[Page 169]

There were a great many workers from various trades in Amdur: shoemakers, tailors, cabinetmakers, carpenters, blacksmiths, tinsmiths, bricklayers, boiler or kettle makers, bakers, capmakers, watchmakers, winemakers and still others. Perhaps there were too many in proportion to the number of residents in the city. All of the trades were in Jewish hands. There were almost no Christian tradesmen (with a few exceptions). Most of the shoemakers and tailors would work for the Christian population of the

[Page 170]

city and surrounding villages. Many of the tailors would leave for the villages on foot very early on Sunday, carrying their sewing machines, irons and other tools, etc., on their backs. They would only return home on Friday during the day for Shabbos [Sabbath]. They would exist on baked potatoes for the entire week – the only food that a Jew was permitted to eat at a Christian's. Dear, sincere Jewish toilers! How much they toiled to earn their poor wages and, still, they did not give up their Yidishkeit [Jewishness]. They made no compromises with their religious consciousness.

* *
*

Amdur Shoemakers – there were several good shoemakers in Amdur, good craftsmen, but there was also no lack of shoe repairers, whom I will mention here:

One was named Leibe Motshe, son of the watchman. As I remember, he had a cataract on his eye. He lived in a small room with an earthen floor. The furniture he possessed consisted of nothing more than a half-broken bed, a broken, little bookcase, and a low work table, the small shoemaker's bench – and that is all. He was a widower, crushed by poverty, a true, pure proletarian, and a pious and quiet Jew. He never failed to run to the Study House, to pray with a group twice a day, in the morning for Shakharis [daily morning prayer] and at night for Minkhah-Maariv [daily afternoon and evening prayers]. He also never missed saying the daily Psalms. While sitting at his work table and pulling the shoemaker's thread, he would always quietly sing sections of the liturgical poems from the Days of Awe [Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur], such as Hineh Khakhomer B'yad Ha-Yotzer [“We are as clay in the hand of the potter”] and V'ha'Kohanim v'ha'Am [“And the Kohanim [priests] and the people”] and others, which he had often heard from the cantors.

[Page 171]

The second shoe repairer whom I will speak about here was named Monye, with the nickname, “Konifole [rosin],” the origin of which we do not know. Monye was a small Jew, truly a midget, but he was agile and lively. He had a thin, small voice, a little sing-song. He had the habit when speaking of using the words “oy, what” or “nu [so], this” after each phrase and it seemed to me that his sense of hearing was not completely in order. I remember his dialogue with one of the Amdur Jewish women, which I happened to hear. The woman came to him with a pair of shoes in her hand; Monye immediately responded with his sayings; “Oy, what? What are you going to say?” The woman said: “R' Monye, I want you to repair the shoes for me.” Said Monye: “Nu, this? Put on new soles?” – The woman answered: “No, R' Monye, darling, not new soles, only put on a patch.” Monye again said: “Oy, what? Not soles, then what, heels?” – “R' Monye, my dear, do not make fun of me, do not draw blood from me…,” the woman spoke beseechingly, but also with anger, and she wanted to speak further. But Monye interrupted her with his sing-song little voice: “Nu, this? This will be heels and soles.” The woman, hearing his last words, completely lost her temper and shouted: 'Ugly Konifole,' you're a bandit! I asked him to place a patch on the shoes and he responded with new soles and heels and with a horseshoe besides… The treasures of Korakh [See Numbers 16; Sanhedrin 110a] would not be enough for this rude man, the bandit…” And thus cursing and swearing, she left as a ghost…

And this Amdur Jewish “bandit” would twice a

[Page 172]

day run to the Study House, recite Psalms, and he understood the interpretations. Lozer, the rabbi's son, said of him: “If he were not so small, he would be a great shoemaker”…

The shoemakers had a separate society. All of the craftsmen from all of the trades were members of one large society named the Khevre Torah [Torah Society] or as we would call it, Khevre P. Tomed [roughly translated, there was always action – drinks – in the society]. Almost all of the members would not have a dislike for the bitter drops [whiskey]. As the shoemakers had to buy materials for their use: wooden pegs, iron pins, cobbler's thread, wax, glue and so on (hetsoes [expenses] in their language) – they would have a written agreement with a certain merchant, that they would only buy the shoemaker's needs from them and as a result the Society received 50 rubles a year, which went mostly to make l'khaims [drinking toasts; i.e., spent for liquor]…

For several years, my father, may he rest in peace, held this podrad [the contract to sell them these materials] which also gave him the concession to teach [Society members], from Minkhah to Maariv [from the afternoon to the evening prayers], Khumish [Five Books of Moses] with Rashi's commentary, or the Kitzur Shulkhan Orach [summary compilation of Jewish law]. There were several among them who very much liked to have the Tractate Sotah [Talmudic treatise regarding a wife's infidelity, referencing the drinking of alcohol], or as the Amdur proprietors would say, Mayim hamarrim [from: Numbers 5:12-31, referencing the drinking of bitter water] and often they were intoxicated, but the majority of them were honest Jews and “lovers of the Torah.” They were students of Rashi, Kitzur Shulkhan Orach and Mishnayos [the Mishnah].

Their anteroom – a large anteroom in the large Study House – would be full of listeners on Shabbos after eating the cholent [a stew-like dish placed in an oven on Friday afternoon, cooked overnight, and eaten on Shabbos]. Moshe Burak, their shamas [sexton], would go to bring the “rabbi,” Leizer Shaul's, and when he, Leizer, would enter the room, Moshe Burak would shout out: “Der rabbi geyt [The rabbi is coming]!” And everyone would stand up. Leizer Shaul's would use the word, “actually” with each translation from Hebrew to Yiddish. While teaching the Parshe Vayetze [one of the weekly Torah portion, beginning with “Yakov went out…” Genesis 28:10], he would be speculating, and add: “Actually, there is a question, how is it that Yakov, an inexperienced person, the

[Page 173]

tzadik [righteous person], set out to go to Labanke, the crook? [Laban was the Patriarch Yakov's future father-in-law, who tricked Yakov into marrying his older daughter, Leah, when Yakov wished to marry Rachel, the younger one.] 'Ein barukh misdabek b'orur' [A blessing does not become entangled with a curse]; how does Yakov become an equal to that 'Kishenik' [pickpocket]? Actually, how is it befitting for Yakov, the scholar from the beis-haMedrash of Shem and Ever to deal with the crook Labanke, son of Bethuel? And, actually, all of the Midroshim [legends based on the Torah] complain about this…” And after he had used another half dozen “actuallys,” he came to his conclusion that Yakov wanted to rescue Rachel from the paws of Esau, who had long ago had his eye on her. And if, God forbid, this had happened, then there would not have been all 12 tribes and while “Shivtei Hashem l'Yisroel eidus” – God's tribes are a witness for Israel – Yakov did not intend anything other than to rescue Rachel.

