CHAPTER FOUR
Stavishche: Just Before the Revolution
Up until the turn of the 20th century, mostly peaceful times prevailed between Christians and Jews in Stavishche. Nestled in a green valley on the road from Kiev to Uman, the small Russian village remained unscathed during the religious discord that plagued so many of its neighboring towns in 1905.I The Gentiles who broke their backs tilling the soil and the Jewish merchants and artisans who struggled to earn a living on a daily basis tried to respect each other’s hardships.
Stavishche, a land isolated by rivers and ponds and surrounded on one side by an overcrowded pine tree forest, had a long, rich history of Jewish culture and life. By 1763, the Jewish population in town was already well established, with sixty-one Jewish households appearing in a census. One hundred and fifty years later, just prior to the Revolution of 1917, half of the 8,500 residents of Stavishche were Jewish. Most of the Jews were concentrated in the center of town, forming a ghetto. The majority of their houses had clay floors and straw roofs; they were built on crooked streets, with no greenery surrounding them.
On a chilly but sunny spring afternoon in 1917, villagers came out from every corner of town. Rabbi Pitsie Avram and Cantor David-Yosel Moser met at Golub’s bookstore, sitting and discussing the latest newspaper stories on the porch.
“Another false accusation of Jewish blood libel,”II the rabbi read. “It’s been over three years since the acquittal of Beilis, yet their hatred for us grows. They’ll never let us live in peace.”
“That is my prayer—that my grandchildren should only know peace,” David-Yosel answered.
“Ah, speaking of grandchildren…,” the rabbi said, while lifting his bearded face up from behind the newspaper. “I see two of them now. It looks as if Isaac has put Daniel and Sol to work.”
“Indeed, it does.”
The cantor watched as his two grandsons pushed an old wooden handcart piled high with shoes and boots earmarked for deliveries.
It was a familiar sight: Isaac sent his young daughter Channa, along with Rebecca’s nephew, Daniel Cutler, to make deliveries throughout the shtetl. Sol Moser, Daniel’s older cousin and the son of Itzie Moser,III the bakery owner, joined them. The three children were excited. They wandered freely through the one-horse town on Alexandria Street, the main road, which was paved in cobblestone.
As usual, they began their journey at Isaac’s old-fashioned boot factory and were expected to make stops around the village, eventually finishing at the town’s gates, near Count Branicki’s vast estate. Surrounding the Polish landowner’s manor were many stately homes inhabited by those who worked for him. There were very few deliveries on the outskirts of town, where impoverished Christian peasants lived on farms.
The trio looked forward to their interesting encounters with many colorful personalities of their village. As was almost always the case, they first spotted Leaper the Blinder, who lived behind Alexandria Street on the intergesl (side street or alley), not far from the boot factory near the Stavishcha Inn. It didn’t matter what the weather was like, Leaper the Blinder made the trip every day to visit his aunt Haika at the family bakery on the other side of town. Today, the ground was very muddy, but somehow, even though he couldn’t see a thing, Leaper managed to avoid the mud and kept his boots clean!
“How do you do it?” Sol asked.
“My cane guides me…,” Leaper answered.
The local celebrity, who was wearing his signature opera hat and a cape, sensed that Sol was not alone. “Call out to me, children, so I know who’s here!”
“Hello, Leaper!” Daniel said.
“You’re Yunkel’s son,” Leaper said to Daniel.
“Hello, sir!” young Channa said.
“You’re Isaac the shoemaker’s daughter!” he answered.
The children giggled and were thoroughly amused. The blind and brilliant chazzan instantly recognized their voices. It was a game to everyone in Stavishche: Leaper was always right.
“Did you children hear the performance of the famous tenor Pinchas Siegal at the large shul on Synagogue Street last week?” Leaper asked. “He is beginning to call himself Pierre Pinchik.”IV
“Papa said that the crowds rushed to hear his concert, but Pinchas stood there in his tall chazzan hat and refused to sing a single note until there was absolute silence,” Sol answered.
“Yes, since he made his debut a few years ago at the Kiev Synagogue, he has become quite the temperamental performer,” Leaper answered. “And he now wears a hat even taller than mine!
“Good day, children,” the cantor said, tipping his top hat toward the youngsters, “I’m off to greet my favorite tante, Haika de Zhitomir.”
As the blind cantor continued on his way, Daniel questioned Sol. “Why did Leaper say that your mother is from Zhitomir?” he asked. “Hasn’t the Stepansky family always lived here in Stavishche?”
“No, she and her eight brothers and sisters, including my two uncles, Lepe the egg merchant and Yoske the blacksmith, fled from their hometown years ago. There was a pogrom there that killed many people, including children,” Sol answered.
