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A City in the Heart of Fields

If it was possible for us to return to the region of our childhood and to look at it from a bird's eye view, it would be revealed before our eyes as a city that dwells in the heart of a sea of green – forests, of green – forests, fields, meadows, and gardens.

This area, which is called “The Lida Plain,” is elevated 160-200 meters above sea level. The nature here is unvaried. Only here and there are there significant folds of the ground – low hills that vary the landscape a little.

The Lida Plain slopes towards the Neiman valley, which is elevated 90-150 meters above sea level. This form of the landscape is a formation mainly by the action of the glaciers that entirely covered northern Europe, including the Lida area, in the period of the quarter that began about a million years ago. The influence of the last ice age is especially noticeable, the Würm^[1], which concluded about 25,000 years ago.

The largest river in all the region is the Neman. From its many days, its pleasant spread and flow prepared it to serve as a valuable pathway for transporting logs in the form of barges.

The clear water of the Neman, surrounded with forests until then, is well-remembered by us, and golden were the sands of its shore, when it was bound with a long chain of rafts. And towards evening, when the shippers lit up the bonfires on their rafts, the water of the river reflected an endless string of lights.

Still engraved on my memory are the days of spring – the time when the first buds appeared and quickly amazed with the abundance of their summer blooms. The golden fall that kindled the trees of the forest with the falling of their purple and bronze, and Grandfather Winter who covered all living things with a pure shroud of virgin snow, and made everything look the same – the castle of the princes and the cabin of the farmers as one – glowing magnificence.

The amount of precipitation reached 650 millimeters a year. This amount resembles the average that falls on the Carmel (!) However the numbers of days of rain is much greater than what is regular in the land.

They fall in Lida over the course of many seasons of the year, but mainly in the fall. A significant part of the rain falls in the form of drizzle, from 1 millimeter to .1 millimeter in a day.

All these, together with the relatively little evaporation, give the Lida fall its humid and annoying nature.

The soils of the region were relatively poor; some of them are light and even sandy, some of them are heavier, and tend to acidity.

The most common crop were the cereals. The prevailing varieties – rye and barley, and after them oats and wheat. In addition to these they grew a lot of potatoes, lupine, flax, buckwheat and more. Large areas were covered with forests – most of them with coniferous trees, where the pine and fir are the main species.

In the low-lying moist areas, the meadows stretched out. And there still remains in my nostrils the perfume of the mowed hay.

Orchards grew in the villages and the estates, herds of cattle and sheep grazed in the meadow, and droves of pigs and flocks of poultry crowded together in the yards.

In the center of this rural view the city of Lida developed and grew.

Lida was built at an important crossroads. From long ago, an international route from the west to the east, from the Baltic Sea and central Poland into Russia, passed here.

In Lida this path crossed another important road that led from the north to the south, from the cities of Lithuania towards the other side of Volhynia and Ukraine.

In days of peace caravans of merchants moved on these paths, and in days of war, combat troops. Lithuanians and Poles, Crusaders and Tatars, Swedes and Russians, Germans and French, Napoleon and Pilsudski, kings and rulers, invaders and conquerors, in every generation.

If a line was stretched on the map and Grodno and Minsk were connected to it, and Vilna and Baronovitz to it, the two lines would cross in Lida.

Following the ancient roads, the railroad was built. Already more than 100 years ago, in the year 1862, the first 80 kilometers of tracks in the whole region were laid next to Lida for the Warsaw-Peterburg train. Between the two world wars the international train to the Soviet Union passed through here.

Even though the network of roads was not developed in our region, a few roads went out of Lida towards the adjacent cities. (See the Map).

As it was situated in the heart of an agricultural region, and at an important crossroads, Lida grew and developed and became a mother city and an important center of Jewish life.

The county of Lida was one of the largest in Poland. Its territory reached 4258 kilometers, and in it, in the year 1936, 183,000 residents.^[2]

It can be remembered that in all of the region of Novogrudok there were in that same period only two cities whose number of residents exceeded 20,000, and they were Baronovitz and Lida, and that was less than in every other region. Novogrudok, the official capital of the region, was a small town, isolated and sleepy. Therefore it exceeded the scope of the village region for which Lida served as the center, from the borders of its subdistrict, and extended over a significant area.

The merchandise and the services that were needed for the farmer,

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the Jews of Lida first and foremost supplied this region. Two military divisions that camped within it, in this same chapter of time, constituted a not insignificant factor in the economy of the city. The 77^th Infantry division, and the Air Force, the 5^th Division of the fighter jets.

The percentage of the villagers in the Lida subdistrict reached 81, and only 19% of its residents dwelled in cities.

65% of the total number of residents of the subdistrict, it goes without saying, most of them villagers, were illiterate!

The Jews in Lida engaged, first and foremost, in commerce and labor, although they also worked in other professions. They were not satisfied with being the middleman, and began to develop the processing of the agricultural produce, and the natural treasures that were found in the area. Instead of exporting the raw materials, they began to establish industry in the city.

In this way there arose the first tobacco processing plants, brick-making, beer (Poupko, in the year 1876, and Pfeffermeister, in 1880), and also for the processing of dairy products, leather, for the production of various materials from trees, the sawmills, and more.

Alongside of these two workshops were established – in order to supply the needs of the agricultural hinterland. From them sprung up foundries, nail factories, agricultural machines, candies, paints, rubber, and more.

Over the course of time there also arose factories whose scope of production was an exception to this framework – when the largest of them was the “Erdel” factory, which at the peak of its activity employed nearly 1000 workers.

What caused the development of manufacturing in Lida? What made it result in the settlement of “Lodz of the Hooks”?

A number of causes joined together here: the utilization of raw materials, the provision of the needs of a broad village area, and the comfortable position of the city from the perspective of transportation. An additional important reason was, in my opinion, the living expenses and low wages for labor that were customary in the region.

The villagers here were among the poorest in Poland – 10% of them lacked land, and 20% of them were small farmers. A third of the farmers did not have even one horse as their private property. The prices of agricultural products were low. The price of a liter of milk reached 15 grush, compare with 21 grush in Shlonsk^[3], and the price of a quintal^[4] of wheat was 18.4 zlotys, compared to 20.48 in Shlonsk.

The wage for labor in the district was the lowest in Poland! In the year 1936 the average worker received 29 grush for an hour of labor, and a woman worker received only 17 grush. And this is in contrast to 87 grush in Warsaw (triple!), 72 grush in Shlonsk, etc. Only less than 1% of all workers earned more than 40 zlotys a week – compared to 37% in Warsaw and 31% in Shlonsk.

All of these factors joined together to serve as a comfortable background for development of the city. However this was mainly the initiative of the Jews of the city, their alacrity, and their business abilities, that they knew how to put the possibilities into action, to turn the hidden potential into a lively economic life. They are the ones that constituted the leaven in the dough.

