(Author: Gwynne Schrire, Vol. 73, No. 3, Chanukah 2018)
It had been a good week for Reb Nachum the Furrier. He had returned from the fair having sold most of his stock and had even managed to exchange a fox skin that had seen better days for a fine piece of blue velvet. The women of Keidan would look at his little blue-eyed Shprinzelle with seven eyes when she arrived with his wife Golda in shul on Rosh Hashanah dressed in that blue velvet.
It had been a good week for Velvel the Tailor too. His workshop had hummed with the new clothes for the Yamim Tovim. With the wars with Napoleon over, peace had brought prosperity. From the blue velvet the stuck-up Reb Nachum had brought him he had sewn a fine dress for the furrier’s spoilt little daughter and had even managed to save enough off-cuts to make a fine blue velvet yarmulke for himself.
Came yom tov, Reb Nachum’s Shprinzelle looked every inch a princess with his Golde a queen, her bulk a clear indication that in his house there was no shortage of good things to eat. However, when Reb Nachum took his seat at the Eastern wall, his pleasure at their entrance was ruined. There, at the back of the shul, in his seat among the workers, sat Velvel the Tailor. And what was that on his head? Not the greasy cap that was the badge of a hardworking artisan, but a fine new yarmulke, a velvet yarmulke, a blue velvet yarmulke that matched Shprinzelle’s dress. Velvet yarmulkes were for the shul worthies, the property owners, the professionals, the scholars, the kahal, not for amei ha’aretz, the workers, the labourers, the artisans. Reb Nachum was not one to take such an insult to his dignity lying down.
When Yom Tov was over the shamash arrived at Velvel the Tailor and summonsed him to appear before the kahal at once. It was not for people like tailors to wear a velvet yarmulke. That was a privilege reserved for the rich. He was ordered to hand over his yarmulke and bring a fine of ten pounds of candles for the shul.1
However, little as the elders wished to recognise it and much as they wished to ignore it, the winds of change were starting to blow through Keidan. One of the oldest cities in Lithuania, 51 km north of Kovno (Kaunas), its Jewish community was controlled by a kahal with a rigidity that brooked no argument, tolerated no religious innovations and permitted no deviant thoughts. Personal liberty was for the followers of the Haskalah (puh! puh! puh!), not for Keidaners. The dangerous ideas of Moses Mendelssohn were not permitted in the town and Shlomo the Bookseller knew better than to allow any such books on his shelves. (But who knows what he kept under the counter?)
These winds reached gale force when Napoleon’s soldiers marched through Keidan in 1812. Velvel the Tailor repaired some of their tunics and heard about their strange new ideas of liberty, fraternity and equality – even for Jews. The French were followed by the Russian army bringing more business and then came the French and then the Russians again. Of course the armies caused much havoc and looting, but there was always work for a good tailor. Naturally, the Keidaners were delighted when the French were overthrown but the ideas of the French were the subject of much talk in the taverns, even if Reb Yankel worried it might be lashon hara. But then no one paid any attention to Reb Yankel anyway.
Was not a Jew who sat cross-legged all day over his needle just as much a son of Adam and Eve as a Jew who travelled the country with his horse and cart buying furs? Pincus the Sandler agreed with Velvel the Tailor. So did Leibl the Butcher, Shmuel the Tavern keeper, even Yitscko the Miller and Dov Ber, whose turnips were famed far and wide. Did they not all work hard six days a week to support their families? Was it not Hashem’s will that some were rich and others poor? Where in the Torah did it say that only rich Jews could honour the Creator by covering their heads with a velvet yarmulke?
Velvel the Tailor was deeply offended at the fine imposed on him, and so were the other workmen. They decided that if liberty, fraternity and equality were good enough for the French, it should be good enough for the Jews. Did not Hillel tell them not to do to others that which was hateful to you? Would that principle not apply equally to fining someone for wearing a fine new yarmulke?
So, came Sukkot, the artisans all appeared in shul wearing velvet yarmulkes, zhupitse2 and sashes round their waists, looking just as smart as the rich and respected men who sat along the Eastern wall. Looking at them, who could tell who sat on the kahal and who sat on a workbench? In spite of the disapproval of the worthies, they arrived on the second day of Sukkot dressed like that as well.
This impertinence, this disrespect, could not be allowed to go unpunished. In any case Napoleon and his forces and their crazy ideas had been repulsed. And so the elders approached Count Marian Czapski. Count Czapski treated his Jews well, not like some others they could mention, although he had not yet paid off the large sums of money he had borrowed from them when he acquired the Kedainiai estate in 1811.3
Czapski estate in Kiejdany4
On Chol Hamoed Sukkot, the Count’s soldiers rounded up all the artisans and whipped each one publicly in the town square. Never before had the Jews in Keidan been whipped! They had been expelled for an infraction, but never whipped.
Now there was open war between the workers and the snooty property owners. No longer were the former prepared to accept the tyranny of the kahal administration and they laid their complaint before the judicial court. However, the kahal had more money to spend on bribes. The case dragged on for years, costing both sides thousands of rubles.