What Sol didn’t mention to his young cousin was that the Zhitomir pogrom was an exceptionally brutal one: Jewish babies were murdered by being thrown into the air and caught on the tips of the bandits’ swords. The Stepansky family resettled in Stavishche, where Haika’s husband, Itzie Moser, grew up. Along with the Moser family, they became, in many of the villagers’ opinions, the true Jewish roots of the town.
Daniel wandered off the main thoroughfare and then flagged over his two cousins. He pointed out the house of Chiah Sura Spivack, well-known in town for practicing her hot “cupping”V techniques on family members to soothe their pain. The children of Stavishche were fascinated by cupping, known as bankes in Yiddish, an ancient Jewish folk remedy similar to acupressure that was popular in Russia in the early 1900s. Although they did not have a shoe delivery for her, the kids peeked through the unsuspecting Chiah Sura’s window, each getting a glimpse of how she magically created a vacuum by air (heated by fire) in glass cups that she placed flush against the skin of her current patient.
“Did you know that Chiah Sura is Avrum Postrelko’s aunt?” Daniel asked Channa, who shook her head. “A few years ago, he escaped exile near Yakutsk and fled to the Holy Land. He now calls himself Avraham Harzfeld and is starting to become a big deal in Eretz Yisrael.”
“No, I didn’t know,” Channa answered, unsure where Eretz Yisrael was. The young girl’s attention was, however, quickly diverted by the appearance of Pitsie Sheynes, the husband of Shika de Potch’s sister Pearl, as he walked down the path that they just strayed from. He was a handsome tailor whom some considered, from head to toe, to be one of the best-dressed men in town. His modern topcoat was only partially buttoned, exposing a fancy suit underneath; he even wore his dress shoes while walking through the muddy thoroughfare.
“I know of two other Pitsies,” Daniel said, and laughed while following Channa back to the cobblestone road. “There is a man called Pitsie Postrel, the overseer of the forest and the keeper of the bathhouse. And the other is…”
“Pitsie Avram!” Sol and Channa shouted out together, laughing in harmony. Everyone in town knew Stavishche’s most famous and beloved “Pitseleh” (an unusual but endearing name, meaning “little one”). He was the esteemed and learned rabbi of the village. The children did not realize that they had just passed the rabbi and the cantor sitting on Golub’s porch.
“And Pitsie Avram now has famous cousins!” Daniel added, as the children continued on their way. “I heard that the Zionist from Zhashkov, Eliyahu Dayan, along with his brother Shmuel, who has been living in the kibbutz Deganyah, near the Sea of Galilee, came to visit him recently.”VI Shmuel Dayan was the father of Moshe Dayan, who would years later become a politician, military hero, and leader in Israel.
The children jumped off the main pathway, allowing a horse and buggy to pass them; they knew that it was owned by Shika de Potch (the nickname for Yehoshua Golditch the Postmaster). It was headed, with a sick passenger in tow, to Count Branicki’s Free Hospital for the Poor, which was a long walk from the Jewish quarter of town. Shika never charged a sick person for using one of the twenty-four stallions or eight buggies that were sitting in his barn.
The children headed toward the brick part of the river, where Daniel lived. His mother, Esther, was expecting a leather boot that Isaac had repaired for her daughter Sarah. The children left the boot by Esther’s door and ran out back to play by the river.
Esther smiled as she watched through her back window, remembering the children’s last delivery just a few months earlier; it was back during the winter, on January 19. The cousins pulled sleds out of a shed and ran eagerly to the frozen Gniloi Tikich River to take a break from their duties. They skidded playfully on the ice and pulled the homemade sleds, made by Yunkel’s skilled hands.
They made their way to the ice while a famous ceremony was held out on the frozen river. The town’s peasantry gathered there once a year to commemorate the baptism of the infant Jesus in the River Jordan. It was the celebration of Epiphany, known as Kreshchenie, the twelfth day of Christmas for Russian Orthodox believers. Christian peasants walked out on the frozen river with their priest.
Jewish mothers, Esther included, whose houses were built along the river, tried each year to distract their children from watching the procession. Even Rebecca instructed Channa not to venture out onto the ice. It wasn’t just fear for their children’s safety out on the ice that drove the women to discourage their children from viewing the ceremony. They were afraid that their children might become influenced as a result of their exposure to anything Christian. However, the women’s efforts were in vain. Despite the objections of their parents, Channa and her cousins, along with many of the Jewish children of Stavishche, watched and were absolutely mesmerized by the beautiful ritual of Epiphany.
During the ceremony, the youngsters looked on as peasants cut a cross out of the ice and prayed as the priest sanctified the water. Some dipped themselves into the cross-shaped ice hole,VII others just bent down to fill their bottles with this water that was considered to be holy. Christian peasants kept the bottled water all year long, believing that it would help heal any sicknesses and would chase evil spirits away.
