In 1861, two years after alexander II began to allow Jewish first-guild merchants to settle in the city, Jewish residence in Kiev was extended to graduates of institutions of higher education, artisans, and several other categories of Jews. Judging from reports that Lithuanian Jews chose to move the long distance to Kiev in that same year, we may assume that Kiev was a very attractive destination.29 It was somewhat easier for Jewish members of the merchant estate to gain access to Kiev than to the inner provinces of the empire: the circle of eligible merchants was expanded to include second-guild merchants in addition to first-guild merchants, and the requirement that they have entered the merchantry at least five years prior to leaving the Pale was dropped.30 Nonetheless, the vast majority of Jewish merchants in Kiev had first-guild status; merchants who would not normally have paid high sums to obtain first-guild status did so because the law then granted them permanent residence rights in Kiev.31 By contrast, most other categories of Jews permitted to settle in Kiev received temporary residence permits.
Jewish residence in Kiev was officially subject to strict regulations and afforded only to members of certain professions or certain other categories, but because of the rapid multiplication of decrees and circulars regarding the exact meaning of the law, the meager wages of policemen and other municipal officials and their openness to bribery, and Kiev's geographical location in the heart of the Pale of Settlement, Jews began to take advantage of or evade the regulations almost as soon as they were announced in 1861.32 By 1874, a Ministry of Interior report showed that "at least 458 Jews were not officially registered and 303 did not possess internal passports," and there were surely hundreds more whom bureaucrats did not manage to find.33
Kiev was perceived to offer many opportunities for Jewish businessmen or traders, and even many Jews who did not fall into one of the categories of eligibility for residence still moved to the city. Jewish merchants were permitted to bring a certain number of clerks to help run their business affairs, many of whom were employed in name only and immediately struck out on their own.34 To preserve the ruse, however, they carried out their petty trade under the name of their official employer.35 As early as 1864, the newspaper Kievlianin (The Kievan) was complaining that Jews were taking advantage of the openness of the city and the lack of resources of the police, and were ignoring the law and entering the city under the pretense of serving as clerks and assistants to first-guild merchants.36
Artisans were another category of Jews permitted to settle in Kiev, and though many truly practiced a craft, others did not. It was widely known that officials at the Artisan Board made it easy to obtain an artisan's license—as easy as handing over 3 rubles, as long as one displayed a bucket and brush (for men) or a bolt of cloth (for women). The law stated that Jewish parents with children studying in Kiev's educational institutions were to be granted temporary residence permits, but there were some stories of individuals bending the rules, such as the woman who received a permit based on her daughter's attendance at a music conservatory; she had failed to reveal that the girl was three years old. Moreover, many parents did not leave the city when their children graduated, as the law required.37 Jews requiring medical treatment in the city could also receive permission to live there for a set period, but here, too, there were instances of abuse (such as the woman who needed to be under the constant supervision of a Kiev doctor for "inflammation of the nasal mucous membranes"—in other words, a common cold).
Lack of organization on the part of the police meant that temporary permits often became permanent simply because they were never checked after being issued; more often, though, police had to be bribed.38 Bribery was a fact of life for most Kiev Jews if they wished to be left alone by the law—so much so that, as one Kievan's memoirs claim, the policemen with the best service records or with connections were actually assigned to the Jewish neighborhoods so they could reap the rewards of institutionalized corruption. Bribes were demanded of Jews whether they were in possession of residence permits or not, because the law regarding Jewish settlement was so confusing and labyrinthine that no one really understood it. Jews might lodge an official complaint if a particular policeman got too greedy, but it would never occur to them to request that policemen not be allowed to take bribes; even the chief of police was on the take!39 But bribes did not always work, and the police would sometimes conduct surprise raids on Jewish houses to find and arrest Jews staying there illegally. Even opponents of the growing Jewish presence in Kiev did not always approve of these raids; in 1864, the editor of Kievlianin, V. V. Shul’gin, criticized "the capriciousness and violence with which the 'hunts' were conducted."40
