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    The Last Jews of Eastern Europe
    The Last Jews of Eastern Europe
    The Last Jews of Eastern Europe
    Ebook260 pages59 minutes

    The Last Jews of Eastern Europe

    By Yale Strom, Brian Blue and George Schwab

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    About this ebook

    In striking photography and informative text, this volume both celebrates and mourns Eastern European Jewish life of the early- to mid-twentieth century.

    From Odessa to Budapest, Warsaw, Prague, and Sarajevo, the Jews of Eastern Europe established thriving, traditional communities . And while there are still proud Jews who keep the Kehilla robust in the region, they are a shadow of their former glory. In The Last Jews of Eastern Europe, Yale Strom and photographer Brian Blue record a way of life that largely disappeared through the torment, violence, and upheaval of the twentieth century.

    Through the USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria, this volume records the three great blows to Eastern European Jewry: the historical persecution of the Jews who suffered the envy of their neighbors; the slaughter of millions during World War II; and the loss of those who accepted the aliyah to Israel. It also records how the Jews of Eastern Europe laugh, weep, and sing.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPhilosophical Library Open Road
    Release dateAug 2, 2022
    ISBN9781504077347
    The Last Jews of Eastern Europe
    Author

    Yale Strom

    Yale Strom is a violinist, composer, film maker, writer, photographer, and playwright—as well as a leading ethnographer-artist of klezmer music. In addition to composing, studying, and playing klezmer music, he writes Jewish stories with klezmer themes. He is an artist-in-residence in the Jewish Studies Program at San Diego State University. He lives in San Diego.

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      Book preview

      The Last Jews of Eastern Europe - Yale Strom

      A Tree Still Stands

      East European Jewry … I shudder to write the phrase. I am astonished to note that it exists today, that it has survived, endured a millennium unbelievable in its lack of mercy: There was the casual anti-Semitisim of neighbors envious of the Jews’ ability to thrive during the numberless times of restrictions by potentates, despots and democratic governments. Then there was the incomparable Holocaust, which cannot be justly spoken of but by recitation of facts and presentations of photographs. Then there was the aliya to Israel, fulfillment of a Jewish dream and the bleeding of the great Jewish artery that is East European Jewry.

      I am in awe because it still exists today, and I leap in the air at the chill, the bumps on my skin that I feel right now, because it does, it does. Ephraim of Budapest, circumcised at the age of forty-one, danced and served wine and honeycakes to his friends when the doctor he had brought from London finished the ritual. 1 feel as he did. I feel honored to be a Jew and to know that Ephraim, his family, and thousands like him keep kehillot robust throughout the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria.

      They are alive and living in the tradition—young ones and old ones. This book of stories and photographs demonstrates that. Brian and I had the great fortune to meet the people of these stories, to reach out to them, to watch them perform the ancient rituals, watch children two years old take the first steps of the tradition in a Jewish school serving a kosher lunch, watch a woman of ninety-three glow as she ate her kosher lunch and spoke, in both Yiddish and English, of what she had seen.

      These people are alive in Eastern Europe, living as Jews, without assimilation.

      Our book records the three great blows to East European Jewry: the historical persecution of the Jews who suffered the envy of their neighbors; the slaughter of millions of Jews during World War II in the countries the Nazis desecrated; and the loss of the Jews who accepted the aliya to Israel, their new lives in the Promised Land further decimating the kehillot of Eastern Europe.

      This book records, too, how the Jews of Eastern Europe laugh, weep, and sing. And oh, how they do those things! Please come and watch them.

      I offer my thanks to a group of young Jews I met in 1978 in the Moscow Central Synagogue. It was Purim, and they wanted to talk to me because I was an American Jew. They knew that I belonged to another arm of the tradition. But they recognized KGB agents standing nearby, and took me to a small park. There they held my hands and had me join them in Hebrew and Yiddish folk songs. A guitar played and the cold of the afternoon was burned away. Cold, I would discover, is so much of the life of the kehillot of the Eastern Bloc. And talk and song are so much of the warmth that keeps the feet and hands from frostbite.

      I hope those young Jews, now older, read and watch this book. They compelled me to make it.

