Defying Authority in the Pale: The Making of Soviet Jewish Ritualsand the Emergence of Folk Legitimacy

This is a digital offfprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Reappraisals and New Studies of the Modern Jewish Experience

Essays in Honor of Robert M. Seltzer

Edited by

Brian M. Smollett and Christian Wiese


Contents

Acknowledgements ixList of Contributors x

Robert M. Seltzer: Scholar and Teacher 1Brian M. Smollett

Introduction: Jewish Identities in the Modern Period 5Christian Wiese

part 1

Jewish Life and Modern Questions in Russia and Eastern Europe

Language Acquisition as a Criterion of Modernization among East Central European Jews: The Case of Dov Ber Birkenthal of Bolechów 13

Gershon David Hundert

Mikhah Yosef Berdichevsky and Shimon Dubnow: A Distant Regard and Appreciation 29

William Cutter

Saul Borovoi’s Survival: An Odessa Tale about a Jewish Historian in Soviet Times 46

Brian Horowitz

Defying Authority in the Pale: The Making of Soviet Jewish Rituals and the Emergence of Folk Legitimacy 62

Elissa Bemporad

vi Contents


part 2

Jewish Thought and Questions of Identity

Pride and Pedigree: The Development of the Myth of Sephardic Aristocratic Lineage 85

Jane S. Gerber

Joshua Hezekiah Decordova and a Rabbinic Counter-Enlightenment from Colonial Jamaica 104

Stanley Mirvis

Merchant Colonies: Resettlement in Italy, France, Holland, and England, 1550–1700 123

David Sorkin

From Combat to Convergence: The Relationship between Heinrich Graetz and Abraham Geiger 145

Michael A. Meyer

Kaplan and Personality 162Mel Scult

How Much Eastern Europe in American Jewish Thought? The Case of Jacob B. Agus 180

Zach Mann

Diaspora, Jewishness, and Diffference in Isaiah Berlin’s Thought 207Arie M. Dubnov

Martin Buber and the Impact of World War I on the Prague Zionists Shmuel H. Bergman, Robert Weltsch, and Hans Kohn 235

Christian Wiese

The Rise and Fall of a Jewish Vision in the Life and Thought of Hans Kohn 268

Brian M. Smollett

viiContents


part 3

Jewish Religion and Politics in America

How the Bible Expelled Religion from the American Schoolroom: The Causes and Consequences of Bible Wars in Nineteenth-Century American Schools 289

Stephan F. Brumberg

Lay and Rabbinic Conflict in Mid-Nineteenth Century American Jewry 304

Bruce L. Ruben

An International Solution for an International Problem: The JDC and the AJC in the 1930s 328

Naomi W. Cohen

Stephen S. Wise and Golda Meir: Zionism, Israel, and American Power in the Twentieth Century 356

Mark A. Raider

“We Must Build Anew”: Ideological Perspectives of the First Generation of Students to Attend Stephen S. Wise’s Jewish Institute of Religion 388

Shirley Idelson

A Judaism for Moderns: Reflections on Contemporary Challenges 412Sanford Ragins

Writings of Robert M. Seltzer 427Roberta S. Newman

Index 434

This is a digital offfprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004284661_007

Defying Authority in the Pale: The Making of Soviet Jewish Rituals and the Emergence of Folk Legitimacy

Elissa Bemporad

In 1934, in the city of Berdichev, where 37% of the population was Jewish, some families marked their sons’ thirteenth birthday with a “Soviet bar mitzvah.” Forged at the junction between commitment to the Jewish tradition and fear of Soviet persecution of religious observance, this new ritual was carried out in the absence of the bar mitzvah boy. According to the centuries-long religious practice, the thirteen-year-old boy—now responsible for taking on all the reli-gious commandments of Judaism—wore tefĳillin and was called for the fĳirst time to read from the Torah. In its Soviet version, however, the boy did not even attend the ceremony. The parents recognized that a traditional celebration of this rite of passage could harm their son’s reputation in school, at the club, and in the Communist youth group he belonged to, and even jeopardize his pros-pects for a successful career in Soviet society. Therefore, to leave him socially unscathed—but at the same time secretly commemorate an important stage in his life—the father would take his place in the synagogue. Perhaps less con-cerned with his own standing in society, and less exposed to the scrupulous supervision of Soviet organizations, the father would read from the Torah on behalf of his son, thus marking his thirteenth birthday.1

This new ritual emerged out of the escalating control that the Soviet state exerted over society, as it strove to create an offfĳicial atheistic Communist cul-ture and destroy the bufffer zone between the private and public life of its citizens. When abiding by traditional practices was no longer feasible or desir-able, Soviet citizens sometimes crafted new rituals, carefully circumventing the legal and social limitations imposed by the state on religious observance. Occasionally, these rituals built on preexisting tensions between the people—the folk—and the religious elites. The antireligious struggle launched by the Bolshevik Revolution undoubtedly mapped onto social, generational, and economic divides in the Jewish community that predated 1917. Contentions over the role that religion played in everyday life and challenges to religious authorities were not uncommon before Lenin’s rise to power. These tensions (cyclically sparked by the social and political crises that afffected Russian

1 H. Lang, “Vi Berdichev zet oys als a sovetishe shtot,” Forverts, January 31, 1934, 3, 7.

63Defying Authority in the Pale


Jewry from the eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries)2 combined with the offfĳicial harassment of religion in the ussr, led to the waning of religious life. Compared to the Jews of neighbouring interwar Poland, Soviet Jews experienced a uniquely violent and sweeping thrust to secularize and con-form to general Communist practices. Of course, Polish Jews experienced secularization as well, but it was not promoted or enforced by the Polish state. Many Polish Jews might have, for example, adopted the practice of selling and buying tickets for cultural events near the entrance of synagogues, on the holy Sabbath, in front of scandalized rabbis.3 But this practice was not encouraged—or mandated—by state authorities. In the Soviet Union, on the other hand, the drive toward secularization and the decline in religious observance were boosted by the unrelenting propaganda and terror devices employed by the state. Under Soviet pressure, the tensions between Jewish religious authorities and the Jewish population grew dramatically. The pres-sure elicited an unusually rapid shift toward a secular and mostly ethnic-based Jewish identity, spurring the rejection of many aspects of traditional cultural life and intensifying generational and social conflicts among many Soviet Jews who wished to embrace the Soviet integrationist option.

