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Although I was born in the town of Kopyl, I still consider myself a Mirrer, since my parents moved with me from Kopyl when I was one and a half years old. Although Kopyl remained completely unknown to me from those years, I spent my entire childhood in Mir until I was seventeen years old.

I remember well the main streets Vilenskaya, Zhukhovichskaya and Mirskaya. I also remember the synagogue courtyard with the cold synagogue, the Beit Midrash^[2] and other small schools and colleges, and all the alleys leading from the synagogue courtyard and a little further to the new city, where our urban poor lived in indescribable hardships. I also remember parts of the city of Padal and Yurzdike, as well as the streets where the city's townspeople and Tatars lived, whom we called, according to the expression from the Pentateuch, Kedarim^[3]. In particular, I remember well our fortress, which in the old days protected our city from attacks by foreign troops. Napoleon destroyed everything around this military castle during his campaign against Moscow, and since then only ruins have remained from it. But from time to time, counts and nobles lived in it, to whom our town belonged. The castle was a real fortress, adapted for the wars of the Middle Ages. A large fortress wall with very thick walls, three or four meters high, with towers on all sides, built with a broad hand and a strategic head.

Below, as they said, there is an underground road along which you can take a carriage drawn by four horses to Nesvizh, which lies twenty-eight miles from our city. Shady hills stretched around the fortress, and a little further our river, Miranka, flowed. We children came to the castle every Saturday after dinner for fun. We went inside, walked through huge ruined halls, climbed floors, walked along wide long corridors, climbed the “dizzying staircase”, and then climbed up the destroyed walls, although this was very risky. About the slums, the children told each other different stories about the “bad guys” who spend their orgies there every night, about beautiful witches, about how they seduce innocent men there and about the grief that falls to those who fall into their clutches. They play with him, kiss him and hold him until he dies in their arms. And with great fear, the children told how they had recently caught a guard and that same night he died in the arms of beautiful girls from the castle. We never went there alone, but always in groups, so that the witches would not have any power over us.

About half a mile from the city was the “court” of the princes to whom the city belonged. In my time the town priest was the old Pole Fusiato. He lived there with his large household and his servants. Then this courtyard passed to the new owner of the city – Prince Svyatopolk Mirsky. This courtyard

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was a very strange and even hostile kingdom for us children. We were afraid to go there because, firstly, we were afraid of his caretaker (guard), who liked us to take off our hats, and secondly, we were afraid of his big dogs. There were rumors in the city that at the entrance to the yard there was a terrible wolf with bared teeth and, as soon as he saw someone entering the yard, he attacked him and tore him to pieces…

At the other end of the village, on the road to the “Kedarimovskie graves” (Tatar cemetery), there was another princely courtyard. There, in the second courtyard, he administered “justice.”

When I was sixteen years old, I had the “privilege” of working as his unofficial secretary because, as a Jew, I was not eligible to hold such a high government position. The town, as we called it, belonged to the Minsk province. Not far from us was our district town Novogrudok, and fifteen miles from the city was the Gorodzey railway station, or Horodziej, as we called it. Five thousand people lived in the city, most of whom were Jews. Jews mainly occupied the city center with the market, but were also distributed in other parts of the city, although not in such dense numbers as in the center. The population of five thousand was divided into three races: Semitic – Jews, Caucasoid – Belarusians and Mongolian – Tatars. But not everyone had equal rights. According to religion, the population was also divided into three separate groups: the Tatars were Mohammedans, the Belarusians were Orthodox, and the Jews naturally believed in the Mosaic Torah. At that time, there were three separate worlds that had almost nothing in common, except that they maintained trade relations with each other. The busiest part of the city was the market square. There were the most beautiful buildings here, there were two churches, the richest Jews lived here, all the shops and stores were here, and at night the market was illuminated with kerosene lanterns.

In Jewish areas the streets were paved. However, this did not prevent the fact that in spring and autumn there were so many leaves that it was impossible to walk along the streets.

Among the most beautiful buildings in the city were two churches and a cold synagogue, in which they did not pray in winter because it was not heated. Also the Beit Midrash in the courtyard of the synagogue, the building of the Russian elementary school and the Catholic sixth-grade school, as well as the house of the Kamenetskys and Lewins.