Footnotes

1. The final Pleistocene glaciation in the Alps, possibly corresponding to the Weichsel of northern Europe. Return
2. Original footnote 1: These numbers and most of the others were taken from within the Government Statistical Annual: The Small Statistical Yearbook. Return
3. Silesia, Poland Return
4. A unit of weight equal to a hundredweight (112 lbs.) or, formerly, 100 lb. Return

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As we come to investigate and wonder about the family names of the Jews who were residents of Lida, we must emphasize that the very same rules and the same development that guided and influenced the formation of Jewish family names of the last generations in Europe, and especially in its east, also are what formed the family names in this area. The city of Lida is not exceptional in this area. However, in parallel to this, we must point out the fact that every city and district had special circumstances that caused the formation of the family names as they came into being. It is to these factors that we dedicate this review: what is common and what is different.

A family name is like a drop of water in the sea of names that reflects the situations and gusts of wind of the period. Like a shell in the sea, it is teeming with the spirit and soul of the last generations of Israel, and is in direct and permanent connection to the generations of the nation that preceded them, even though it is sometimes scribbled in the vicissitudes of fate.

Out of the study of family names emerges the picture of the Jewish way of life of about 150 years ago. We get to know the masses of the people, their occupations and their language, follow the waves of their wanderings, stand on the relationships with their neighbors and on the coining of the nicknames that they coined for each other. Before a family name was formed, there was “a tzunamen”^[2] – an additional name or nickname.^[3] This was a second name to designate an individual. Afterwards, when the regulation obligated the designation of family names, the nickname was designated in many cases as the official family name. Between the family names and the nicknames that preceded them, there is a genetic connection.^[4]

Residents of the countries of eastern Europe were obligated by the authorities to adopt family names in a later period than in the West. In Austria, the matter was determined in the time of Kaiser Joseph II in the year 1787. Regarding French Jews, the law obligated it from the year 1808 and in Germany by order in the year 1812.^[5] In Russia at that time, they used only the person's name with the addition of the father's name (otz'stavo) on official documents. The law to set a fixed family name for Jews appeared in an order in the year 1804. Then, free choice was given in selecting a name. The law from 1835 overturned that order, and apparently only went into force a few years later.

In Poland, the matter was determined by the “Namistnic” order on March 27, 1821.^[6] This entry is based on Jewish family names in Lida in the period between the two World Wars. In a few instances, we were assisted by family names of Jews from surrounding towns, since the movement of residents between the cities and towns of this section of the country is a regular and natural phenomenon. Restrictions in time and place regarding a particular area define the area of review, and make it possible to touch historical, etymological, and etiological aspects only superficially and temporarily.

The assumption by Y.Ch. Taviov^[7] is that the family name – the kinui^[8] that was accepted in a family, and that passes from father to son until the end of all the generations, that no one has the right to change and choose for himself another kinui – lost its meaning. Not only the presence of Holocaust refugees, who in their new countries of residence acquired for themselves, to a large extent, other family names, and the presence of the movement to Hebraize family names in the land, but already in the generation before the Holocaust, with the Jewish migration to countries across the sea, the trend of changing kinuyim had emerged. Truly, at the time that Taviov made his assumption, the Jews in Tsarist Russia did not have permission to change their family names. The matter was possible only for apostates, in order to cut off every connection to their people, and also for cantonist children.^[9] Cases are known of young boys who took a name that was different than their whole family to deceive the authorities who were going to induct them into the army, with the claim that they were their parents' only child.

Research into Jewish family names serves as testimony to far-reaching changes that are traced back to the end of the previous century, which continued to increase with the Jewish population movement in parallel with the demographic and sociological revolutions of the nation that took place in the periods of the First and Second World Wars, a change in the makeup of Europe and the establishment of the Jewish State.

Therefore, as we erect a monument to Jewish communities that were destroyed, as we come to recount, to tell, and immortalize the towns and cities that existed and are no more, it is befitting to review and wonder about the family names of the residents that continue to disappear from the map of kinuyim, to encounter their essence and the factors that shaped them.

The beginning of the Jews' settling in Lida is located in the latter half of the 16^th century in the period of Jan Kazimir. At that time, Lida was a large village settlement that numbered about 15,000 people, and the Jewish community within it numbered 160 people.^[10] The people of this settlement worked plots of land that were transmitted to them as franchises by the landowner, who lived in the “Zamek” castle. In return for the right to use the land, they were obligated to transmit to his authority each year a certain part of their produce, present themselves according to his demands for digging projects and repair of roads and bridges. One of the documents from the year 1680 states that all these duties were defined by the Polish kings, and on the list of people using plots of land belonging to the landowners there appear two names of Jews: (Movsha and Avram)^[11] Moshe and Avraham.

In a later document it appears that in the year 1701, the leaders of the Jewish community of Lida were required to pay a debt of 2100 guilder. The defendants were Yaakov Yonsovitz, three members of the family of Yaakovitz (Yitzchak, Moshe, and Yaakov), Isaac Yitzchak Kushelevitz, Reuven (Reuben) Nisnovitz, and Chaim Yovzelevitz (Yoselevitz). All these names are patronyms (the name Kushelevitz-Kushka-Yekusiel). This proves that in this early period the Jews were called by their neighbors the Lithuanians and the Belorussians, and also in government documents, by their personal names, or with the addition of a patronymic. The family name of the non-Jews were composed of their personal names, to which were added a patronymic suffix or place name with a local suffix that hints of the person's birthplace.

In these family names, residents of Lida and its environs, in the first half of the 20^th century, there is almost no mention of Lithuanian family names

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or Lithuanian language, and only a few family names remained, and this was among the class of the Polish nobility.

The Christian population mostly spoke Belarussian. This language was, over the course of hundreds of years, in the period of Poland before its division (the first division was in the year 1772), the official language of Lithuania. After the division of Poland, and the domination of the Russian language the penetration of the Russian language in the cities, Belorussian became the language of the simple masses alone, while the language in the mouths of the Lithuanian nobility was Polish. The primitive Lithuanian culture surrendered to the culture of the neighbors, from the west, the Polish, and from the east, the Russian, and was lost between them. This matter made its mark on the way of life, religion, and language. The family names of the non-Jews were found to be influenced by this process and their impression is recognized in the family names of the Jews who were residents of the place.

Jewish family names can be divided into a number of groups according to their meaning. The main ones are:

1. Geographic names – a city or village settlement, principality or a past holding.
2. Names that designate profession or occupation.
3. Patronymic names – in the name of the father.
4. Matronymic names – in the name of the mother, the wife, and sometimes the mother-in-law.
5. Names that indicate external appearance, personal quality, or economic status.
6. Names that indicate an animal or a plant.
7. Names that indicate a noun.
8. Various names.

The names referred to of this type mentioned above are identical to the names of cities that still exist, or estates that were erased from the map of the country long ago, and no memory of them remains, or that their names were changed as time passed.

At the end of the 14^th century, the “Volosch” of Lida belonged to the Prince Jagielo, and in historical documents, he calls himself the Prince of Vitebsk, Kravask, and Lida.^[12] The borders of Lida Volosch were defined as follows: The Zhyzhma and Gavia rivers separate it on one side from the Vilna Volosch of Oshmany, and on the other side by means of the Dzitva River that borders the principality of Troki.^[13]

There is no doubt that next to the rivers mentioned above there were places that were called by their names. From here is the source of Jewish family names:

Zhyzhemski from the name Zhyzhma
Guviansky from name Gavia
Trotzky from the name Troki

The Zhyzhma estate of Prince Zhyzhemski is already mentioned in the 15^th and 16^th centuries. Among the rest, the Berdovka estate is also mentioned.^[14] From here is also the name Berdovski.

