Notes
Notes 1 There are three things forbidden here. First, the salami was not kosher: that is, not made with kosher meat. Also, it would have had pork in it. Third, mixing meat with dairy (the butter on the bread) was also forbidden. 2 Nicholas II (1894–1917), last tsar of Russia. 3 Now Gdansk, in Poland. 4 Rose had papers saying she was going to work for the Rothsteins, as she had to show she had a job awaiting her in order to enter the country. The Rothsteins were a family living in Vancouver who had a business, probably established at the time. 5 Odessa, in the southern Ukraine, is a major seaport on the Black Sea. 6 Bread present in any form made things unkosher for Passover. 7 Symon Petliura, leader of the Ukraine during its independence between 1918–1920. See Abe Smith’s account on page 35. 8 Religious schools to teach Hebrew and the Scriptures. 9 The Jews felt they needed to collaborate and were spying for the Germans, as the Russians were killing them. The train took the Jews to Siberia, where life was bad and many died. 10 At this time, Russian Jews lived in the Pale of Settlement, an area along Russia’s western border designated by Catherine the Great in the late eighteenth century . The Pale’s borders were established several times. Some Jews did live in cities and big towns with the acquisition of permits in order to attend university , for example, or to conduct or carry on a business. 11 Now in Belarus. 12 Alexander Kerensky was minister of justice first, and then the second prime minister of the Russian Provisional Government. 13 In southwestern Russia, near the top of the Caspian Sea. 14 Today Rivne, in the Ukraine. 15 Two of the many sides in the Russian civil war, fought between 1917 and 1923. 16 In 1905 there was a wave of mass political unrest throughout the Russian Empire. 17 Without a trade, one had to get special permission to live in a city within the Pale of Settlement. 277 278 notes 18 The “bandits” were Ukrainians involved in the Kiev Pogroms and the uprising of 1919, where they set out to deliberately kill the Jews. Jews would be taken on a boat and thrown into the water with their hands tied and left to drown. 19 Collectively the 1905–6 unrest, uprising, and civil war was known as the Revolution of 1905. It wasn’t until 1917 that Nicholas II was overthrown. In 1918, he was murdered with his family. In 1917 as well, Alexander Kerensky became the second prime minister of the Russian Provisional Government, which lasted from March to November of that year. 20 This is a stylistic device for study of the Bible: the Hebrew is given first and then translated into khumesh. 21 Shlomo Yitzhak, medieval rabbi, author of the first authoritative commentary on the Talmud. 22 Tanakh comprises twenty-four books of the Bible. 23 Maimonides, a Torah scholar and philosopher, born in Cordoba, Spain, in 1138, died in Cairo in 1204. 24 Isaac Leib Peretz, along with Sholem Aleichem, is widely regarded as one of the greatest of the classical Yiddish writers. Several schools in Canada and elsewhere in the West are named after him. 25 Prime Minister Stolypin was assassinated at the Opera House, while the Tsar was in attendance. 26 On 21 July 1911, in Kiev, Menachem Mendel Beilis was arrested and accused of murdering a Christian child in a Passover blood ritual. He was eventually exonerated. 27 A weak government, due to the harsh constraints of the Treaty of Versailles. 28 Governing councils, with towns and villages at their base. 29 Wilfrid Laurier became Liberal prime minister of Canada in the general election of 1896. 30 Today Kishenev is called Chisinau, and is in Moldova. 31 A Yiddish cultural organization. 32 Morris Winchevsky (1856–1932), prominent Jewish socialist leader in London, England. 33 The strike was at Shiffer & Hillman. This strike is mentioned by some of the other interviewees. 34 This refers to the split between Amalgamated and the new union. The struggle between the two unions and its effects on workers is something talked about by a number of the people here (see also Max Povitz’s account on page 220). 35 A Jewish politician. 36 The unrest gave momentum to the revolution. 37 Conscription at the time was compulsory and you had to serve for five years in...
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