![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
This article examines Jewish institutions for the care of orphans in an attempt to understand several aspects of Jewish life in Eastern Europe: (1) attitudes towards orphans on the part of communal leaders, intellectuals, and political activists; (2) the transition of Jewish charitable and (in the modern period) philanthropic institutions from the pre‐modern communal charity of the early nineteenth century to modern “scientific philanthropy” at the fin de siècle to national welfare in the interwar period; (3) and, to a lesser extent, the experiences of orphans themselves, as far as is possible to ascertain from documents relating to the institutions that cared for them. Marginal figures such as orphans were of growing concern to the organised Jewish community in its increasingly complex encounter with modernity in the Russian Empire, and traditional patterns of charity, family life, and relations between socioeconomic classes were cast into doubt by new government policies and modern scientific attitudes arriving from Western and Central Europe. The religiously mandated charity of the pre‐modern kehillah gave way to a paternalistic philanthropy that aimed to mould a generation of “productive” working‐class Jews. However, the upheavals of World War I and the mass politicisation of East European Jewry brought about a transformation in attitudes towards orphans and other marginal groups, whose care was made a centrepiece of national, and nationally minded, Jewish communal life in the interwar Polish Republic.
Notes
1. Weinreich, Yiddish Folktales, 93–4.
2. See, for example, Baron, The Jewish Community, vol. 2, 362, 364.
3. Baron, Jewish Community, vol. 2, 330–2.
4. See, for example, a case from Poznan in 1724 in Avron, Pinkas ha‐kesherim shel kehilat Pozna, 288–9. In this case, the wording of the entry in the pinkas suggests that this was a custom that had fallen out of use by the eighteenth century, so we cannot be sure of the extent of its application in early modern Poland.
5. Katz, Tradition and Crisis, 126.
6. Evreiskaia entsiklopediia, s.v. “Talmud‐tora,” vol. 14, 723–4; Dubnow, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, vol. 1, 114.
7. “Lodz'” in Pinkas ha‐kehilot, vol. 1: “Lodz' ve‐hagalil,” 6
8. Born in Shklov, Berlin studied in Königsberg and Bonn in the 1840s, then worked as a teacher in a Russian state Jewish school and, from 1856, as advisor on Jewish affairs to the Department of Foreign Faiths of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. His ethnography of Russian Jewry was undertaken at the request of the Imperial Russian Geographic Society, of which he was a member. Jewish Encyclopedia, s.v. “Berlin, Moses (Moisei Josifovich),” vol. 3, 80–1.
9. See Lindenmeyr, Poverty Is Not a Vice, 54.
10. Berlin, Ocherk etnografii evreiskago narodonaseleniia v Rossii, 59–60.
11. See, for example, the descriptions in TsDIAU (Tsentral'nyi derzhavnyi istorychnyi arkhiv Ukraïny, m. Kyïv) f. 707 (Upravlenie Kievskogo uchebnogo okruga), op. 203, spr. 58 (“O zakritii sushchestvuiushchego bez razresheniia v g. Kieve, v plosskoi chasti v dome Bazilevskoi evreiskogo uchilishcha”).
12. Lindenmeyr, Poverty Is Not a Vice, 54.
13. TsDIAU f. 707, op. 203, spr. 58, ark. 3–7zv, 17–18zv, 25–6.
14. See, for example, D‐r [Simon] Shvabakher, “Zametka (o vazhnosti uchrezhdeniia sirotskikh domov),” Sion 2 (1861): 21–4 and [Alexander Tsederbaum,] “Der opteyling far yesoymim bay dar Odeser Talmud‐Toyre,” Kol mevaser 49 (1867): 365–8.
15. Lindenmeyr, Poverty Is Not a Vice, 62, 70.
16. Ibid., 116, 296 n. 112.
17. Ibid., 222.
18. Freeze, “The Price of Milk.”
19. “Most of the youngsters admitted to these institutions [orphanages], at least in the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, were half‐orphans, especially the children of widowed or deserted mothers.” Encyclopedia Judaica, 1st ed., s.v. “Orphan, Orphanage.”
