The forgotten Jewish history of a town

Pochep

You Never Knew

The 19th century was a period of flourishing Jewish life in Pochep. The town's Jewish population increased significantly.

According to the 1897 census, Jews constituted a third of the city's total population (3,172 out of 9,714 residents). After the revolution and World War I, this number even increased slightly.

Population of Pochep in 1920.
Total population is 11801. Of these, 3,909 are Jews and 7,735 are Russians.

In the 19th century, Pochep was a mestechko on the border of the Pale of Settlement, or as it is called in Yiddish, a shtetl.
The term mestechko is of Polish origin, adopted into the Russian language after the partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It referred to a small town with a market square and a population engaged in trade and crafts. These towns frequently had a large Jewish community that differed from their non-Jewish neighbors in religion, occupations, language, and culture.

Pochep was one such town. It had five synagogues, a rabbinical court, a yeshiva (a higher Jewish religious educational institution), Jewish shops, and a Jewish cemetery, which still exists today.

Craftsman Izrail Volovich with his family, Pochep
Yad Vashem

Under the Russian Empire, Jews were prohibited from owning land, which prevented them from engaging in agriculture. Consequently, the Jewish population of Pochep, like in other towns, focused on crafts and trade.

The heart of the town was the market square, where the trading and craft activities were concentrated. There was a clear property stratification, with both wealthy and poor merchants trading in the bazaar.

One of the prominent Jewish merchant families in Pochep were the Blanters, who were the father and grandfather of the composer Matvey Blanter, author of the famous song Katyusha. They were prosperous merchants and owned a kerosene warehouse, a wheel grease factory, and a soap-making plant in Pochep.

What did Jewish life in Pochep look like?

We know there were exactly five synagogues from a statement made by members of the Jewish community of Pochep at the Beis Yisroel synagogue in 1934, stored in the State Archive of the Russian Federation. According to this document, one synagogue was located at Oktyabrskaya Street, building 1, and another at Malaya Starodubskaya Street, building 9 (currently Khabotko Street). The locations of the other synagogues remain unknown.

Statement from members of the Jewish community of Pochep regarding the return of the synagogue building, 1934, State Archive of the Russian Federation

Pochep-born Fara Lynn Krasnopolsky shared her memories of childhood and life in the pre-revolutionary town in her book, I Remember. Although written as a work of fiction, it contains many descriptions of life in Pochep over several years.

The main character, Hannah, is six years old at the beginning of the book, and her mother tries to get her into the gymnasium where Maria Valerianovna Litvinenko was the director. “She was a short, fat woman, who sat most of the time because it was hard for her to walk. She told us politely, “I regret to have to tell you that the Jewish quota for this year is all filled. Come next year.” Hannah eventually entered the gymnasium, and her favorite subjects were literature and mathematics.

The children attended school six days a week, including Saturday. To avoid violating the laws of Shabbat, which prohibit carrying books, the girls devised a way to pass books along a chain. They stood one after another and threw the books between themselves, with the girl at the beginning of the chain running to the other end. In this way, they cleverly overcame the Shabbat prohibitions on work.

Hannah also remembers Uncle Leib's store, where they sold pickles, herring, sauerkraut, and Dutch chocolate. She recounts her walks around the city square, her time by the Sudost River, the layout of houses, and the people of that era.

From the book, we learn that every Sunday, Pochep hosted a market, and several times a year, a fair was held. The fair was a significant event, drawing many visitors who often needed a place to stay overnight. Visiting Jews were accommodated in the homes of local co-religionists. Religious Jews who observed Saturday (Shabbat) could not work or use transport on that day, so they arrived at the fair the day before, on Friday. The author's great-great-grandmother, Esther, was a devout woman who became very concerned if they still had no guests by 12 o'clock on Friday. She would ask the younger family members to look for those who had not yet found a place to stay, as hosting guests was considered sacred. It was regarded as a great sin if a guest left the host's house on the eve of Shabbat.

The life of Jews in Pochep during the 19th and early 20th centuries is vividly described by Beth Galleto in her book From Pochep with Love. This work is a genealogical study of Beth's family history, whose grandparents emigrated from Pochep to America in 1911.

Beth's family kept a large herd of cows. They didn't sell milk because it was too cheap, but they made cheese, sour cream, and butter. On Thursdays, they packed these products into barrels, loaded them onto a cart, and sent them to the outskirts of Pochep, where poor Jewish families lived.

For the Jewish Passover holiday, the family made their own matzah — unleavened flatbreads made from a mixture of flour and water, baked for 18 minutes to prevent fermentation. They drew water for the matzah from a stream, often needing to break through the ice since during Passover (April), it could still be winter in Pochep.