Not far from the synagogue courtyard was the world famous Mir Yeshiva^[4], founded in 1815. In my time, the head of the yeshiva was Rabbi Chaim Leib^[5]. I still remember Rabbi Chaim Leib very well. He was the most respected and prominent Jew in the city. I instinctively feared him, since my parents were not pious, did not have a kosher kitchen, and I was always afraid that, God forbid, he would curse us as a “saint.” Both in the city and in the surrounding area they paid much more attention to him than to our Rabbi Lipele, who also had a reputation in what was then Belarus. Rabbi Chaim Leib did not interfere in the affairs of the shtetl, and devoted himself entirely to running the yeshiva. He was a Jew not of this world, but of a completely different world, a higher, noble and moral world. He soared in the skies and moved only

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in the world of the highest Jewish morality. He did not withdraw into himself, and spent most of his time with the yeshiva boys, of whom he always had 400–500 people.

In our city there were already Jewish teachers, doctors, a pharmacist, and two lawyers. Some of our youth have devoted themselves to reading secular books. From those times I remember the Zeldovich brothers, who independently studied not only Russian and German, but also English. I remember the Jewish students Jacob Halfern, Solomon and Thaddeus Levin, Shmuel Leder, professor of mnemonics Feinstein and the most learned Vera Levina, a friend of A. Lesin^[6] in his Minsk period. Advanced Russian intellectuals such as teachers, judges and priests received more pleasure from communicating with intelligent Jews than with their coreligionists.

We already had a library in the shtetl, consisting of a large selection of books in Russian, Yiddish and Hebrew, first in the house of Shai Rozovsky, and then in the house of Isaac Schwartz. In addition to the library, there was a girl in our town named Miss Feder who wrote Jewish books, novels, and story booklets and lent them to her regular customers. Then, when Jewish literary collections began to appear, she bought them and rented them out. So she spread light and knowledge in our town.

Russian newspapers and magazines also came to our home; my father had an excellent library of Russian classics and translations of European literature.

However, I must add that there were few readers of books in Russian, Yiddish and Hebrew in my shtetl at that time, about forty to fifty people. Mostly women read, and their favorite books were the “most interesting” novels of Shomer^[7]. In general, the Jewish life we were in at that time was glorified. The vast majority of the Jewish population was very devout and all lived according to the old Jewish tradition.

In our shtetl, Jews were valued not for their wealth, but for their learning. The “wealth” of the individual took second place.

The economic situation of the shtetl Jews was terrible. Almost eighty percent of the Jewish population did not have enough bread. The Christians forced them to engage in agriculture, but the Jews did not agree to this. The government took away all sources of income for the Jews, and I still cannot understand how the poor Jews did not simply starve to death. We only had bartenders, a few rich shopkeepers, a few moneylenders, forest merchants, forest officials, etc. Farmers, peasants and Jews with similar “means of subsistence” had to feed themselves all their lives and never received proper food. Fortunately, the tsarist government did not interfere with market days, which were held every Sunday, and fairs were held in the city twice a year. The Jews considered them manna from heaven. Thousands of farmers came from surrounding villages. They sold their products and used the proceeds to buy tobacco, kerosene lamps, linen, various materials, agricultural implements and gifts for women and children. After every purchase and sale, farmers went to bars. The Jews prepared for the fair several weeks before it began. And everyone became merchants. They borrowed a few rubles and traded. We bought and sold eggs,

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hay, grain, a bushel of apples, and there was something left in our pocket. Richer people bought sheep, calves, and horses and had income from this trade for six months. The Jews also looked forward to the whole year for the time when “strangers” would come to the city from all the surrounding areas, because then the bartenders and shopkeepers were doing very well. True, very often the appearance of visitors ended in fights among themselves or between Christians and Jews. In such cases, strong Jewish guys and butchers came and drove away the drunken attackers.

The Jews of my shtetl differed from all the neighboring Jewish towns in their nobility and learning. And the Jews always boasted of this when the inhabitants of Kletsk, Stolbtsy, Nesvizh or Lyakhovichy came to the Mir. And we were all really proud that we were Mirrers.

My father, being a former yeshiva student, was able to study well and was very fond of secular education.

He was, in the full sense of the word, a modern man with a warm Jewish heart. As a lawyer, as a matter of principle he never defended a criminal and never recognized the trial of a Christian over a Jew. My father spoke and read several languages and was a great lover of fine literature. He also wrote extensively in Yiddish. Great work: “Palestinian Emigrant” remains forever in my memory. As far as I remember, it was a literary work with a strong patriotic content, in which he put forward the ideas of the “Lovers of Zion.”

