from the enlightenment to the state of israel 441
way of life’) in the warm glow of his family, centred on the peace of the
Sabbath and dignity of the festivals:
And coming home from the bath, refreshed, invigorated, almost a new
man, he dresses for the holiday. He puts on his best gabardine with the
new cord, steals a glance at Bath- Sheba in her new dress with the new silk
shawl, and finds her still a presentable woman, a good, generous, pious
woman ... And then with Froike he goes to the synagogue. There greet-
ings fly at him from all sides. ‘Well, well! Reb Fishel! How are you? How’s
the melamed [“teacher”]?’ ‘The melamed is still teaching.’ ‘What’s happen-
ing in the world?’ ‘What should happen? It’s still the same old world.’
‘What’s going on in Balta?’ ‘Balta is still Balta.’ Always, every six months,
the same formula, exactly the same, word for word. And Nissel the cantor
steps up to the lectern to start the evening services ... They are home
already and the seder is waiting. The wine in the glasses, the horseradish,
the eggs, the haroses [a paste made of fruit and nuts, symbolizing the mor-
tar used by the slaves in Egypt], and all the other ritual foods. His ‘throne’
is ready – two stools with a large pillow spread over them. Any minute
now Fishel will become the king, any minute he will seat himself on his
royal throne in a white robe, and Bath- Sheba, his queen, with her new silk
shawl will sit at his side. Ephraim, the prince, in his new cap and Princess
Reizel with her braids will sit facing them.^3In practice, Jewish life in eastern Europe was more varied and much less
settled than the stereotype suggests, and much of the mass emigration in
the late nineteenth century reflected a widespread desire to live in a less
traditional environment.
With the Communist revolution of 1917, in which many Jews par-
ticipated, but many others suffered horrifically (with 200,000 dying in
Ukraine alone), the Pale was abolished and Jews migrated en masse to
the big cities of Russia, especially Moscow. The attitude of the Com-
munist state to Jews was contradictory. By 1927 Jews formed the third
largest national group among members of the Communist party, even
though the state vacillated over whether Jews were a nation at all or
should just assimilate into wider Soviet society. From the mid- 1920s,
attempts were made to settle Jews as farmers in Birobidzhan, an exten-
sive but inhospitable region in the eastern Soviet Union on the border
with Manchuria. But the projected Soviet Jewish republic never materi-
alized, and Jewish settlers never amounted to more than a quarter of the
population there. For all Jews the observance of religious practices was
permitted only as an expression of the Jewish national culture, along