Jews in Podolia: 1860s-1880s

 

 

Source: (try to ignore her politics...)

She took it from HERE

German Troops Enter Town During WW1 as Local Jews Watch

"Last" of the Sub-Carpathian Jews

Shimon putting on tefillin for his morning prayers while his Christian wife wakes up from bed. His mother told him he was Jewish only after he grew up, so he did not get any Jewish education, but he's trying his best to keep the traditions.

Alexander is the shochet (ritual slaughterer) of Mukacheve, and the last active one in the region. There aren’t many people who eat kosher around so he is thinking to move somewhere else, probably to Israel, where he could get more work.

In the Jewish cemetery of Khust: “She always acted with care, and read the book of Psalms with love. She married her daughters to students of the Torah, and always lend a helping hand in the house. She honoured Tisha b'Av with all her strength, and as a righteous woman went straight to the world beyond...”

Irshova has no Jewish community today, so there is nobody to keep the key to the old cemetery. The combination of numbers that opens the padlock is scribbled by the gate, but to be able to read it one needs to know gematria, the Jewish method of interpreting letters as numbers. 
















Aaron bakes challah in his Brooklyn Bakery in Uzhgorod. He grew up in a Jewish neighbourhood of New York and then moved here with his wife. He is fascinated by the region's Jewish heritage, and looks forward to showing his father that it is still possible to live a Jewish life here.

A religious Jew prays his morning prayer in Kolochava. He has been sent to help the local rabbi during holidays by Chabad, a Jewish religious organization whose mission is to bring Jews together and closer to God.

Vova, the president of the Jewish community of Khust, carries the Sefer Torah (Bible Scroll) during the shabbat prayers.

Jews gather in Mukacheve for the ritual of Tashlich. On the first day of the year, it is tradition to go to a river (or to a lake, as long as it has fish in it), and cast the sins and misconceptions of the past year into the water.


Source H/T Mottel

B&H gets a crash course in Customer Relations in Today's New Reality

Photo Source


What started it all

The very polished apology from B&H

I do not envy the good people at B&H. They're in the heart of it all, New York City. They pride themselves in trying to please every single customer - so I hear, anyway. Many of their customers are of the alternative lifestyle. I'd say disproportionately so. And they need to keep them happy customers. All this is part of the general "פרנסה שאני" umbrella היתר. They don't want to be the next Chik-Fil-A that gets boycotted. I see "sensitivity training" in the future at B&H, and I can only imagine what that will do to a young Hasid from KJ or Monsey... Who knows? maybe the Rabbonim will soon forbid yungeleit from working there! nah. So is the internet the biggest threat to today's youth, or, perhaps, working at B&H can be hazardous to your spiritual well-being. But truth be told, don't you think this woman was just a wee bit sensitive? So some guy from the dark ages was surprised that "Heather has two mommies." Big deal. What's up with forcing people now to think that this is the new normal? And some of the commenters want that poor guy fired! But it WAS stupid of him to ask, no matter what his feelings are about their lifestyle.

G-d save us all.

פרשה lesson

פר׳ שלח פרק י״ד פסוק מ״ד רש״י ד״ה ויעפלו׃
אינגרי"ש בלע"ז לשון עזות

What is this "azus" that the Rashi speaks of? Is it "Azus D'Kedushah" that many groups and sects claim as their own, or is it the old-fashioned "Azus," as in "Dee Azis Poonim, Dee!" that you may have heard from your father, Rebbi, or an older person in shul when you refused to give up your seat for him. Many of our detractors, those who dislike the pure and innocent sould of Hungarian descent, would point to the latter, the Poshete Pshat of azus, but that may be more out of jealousy than of reality. My parents are very fond of the fact that their parents were frum even when others were not - which is after the Holocaust. Not that they weren't frum, but they were a bit lax in some areas of observance. Later on in life, after their children had gone to Yeshives and Bays Yankevs, all was well again, but there was a time that it wasn't. By "others" I mean Peylishe and Galitzyaners - sorry to break it to you. Having said that I can see why the P&Gs would be scornful of the Hungarians, especially if they spoke with that accent that seems to be the only form of Kosher Entertainment. The only way you can get a Heimisher to laugh is by mimicking Hungarians. What's up with that?! So lay off my people; we're tried and true. We keep it real, always have and always will be.

