Читать книгу In the Land of Israel: My Family 1809-1949 - Nitza Rosovsky - Страница 18

By late 1839, my ancestor Menahem was one of the three officials, memunim, who led Kolel Reisin. The poverty-stricken kolel was then at one of its lowest points because the earthquake killed many of its members and only twenty-four adult males survived. Some Hasidim began to think that the whole idea of settling in Eretz Israel to try and hasten Redemption was a mistake and that the earthquake, which killed so many of them, was God’s punishment.

In the 1855 Montefiore census, the names of Menahem and Leah’s seven children were given, starting with Haya, aged sixteen. The census taker noted that Menahem “serves the needs of the community faithfully”—osek betzorchei tzibur be’emuna—and that “he needs [help] with the marriage of his daughter,” hu tzarich lenesuei bito. Did he require financial aid for Haya’s dowry and wedding, or did he worry that she was becoming an old maid? In either case, his wish was soon granted as Haya married Mordechai Mottel Ashkenazi. Esther, their first child and my great-grandmother, was born within a year.

The three officials mentioned above signed Kolel Reisin’s 1855 census sheets to testify to the accuracy of the data. The kolel comprised of ninety-two people, including two orphans and six widows. It had four societies, manned by volunteers: Hevra Kdosha, the Burial Society; Bikkur Holim, Visiting the Sick; Malbish Arumim, Clothing the Naked; and Olei Regalim, a society which assisted people going on pilgrimage to Jerusalem during the festivals of Succot, Passover, and Shavuot, a tradition that goes back to biblical times. The more affluent Kolel Volhyn sponsored additional good causes, such as providing for poor brides and supporting needy Torah students. Both kolelim had small study houses or rooms where tutors instructed four to six students each, and were paid a pittance, between sixty and a hundred piasters a month, depending on whether they taught youngsters “from Alef-Bet to Torah,” or guided older students through the intricacies of the Mishna and Talmud.

In 1862 Menahem’s name appeared on a letter sent jointly by the Sephardi and Ashkenazi communities in Tiberias to the officials of Kupat Eretz Israel—the Fund for the Land of Israel—based in Trieste. The letter, another appeal for help, described events during the preceding year when a cholera epidemic had broken out in the city and the Jewish community had to borrow thirty thousand piasters in order to send its members to the mountains of Safed to escape the outbreak. The letter is preserved in Jerusalem, at The Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, under “Trieste: Poveri di Terra Santa.” (File IT/Ts 161.) The last signature and name affixed to it is “Menahem Mendel.” I saw the original letter at the Archives where I gingerly touched his pen strokes. When the 1866 census was taken, Menahem was still an official of the kolel, but Leah was dead by then. In 1861 her daughter Haya had a child whom she named Leah, after her mother.

Letter from the Jewish community in Tiberias, 1862. Menahem Mendel’s signature and name are the last two on the left.

Courtesy of the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem

I try to imagine Menahem, with a long beard and ear locks, wearing an ankle-length coat and perhaps a shtreimel, a fur hat, even during the oppressively hot summers. Menahem Mendel’s word was said to be law and he was not only honored and respected by all the Jews in Tiberias, but even the Arabs admired him. Yet within the family, he was reputed to have been “a difficult person.”

As one of the leaders of a tiny kolel completely dependent on charity from abroad, he surely worried about the welfare of his small community and his large family. Yet there must have been some bright spots in his life. From its very beginning Hasidut was a joyous movement whose followers worshipped God in ecstasy. They had communal meals and drank wine together, and they sang and danced. Rabbi Israel wrote in 1777 that the Hasidim were happy to be “in our land, the object of our delight, the desire of our hearts and joy of our pursuits ...”¹² In 1789 another Hasid described praying at the tombs of the sages in Safed: it was “like milk and fatness [overabundance]. And now my lips are full of joy and praise from what I tasted and my eyes are brighter [see the light better] than in all the days when I lived abroad.”¹³

Menahem Mendel died on November 17, 1879, and was buried in Tiberias.