Before I began researching my family history, I had never heard of Lomza. But it turns out that I have connections to this city, connections of the past that stretch into the present, and future.
Lomza is located in northeastern Poland. It played an important role in the history of Jews of Poland. Jews first settled there in the 1400s. They were expelled and then resettled the city early in the Nineteenth Century. By the end of that century, nearly 9,000 Jews lived there, making up nearly half of the city’s population. Russia controlled most of Poland from 1795 to 1918; the area under its rule was called Congress Poland, which was divided into gubernias, or counties, one of which was the Lomza Gubernia. (After Poland became independent in 1920, the county was renamed the Lomza Powait.)
My paternal grandmother, Gussie (Golda) Laskin, was, I recently discovered, from the area near Lomza. A search for her name in the Ellis Island database revealed the ship manifest, which shows that, at age 17, she sailed on the ship Carmania, departing from Liverpool, England, and arriving in this country on July 26, 1906.
She indicated to immigration officials that she came from Lomza:
My connection to Lomza runs deeper still. My mother’s father, my Zaide (grandfather), Yosef Wierzbowicz (Waxman), grew up in Zambrow, a town about 12 miles south of Lomza. After his Bar Mitzvah (either in 1912 or 1913), he went to study at the Lomza Yeshiva. He remained at the yeshiva until sometime during World War I. While I never had the chance to speak with him about his experience, it must have been a transformative experience in his life for the Lomza Yeshiva was one of the premier institutions of Jewish learning in prewar Europe.
Lomza was a major center of Jewish religious life before the Holocaust. It had a thriving religious community with a talmud torah (Jewish school) dating back to 1831.
The chief rabbis of Lomza (Beniamin Diskin (1840-1846), Eliyahu Chaim Meisel (1867-?) and Eliezer Symcha Rabinowicz (1880-?) were some of the most prominent Nineteenth Century rabbis in Eastern Europe.
The community must have prospered, as it wealthy enough to hire Enrico Marconi, one of the leading architects of the time, to design its central synagogue. Based on a Moorish design, it was a magnificent edifice located in the center of town:
But the crowning glory of Lomza was its yeshiva (institute for higher Torah learning), the one my grandfather attended. Exploring the history of the yeshiva has helped me better understand how he might have been influenced by his studies there.
The Lomza Yeshiva, founded in 1883, was the first yeshiva established in Poland. It was a product of the revolution in Torah study inaugurated by the Vilna Gaon.
Though he held no official position in the Jewish community, the Vilna Gaon (1720-1797) by virtue of his incredible learning, was recognized as the leader of Eastern European Jewry. He emphasized rigorous Torah study, especially of the Talmud. In 1803, his leading disciple, Chaim Ickovits, better known as Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, founded the most famous yeshiva in Nineteenth Century Europe, the Volozhin Yeshiva. The Voloshin Yeshiva became the model of all Lithuanian yeshivas in Eastern Europe.
Before the Volozhin Yeshiva, Jews wanting to learn Torah would study in local houses of learning, the bet midrash, or besmedresh in yiddish. The duration for learning, as well as the selection of sources, was informal. Students (only males of course) were generally married and residents of the community. Funding was based on local sources. Students generally went home to their families on the Sabbath.
What distinguished yeshivas based on the Voloshin model was their devotion to study of the Talmud as well as independence from local community control and funding. Yeshiva students were generally younger, unmarried teenagers who left home to go learn Torah in what became something of a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood (Stampfer, Lithuanian Yeshivas of the Nineteenth Century, 366-367). They lived at the yeshiva and were expected to be completely devoted to their learning, which consisted entirely of Talmud study. The average study day in Volozhin was 18 hours. Some learned 36 hours consecutively, sleeping 8 or 10 hours, and then learning another 36 hours. The famous yeshivas of Slobodka, Mir, Ponevezh, Kelm, Kletsk, and Telz grew out of the Volozhin model.
One of Rabbi Chaim’s star students was Israel Salanter. Salanter would go on to found the Mussar movement, which emphasized, in addition to Talmud study, individual ethical and moral self-introspection. For Salanter, “education had to emphasize moral development alongside with the study of rabbinic texts” (Stampfer, 261). In Mussar yeshivas, students were expected, under the guidance of a mashgiach ruchani (spiritual supervisor), to study classical Jewish texts on ethics, such as Luzzato’s Mesillat Yesharim, and engage in spiritual exercises to improve their personal behavior.