But the condemnation of the religious elites—forced from above and often embraced from below—did not necessarily mean the total abandonment of religious behaviour. Rather it changed it. The rejection of religious authority and the concomitant preservation of some religious practices by residents of the Soviet state can be seen in the transformation undergone by rituals

2 Socio-economic or religious conflicts within the Jewish communities of Russia were trig-gered by and coincided with the eighteenth-century Kulturkampf between Hasidim and Mitnagdim; the nineteenth-century clashes between the Maskilim and the united Orthodox front of Hasidim and Mitnagdim; the 1827 conscription decree that made Jews liable for military service; or the emergence of nationally and socially inspired secular Jewish move-ments and parties that often sanctioned opposition to the religious elites. On these and other strains within the Jewish communities of Russia see, for example, Israel Sosis, Di sotsial-

ekonomishe lage fun di Ruslendishe yidn in der ershter helft fun 19tn yorhundert (Petrograd: Ḥevrat mefĳitse haskalah be-Israel, 1919); and Di geshikhte fun di yidishe gezelshaftlekhe

shtrebungen in Rusland in xix y.h. (Minsk: Ṿaysrusisher meluḥe-farlag, 1929); Raphael Mahler, Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment: Their Confrontation in Galicia and Poland in the First

Half of the Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985); Michael Stanislawsky, For Whom Do I Toil? Judah Leib Gordon and the Crisis of Russian Jewry (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); and Olga Litvak, Conscription and the Search

for Modern Russian Jewry (Bloomington, in: Indiana University Press, 2006).3 Olga Sobolevskaia and Vladimir Gancharov, Evrei Grodnenshchiny: zhizn’ do katastrofy

(Donetsk: Nordpress, 2005), 233.

64 Bemporad


traditionally sanctioned by the religious elite, particularly those that pertained to rites of passage. In the case of circumcision, for example, many Jews, includ-ing members of the Communist elite, no longer relied on a mohel (the religious professional adept in the procedure’s ritual requirements, and a member of the religious elite) but preferred doctors to perform the circumcision on their children, with or without the traditional blessings and prayers.4 The ritual was therefore carried out without the mediation of religious functionaries. In other cases, the mohel as a religious authority was not entirely rejected, but his func-tion was seen principally as medical, the religious aspect of the ritual down-played, and the ethnic one enhanced. Moreover, women came to play a new role in this traditionally all-male ritual. Members of the Communist vanguard who wished to “make their son Jewish,” as the traditional Yiddish expression for circumcising one’s son indicates (yidishn dos kind), usually left on a pre-arranged work-related trip. While away the Communist husbands5 delegated their wives (or mothers) with the important task of arranging the new Soviet Jewish ritual.6

In the case of burial customs, it appears that most Jews in the interwar period made use of Jewish cemeteries as opposed to Soviet civil cemeteries that promoted cremation, a custom patently in conflict with Judaism. In many cities, especially in the latter part of the 1930s, the Jewish cemetery remained perhaps the only “Jewish space” largely untouched by the Soviet efffort to

4 While we do not have any statistics on the percentage of Jewish children circumcised in the interwar period, it is fair to argue that most Jewish male newborns underwent the rite, especially in the Jewish centers of the former Pale of Settlement. (Notwithstanding the fact that from a rabbinic perspective the medical circumcisions, which often became the norm, are not halakhically valid.) On the practice of circumcision among interwar Soviet Jewry, see Elissa Bemporad, Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk (Bloomington, in: Indiana University Press, 2013), in particular, chapter 5. According to one source, 60% of all Jewish children in the Soviet capital of Moscow underwent circumcision in the late 1920s. See Hersh David Nomberg, “Fun mayn rayze in Rusland: notitsn fun a tog-bukh,” Der moment, no. 104, May 6, 1927: 5.

5 According to Jewish law, the commandment to circumcise the newborn falls on the father. The father usually defers the commandment to the mohel, but must be present and recite one of the blessings. In this new Soviet-Jewish ritual, the father is completely absent.

6 See Bemporad, Becoming Soviet Jews, 133–143. On the practice of circumcision, and ways of circumventing the Soviet condemnation of the ritual for alleged medical reasons (a “cruel act” damaging to the health of the baby), see Leonid Smilovitsky, Jewish Life under Stalinism (forthcoming with Central European University Press). On circumcision in the postwar years, see Mordechai Altshuler, Religion and Jewish Identity in the Soviet Union, 1941–1964 (Waltham, ma.: Brandeis University Press, 2012), 200–204.



enforce the tenets of internationalism.7 At the same time, however, many Soviet Jews stopped relying on the services of the cemetery’s religious authori-ties, namely, the members of the Ḥevra Kadisha, or Holy Society. Regardless of its size, every Jewish community in prerevolutionary Russia needed a Ḥevra

Kadisha in order to ensure that the burial strictly followed the meticulous regulations dictated by Jewish law. Belonging to the Ḥevra Kadisha therefore entailed privileges, power, and a visible communal and socio-economic status. But in the Soviet context, with the interference of the state in matters of death, the Ḥevra Kadisha’s influence declined. Indeed, while most Jewish societies, such as, the Ḥevra Linat Ha-ẓedek (which provided lodging for poor visitors, including visiting family of sick people), the Ḥevra Konah Sefarim (to purchase holy books for the study hall), the Ḥevra Mishnayos (to study the Mishnah), or the Ḥevra Bikur Ḥolim (to provide assistance to the sick), were disbanded in the early Soviet period, the Ḥevra Kadisha continued to exist. But it sur-vived in a new secular and bureaucratic guise, as a “cemetery committee,” or an artel, “burial cooperative,”8 and had to struggle to retain some control over the Jewish cemetery and burial procedures. New rituals emerged. These combined together aspects of the Jewish rite, such as the recital of the funeral prayer ’El Malei Raḥamim or of the mourning prayer, Kaddish, by a member of the Ḥevra Kadisha, with features from the new Soviet funeral, such as the orchestra playing Chopin and the eulogy for the departed delivered by the head of the workers’ union.9 Just like in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tensions between the “owners of the Jewish cemetery” and its patrons were not uncommon. The Soviet discrimination against religion enhanced these tensions after 1917.10 While committed to burying their relatives in a Jewish cemetery, many refused to pay the fee to the Holy Society / cemetery commit-tee for its services, which included the recital of the Kaddish on the yahrzeit, anniversary of death, of the deceased. In some cases clashes erupted over the right to bury a family member in a Jewish cemetery without following the reli-gious rite, including, for example, the wrapping of the body of the deceased in the customary shrouds (taḥriḥim) for the burial.11 But in some instances, Jews

7 On Jewish cemeteries after the war see ibid., 205–219.8 Nomberg, “Fun mayn rayze in Rusland,” 5; and idem, “A gelekhter on a zayt,” Oktyabr, no.

273, December 10, 1936: 6.9 Di garber un bershter shtime, no. 1, June 1, 1924: 2.10 On a clash that erupted between Jewish workers and the Ḥevra Kadisha in 1905 see, for

example, Tsodek Dolgopolski, “On khevre kadishe,” Oktyabr, no. 60, March 16, 1936: 3.11 M. Liberman, “Sistematish un umetum fĳirn di antireligyeze arbet,” Oktyabr, no. 88, April

20, 1937: 2.