In short, Laban and Esau received their portion; the “rabbi” made ash and dust out of them, equal to mud. Labanke, the scoundrel, Esau, the good for nothing boy… And the group left satisfied that both were buried nine cubits in the ground.

After Minkhah, when the Study House was already dark, members would sit and recite “Ashrei t'mime Derekh [“Praiseworthy are those whose way is perfect…” Psalms 119:1]… Ordinary businessmen sat at the head of the table and talked about worldly events, about the new nabor [army recruitment], about “exemptions,” red, blue and white tickets, about young men who abused their bodies in order to lose weight so that they would be rejected by the voysk (military service), also about young nowobrantses [recruits], who demanded money from the meat tax for their traveling expenses and had already interrupted the reading of the Torah on two Shabbosim to call attention to a grievance. Again, in separate corners of the Study House, several of the middle class young men stood and mocked… And there – from the long table, at which several of the members of the Torah Society would sit – sometimes Yakov-Moshe the tailor would be heard calling out, accompanied by a truly heartfelt Jewish groan: “This

[Page 174]

is my comfort in my affliction, for Your word has revived me,” [Psalms 119:50] and Asher the shoemaker, who sat at another place, would answer him with a groan” – “Oy, God in heaven! Mi Khamokha Yisroel [Who is like you Israel]”… But – the Shamas Rafael's bang on the table was heard and Efraim Elihu the malamed [teacher] would begin a sad melody: “Vehu Rakhum Yekhaper Ovon” [“And He, the Merciful One, forgives iniquity”].

The same process would occur in all of the synagogues, where the Amdur Jewish craftsmen would come at Minhah time to rest after their daily work, to spend a few hours away from the boredom of earning a living- - -

It is worthwhile mentioning that at that time almost all Jewish workers and craftsmen, who for the most part were not very skilled in Hebrew, knew the entire “Ashrei Temimei Dorekh” [“Happy are those whose way is perfect…”] by heart.

So what other people can boast of such a phenomenon, that simple, common toilers would know how to recite an entire philosophical poem by heart? Jewish craftsmen did not only recite the Psalms, but our common Jews from the past also knew entire chapters from the Mishnah and Zohar [book of the Kabalah] by heart. In the cities and towns of Lithuania, Jewish craftsmen – it is known about the businessmen – knew the chapter Ba-Meh Madlikin [from the Mishnah – “With what may one kindle [the Shabbos lamp…?”]]. The same in Ukraine and Bessarabia – each [would sing] the Ke'Gavna [passage recited at the arrival of the Shabbos] of the Zohar with its usual melody and intonation. So, dear Jewish workers of the past! How little you are celebrated in song; and how much character you possessed! How many poets, writers and thinkers came from your ranks! Yes, naturally, the exclamation Mi khamokha Yisroel [“Who is like you, Israel] comes to the lips.

Amdur Tailors. It would take a great deal of space to

[Page 175]

list the entire gallery of all of the Amdur craftsmen, because each one of them had their characteristic peculiarities. However, I will still describe several of them: Aizik's son, Leyzer Itshe was the scholar among the craftsmen. The tailors would boast about him. He was really good at studying Mishnays and Ein-Yakov [compilation of the non-legal aspects of the Talmud] and would even sometimes take part in the lessons of the Talmud Society. Physically, he was stout, burly, built like a barrel. He traveled to Odessa to bathe in the thermal waters. Jews would say that he had traveled there to “bleed fat.” He came back weighing a little less, but always remained corpulent. He was a true tradesman, a good and elegant tailor. Only the rich or landowners, among whom he was renowned, would have things sewn by him.

Yoal Titnik, on the contrary, was a tailor on a different level. He was childless. He carried himself in the manner of a businessman. Magidim [itinerant preachers] or respected, prominent visiting clergy would stay with him. The Kelmer Magid would stay there when he would come to Amdur. It was thought that the mitzvah of hospitality would help his childlessness [Sarah had her first child after she and Abraham showed hospitality], but it did not help…

I will describe several Jewish tailors who would sew for the non-Jews:

Itshe the Tailor to the Landowners – that is what he was called, but no landowners ever came to him. He was a tall Jew with a pock-marked face and very lively. When he wanted to convince his non-Jewish clients that the coat of coarse material or the fur would come out well and regal, he would spread out the “goods” on the table; he himself would go to the door, close an eye and say to the non-Jew: “Vidish, yak lezhit tut na stole, tak samo budet lezhat na tebe” (See, the way it lays

[Page 176]

on the table, it will lie on you the same way). And Itshe the Tailor to the Landowners did not cheat; the way it lay on the table, it lay on the non-Jew… He had an only son and he wanted him to study Gemara [rabbinical commentaries on the Mishnah]. He was named Pesakh. He entered the Amdur yeshiva after great effort. His father would always admonish his son: 'Pesakh, remember, if you do not study, you will be a tailor to the landowners with me.' Pesakh studied in the yeshiva for one year in total. He was not a bad student, but his father's prophesies were fulfilled…

Noakh the deaf one – an efficient person at sewing shrouds [burial clothes] or coarse cloth coats for non-Jews. He was a little crazy. He was a Levi [Levite; descendant of the tribe of Levi] … He would always complain that he had been wronged and not called up to the Torah. More than once, he made a racket in the Study House on Shabbos at the afternoon prayers because of the injustice that had been done to him. Amdur jokesters seized on this and would [facetiously] call him to the Torah in the middle of the street: “Yamod [stand up] R' Noakh B'Reb Yehoshua haLevi [Noah, son of Joshua the Levi]…” with the entire melody as it should be. So there would be an entire battle and stones would fly from all sides.