The founder of the Lomza Yeshiva was Rabbi Eliezer Shulewitz, one of Rabbi Salanter’s leading students. Salanter died two months before its founding, and Shulewitz dedicated it to his memory.
The Lomza yeshiva endeavored, in the Mussar tradition, to inculcate values of modesty and responsibility and self-discipline. Among its features was the seriousness of the silent prayer, being careful with one’s language, including not raising one’s voice, and dressing in a dignified manner. Several times a week, between the afternoon and evening prayer services, the students learned various sources in Mussar (called the Mussar Shmooze) after which they would sit in silence while they reflected on their deeds (חשבון נפש). The goals of Mussar education at Lomza were two-fold: to strengthen the belief that all things come from God (‘אמונת ה) as well as to banish undesirable character traits such as stinginess and hubris.
At first, the yeshiva faced local opposition, since it set up an independent and rival power structure within the local community, threatened to siphon off the best students from local institutions and was viewed as an intrusion into Poland of Lithuanian-style Judaism. The yeshiva was likely viewed skeptically by the half of Lomza’s 9000 Jews who were members of various Chassidic sects (including Ger and Aleksander). But Shulewitz endeavored to integrate the yeshiva into the town structure and eventually the town came to support it. Indeed, Lomza eventually became synonymous with its yeshiva. Even the chief rabbi of Lomza from 1905-1921, Rabbi Yehuda Leib Gordon, fundraised for the yeshiva, and continued to do so after he moved to Chicago in 1921.
The yeshiva was situated in an unprepossessing building located next to the synagogue:
Photos of students of the yeshiva show that it attracted a range of students of all ages. On average, there were about 500 students studying there at any one time.
Inside the building lay rows of wooden benches or individual chairs with book stands (shtenders) where the students would learn or sit for the rabbi’s sermons. Most of the day was spent on independent Talmud study, as these photos from the Lomza Yeshiva web site attest:
Students did not learn together or in groups; rather, each student was responsible for his own learning. There were no exams or checks for understanding. The purpose of the yeshiva was not to train rabbis, but “to provide a place for intensive study for its own sake” (Stampfer, 41). Students studied whatever mesechet (tractate) of the Talmud they wanted to learn, though they were expected to eventually study all of the Talmud (the Babylonian Talmud that is; the Jerusalem Talmud was not studied in European yeshivas).
The students formed strong connections since they lived, studied and celebrated holidays together in the yeshiva rather than in the local community (Stamper, 35). At Lomza, the students slept in a dormitory adjacent to the yeshiva. Except perhaps for students who hailed from the Lomza area, most stayed at the yeshiva year round. Many students hailed from small towns from all over the Russian empire, making it impracticable to return home on a regular basis. The one exception was the three week vacation period between Tisha B’av and the first day (Rosh Chodesh) of the Hebrew month of Elul, a period of time known in the yeshiva world as bein-hazmanim (בין הזמנים).
While some students ate their meals at the yeshiva, the yeshiva, probably to save money, also arranged for some students such as my grandfather to eat on specific days at the homes of Lomza’s local wealthy homeowners (ba’ali batim). These days were called “essen teg,” or eating days. My Zaide was one of those. Unfortunately, the homeowners were not always welcoming to the yeshiva students, many of whom had come from distant and rural Jewish communities. According to my aunt, my grandfather and other yeshiva students were told to eat in the kitchen rather than in the dining room. They were given metal plates and cups from which to eat rather than use the family’s china. For the rest of his life, my grandfather could never stand to use any metal dish, not even a silver cup for kiddish.
The Lomza Yeshiva did not necessarily accept any student wanting to study there. Students had to demonstrate that they had learned several talmudic tractates and pass an examination on one of them. They also needed a letter of recommendation from their local rabbi. It is possible that my grandfather, who came from a middle to upper middle class family in Zambrow, may have been aided in getting accepted to the yeshiva by virtue of financial donations made to the yeshiva on behalf of his family. (See generally Stampfer, 46).
At the Lomza yeshiva, as at other Mussar Yeshivas, there were two dominant personalities: the Rosh Yeshiva, or head of the yeshiva, and the Mashgiach Ruchani, or spiritual guide. The Rosh Yeshiva gave sheurim (lectures), made decisions on which students to accept at the yeshiva, gave out stipends to students and, perhaps most importantly, oversaw fund raising efforts, which involved sending out fund raisers throughout the Jewish world. The mashgiach was responsible for overseeing the students daily lives and encouraging them to take their studies seriously (Stampfer, 37).
