קהילת יהודי ביאליסטוק

זוסמן סגלוביץ' (1884-1949) משורר וסופר. נולד בביאליסטוק, פולין, התגורר בלודז' ובווארשה, עלה לארץ-ישראל ב-1941 ולבסוף השתקע בארה"ב. הוא מחברו של ספר השירה "שטילע טרוימען" (Shtile Troymen, 1909), השיר "אין קאזמרזש" (In Kazmerzh, 1912), מחזור שירי האהבה "צייטיקע טרויבען" (Tsaytike Troybn), הדרמה הפיוטית "די וואנט" (Di Vant, 1915), הרומנים "די ווילדע צילקע" (Di Vilde Tsilke, 1922), "ראמאנטישע יארן" (Romantishe Yorn, 1923) ו"די ברידער נעזאר" (Di Brider Nezar, 1929). נפטר בניו-יורק.

Abraham Zvi Hirsch ben Jacob Eisenstadt (1813-1868), rabbi and halakhic authority, born in Bialystok, Poland (then part of the Russian Empire). At the young age of 23, he was appointed rabbi of Berestovitsa, district of Grodno (1836). In 1856 he became rabbi of Utena (district of Kovno), Lithuania.

He set out to collect and digest the halachic material scattered throughout rabbinical responsa and decisions and then relate it to the Joseph Caro’s Shulchan Aruch. He also wished to explain the logic of the arguments used by the writers of these responsa. Eisenstadt’s work was therefore intended to assist later rabbis to make decisions and come to conclusions on problems which had occurred as a result of changing circumstances since the time when Shulchan Aruch was written. He believed that it was impossible to come to any practical conclusion on the basis of the basis of the original text alone and therefore his books were to fill in a missing link in the chain of rabbinical literature. Eisenstadt prepared his “Pitchei Teshuvah” commentary on the Yoreh De’ah, Even Ha-Ezer and Chosen Mishpat sections of the Shulchan Aruch. [The "Orech Hayim" part had been similarly covered by the work of Haim Mordechai Margolioth of Dubnow]. At the end of his introduction to "Even Ha-Ezer", Eisenstadt set out the 180 volumes of rabbinic responsa which he had scanned.

"Pitchei Teshuvah" on "Yoreh De’ah" and "Even Ha-Ezer" were published in 1836 and 1861, while the work on "Chosen Mishpat" was published after his death in 1875. His works were highly appreciated by other halakhists and remain in use to this day. Eisenstadt's son and later his grandson succeeded him in his capacity of rabbi of Utena.

לודביק אלעזר זמנהוף, רופא ובלשן בפולין.
ב-1878 פרסם את יסודות הלשון החדשה והפשוטה שתתרום להבנה בינלאומית. שם הלשון נגזר מחתימתו 'דוקטור אספרנטו' - הרופא בעל התקווה. ב-1905 כינס קונגרס בינלאומי ראשון של דוברי האספרנטו.
נמנה על ראשוני 'חיבת ציון'.

 

Samuel Pisar (1929-2015) - Yad Vashem Institute in Paris Director, Lawyer and Author.

Samuel Pisar, a native of Bialystok, was 10 years old when Stalin and Hitler carved up his native Poland and ignited World War II. After six years of Soviet oppression and Nazi internment in Auschwitz and other infernos he escaped from Dachau and was liberated by the U.S. Army in the wake of the Normandy landings. At the age of 16, he was the only survivor of his family and his school.
He resumed his education in Paris and Melbourne, and earned doctorates from Harvard and the Sorbonne, as well as honorary doctorates from other American and European universities. In the late 1950s he began his professional career at the United Nations in New York and UNESCO in Paris, returning to Washington in 1960 to serve as a member of John F. Kennedy’s task force on foreign economic policy, adviser to the State Department and consultant to committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives. In 1961 he was made a citizen of the United States by a special Act of Congress, signed by President Kennedy.
As an international lawyer in America, Britain and France, he has acted for governments, industrial, commercial and financial corporations, charitable foundations and the International Olympic Committee. He presided at the 1983 world gathering of Nobel Laureates and at numerous international conferences on trade, law and diplomacy, testified repeatedly in Congress and addressed the European Parliament, the Davos Economic Forum, the New York Council on Foreign Relations, the North Atlantic Assembly and the International Monetary Fund. Elected a trustee of the prestigious Brookings Institution in 1999, he is also the founder-president of Yad Vashem France and administrator of the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah.
Pisar was one of the first to urge broader economic, cultural and human contacts as “weapons of peace” to reconcile the so-called hereditary enemies of history. At the height of the Cold War, he helped shape policies for a stronger Euro-American partnership and expanded intercourse with Eastern Europe, Russia and China. As a defender of freedom and human rights, he took up the causes of oppressed minorities, political dissidents such as Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis and Russian scientist Andrei Sakharov, and succeeded in freeing many “refuseniks” from Soviet jails.
His books, translated into 20 languages, include “Coexistence and Commerce”- acclaimed by Jean Monnet, the “father” of Europe and many heads of state and government - was described as a work that “charts an enlightened course for the future of American and Western policy” (Senator Edward Kennedy) and “benefits politicians, civil servants, students and businessmen” (David Rockefeller). His autobiography, "Of Blood and Hope,” was greeted as “an extraordinary story of 20th century terror, fortitude and faith in the human spirit” (Arthur Schlesinger Jr.) and a memoir from “a man of great insight” (Alexander Solzhenitsyn).
A recipient of the highest French, Australian, Polish and other distinctions, as well as numerous American awards, Pisar was nominated and short-listed for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973. On the 50th anniversary of the Allied victory in Europe, President Bill Clinton publicly recounted his traumatic adolescence and miraculous liberation by a platoon of GIs, while President Jacques Chirac cited his life and work in a historic speech acknowledging France’s responsibility for the crimes of the Vichy regime.