In my time, old Jews would provide themselves with shrouds. “God grant that we not need them”… the old Jews would say very earnestly. The fear of dying without one's shrouds was very great. It was told in Amdur that Moshe Daniel, an old businessman, came to Noakh to order a “complete set” of shrouds. The deaf tailor asked him for three gildn for the work. Moshe Daniel offered only two gildn, arguing that Shimeon the tailor did not ask for more. “So, go to him in health, but I am telling you in advance that in two weeks you will go [i.e., die] with torn pants… Do as you understand, R' Moshe Daniel”…

Amdur Blacksmiths. There were such in Amdur

[Page 177]

and not in small numbers, but I will mention here only two and namely: Karpl the blacksmith, who had a forge near the end of Grodner Street. He was very pious and a bit of a learned man. He did not want to endure any secular speech during Shabbos, only Hebrew, the holy language, which at that time in Amdur meant being quiet for an entire 24 hours. There is an anecdote about Karpl speaking Hebrew in the shtetl: Once on Shabbos at the eating of the cholent, the cat in Karpl's room approached the pot and began to pull out the meat from it. Karpl called [in Hebrew] to his wife from afar: “Ishti, Ishti, ketz kol bosor!”… - that is, my wife, my wife, the cat will eat up all the meat. Karpl's wife, who was also probably accustomed to speaking the holy language, answered him [in Hebrew]: “Nu, nu, Katzti b'hayai” – that is, my cat also has to live… [Note: This humorous play on words uses two Biblical phrases with the Hebrew word katz, which means “cat” in Yiddish, but not in Hebrew. Ketz kol bosor (Genesis 6:13] really means “the end of all flesh,” and katzti b'hayai (Genesis 27:46) really means “I am weary of my life.”]

The second, whom I think is worthy to remember, is Nakhum the blacksmith. He was a Jew, a very poor man, a pauper – as it is said – very poor…. But he was far from ignorant. Just the opposite, he was a good student. Since he almost never had enough work, he would spend his free time in the Study House and tell of miracles and wonders by the rabbis, righteous men and lamed-vovnikes [legendary 36 righteous persons]. I once heard him speak about the dispute between Rashi and his grandson, the Rabbi Tam, because of his position on the Parshes [weekly Torah portions] and the prayers, a controversy over whether in fact Moshe Rabenu [Biblical Moses] himself was troubled when making a decision and he had naturally decided according to Rashi. One had to see how during his description, Nakhum the blacksmith had imitated Rabbi Tam, that the rabbi thumped his foot and cried out: “Moshe Teyt!” (R' Moshe, you made a mistake). Nakhum's mimicry showed how he would have

[Page 178]

acted, the grandfather and the grandson arguing in the presence of Moshe Rabenu; how he would have seen that Rabbi Tam had really thumped his foot and decided against the leader of all the prophets. One of the listeners, Motye Pesha Wigdor's, a Jew, an old man and half-witted, called out: “Oy oy oy! You are placing yourself against Moshe Rabenu; Jews in the past could decide, oy oy oy!”…

Nakhum the blacksmith was also a Torah reader with the Torah Society. And he had a fault of spitting all of the time. He would spit at every pause and at the end of each verse so that it would come out, for example, as: “And Yakov went out of Beersheba” – Tfoo [spitting sound]… “and went toward Haran” – Tfoo… (at the end of a verse he would give tfoo a heavy intonation). In Amdur it would be said of him: Nakhum the blacksmith spits with trop [musical accents used when reciting from the Torah]…

He had a very good son, who entered the yeshiva.

Poor Nakhum! Poor blacksmith! Starved himself – truly starved and he sacrificed to let his child study Torah.

Amdur Bakers. Amdur was certainly fed by a dozen Jewish bakers. Several of them baked only rye bread and their ovens served their poor neighbors as a central place to seal the cholent for Shabbos in their ovens. The others baked soft bread, cakes, rolls and challah for Shabbos and the holidays.

It is a fact that each of the Jews in the craft trades in my former residence had their own level and category, according to which their cultural achievement could be evaluated – as

[Page 179]

in the past: boilermakers were higher than shoemakers, and higher than tailors and the most advanced of them all were watchmakers and jewelers and even more advanced were the barbers, and, over all, the photographers; also among them were many well advanced among the leather workers, and on a much higher cultural level stood the typographers, in general, and the so-called typesetters in particular. Again, the bakers, for the most part, had a much higher cultural level in the realm of business.

So, of our former Amdur bakers, I will recall several here: Borukh the baker, who had his own house in the middle of Grodner Street; this house was built of bricks. All of his sons – I remember only the names of two, Chaim and Kasriel – were also bakers; all carried themselves well as businessmen. Chaim, Borukh's son, was an influential businessman; he possessed a few thousand rubles; such a sum was an enormous treasure in Amdur at that time. During the last years, Chaim Borukh's – that is how we referred to him – recited the Shakharis [morning prayers] during the Days of Awe in the Great Synagogue, which not all men were worthy of in those times. Besides, at the time of my departure from Amdur, in addition to his treasures, Chaim Borukh's also had his first dozen children, about whom the Amdur jokesters would say that his rolls were the cause of his wife, Khaskhe, being pregnant year-in, year-out and often with twins… One of his sons, who was named Shmuel, with the nickname Bulke [roll], studied in the yeshiva. He is now in Lisbon, Portugal.