Rabbi Yechiel Mordechai Gordon (no immediate relation to the chief rabbi of Lomza, Yehuda Leib Gordon, or the Rosh Yeshiva of Telz, Rabbi Eliezer Gordon) served as the Rosh Yeshiva of the Lomza Yeshiva for many years, including the time my grandfather studied there. Gordon’s life was itself a saga that encompassed the twists and turns of Jewish life in the first half of the twentieth century, and his life story parallels my grandfather’s in significant ways.
Gordon, the son of Rabbi Moshe Aaron Gordon, was, by age 12, learning in the Mussar Yeshiva of Slobodka and recognized as an eliu (genius). He later became Shulewitz’s star student. To cement the relationship between the two men, Shulewitz married off his eldest daughter, Tzerl Leah, to Gordon, then aged 22. Tragically, she, as well as as Shulewitz’s own wife, died within a year when a typhus epidemic struck Lomza. Gordon then married Shulewitz’s second daughter, Aidel D’vorah. She bore him five children until she too died in 1929. Gordon remarried twice more, outliving his third wife as well.
In 1906, Shulewitz appointed Gordon, then only 24 years old, as Rosh Yeshiva of the Lomza Yeshiva. Gordon dedicated his life to the yeshiva, taking responsibility not only for teaching but also the arduous task of fundraising. His travels on behalf of the yeshiva took him to England, the United States and Palestine. His efforts, particularly in the United States, were so successful that he was able to raise enough money to erase the yeshiva’s massive debt, which at one point had reached $4,000,000.
Gordon’s fundraising efforts included support for the branch of the Lomza Yeshiva that, in 1926, Shulewitz had founded in Petach Tikva. The Lomza Yeshiva, which still exists to this day, was the first yeshiva established in Palestine.
While in the United States in 1935, Gordon wisely decided not to return to Poland given the worsening condition of Polish Jewry, and he spent the war years in New York, continuing to support the Lomza Yeshiva and, during the Second World War, helping to raise awareness of the destruction of European Jewry as a member of the Va’ad Hatzalah (rescue committee) of the Agudat Ha’rabanim (Association of Orthodox Rabbis).
Three of his children, his eldest daughter Frieda, his daughter Ita and his son, Rabbi Yehuda Lieb, as well as their spouses and children, died at the hands of the Nazis. The students of the yeshiva were killed along with the rest of the Lomza Jewish community, either in the mass shooting of 2,200 Jews, on August 16-17, 1942, in the woods near Giełczyn or, in Auschwitz, after the Jews of Lomza were deported to Zambrow, as part of the final liquidation of the Zambrow Ghetto on January 10, 1943.
In 1950, Gordon moved to Israel and served as the Rosh Yeshiva of the Lomza Yeshiva in Petach Tikva until his death in 1965.
Years after his death, Gordon’s memory remains central to the Lomza Yeshiva. Eliezer Ozer, a grandson of Rabbi Shulewitz, and nephew of Rabbi Gordon, serves as the current Rosh Yeshiva. When I recently went to Petach Tikva to visit the yeshiva, Rabbi Ozer was kind enough to invite me into his home, next door to the yeshiva, to discuss Gordon’s legacy. He showed me his photo album, from which some of the photos in this post were obtained, as well as Gordon’s chair, which no one sits on, and after which he styled his other furniture in his study.
Yechiel Mordechai Gordon was venerated not only for his learning, but also for his qualities of kindness, understanding and refinement, especially given the hardships he suffered. According to the Lomza Yizkor book, Gordon worked to protect his students from being drafted into military service and worked to release those who had been drafted. During World War I, many of his students were stranded in Lomza; Rabbi Gordon made sure they were cared for. One source writes of Gordon that “his love and devotion to his talmudic (students) were legendary and the encouragement and goodwill that he bestowed on them, even when rebuke was called for, warmed their hearts and made them receptive. His method of chastising was to envelop the talmid in warmth and love and to slip in an allusion to the matter that required attention. An oft-repeated saying of his was ‘Mit schlechts macho men nisht gut (with bad one can do no good).'” He displayed compassion and patience toward all his students, another former student writes. “Even if they stopped him in the middle of his sheur (sermon) with tangential questions, he would respond to everyone tenderly and with no hint of anger and resentment.”
