses this would entail, she would pay.

The sheep farmer duly came and he patiently convinced the child that he was not her real father because she had been born to Jewish parents who were no longer alive. Slowly the child calmed down and began to grow used to her new surroundings and her new identity. She found a good and warm home with my niece and proved to be a bright and alert student in school. After high school she went on to study medicine until she attained her doctor's certificate. Today, she is in America where she married a fine young man and settled in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

Many other natives of Pokshyvnitza in America were able to trace members of their families who survived the Holocaust. We established connections with landsleit in Israel – both people who had long been living there and those who had come to the Jewish homeland after the war. Our first purpose, over and above everything else, was to help the new arrivals – for in the land of Israel, there was a pathetic lack

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Of food at the time. Every month, we would send food packages as well as financial help. This assistance was given not only by the organization of landsleit in America to its counterpart in Israel, but also on an individual basis.

At this point, in the name of the landsleit of Pokshyvnitza, I feel it a holy duty to pay homage to the shining memory of Riktcha Rotenberg, may her soul rest in peace. She devoted herself indefatigably to the task of finding survivors of the war who hailed from our shtetl, and her house became a second home for them where they were welcome to stay as long as they needed. It was she who would send to us in America the names of individual landsleit who came to Israel after the war and after it was declared an independent Jewish state.

Being president of the organized landsleit of Pokshyvnitza, I travelled with my wife to visit Israel. There, I met people we had known in the years back in the shtetl when we lived there. But, as soon as we arrived in Israel, our first wish was to go and visit Riktcha, from whom we had continually received greetings and news about the landsleit, and who had always hoped, through the years, to see us.

At the port of Haifa, as my wife and I found ourselves on Israeli soil at last, a sizeable group of landsleit were there to greet us, among the Riktcha's grown up children, and a niece of mine with her family. My first question was: “Where is Riktcha”? And the answer was a mournful one: She had passed away only a few weeks earlier. The news was both unexpected and saddening.

At the Dan Hotel in Tel-Aviv, landsleit made a little gathering to meet with us and they invited us to visit them in their homes. When we began making these visits, our eyes were met with scenes that told their own story of poverty and need. In the homes we entered, there were, as a rule, no tables or chairs. Some lived in the confined quarters of shacks, the best that the young and struggling government of Israel could give them. Nor did they seem to manage to have too much food to eat.

The following week, we had a meeting with almost all the landsleit of Pokshyvnitza living in Israel. At this gathering, I distributed

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to all the people in attendance, special certificates with which they could obtain food packages. As I visited the homes of our landsleit, however, and became more familiar with their situation, I became convinced that the food packages would not bring any radical improvement into their lives. So, at our second assembly, I took the initiative and came up with the idea of organizing a g'millas chessed, a few loan fund, to make it possible for people, through interest-free loans, to stand on their own two feet and become self-supporting. On the spot, an organizing committee was formed with Moshe Unger as president, Minnie Greenberg as secretary and several others as various officers. Immediately after my return to America, 2,000 dollars was sent to them to get the project underway.

The landsleit in America were more than pleased with the initiative to establish a g'millas chessed fund in Israel and the support they provided for it was most generous.

In 1959, my wife and I paid a second visit to the re-born Jewish homeland. At the airfield in Lod, there were landsleit waiting to meet us and later, a fine reception was arranged for us. We found that people there were really happy to see us. To the cheerful and heart-warming atmosphere, Riktcha's daughters and sister's son, Moshe Unger, contributed greatly.

Being there, I had a good and thorough look to see how the free loan fund was faring and I can report in all honesty that the action I took to establish the project and get it going, was not in vain. The loan fund is doing a very necessary and constructive job, to extend a helping hand to the landsleit so that they can become economically independent and put their life in order.

When I went, this time, to the homes of the people who had been living before in such poor circumstances, I did not recognize them from the previous visits. I found now elegant furniture and fine clothing with a general atmosphere of well -being, to convince me that these people have recovered from their setbacks and found their way in life.

I was particularly gratified by my visit to a certain Mr. Gottlieb.

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In 1954, he had been living in a temporary housing unit, - a shack – into which the rain poured in and the wind blew freely. Now, I found him in a decent and handsome apartment.

I returned to America with satisfaction in my heart, having become convinced that we, in the New World, had done a good piece of work on behalf of our landsleit in Israel.

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Our trip to Poland

After a stay of seven weeks in Israel, we travelled to Poland to visit the daughter of a sister of mine whom I had managed to trace. In Warsaw, she met us at the airport. We spent a few days with her in the Polish capital and later rode to the suburban development centre where she lived.