Until the outbreak of the Second World War the Zaretshe and Kaminki suburbs existed in Lida, which already mentioned in the 17^th century as estates (the latter next to the Kaminki River). From here are the Jewish family names Zaretchanski, Zaretzki, and Kamianski.

In the year 1785, King Stanislav August distributes lots of land in Lida on Zamkova Street and among those who receive them appears one Ivan Romer,^[15] apparently also an estate owner. He transfers them to Jews and city residents “with rights in perpetuity.” From here is also the name Jewish family Romerovski.

During the period of the tenure of King Sigismund August, the Calvinism movement was spreading; and among the towns around Lida, this movement took roots, remembered in Belitsa and Lidesk.^[16] From here are also family names: Bielitzki, Latzki. In that period and in connection with that, the place Trokel is also mentioned. Those who came from this city, members of generation, still remember “Melamdim,” Hebrew teachers from the period of their childhoods, whose first name and family names disappeared from them, but whose kinuyim are remembered. They called them: the Trikeler, the Lazoiker, and the Eishishker. Also known is the family name Eishishki.

Lands within Lida that were transferred to the ownership of one Alexander Vismont in the year 1668^[17] are called Vismonti and from here is the Jewish family name Vismonski. In the same way also the family name Bielski is after the name of the village Bielsk located “five viorsts from Lida.”^[18]

In the towns of Eastern Europe, also in the last generation, when somebody arrived from another city or town to settle and already had a fixed family name, his neighbors nicknamed him by his town origin. Those who came from the city tell stories of a seamstress whose name was Esther the Rostoverke (from the city of Rostov), Rivka the Orlanker, Hershl the Doliner, Zalman the Ziemlanker, Nachman the Leipnitzer, Archik Pupke from Gavier hoyf, and Lipnishker shoemaker.

From here are also family names that emerged at the same time or later: Orlanski, Dalinski or Dalinka, Ziemlanski.

Yeshiva boys were called by the name of their towns of origin: the Ilui^[19] of Maichet, and sometimes also on outward appearance: the little Horodishtzi,^[20] or only by the name of the town: the Volozhiner, the Dzshetler and the Delyaticher.^[21]

In his memoirs, B. Goren (Goido),^[22] a native of Lida and its resident of many years, tells about residents of the city: Iliake the Olshaner, Shlomo the Radener, etc. From here are the family names: Olshanki and Radunski.

Jews were also known by the names of the courtyards of the Polish or Russian landowners from whom they leased land. In the 1890s, heads of families were known in Lida:

Isaac the Holdever for the name of the court of Holdva.
Yankel the Paloveniker for the name of the court of Plovnik
The family of Dukor for the name of the court of Dukor.

Family names that indicate the city of Lida are common in the world: Lidski, Lidovski, Lider, Liden, Lida. And Reb Dovid son of Arieh Leib Lida, who served in the rabbinate of Lida in the year 1671; he was the son of the sister of Reb Moshe Rivka'sh (incidentally, from the name Rivka) the author of “Be'er HaGolah.” Afterwards he was a rabbi in Shavel, Ostrog, Mainz, and in the year 1681 in the Jewish community in Amsterdam.^[23]

Sometimes the name of a place comprised a family name in various forms. One that lived across the river they called: Zaretzky, Retzky, Zaretchanski, Zartzin, and Rekatchinski.^[24] (In Poland, we encounter: Teich, Teichman, Teicher).

In general terms it is possible to say (but not as a formula), that family names that were derived from names of cities or settlements testify that one of the ancestors of the family came from these cities. As an exception to this rule, it can be noted that the widespread trend among the Jews at the time that that their family names were set in citizenship papers was to be called by

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place names in the Tanakh. In Lida, known were: Yerushalimski, Damesek. This was an expression of the constant desire of people to link to something supreme that exceeds the scope of the secular.

It is also possible that this geographical place appears in a number of places in the same region of the country, or that this was a kinui with no connection to the origin of the person, but these cases are few. The crucial part of all geographical names are from places that are in White Russia and only an insignificant number are named for places in Poland and Germany. The Jews that assembled in Lida did reach it from distances.

One of the ancestors of the Lida family Vinogradov, which is a geographic family name, is mentioned with the addition of a second geographic name – Horvitz – in the “Book of the City of Vilna – Memories of the Community of Israel and the History of Its Great Ones,”^[25] as follows: the Rabbi Reb Eliyahu Shlomo, the son of the Rabbi Reb Moshe Yitzchak the Levite Horovitz Vinograd, the fourth generation of the Gaon Reb Shmelki, Av Beit Din^[26] Nikolsburg, the brother of the Gaon, the author of “Hafla'ah.”

It is proper to single out the Lider family, that carries the name of the city of Lida.

Most of the families of Israel that carry that name are descendants of Reb Zalman Relis (for his wife's name Reli). He was born in Vilna in about the year 5542 [1782] and died in Tiberius on 17 Tamuz in 5617 [1856]. He was the son of Rabbi Eliyahu Hindes, the scribe and judge in the court of the Gaon of Vilna, whose name is signed on all of the excommunications that were issued by the Mitnagdim by the order of the Gaon of Vilna. (See “Kirya Ne'emanah” of Shmuel Yosef Fine).^[27]

Rabbi Zalman Relis was from the Ivanski family and a relative of Reb Moshe Ivir (it is possible that the name Ivanski came from here). From his first wife, Reli, Rabbi Zalman had five sons and three daughters. After her death, he married a second woman, Sara, the sister of the author of “Pitchay Teshuvah.” From this wife, two sons were born to him, Reb Mordechai and Reb Moshe Gronem, and a daughter by the name of Batya. After the death of his second wife, he decides to leave his city Lida and ascend to the land of Israel. It is nearly certain that he is one of the first olim from Lida who went up to the homeland to renew it, to settle it, and to cherish its dust.^[28]

Rabbi Zalman Relis left his house and his belongings. He left his little son Moshe Gronem, who was then only one year old, with a relative of his family; and he went out on the road. From Odessa, he arrived in Kushta, where thieves tricked him and stole his money. In the year 5611 [1851], he reached the shores of land. As he descended from the ship, he threw himself on the sands of Jaffa, kissed its dust, and in a crying voice murmured “sweeter than honey, sweeter than honey.”

He settled in Tiberius, and there he found the rest and heritage that he aspired to all his life. He was known to the residents of Tiberius by the name “Reb Zalman Lider” for the name of the city of his origin.

His son, Reb Mordechai, had great influence on his younger brother Reb Moshe Gronem Ivanski, who remained in Lida and was educated in the way of the enlightenment, but afterwards became an ardent chassid of the Rabbi from Koidanov, and like his father Reb Zalman, who used to travel a lot to the old Rebbe of Koidanov, Rabbi Shlomo Chaim, so too did Reb Moshe Gronem.