Mordekhai the baker was a bit of an original type. It would be better to say almost “deranged,” that is, a person with

[Page 180]

madness. He was, as is said, a krumer lamdn [an unbalanced scholar]; he studied a great deal but was not highly skilled. His craziness was his preventing any new clothing to be made for him for the holidays. His wife, Kheyke, would come to my father, may he rest in peace, about measuring her husband for a kapote [long coat] or a few pants and it did not help, no matter how much they pleaded with Mordekhai to allow them to take his measurements.

“We do not need a new suit, we can bake bagels and study Gemora with commentaries in old clothes, too,” he would argue. And thus, he went around his entire life in a pair of old linen pants and barefooted. Every morning in the same clothes, he would drive two cows with their calves to the field, speaking gently to them, the way a devoted father speaks to his children, and he would beam, seeing that the cows were grazing on the blote [marsh]. (That is what a low grazing field was called in Amdur.) The verse in the Khumesh [Five Books of Moses], Va'sir'eh'nah ba-ahu [They grazed in the reeds. Genesis 41:2], was translated by my rabbi as “and they grazed on the blote”). Mordekhai the baker would say: “If we had Munye's blote we would not need Eretz-Yisroel [the Land of Israel]”… Munye was the owner of the Amdur estate and its meadows…

Let us here remember Mordekhai's son, Yisroel, a Jew, a scholar, a real Torah scholar with a good position; he was the finest bal-tefiloh [person who recites the prayers in the synagogue] in Amdur. His Musofim [prayers following the Shabbos morning service] and Neilos [the concluding prayer recited on Yom Kippur] were accompanied by all of the well-known melodies.

Amdur Peddlers. This is to remember several of these small merchants, who would draw their income from traveling through the villages and buying village products from non-Jews – hog hair, wool, weasel pelts, sheep and other things. They would leave Sunday early in the morning or drive to

[Page 181]

a village and come back on Friday. There were a few families who were called “the Woljakes,” a name that probably comes from the word wol [wool] because they would buy wool. I remember two of them: Gershon and Shmuel, the latter a teacher and also a bit of a magid [itinerant preacher]; he would deal with scraps (rags).

One of the peddlers, he was called Itshe Pukhovnik, particularly needs to be mentioned. I knew him when he was already an old man. He was the official Psalm reader during the day for Rosh-Hashanah at the Great Synagogue. At night on Hoshana Raba [the seventh day of Sukkos, The Feast of Booths], the old rabbi, R' Avraham-Ezra, of blessed memory, recited the Psalms with him from one Book of Psalms. Old and asthmatic, he would recite the khatzos [prayers for the restoration of the Temple said at midnight] all night. I remember once during the day, during the “Three Weeks,” [the three weeks preceding the holiday Tisha b'Av] my brother, Shevah, of blessed memory, and I heard a strong voice in the synagogue courtyard that came from the synagogue. We entered and we saw how old Itshe Pukhovnik was sitting on the ground and reciting Tikun Leah [prayers mourning the exile of the Divine Presence and the destruction of the Temple]. He shouted in a bass voice: “Noa tanua eretz kashikor v'hisnodedah kahmlunah” – “…the land will totter like a drunkard, and sway like a shack…” [Isaiah 24:20] And immediately after this he recited, in a moving tone, the chapter “Beshlosha mekomos hakohanim shomrim,” from the Tractate Tamid, on sacrifices, which speaks about the three places where the Kohanim stand guard in the former Beis-haMikhdosh [Holy Temple]. The old rabbi called him 'der eved' – God's servant.

How much Jewish feeling and noble, communal sensibility lay in Itshe Pukhovnik's Tikun Khatzos day and night! He would always sing a little: “For the destruction of the Temple, I shall weep...”

Amdur Wagon Drivers. Amdur did not have a railroad and, at my leaving Lithuania, also no highway. Its entire

[Page 182]

trade was with the capital, Grodno, 14 miles from each other. The shtetl Kuznice, 11 miles away, had a train station, but wagon drivers rarely drove there. In later years there would be great movement between Amdur and Bialystok, a distance of 37 miles, but Grodno remained Grodno. [The author's distances: three, two and seven miles, respectively, have been corrected to reflect actual distances] Amdur belonged to the Grodno ujezd [district] administratively and was under its police jurisdiction. Jews knew that for an address in Amdur, it was necessary to write: Miasteczko [municipality] Indura [the Russian, Belarusian and Polish name for Amdur], Grodnienskoj Gubernia [Grodno province] i Ujezda [district]. The roads would be very bad during the winter, during the heavy snow and blizzards, and particularly at Passover, when the snow would begin to melt. Amdur also had a good number of wagon drivers, or draymen [drivers of flatbed wagons], as they were usually called. I will provide a place in my Amdur memories for this trade and record several types.

Hershl Shuliak was a responsible wagon driver. He had the best horses. Amdur storekeepers who would send money to Grodno for bringing back goods, would say: “Hershl, an iron strongbox.” He had an iron foot [crutch]. It was said that he received the iron gift through a curse by R' Avraham-Ezra, of blessed memory, because he had not followed the rabbi's ban and had carried beams to the church on Khol Hamoed [the intervening days between holidays, during which only certain categories of work were permitted]. The rabbi had sent him a warning that he should not do this. “He who scorns the holidays” [see Babylonian Talmud Pesachim 118a] he had commented to him, but Hershl pretended not to hear. R' Avraham-Ezra then cried out (it was said in Amdur): “He will soon be taken care of.” And in the morning it happened that he broke his foot with a beam. From then on he carried an iron foot. One does not play with any trifle – old Amdur Jews would repeat. When he would go to the market, he would always strike the tip of the iron crutch on

[Page 183]

the feet of the barefoot non-Jews and would yell: “They are everywhere, one cannot get rid of them”…

One could not be sure of all of the wagon drivers when money was sent with them; the goods were either stolen from them or they would be lost… and the money. Often a lawsuit against them would be heard in a rabbinical court, the laws regarding one who is temporarily entrusted with goods would be aired, and almost always the storekeepers would lose… One was sure with Hershl Shuliak. Leizer, the rabbi's son, would say: “Hershl stands firm, with an iron foot.”