Recruits (Prizivnikes) for the Russian Army in 1914

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destroyed everything herself.^[b]

From that time, I also have almost no memory of the first era of the “Lovers of Zion” movement in the eighties. I remember my father fiddling with the “campaign.” He was the chairman and secretary of the organization in Mir. There were often meetings in our house at which my father spoke. I remember how on my birthday, the “loving one” who lived in our house left our city and went to the Land of Israel with his family. Because of this, there was a buzz in our house, everyone was talking, and the next morning all the “loving” people saw him off from the city. Then I lost my roommate. He was a strange boy who went with his father to the Land of Israel and in my childhood fantasies I imagined how my friend would become a shepherd on the mountains of Zion, and I was very jealous of him…

When I was five years old, my mother took me to my first teacher, Kiva Kugel. I also studied with two other teachers. I went to them for almost four years. During this time I learned about Joshua, the Judges, Samuel, and with this my old Jewish education was almost complete.

At that time we lived with Dodgen (David), a Jew who wrote petitions to Russian officials. He was a widower and loved bitter drinks. He always came home very late. His son Berl, a thirteen-year-old boy who was already attending a Russian district school, became my first Russian language teacher. Soon my parents sent me to a Russian elementary school. While attending public school, I studied with two private teachers. I studied Hebrew with teacher Weiner and went so far as to translate the story of Robinson Crusoe^[8] from Russian into Hebrew. I also studied German from a German woman, Fraulein Tetz.

Most of all I loved the evenings when my father read his stories or we listened to a novel about life in the Mir, written at that time by the watchmaker Mendel Tsirinsky. As far as I remember, it was written with great talent. His coming and reading was a real holiday for me. My parents had to be upset about this affair. In the middle of writing the novel, he left for America and what's more: we never heard anything more about him…

At that time my father was very busy creating educational courses for our poor youth. He argued in one of his speeches that the whole problem of the Jews is that we are engaged only in unproductive labor, and we have more shopkeepers, innkeepers, bartenders and peddlers than we need. One competes with the other and snatches the last piece from his mouth. Anti-Semitism, he argued, also stems from the fact that we derive our happiness from the smell of the market, from the wind. We must open a vocational school in our city, where our youth should be taught to cultivate the land or train to become good tailors, shoemakers, and mechanics. Let our vocational school, he concluded his frequent sermons, serve as an example for neighboring cities and towns of how to move from air pollution to productive work. But he not only campaigned, but also stepped forward with iron determination to realize his dream. Through the Jewish Society^[9] of Craft Labor, then located in St. Petersburg, he obtained money for this purpose and also, after long negotiations in high government spheres, agreed to build a house

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for such an institution.

However, when everything was almost finished, a major economic crisis occurred, due to which all work was stopped.

I remember a guest who stayed in our house for a very long time. He was my cousin on my mother's side, Shmuel Shmurak, and at the same time he was the nephew of our classic Mendel Moyher-Sforim^[10]. At first, Shmuel lived in the house of his uncle R. Mendel in Odessa and came to visit us directly from his house as a 21-year-old youth. Mendel wanted to make him a useful Jew and enrolled him in the Trud vocational school^[11], where he was the director. Shmuel always loved to brag about his great-uncle and always told stories about his uncle's house. But personally he was not interested in any questions; he spoke only Russian, dressed like a Tyrol's German. For some time he was a teacher in our city. And then he taught in Baranovichi, from there he left for Warsaw.

Original footnotes:

1. From the book “My life and my travels”, Mexico, 1947. back
2. See my mother's article: “From old Kopyl. Memoirs of Sarah Myshkowskaya”, Jiwobleter, March-April 1937 back

Translator's footnotes:

1. Noach (Noah, Nevakh) Markovich (Mordekhaevich) Mishchkowski (July 8, 1978, Kopyl, Minsk province, Russian Empire - January 11, 1950, New York, New York, USA) – journalist, writer and public figure, Zionist territorialist. back
2. Beit Midrash (“house of learning”, yeshiva) is a higher religious educational institution designed to study the Oral Law, mainly the Talmud. back
3. Kedarim - probably the Tatars considered the streams of Kedar - the second son of Ishmael. back
4. In 1815, Talmudist and major merchant Shmuel Chaimovich Tiktinsky (died April 8, 1835 in Hungary) founded a famous yeshiva in Mir. back
5. Tiktinsky Chaim-Yehuda-Leib (1823, Mir - 1899, Warsaw), rabbi. Son of the founder of the yeshiva. From 1850 he headed the yeshiva. back
6. Avrom Lesin (Avraham, born Avrom Valt; May 19 1872 , Minsk – November 5 1938 , New York ) - American poet, essayist and translator, editor, journalist. He wrote in Yiddish. back
7. Shomer (pseudonym, acronym for the name Shaikevich Nahum Meir; 1846, the town of Nesvizh, Minsk province, now Belarus - 1905, New York) - Jewish writer, theater figure, publisher and playwright. He wrote mainly in Yiddish. The classics of new Yiddish literature, primarily Shalom Aleichem, actively opposed Shomer's work, introducing the term “shomerism” as a designation for low-grade fiction. back
8. Robinson Crusoe is a novel by the English writer Daniel Defoe (1660–1731), first published in April 1719. back
9. The Society of Craft Labor (ORT) was founded in 1880 in the capital of the Russian Empire, St. Petersburg, as the “Society for the Dissemination of Craft and Agricultural Labor among Jews” (ORT). The idea of creating such an organization belongs to the famous scientist Nikolai Bakst. back
10. Mendele Moykher-Sforim (Sholem-Yankev (Yakov) Abramovich; December 21, 1835 [January 2, 1836] or January 2, 1836], Kopyl, Minsk province - November 25 [December 8] 1917 or December 8, 1917, Odessa, UPR) - Jewish writer , is considered the founder of modern secular literature in the Yiddish language. A classic of literature in Yiddish and Hebrew. back
11. Jewish vocational school “Trud”. Opened in 1864. Provided secondary general and special education according to the regulations on city schools of 1872. The new building of the Trud craft society was built in 1895. The school of craft students was founded by E.M. Mendelevich. Subsequently, the trustee was Efim Yakovlevich Mendelevich, merchant of the 1^st guild, elected merchant class, member of the grain control commission at the Odessa stock exchange. back

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I was introduced to the Yeshiva through my last teacher.

I personally did not have a great desire to continue learning the Gemara, and the supervisor of the Yeshiva, who interviewed me, was also not too keen to accept me; however it was almost a tradition, that every village boy, from the most prosperous to the poorest boot maker's son would be accepted. Nevertheless he was accepted as long as he was an adequate student and then studied a few terms in the Yeshiva.

The author Y. Rolnik, New York Yosef Rolnik, born in 1879 in the village of Zuchevich (Zhukevichi), close to Mir. Until the age of fifteen he studied in the Mir Yeshiva. In 1899 he emigrated to New York. He returned and lived in Minsk. In 1908 once again he emigrated to New York, and remained there until passing away on July 18, 1955. He was the editor of several books of poetry as well as a book of memorials (1954).

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pieces and would entertain the family. We used to refer to them by the name of their villages, as they referred to each other in the Yeshiva.

The Yeshiva was located in a large building not far from the area of the synagogues. In the Yeshiva, there were twelve tables; ten near the walls and two in the middle of the Yeshiva. In between the two middle tables, there were two thick, wooden pillars that supported the ceiling. The two tables were known as; the “the guard table” and the second one was called “the table behind”. At these two tables' people studied day and night. As soon as one Yeshiva boy left a second one came along. Several learned until dawn, and others would awaken at dawn and they would replace them.

The other ten tables also had names; amongst these tables which faced the eastern side and stood on both sides of the Holy Ark, and the one table on the right was named with the name of the head of the Yeshiva, “Reb Chaim-Leib's table”. The table on the left side of the Holy Ark was named “the Rabbi's table”, in memory of the previous rabbi. These two tables, had “subsidiary tables”. I say they were “subsidiary” tables and not “back tables”, because they were a little lower in importance compared to the first two tables; behind Reb Chaim Leib and behind HaRav's tables.

The best students with brilliant minds sat at these eastern tables, and also students with important backgrounds. Behind them at the southern and northern walls there were two long tables. The one was named “the clock table”, and the second table by the northern wall, was called the “village table”. The mature students would sit at these tables. There were more tables which were lower in importance; the Supervisor's table; the Reb Peretz's table; the oven-table and the door-table. In total – twelve tables.

In the front of the building there were two separate rooms – a little synagogue and in the second room there was a private office for the Rosh Yeshiva.

Studying began at nine in the morning. At that time the yeshiva students

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would “prepare” the page of the Gemara, upon which the Head of the Yeshiva would give his lesson. Precisely at one o'clock the students from the “the clock and the villages tables” would all suddenly move their tables to the middle of the hall, and would push themselves into the two “guard tables” which stood on the east and west side, and they created a square with four little walls.

