Population and Trades
Social Institutions and Education
Synagogues and Cemetery
Jewish Personalities from Podu Iloaie
The art of Podu Iloaiei
The small town of Podu Iloaiei is situated in northeast Romania, latitude 47o
13’ north and longitude 27o
16’ east. From a geographical point of view, it is located east of the Oriental Carpathian Mountains, in the Depression of Jijia-Bahlui, at the confluence of the river of Bahlui with Bahluiet. From an administrative standpoint, Podu Iloaiei is subordinated to the county of Iasi and, according to the census of 2001, it has almost 10,000 inhabitants, most of them Christian Orthodox. The place lies on an important traffic axis, on the roads coming from beyond the Carpathians and leading to the city of Iasi and farther to Crimea. It became even more important when the railway Iasi-Pascani was built; this was the logistic detail that involved the settlement in the tragic events of the end of June 1941.
The Jewish community in the village of Podu Iloaiei appeared in the second half of the XVIII-th century and the first half of the next one, as a general result of the great demographic changes engendered by the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), by Poland’s second and third partitions (1792,1795) and above all, by the Russian-Austrian-Turkish wars (1769-1774, 1787-1792, 1806-1812, 1828-1830). On the one hand, the armed conflicts, the pogroms, the anti-Jewish fiscal and administrative provisions or the attempts of forced modernization had aggravated the situation of the Jews in Prussia, Baltic countries, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Galicia and Russia, urging them to emigrate towards South, in a neighbouring area, with which they had had commercial contacts even before the XVII-th century. On the other hand, the wars had led to the same damages in the new adoption territories as well, determining the authorities here to settle the economic situation of the Romanian Principalities with the help of the taxpayers coming from abroad. Thus, in a chain reaction, Bukovina’s annexation to Austria (1775) caused the Jews’ leaving to Moldavia, the place they left being occupied by the co-nationals from the Polish territories, now under Vienna’s rule as well. The same happened in 1812, when the annexation of Bessarabia to the Czarist Empire brought a new wave of Jewish refugees into the territory bounded by the river of Prut and the Carpathian Mountains.
Wishing to repopulate their countries, to recover them from an economic point of view and to honour their obligations to the Ottoman Empire, the Phanariot princes that ruled the Romanian Principalities in that time encouraged the foreigners’ incoming, promising them temporary tax exemptions. Such a decision dates back to 3 July 1763, when the prince of the Moldova, Grigore Calimachi, tried to repopulate the small town Târgu Frumos, promising to the new comers 6 months of fiscal immunity.
The village of Podu Iloaiei has been mentioned in documents since the XVII-th century (the first time, its seems, in 1646). Hereabouts took place the battle between prince Vasile Lupu and his successor Gheorghe Stefan (1653). According to a legend, the name of the place might have been Podu Lel(i)oaiei (Lelioaia’s Bridge), after a Jewish innkeeper lady who would have built a bridge over Bahlui in order to attract clients. But the real beginning of the townlet is related to prince Ionita Sandu Sturdza’s rule. In 1823 he confirmed the Scarlat Calimachi’s 1818 charter, which was granting hetman Constantin Palade the right to settle a borough at Podu Iloaiei, on his domain of Totoiesti. The document explicitly mentioned, in 16 paragraphs, the terms of the agreement between the landowner and the future inhabitants. It clearly stipulated the Jews’ right to have butcheries, to “bake bread and covrigi (bread specialty) for their house”, to have “two synagogues, two houses for the kosher cooks near the schools, feredeu (public baths) and tintirim (cemetery)” exempted from taxes (bezman). A financial stipulation also led to creating a specific architecture of the townlet: “anyone can expose his/her merchandise in front of his/her house; if someone does it at the corner of the street or in the field (medean), he must pay the owner a tax”. We can still see today several houses “in the main street”, with an entrance from the street directly to what was the family’s business, the shop, workroom, pub, office, etc.; at the back were the annexes, specific to a semi-urban habitation.
