The Jewish Hospital

In its first decades, much of Kiev Jewry was transient. There were as yet few Jews residing permanently in the city, and apparently many of the Jews who could be seen in Kiev on a daily basis were passing through: itinerant traders carrying their goods, artisans in search of temporary employment, sick Jews seeking medical care, and all manner of other people whom fate had carried to the city on the Dnepr, some of whom arrived without a penny to their names.33 Such Jews had been coming to Kiev as visitors well before 1861; indeed, a monthly distribution of charity to poor and sick Jews was started as early as 1860—not by their fellow Jews, but by Princess Ekaterina Vasil’chikova, wife of the Governor-General and chair of the Kiev Philanthropic Society for Aid to the Poor.34 This piece of evidence helps to corroborate contemporary impressions that in the first ten years after Jews were readmitted, it was every man for himself, and most Jews with means were likely to have been too busy establishing themselves to worry about the growing numbers of needy Jews passing through, and sometimes staying on in, Kiev. In addition, wrote the Hebrew poet Yehalel (Yehudah Leib Levin) in 1871, Jewish traders in Podol were divided among themselves, their only common denominator being "the spirit of commerce," and no one was interested in education or doing good (ve-ein poneh le-haskil u-le-heitiv).35

Another contemporary account, however, maintained that although Jewish charity was administered through a Christian organization, Jewish initiative was, in fact, responsible for this first Jewish charitable undertaking in Kiev. according to the pseudonymous Tmol bar yente's 1872 account in the Odessa yiddish weekly Kol mevaser, immediately after Jews were permitted to settle in Kiev, the first otkupshchik (holder of the franchise for Jewish taxes in Kiev), whom Tmol named only as "B.," donated 10,000 rubles to the Kiev Philanthropic Society, which was headed by Princess Ekaterina Vasil’chikova. "This donation was on such a grand scale," marveled Tmol, "that it was possible to provide for the Jewish poor and sick in the same numbers as for the Christians."36 Vasil’chikova and Avraam (Avraham) Kupernik, one of the trustees (popechiteli) of Jewish charity in Kiev, apparently decided that B.'s donation would be used solely to provide aid to poor Jews.37 A precedent was thus set that would serve as a model for decades: even if Jews were to be served by Christian or nonsectarian philanthropic institutions, they would almost always be served separately from the Christian population, with discrete funding streams. A description of Jewish philanthropy in Kiev from 1880 confirms that the established community paid for the medical costs of poor Jewish patients in the city's hospitals.38

It was not only poor Jews coming to Kiev who needed caring for, but the sick as well, for Kiev was known as a center for medical expertise. Thus, Tmol's account continues, Kupernik suggested to the princess that a Jewish clinic or sick care society [biker khoylim] be established, and her subsequent petition to the tsar requesting permission for such a clinic was granted in 1862. This was the genesis of the Jewish Hospital, an institution that would dominate charitable and, to some extent, communal affairs in Jewish Kiev for the next fifty years. The hospital remained part of the Kiev Philanthropic Society until the adoption of its new charter in 1891. According to the hospital's first charter, 2,500 rubles were added to the total amount of the tax to be collected from kosher meat sales, one-fifth of which was to go to the Philanthropic Society (presumably for administrative costs) and the remainder for hospital expenses.39 In Tmol bar Yente's account, the annual operating budget consisted of 2,500 rubles from the korobka, supplemented by donations from householders and the whole city (meaning, presumably, the entire Jewish community), which brought the total to 3,000 rubles. Thus, from its inception the Jewish Hospital was closely linked both with non-Jewish institutions and society in Kiev and with Jewish taxation in the city, and both connections remained significant in the decades to come.