Then Stanislaus the Policeman let slip over a drink or two (or three) of vodka in Shmuel’s tavern that they were getting ready for a visit to the town by Constantin Pavlovitch, military commander of Lithuania and Poland. Surely the Tsar’s brother would not approve of the injustices they were suffering in his own courts?
Reb Mendel the Scribe prepared a petition outlining their grievances, and Leibl the Butcher agreed to hand it over when the Grand Duke passed through. Leibl was afraid of no one. Unfortunately, word leaked through to the kahal and shortly before his Royal Highness and his entourage were due to arrive, Leibl got into an argument with Dovidl the Water Carrier and Officer Stanislaus promptly arrested both for disturbing the peace. At the tavern that evening Stanislaus boasted that Dovidl had been paid to provoke the fight and that his men had been standing by just waiting to arrest them.
This treachery and the loss of the next court case were the last straw and the workers decided to take the law into their own hands. Soon after, reports started coming into the kahal of attacks on their members – in the forest, in the lanes, on muddy paths. One could not even collect rents without being set upon by bands of toughs, who vanished as quickly as they had appeared. Twice, Reb Nachum’s furs landed in the mud and once in the Nevezis River and Berel the Blacksmith was always busy with something else when his horses shed a shoe.
Stanislaus and his policemen were of little help. What could they do? They were not around when the alleged incidents happened. There was no evidence, there were no witnesses and the police were being offered a special on vodka by Shmuel to honour their services to the town.
Finally, the kahal sent the shamash to ask the artisans to negotiate. The artisans deeply regretted that such terrible things were happening to these highly respected community members. They deplored the attacks about which – of course – they knew nothing but for the sake of shalom in the community they agreed to enter into negotiations and just so happened to have a ready prepared list of conditions. It was hard for the kahal to accept the chutzpah of the workers and even harder to agree to sit down and negotiate but, as Ben Zoma taught, “Who is wise? He who learns from every man…. Who is a hero? He who controls his passions”. The kahal agreed to the conditions and peace was resumed between the worshippers at the Eastern wall and the worshippers in the body of the synagogue.
So it came about that in Keidan, Jews of all classes gained the right to wear a velvet yarmulke, a zhupitse and a sash. Furthermore, the Keidan kahal agreed that one of its members had to be an artisan and that in any future litigation between a workman and a property owner, the workman was to be represented by a judge on his own behalf.5 Although the principles of the French Revolution were not taught as part of the ethos and values of Lithuanian Jewry, at least some of the ideas of fraternity and equality had been adopted by the Keidan Jewish community.
And just to be on the safe side, the artisans established their own synagogue, Etz Chayim, with their own Eastern wall.6
The facts in this story are all true, and came from a journal of an artisans’ group mentioned by Baruch Chaim Cassel in a 1930 Yiddish article7 on the Jewish Settlement of Keidan. The characters in this story are all imaginary – but they could easily have been real.
What is true is that twenty years after this momentous victory Eliahu Vilner, the richest tailor in Keidan, built a small shul nearby just for artisans and butchers. One night of the year, though, he would go to the main shul where he had purchased the right to open the ark for the closing prayer of Yom Kippur. Was it Eliahu Vilner who had worn the velvet yarmulke? Your guess, dear reader, is as good as mine.
See also in this issue Sorrel Kerbel’s review of The Keidan Memorial (Yizkor) Book
Gwynne Schrire, a veteran contributor to Jewish Affairs and long-serving member of its editorial board, is Deputy Director of the Cape Council, SA Jewish Board of Deputies. She has written, co-written and edited numerous books on local Jewish and Cape Town history.
NOTES
1 Boruch Chaim Cassel, “The Jewish Settlement of Keidan”, (Yiddish) Keidaner Association of New York, 1930, republished in Hebrew in the Keidan Yizkor book, pp19-40, translated into English by Meyer Dwass in 1989 and republished in David Solly Sandler (compiler), Our Litvak Inheritance: Volume One of Our Litvak and South African Jewish Inheritance: The History, Life and Times of South African Jews Originating in Eastern Europe, 2016, pp17-18
2 Zhupitse (also known as yupitse, yupe, yipetse), was a winter outer garment, broad from the waist down, adorned with metal or textile appliqués and for the wealthy was often sewn from materials such as satin, moiré, or silk, secured at the top with decorative clasps and held at the waist with a leather belt.
3 Kedainiai in Lithuania – Travel East and Central Europe, www.codelt.nl/kedainiai-lithuania/
4 Picture from Marian Hutten-Czapski – Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_ Hutten-Czapski
5 Josef Rosin, “Kedainiai” chapter from Pinkas Hakehillot Lita, translation. In Kedainiai” – Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities in Lithuania (Lithuania) 55° 17’ / 23° 58’,Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, 1996
6 Schoenberg disagreed and said that the shul was called Chayei Adam of the artisans – but what difference does the name make to a good story? Nancy Schoenburg & Stuart Schoenburg, The Lithuanian Jewish Communities, Jason Arons, 1996, p118
7 The story is also found in Andrew Cassell, Lithuanian Community lives in Diaspora, 17 August 2011, 70 Years Later, Lithuanian Community Lives On – News – Forward.com forward.com/news/141461/70-years-afterdestruction-memory-of-lithuanian-co/