Reb Mordechai Lider served for a few years in charge of the Reisin Kollel in Tiberius, and he is a signatory signed a letter of protest that the leaders of Tiberius sent to Reb Tzadok Hacohen against the clerk of the Y.K.A.^[29] settlements in the lower Galilee, Chaim Margolit Kalvariski, for his desecration of the religion (“Chavatzelet,” year 32, edition 8, 11 Kislev, 5662 [1902]) and other public letters that were published in the same newspaper.

One of the sons of Reb Mordechai Lider was Reb Azriel Zelig Lider, one of the important merchants in Jerusalem in the previous generation. Reb Azriel Zelig Lider settled in Jerusalem at the beginning of the 20^th century. His name was mentioned a number of times in “Chavatzelet” as one of those engaged in the needs of the public. He also published articles in “Chavatzelet.” In the year 5663 [1903] his articles were published in this newspaper: “From Jerusalem to Tiberius” and “The Benefit of the Poor in Jerusalem.” In this article he emphasizes the importance of Jewish settlement in Nazareth. He also published a few articles in “Chavatzelet” in the year 5669 [1909] on the matter of the dispute that broke out at that time about the question of the “Chacham Bashi.”^[30] In that same year, he visited Russia and published in “Chavatzelet” impressions of “Jews and Judaism in Russia.” In his hands were found letters of the first chassidim in the land of Israel, which were of great value to the history of settlement in Tiberius. He gave them to Dr. A. Y. Braver, who published them in “Hator” year 4, issues 16, 17, and 5 on 12 Shvat 5684 [1924]. (See in connection with this the collection “Yisrael,” edited by A.R. Malachi, and also the book by M. Ivanski, “On the Sides of the Roads,” New York, 5712 [1952].

The geographical names are as follows:

Ivenski	Dolinski	Yanovski	Peresietzki
Eishishki	Dolinko	Yezierski	Podvoriski
Olkenitzki	Dvoretzky	Ladski	Podziemski
Ostrinski	Dzientzielski	Lande	Kalish
Azshechovski	Dzivoniski	Lidski	Kamienitzki
Olshtein	Valach[31]*	Lipnishki	Kamionski
Orshanski	Vilentchik	Lubachanski	Kenigsberg
Boyarsky	Viniatzki	Lutzki	Kletzki
Belagradsky	Viner	Mazovietzki	Kovenski
Breskin	Vinogradov	Mikolitzki	Kozlovski
Bielitzki	Vismonski	Mirsky	Kranik
Bielski	Volinski	Moltchedeski	Krasnosielski
Biniakonsky	Volkoviski	Mostovski	Krimski
Berdovski	Volpianski	Novogrodski	Krinski
Bedzovskvi	Voronovski	Novoprutzki	Radunski
Beikalski	Zablodovski	Slobodski	Retzky
Bitenski	Zaretchanski	Slonimski	Rodnitzki
Gornopolski	Zaretzki	Slonimtchik	Rodzivonishki
Grodzenski	Zhyzhemski	Slutzky	Romerovski
Grodzenchik	Ziemlanski	Smorgonski	Rozshanski
Guralski	Zshelodkovski	Snovski	Shapiro
Guvienski	Zshermonski	Soltz	Sheliovski
Derechinski	Trotzky	Starodvorski
Doguski	Turetzki	Stolovitzki

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The family name Boyarsky was widespread in Lida and the surrounding area. This name is fundamentally local, derived from the Russian word “boyary.” From the time of the elimination of Tartar rule to the time of Peter the Great (1682-1725), the Russian nobility was called “boyarstavo.” It is possible that the source of the word is the word “barin,” Lord. It is also possible from the word “boy,” which means battle. This aristocratic class ruled rural estates throughout Russia. Even after their departure from the political and economic map of the Russian Empire, some villages and places of settlement that had been in the area of their rule continued to be named for their class. It is possible that Jews who dwelt on these estates or adjacent to them were known by the name of the settlement. However, there also were Jews who were found under the state military authority of the boyars.

In the archive of the Archaeological Institute of Leningrad is a “skazka” (a personal questionnaire in ancient Russian language) from the year 1680 of a Jewish boyar child that includes details of name, age, period, and place of service, and is concluded with a sentence Russian, but in Hebrew letters.^[32] “Ye Shmuleh Vistitzky eek say kazko ye roko prolazil,” which means: I Shmuleh Vistitzky agree with this questionnaire, which is to say, I signed it.

There is no doubt that the person whose questionnaire it was, was fluent in the Russian language, but Russian writing, not necessarily. On the other hand, he had command of Hebrew transcription, and in his handwriting, he confirms the details.

“Children of boyars” – this was the lowest level within the boyar nobility. At the beginning, they were in the service of the wealthy nobility with the status of members of the family, and therefore were called “Boyar's children.” But later, and at the time of the document mentioned above, at the end of the 17^th century, “boyars' children” were in the service of the state in those places that had a strategic importance of the first degree.

What is the place of origin of Shmuel Vistitzky?

In his “skazka,” he tells that he served in the vorchotorya for 12 years. Before that, he served in the ranks of the shlachta (the nobility) of Smolensk, and his father Avraham served in the ranks of the nobility of Brest-Litovsk. From this, we may suppose that Shmuel Vistitzky was born in the area of Brisk but what is more reasonable to think is that it was in the village of Vistitza, which is next to Grodno.

These family names testify to the occupation of the people who carried them at the time when they were set,^[33] and from them, we are taught about the professions and occupations of the Jews in Lida.

A generation ago, Jews engaged in the brickmaking industry in the city. Y. Gurin tells about Beryl the Tzigelnik.^[34] From here is the family name Tzigelnitzky. Our generation knows to tell about Rochel di Krupnitze; her profession does not exist anymore but the family names Krupski or Krupnik remained. Then, and sometimes up to the days of the Holocaust, there was a custom to call a person by his given name and his profession. Yashe the Sofer,^[35] Yoshe the Kotler, Dobe the Fisherke, Munye the Tzukernik, these found expression in the family names: Sofer, Kotler or Kotlarsky (pot maker), Fisher, and Tzukernik.

The family names indicated not only the profession of its carrier but also the essence of his occupation, such as: Moslovati (butter), Karpovich or Karpinovich, Latute - a profession as a helper for a tailor, which disappeared from the horizon of Jewish professions already in the last generation before the Holocaust. His job was to patch old clothes. Before the First World War, Beryl the Teitchel was known in Lida. He used to travel a lot to Prussia for his business; therefore they added Teitchel to his given name (a distortion of the word Daitchel). Jews used to sell milk for soap manufacturing that was in the city and one of them was Pinchas the Kheilevnik.^[36]

The influence of the language of the neighbors and changes in government are hinted at in professional kinuyim. The following are family names that are derived from equivalents in the languages commonly spoken by the Jews in the city:

Schneider-Kravitz-Portnoy,

Fisher-Ribak-Ribatzki,

Shuster-Sapozhnik (Sapozhnikov) Sandler (shoemaker),

Glazer (Glazman) - Shklarovski - Shklar (Shklarski),

Fleischer - Miasnik,

Chazan (Chazanovitz) - Cantor,

Schmid – Kuznietz – Kovalski

There are also those that designate the same profession and their source is in one language but the suffixes are different, they are: Reznik, Rezsnitzki, Reznikov.