The young trio’s second-to-last scheduled stop was the fair in Stavishche. Known as the yarid, it was, every day except Tuesday, just an empty plaza with wooden gates near the highway, not far from Channa’s home. Isaac had instructed the children to make two deliveries to merchants at the fair. One merchant was friendly with Daniel’s father, Yunkel. The other delivery was for Avrum, Channa and Daniel’s youngest uncle. Each manned a booth at the fair where Avrum sold wheat and Yunkel sold handmade wagons. During the remainder of the week, they worked at markets in neighboring towns, much like their father, Carl Cutler, had done years earlier.
The fair lasted an entire day. Everyone in Stavishche was either buying or selling in an attempt to make a living. On the day of the fair, there was never an empty space at the market because Christians and Jews sold their wares alongside each other. Stavishche’s rich soil made the cultivation and sale of corn, watermelons, grapes, peaches, and apricots popular at the market. Fresh carp, the tastiest fish in the province, was caught from the surrounding ponds and sold at the fair. Farm goods like potatoes and raw bags of wheat were brought in by horse and wagon.
Those who didn’t have horses used pushcarts. Those who didn’t have wheat brought live chickens. The children wandered near the chickens that were tied by their legs; Channa wasn’t surprised to see the peasants hanging them upside down. Farmers also brought along their pigs and other livestock.
The fair was noisy and lively. Yosl Golub, the handsome son of Soloman the bookstore owner, whom Channa had a crush on, wrote about the market many decades after leaving Stavishche. He perfectly captured the essence of the hustle and bustle that the children experienced that day at the yarid: “When the fair came, everyone was busy with commerce, buying and selling, with lively noisy merriment.… The various sounds of the fair, the shouting and bargaining of buyers and sellers, the cries of drunkards and the music of the beggars playing their banduras, the crying of babies, the neighing of horses, the barking of dogs and the lowing of cattle—all blended into a noisy symphony—the fair in Stavishche.”VIII
The bustling open marketplace in Stavishche was often the scene of many love matches, as well as countless numbers of lovers’ quarrels. For Channa’s mother, Rebecca, it was a glimpse of her long-lost love Isaac at the fair back in 1911 that marked a turning point in reuniting the young couple.
The Stavishche marketplace also played an important role in the life of the great Jewish writer Sholem Aleichem. In 1883, he married Olga “Bibi” Loyev, whose family, the Loyevs and the Mazurs, were prominent Jews with familial ties to Stavishche. Sholem often visited his wife’s father, Elimelich Loyev, at the Stavishche yarid; his first meeting with his father-in-law (at another nearby marketplace) is vividly described in a chapter in the writer’s autobiographical masterpiece, From the Fair.IX
Channa and Daniel spotted their youngest uncle, Avrum Cutler, standing by a nearby table, selling wheat. He gave each child a warm hug.
“I have good news,” he announced. “But you must promise to keep it a secret. I’m about to sign engagement papers; you will soon be dancing at my wedding!”
The children were so excited by Avrum’s news that they forgot all about their final stop at the home of the poritz, a nobleman and customer of Isaac’s who lived near the town’s gates, not far from Count Branicki. Instead, they accidentally abandoned the wooden handcart that held his boots. They made their way back home in the dark, exhausted but elated by their uncle’s happy announcement.
1. I. In 1903-1906, anti-Jewish riots left an estimated one to three thousand Jews dead across Russia. In 1905, these riots flared up in villages surrounding Stavishche.
2. II. This term refers to a false accusation, centuries old, that Jews murdered Christians, in particular young children, to drain and use their blood for the making of Passover matzahs and other ritual purposes.
3. III. Daniel’s mother, Esther Moser Cutler, and Sol’s father, Itzie Moser, were siblings. The boys shared the same grandfather, Cantor David-Yosel Moser.
4. IV. Siegal or Segal officially took on the stage name Pinchik in the 1920s.
5. V. There is a well-known and humorous Yiddish proverb: “Es vet hlefn vi-a toyten bankes” (“It would help like cupping a corpse”).
6. VI. Eliyahu and Shmuel Dayan’s father, Reb Avraham Dayan, was the son of Reb Pinhas, the shohet and dayan “judge” of Zhashkov. They were most likely half brothers who descended from a folk rebbe, Rabbi Aryeh Leib of Uman (1724–1811), known as the “Shpole Zeide.”
7. VII. Although Yasha Kainer didn’t identify the celebration of Epiphany by name, he did describe the ceremony in a story by Emily Bayard.
8. VIII. From a story written by Channa’s childhood acquaintance Yosl Golub, in the Stavishche Yizkor Book.
9. IX. Aleichem does not specifically name Stavishche in his autobiography, but many Stavishchers knew that he visited their local yarid on many occasions. His wife was born in nearby Shubovka.