Once the foreign consulates were founded in Iasi (the Prussian, Austrian, French, Russian ones), at the end of the XVIII-th century and the beginning of the next one, the Jews acquired the right to place themselves under the protection of these agencies, becoming “suditi”, that is foreign subjects (the ones who were not under foreign protection were called “raiale”, enjoying a different legal and fiscal status). Their number rose significantly after 1829, when the export trade of the Romanian Principalities was out of the Ottoman monopoly tutelage and the chances to prosper had grown bigger and bigger. Analysing the evolution of towns in Moldavia up to the Prut, it was found out that over the period 1800-1850, almost 60 new settlements appeared, divided into two categories: a) that of the cities, seen as remarkably old urban centres, among which Târgu Frumos; b) that of the boroughs, as semi-urban centres, with mono-functional activities, among which Podu Iloaiei. The last example is a result of the immigration influx after 1820, an eloquent case for the development of towns in the North-South direction, towards Iasi.
Besides the itinerant trade, the small Jewish towns played the role of stocking necessity goods, collecting cereals, dairy products, cattle and cattle products.
The Jews were organized in guilds, led by guild masters; their main occupations were pub and shop keeping, usury (especially the Jews coming from the Ottoman Empire), different crafts, transportation and leasing oil sources. Their presence in the rural area was limited, because of the interdiction to hold farmlands or even because, from time to time, they were ejected from villages. Therefore, the Jews were settling down in towns and cities, where their commerce had real chances of success. In 1832, the registers of Podu Iloaiei (‘Podeloi’ in Yiddish) show 570 stable inhabitants, out of which 252, that is 44.21% were Jews. To make a comparison, in the same year, in Târgu Frumos there were 2,035 inhabitants, out of which only 399 Jews, that is 19.60%. According to the censuses of 1859 and 1899, the percentage of this population was more significant, of almost 50%, in big cities like Iasi, in the smaller one, like Târgu Frumos, their number reaching about 26.2%. To be more precise, in the period 1803-1899, the Jewish population in Târgu Frumos rose from 280 people in 1803 to 396 in 1820, 479 in 1831 and 524 in 1838. We can notice an obvious jump, to 1,258 individuals, in 1859 and eventually to 2,107 in 1899. In the same period of time (1803-1899), the community of Podu Iloaiei had a slower evolution, passing from 284 Jews in 1831 to 480 in 1838, reaching 996 in 1859 and only 1,692 members in 1899. According to the census of 1845, of the 964 families registered in Târgu Frumos, 225 were Jewish, and in Podu Iloaiei, out of the total of 363 known families, a significant percentage was that of the Jewish ones, i.e. 220 families. The rise is visible at the beginning of the XXth century as well. In 1912, to give just an example, Târgu Frumos had 1,900 Jews, representing 38% of the city population.
In 1845, in Podu Iloaiei there were 240 Jewish taxpayers and 143 Christian ones. Among the Jews, 129 were merchants, 40 craftsmen, 2 journeymen, 6 had other occupations and the rest of them were old people, widows, etc. according to a table of “foreigners” made in 1898, the Jews professional distribution in Podu Iloaiei was as follows: 4 barbers, who also attached leeches; 8 coachmen, driving the travellers to the railway station, to Iasi or Târgu Frumos; 6 carters (cotiugari), transporting merchandise in or outside the town; 3 belferi – auxiliary teachers, employed by the 4 melamdin, teachers in confessional asylums; 14 furriers and 13 skinners (blanari and cojocari); 3 dyers, sought after by the peasants as well, for dyeing the wool; 3 bread and 2 covrigi bakers, baking according to Jewish requirements; 2 kosher butchers; 2 stave makers, making staves fro casks; 2 boot makers, 12 shoemakers; 28 tailors and 8 dressmakers, working for simple people (the rich were ordering at Iasi); 11 farriers and smiths, 2 wheelwrights; 4 fish sellers, 203 merchants, etc. As the town was actually living off the market days, the weak crops and the economic crises led to the phenomenon of immigrations to America: on 16 July 1900, 400 Jews were leaving Podu Iloaiei. After the immigrations of 1900-1901 and 1905-1906, Podu Iloaiei still had, in 1910, 1,895 Jews, representing about 68% of the total population. As far as professions were concerned, there were registered 187 merchants, 15 tailors, 20 shoemakers, 8 smiths, 3 carpenters and 175 other craftsmen (stave makers, tinkers, coachmen, barbers, dyers, carriers, clerks, etc.). As a result of the price rises for food and of the crisis of cash in the years 1923-1924, the market of Podu Iloaiei stopped functioning, and that of Târgu Frumos gave no result, as the people were going back home with their goods unsold.