The following are names of the kind mentioned above:

Einbinder	Maslovate	Tzigelnitzky	Reizman
Basist	Melamed	Tzukernik	Ribatzki
Beker	Meshengiser	Tzirulinski	Sapozhnik
Budovnitz	Mielnik	Kantor	Kaplan
Glazer	Miesnik	Karabelnik	Sharfstein
Glazman	Muller	Kartsmer	Shifman
Garberovitch	Musikanski	Karetsmer	Shifmanovitsh
Goldman	Sapozhnikov	Kirzshner	Shklarovski
Gorfung	Strugatch	Kopelushnik	Shlyapak
(A glowing stone)	Pfeffermeister	Kotlarsky	Shlyapatashnik
Darshan	Parnes	Kotler	Shmid
Druk	Portnoy	Krasilshtik	Shmukler
Zinger	Feinshreiber	Kravietzky	Shulman
Chazan	Feldman	Kravitz	Shneider
Chazanovitz	Ferdman	Krupnik	Shreiber
Tepper	Fidler	Krupski	Shuster
Yablonsky	Fisher	Rabinovitch
Latute	Fleisher	Reznik
Lichtman	Fruchtman	Reznitzki
Maslianski	Furman	Ribak

The children of the preacher the Magid of Kelm (The Kelemer Magid) were called by the family name Darshan. One of his sons came to live in Lida in the year 1900.

The family name Karabelnik has its source in Russian, and its meaning is a shipman, a member of a crew whose profession and custom was to wander over the seas and lands. This word was implanted in the Jewish experience of Eastern Europe generations ago and took on a different meaning, even though in a certain way it resembled its original meaning.

A karabelnik is a Jew who travels around the villages with his horse and wagon, offering his merchandise to farmers and also buying their produce to sell to people of his town. Most of his time he is distant from his family and his home. The roads were badly kept, he was in danger from robbers and climatic changes.

The farmers of the towns of the area were paupers, and could not afford to acquire his merchandise except by a stubborn stance on bargaining. Yet the lot of the karabelnik was better than that of the “piechotinietz,” who like the karabelnik wandered with his merchandise between the villages, but lacked a horse and wagon and went on foot.

As a consequence of the poverty and the terrible lack of sources of livelihood, the karabelniks proliferated, and they competed among themselves in the villages that were available to them. Then, they got together and established “parishes.” Every karabelnik had his own “parish,” an area that belonged just to him. This thing caused the Jews who were additional to this business were forced to wander a very far distance from their towns.

Incidentally, this business also existed in central Poland, and from there a trace remains: a Jewish family name, “Piechotka.”

The family name “Klepatch” (Klaptz) has its source in a widespread occupation - fixing broken dishes, pails, bowls and dishes made of tin, clay or wood that were broken or worn out from longtime use. These found their repair in the trained hands of the artisan and returned to use by the household.

The “Musikanski,” whose meaning is a person playing in a band, or a musician, participates in special professions of musical instruments: bassists and fiddlers.

Also in the last period, there were instances when the peoples' professions were identical to the family name. From a list of the professions mentioned above there were in Lida were at least five such cases, which proves that the profession of the father was transferred to his sons and to their children.

Our sages, may their memories be for a blessing, said: “…The ancients, since they knew their genealogy, named themselves in reference to the events [of their days]. But we who do not know our genealogy name ourselves by our fathers. R. Simeon b. Gamaliel said: The ancients, because they could avail themselves of the Holy Spirit, named themselves in reference to [forthcoming] events; but we who cannot avail ourselves of the Holy Spirit are named after our fathers…”^[37]

To be called by the name of the father is an ancient Jewish custom that was preserved until our days both in an aliyah to the Torah, and also in everything connected to specifying the individual in worship.

In these, the personal name of the father appears in its original form, with the addition of a suffix, and sometimes also alone. There are instances where the personal name is according to what was set by the Russians, such as:

Matusevitsh – from the name Matityahu, who is called Matush

Berkovitsh – from the name Baruch, who is called Berka

Movshavitsh – from the name Moshe, who is called Movsha

Binyakovski - from the name Binyamin, who is called Binek

Volkin - from the name Volf, who is called Volk

Or as is called in the local dialect of Yiddish:

Itzkovitsh – from the name Yitzchak, who is called Itshke

Chatzkelevitsh – from the name Yechezkel, who is called Chatzkel

Arkin – from the name Aharon, who is called Arke

Toder – from the name Teodor

Ilyutovich – from the name the name Eliyahu, who is called Iliatke.

Family names of this kind are as follows:

Abramovitsh	Berlovitsh	Tevelson	Matusevitsh	Feivushevitsh
Eizikovitsh	Gershovitsh	Yoselevitsh	Mishkin	Kalmanovitsh
Iserzon	Gertzovski	Yedidovitsh	Nachumovski	Kivelevitsh
Itzkovitsh	Gertzolin	Yudelevitsh	Nishelevitsh	Kopelovitsh
Avramovski	Davidovitsh	Yeruchmanov	Nachmanovitsh	Rafalovitsh
Ahranovitsh	Hirshovski	Levinson	Senderovski	Rubin
Ilutovitsh	Volpovitsh	Leibovitsh	(Akiva)	Rubinovitsh
Berkovitsh	Zelikovitsh	Leizerovitsh	Peretz	Shmerkovitsh
Binyaminovitsh	Chaimovitsh	Meirovitsh	Peretzki	Shmulovitsh
Berkovski	Chatzkelevitsh	Movshavitsh	Pinchasovitsh

Sometimes the patronymic was not set as an official family name, but passed from father to son for a number of generations, in parallel to the family name which was entirely different. At the end of the previous century, there was a tavern in the marketplace of the city whose owner was called Chaim Pinkes (Pinchus-Pinye-Pinke), and according to this everyone knew him, even though his family name was completely different. The elders of our city, some of whom are still walking among us, tell about the family of “Chuntzik” whose family name was Pupko. The first of this Chuntzik family tree, they surely called Chanan, but while he was still young they called him “Chuntzik,” and in this way it was passed to the next generations. When they wanted to know about the family connections of a person, they used to say, “He comes from the Chuntzikes.” The first Chuntzik was apparently a leader in the Jewish community in the city. One of the elders of the city^[38] tells in his memoirs that he heard from his father that at the time of the kidnapping of Jewish children for the tsar's army in Lida, while he was still young, he left the Beit Midrash late at night. The streets were dark, and suddenly the kidnappers stopped him. The oldest among them shone a lantern that he had in hand on the face of the boy, and on the spot he said, “Leave him alone, he is from the Chuntzik!”