66 Bemporad


had to give in to the authority of the “Soviet Ḥevra Kadisha,” as in the case of a staunch communist who reluctantly paid the fee to the “cemetery committee” to guarantee his deceased father a Jewish burial.12

This article explores the intricate dynamics between state authority, reli-gious authority, and folk legitimacy in the 1920s and 1930s in the former Pale of Settlement, and more specifĳically, in the Jewish demographic centers of Minsk, in Soviet Belorussia, and Odessa, in Soviet Ukraine. The fĳirst section of the article studies aspects of religious practice and behavior in a key Soviet public, modern, and secular space, namely the factory. In this prime mover of Marxism, Jewish workers were expected to publicly display their loyalty to the state and the Communist Party, repudiating religious authorities and practices. But as the reluctance to work on the Sabbath, the Jewish traditional day of rest, and the persistent tendency to produce and consume matzah during Passover show, the public display of devotion to the state by a number of Jewish work-ers was far from ideal. Tradition won out over the demands of the state, for a long time.

The second part of the article investigates the way in which kosher meat pro-duction and consumption changed under Bolshevik rule. Both producers and consumers came to face the unmanageable tension between allegiance to the new state and the declining authority of the religious elites; between the deep-seated dietary laws and food habits of their communities and the thrust to modernize and abandon them. The conflict between Jewish religious authori-ties and the state for the control over sheḥitah (or ritual slaughter according to the Jewish method) led to the emergence of a “proletarian shoḥet,” or a Soviet Jewish ritual slaughterer, as well as to the strengthening of folk legitimacy in determining what precisely should be deemed kosher.

1 In the Factories of Minsk: Religion in the Public Sphere

A 1926 Joint Distribution Committee memorandum on religious educa-tion in Russia stated that rituals such as religious funerals, the blessing of the New Moon, tashlikh (or the tossing of one’s sins into the river during Rosh Hashanah), and the wearing of tefĳillin, were offfĳicially permitted in the mid-1920s.13 These rituals largely related to the private sphere of the life of a Soviet citizen and were typically performed in the intimacy of a Jewish space,

12 Nomberg, “Fun mayn rayze in Rusland,” 5.13 “Aide-memoire about Religious Education in Russia, 3 July, 1926,” jdc Archives, Collection

21/32, fĳile 472, p. 1.



usually a Jewish home, or in the Jewish quarter of a city or town, among other Jews. But was it possible for Soviet citizens who were active and productive members of Soviet society to behave according to the tenets of Judaism in the public sphere? A close look at the behavior of Jewish workers in the factory sheds light on the interplay between state authority, religious authority, and folk legitimacy, complicating our assumptions about the role that religious Judaism played in the public life of Soviet Jews.

Antireligious slogans in Yiddish were posted through the streets of Soviet cities on the eve of Jewish holidays. Slogans such as “The old market and the shulhoyf are living their last days!”; “Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are holi-days for Nepmen!”; “Those who observe religious holidays are enemies of the Soviet system!”; and “During religious holidays 100% of workers at work!” could be seen hanging by the entrance to a synagogue building, by the window of the union’s club, or in the foyer of a factory with a large percentage of Jewish workers.14 In the mid-1920s, in the city of Minsk, capital of the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (bssr), 43% of the population was Jewish. Here, 35% of the total number of workers registered in the city unions were Jewish (in 1924, there were approximately 8,000 Jews gainfully employed as factory work-ers in Minsk).15 While the majority did not attend synagogue services regu-larly, if at all, many observed some religious practices, especially those more deeply entrenched in their families’ cultural habits and lifestyles and consid-ered essential in the social environment in which they lived. The Sabbath, an important element of self-identifĳication for a large segment of the Jewish pro-letariat before the Revolution, still represented a signifĳicant aspect of religious observance, and even more so of ethnic identifĳication, for a number of workers and/or their families in the 1920s. In the early twentieth-century cities of the Pale of Settlement, most Jews did not work on the Sabbath, but only a minority went to synagogue.

When on September 29, 1921, the workers of the heavily Jewish Tobacco Factory in Minsk met to discuss the ways in which they could make their con-tribution to the welfare campaign, “A Week to Help the Hungry,” the Party-cell leaders proposed to organize a subbotnik, or a working day, on Saturday. One worker spoke in favor of the proposal, emphasizing that, “indeed it is not a sin to work for the hungry on the Sabbath.” She added, however, “only as long as [the subbotnik] is not [organized on] the Sabbath before [the Jewish] New Year [i.e. Rosh Hashanah].” Another worker drew on Jewish law to oppose the

14 Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Minskoi oblasti (hereafter gamo), f. 12, op. 1, d. 475, ll. 30, 32.15 Natsionalnyi arkhiv Respubliki Belarus (hereafter narb), f. 4, op. 1, d. 804, ll. 15–26. See

also, gamo, f. 12, op. 1, d. 558, l. 6.

68 Bemporad


subbotnik, and stated that “[i]t is permitted to work on the Sabbath in order to help the hungry. But only if it is unavoidable [neizbezhno]. In the present case there is nothing unavoidable. Therefore, it is perfectly possible to [help the hungry] [. . .] another day [i.e. not on the Sabbath].” Only ten workers out of seventy-fĳive voted in favor of organizing a subbotnik on the Sabbath.16

Most factories and workshops with a considerable proportion of Jewish workers remained closed on Saturday until 1923. By March of that year, fol-lowing a systematic campaign against the Sabbath, nearly all state enterprises, including the largest textile factory in the city, Shveiprom, which employed almost exclusively Jewish workers, introduced Sunday as the offfĳicial day of rest.17 In spite of the shift to Sunday rest, however, in the Minsk workers’ col-lectives (trud-kolektivy), where Jews constituted 50% of the working force, on Friday Jewish employees usually left the workplace two hours before the onset of the Sabbath, and generally rested on Saturday and worked on Sunday. Those who chose to work on the Sabbath were apparently the exception rather than the rule. By the mid-1920s most workers’ collectives had introduced a 5% sal-ary raise for employees willing to work the two hours before the onset of the Sabbath. In November 1925, the Tailors’ Working Collective was one of the only enterprises in the city which had not yet introduced the 5% salary raise. This either meant that all the workers in that collective left work two hours before the Sabbath, or that those who did not wish to observe the Sabbath rest repre-sented a minority.18

In private enterprises and workshops, in which Jews made up at least 60% of the work force, the day of rest remained optional until the late 1920s. Employees could choose to work on Sunday or Saturday depending on their religious and ideological inclination.19 While some Jewish employees rested on Saturday morning to attend synagogue for Sabbath services, most of them refrained from working because of the socio-cultural norms ingrained in the milieu in which they lived rather than out of commitment to religious obser-vance. Not working on the Sabbath was a custom, a cultural convention, not a religious obligation. As late as November 1926, the Sewing Industry Workers Union was still debating whether to convene its assembly on Friday evening (which marks the beginning of the Sabbath) or on another day; in the fĳirst

16 narb, f. 4, op. 1, d. 417, l. 152.17 narb, f. 4, op. 1, d. 417, l. 193. The shift to the Sunday rest was met with less opposi-

tion in those enterprises with a large proportion of workers who were members of the Communist Party. See, for example, narb, f. 4. op. 1, d. 580, ll. 55–56.