20. Brutskus, Statistiki evreiskago naseleniia, 26–7.
21. Ibid., 11.
22. “Odna iz zhguchikh potrebnostei nashego obshchinnago ustroistva” [Editorial], Russkii evrei 16 (1883): cols. 2–5.
23. Ibid.
24. See Lindenmeyr, Poverty Is Not a Vice, passim.
25. Meir, “Mnogolikost' evreiskoi blagotvoritel'nosti v Kieve,” 185–216 and idem, Kiev, Jewish Metropolis, chap. 6.
26. Klausner, Vilna, 636–7.
27. Encyclopedia Judaica, 2nd ed., s.v. “Orphan, Orphanage.”
28. Kovenskii evreiskii sirotskii dom imeni uchenago ravvina Itskhok‐Elkhonona Spektora, Otchet… za vse vremia ego sushchestvovaniia do 1‐go Ianvaria 1907 goda (Kovna, 1907), esp. 3 and 8.
29. Pinkes fun der khevre “Makhzikey yesoymim” in Shklov, TRL'H [1875], YIVO Archive RG 30 (Russia and the Soviet Union), folder 106.
30. TsDIAU f. 707, op. 203, spr. 58, ark. 1–4.
31. Ibid., ark. 3–4.
32. Evreiskaia entsiklopediia, s.v. “Korets,” vol. 9, 751–2; Gelber, “Le‐toldot ha‐yehudim be‐korets,” 31. Other sources, however, suggest that the Talmud‐Torah was “officially” established in 1886, which shows just how difficult it is to reconstruct the histories of these institutions.
33. “Spisok sushchestvuiushchikh v m. Kortse Volyn. Gub. chastnykh evreiskikh blagotvoritel'nykh uchrezhdenii” (1893–9), YIVO Archive RG 30, folder 55.
34. Evreiskaia entsiklopediia, s.v. “Belostok,” vol. 5, 174–7; Obshchestvo popecheniia o bednykh i bezpriiutnykh detiakh g. Belostoka, Ustav Obshchestva… g. Belostoka, Bialystok, 1905.
35. CAHJP (Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem), JCA/Lon folder 69/4 (“Correspondence regarding the opening of a vocational school ‘Talmud Tora’ in Bialystok”), Annexe I, ad. No. 475.309.
36. Evreiskaia entsiklopediia, s.v. “EKO (Evreiskoe Kolonizatsionnoe Obshchestvo),” vol. 7, 503–10. See, for example, the file on the farm‐school established by the Odessa Jewish orphanage in CAHJP JCA/Lon folder 75/7.
37. Leon Shapiro, The History of ORT: A Jewish Movement for Social Change (New York: Schocken, 1980), 47.
38. S.‐Peterburgskii evreiskii sirotskii dom, Otchet za 1897 g. (St Petersburg, 1898).
39. Klausner, Vilna, 636–7.
40. Kovenskii evreiskii sirotskii dom, Otchet, 18–20.
41. Klausner, Vilna, 650–1; Norman, An Outstretched Arm, 44.
42. Keshenever yesoymin‐hoyz far inglekh, 35 yor tetigkeyt fun keshenever yesoymim‐hoyz far inglekh, 9.
43. Evreiskaia entsiklopediia, s.v. “Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden,” vol. 6, 511–14.
44. Evreiskaia entsiklopediia, s.v. “Blagotvoritel'nye uchrezhdeniia v Rossii,” vol. 3, 634–43.
45. TsDIAU f. 442, op. 661, spr. 273 (“Ob uregulirovanii blagotvoritel'nykh uchrezhdeniiakh v Kievskoi gubernii”), ark. 40–5.
46. Wulman, “Der bereyshis fun ‘Oze,’ ir antviklung un perspektivn,” 15.
47. Program for OZE general meeting, 21 December 1913, St Petersburg; Minutes of OZE general meeting, 20 February 1914, St. Petersburg; both in YIVO Archive RG 53 (OZE–TOZ), folder 1.