With the research of family names of a certain area, exploring the stories of the families themselves cannot be avoided, especially when their histories reflect the ways of life and the vicissitudes of fate of the last generations of the Jewish people, and in tandem, there are signs of their contributions to the treasury of deeds and the spirit of these generations, like little streams that bring their contents to the great sea.

In about the years of the 50s of the previous century, there arrived in Lida a young man from the town of Yanova, which is next to Kovno, by the name of Reb Feivel Varshavski. They all knew him by the name of the town of his origin: the Yanover. This additional name passed to his children and his grandchildren after him. Reb Feivel's son-in-law, Reb Shlomo Yudelevitz, who was born in the town of Zeshtel, which is adjacent to Lida, was also called in the city Reb Shlomo the Yanover, in the name of his father-in-law.

Reb Feivel was an important “landlord” in Lida, a known giver of tzedakah and a chassid of the Rabbi from Lubavitch. His main business was renting pieces of land from the “fritzes”^[39] and leasing them to the owners of barns and stables. He died in 1905 at a good old age.

Reb Shlomo Yudelevitz was a learned Jew and in this role he was honored to become the son-in-law of Reb Feivel. Since he himself was a misnaged,^[40] he was loyal to his father's will that he remain a misnaged but that he should take to wife a daughter of the chassidim. He was trained in the Yeshivot of Telz and Volozhin, a learned person, and passed before the ark.^[41] He was not successful in practical matters, and his wife Miriam, a mother of nine children, carried the burden of the house.

Their son, Reb Yossel Yudelevitz, a man of the second aliyah, ascended to the land in 1905. In his youth he learned in a seminar for teachers in Vilna. After that, he worked as a smelter in Warsaw. The tsarist police arrested him for the crime of Zionist activism, and he was imprisoned in Brest-Litovsk fortress. In the land, he started to work in a profession that he yearned for all his days, agriculture and planting. He devoted himself to conquering the labor^[42] for the Jewish worker. He was a hired worker for the farmers in the Jewish settlements, in the Kabara swamps next to Zichron Yaakov and Bayit Vegan, today Bat Yam. In the 1930s he settled in Kfar Saba and engaged in his soul's desire – agriculture.

The daughter of Reb Shlomo – Temima – was an actress in “Habima” from the time that it was founded in Moscow. She dedicated her life to the stage; she was devoted to it, and saw in it the vision of all. She appeared in the plays: “The Dybbuk,” “The Treasure,” “The Eternal Jew,” “Uriel Acosta,” and more. She liked to play types of Jewish women. She died without children in the year 1967, and dedicated her little property for the benefit of incurable children.

A second son of Reb Shlomo, Gershon, in his youth entered the “Hechalutz”^[43] organization in Russia. He was among the founders of the “Volga Guard” group that worked an agricultural plot given by the Soviet government. The group made aliyah during the Russian civil war. Gershon Yudelevitsh was among the first of the kibbutz Ganigar.

The son Mordechai received rabbinic ordination. He was the right hand and helper of Rabbi Reines at the beginning of the Mizrachi movement, and one of his first secretaries. All his days he engaged in research in the life of Israel according to the Talmudic sources, and published a series of monographs on the lives of the Jews in the period of the Talmud. His books: Nehardea, Pumbedita, Tveriah and more.^[44]

Another son and daughter remained in Russia, and there endured the upheavals of the revolution and the Second World War.

Reb Shlomo Yudelevitsh's brother, Reb Zalman, arrived in Lida in the year 1895. As an autodidact he learned the Hebrew, Russian and German languages well, and was a correspondent for “HaMelitz” in the city. He founded a unique kind of cheder. In it they did not teach what was customary, Chumash,^[45] Rashi,^[46] or Mishnah and Poskim, but rather, the Hebrew language, grammar, Tanakh, Hebrew history and the geography of the land of Israel. In his method of teaching he preceded the “cheder Metukan”^[47] by decades, and trained his students for Zionism and aliyah.

An ethnographic uniqueness regarding Jewish family names that is rarely found among other peoples is typical of the family names that were formed from the given names of women. The crown with which the Jews of Eastern Europe crowned the Hebrew woman, who saw to the livelihood of her family and the education of her children while her husband was sitting and learning Torah, was this, that her husband and children were called by her name and, sometimes her daughter's husband as well.

In the book “Bod Kodesh”^[48] is mentioned one of the intimates of the Admor,^[49] the “Baal HaTanya”^[50] - Reb Zalman Roizes, by the name of his mother-in-law Roize from Shklov, the son of the Gaon Rebbe Eliezer Grayever from Slonim.”

This phenomenon, as mentioned above, was quite common in the generations that preceded the Holocaust. The family tree of Lida's Rabbi is very interesting, from this perspective, Yitzchak Yaakov Reines, may the memory of the righteous be for a blessing, as it appears at the end of his book “A Leather Bag of Tears,” and is brought in the introduction to the book by Rabbi Y.L. Hacohen Fishman that appeared in Jerusalem^[51] as follows:

“In the city of Karlin in the county of Minsk there lived one rabbi, prominent in the Torah and a respected merchant, and his name was Reb Shlomo Naftali. This honest merchant rabbi, was born in the year 5557 [1797], in the last year of the life of the Gaon of Vilna, to his father Reb Chaim, one of the “dayanim”^[52] of Vilna in the days of the Gaon Reb Eliyahu, the son of the righteous rabbi, Reb Moshe, who was called in his days Reb Moshele Reines, for the name of his wife, the Rebbetzin of distinguished lineage Mrs. Reina, the daughter of Rabbi Shlomo Zalman, the Av Beit Din^[53] in Mir, from the children's children of the Minister Reb Shaul Vohl, a descendant of the tree of Rashi

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which continues to Reb Yochanan Hasandlar, the fourth generation of Rabban Gamliel the Elder, a grandson of Hillel the Elder, from the trunk of the family of David.”

The father of Rabbi Reines, Reb Shlomo Naftali, was born as was said above, in 5557 (1797). Mrs. Reines was the grandmother of Reb Shlomo Naftali. The family merited her, and gave her name, the name of Reina the woman of valor, for generations before her, and her descendants. Maybe not a few also, by this merit, because she lived and was actives for decades before the government order to fix family names.

In Lida we encounter family names of this kind:

Beilin, Gutelevski, Dobtshanski,^[54] Zeldovitsh, Zlatkovitsh, Kheikin, Lubetzki, Matelovski, Elkin, Tzipelevitsh, Tzipkin, Kreinovitsh, Reines.

In towns in the area, we also encounter: Esterkes, Teiveles, Freidkes, Leahles, and also Yudashke (Yehudit).

There are people who were known by their outward appearance or by their qualities. This kinui was formed by the people of their environment and sometimes by way of coercion by a government clerk. About fifty years ago, there lived a melamed in Lida, and the elders of the generation remember him only as “Itshe di koshe hentele” (Yitzchak of the bent hand). Or “Yoshe der miedviedo” (Yehoshua the bear). Y. Goren (Goido) in his memoirs tells of “Beryl der hoicher,” “Avreml das lustiger,” etc. (Beryl the large, Avraham the cheerful).

The family name Bugatsh (rich) is known, or Pasinski, that comes from the Russian word “psinouk” (an exceptional child).