My grandfather most likely maintained a connection with Rabbi Gordon throughout his life. By the time Gordon first came to Palestine, in 1926, my grandfather had left Poland and was living in Tel Aviv, not far away from Petach Tikva. And when Gordon took up residence in New York, with an office on Delancey Street (see letterhead above), my grandfather was living and working in the Lower East Side. While I can only speculate on their exact relationship, is likely that Gordon remained an important influence on my grandfather’s life long after his formal studies at the Lomza Yeshiva had ended.
Like Gordon, my grandfather suffered many hardships and dislocations–fleeing Poland after a year of mistreatment in the Polish army, spending two years as a refugee in Germany, immigrating, perhaps illegally, to Palestine, leaving Palestine not once but twice in a span of ten years, building up a paper goods business in the Lower East Side during the depression years, and struggling to get his family out of Poland only to learn of the murder of his mother and three sisters during the war. Yet, my grandfather, similar to Gordon, was known for kindness, the dignity with which he carried himself, and the respect with which he treated each person. And, true to his Lomza Yeshiva values, he always dressed in a formal, dignified manner.
I’d like to think that he learned some of these characteristics from his years at the Lomza Yeshiva and from Gordon’s influence.
The other dominant personality at the Lomza Yeshiva during my grandfather’s days there was Moshe Rosenstein, the mashgiach ruchani (spiritual advisor).
Rosenstein was born in Lithuania in 1880. He, like Gordon, learned in Mussar Yeshivas (Telz and Kelme) as a youth. He wrote two books of Mussar, “Yesodei Hada’as” (יסודי הדעת) and a collection of his talks published posthumously, “Ahavas Meishorim” (אהבת מישרים). When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, he moved the Lomza Yeshiva to Plunge, Lithuania. On July 18-19, 1941, he, was well as his wife, two daughters, his son and several grandchildren were among the 1800 Jews of Plunge killed at Kausenai by local Lithuanian nazis.
Rosenstein is remembered as a man completely dedicated to the yeshiva and its students, as well as for some unusual habits. His job was to ensure that students took their studies seriously. To this end, he appointed “inspectors” (מפקחים) from among the best students who would write down the names of the students that were missing or were late to their studies. (https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/משה_רוזנשטיין) Once a week he would confer with students who were not fulfilling their duties. He had ascetic tendencies. He would regularly fast. He would spend his days in the large hall of the yeshiva, even in the cold winter days when others had escaped the unheated hall to smaller, heated rooms. He spent the entire week in the yeshiva building, day and night, returning to his home and family only for the Friday evening sabbath meal. (http://www.chareidi.org/archives5765/bo/BO65features.htm)
One of his teachings involves a metaphor of a person who wanders from place to place without being able to find any place of comfort in which to reside. The person’s soul can find no place to rest in the wider world, but only in the Torah. For “every person must build a dwelling of truth within the Torah to protect them, to hide them away from the strong winds of this world. To find comfort in the Torah itself.”
(For a pictorial history of the Lomza Yeshiva, from which some of the photos in this post have been culled, see the following video)
My Zaide began his studies at the Lomza Yeshiva after attending Cheder in Zambrow. He was only 13 years old, just having celebrated his Bar Mitzvah. There he met dominant torah scholars such as Yechiel Mordechai Gordon and Moshe Rosenstein. He also met other boys of his age from all over Eastern Europe, many of whom had travelled hundreds of miles from home to further their Torah studies and begin their journey into adulthood at the Lomza Yeshiva. (For an interesting story of the journey to Lomza of a boy who grew up in the Chabad chassidic community, see https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/312432/jewish/Family-History.htm) He lived among these boys nearly the entire year, and out of which he surely formed important social connections that lasted his entire life. The Lomza Yeshiva was where his religious outlook, as well as his ethical nature, was formed. I now better understand why he always dressed impeccably and acted in such a kindly and compassionate manner.
My connection to Lomza does not end with the past, however. I have a friend and neighbor in New York City whose last name happens to be Gordon. A few years ago, as I spoke to her about my interest in family history, she mentioned that her great uncle was Yechiel Mordechai Gordon, the Rosh Yeshiva of the Lomza Yeshiva. My friend is the granddaughter of Rabbi Gordon’s brother, Schneur (Sidney) Avraham Gordon. I had never heard of Rabbi Gordon, but when I learned that my grandfather had studied in the Lomza Yeshiva, and that her great uncle was the Rosh Yeshiva there, I set out to learn about him.
But the connections do not stop there. It extends to the next generation. For my friend’s son and my son are themselves friends. They’ve been friends since kindergarten and remain good friends to this day. Here they are, a few days ago, in Brooklyn:
Lomza connections, past, present and future.