CHAPTER TEN
Kol Yisrael Arevim Ze ba Ze
All Jews are responsible one for the other.
Stavishche, July 1919
Rabbi Pitsie Avram had his own special interpretation of this famous Talmudic statement. When several thousand murderous bandits took the shtetl of Stavishche by storm on July 31, 1919, Pitsie Avram felt compelled to save the Jews of the town. While everyone in town feared for their lives, the sixty-two-year-old rabbi, much to the dismay of his wife, Sara, who begged him not to draw attention to himself, ran out openly into the street and was arrested by the infamous Zeleny’s bandits.
“Take me to your ataman!” he demanded.
A dark-haired, lightly bearded man in his thirties stepped forward. “I am Ataman Zeleny,” answered Danylo Ilkovych Terpylo, the hetman from the village of Tripoliye. “I believe you were asking for me.”
The white-bearded rabbi, standing before him with a gun pointed at his head, spoke in Russian, the ataman’s native language, hoping to use diplomacy as a way of protecting his people from any further violence. His heroic negotiation with Zeleny was within earshot of Rebecca, who, while hiding in the nearby muddy woods with Isaac and their three daughters, translated the fiery exchange for her husband.
“I am Yitzhak Avraham Gaisinsky, the rabbi of Stavishche,” he told the bandit, a former carpenter in the Kiev train yards. “Since you and your soldiers are our guests, we wish to provide you with boots, sugar, salt, and money, on the condition that you protect the town.”I
“You show great courage,” the hetman responded. “This is something I have not seen before in a Jewish leader.”
By a great stroke of luck, Ataman Zeleny liked, and even admired, the brave rabbi, and agreed to send two of his soldiers to accompany Pitsie Avram on a house-to-house collection. Six hundred thousand rubles were collected from the town’s population, and a group of nearly thirty men, who had been arrested and taken hostage during the initial tumult, were released unharmed. Only two or three murders were committed during the raid, minimal in comparison to the devastating trail of bodies that Zeleny’s soldiers had left behind in other villages. Zeleny, out of great respect for the rabbi’s fierce and unyielding determination to shield his people from danger, prevented his henchmen from committing any further lootings, robberies, and murders on that summer day. The Red Army, on the trail of the bandits, soon appeared and chased the thousands of hooligans out of town.
When he boldly demanded a meeting with the infamous bandit, the rabbi exhibited an innate understanding of human nature. In this instance, it was almost as if he had been given access to one of Zeleny’s earlier speeches, which expressed the murderous ataman’s views on the Jewish “question.” Less than seven months earlier, Zeleny, a gifted orator, delivered a speech in the town of Borispol, located twenty miles east southeast of Kiev, which was later reported on by eyewitnesses.
I am neither a Jew-lover, nor a Jew hater. It is not because of hatred that we do not take Jews into our ranks. We are fighting for freedom and land; with freedom every resident of the Ukraine will benefit, but the land belongs only to the Ukrainians. The Jews certainly cannot take offense at this. The Jew does not need land. The Jew does not want to toil, just as the Jew does not want to fight a war.… A Jew needs freedom, and he will get it. Let him do as much business as his heart desires, as long as it is of honest and respectable character. In return for the freedom we will bring to the Jews, they should help us out with money.II
Who was this fearless rabbi who risked his life for the Jews of his shtetl?
Without question, Pitsie Avram was Stavishche’s greatest Jewish homegrown scholar as well as its strongest personality. While there were other fine rabbis in the town, such as Yaakov Yosef, Eliyahu Sohet, and the Zionist leader HaLevi from Lida, it was Pitsie Avram’s remarkable courage that stood out, ensuring his legendary status. Even a half-century after his death in 1942, Stavishche landsmen shared fond memories of the colorful rabbi.
While his proper name was Rabbi Yitzhak Avraham Gaisinsky (Haissinsky in Yiddish), he was known to everyone in Stavishche simply as “Rabbi Pitsie Avram.”