The following are family names like these:

Altman, Alter, Bielobroda, Brodatsh, Beizer, Gelfer (Helfer), Gelman, Gloiberman, Helbord, Hofman, Ziskind, Tsharni (Churny), Lauferman, Libkind, Lustik, Modrik, Niebranski, Spokaini, Svyatoy, Sadovo, Erlich, Kleika, Kaleka, Rudy, Shorski, Shneler, Shveiger, Shtark.

The family name “Alter” that is brought above is also derived from a given name. At the time of a fatal disease, they added “Alter” or “Alte” to the given name of the sick person as an omen for long life. Parents called the children Alter or Alta after disasters that happened to their children. It is possible that that's what influenced the traditional blessing: “Le'alter l'chaim.”^[55]

A family name that indicates an animal or a plant mostly expressed the occupation of the person or the commodity that he sold: Ferdman, Klatshkovski. Sometimes also there is a teasing twist in them: Baran, Barantshik, Kozlovski, Kotok, Katshan, Koren (root), Bloch.

Since in many of the family names in the city the Russian influence is a significant, we will have to briefly linger on the trend in Russian family names. In the 10^th century with the acceptance of Christianity by the Russians in the period of the Kievan Prince Vladimir Svitoslevitz, the Byzantine given names were also accepted by and were given to babies at the time of christening. These names included among them names that were of ancient Greek origin, which included Hebrew and Roman names. This refers to the names of those peoples with whom the Romans had commercial relations.^[56] With this it is possible to explain the Russian family names Avramov, Avramovitz, which both Russians and Jews carried. In the personal names of Russians until that period, names were given according to physical or spiritual qualities, or according to various situations in life. Then they also gave names of animals.

Among the Russians there also exist solitary Jewish personal names that did not come through the canonization of the Church, and apparently, they acquired these names directly from the Jewish population (a regular thing in the histories of the nations). In the dictionary of Tipikov – ancient Russian personal names – appear the names: Shelom, Shelama, Shloma (the transcription is in Yiddish).

It is also possible that in the giving of family names to the Jews in the city of Lida and the surrounding area, they also gave Russian family names of an animal or plant without any reason or connection to the one receiving the name.

The following are the names: Orliok, Baum, Bernholtz, Borovik, Galovevski, Dobovski, Haber, Zeitshik, Teitelboim, Yablonsky, Lev, Losh, Sokolovski, Fietochovski, Fuks, Tzibolski, Kaposhtanski, Kerner, Kotok, Kozlovski, Koren.

These names mostly indicate the commodity that bearer of the name sold. Sometimes it was meaningless, and there is evident in it the tendency of the name carrier to be attached to something supreme and magnificent, or the opposite - sometimes the inclination of the clerk who gave the name was to open its bearer to ridicule and scorn.

Gervoski, Goldberg, Goldvaser, Gorelik (from the Russian word “garilka”-meaning liquor), Diamant, Dom (from the Polish word Dom - house), Honik, Veinshtein, Zak (possibly from the initials of Z”K, zera kodesh),^[57] Zeidenshnur, Tshertok, Lichtenstein, Leibvol, Maslovate, Millstein, Serevrovski, Ekshtein, Feinshtein, Perel, Perlman, Tzimerinski, Kule, Kuperstein, Rozenberg, Rozenstein, Shpilkovski, Steinberg, Sternberg, Shlapak, Sheinboim, Sharfstein.

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Shif – the Jews of Germany went very far and changed the name Kahn (Cohen), whose meaning in German is a ship, to Shif.

There are family names whose identification is not clear, such as Pupko. This name is very common in Lida, according to the famous saying: “Where there is a Pupko, there is a Lida-ite.” The suffix “ko” on the family name is very common in among non-Jewish names of Ukrainian people. This suffix is also included in the family name Konopko, which it is possible to classify with those family names granted arbitrarily to the Jews by clerks of the authority out of a clear trend to degrade them, as mentioned above. The syllables of that name are “kon,” horse, and “op,” a word of goading.

In the area of the city the name “Brodni” was also known, whose meaning is “dirty.”

Sometimes, the clerk that was appointed over the giving of family names revealed a certain measure of knowledge, and sometimes also irony.

In the town of Vilyeyka, which is adjacent to Lida was a family “Bezaimineni” whose literal meaning in Russian is “a person without a name.” The descendants of that family knew to tell that one of the ancestors of the family arrived in the town when he was released from the tsar's army. While he was still a baby he was kidnapped from his Jewish parents, and when he came before the Russian clerk to establish the name of his family, he couldn't specify the name of his parents, the town of his origin, and nearly certainly, his Jewish personal name. The clerk gave him the family name “Bezaimineni.”

Incidentally, a survivor of this family, a survivor of the Holocaust, when he came to the land, Hebraized his name – Ben Shem.^[58]

Solodocha was a food that was common among the Belorussian villagers. Its main ingredient is a kind of mixture of flakes of dough that turned sour. “He filled himself up with solodocha” they would say about someone about whom there was no doubt that he was indeed full. In Lida and in the towns of the area, we encounter this family name. It is nearly certain that Solodocha was the kinui of the bearer of the name before it became set as his official family name. The residents of his town stuck that kinui on him, either because he always spent time with the Belorussian villagers, or because he simply loved that food.

There are some family names that were corrupted by their bearers, due to corruption in writing, on their official documents, or as a result of etymological changes that came as a result of changes in writing and folk orthography or other reasons, such as Gertzolin, that came from the name Hertzl with the addition of the suffix “in, ” or the name Barbada that comes from the name Broido, for the name Brod in Hungary or Broda in Marin. Another example is the name Gordon, which was corrupted from Yarden, Yorden or Gordin.

It happens that we come across family names that are very picturesque, are very colorful and awaken associations from Jewish folklore or from the Tanakh, such as Kopshtein, which is a keystone, a stone that you put at the top of a building at its completion. “And he took out the headstone” (Zechariah 4:7), or a stone that is placed under a person's head in the absence of something else. “And he took one of the stones of the place and he put his head and he lay down in that place” (Genesis 28:11).

Great is the part of Hebrew in the kinui of family names^[59] and in Lida we encounter:

Emet [truth], Bor (Bor, could be Bur) [a pit], Brem (could be from the initials of ben [son of] Reb Moshe), Dagin (from Dag) [fish], Dach (could be also from the initials of David Chaim), Chadash, or Chodesh [new, or month], Yamin (Yamin [right side]), Katz (Kohen Tzedek [righteous priest]), Levin (Levi), Luriye (L'or Yah [to the light of Yah, God]),^[60] Margoles (Margoliot [pearls]), Neiman (Ne'eman [faithful]), Tzafnat.

The aspiration to cling to names of personalities from the Tanakh or to Klei Kodesh^[61] also left its signs: Efron, Yafuni (Kalev the son of Yefune Deuteronomy 1:6), Shafer (Shofar). Also the family name Sviatai, which means “holy” in Russian.