48. See Evreiskaia entsiklopediia, s.v. “Kovenskoe soveshchanie evreiskikh obshchestvennykh deiatelei,” vol. 9, 583–4.
49. Evreiskaia entsiklopediia, s.v. “Blagotvoritel'nye uchrezhdeniia v Rossii,” vol. 3, 634–43.
50. Aronson, “In amolike rusland (ayndrukn, zikhroynes, geshikhte),” 34.
51. Shapiro, The History of ORT, 53–62.
52. On World War I, see The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, s.v. “World War I;” Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking, 17–32, 145–50; and An‐Ski, Der yidisher khurbn fun poylin, galitsye un bukovine. Shapiro discusses this aspect of the war's impact in The History of ORT, 80–2.
53. S. Chernovich, “Problemy ‘novoi cherty’,” Evreiskaia zhizn' 15 (1915): 10–12, cited in Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking, 148.
54. Aronson, “In amolike rusland (ayndrukn, zikhroynes, geshikhte),” 42.
55. OZE, for example, had 27 “relief stations” serving over 40,000 refugees. Aronson, “In amolike rusland (ayndrukn, zikhroynes, geshikhte),” 45. ORT created new programmes such as “Relief through Work” and labour bureaux; see Shapiro, The History of ORT, 73–6. See also Bar‐Yishai and Web, “Yesoymim‐farzorgung un kindershuts in poyln (1919–1939),” 102. For a study of an individual Jewish community in the war years, see Kassow, “Jewish Communal Politics in Transition,” 61–92.
56. “Piotrkow‐Trybunalski” in Pinkas ha‐kehilot, vol. 1, 189.
57. Rader, By the Skill of Their Hands, 15.
58. For a comprehensive survey of wartime charitable, welfare, and cultural activities in Vilna, see Vilner zamelbukh, ed. Ts. Shabad (2 vols, 1916–18) and Pinkes: far der geshikḥte fun Vilne in di yorn fun milhome un akupatsye, ed. Zalman Rejzen et al. (Vilna, 1922).
59. YIVO Archive, RG 53, folder 2 (n.d.).
60. Vilner zamelbukh, vol. 1, 196.
61. Kassow, “Jewish Communal Politics in Transition,” 65.
62. Aleksander Lednitski, “Yesoymim‐shuts als sotsial‐ertsiherishe problem,” 6–7.
63. Avrum Levinson, “A natsionaler khov,” 8–9.
64. Bar‐Yishai and Web, “Yesoyim‐farzorgung,” 106–7.
65. See YIVO Archive, RG 10, folder 178 (untitled document on “Die jüdische Gesellschaft für Kinderfürsorge,” 1916 or 1917 and “Tsu der Vilner idisher gezelshaft!” n.d.). On the Vilna Central Committee, see Kassow, “Jewish Communal Politics in Transition,” 65ff.
66. Kobrin, “The Politics of Philanthropy,” 233–64.
67. See, for example, Shneyorson, “Der farband fun di yesoymim‐tsentrales in yor 1928.”
68. Marcus, A Social and Political History of the Jews in Poland, 143.
69. Bar‐Yishai and Web, “Yesoyim‐farzorgung,” 113.
70. Ibid., 110; on the institution for retarded children, see Rozenblum and Auerbakh, “Der heyl‐pedagogisher anshtalt in Otvotsk.”
71. Marcus, A Social and Political History, 143.
72. YIVO Archive, RG 2 (Lithuanian Jewish Communities), folder 1428 (Kaunas Jewish Children's Home), “Proyekt: tsum aynordnen dem kinder‐hoyz, Kovne.”
73. YIVO Archive, RG 2, folder 1428, “Shtitst haynt dem bliml‐tog.”
74. Shapiro, The History of ORT, 132.
75. See Ball, And Now My Soul Is Hardened.
76. Cited in Levin, The Jews in the Soviet Union since 1917, vol. 1, 122.
77. Shapiro, The History of ORT, 152–3.
78. Vaulman, “Der yidisher gezuntshuts: tsvantsik yor tsurik un itst.”