The last years he would go to Bialystok twice a week. He had three “eagles” harnessed to a covered wagon. In Bialystok this was called “the iron stagecoach.” I will end with Hershl and his “seraphim” [angels, see Isaiah 6:1-3]. When I left Amdur he was in full fervor, despite his advanced age. Hershl Shuliak was a renowned person as a wagon driver in Amdur, Grodno and Bialystok.

Meir Guzshik, a wagon driver, was a poor man, crushed by poverty. He had one horse – skin and bones, and Meir Guzshik had to draw his livelihood from him. On the bad roads, Meir would harness himself to his wagon and pull the wagon with his sivak [grey horse]. He toiled as a donkey. Leizer, the son of the rabbi, would say that when Meir pulled the wagon with his horse, it was a transgression against kilaim [Torah prohibition against mixing different plants or beasts of burden] – a horse and a donkey… [Deuteronomy 22:10]

Shabbos morning he would come to pray in the Study House – the only day on which he was free. Exhausted and rundown from the entire week of heavy labor, he would sleep through the entire praying, snoring. Once, at the opening of the ark, when the congregation says, “Vayhi Binsoa Ha'aron [Whenever the Ark was set out],” Meir Guzshik suddenly

[Page 184]

cried out, “Enough! Enough!,” certainly dreaming of his horse. Naturally, the congregation laughed. But who can appreciate the poverty of this sort of Jewish laborer who earned his living through his hard work! I would also paraphrase the Berdichever's [Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev, the Berdichever Rebbe] words: He even prays at his horse and wagon.

In Amdur, there were many wagon drivers, but they lacked Meir Guzshik's honesty; several of them were fighters and even thieves.

Amdur Butchers. The residents of Amdur did not eat too much of any kind of meat: during the summer times, from Shabbos to Shabbos – a little piece of meat; in wintertime the rich would salt an entire side of meat from a sheep. The poor would do the same thing, but would only permit themselves to eat a small piece of meat from Shabbos to Shabbos. In the anteroom of the synagogue, where Jews would carry on conversations about timely matters, there would be complaints about the seasonal scarcity of meat. I remember such a conversation when Mendl the shoemaker, a quiet, virtuous Jew (his son Leibke was a good Gemora [commentary on the Mishnah] teacher) spoke up: “Why do we need so much meat?! Are we wolves? Do we need to sit al sir habosor [on a pot of meat, Exodus16:3] the entire week? A pound of meat on Shabbos is more than enough…” Perhaps this is why at that time in Amdur we did not suffer from ulcers, high blood pressure, appendicitis and still other modern illnesses that are so widespread in our civilized world and are possibly the result of an abundance of food, which today characterizes our tables.

Yet, my city had a significant number of butchers, large and small, rich and poor. All of the butcher shops were concentrated on one street – between the market and the Great Synagogue. Among them, I remember two:

Matess the Butcher. His large room was in the market. He was a

[Page 185]

respected businessman. There was a large minyan [group of at least 10 men required for prayer] at his room for Shabbos and holidays. Jews would want to sing, something not all of those seeking the cantor's lectern were able to do in the synagogue or Study House. For that reason, there were many minyans. Matess the butcher had the honor of reciting the Shakharis prayers during the Days of Awe in the Great Synagogue, a function that bestowed esteem and prestige at that time. During the prayer Yareisi biftzosi siakh l'haskhil [I am in awe as I open my mouth to speak,” an 11^th century liturgical poem] Matess would cry… Matess died a very old man and his death was mourned by the entire town.

Berl Cossack. In his youth, he was a butcher, and later a trader of oxen and horses. A good businessman, he ran a fine shop, lived in his own beautiful house and was well dressed. He gave his several daughters – he had many children – educations. Let us present a short biography of Berl's family. His father was named Matshe Cossack. When he was intoxicated and would shout in the street, Matek the butcher would call him “Matshe Cossack.” He was a Hasid. Avraham Shlomo Tsinne's once said: “It is fortunate that Matshe is a Hasid and therefore it is said that he is intoxicated. If not, it would be said that he is a drunk.” He had six sons, all tall, handsome and healthy: Berl, Elie-Yankl, Melakh, Gedalia, Fishl and Shmuel. Elie-Yankl, a wagon driver, had a fine son attending a yeshiva. He died young. Melakh – a superior musician in the Grodner Muzikantstkaya komanda [marching band]; one of the first of the Aleksandersky soldiers; he became completely estranged from his origins. The remaining sons were all butchers.

Yankl Farfl's: There was a family with many branches in Amdur with the family name or nickname “Farfl.” They were all butchers. They were involved with cattle or with hides. They led a middle class life. Yankl Farfl's was the richest of them.

[Page 186]

He built the first and largest brick house, after the great fire [June 1882], right in the middle of Grodner Street. He would love to take a goblet and with a midoh nekhonoh – the proper amount. I was once present when he came to the rabbi with a question about a czepczuche [the second stomach of a ruminant animal]. The rabbi was not at home and Yankl, who was in a jolly mood, sat down. The rabbi came and Yankl did not stand up from his spot. R' Borukh Ben-Zion Mishkowski, the rabbi, later said: if “he did not get up and did not even see me,” surely that is a sign that “he was apparently loaded”…

Yet, Yankl Farfl's was a respectable businessman in Amdur. Before my departure [1896], he married off his daughter to a well-known young man, absolutely first-class. I think that his family name was Poliatschek. The [other] property owners were envious of his good son-in-law.