That's why the Rebbe surrounded himself with Hungarians.... :-)

אשר בחר בנו מכל העמים

A melamed with children in Bukhara, 1910

They say in the name of C.N. Bialik that he hated the Arabs because "they're similar to the Sefaradim..." say what you want about CNB; but I doubt that feeling had anything to do with his beliefs on Torah and Zionism, and whether or not he put on Rabbeinu Tam's Tefillin... I do not claim to know the answer as to why Jews were so adverse - to use a light term - to anybody that wasn't exactly like them. That goes for their fellow Jews as well, even if they were from the next town over, or right over the border. עאכו"כ if they spoke and looked differently! I would assume that it was like that with all the Gentiles as well, and maybe that's where we picked it up, much like lots of other ideas we have and things we do. Most of us brought this with us to America and to E. Yisroel, just like we brought our clothing and minhogim, although, to our credit, we don't harp as much on the backgrounds as we used to. Polish and Hungarian are known to mix and marry, which was unheard of a century ago, and in some circles you might even see an Eastern Jew marry a Western Jewess, and vice versa, and I don't speak of the newly religious crowd when I say that.

I attended a wedding of Bukharian Jews last week. It was my first time. There was lots to enjoy there - more food than you'd see at an Ashkenazi wedding that had 5 times as many people attend. Non-stop food. Both at the smorgasbord, and then later, at the meal. The music was outstanding, mostly Bukharian "songs" with a great singer and GREAT music. These guys REALLY know how to handle the instruments, especially those drums that they play, both the big bongo-like drum, and the smaller drum, the one that looks like something a baker would use to mold pies. You hold it in both hands and use mostly your left hand to drum. You need to be really quick with that thing in order for it to work properly and give you the desired sound, and these guys were just that! And you also have these long drum solos, which makes doing your job twice as difficult, sice you're holding a heavy drum in your hand and going on and on and on - all without the help of "banned substances." Sorry for boring you there, but this was the first wedding in a long time where I was actually interested in what was going on, so I thought I'd share, especially since it "inspired" this blog post.

I bring you that Bialik (ptoo!) pearl of wisdom because that's what ocurred to me at the wedding, G-d forgive me for that blasphemous thought. I have become somewhat less tolerant lately, almost as if it was against my will, as if it was a new Yetzer HoRah that I never really experienced before. So I looked around and I began to make Bialik's comparison - basically that these B'nei Avrohom Yitzchok VeYaakov were just like the Arabs, r"l. The strange customs, the style of brachot and at maariv, it all sounded so Arabic to me! I closed my eyes and saw the Muezzin calling the faithful to prayer! I know, I know, this kind of thinking is terrible, but what could I do? Mind you, I love the culture, the music, the piyutim, and lots of other things about it. The Rabbi pictured below was at the wedding, as well as a younger Rov, who other than his dark complexion looked like a regular Yeshivaman, Ashkenazi, he even had peyos behind his ears, which is rare for Bukharians, yet when he said the brachot under the chuppah and later davened maariv he sounded like that muezzin (ptoo!) again! This inherent Racism that I harbor is to be understood, I guess, since old habits die hard, they say. I would imagine that the old time shuls with the "cathedral" ceilings and with the chazzonim and their outfits would sound like a Timeh, leHavdil, to an Eastern Jew.

Reuters Photo

This is where Asher Bochar Bonu comes in. In cheder many of us are/were taught that a Yid is only as good as what he does. We're better than the Goyim since we don't eat pork and shrimp. We're better because we don't go to the bar and blow the rent money every day. We don't kill and maim and harm other people. We were also taught that a Yid has to look and sound like us. EXACTLY so. Otherwise he's תת רמה and maybe worse. [I may have told you about being called "א גוי" by a 2-year old kid in a shopping cart in Swan Lake a few summers ago. The reason? I had my peyos behind my ears, or maybe because I was talking English on my cellphone. I forget.] But the truth is that an adult like myself having such thoughts is a lot worse than what the 2-year old was thinking. After all, what's he seen and heard already? only his daled amos, everything else is a goy. At times like that we need to remember (or maybe only I need to, since I was the one that brought this up...] that the Eybershter chose our GUFIM, we're special because of who we are, not just what we do.

Where do I stand on this subject? Iz azoi. I have a very strong sense of identity. I have a strong love for my background and for all things Hungarian. Jewish Hungarian, that is. Blue Danube and the Csárdás are not my thing. All these years in Lubavitch have not changed that, despite the fact that I've also added a love for all things Lubavitch. But at the same time I love to learn about other Jewish cultures as well, that way when I poke fun at least I know what I'm laughing about. Just kidding. I even pride my self that I'm sort of at home in many different cultures, which is not so common these days, with people afraid to peek elsewhere for fear of maybe seeing something they like there and feeling uncomfortable where they currently are. I apologize. I completely lost my train of thought on this one. I started it 2 weeks and have no idea what I was trying to say in this paragraph. Hopefully, by me putting this back to Monday, despite finishing it on Thursday, most of won't notice and won't ask for an explanation. Stuff like this happens in this line of work. Oh, and the name of the Rabbi in the second picture is Rabbi Yehoshua, he's the "Chief Rabbi" of the Bukharian Community in Queens, or maybe even in the entire USA!