18 gamo, f. 37, op. 1, d. 307, l. 6.19 Kopelevich, “Gekumen di tsayt,” Di royte nodl 8 / 2 (March, 1925): 29.



case, Jewish workers employed in private tailors’ workshops would not attend the event.20

Keeping major Jewish holidays remained fairly widespread among Jewish workers during the 1920s and, at least on paper, guaranteed by Soviet law. The resolution passed by the Belorussian People’s Commissariat of Labor on August 17, 1923 indicated that Jewish workers had the right to stay home on spe-cifĳic Jewish religious holidays. The offfĳicially recognized “days of rest for workers and employees of the Jewish faith, employed in state and private businesses,” included two days for Rosh Hashanah, one for Yom Kippur, one for Sukkot, three for Passover and two for Shavuot. The resolution also afffĳirmed that the days of rest were guaranteed “only if the [workers’] absence did not interfere with the normal work productivity.”21 With this resolution, the Belorussian Commissariat of Labor was simply formalizing a preexistent situation. In most factories in the city, including state enterprises, Jewish and non-Jewish workers did not work on major religious holidays. On June 4, 1923, the offfĳicial organ of the Jewish Section of the Belorussian Communist Party (cpb), Der veker (The Alarm Clock), was not published. It was the fĳirst day of Shavuot. While the editors and journalists were in all likelihood not observing the Jewish holiday, many workers at the press that issued the newspaper almost certainly were.

In spite of the legitimacy granted by the Belorussian constitution, the social pressure to desist from keeping Jewish holidays, and go to work instead, weighed heavily on Jewish workers, especially within the setting of the state factory. When in the mid-1920s, for example, a worker employed in the Minsk Tanners Factory22 decided to stay home on the holiday of Sukkot, his fellow workers and factory managers, Jews and non-Jews alike, could regard his behavior as a deviation from Soviet norms. The tanner himself realized that his “religious behavior” clashed with the expectations of state authorities and Party-cell leaders and could therefore thwart his prospects for a success-ful career in the Soviet enterprise. Over time, the remarkable social pressure and the intensity of the Sovietization process produced a plunge in absences

20 gamo, f. 37, op. 1, d. 308, l. 4.21 narb, f. 4, op. 1, d. 703, l. 80. A second resolution passed by the Belorussian People’s

Commissar of Labor in January 1928 reduced the total number of offfĳicial religious holi-days (including Christian and Jewish holidays) that workers in the Belorussian ssr were allowed to observe to seven. Besides the religious holidays (and Sundays), Soviet citizens did not work during the seven offfĳicial revolutionary holidays. Those who did not wish to observe the religious holidays had the right to other days of rest in their place, or could work and receive a bonus salary; see Oktyabr, no. 7, January 8, 1928: 4.

22 In 1924, 61.5% (771) of the members of the Tanners’ Union in the city and district of Minsk were Jewish; see gamo, f. 12, op. 1, d. 166, ll. 11–12.

70 Bemporad


from the factory on Jewish holidays. In early 1932, the propaganda depart-ment of the Central Committee of the cpb boasted the victory of the Minsk branch of the Bezbozhniki, the Union of the Godless, which cut down on the number of workers forsaking work during the Jewish holidays. If in 1925, a large percentage of Jewish workers missed work during the High Holidays, in 1931 “only a few stayed home, and the majority were seasonal workers or work-ers who had recently moved to the city from the surrounding villages.”23 The Minsk Bezbozhniki might have exaggerated the drop in absenteeism among Jewish workers for propaganda reasons, to swank their successes in uproot-ing religious behavior in Soviet society. In some cases, in fact, even members of the new “proletarian aristocracy” of Stalin’s working force, the so-called udarniki or outstanding workers, refrained from working on Jewish holidays. In the fall of 1932, during the Jewish High Holidays, seven udarniki employed in the Minsk Krupskaia cooperative missed work. The factory’s control com-mission established that only one of them was absent owing to an illness; the remaining six were expelled from the udarniki brigade.24 Disregarding the authority of the state, the workers violated the rules of behavior expected of the honored elite in a public Soviet space.

Antireligious propaganda condemning the observance of Passover became particularly fervent at the turn of the decade and into the 1930s. Political activists organized anti-Passover campaigns with lectures, literary evenings, and performances by the Belorussian Jewish State Chorus in workers’ clubs throughout the city; political brigades visited workers at home, distributed propaganda literature, and engaged them in political conversations against Passover;25 the main Soviet Jewish daily in the city issued antireligious wall newspapers (30,000 copies in 1930) with illustrations and poems by Yiddish writers;26 and as late as 1937, the Belorussian state radio broadcast antireligious programs against Passover.27

It was not only the essence of Passover as a cultural holiday, largely linked to the consumption of the traditional unleavened bread, and therefore deeply entrenched food habits, that made it a favorite among the Jewish workforce. It was also the relative accessibility of matzah in Minsk during the interwar

23 narb, f. 261, op. 1, d. 14, l. 33.24 narb, f. 261, op. 1, d. 14, l. 18.25 “Der arbeter-klub un di antipeysekh-kampanye,” Oktyabr April 7, 1930: 3. See, also Oktyabr,

September 12, 1936: 4.26 Oktyabr, February 21, 1930: 3.27 P. Sh., “A vort vegn dem efĳir,” Oktyabr, April 10, 1937: 4.



period. Through the creation of a Russian Matzah Fund Committee, the jdc made matzah and matzah flour available during Passover throughout most of the 1920s and early 1930s in major Soviet cities, including Minsk. In early 1929, the Soviet government approved the import of fĳifty carloads of matzah (albeit at a prohibitive duty fee) which guaranteed Passover bread for twenty thousand families. The American kosher food company Manischewitz even agreed to retail matzah at ten cents per pound, instead of seventeen cents, for Russia only.28 According to the instructions of Dr. Joseph Rosen, the jdc executive in Russia, 10% of the matzah flour was shipped directly to Leningrad, 20% to Moscow and 25% to Minsk.29 In early 1932, the Manischewitz Company was in the process of concluding another agreement with the Soviet govern-ment allowing the import of matzah and the delivery of matzah parcels to pre-designated addresses.30