In Warsaw, we saw no sign of any Jewish life worthy of the word. The Jews who lived there have no wish to be recognizable as Jews. In the suburban development centre, where some 200,000 people live, there are barely three Jewish families among them.

On a bright summer Sunday, I took a ride with these families out of the city to spend some time in the woods. And I discovered that one of the families was not even properly Jewish. The woman was Christian and hence the children were too. Both she and her two daughters wore crosses. My niece introduced me to the family and we sat on the grass to have our picnic lunch.

The woman's husband, who owned a radio store in the development centre, came to me afterward and asked me to take a walk with him in the woods. He spoke to me in German and I was able to understand him. Right at the start, he told me: “I'm Jewish!”. “Well how do you feel as a Jew?” I asked him, “And why do your wife and children wear crosses around their necks?”.

“Even when I want to be a goy”, he replied, “I can't”. He went on to tell me that as his wife and children go to church every Sunday, he used to go along with them. Once, he said, a Polish neighbour came over to him and asked, in irritation: “What are you doing here? Go to your Jews!”. His children, the man lamented, hate him and are ashamed of him wishing to heaven that they did not have a Jew for a father. And he was the only one left alive out of a large family. Finally, he concluded: “I don't have any true life here. This is just no life. If I could only run off to Israel, I would leave my wife and children. They are strangers to me”.

Back in Warsaw, my niece telephoned a friend of hers, a senior official in a furniture concern. He came with an elegant aristocratic

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automobile, driven by a chauffeur and had my wife, my niece and myself take our places in it with him, whereupon he told the chauffeur to drive us all over the city. In the evening, I met him by appointment in the restaurant of the Grand Hotel where we had dinner together. In the course of the conversation, he told me that he had a Christian wife and two bright and lovely children. His father-in-law, he added, was a Jew-hater. But, he continued, the life he was living was not bad at all. The only trouble was, he said, that on any given day, he could suddenly lose his position (it was a government position) simply because he was Jew.

His wife knew that he was suffering from this state of affairs and that he had to take great care to keep hidden the fact that he was a Jew. So she told him: “Let's get out of here and go to Israel, or to some other place?”. She was ready to travel with him to any country he might choose.

At any rate, we spent a pleasant evening together. As we parted, he remarked: “I would gladly invite you to my apartment but to my regret, I can't do it. You see, it's healthier for me, in my position, to keep a good distance away from Americans”.

A few days later, we travelled to our native shtetl, Pokshyvnitza. With us went three Polish acquaintances of my niece, as well as my sister's grandchild, the girl who had been kept safe during the war by the Polish sheep farmer, about whom I wrote previously.

It was the month of May. As I had seen them long ago, I saw again the lovely green flowering fields and meadows, spreading into the distance. The white acacia trees were standing in full bloom. Yet, the little town left me with the impression that everything in it had died. I found it without life, without movement like a graveyard. In the market square, the little shops were boarded up. I found one store open for three hours a day. This market square had one been full of people. Now it was desolate. Not a living soul was to be seen except for two children who came over to admire our automobile.

In the market square, I saw our house where I had been born and raised. Now Polish folk were living there. My wife and niece went inside, but I remained where I was. I felt my heart contract in pain.

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My knees were ready to buckle under me. I could not bear to see the home of my family in the possession of strangers.

From the market square we went looking for the Jewish cemetery and we had to search a long time until we located it. No fence of any kind surrounded it now and all the graves were covered with sand – the tombstones were shattered and broken. Only seven tombstones somehow still remained, and on but two of those, the inscribed names could still be made out.

Our hearts wept at our frustration, at our inability to find the graves we were looking for, where the bodies of our parents had been buried. My wife burst into tears when, try as we would, we could not locate her mother's burial place. In a trembling voice she cried out: “Mother, I've come to you but I don't know where your grave is”. And tears were running from my eyes. At least I said keddish and, broken and dejected, we left the desolate wasteland that the cemetery had become.

By the time we returned to the market square, the Polish people who were accompanying us felt quite hungry. I gave them some money and they went into a bar to get something to drink. A while later, they came out and said to us: “Let's get out of here fast. A person could die of hunger here”. At this point, two militiamen came near, evidently realizing that we were strangers. The Polish folk spoke up sharply: “Come on, let's get right out of this town. They are liable to take us for a bunch of spies”.

From Pokshyvnitza, we rode over to Tzoysmer and in the town's restaurant, we were told that for lunch we would have to wait two hours. Our hunger getting slowly worse, we rode on to Zhikev and neither there could any Jews be found. So we travelled on from town to shtetl to town to shtelt, stopping everywhere and finding nowhere a single trace of a single Jew.

After three days of driving around, we returned to Warsaw and from there, went on to Vienna.

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