      There was a preparatory journey in 1981, centered on Jewish music, especially klezmer music. Then, on October 30, 1984, the journey that led to this book began, and continued for five months. Brian Blue, a photographer with an acute eye, journeyed with me. I am grateful that he did, as you will be who open this book. He is not a Jew, and I believe that that gave his eye a singular sharpness.

      I confess I was eager to tell you more of our personal journey. But the power of the story of the kehillot forbad me. Therefore, I have tried to disappear. I hope I have succeeded. I have tried to make the stories live, as the photographs freeze moments in time and carry with them their past, present, and future.

      The living history is what matters. You will see it in Ephraim, the Cojacaru sisters, Shamash David of Plovdiv, Zipporah, Zoran the soldier. You will see it in the synagogues, the Jewish clubs, the kosher kitchens, and the cemeteries. I hope I have not intruded too much.

      I would like to thank all the Jews Brian and I met while traveling through Eastern Europe. These people, through their most generous hospitality—their menshlekheit—opened the doors of their synagogues, kosher kitchens, clubs, and homes offering food, warmth, and a glimpse into their past and present.

      Throughout our travels we were befriended by many, and without them our task would have been much more difficult: people like Genia Lis, Krystna Piekarska, and Ludmilla Pollack, who allowed us to stay with them; and Bea Sommersguter, who gave us the full use of her darkroom in Vienna, where we developed our first sixty-nine rolls of film.

      My enthusiasm for Yiddish culture was nurtured at home and developed while I studied at the YIVO Institute and New York University. Teachers and friends such as Dr. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Dr. Jack Kugelmass, and Prof. Laurin Raiken provided advice and guidance.

      I also thank my parents, David and Phyllis Strom, who gave me a solid and traditional Jewish upbringing and the support and opportunity which enabled me to learn to play the violin. Klezmer music was the bond between myself and the people in this book.

      Finally, I want to express my wonder at and thanks for George Schwab’s brilliant Preface. It provides the correct context for this story of pictures. But what it does most astoundingly is frame the only right question: can the vitality of life in Eastern Europe spark a renaissance, can Jewry there, to use the words of Faulkner in his Nobel speech, not only survive but prevail? We did not find much logic in Eastern Europe, just the chill of experiencing abundant life.

      Thank you for opening this book. You won’t be sorry you met these people, that you saw these sights inside?

      U.S.S.R.

      Kishinev

      A smallish man quickly paces a narrow street toward a large, nondescript, blue-gray building. He darts inside a gate and disappears out of the Kishinev afternoon.

      Above the gate a window reveals a Magen David hanging within a room of the building. A few moments later, the man—who had not wanted to be conspicuous as one going to study and prayer—is studying the Talmud. He is inside a synagogue. He is surrounded by the living history and tradition of Jewish life: the eternal light over the ark, the candlesticks on the bima, tallisim draped over the backs of wooden benches, and well-tattered siddurim strewn over the seats of the benches.

      An older man enters, and joins in peaceful study. Safe in this room of Jewish history, the man who had been furtive in the street reveals himself to be a young yeshiva student.

      After services another day … Shmuel, sha-mash of the synagogue, explains the care congregants take in this city. Refusing to be photographed, he says: Itzkhak, you are my friend, but I don’t know if the guards at the border will take your film. He speaks of the authorities and his fear is that the congregants will be questioned and harassed by those authorities if photographs are discovered—photographs of religious activities frowned on by the state.

      Among the older Jews, closer to the burning anti-Semitism of the earlier twentieth century than the younger ones, and more in touch with the historical anti-Semitism than the younger ones as well, there is little resentment of concealment that they feel is required to practice their religion. They believe that the Western press makes too much of Soviet government interference. They cite, with resignation more than heat, examples of racial and anti-Semitic problems in the United States.

      Older Jews attend synagogue services more consistently than younger Jews. A twice-daily minyan consists of twelve to fifteen men—most of them older. Following each morning service, a kiddush and a pick-me-up schnapps are served. The history breathes here as surely as it does in the siddurim.

      While synagogue worship is the most visible form of Jewish expression in Kishinev and the rest of the Soviet Union, wary Jews live their religious life more robustly. Within careful mantles of suspicion, groups celebrate Shabbat and holidays and festivals, study Hebrew and

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