I will recall several everyday people of Amdur, people who did not impress with their knowledge, who were not well educated, who were, one might say, even lacking in culture–they and their type complete the gallery of types in the shtetl. One of them was

Yoshe Desyatnik, an old retired soldier from the time of the Nicholas. A small man with a pockmarked face. He liked to drink, but he was never drunk. When he would go for a drink, he would say, “I'm going to throw a couple back in honor of Rabbi Meir Baal haNes…What? Should I get drunk like a Gentile? Feh!” He went and threw some money into the collection box of R' Meir Baal haNes…Yoshke Desyatnik, that uncultured man, associated his glass with the charity collection box of the legendary Jewish Tzadik. For all his simplicity, Yoshke Desyatnik

[Page 187]

was very religious and used to pray word by word, and in order to be sure of his words, he would repeat them several times. When he would repeat from memory the chapter, “Rabbi Yishmael says there are thirteen principles”, it would come out, “People complain and they travel” instead of “A general law followed by a specific” and “People travel and they complain” instead of “the specific followed by a general.” [Translator's note: This is impossible to translate. The point is that Yoskhe does not understand the technical Hebrew of this Talmudic passage and instead uses Yiddish words that sound like the Hebrew but that have nothing to do with the actual Hebrew meaning.]. We children would stand near him in order to poke fun at him: “People go and complain, they complain and they go.” He would smile when he saw us around him. And wonder of wonders: On Friday night, this simple man could say the whole “Ba-meh madlikin” [an extended Talmudic passage recited in the Friday evening service] by heart and with the tune that people use when they study Gemara. A whole chapter of Mishnah from the tractate of Shabbos from memory; a whole passage by R' Yishmael about logic from the Talmud from memory, a passage of Aggadah–“Wise students increase peace in the world”–from memory…This is the kind of uncultured people we had. I doubt whether we have the right to refer to such people as “uncultured.” Yoshke Desyatnik may not have understood the words that he said, he may have said “Rabbi Treyfin” [unkosher] instead of “Rabbi Tarfon” in Ba-meh madlikin, but he certainly knew by heart many Hebrew and Aramaic words, and the sound of Hebrew was not foreign to him.

On a market day or some sort of holiday, when all the Gentiles from the villages would come into the city, Yoshe would put on his Shabbos caftan or his fur cape with its hood in the winter; on his lapel the tin badge with the Russian coat-of-arms, and he would go out proudly into the street, like a representative of the government, and act like a ruler among the Gentiles, like a “high official.” If a Gentile got drunk and yelled in the street, he got slapped. If the Gentile had a pipe in his mouth

[Page 188]

Yoshke would yank it out of his mouth. The Gentiles would say, “A pox on that badge. He grabs us without fear…”. That was Yoshe Disyatnik, who would say “Ba-meh madlikin” or “Rav Yishmael” and throw fear into the Gentiles with his badge. How odd it sounds: a “Disyatnik,” a government badge beside “Ba-meh madlikin” and “The Torah can be interpreted according to thirteen principles…”

Moyshe Khvalish had been a blacksmith. His home–the last in the city on the way to the Grodno highway. Later he ran a store and became wealthy. His Gentile name, Khvalish, he received for his crudeness and boorishness. He once bet that he could eat a dozen herring and a black bread. He won the bet and was still hungry…Once on a yahrzeit–it was on Shabbos–he was called to the reader's stand to lead the afternoon prayers, and his gush of Hebrew elicited great laughter from everyone. In the repetition of the Amidah, for the passage “You are one and Your name one, and who is like Your people Israel, one nation,” he got stuck on the three “ones,” so the passage came out, “You are one, and Your name; one and who is like Your people; Israel is one people…”. Chanah's Shemay, a shoemaker, a great wit, said quietly, “And who is like Khvalish, one people [or “one Gentile”] in the land…”

His son Hershel, a boy of sixteen, with red eyes, he sent to R' Aharon Kaddish the cheder teacher so he could learn to pray and learn the Haggadah. I was then a boy not yet seven years old, and my childish mind could not grasp how a boy of marriageable age not know how to pray or study the Chumash with Rashi. I remember when the rabbi taught us the whole Haggadah for Pesach. The words “to eat” appear many times: one takes a piece of onion

[Page 189]

and dips it in salt water, says the blessing “Who creates the fruit of the earth,” and eats it; over matzo–one should say the blessing over eating matzo and eat it; bitter herbs–one says the blessing for eating bitter herbs and eats them; korech–and one eats; the meal–the table is set, and we eat; tzafon–one should eat from the afikomen. And for this older student came: “Kadesh–when the father comes home from shul, he should make Kiddush and eat; urchatz–one washes one's hands and eats; karpas–and one eats.” So Rabbi Kaddish became angry and cried out, “He should be hanged, that unkosher gullet, only to gorge himself; this is a kind of gluttony!” After Pesach, the boy left the cheder and was quickly married off. He knew no Chumash with Rashi. As for the Haggadah, he knew as far as “We were slaves to Pharaoh” and no more; but he knew all about eating…Like father, like son.

Yankel Veisse Keppel [White Head] was a village tailor, who, from the time of his birth, had a white head, hence his name. A quiet man, simple. As Tevye the Dairyman would have said, “He smote in his wealth,” that is, weak in reading Hebrew. {This is a complicated joke based on the fact that Sholem Aleichem's character Tevye frequently misinterprets Scriptural passages.]. At common prayers or chapters, he could make his way through, but when it came to the Haggadah, selichos [penitential prayers], kinos [lamentations], or hoshanos [verses for Succos], then he would begin to cough as if he had eaten cabbage. For the lament “Aval emorer aninos agarer” [I raise lamentation, I drag out my grief], for him it came out as “animess a ganer” [I drag out a gander]. His errors were connected to his opposition to Yiddish. I remember one time when my father, a”h, had sent me to get charoses from Feivel the tavern keeper. From those who did not make a lot of ceremonies before starting the seder, even before the evening prayers, I could hear through the window how they read the Haggadah, and I heard my hero singing, “At the when the matzo and the bitter herbs are ‘married’ before you” instead of “lying before you…” For

[Page 190]

Yankel of the White Head, the matzos were considered relations by marriage, dear and beloved in-laws, and instead of “grief” he drags out the more familiar “gander,” since so many geese and ganders were seen in the village. And he was not the only “author of errors” in Amdur. My city had a whole assortment of such folk types. It think it would be appropriate to compile a whole anthology of all the clever and “learned” errors that were made over generations in the mouths of these kosher Jews.