Isaac Berenblum (1903-2000), pathologist and biochemist, born in Bialystok, Poland (then part of the Russian Empire) and brought to England in 1914. From 1920 he studied at the Universty of Leeds, where he gained his master's degree in 1936 in physiology and biochemistry. Berenblum developed a keen interest in cancer research. From 1936 to 1948 he was a member of the School of Pathology at Oxford and was in charge of the Oxford Research Centre of the British Empire Cancer Campaign.

At this time he developed the theory of the two-stage mechanism for the production of tumors. He discovered that in addition to the chemical which causes cancer, another chemical is needed for the promotion of a tumor. Between 1948 and 1950 he further developed this theory at the National Cancer Institute at Bethesda, MD, in the USA. In 1950 Berenblum immigrated to Israel where he became head of the department of experimental biology at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot as the Jack Cotton of Cancer Research. There he set up the department of experimental biology and developed an internationally respected school of cell biologists and cancer researchers. At the same time he was visiting Professor of Oncology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1966 he was visiting professor at the University of Texas. In 1971 the Weizmann Institute appointed him Professor Emeritus.

Berenblum received many awards for his work. From 1952 to 1959 he was a Member of the Israel Research Council, in 1954-66 he was Member of the Cancer Research Commission of the International Union Against Cancer, from 1955-1975 Chairman of the Israel Cancer Association, in 1959 he was a Founding Member of the Israel Academy of Sciences. He was elected a Honorary Life Member of the New York Academy of Sciences and Humanities and in 1961 was Charter Member of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was chairman of the Israel Society for the Fight Against Cancer.

מנחם מנדל דוליצקי (1856-1931) משורר וסופר.

נולד בביאליסטוק, פולין, ועבד בערים שונות כמורה לעברית. ב-1881 היה עד לפוגרום שנערך בדרום-רוסיה והרושם הקשה שהותירו בו האירועים בא לידי ביטוי בכמה משיריו (האיכר והנוצה 1884) ומסיפוריו (בתוכי לביאים, 1884, מבית ומחוץ, 1891). הוא הצטרף לתנועת חיבת-ציון וכתב שירי געגועים לציון. בשנים 1889-1882 התגורר דוליצקי במוסקבה ושימש מזכירו העברי של הנדבן ק"ז ויסוצקי. לימים חיבר את הביוגרפיה של מעסיקו. ב-1892, בעקבות גירוש היהודים ממוסקבה, היגר דוליצקי לארה"ב, ופרסם תיאורים במבנה שירי של רדיפות היהודים ברוסיה. מכיוון שלא יכול היה להמשיך ולכתוב עברית, עבד לבסוף ככתב עבור עיתון יומי ביידיש. דוליצקי נפטר בלוס-אנג'לס, קליפורניה.

Samuel Mohliver (1824-1898), rabbi, leader of Zionist movement Hibbat Zion, born in Glubokoye, a town near Vilna, Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire). Mohliver studied at the yeshiva of Bialystok where he was ordained as a rabbi at the early age of eighteen. For some five years he refused to practice as a rabbi but finally accepted the position of rabbi of his native town in 1848. In the years which followed he was called to fill the role of communal rabbi in increasingly more important communities: first at Sakiai, Lithuania (then in Russia), Suwalki, Poland (then in Russia), and Radom, Poland (then in Russia). Finally from 1883 until his death in 1898 he was rabbi of Bialystok, Poland.