Information about the origins of Kiev's Jews is sparce and anecdotal, and tsarist-era restrictions on organized religious activities in Kiev have greatly impeded the contemporary scholar's efforts to unearth information on the city's synagogues and prayer houses, which were often organized by town of origin. According to a report from 1869, only two prayer quorums existed in Kiev, one a group of Talner (Tal’noe) Hasidim and the other a group of Misnagdim (non-Hasidic Jews).41 But a slightly more accurate depiction is probably provided by Crown Rabbi Tsukkerman in a memorandum to Kiev's chief of police that same year, in which Tsukkerman referred to two prayer houses in Ploskaia and another in Podol. A later account (written in 1891) seems to confirm Tsukkerman's report, relating that in 1866 the authorities permitted the establishment of three prayer houses.42 It is unclear whether one of these was what Kievlianin referred to in 1866 as the "communal synagogue" (obshchestvennaia sinagoga), possibly the prayer quorum of the Jewish elite and the forerunner of the Choral Synagogue.43 However, all was not what it seemed. When, starting in 1869, groups of Jews began to request permission to open additional prayer houses (one each in Ploskaia, Podol, and Lybed), the authorities discovered the existence of another five prayer houses that had originally been opened for Jewish soldiers in the 1850s, in which other Kiev Jews were now praying as well.44 This kind of underground Jewish life was common throughout the entire period: time and time again, officials found out about secret synagogues or Jewish educational institutions, attempted to get rid of them or regularize their existence, and then new ones would take their places. This also makes our task difficult if not impossible: secret institutions frequently left no trace behind for the historian to find. Thus, to say that there were already at least eight prayer houses in the first decade of official Jewish settlement in Kiev is an educated guess at best (an additional two in Ploskaia and Lybed were authorized for groups of artisans by Governor-General Drentel’n in 1876).45
Who prayed in these synagogues? Beyond the traditional divisions of Hasidim and Misnagdim, the former category was made up of a great many smaller groups. Ukrainian Hasidim included members of sects based throughout Kiev and Volhyn provinces and neighboring areas, including followers of the tsaddikim (charismatic rabbinic leaders) who lived near Kiev.46 Most, if not all, were members of the Twersky Hasidic dynasty, the dominant strain in Ukraine; scions of the original rebbe, Menahem Nahum, lived in towns near Kiev such as Chernobyl, Makarov, Vasil’kov, and Rotmistrovka.47 A pinkas from a havura mishnayot (Mishnah study brotherhood) at Beit ha-midrash Makariv (Makarov Prayer House) survives in the manuscript section of the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine; the contents refer specifically to "the synagogue of the Admor [Hasidic term for "Our master, teacher, and rabbi"] of Makariv of this place, Kiev."48 His analysis of the pinkas leads Yohanan Petrovsky-Stern to argue that the urbanization process "transformed the traditional societies of Hasidism into urban headquarters of this or that trend in Hasidism"; donations to the brotherhood supported not only the synagogue but also "the courts of the Makarov and Chernobyl dynasty."49 The society was in existence—and thrived—until the end of the tsarist period, though we have no evidence about specific activities or trends within the brotherhood. Other sects included those based in Tal’noe, Skvir, Cherkassy, Korishchev, and Gornostopol’; there was also a prayer house of the Gornostopoler Hasidim on laroslavskaia street in Ploskaia.50 A petition of Jewish clerks in 1880, requesting permission to establish a mutual aid society, was signed by thirty men, of whom nine were from Vasil’kov.51 We know of the existence of a "Chernobyl" prayer house in Kiev in the 1880s, and in a cemetery consecration dispute between the Lithuanians and the Hasidim of Kiev in 1892, the latter requested assistance from the tsaddik of Rotmistrovka.52 There were also Polish and Lithuanian Hasidim of various stripes, the latter including Chabad or Lubavich Hasidim.53 Indeed, in 1866 Kievlianin reported that Kiev's Jewish leaders were attempting to install a grandson of the Hasidic leader Menahem Mendl of Lubavich as rabbi.54 Other than this episode, we lack detailed information about Kiev's religious leaders in this early period, though we know that by 1879, there were "four or five rabbinic law judges" (dayonim mo"ts) in the city. Traveling preachers, or maggidim, would of course stop in Kiev for a few weeks, as in the case of the famous Horodner Maggid from Minsk, whose preaching—according to Yekhezkel Kotik, with whom the maggid boarded during his stay in the city—attracted many Kiev Jews of all stripes, even students.55 (To the maggid's dismay, his words had no effect on Kotik's other boarder, a student, who challenged him to a debate and called him "an old fool.") Kotik, who lived in Kiev in the late 1870s, wrote in his memoir that of the Jewish groups in the city, the Lithuanians were the most stable and secure; they played an important role in Kiev, and had "the best businesses, the finest synagogues, the most aristocratic Jews, and the most respectable rabbi."56
In addition to the Hasidic and Lithuanian prayer houses, the tailors had their own synagogue, as was the case in many Jewish cities and towns. This institution was known variously as the Tailors' Synagogue, the Rozen-berg Prayer House, the Large Prayer House (Beit ha-midrash ha-gadol), and Beit Midrash Poalei Tsedek. Its official name was the Artisans' Prayer House (Remeslennaia molel’nia) no. 10.57
A native of the town of Kamenets in the Polesie region, Kotik likely typified many Jews from market towns and villages who migrated to the big city. Upon arrival, he was thrown into despair by the scale of the place (and by the fact that his brother-in-law had lost many business undertakings): "How can I come, a village Jew, to find business in a big, noisy city? Who needs me here?"58 He only returned to himself that evening, when his brother-in-law took him to the shtibl (prayer house) of the Karliner Hasidim. No doubt for many Jewish migrants to Kiev, the prayer house served as a kind of landsman-shaft (society of fellow townsmen), where the artisan or broker could take refuge from the anonymity and impersonality of the big city and mingle with like-minded people from the same town.
