[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.153 Was this a testament to the extent of integration of Jews into Kievsociety, or simply greed on the part of these institutions? If we take these re-quests at face value, perhaps the administrators of the school, the guild, andthe brotherhood felt duty-bound to care for pogrom victims who were asso-ciated with their institutions, or possibly felt even a religious or moral obliga-tion to make up for what other Christians had done.If, however, the PogromAid Committee was the only source to which they turned for funding (andthis is unclear), then the gesture of assistance to be provided with Jewishmoney alone! was somewhat less altruistic.The report also betrays a certain lack of trust among Kiev s Jews; com-mittee members frequently requested verification of the aid applications of anumber of individuals and groups often, apparently, with reason; an asso-ciation calling itself the Society for the Provision of Bread to Poor Jews wastold that it could not receive aid so long as it was under the oversight of justone individual and not the official community organization.Twenty per-cent of the aid applications from petty and middling traders were rejected, aswere 12 percent of those from artisans.154 The committee had nowhere nearenough money to provide for all those who were in need, and thus had tohusband its resources carefully.Despite the apparent attention it paid to a fairdistribution of aid, the committee still came in for criticism; an article in theSt.Petersburg based Jewish weekly Khronika Voskhoda complained that itsactivities were marred by favoritism, funds were not being distributed byneed, and no criteria for fair distribution had been established.155 The com-parison with the reception of the activities of the 1881 Pogrom Aid Societyis instructive.The Kiev Jewish community was smaller in 1881, as was thescale of the destruction; nor were recipients of philanthropic aid or indeed the 248 JEWISH METROPOLISwider public accustomed to criticizing the leadership who came to their aid.The large and diverse audience that was Kiev s Jews in 1905 had also becomea critical one, and demands for transparency and probity would now becomethe norm, as we shall see in the next chapter.A total of 676,000 rubles was raised by the committee, almost 400,000of it in Kiev and another 270,000 sent by the International Aid Committeein Berlin.In January 1906, the committee reported that many of those whohad received aid had already used it up (artisans, for example, had receivedan average of only 37 rubles each) and, not having been able to rehabilitatetheir businesses, were living in dire need, in hunger and cold. Local sourcesof private charity had been exhausted.156ConclusionIn 1910, Baron V.G.Gintsburg informed the mayor of Kiev that hewished to donate to the city a statue of Tsar Alexander II by the renownedJewish sculptor Mark Antokol skii.The statue was to be poured in Paris andbrought thence to Kiev, where Gintsburg requested that it be placed in themain hall of the public library.157 Carefully parsed, this seemingly ordinarycivic-minded gift shows just how loaded with symbolism philanthropy couldbe.If they wished to show their patriotism, for Jews there was really no otherchoice among the tsars of the previous century than Alexander II, who wasstill remembered fondly by most Jews for his role in expanding Jewish rightsin the 1860s.Liberals who still insisted on viewing Russian history throughWhiggish lenses (as did most Jewish notables such as Gintsburg) hear-kened back to those happy days of optimism and progress, and an effigy ofthe Tsar Liberator in Kiev was almost a talisman a statement of hope thatperhaps some day Russia would return to his path.Of course, the choice ofartist was no coincidence: a sculpture created by a Russian Jew was a fine ex-ample of the contributions that Jews made not only to the world of commerceand industry (as with Gintsburg) but to the arts as well.The placement of thesculpture in Kiev s public library was a reminder of the important role thatJewish contributions played in advancing literacy in the city.And finally,the artwork s provenance in Paris showed that just as Jewish philanthropistshad brought the best medical and technological expertise from throughoutEurope to the Russian Empire for the good of its Jewish and Christian sub-jects alike, so would they continue ever to brighten the urban landscape of VARIETIES OF JEWISH PHILANTHROPY 249the empire in other ways as well with delightful monuments such as thisone, for example.In a sense, all Jewish charitable initiatives in Kiev were destined to beladen with symbolic meaning in addition to their more practical, rationalaims.Even those engaged in more traditional forms of charity not discussedin this chapter hevrot for dowering the bride or visiting the sick, forexample would not have been ignorant of the significance of a positiveJewish profile in holy, Russian Kiev.But for acculturating Jews in particular,modern philanthropy was a way of expressing their own sense of what be-ing Jewish was about no less than it was a means to the transformation of theJewish masses and the creation of a new Russian Jewry in the image of theJewish bourgeoisie.Jewish philanthropists and community activists used so-cial services to mold the (as yet) unacculturated Jewish migrants who settledin Kiev as well as to shape public and official opinion of Jews and Judaism.The institutions they built were a crucial and as yet largely unrecognizedpillar of modern Jewish self-expression in the Russian Empire.As donorsboth large and small, administrators, employees, and clients, most RussianJews were implicated in the project of Jewish welfare in one role or another.In an era of Jewish ideological division, communal fragmentation, and socio-economic differentiation, this was a remarkable achievement indeed.No lessan attainment was the mobilization of philanthropy for political or quasi-political aims and to project Jewish leadership from the realm of the paro-chial to the wider imperial stage [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.153 Was this a testament to the extent of integration of Jews into Kievsociety, or simply greed on the part of these institutions? If we take these re-quests at face value, perhaps the administrators of the school, the guild, andthe brotherhood felt duty-bound to care for pogrom victims who were asso-ciated with their institutions, or possibly felt even a religious or moral obliga-tion to make up for what other Christians had done.If, however, the PogromAid Committee was the only source to which they turned for funding (andthis is unclear), then the gesture of assistance to be provided with Jewishmoney alone! was somewhat less altruistic.The report also betrays a certain lack of trust among Kiev s Jews; com-mittee members frequently requested verification of the aid applications of anumber of individuals and groups often, apparently, with reason; an asso-ciation calling itself the Society for the Provision of Bread to Poor Jews wastold that it could not receive aid so long as it was under the oversight of justone individual and not the official community organization.Twenty per-cent of the aid applications from petty and middling traders were rejected, aswere 12 percent of those from artisans.154 The committee had nowhere nearenough money to provide for all those who were in need, and thus had tohusband its resources carefully.Despite the apparent attention it paid to a fairdistribution of aid, the committee still came in for criticism; an article in theSt.Petersburg based Jewish weekly Khronika Voskhoda complained that itsactivities were marred by favoritism, funds were not being distributed byneed, and no criteria for fair distribution had been established.155 The com-parison with the reception of the activities of the 1881 Pogrom Aid Societyis instructive.The Kiev Jewish community was smaller in 1881, as was thescale of the destruction; nor were recipients of philanthropic aid or indeed the 248 JEWISH METROPOLISwider public accustomed to criticizing the leadership who came to their aid.The large and diverse audience that was Kiev s Jews in 1905 had also becomea critical one, and demands for transparency and probity would now becomethe norm, as we shall see in the next chapter.A total of 676,000 rubles was raised by the committee, almost 400,000of it in Kiev and another 270,000 sent by the International Aid Committeein Berlin.In January 1906, the committee reported that many of those whohad received aid had already used it up (artisans, for example, had receivedan average of only 37 rubles each) and, not having been able to rehabilitatetheir businesses, were living in dire need, in hunger and cold. Local sourcesof private charity had been exhausted.156ConclusionIn 1910, Baron V.G.Gintsburg informed the mayor of Kiev that hewished to donate to the city a statue of Tsar Alexander II by the renownedJewish sculptor Mark Antokol skii.The statue was to be poured in Paris andbrought thence to Kiev, where Gintsburg requested that it be placed in themain hall of the public library.157 Carefully parsed, this seemingly ordinarycivic-minded gift shows just how loaded with symbolism philanthropy couldbe.If they wished to show their patriotism, for Jews there was really no otherchoice among the tsars of the previous century than Alexander II, who wasstill remembered fondly by most Jews for his role in expanding Jewish rightsin the 1860s.Liberals who still insisted on viewing Russian history throughWhiggish lenses (as did most Jewish notables such as Gintsburg) hear-kened back to those happy days of optimism and progress, and an effigy ofthe Tsar Liberator in Kiev was almost a talisman a statement of hope thatperhaps some day Russia would return to his path.Of course, the choice ofartist was no coincidence: a sculpture created by a Russian Jew was a fine ex-ample of the contributions that Jews made not only to the world of commerceand industry (as with Gintsburg) but to the arts as well.The placement of thesculpture in Kiev s public library was a reminder of the important role thatJewish contributions played in advancing literacy in the city.And finally,the artwork s provenance in Paris showed that just as Jewish philanthropistshad brought the best medical and technological expertise from throughoutEurope to the Russian Empire for the good of its Jewish and Christian sub-jects alike, so would they continue ever to brighten the urban landscape of VARIETIES OF JEWISH PHILANTHROPY 249the empire in other ways as well with delightful monuments such as thisone, for example.In a sense, all Jewish charitable initiatives in Kiev were destined to beladen with symbolic meaning in addition to their more practical, rationalaims.Even those engaged in more traditional forms of charity not discussedin this chapter hevrot for dowering the bride or visiting the sick, forexample would not have been ignorant of the significance of a positiveJewish profile in holy, Russian Kiev.But for acculturating Jews in particular,modern philanthropy was a way of expressing their own sense of what be-ing Jewish was about no less than it was a means to the transformation of theJewish masses and the creation of a new Russian Jewry in the image of theJewish bourgeoisie.Jewish philanthropists and community activists used so-cial services to mold the (as yet) unacculturated Jewish migrants who settledin Kiev as well as to shape public and official opinion of Jews and Judaism.The institutions they built were a crucial and as yet largely unrecognizedpillar of modern Jewish self-expression in the Russian Empire.As donorsboth large and small, administrators, employees, and clients, most RussianJews were implicated in the project of Jewish welfare in one role or another.In an era of Jewish ideological division, communal fragmentation, and socio-economic differentiation, this was a remarkable achievement indeed.No lessan attainment was the mobilization of philanthropy for political or quasi-political aims and to project Jewish leadership from the realm of the paro-chial to the wider imperial stage [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]