All that is really known about Pitsie Avram’s childhood is that he was born in Stavishche to Rabbi Israel Haissinsky and his wife, Libby, on June 5, 1857, and that he came from a long line of rabbis. He was ordained by Rabbi Michel of Belaya Tserkov. In 1883, Pitsie Avram succeeded his late father as the Jewish spiritual leader of Stavishche. His grandfather Isaac and his great-grandfather Nissan had both served as rabbis of the community, and his mentor and uncle, Rabbi Raphael Haissinsky, was an outstanding scholar and teacher.III
Pitsie Avram’s oldest child and only son, Nissan, was a rabbi and an “honored merchant in the town of Talnoye, Kiev District.”IV The esteemed rabbi upheld family tradition by marrying off the three oldest of his five daughters to the sons of other well-established rabbinical families in (what is now) Ukraine.V His oldest daughter, Fruma, married Rabbi Zelig Tanicki of Boguslav, and a second daughter, Golda, became the wife of Rabbi Dov Ber Czarne of Monasterzyce. A third daughter, Liba (Libby), married Rabbi Aryeh Judah Spector of Zhivotov.VI Rabbi Spector, the esteemed teacher of the teen songbird Pinchas Segal (Pierre Pinchik), was murdered while heroically trying to warn Jewish families of an imminent pogrom.
Pitsie Avram insisted that his young and brilliant grandson Moise Haissinsky, son of Nissan, leave his parents’ home in Tarashcha to be raised by him as a rabbi in Stavishche. Moise, who inherited the rabbi’s keen intellect, eventually left Stavishche for other parts of Europe, leaving behind all the rabbinical aspirations his grandfather had for him. In France, he became a well-respected scientist, assisting Marie Curie in her famous laboratory. Today, Pitsie Avram’s grandson is considered to be one of the founders of radiochemistry.VII
The esteemed rabbi’s granddaughter (and Moise’s sister) Eva Haissinsky Goldman recalled that for four decades, the residents of Stavishche would turn to her zeyde (grandfather) for advice in all important life-altering discussions: engagements, weddings, divorces, business arrangements and disagreements, and the settling of other disputes. In addition to being wise, he was a skilled diplomat. It would not be an unusual sight for his many young grandchildren, including Moise and Eva, to witness both sides of disputing parties arguing and yelling before him. According to Eva, the old rabbi would then hold out his kerchief, letting it be known that he had made his decision.VIII
All facets of life in the town revolved around Pitsie Avram and his influence. Although he was known as the rabbi of the common people and prayed with them at both the bet hamidrash and the Sokolovka kloyz, he was respected by almost everyone in Stavishche.IX His display of courage in protecting all the Jews in town during times of distress, regardless of their religious level and affiliation, awarded him heroic status.
His youngest daughter, Havah, who earned a chemistry degree and worked in Stavishche as a pharmacist, worshipped her father. She would later write of him proudly:
Besides being a pious scholar, he was also very wise. He was the religious leader of the town, the adviser, the peace maker, the representative of all the Jews before God and before the world. He helped the Jews of Stavishche at all times, especially in time of war. At the time of the pogroms he rescued them from the murderers’ hands. With his great wisdom he saved the Jews from the greatest dangers.X
After exiting Stavishche, Zeleny and thousands of his men rode by horseback and soon reached the town of Sokolovka Justingrad. As they passed through a nearby shtetl, Jewish eyewitnesses described seeing as many as five thousand to ten thousand of his followers. Unfortunately for the Jewish population of Sokolovka Justingrad, Zeleny did not take such a liking to their rabbi.
1. I. This was also a recollection by the rabbi’s granddaughter Havah (Eva) Haissinsky Goldman (see Notes).
2. II. Source: Tcherikower, Di Ukrainer Pogromen in Yor 1919.
3. III. Source: Gottlieb, S.N. Ohole-Schem, Biografien und Adressen d. Rabbiners. Translated by Yale J. Reisner. Pinsk: MM Glouberman Printer, 1912.
4. IV. Source: Gottlieb, Ohole-Schem, Biografien und Adressen d. Rabbiners. Family members state that Nissan also had familial ties to Tarashcha. His last residence in Ukraine was in Talnoe in 1927.
5. V. The only child of Rabbi Pitsie Avram and his wife, Sara, who is not mentioned within the text is his fourth-born daughter, Rose, who remained in Europe.
6. VI. Source: Gottlieb, Ohole-Schem, Biografien und Adressen d. Rabbiners.
7. VII. Rossiyskaya Evreiskaya Entsiclopediya, entry 1354.
8. VIII. Source: Eva Haissinsky Goldman describes her grandfather’s influence in a story in the Stavishche Yizkor Book.
9. IX. In addition to Rabbi Pitsie Avram’s followers in the bet hamidrash and the Sokolovka kloyz, many Stavishchers were followers of the rabbis from the Zionist, Hassidic, Talnoe, or Makarov kloyz.
10. X. Source: Havah Zaslawsky’s story in the Stavishche Yizkor Book.