Nioma the Bathman, a small-statured man with one eye and a large swelling under his ear. Always wore linen pants and went barefoot in the summer. He had a variety of professions. For a long time he held the lease on the bathhouse and was himself the bathman and the masseur; he was the chimney sweep, and he would whitewash houses; and in the winter–he would carry pails of water on a yoke. This last was just “hard work.” Around the well, it was so frozen that it was almost impossible to approach; the winch was covered with ice, and moving it caused one's hands to freeze. In such conditions, he, Nioma, would draw and carry water from dawn until late in the evening, earning a kopeck for two pails of water. And even so, the Jews were not happy, especially those with larger families, who needed more water for their daily bodily functions: “We have drunk our water for money” [Lamentations 5:4]–they would mutter–but with such professions, our hardworking Jews got by. Anyone who says that our Jews in our old home used to live off shady dealings is lying. Nioma the Bathman was always embittered, with a bitter soul, and would often speak with some chutzpah against the “richostocracy.” Once, at a meeting of the kahal, people were given to know that “Nioma

[Page 191]

the Bathman” had 400 rubles. Sholem-Leyzer Rabinovitsh said that they should take his money…He would kill people in the street for so much money.

As I said, my hero had only one eye. The other had been burned by the soot in the chimneys and by the whitewash, since he was both a chimney sweep and a whitewasher. So, to pray from a Siddur, one needs not a pair of glasses but only a single spectacle. Two eyes, two lenses; one eye–one lens suffices. “What? Are people so elegant?” Nioma asked.

But then Yom Kippur would come, when people say “Al Khet” at each service: beat their chests at each verse. Nioma would not say a single Al Khet without striking his stomach with his fist–instead of striking his breast, he would hit his stomach…But this created a problem for our “Al Khetnik”: in his right hand he held his single lens; with the same hand he had to strike his belly…He did not know the prayer by heart. So he would move his hand between his eye and his belly: “For the sin which we have committed before Thee” he would say with his hand by his belly, and “under duress and by our own will” with his hand holding the lens to his eye; “and for the sin which we have committed” with his hand at his belly, and “through hardness of heart” with his hand at his eye. Thus he did through the whole alphabetic acrostic five times a day. He stood near the window that was by the washstand so it would be a little brighter, and children laughed at his mechanical movements; and they would stand outside the window to make fun of his maneuvers. But then he lost patience and went after the children and–forget the Makhzor, forget the his lens, forget saying “Al Khet” and hitting his belly…And meanwhile everyone else was saying

[Page 192]

“For the sin which we have committed through scorn…For the sin which we have committed by running to do evil…”

These are my memories of a whole gallery of such types of whom Amdur had so many; but for my memoir, those whom I mentioned will suffice.

My conscience would not be easy if I omitted the kind of simple and ordinary Jews who bore the title “Soldiers of Nicholas,” or, in general, “Yevanim” [literally “Greeks,” but meaning the Jewish men who had been kidnapped and forced into the Russian army as boys]. Amdur had quite a number of them.

Estranged and torn away from bookish and cultural Judaism, they lived among the people and yet remained true Jews, despite their crudeness and uncouthness. Always poor, they were consigned to hard labor. I will recall several victims of Nicholas:

Yehuda the “Greek”, a crude Jew. He spoke with a lot of Russian. He always said, “Govori gramko”–speak louder. He had a long beard; he spent a lot of time cutting it and shaving. He did not get much work with Jews because at that time Jews neither shaved nor cut their beards. A Jew who shaved his beard–there was no such thing. To go to a barber for a trim in honor of a holiday–also not done; that job could be done by a wife or mother, but if someone did it differently, he would not be expelled from the beis-medresh.

Yehuda the Greek used to work only on the cutting benches in the bathhouse and for people who were gravely ill with high blood pressure who had to come to the blood-letter. For a haircut, he would take a tenner (five kopecks).

[Page 193]

If people bargained with him, he would go down to eight groschen, and as a last resort, to six. He also had a franchise from the government to stand to stand in the market on Tuesdays with a barrel organ and play at dice, the same games that are played today in cafes and train stations restaurants by ne'er-do-wells. It is understandable that his clients were the village Gentiles. No Jew would ever play dice games with Yehuda the Greek. Feh! “Far from winning and close to losing.”

Yehuda the Greek was–like all the “Greeks” in that regime–an unlearned man. Yet still he knew how to daven and be observant. People told me that once at Ne'ilah on Yom Kippur, when people said aloud seven times, “God is our Lord,” he pointed with his finger to the Makhzor where it said, “Next year in Jerusalem” and he called out, “That's it, that's it”…Yehuda the Greek knew that hidden in those words lay a great treasure. That was it, the most treasured…My kosher Amdur everyday guy, how dear your name is to me!

He merited having a son in the Amdur yeshiva, not badly learned. He had a pleasant singing voice and could imitate well. I was told that he was one of the best amateur actor in Amdur.

Artshik the Greek–an old Nicholas soldier. As far as learning goes, he was like all the “Greeks” from that time. All his days were spent as a watchman in the shops, and so he was also called “Artshik the Watchman.” One small episode stays in my mind: a winter night, a terrible cold; I was then twelve years old, and Itshe-Ber the

[Page 194]

sexton had then given me to understand a difficult issue involving watchmen from the Talmud (Baba Metzia 41). Artshik the Watchman was inside warming himself by the warm oven of the beis-medresh. I said to Itshe-Ber, “We should ask Artshik's interpretation of the problem, since he's a paid watchman.” Itshe-Ber responded, laughing, “No, my dear, unfortunately he is an unpaid watchman. No one gives him a groschen for being a watchman.” Artshik, the ex-soldier, arms crossed to protect himself from the cold, withered like Rabbi Tzadik (a sage from the time of the destruction of the Second Temple who withered away from fasting and, according to the writing of the Sages, would each day suck on a fig), called out to us: “Oy, oy, things are good for you. You have both worlds. You sit in a warm room and study Torah. And I? Not this world and not the next. I'm lost, brother!”