When not via outside support, matzah made its way to the tables of Minsk residents through “internal” production, namely local matzah “bakeries.” These improvised bakeries (small workshops or private homes) were generally tolerated by the state and operated in a semilegal fashion until 1930. During Passover of 1924, for example, the demand for matzah was so great that even members of the Construction Workers’ Union, who were Communist Party members, participated in the baking process.31 After 1930, the matzah bakeries were repeatedly closed down on charges of exploitation of minors, namely the young workers who helped in the strenuous baking process of the unleavened bread. On Passover in April 1930, the Minsk Inspector of Labor turned down the petition by the assistant to the chief rabbi of Minsk, Rabbi Menachem Mendl Gluskin, demanding to reopen the bakeries. The inspector confĳirmed that the “abuse of workers” would no longer be tolerated.32 Underground bak-eries reemerged every year at Passover. In 1937, two shoemakers residing in the New Komorovka neighborhood of Minsk were found guilty of secretly baking the unleavened bread in a matzah bakery.33

28 Memorandum by Joseph C. Hyman to Warburg, Rosenberg, Baerwald and Marshall, March 1, 1929, Collection 21/32, fĳile 478, jdc Archives.

29 Cable from nyc jdc Committee to Berlin, March 22, 1929, Collection 21/32, fĳile 478, jdc Archives.

30 Correspondence between Joseph C. Hyman and Dr. Cyrus Adler, January 15, 18, 1932, Collection 21/32, fĳile 478, jdc Archives.

31 gamo, f. 37, op. 1, d. 228, ll. 22–23.32 M. Bernshteyn, “Ekspluatatsye unter der maske fun religye,” Oktyabr, April 7, 1930: 3.33 M. Liberman, “Sistematish un umetum fĳirn antireligyeze arbet,” Oktyabr, April 20, 1937, 2.

72 Bemporad


During the 1930s, the local production of matzah went mostly underground. When factory management learned about workers involved in the secret pro-duction or consumption of matzah during Passover, they usually blamed their behavior on the “bourgeois” habits and mentality still deeply ingrained and widespread among artisans and shtetl Jews who had recently moved to the Belorussian capital and who corrupted the proletariat.34 The Soviets attempted again and again to limit the dangers of “contamination,” for example making sure that “bourgeois elements” did not share the same living quarters with members of the working class. Living in the same apartment building with religiously observant citizens would expose workers to religious behavior and thus jeopardize the Bolshevik experiment as a whole. As one activist stated, it was necessary for “equals to live among equals.”35 The argument of “bourgeois contamination” of members of the Soviet proletariat was hardly applicable to the case of workers who were Communist Party members, and participated in baking endeavors or purchased matzah during Passover.36

In March 1937, complaints reached the managers of the Stalin Typography about a “backward” worker who had recently relocated to Minsk from a nearby shtetl and who lured his co-workers with “delicious Passover specialties,” including matzah.37 He might have even tempted some fully Sovietized Jewish workers who, while disassociating themselves from religious Judaism, did not wish to renounce the traditional food customs and still craved matzah during Passover,38 even if this meant diverging from the rules of behavior established by the Soviet state.

If by the late 1930s most Jewish workers accepted and acknowledged the authority of the Soviet state, in specifĳic contexts they could easily succumb to other pressures, including the authority of socio-cultural practices prevalent among family members and circles of friends. Resting on the Sabbath or during other Jewish holidays in the 1920s, and producing or consuming matzah during Passover in the 1920s and 1930s, thus stemmed from the authority of the home, the family and friendship networks, which could prevail over the authority

34 L. Frid, “Di antireligyeze arbet hot zikh opgeshtelt,” Oktyabr, April 7, 1930: 3.35 gamo, f. 12, op. 1, d. 321, l. 63.36 Rozin, “Fryer bakt men matse, dernokh hoybt men on di antipeysekh-kampanye,” Oktyabr,

April 7, 1930: 3.37 “Farlozn di antireligyeze dertsyung,” Oktyabr, March 21, 1937: 2.38 See, for example, Elye Kahan, “Tsefaln der matse-podriad,” in Sovetishe Vaysrusland:

literarishe zamlung, ed. Izzy Kharik and Yasha Bronshteyn (Minsk: Melukhe-farlag fun Vaysrusland, 1935), 189–191.



of the state and the Party. After all, as Hannah Arendt has noted, authority demands obedience and precludes the use of external means of coercion; it transcends power and is one of the decisive factors in human communities.39

2 Proletarian Kosher Butchers in Odessa

Three general remarks are necessary before exploring questions of kosher meat production and consumption in interwar Odessa. First, like the rites of passage mentioned at the beginning of this article, dietary practices lie at the heart of all cultural and ethnic identities, are closely connected to the life of the family, the community, and deeply ingrained social customs, and are therefore more resistant to change. As such a conservative feature in cultural identifĳication, the challenge to dietary practices introduced by the Soviet state tapped into a sensitive aspect of Jewish daily life, even for those who were not strictly observant.

Second, in spite of the relentless assault on religious practice under Stalinism and the progressive secularization and Sovietization of the Jewish population, the demand for kosher meat never subsided entirely during the interwar period in areas of the former Pale of Settlement. Cities like Odessa (where one third of the population was Jewish on the eve of World War ii) remained the destination of a large and steady migration of thousands of Jews from the surrounding provincial cities and towns, where traditional life-styles were relatively more pervasive, who relocated to larger urban centers in search of better employment. Although it is hard to ascertain how many of these new migrants were religiously observant, it is likely that many of them came from traditional homes, abided by certain religious practices, or at least were more resistant to renouncing traditional food habits. Shtetl Jews who set-tled in Odessa and other urban centers in the former Pale of Settlement were the Jewish counterpart of the Russian peasants who settled in Moscow, tak-ing with them their culture and mentality and implanting it in specifĳic areas of the capital.40 Moreover, unlike Jews who in the interwar period moved to the Russian interior and settled in Moscow or Leningrad, those who settled in Odessa and other urban centers in the former Pale usually migrated as a

39 Hannah Arendt, “What is Authority?,” in Between Past and Future: Eight Excercises in

Political Thought (New York: Penguin Books, 1993), 93, 104, 141.40 See, for example David L. Hofffmann, Peasant Metropolis: Social Identities in Moscow, 1929–

1941 (Ithaca; ny and London: Cornell University Press, 1994).