The Rosh Yeshiva sat at the eastern table and delivered the lesson and the yeshiva students would seat themselves around all four sides, and those who did not have where to sit, would stand overlooking the heads of those sitting and they would hold the open Gemaras in their uplifted arms. The Rosh Yeshiva would deliver the lecture from an open Gemara, however, the top students would continually interrupt him with their questions which they had previously prepared, and in return the Rosh Yeshiva would either reject or would reply to the questions.

Not all of the yeshiva students would remain in the yeshiva for the lessons; many would leave the yeshiva until the afternoon. At three o'clock they would once again sit down to study at the tables, and studying continued until nine in the evening. Afternoon and evening prayers took place in the yeshiva hall both in summer and in winter.

I was seated at the “clock table”, at which the mature students would sit, but not in the same row with them, but on one of the small benches at the end of the table. When the lesson was given, the “clock table” was pushed towards the “guard table”, and the small benches were removed, and I did not know whether I belonged to the “clock table” or not.

The heads of the Yeshiva were the following: Reb Chaim-Leib, the head of the Yeshiva, with a snow white little beard. He would walk around the yeshiva with little steps, and glancing in all directions. Suddenly, he grew large behind the back of one of the yeshiva students, who was swaying over the Gemorra, and asked him a question, exactly from the page that he was learning. (He never approached me, because one required to be privileged).

He was neither disliked nor liked – we were petrified in his presence. One would say; “he can cause pain”. Not looking directly at him, they would answer him confidently, and those who received a good word from him were happy. He gave a lesson four times a week.

Mir Yeshiva Located in Shanghai In the synagogue “Beit Aharon”, Museum Road, 50 years, 5702 – 1941/1942

The more worldly and younger yeshiva students, had a separate little synagogue, next to the Yeshiva

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where they would pray as a congregation. One of the students would lead the morning service, the second would lead the additional service and a third student would read from the Torah and the others – who wanted to pray would remain inside, and those who did not wish to pray – would stand outside and gossip.

There was another quorum in a house in the vicinity of the synagogue. There we would come to the synagogue, as if to pray on Saturday morning. But, in actual fact, we would exchange with each other Hebrew booklets. It was a kind of exchange location.

I learnt in the Yeshiva for one year – a winter followed by the summer. At the end of the summer, the Yeshiva burnt down, and not just the Yeshiva but also three quarters of the village. The morning after the fire many of the Yeshiva students left to go home, each one

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to his town. They stood next to the transporters' premises with their salvaged boxes in their hands. Amongst them there were many close friends of mine: Der Pinsker, Der Oshmyanyer, Der Marzirer and Der Bialistoker. I missed them terribly for many years, and searched for them all over the world.

The Yeshiva had twelve “mishulochim” (emissaries) that is what they called them, who travelled all through Russia and also to various other countries. They reached Siberia, the Caucasus, England, America and even Africa. They collected funds in order to support the Yeshiva, its leaders and also “weekly stipends” to the Yeshiva students.

“The weekly stipend” was paid monthly, according to the amount of money collected from the village from where the student came. Obviously a bigger town gave more than a smaller town, but as it turned out, that there were four or five yeshiva students from a big town and only one or two from a small town. Thus the student from a small village received more than the students from the big towns. The “weekly stipend” amounted to one and a half ruble, and reached a maximum amount of four or five ruble a month. In extraordinary cases, when the student was a conscientious student or had another positive merit, he received a large “weekly stipend”, although his village only brought in very little.

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The bookkeeper, Reb Heshel Elishberg, oversaw the “emissaries”.

In our Yeshiva, there were students from all parts of Russia; Lithuanians, from the nearby towns; from Warsaw, with long caftans and side locks; students from the Baltic areas, who brought with them German books; a very pale Siberian boy – Yoshe, with snow white teeth, and very tall, with a gray fur hat; and a student from the Caucasus, who brought two hats with him, as the inhabitants of his country wore; one a red, round hat (feske/peske) with a brass handle and the other a rectangular sable streimel with fringes on all four sides

The number of names of the towns and villages was in the hundreds, and the age of the Yeshiva students – were from the age of fourteen until the mid twenties. There were no qualified rabbis amongst the students; anyway I did not know of any. Subsequently many of them later became rabbis and leaders of Jewish communities.

In later years there were many changes in the Yeshiva; other than the method of learning – there were no longer any tables, studying took place on a “shtender” (lectern); as well as the method of supporting for the Yeshiva and its students. However, I am expressing the general picture and the leadership of the Yeshiva during my times.

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