The dedication ceremony for the new hospital in 1862 was an opportunity for the merchants who made up Kiev's small Jewish community to introduce the city to Jews and Jewish ways. A report in the local paper Kievskii telegraf (Kiev Telegraph) explained to readers that the small group of Jews present included "a rabbi, holding in his arms a scroll (Toira [sic]) and a cantor, who are necessary for the performance of certain rituals." Also in attendance were Governor-General Vasil’chikov and his wife, the governor of Kiev Province, the marshal of the nobility, trustees of the Philanthropic Society, and many local officials. This audience witnessed, many of them probably for the first time, the recitation of a Hebrew prayer; naturally, it was Ha-noten teshu’a, the traditional supplication on behalf of the monarch. While both speakers made clear that the hospital was for indigent Jews coming to Kiev for medical care, they diverged in their vision of the Jewish future in the city; the Governor-General stressed the fact that only Jewish merchants were permitted to live in Kiev, whereas hospital trustee Kupernik chose to emphasize that the hospital's small size (twenty beds) was due only to insufficient resources and that the institution would be expanded as soon as it was possible.40 Thus, the Russian official indicated that the establishment of the hospital should not be taken as evidence that any expansion of Jewish settlement in Kiev would be viewed favorably, while the Jewish notable painted a picture of continued growth—if not of the Jewish population itself, then at least of its charitable institutions. The location of the hospital—at the city limits in the far reaches of the Ploskaia district, as specified in the hospital's charter—was in itself symbolic of the position of the small and new Jewish community in Kiev. Ostensibly, this area was deemed advantageous because it was near the Kirillov Institution, a mental hospital, almshouse, and school for physicians' assistants, where Jewish Hospital staff would be able to obtain advice for difficult medical cases.41 Clearly, though, the Jewish institution was placed in the same category as the mental hospital—somewhat undesirable and thus relegated to the outskirts of the city.

The boundaries between Jewish and Christian welfare systems, such as they were, were not yet clearly drawn in these early decades. Not only was the Jewish Hospital formally a branch of the city's Philanthropic Society, but in 1870 the society was also distributing monetary aid to Kiev's poor Jews in advance of the upcoming Passover holiday.42 As with the hospital, though, both the initiative and the funds for these offerings almost certainly came from Kiev's Jews, a supposition supported by the fact that the list of honorary members in the society's report grouped all the Jews together, after the Christian members, signaling that their participation in this Russian institution was somehow conditioned by their difference.43 Still, the very fact that a non-Jewish institution was involved in the distribution of aid for a Jewish holiday, and that it was acceptable for Jews to be assisted through the city's general charitable organization, is significant. This phenomenon also points to the fact that Jewish welfare in Kiev was as yet fairly unorganized.

For their part, Jews were eager to show that they, too, were prepared to aid the needy, regardless of confession. In 1866, local Jewish merchants proposed taking up a collection in honor of the miraculous saving of the tsar's life (the reference was to the failed assassination attempt of Dmitrii Karakozov), but they did not immediately determine how to allocate the funds. Eventually, the merchants agreed to establish a fund to assist needy Jewish and Christian students attending local gymnasia.44 This gesture echoed an earlier charitable donation made by A. M. Brodsky, who added a scholarship endowment for Christian students at St. vladimir University to a fund for Jewish students already established by Brodsky and other Jewish merchants—in order to emphasize his "sincere rapprochement with his fellow Russian citizens."45 (Interestingly, the annual benefit events for the cause of Jewish students were well-known in Kiev and attended by Christian as well as Jewish Kievans; an 1865 editorial in Kievskii telegraf noted that among the many kinds of entertainment one could enjoy in Kiev, in addition to theater, opera, masquerades, balls, concerts, and restaurants, were spectacles to raise money for poor Jewish students.)46 These moves were significant, setting a long-term precedent for Jewish charity in Kiev: Jewish philanthropy was to have a political as well as a humane goal, and would exemplify the best of Russian Jewry by illustrating their willingness to live in peace alongside their fellow citizens. More prosaically, providing for Christians helped avoid the appearance of insularity, an important goal for a new Jewish community that was small but growing and whose members interacted on a daily basis with non-Jewish businessmen, merchants, and bureaucrats. Brodsky's move also points up the impact that Kiev's restrictions on Jewish settlement may have had on would-be philanthropists, since they would have wanted to avoid the appearance of attracting illegal Jews to the city.