74 Bemporad


family, and continued to live together as a multigenerational family, chiefly because of the geographic proximity between their shtetl and their new city of residence. The constant influx of this population to cities like Odessa resulted in the persistence of kosher butchering in many urban centers of the former Pale in the second part of the 1930s.41

Third, the question of kosher meat production and consumption is closely intertwined with the issue of gender. In spite of the 1920s revolutionary rheto-ric about gender equality, mostly women bought food and brought it to the table. Jewish women, who never served as kosher butchers or as religious lead-ers and who, because of their gender, were rarely active in the administrative bodies that ran Soviet cities, played an important role in the preservation of kosher meat consumption under the Soviets. In one instance, in the city of Kremenchug, Jewish housewives petitioned the central food cooperative in the city not to discontinue the sale of kosher meat to its members and threat-ened to launch a strike, by which they meant “abstain from cooking dinners for their husbands, unless kosher meat is provided.”42 Since the main actors in the struggle for the control over, and against the persistence of kosher butchering were men, but the main customers were women, the study of kosher meat pro-duction and food habits among Soviet Jews can provide a glimpse into gender relations on the Jewish street.

The production and consumption of kosher meat and poultry in the cities of Ukraine remained relatively untouched in the early years after the Revolution, and frequently became integrated into governmental structures and facilities, such as city cooperatives and slaughterhouses. The viability of kosher meat production in Ukraine was clearly stated in a resolution passed in 1924 by the nkvd People’s Commissariat for Internal Afffairs, according to which the status of shoḥtim (ritual slaughterers) who were employed in state facilities, was made equal to that of skilled laborers, “whose job satisfĳies all the physical requirements of the category.”43

41 Mordechai Altshuler, Soviet Jewry on the Eve of the Holocaust: A Social and Demographic

Profĳile (Jerusalem: The Centre for Research of East European Jewry and Yad Vashem, 1998), 45–46. On the persistence of kosher butchering in Soviet cities during the 1920s and 1930s, see A.A. Gershuni, Yehudim va-yahadut bi-verit ha-mo‘aẓot, vol 2: yahadut

rusiah metkufat Stalin va-‘ad ha-zman ha-’aḥaron (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1970), 86–87; and Bemporad, Becoming Soviet Jews, 125–129.

42 “Women Strike as Protest in Stop on Kosher Meat Sale,” jta, April 29, 1929.43 Tsentralnyi derzhavnii arkhiv vishchikh organiv vladi ta upravlinnia Ukrainy (Hereafter

TsDAVO), f. 5, op. 3, d. 335, l. 109.



In spite of occasional challenges to the offfĳicial status of shoḥtim, possibly instigated by the members of the Evsektsiia (Jewish Section of the Communist Party), who, in their quest to create a New Soviet Jewish Man and Woman made it their passionate aim to also uproot ritual slaughter, the nkvd confĳirmed the resolution on the shoḥtim’s rights as Soviet citizens and as Soviet butchers.44

A signifĳicant portion of the meat distributed to the main food cooperatives in urban centers had therefore been slaughtered according to the Jewish ritual method. In some cities with a signifĳicant Jewish population, when a house-wife planned to purchase nonkosher meat, she had to go to one of the city’s food cooperatives, and approach the shop’s counter specifĳically asking the store clerk for treyf (“forbidden”) meat.45 The korobka system, or the traditional tax system which, for decades, Jewish communities throughout Russia had imposed upon their members as an indirect levy on kosher meat, was funda-mentally unafffected by the Revolution and retained the same modus operandi of its pre-1917 equivalent. Until the mid-1920s, most shoḥtim worked under the supervision of the city’s rabbi; a mashgiaḥ, or ritual supervisor, made sure that the slaughtering process strictly abided by Jewish laws, and collected a tax on each animal slaughtered according to the ritual. The tax was passed on to con-sumers in the price of each individual chicken or cut of beef. The proceeds of ritual slaughter were then divided between the ritual slaughterers, who were not state employees and worked privately under the supervision of the rabbi, and the rabbi himself, while the meat was sold to the local Soviet food coop-eratives at a higher cost than nonkosher meat. This new Soviet korobka rep-resented the main (and typically only) source of income for rabbis and other members of the religious elite who, as religious functionaries, were included in the lishchentsy lists and offfĳicially disenfranchised from Soviet electoral rights.

With the second half of the 1920s, besides centralizing the meat sector, one of the main concerns for Soviet authorities was to challenge rabbinic author-ity and remove from the religious elite its historic monopoly on the produc-tion of kosher meat, thus breaking up the korobka system.46 In 1926, Odessa’s local authorities openly challenged the traditional kosher meat levy system.

44 On the special license issued by Soviet authorities to the shoḥtim, and on the reasons and excuses to rescind the license, including evasion of taxes, violation of sanitary regula-tions, etc., see Leonid Smilovitsky, Jewish Life in Belarus Under Stalin (forthcoming, ceu Press), 160.

45 gamo, f. 12, op. 1, d. 539, ll. 22–24.46 See, for example, Di Rabonim in dinst fun fĳinants-kapital, ed. Belaruskaia akademiia

navuk, Iaureiski sektar (Moscow-Kharkov-Minsk: Tsentraler felker-farlag fun F.S.S.R., 1930), 26–29.

76 Bemporad


As the city grew into one of the largest resort centers in the country, attracting thousands of people from all over the Soviet Union, especially during the sum-mer, the District Department of Agriculture (Gubzemotdel) opened a chicken slaughterhouse in the southern resort zone of Odessa, the section known as Lustdorf. This state-controlled slaughterhouse, which employed shoḥtim, would compete with the private shoḥtim who worked under rabbinic supervi-sion, and thereby contributed to the existence of the korobka levy. In the begin-ning the Lustdorf Municipal Chicken Slaughterhouse faced the opposition and competition of private shoḥtim. Local authorities eventually overcame competition by forbidding the private slaughter of chickens in the Lustdorf marketplace. In response, the Odessa rabbinate and the offfĳicial body respon-sible for supporting Jewish religious practice in that section of the city (the Jewish religious community Halvues-Khein) fĳiled a complaint to the People’s Commissariat for Internal Afffairs. Here they protested their loss of income (i.e. korobka), and argued that forbidding ritual slaughter outside of the munici-pal structure was a violation of the Constitution of the Ukrainian Republic, which guaranteed freedom of religion.47 The Odessa District Department of Agriculture settled the question in favor of the authorities, explaining that: 1) One, the hygiene standards necessary to protect the health of Odessa resi-dents and visitors could be met only in municipal structures; 2) that the price of kosher and nonkosher chicken produced in the slaughterhouse would be the same, and “without distinction of nationality or religion [. . .] [there would be] no additional cost for religious Jews” (i.e. no korobka)48 3) and fĳinally, since cattle was already being slaughtered for ritual purposes in city facilities, kosher chicken should also be produced within a state slaughterhouse. And they added, “religious Jews will not oppose ritual slaughter in the slaughterhouse [. . .] because specifĳic days will be set for ritual slaughter only.”49

As a result of the state’s growing meddling in issues of kosher meat pro-duction, many shoḥtim came to forge a new social identity and presented themselves as members of the proletarian labor force. Traditionally part of the secondary religious elite after the rabbis, shoḥtim held status and power in the Jewish community and were well respected for their ritual function. Under the Soviets, many shoḥtim reinvented themselves as proletarian Jewish butchers: removed from rabbinic control, they shifted their allegiance to Soviet

47 TsDAVO, f. 5, op. 5, d. 335, ll. 101–102. For the nkvd response to the rabbis’ complaint, and in general on the question of who should control the production of kosher poultry, see TsDAVO, f. 5, op. 3, d. 335, l. 117.