In his memoir From the Fair, Sholem Aleichem recalled a similar sense of loneliness and despair upon arrival in Kiev:
Being a stranger in a large city is like being in a forest. Nowhere does a person feel more lonely. Sholom never felt as lonely as he did then in Kiev.
The people in that big, beautiful city seemed to have conspired to show the young visitor no signs of hospitality or warmth. A11 faces were grim. A11 doors were closed to him.59
Although there was a prominent semi-russified Jewish elite in the city, most of the Jewish migrants in the first fifteen years had received little if any secular education; some, including most women, were probably totally uneducated. In 1874, Jewish women made up a larger proportion of the unlettered—60 percent—than did women in other religious groups (55 percent for Orthodox and Catholics, 47 percent for Protestants).60 The overwhelming majority—about 97 percent—of Kiev's Jews declared yiddish to be their native tongue, defined by the census as the language customarily used in the home. Only 483 out of the 13,800 Jews in Kiev identified a language other than yiddish—in most cases Russian—as their primary language.
The growing Jewish student population was, of course, literate in Russian. Jews were allowed to reside in Kiev in order to enroll in educational institutions. Accordingly, while the total male gymnasium population increased by just 40 percent between 1874 and 1879, the number of Jews in that group grew by 140 percent to 257 (the sharp rise was probably due in large measure to the Universal Military Statute of 1874, which offered exemptions for higher education).61 Almost 60 percent of Jewish male students in Kiev were enrolled at the Third Gymnasium in the heavily Jewish Podol district, where the student body was almost one-third Jewish.62 At girls' schools, the percentage of Jews was often higher, and the rate of increase over time sharper: there were thirty-one Jewish girls at the Podol Girls' School in 1885, compared with fifteen the previous year; at the Ploskaia Girls' School, the number was twenty-two, up from twelve.63 Kiev's St. viadimir University counted seventy-six Jewish students in 1876 (the most of any of the empire's eight universities), who made up 9.8 percent of the student body, a proportion surpassed only by Warsaw University.64 In 1878-80, sixty-seven of these students were enrolled in the medical faculty.65 As Lisa Epstein writes, "The large number of Jewish medical students seeking to study in Kiev heightened the issue of residence and sojourn rights [there]."66 According to an account from the 1850s, Jewish students came from two backgrounds: from wealthy and acculturated families, and from more traditional homes. In later decades, the former contingent probably grew as the younger generation of Jews became progressively more russified.67 The student boarding in Yekhez-kel Kotik's home who had called the maggid an "old fool" was a young man by the name of Lipski, a socialist and nonreligious Jew (apikoyres) from Vilna who had studied in the state-sponsored rabbinical seminary in Zhitomir until its closure.68 Lipski then came to Kiev to prepare for his admission to the university there. At night he studied for his exams, but during the day he hauled sacks of flour at Brodsky's mill, to pay for his living expenses. He later found work as a tutor, as did many students, and was able to leave the mill.69
When the Higher Women's Courses opened in 1878, offering university-level education, they also attracted Jewish women interested in advancing themselves. The four-year study program was often taught by professors from Kiev's St. Vladimir's University, and graduates could obtain a teaching certificate upon graduation.70 Between 1878 and 1882, Jewish women constituted 16 percent of students at the courses, the second-largest group after Russian Orthodox women.71 Jewish women also made up a sizable proportion—more than one-fifth—of pupils at the city's Midwifery Institute.72
There were even small numbers of Jewish radicals in Kiev. The young revolutionaries Pavel Akselrod and Grigorii Gurevich established a Chaikov-skyist circle—espousing a radicalism that was "a combination of maskilic idealism, nihilist scientism, and Lavrovist Populism"—in the city in 1872, which soon turned into a small commune with a predominantly Jewish membership.73 All the Jews in the group had had traditional upbringings and some had even been dedicated adherents of Haskalah, but now their socialism demanded that they reject Judaism and any allegiance to the Jewish people. Ironically, several members of the commune continued to live with their parents in Podol even after joining the radicals and beginning to conduct propaganda among workers. Their activities were short-lived, however, for in 1874 the circle was uncovered by the police and its members left Kiev or went into hiding.
World History
