Kiev's Jewish Hospital illustrated the paradox to which Reinhardt Liedtke points in his discussion of Jewish philanthropy in Hamburg and Manchester: Jewish welfare institutions, illustrating the universal value of charity, promoted acceptance of Jews by the larger society; at the same time, the institutions remained separate and thus reinforced Jewish distinctiveness.31 Indeed, in the very year of the dedication of the new building of the Jewish Hospital, the Kiev newspaper Zaria reported on a decree that no more Jews were to be accepted at the Kirillov Hospital because Jews now had their own hospital.32 Thus, the attempt to encourage integration apparently backfired: the hospital that was supposed to be the equal of its non-Jewish counterparts, showing that Jews could operate model institutions, as well as serving both Jews and Christians, actually led to the barring of Jews from nonJewish hospitals.
The continuing segregation between Christians and Jews would be reinforced several years later by the "categorical refusal" of S. S. Ignat’eva, chairwoman of the Kiev Philanthropic Society, to serve as head of the Jewish Hospital, a position she automatically inherited when she took on the mantle of leadership at the society. The new (1891) charter of the hospital removed it from the administrative structure of the Kiev Philanthropic Society at least partly as a result of Ignat’eva's demurral.33
However, Kiev's Jewish magnates could continue to attempt to influence the current state of affairs with their philanthropy. In 1895, Kiev's Jews celebrated the opening of the new children's ward of the Jewish Hospital, funded by Lazar’ Brodsky, and in that very same year Brodsky announced at a board meeting of the Kiev Society for Aid to Sick Children his intention to finance the construction of a free pediatric outpatient clinic in honor of the birth of Princess Ol’ga Nikolaevna.34 Did Brodsky, perhaps concerned about being criticized for being clannish or miserly toward Russian society, feel an obligation to provide the same institutions for Christians in Kiev that he was bestowing upon his fellow Jews? Perhaps. But an analysis of his patterns of giving suggests another likelihood: he was rewarding the Society for Aid to Sick Children for its acceptance of Jews. Almost without exception, the institutions to which Brodsky contributed all served Jews and were sometimes intended specifically to replace similar institutions where Jewish admission was restricted (institutions of higher learning, for example). Brodsky refused restrictions on the number of Jews to be permitted to sit on the board of his planned artisans' loan fund. Around 1895, he offered a large sum to establish a trade school for children of all faiths, but some members of the city council mandated that the number of Jews on the school's board would have to be limited, while others demanded that the number of Jewish students be proportional to their Christian peers. Brodsky rejected these conditions, and the school project did not go forward.35
The chain of events is remarkable: turned down by the authorities in his initial request to open a Jewish trade school to train the poor boys of Kiev, Brodsky then attempted to gain approval for a school that would school both Jews and Christians. Stung yet again when this proposal, too, was rejected, Brodsky, together with his brother Lev, finally returned to the original plan for an exclusively Jewish school, for which they finally received permission. If the government's segregationist policies could not be defeated, they would have to be adopted. Brodsky was also a major force in the establishment of Kiev's Polytechnical Institute in 1898, which became known as a welcome alternative for Jewish men to other institutions of higher learning where the numerus clausus was strictly enforced.36
It is no coincidence that these episodes took place in the 1890s, and they are even more striking when compared with this Brodsky brother's earlier giving patterns. In 1884, for example, after he had presented Kiev's St. vladimir University with a princely gift of 50,000 rubles, his name was not mentioned at the festivities celebrating the university's fiftieth anniversary. In Ha-melits, Alexander Tsederbaum moralized that the money would have been better spent on the poor of Brodsky's own people—the Jews. Tsederbaum went on to argue that Brodsky was even more deserving of reproach because the university was known for its anti-Jewish policies.37 Given the growing burden of anti-Jewish legislation and administrative practice that became especially notable in the 1890s, it is not unlikely that Brodsky began to heed such advice and appropriate his funds with a more discerning eye. Institutions that did not discriminate against Jews would be rewarded, while Jewish institutions serving Jews exclusively—which Brodsky would previously have rejected—were now acceptable and even desirable. If Brodsky's giving, including his gift of a new clinic to the Kiev Society for aid to Sick Children, was indeed motivated by such quasi-political aims, it is not without irony that his endowment of the clinic should have moved no less a personage than the emperor himself to offer Brodsky his personal thanks (tied, of course, to the naming of the institution after his new daughter).38
Lev Brodsky seems to have followed his brother's example. In 1894, he endowed scholarships at a Kiev gymnasium and at the medical faculty of St. vladimir University that were to be restricted to Jewish students.39 That same year, he offered to defray tuition for a large number of students at two of the city's women's gymnasia, most of which had high percentages of Jewish students.40
But we must not hasten to assume that the earlier motivation attached to philanthropic generosity—to "bring peace," as it were, between Christians and Jews, had disappeared. Certainly others continued to see the Brod-skys' large gifts in this light. The founding of Kiev's Bacteriological Institute in 1896 was an opportunity for one Barukhovitsh of Kiev to write an article entitled "Works of Charity [Lead to] Peace." The author noted that Lazar’ Brodsky gave charity to Jews and non-Jews alike, and that all Jews could exult in the honor that had been showered upon the great humanitarian by Russian officials and scientists. Barukhovitsh also described Brodsky's proposal that all sugar processors in the southwest region donate a fixed percentage of their income to the Kiev branch of the Imperial Russian Technical Society, another act that brought honor not only to Brodsky himself but to all Jews. Barukhovitsh encouraged other Jewish industrialists to follow Brodsky's example.41 Another observer wrote that "we are doubly happy [about the Bacteriological Institute] because the founder is a Jew," and commented that all those present at its dedication had heaped accolades upon Brodsky.42 The project unquestionably underlined Brodsky's loyalty to the empire and its ruling family, as the institute was named after the assassinated Tsar Alexander II and the dedication itself was held on the anniversary of the coronation of Nicholas II.
World History