48 TsDAVO, f. 5, op. 3, d. 335, l. 103.49 Ibid., ll. 105, 106ob.



state authorities. In February 1927, a group of shoḥtim employed in the Odessa Slaughterhouse petitioned the City Voting Committee and complained of having been mistakenly classifĳied as sluzhiteli kulta (religious functionaries), deprived of voting rights and branded lishchentsy. In their petition, the Jewish butchers stated that this classifĳication was “utterly incorrect,” and emphasized their “proletarian social identity and function in society” over their religious role. “The work performed by Jewish butchers in the slaughterhouse,” they argued, “has nothing to do with the administration of religious ceremonies.” “The diffference between the shoḥet and the regular butcher should not be sought in any specifĳic religious function, but rather in their diffferent ability to slaughter, abide by sanitary rules of cleanliness and carry out a veterinary inspection,” continued the petitioners.50 In this secular explanation of the method of Jewish slaughter, the shoḥet carried out a mere act of physical work through slaughtering, as well as a professional and medical examination of the animal to make sure that its consumption did not pose a threat to consumers’ health. Technically speaking, the shoḥtim were explaining the religious pro-hibition to consume animals that, upon further inspection, are found to have blemishes or lesions.51 “There is nothing religious in this,” asserted the petition-ers, as they played down the blessing traditionally pronounced by the shoḥet during the slaughtering process as devoid of any meaning, even reminding Soviet authorities that dumb shoḥtim who could not say the blessing were nev-ertheless allowed to slaughter according to the Jewish method, and fĳinally that shoḥtim were usually secular (svetskie) and did not abide by ritual laws. “[The shoḥet] is seen as a lay person, alien to all rituals,” contended the petitioners, and even stated that “The Jews who purchase our meat know very well that kashrut does not stem from God, nor from the holy person of the shoḥet, but it rather derives exclusively from his careful medical inspection of the animal.”52 While the main purpose of the petition was most likely for the shoḥtim to be reinstated in their voting rights and escape social and legal stigma for them-selves and their families, it is noteworthy that they conceptualized a new role for shoḥtim in Soviet society, entirely severing themselves from religion and religious authorities, and recognizing the state as the only authority.

Many Odessa shoḥtim were ultimately stripped of their voting rights in 1927, but as the new resolution passed by the nkvd and signed by the local expert on kosher butchering, Liubinskii, stated, it applied only to the shoḥtim of the

50 Ibid., f. 5, op. 3, d. 335, ll. 109–109ob.51 Robin Judd, “The Politics of Beef: Animal Advocacy and the Kosher Butchering Debates in

Germany,” Jewish Social Studies 10 / 1 (2003): 117–150, here 126–127.52 TsDAVO, f. 5, op. 3, d. 335, ll. 109–109ob.

78 Bemporad


Jewish religious communities, “rizniki evreiskikh religiinikh gromad.”53 As the nkvd notifĳied a member of the Odessa workers’ collective for the slaughter of poultry by the name of Sh. G. Gorokhovskii, who had turned to lawyers in the Odessa District Tribunal for legal consultation, kosher butchers of the reli-gious community (namely, who operated under rabbinic supervision) were indeed sluzhbovtsi kul’tiv (religious functionaries) and should consequently be deprived of voting rights.54

State interference with ritual slaughter not only led to attempts to construct a new social identity for many shoḥtim. It also produced a novel strain between ritual slaughterers, who in the 1920s still worked under rabbinical authority and supervision, and those who rejected the latter and tried to work within the state system. A group of local shoḥtim responded (in 1925) to the decree by the Odessa District Executive Committee, which ordered the centralization of the city poultry production, the concentration of the slaughter procedure in special facilities with appropriate sanitary and veterinary inspection, and the limitation of the sale of live and slaughtered animals to restricted areas in the marketplace,55 with a statement addressed to the District Department of Agriculture. To satisfy the terms of the decree, the shoḥtim proposed opening, at their own expense, examination points to oversee the animals’ health and improve the sanitary conditions of their private slaughterhouses. They also suggested restricting ritual slaughter to four centers in the city, and closing the remaining four “because they serve only private consumers.”56 Whereas the authors of the above-mentioned statement most likely sold the meat to city cooperatives, the shoḥtim who worked in the other slaughterhouses did not work within governmental or state facilities, nor did they sell their product through city cooperatives.

It was not uncommon for rabbis to dismiss the meat produced by shoḥtim who were not under their tutelage, but operated in the fluctuating reality of the nep, as nonkosher.57 In some cases, the shoḥtim whose religious stan-dards were doubted sold their product to the same cooperatives that pur-chased kosher meat from the shoḥtim who worked for the rabbi. At the same time, they charged less and therefore became threatening competitors for the

53 Ibid., l. 144.54 Ibid.55 Ibid., l. 111.56 Ibid., l. 190.57 On clashes between rabbis and shoḥtim over kosher meat production, competition in

price, and norms of kashrut see, for example, “Koshere shkhite,” Oktyabr, No. 59, April 13, 1928: 4.



rabbis. While strictly Orthodox Jews could not accept as kosher the cattle and fowl slaughtered without the rabbi’s ritual supervision, and possibly without full compliance with the strict rules of kosher butchering, many consumers did: for them such meat was sufffĳiciently kosher, even without rabbinic certifĳication.

Whether they purchased the meat because of its lower price, because of their poor knowledge of the laws and customs of kosher butchering, or because it was less risky than buying “black market meat,” their action represented an important step toward the breakdown of the historic monopoly of rabbis over the production of kosher meat. The shift of sheḥitah from religious supervi-sion to state control symbolized the progressive loss of power and authority of the rabbi. This combination of the decline of the traditional role of the rabbi and the retention of conventional kosher slaughtering methods gener-ated a new kind of folk-kashrut (or popular interpretation of Jewish dietary laws) based on traditional slaughtering practices and food habits rather than on religious authority. This situation was addressed (and criticized) in 1928, by Samarius Gourary, son-in-law of Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneersohn, who com-plained about the chaotic state of kosher butchering throughout the Soviet Union, exemplifĳied by the rabbis’ loss of control over meat production, and the presence of wandering shoḥtim who travelled from city to city and slaughtered animals without rabbinic permission.58

By 1929, the korobka institution, which had ensured fĳinancial support for the rabbis and in some places for illegal educational institutions throughout the 1920s, began to collapse and give way.59 The decline of grassroots religious life was not only a result of antireligious persecution, but the general political and economic pressure of the 1930s as well. The regime’s turn to rapid industrializa-tion, forced collectivization, and a centralized economy (which caused, among other things, massive food shortages in urban areas) made kosher butchering increasingly difffĳicult. Religious leaders involved in the production of kosher meat were arrested; kosher meat was not often available in Soviet coopera-tives. Whereas slaughter of cattle according to the Jewish method became almost impractical in the 1930s, primarily because the government took con-trol of food production and restricted cattle supply for religious purposes,

58 Samarius Gourary, “Denkschrift Uber Die Materielle Lage Des Rabbinerstandes in Russland,” December 5, 1928, Collection 21/32, fĳile 475, jdc Archives.

