Tag Archives: Russian Empire

Jew of the Week: Sholem Aleichem

The Jewish Mark Twain

Sholem Solomon Alexei Rabinovich (1859-1916) was born to a wealthy family near Kyiv in what was then the Russian Empire. He grew up in the Jewish shtetl of Voronkiv, receiving both a secular education and a traditional Jewish one. His father lost most of the family’s fortunes, and his mother died of cholera when he was just 13. Rabinovich started writing around this time, and already at age 15 wrote a Jewish version of Robinson Crusoe. He wrote stories in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian. At 24, he took up the pen name “Sholem Aleichem”, the Yiddish pronunciation of the Hebrew greeting meaning “peace be upon you”. After completing his studies, he worked as a teacher and then as a “crown rabbi”, a representative of the Jewish community to the Russian government. He lost his own wealth in the stock market in 1890 and at one point struggled to make a living and feed his five children. By the end of the 1890s, Sholem Aleichem was the most popular Yiddish writer in the world, and inspired countless other young Jewish writers. He published Tevye the Milkman in 1894, which was later adapted to Fiddler on the Roof, becoming a major international hit (as well as a Broadway play—the first to run for more than 3000 performances—and a film). Rabinovich lived in Kyiv until 1905, when terrible pogroms raged across the Russian Empire and he witnessed the brutality firsthand. The family fled, splitting their time between New York City and Geneva, Switzerland. All in all, Sholem Aleichem wrote some 40 works in Yiddish, and many more in Hebrew and Russian. He was commonly referred to as “the Jewish Mark Twain”. (When Mark Twain himself heard about this, he said that he was actually “the American Sholem Aleichem”!) Rabinovich was a passionate Zionist, too, joining Hovevei Zion in 1888, and representing the American Jewish community at the Eighth Zionist Congress in 1907. There are streets, schools, and other public places named after him around the world, including in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Israel, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, and the United States. There is even a Sholem Aleichem Crater on the planet Mercury! Rabinovich’s funeral drew some 100,000 mourners, making it among the largest in New York’s history. He wrote in his will: “Let my name be recalled with laughter, or not at all.”

Who are the Indigenous People of Israel?

Words of the Week

Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.
– Sholem Aleichem

Jew of the Week: Temerl Sonnenberg Bergson

Europe’s Greatest Jewish Businesswoman

Tamar “Temerl” bat Avraham of Opoczno (c. 1765-1830) was born in Poland to a wealthy and deeply religious Jewish family. She married young, but her first husband tragically died soon after. She got remarried to a young businessman named Dov Ber (“Berek”) Zbytkower. He went on to become immensely wealthy, and supplied the Polish and Russian armies. He took on the last name “Sonnenberg”, and was nicknamed the “Polish Rothschild”. Meanwhile, besides being a devoted mother of six children, Temerl was busy supporting the nascent Hasidic movement, founded just a few decades earlier by the Baal Shem Tov. Temerl played a huge role in bringing Hasidism to Poland. In fact, she financed the construction of Warsaw’s first Hasidic synagogue. She paid the salaries of numerous Hasidic rabbis in Poland (along with non-Hasidic rabbis), including the great Simcha Bunim of Peshischa. Temerl was a huge philanthropist and gave to all kinds of other causes as well. In 1818 alone, she donated some 54,000 rubles to Polish charities. After her husband passed away, Temerl took over his business. (In honour of their father, her children changed their last name to “Berekson”, or “Bergson”, which is why she came to be known as Temerl Bergson, too.) She also founded her own new bank. Temerl was one of the top businesswomen in all of Europe at the time. She was so influential that the Russian government gave her special permission to buy an estate, making her only the third Jew to own property outside the ghettos. She continued to do everything she could to assist the plight of the Jews. In 1824, she used her influence to rescind a government decree against Jewish pilgrimages. In fact, some Hasidic leaders came to refer to her as Reb Temerl! (A title traditionally reserved for men.) In her will, she left 300,000 zlotys to charity. Temerl was called the “Polish Hasidah”, and her tombstone states: “To her nation she was a protector against oppression—a helper during distress. To the poor she was a mother. She was a virtuous woman, powerful and famous.” The renowned philosopher and Nobel laureate Henri Bergson was her great-grandson.

Chanukah Begins Sunday Night – Chag Sameach!

18 Incredibly Brave Women in Jewish History

Archaeologists Find 2200-Year-Old Coins Confirming Chanukah

The Peruvian Villager Who Led Hundreds to Convert to Judaism

When Jews & Greeks Were Brothers: The Untold Story of Chanukah

Words of the Week

The Sabbath is the day we focus on the things that have value but not a price, when we neither work nor employ others to do our work, when we neither buy nor sell, in which all manipulation of nature for creative ends is forbidden and all hierarchies of power or wealth are suspended.
– Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

Jew of the Week: Meir Dizengoff

Founder of Tel-Aviv

Meir Dizengoff

Meir Yankelevich Dizengoff (1861-1936) was born in Bessarabia, a region overlapping parts of modern-day Moldova and Ukraine. After completing his education, he enlisted in the Russian Army, where he served for two years. Dizengoff then settled in Odessa and soon joined a revolutionary group called Narodnaya Volya (“People’s Will”), which sought to overthrow the Tsar and assist the plight of the many impoverished people across the Russian Empire. At the same time, he met several Zionist leaders and joined Hovevei Zion, an organization formed in response to the tragic pogroms of 1881. In 1885, Dizengoff was arrested for his involvement with Narodnaya Volya’s insurgent activities. Upon his release, he moved back to Bessarabia to found a new branch of Hovevei Zion. A couple of years later, Dizengoff enrolled at the University of Paris to study chemical engineering. It was there that he met Edmond James de Rothschild, a member of the French Rothschilds who was an ardent Zionist. Rothschild sent Dizengoff to Israel to set up a bottle-making factory for his family’s wineries. Unfortunately, the factory didn’t do well, and Dizengoff returned to Europe. It wasn’t long before Dizengoff returned once more to the Holy Land, setting up his home in Jaffa in 1905, and starting a development and import company called Geulah. Several years later, Dizengoff joined together with Ahuzat Bayit to purchase a plot of land outside of Jaffa to create a new Jewish community. In 1909, this plot of land was divided among 66 Jewish families, establishing the town of Tel-Aviv. Two years later, Dizengoff became its head of planning, and was instrumental in its quick expansion and development. During World War I, the Ottomans expelled the town’s population, and it may have ceased to exist entirely were it not for the efforts of Dizengoff. In 1922, Tel-Aviv was recognized as a city, and not surprisingly, Dizengoff was elected its first mayor, a post he held until his death. In 1923, Tel-Aviv became the first city in Israel to have electricity. By 1925, its population had swelled to 34,000. Upon the passing of his beloved wife in 1930, Dizengoff donated their family home to the city, requesting that it be turned into a museum. It was there, on the 14th of May in 1948, that the State of Israel declared its independence. Unfortunately, Dizengoff himself didn’t live to see this day. However, he played a critical role both in the founding of Tel-Aviv, and Israel as a whole, and transformed Tel-Aviv from an empty parcel of land to a beautiful city of 150,000 at the time of his passing. To this day, Tel-Aviv’s most important artery is Dizengoff Street, often described as “Israel’s Champs-Élysées”.

Words of the Week

“Thus said God: ‘Behold, I will save My people from the countries of the East, and from the countries of the West; And I will bring them, and they shall dwell in the midst of Jerusalem; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God, in truth and in righteousness.'”
– Zechariah 8:7-8