The pogroms initiated by the Russians against the Jews in 1881 moved him to work for the emigration of Jews to Eretz Israel. To escape the persecution many Jews had fled across the Russian border as far as Lvov in Galicia which was then part of the Austrian empire (now Lviv, in Ukraine). Mohliver tried to divert them to Eretz Israel, without success. However he did not let the matter rest and was partly responsible for the founding of the Hibbat Zion Zionist movement (also known as Hovevei Zion) and became one of its leaders. The movement was dominated by secular Jews and he was one of the very few traditional rabbis associated with it. His decision to remain within the Zionist movement and cooperate with agnostic or less observant Jews was a turning point in the history of religious Zionism which ultimately led to the creation of the Mizrachi movement. Throughout his life Mohliver pressurized the religious establishment to attach itself to Zionism while pressurizing the secular Zionists to accommodate the religious groups.

In his articles published in the newspaper “Ha-Levanon” he stressed the need for cooperation with the “maskilim” [followers of the Haskala or Jewish enlightenment, movement, who pressed for more integration of Jews into European society and more education in secular studies] and insisted that rabbis "combine the Torah and wisdom as the time is appropriate." Mohliver devoted most of his time and effort to the Zionist movement and worked tirelessly to increase the Jewish population in Eretz Israel. In 1882, he traveled to Paris and succeeded in persuading Baron Edmond de Rothschild to take an interest in the efforts to support existing settlements in Eretz Israel and to establish new ones. As a result of his efforts Ekron and Rishon Le Zion were founded, and the settlement of Petach Tikvah, at the time in a difficult position, was consolidated. In 1890, Mohliver helped to found the settlement of Rehovot. In 1888, a shemittah year when according to the Torah the fields in the Land of Israel should lie fallow, he joined Rabbi I. E. Spektor and Rabbi M. Eliasberg and others to find innovative interpretations of the Law which enabled the farmers to continue to work their fields.

In 1890, he headed a Hovevei Zion group on a tour of Eretz Israel, and upon his return to Bialystok published an open letter entitled "The Purpose of my Trip to the Holy Land," in which he called upon members of Hovevei Zion "to work physically and financially for the sake of Eretz Israel." A citrus orchard near Haderah, later to become a kibbutz, was named Gan Shmuel in honor of Mohliver on the occasion of his 70th birthday. He was recognized as the leader of Russian Zionists. A letter from him, read to delegates at the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897 created a great impression and he was chosen to be one of the four leaders charged with directing the work of the Zionist Movement in Russia. He later became a close friend of Herzl. Mohliver wrote many talmudic respnsa and rabbinical treatises most of which were lost in the Bialystok pogrom in 1906. Some of the ones that survived were published in 1944 under the name "Ikrei Halakhah v-She'elot u-Teshuvot".

Rabbi Samuel Mohliver died in Bialystok in 1898.

Avraham Ber Gottlober (1810-1899), author and poet, born in Staro-Konstantinov, Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire). At the age of 17 he moved to Tarnopol. He remained there for eleven years coming under the influence of Haskalah circles and meeting Yosef Perl. He returned to Volhynia where his Orthodox father-in-law forced him to divorce his wife because he was enraged by Gottlober's secular studies. This engendered a hostility to Orthodoxy and Hasidism which was to find expression in his satirical writings. He engaged in teaching in government-established Jewish schools. He did not stay long in any one place and spent much of his life wandering. From 1865 to 1872 he taught Talmud in the rabbinical seminary in Zhitomir. Later he turned editor and published and edited a Hebrew monthly, Ha-Boker Or , from 1876 to 1881 first at Lvov, later in Warsaw. After the 1881 pogroms he joined the Hovevei Zion and wrote Zionist poems. He died in poverty in Bialystok. Over a sixty-year period, he made a contribution to Hebrew and Yiddish literature, writing poems, drama, historical treatises, stories, memoirs and translations. Gottlober was a prolific poet, publishing lyrics, nature songs, national poems and a long poem which gave a history of Jewish poetry.

Pesach Kaplan (1870-1943), author, journalist, and translator, born in Stawiski, Poland (then part of the Russian Empire), the son of a cantor and shochet. In 1889 his family settled in Warsaw. Kaplan was attracted by the Jewish enlightenment, particularly by the modern Hebrew literature. He moved to Bialystok towards the end of the 19th century, remaining there for the rest of his life working as a teacher and journalist. In 1919 he founded the Yiddish newspaper Dos Naje Lebn (later known as Unzer Lebn) and served as its editor-in-chief until 1939. 

His translations into Hebrew and Yiddish include Ivan Krylov’s Fables, plays by David Pinski, and poems by Mark M. Waszawski, including his famous Oyfn Pripetshik (“On the Hearth”). After the German occupation of Bialystok in WW II, Kaplan served as head of the education department of the Judenrat in Bialystok ghetto. He perished in the Holocaust. His ghetto diary survived and was published in Bialistoker Shtime, a Yiddish newspaper in New York in 1982.