59 On Rabbi Schneersohn’s and Rabbi Gourary’s plans to face the kosher meat crisis by establishing kosher kitchens throughout the country and creating a large plant for the production of preserved kosher meats in the Urals, see “Memorandum of Interview with Rabbi Schneerson and Rabbi Gourary, by Dr. Adler and Mr. Wiernik, on October 9, 1929,” Collection 21/32, fĳile 476, jdc Archives. See, in particular, pp. 2, 5.

80 Bemporad


kosher fowl was easily accessible.60 Upon the request of individual citizens, state-employed shoḥtim or unemployed religious shoḥtim slaughtered chicken throughout the mid-1930s, generally undisturbed, in some cases, even within governmental structures. Besides demand, kosher meat production largely depended on the economic interest of local authorities. In the early 1930s, in the city of Zinovievsk, for example, local trade authorities opened three kosher chicken slaughterhouses, in which shoḥtim were classifĳied as skilled laborers, with the hope of enhancing the export of feathers.61 According to one source, ritual slaughtering flourished in Ukraine in 1931–1932 as part of cooperatives where shoḥtim were employed as workers.62 In some cities of the Ukrainian Republic, managers of Torgsin stores, the state-run hard currency stores that operated from 1931 to 1936, requested to sell kosher meat.63 The Kiev State Slaughterhouse supplied city residents with kosher poultry until the late 1930s.64 At least one kosher chicken slaughterhouse operated in Kiev in the 1930s; in 1935 there were twenty-one shoḥtim working there either with no rabbinic supervision at all, or in the presence of a “Soviet rabbinic shoḥet,” who in his functions merged together the persona of the rabbi with the kosher butcher. Rabbi Yaakov Berger worked in the Kiev slaughterhouse as shoḥet from 1927 to the late 1930s.65

3 Conclusion

In interwar Poland, a predominantly conservative and Catholic society, the Jews were viewed as an inassimilable, foreign, and even threatening group, inclined toward economic exploitation and the political corruption of Communism. However, while anti-Semitism found support among sectors of the Polish political, intellectual, and religious elites, Jewish life reached a pinnacle of diversity unseen in Europe at the time. Allegiance to Judaism

60 Gershuni, Yehudim va-yahadut be-verit ha-mo‘aẓot, vol. 2, 86.61 “Shokhtim un rabonim af kest bam zinovyevsker melukhe-handl,” Der Emes, April 11, 1930:

3; and “Kosher Meat Again Made Available in Ukraine,” jta, April 15, 1930.62 Gershuni, Yehudim, vol. 2, 86.63 Ibid., 87.64 Leonid Smilovistki, “Jewish Life in Minsk after the War,” Jews in Eastern Europe 30 / 2

(1996): 5–17, here 7 n. 13.65 Ibid. On kosher meat production and consumption after the war see Altshuler, Religion

and Jewish Identity, 161–165.



developed in a multifaceted spirit ranging from strict observance to absolute laxity. With rare interference on the part of the state, and tensions limited to the encounter between folk legitimacy and religious authorities, the emer-gence of dissimilar notions of kashrut is not surprising. For example, conflicts between the members of the rabbinical elites over the religious profĳiciency and skills of a shoḥet, and consequently over whether the meat he produced was kosher or not, emerged regularly in the interwar period.66

It is much more surprising that contradictory and many-sided notions of kashrut emerged in the Soviet Union, where the one-party system, with a state-controlled economy and an offfĳicially atheistic culture, established in 1917 by Lenin’s Bolshevik vanguard, accepted nonreligious and non-bourgeois Jews as fully-fledged equal citizens of the state and outlawed anti-Semitism, but sys-tematically persecuted religion. In its thrust to Sovietize and modernize its citizens as swiftly and thoroughly as possible, the state inflicted a mighty blow to the already shrinking authority of the religious elites. But religious practice (and cultural rituals connected to Judaism) did not die out. As religious institu-tions came under attack, and became unviable, folk practices gained the upper hand. Here—much more than in Poland—folk legitimacy refashioned reli-gious practice, bringing unexpected changes to the rituals and customs, and instilling in them a degree of creativity that appears surprising in the midst of an oppressive system like the one created by the Soviets.

Caught between two conflicting authorities, shoḥtim looked for middle-ground solutions and modes of production of kosher meat, fĳighting against the rabbis and the state and compromising with both of them at the same time. The shoḥtim negotiated with the Soviet state to integrate their type of slaugh-ter into the Soviet meat production system, in part for their own professional benefĳit. Complying only with rabbinic authority and completely removing themselves from state supervision would have meant the immediate demise of kosher meat production in the Soviet Union. But kosher meat produc-tion also depended on the persistence of demand, which carried on despite Sovietization because of deeply ingrained dietary practices. Not unlike other religious practices no longer monitored by the religious elites, such as birth and death rituals, and observance of the Sabbath and Passover, the attempt

66 See, for example “Vider an ekstra rabinat zitsung vegn ha-rav Ritshevals aroystrit in inyen ‘vinkl-shokhtim’,” Der moment, March 2, 1930, 9. For a literary depiction of tensions between kosher butchers and rabbis about bringing meat to Vilna without rabbinical supervision see Chaim Grade, Di agune (New York: Hoypt-farkoyf, Cyco-Bicher Farlag, 1961), 103.

82 Bemporad


to carry on kosher meat production in Soviet society did not depend on the rabbis, who ultimately failed; neither did it depend on the shoḥtim, who nego-tiated with the Soviet state mainly for professional reasons. The production, and consequently the consumption of kosher meat in the Soviet Union, largely depended on Soviet Jews themselves—Jewish women in particular—who attempted to negotiate Soviet economic and political conditions, circumvent-ing open conflict with the state and renouncing traditional leadership. In a way, these new expressions of folk religious behaviour were just another aspect of the Soviet Jewish experience and daily life in the 1920s and 1930s—made of synthesis and compromise.

Defying Authority in the Pale: The Making of Soviet Jewish Ritualsand the Emergence of Folk Legitimacy

Documents