To the degree that the influence of the surrounding languages on Jewish family names is felt in Lida, Yiddish constitutes the crucial part in the names, considering that the geographic, patronymic, and matronymic names are original. To this it is possible to add the names whose etymological structure has its source in Yiddish, even though the suffixes are typical of the languages of the peoples of Russia, White Russia and Poland.

Footnotes:

1. The Original footnote at the end of the article's title refers to a note that the article was published, in part, in “He'Avar,” [The Past] on matters of the days of Jewish men and women in Russia, Book 16, 5729 [1969]. Return
2. Yiddish. Return
3. The Hebrew word kinui refers to a name by which a person or family was known. There is no word in English that expresses this word. Return
4. Bibliographic entry 1: Dr. Sh. Veisenberg: The nicknames of Jews. Writings of YIVO Volume II. Landoi book. 1926. Return
5. Bibliographic entry 2: Professor Philipson: Chronicles of Israel. Recent Generations. Return
6. Bibliographic entry 3: Dr. Sh. Veisenberg: The Jewish Family Names in Ukraine. Return
7. Bibliographic entry 4: Y. Ch. Taviov: Hebrew Family Names. Documents. A Publication of Moriah and Dvir. Berlin 5683 [1923]. Return
8. A name by which a person or family was known, or a nickname. Return
9. These were children, who at a young age were kidnapped from their families and impressed into the tsar's army. Return
10. Bibliographic entry 5: Vilensky Central Archive. No. 5405, 505-506, as quoted by M. Simlevitz, Polish jurists in Lida in his study “Lida Town and Lida Castle” which was published in the year 1906 in “Vilnesky Calendar” (Russian) Return
11. Bibliographic entry 6: As mentioned above, number 5661, 403. Return
12. Bibliographic entry 8: Balinsky: Ancient Poland. III, 253. Return
13. Bibliographic entry 9: M. Liubovski: (Russian) Return
14. Bibliographic entry 10: The Vilna Archaeographic Committee on Publishing Ancient Certificates, No. 5664, 208. Return
15. Bibliographic entry 11: As mentioned above, No. 6152, 53. Return
16. Bibliographic entry 12: Narbut, History. Return
17. Bibliographic entry 13: p. 53, M. Simlevitz. Return
18. Bibliographic entry 14: p. 54, as mentioned above. Return
19. Prodigy. Return
20. Bibliographic entry 15: Rabbi Aharon Rabinovitz, may God avenge his blood, the Rabbi of Lida. Reminiscences. Idinu. Kislev 5689 [1929] New York. Return
21. Bibliographic entry 16: Dr. H. L. Gordon: On the banks of the Villia and the Neiman. “HaDoar,” editions 3, 4, 5. 5725 [1965]. Return
22. Bibliographic entry 17: B. Garin: Forgotten Melodies. New York 1919. Return
23. Bibliographic entry 18: The Hebrew Encyclopedia. Masada. Volume 12. Return
24. Original footnote: Rashi [Rabbi Shimon Yitzchaki] interprets Genesis 39:12: A Hebrew man [Ivri] from across the river [Ever]. Return
25. Bibliographic entry 19: The City of Vilna. Memories of the Community of Israel and the History of the Lives of Its Great Ones. By Hillel Noach Maggid, known as Steinshneider. Vilna, printed by the Widow and the Brothers Ram. 5660 [1900]. P. 183. Return
26. The Father of the Beit Din, the head of the rabbinical court. Return
27. “Faithful City.” Return
28. From Psalm 102:15. Return
29. Yiddeshe Kolonazatzia Associatzia – The Jewish Colonization Association. Return
30. This title is composed of the Hebrew word chachamM, “sage,” (the title for the rabbi in Mizrachi communities) and the Turkish word bashi (“head,” or “chief”). In other words, the Chief Rabbi. Return
31. Original footnote: * It is possible that this name is an acronym: “V'ahavta l'rayecha camocha” [You shall love your neighbor as yourself.] Return
32. Bibliographic entry 20: Ben Tzion Rubshtein: The Discovery and Development of the Yiddish language (The Sociological and Cultural Factors) Publisher “School and Life” Warsaw 1922, edition 101. Return
33. Bibliographic entry 21: A Nation Knew, Volume 2, edited by Dr. Yom Tov Levinski. Dr. Rivkai: The Family Name of the Craftsman. Return
34. Bibliographic entry 17: B. Garin: Forgotten Melodies. New York 1919. Return
35. Scribe. Return
36. The Hebrew word for milk is Chalav. Return
37. Bibliographic entry 22: Genesis Rabbah 37. Return
38. Bibliographic Entry 23: Mr. Yaakov Ilutovitsh. Return
39. The estate owners. Return
40. A member of the movement that opposed Chassidism. Return
41. “To pass before the ark” means to lead the Amidah, the standing prayer, also known as the 18 benedictions or the Shemonah Esray. Return
42. “Conquering the labor,” “Kibbush Ha'avodah,” was an idea among the early Zionist thinkers that Jews had to reclaim the land of Israel through their own hard work, not by hiring others to do it. Return
43. “The Pioneer.” Return
44. Bibliographic entry 24: G. Kressel: Lexicon of the Hebrew Literature in Recent Generations. Return
45. Five books of Torah. Return
46. Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, one of the most influential Jewish commentators in history, was born in Troyes, Champagne, in northern France, in 1040. Return
47. An improved school that combined traditional studies in Torah and Talmud with secular studies taught in Hebrew. Return
48. Bibliographic entry 25: Holy Fabric: A Book of the Treasury of the Chassidim of Lubavitch. Brooklyn 5707 [1947]. Return
49. An acrostic for the Hebrew Adoneinu Moreinu veRabeinu – “our Master, our Teacher, our Rabbi.” Return
50. The Tanya is an early work of Chassidic philosophy by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of Chabad Chassidism, first published in 1796. Return
51. Bibliographic entry 26: Rabbi Y. Y. Reines: A Leather Bag of Tears. Jerusalem 5664 [1904] p. 4 Return
52. Judges. Return
53. Head of the Rabbinical Court. Av Beit Din designated the principal of the yeshiva who made halakhic rulings and took part in the communal administration; in particular, it was used as the title of the district rabbi of a large community. Return
54. Bibliographic entry 27: Dr. Dov Noy: Women's Names as Names of Animals. Machanayim 98. p. 150. Return
55. To the old one, to life. Return
56. Bibliographic entry 28. A. VV. Soferzaskaya: (Russian) Return
57. Holy seed. Return
58. Son of a name. Return
59. Bibliographic entry 29: Records. Volumes 5, 6. Return
60. Bibliographic entry 30: In “Jewish Antiquity” S. Luria connects his family name with the Luria family in Roman Egypt. The Luria family had a long and many-branched genealogy that reached to the end of the 14^th century CE. They had a tradition that one of the heads of their ancestors – he was Reb Shlomo Shapira – was a grandson of Rashi. There is a foundation to this tradition in the history (see the writings of Avraham Epstein, Mossad HaRav Kook, Jerusalem, 5710 [1950], Volume 1, “The Luria Family”). Return
61. Literally “holy vessels,” used to refer to clergy or sacred implements. Return

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