Friday evening.—On the dining table at the home of Reb Zakhare, the old Zionist, burn three candles orthodoxically blessed by the housewife. The whole family are gathered for the festive occasion. But the traditional soup and meat are absent: herring and kasha are being served, and small chunks of challah, the Sabbath bread, now only partly of wheat. Besides the parents, two daughters and a son of eighteen are present. The oldest boy—“Yankel was his name,” Reb Zakhare says with a heavy sigh. “He’d now be twenty-three, his memory be blessed”—was killed in the pogrom the Denikin men had made just before they finally evacuated the city. He sought to defend his sister—the youngest, then only fifteen. Together they were visiting a friend in the Podol when the mob broke into the street, sacking every house, pillaging, and murdering.
The old lady sits in the corner crying quietly. The look of frozen terror, which I have seen often lately, is in the eyes of the girls. The young man steps over to his mother and gently speaks to her. True Zionists, the family converse in Old Hebrew, making an evident concession in addressing me in Yiddish.
“At least you are free from pogroms under the Bolsheviki,” I remark.
“In a certain sense,” the old man assents; “but it is the Bolsheviki who are responsible for pogroms. Yes, yes, we had them under the Tsar also,” he interrupts my protest, “but they were nothing like those we have had since. Hatred against us has increased. To the gentiles a Bolshevik now means a Jew; a commissar is a Zhid,39 and every Hebrew is held responsible for the murders of the Cheka. I have lived all my life in the ghetto, and I have seen pogroms in the years past, but never such terrible things as since the Bolsheviki got into Moscow.”
“But they have made no pogroms,” I insist.
“They also hate the Jew. We are always the victims. Under the Communists we have no violent mob pogroms; at least I have not heard of any. But we have the ‘quiet pogroms,’ the systematic destruction of all that is dearest to us—of our traditions, customs, and culture. They are killing us as a nation. I don’t know but what that is the worst pogrom,” he adds bitterly.
After a while he takes up the subject again:
“Some foolish Jews are proud that our people are in the government, and that Trotsky is war minister. As if Trotsky and such others are Jews! What good is it all, I ask, when our nation must suffer as before, and more?”
“The Jews have been made the political and social equals of gentiles,” I suggest.
“Equals in what? In misery and corruption. But even there we are not equal. The Jew has more to bear than the others. We are not fit for the factory—we were always businessmen, traders, and now we have been ruined entirely. They have sown corruption in our youth who now think only of power; or to join the Cheka for gain. That was never before. They are destroying the dream of Palestine, our true home; they are suppressing every effort to educate our children in the proper Jewish spirit.”
In the Kulturliga gather Hebrew writers, poets, and teachers, most of them members of the Volkspartei when that political party was represented in the Rada by its Minister of Jewish Affairs. Formerly the League was a powerful organization, with 230 branches throughout the South, doing cultural work among its coreligionists. The institution had much to suffer through the various political changes, the Bolsheviki were tolerant at first, and even financially aided its educational efforts. But gradually the help was withdrawn and obstacles began to be placed in the way of the League. The Communists frown upon the too nationalistic character of its work. The Yovkom, Jewish branch of the Party, is particularly antagonistic. The League’s teachers and older pupils have been mobilized into State service, and the field of its efforts narrowed down. In the provinces most of its branches have been compelled to close entirely, but in Kiev the devotion and persistence of its leading spirits still enables the League to continue.
It is the sole oasis in the city of nonpartisan intellectual and social life. Though now limited in its activities, it still enjoys great popularity among the Jewish youth. Its art classes, including drawing, painting and sculpture, are eagerly visited, and the theatrical studio is developing young actors and actresses of much promise. The rehearsals I attended, especially that of The World’s End, the posthumous work of an unknown dramatist, were unique in artistic conception and powerful in expression.
The younger elements that frequent the Kulturliga dream of Zion, and look to the aid of England in securing to the Jewish nation its traditional home. They are out of touch with the Western world and recent events, but their reliance on the hopes raised by the Jewish Congress is unshaken. Somehow, sometime, probably even in the not distant future, is to happen the great event and Jewry will be reestablished in Palestine. In that ardent faith they drag on their existence from day to day, intellectually vegetating, physically in misery. Their former sources of support are abolished, the government having supplied them with a bread-card of the fourth category. The latter is the Bolshevik label of the