“Whenever Mother saw that I felt hurt or offended by my sister she would offer to take me along when she went out.
‘Come’, she would say, ‘we’ll visit Aunt Risha and Uncle Leib,’ - one of mother’s three brothers, he was the only one who lived in Pochep. ...
They had a food store of all good things to eat, from herring to sweets, even fancy imported chocolate bars. I liked visiting them. While Mamma would go through to their apartment at the back of the store, I would stay behind and inhale all the smells from the foods. I also liked to watch Uncle Leib as he wrapped the items he sold in newspaper.
The floor in the store consisted of loosely connected wooden boards held down by the display of heavy groceries: big sacks of barley, rice and potatoes. At the entrance to the store, Uncle kept big barrels of herring, pickles and sauerkraut. Behind the counter he kept big bags of sugar, salt and an assortment of sweets. ...
On this particular visit, Uncle Leib gave me a chocolate bar to take home. I read on it, ‘Imported from Holland’. My knowledge of geography being still limited, I knew only that Holland was not in Russia. It was in Europe, but where exactly I wasn’t sure. The chocolate tasted good. I ate half of it. Mother didn’t want any. I saved the other half for later.”

Beth Galleto, From Pochep with Love
archive.org

“The city was located in a low area, and during most of the year it was muddy. There were wooden walkways along the rows of houses, but they were mostly rotten and weak. A person would try to avoid the mud by jumping and balancing, often sinking in the dirt.
On the other hand, the town enjoyed a nice view. There was a river whose path created a small lake, surrounded by a pretty forest that stretched to the hill at the end of town. The forest was a favorite for romantic outings of youngsters.
The human landscape was a mix of all possible contradictions. There were Jews and Christians, orthodox and secular, Zionists and anti-Zionists, socialists and conservatives, Chassidim and Mitnagdim, Yiddishists and Hebraists.
The atmosphere, though, was of tolerance and forgiveness. Even antisemitism was not as intense. There were many arguments against Jews, but they co-existed peacefully.”

Pochep, market square
Genealogical workshop of Maria Kiselyova

Fara Lynn Krasnopolsky, I Remember
archive.org

The communal autonomy of the Jewish population of Pochep was reflected in their language. The main language of communication among Jewish residents was Yiddish, and many of them did not speak Russian at all. For about a third of Pochep's residents, Russian was not their native language, and they only learned it when necessary. Prayers, on the other hand, were said in Hebrew.

Yiddish and Hebrew are distinct languages.
Yiddish is closely related to German, while Hebrew is related to Arabic.

Yudel Pen, Reading a Newspaper
Wikipedia

Here is an example of how Yiddish sounds, with a poem by Yakov Glatshteyn called Good Night, World. Listen to how much the language resembles German. Yiddish was commonly used as a language of communication and was often referred to as "jargon."

Hebrew, on the other hand, was not used in daily life but was the language of religious study. Boys began learning Hebrew from the age of 3-4 in a heder (Jewish elementary school) because it was the language of the holy books. The part of the Bible known in Christianity as the Old Testament is written in Hebrew.

In the provided video, the poem is read by Hanna Rovina, an actress from the Israeli Habima Theater. One of the founders of this theater was Menachem Gnessin, the son of the Pochep rabbi.

What Languages Were Spoken in Pochep?

In Pochep, it so happened that enlightened individuals sought to create using Hebrew. Two future writers who contributed to the revival of literary and spoken Hebrew studied at the Pochep yeshiva (religious school): Yosef Haim Brenner and Uri Nissan Gnessin. They believed it was important to transform a language that had ceased to be spoken for two thousand years into a living, literary language. Uri Nissan Gnessin translated Russian classics into Hebrew, including works by Chekhov.
Through the efforts of many people, Hebrew eventually became the state language of Israel. It can be said that the Pochep yeshiva played a significant role in the development of Hebrew.

Yosef Haim Brenner
Harvard Library

Uri Nissan Gnessin
kedem-auctions.com

The Pochep teacher Aharon Tzvi Bass was also an advocate for Hebrew, teaching the language using his unique method. Later, his son Shmuel Bass would write in Hebrew as well, creating many popular children's songs.

Aharon Tzvi Bass, father of Shmuel Bass
Encyclopedia of the Founders and Builders of Israel

Shmuel Bass
Encyclopedia of the Founders and Builders of Israel

In the 1900s, theater troupes came to Pochep to perform plays on Jewish themes.

A little later, Menachem Gnessin, the son of the Pochep rabbi, became one of the founders of Israel's national theater, Habima. Initially based in Moscow, the theater was supported by the renowned director Vakhtangov and staged performances in Hebrew. Eventually, the theater relocated to Tel Aviv.

Menachem Gnessin
Wikipedia

Habima Theatre, Israel

Stories about people who were born or lived in Pochep can be found on the Biographies page.

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e.zhilina@shtetlpochep.ru

AUTHOR - EKATERINA ZHILINA

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* פוצ'פ (hebrew) - Pochep