Kosher Jewish worker. He was a soldier of Nicolas because of the kidnappers, worn out by bestial labor. In old age a watchman whose whole daily food consisted of coarse black bread with herring.

I will recall another Amdur watchman–Meires the Watchman, a decrepit man, herniated, blind, and hunchbacked, he became destitute in his old age when he could no longer be a watchman. He would come to all celebrations–brises and weddings–to get a drink of whisky and a piece of cake. He missed no opportunity for a schnaps. He that “if it were not for Jewish celebrations, I would be in the next world”…It once happened that Avraham the Deaf's horse collapsed, the source of his livelihood. People said

[Page 195]

that he and his whole family sat shiva for the horse. That should not be taken as a joke. You have to consider the poverty in Lithuania at that time. People got together and bought him another horse, and from joy Avraham the Deaf provided cake and whisky. Meires the Watchman, naturally, came and, as was his habit, he made a toast: “Avraham'l, you should be worthy of raising him to Torah, to marriage, and to good deeds…”

Amdur was a city like other cities, and like them it had the right to have its crazies…It is possible that in proportion to its size, it had far more crazies than it deserved. I will recall one sort of them. Much has been written about crazy people among Jews. In “Rahumot,” part 1, p. 199ff., “Crazy People and Idiots on the Jewish Street” briefly treats this theme. One can almost confirm that even in this area there was a Jewish originality. The Jewish crazy differed from the non-Jewish one. Psychiatrists might maintain that the sources of their madnesses were one and the same, and a simple remedy–if there is one–would be good for both; but in fact it appears that there is a profound difference in the psychological, national and moral characters of the Jewish and Christian mentally ill. It seldom happens that Jewish lunatics commit murders during their spells, as happens with lunatics of other nationalities.

One of Amdur's lunatics was Hirshel-Hoshea, a

[Page 196]

son of a wealthy citizen. He was a quiet, still man. But his foolishness had no limit. If people in Amdur wanted to shame anyone in Amdur for his foolishness, they would call him “Hirshel-Hoshea.” People would tell a story about Hirshel-Hoshea's wisdom. His father, a prominent Amdur citizen, lived in a fine, large apartment with stylish furniture. In the vestibule there was once a goat. Because the door was open to a room in which there was a large mirror, the goat was reflected in the mirror. The father yelled, “Hirshel-Hoshea, don't you see? Get the goat out of the house.” Our genius did not hesitate and with a stick he tried to drive the goat out of the mirror…For many years, people in Amdur referred to Hirshel-Hoshea's “genius.”

Moyshe-Meir was a learned Jew. He had three sons: one of them, Moyshe-Meir Zalman, wore a large talis-katan and a long caftan. He was very observant. He would pray every word individually while crying bitter tears. He was very poor and had a shrewish wife. Her name was Miriam-Gittl, but in Amdur she was called “Verem Gittl” [Gittl the Worm]. The second son was called Moyshe-Meir's Ephraim, or Ephraim “Lentil,” because his constant food was lentils–not, God forbid, because of wealth…He had windmill outside the city on a hill, where he would work with his whole family to extract a little bread and water. When they had to drive the mill with its wings, it was really hard work, and my childish mind could not understand how people could do such difficult labor. Moyshe-Meir's Ephraim always spoke in a plaintive voice. The third son, Moyshe-Meir's Chaim, was a rich landlord, with

[Page 197]

a fine house, near the stores. But he had a wife who could have been married to Lot…She was often inebriated and caused scandals. On market days, the Gentiles envied her: “Where has she gotten such strong strong whisky?”

The elder Moyshe-Meir lost his mind. He was confined to a dark room. I remember that one summer day he escaped from that room and snuck off to the shul courtyard. He kissed the stones of the foundation and cried with bitter tears, “Save me, O Lord. Don't cast me into old age”…clear and suitable words, and still crazy. Who knew what old Moyshe-Meir was thinking at that moment?

People laid him in a Gentile's cart and took the reins, because he could not direct the horses, and took him back to his dark prison. His son Ephraim cried, “Father, Father. We're worse off than you. It is dark for us. How can we honor our father?” And everyone who passed by cried along with him.

Moyshe Esther the Black–he resembled his mother, but with a black beard, always smoking. A young scholar, well-read. Speaking with him, he gave the impression of a normal man. He spoke clearly, and his remarks were often very apt and often profound. He would go around the streets and no one knew what he lived on. But when one spoke with him at length, one would notice symptoms of his not being normal: a green fire would

[Page 198]

show in his eyes, and a person speaking to him would feel that he was spiritually ill. Although he was calm and quiet, with a light smile on his face, he would become angry, sharp, and sarcastic when he felt that someone was mocking him.

Once, when everyone was coming from Bregman's beis-medresh after mincha, Ester's Moyshe approached with a cigarette in his mouth. A certain person got a light from him and incidentally said, “Moyshe, if you were a guy like other guys, you could have the prettiest girl in the city.”

Moyshe responded, “I wouldn't have your daughter.”

“Why not, Moyshe?”

“Because the Gemara says in the tractate of Shabbos that one should not.” And Moyshe recited by heart all eighteen edicts that were decreed according to Chananiah ber Cheskyah ben Gurion…and he concluded: “The Gemara says, ‘And [one should not rely] on their daughters on account of something else’–one should have nothing to do with the Romans, not eat their bread nor drink their oil and their wine, and all because of their daughters, that is, one must not take their daughters as wives. And why shouldn't men marry their daughters? Because of something else…By this expression the Talmud means lest one become an idolator. Your daughter,” Moyshe concluded, “I could not take because you are a ‘something else’”…

After that, no tried to joke around with Moyshe Esther the Black.

Along with the mentally afflicted, the city did not lack epileptics. Epilepsy, or the “falling sickness,” at that time was a widespread illness in the cities and towns and did not discriminate between rich and poor.

  Indura, Belarus     Yizkor Book Project     JewishGen Home Page

Copyright © 1999-2026 by JewishGen, Inc.
Updated 26 Jun 2026 by LA