In 1925 the Jewish community of Podu Iloaiei was officially founded, with its own statute according to the new law about the functioning of the religious life in the kingdom of Romania. The population census of 1930 indicates for Podu Iloaiei 1,601 Jews, representing 40.4% of the total population. The decrease, compared to 1910, was due to war, the epidemics entailed, but also to the exodus to the big cities. It is therefore not surprising that in 1941 the Jewish community of Podu Iloaiei amounted to only 1,454 individuals, representing 37% of the total number of inhabitants. The events of the World War II, including the forced evacuation, in 1942, of a big segment of the Jewish population from Podu Iloaiei (in spite of the local authorities’ protests, fearing the economic ruination of the commune) drastically decreased their percentage, so that in the statistics of 1947 there were only 300 individuals registered. Even these ones left, in other cities or countries and in 1965 only a few old men were still living in the borough. One of them, smith Avram, was going alone, every Saturday, to make his prayers in their old synagogue. Every week, the community of Iasi was sending Avram a kosher butcher to cut up a fowl, until this was not necessary any more, the last Jew of Podu Iloaiei passing away together with more than 150year history of his community.
The feeling of being affiliated to the Jewish community of Podu Iloaiei was kept on the basis of mutual aid associations or of societies with philanthropic purpose. One of them, registered in 1882, offered both free physicians and medicines. In 1889, another society was mentioned, as having functioned for a long time, for the clothing of poor children (“Tomhei ani’im”). In 1894 a youth society, “Achim” was founded, which, aiming at assisting the poor as well, donated the community school some furniture pieces. Among the charity activities we also mention the helping of poor confined women (“Ida Strauss” Society), founded in 1912, and the Philanthropic Society of Mesdames and Mesdemoiselles “Clara de Hirsch Baroness”, appeared in 1919.
Under the auspices of Zionism (the first “Hoverei Sio” section was founded in 1891, followed by “Caramel” circle, in 1901, then by the “Macabea” section in 1902) many cultural activities were organized: reading circles, libraries with works in Yiddish, Romanian and German, conferences about the Jews’ history, literary meetings, courses of Hebrew, theatre plays. After World War I, when these activities were forbidden, the old Zionist section restarted its activity with the traditional Hanukkah celebration. The Hebrew courses restart, new funds are gathered and a kindergarten is founded. In the 1920s were also created a sportive association (1922), an association called “Macabi” (1922) organizing literary-artistic activities, and the “Iavne” club (1926), with a chess section.
But the field that represented the best the community’s energies was education. In 1834, in Podu Iloaiei there were already three teachers called melamdim; their number doubled in 1845. We know that in 1882 a number of children of Podu Iloaiei attended the Torah courses, especially organized for the poor, others attending either the confessional schools (in 1904 there were 5 confessional asylums) or the public elementary school. A statistic of 1898 shows that in Podu Iloaiei there were 4 teachers and 4 assistants (belferi), 2 tutors, teaching in private Romanian, Yiddish, German, French, Hebrew, arithmetic and calligraphy. Public education began in the commune in 1862 for boys and in 1865 for girls, but registering a proper activity only since 1867. Jews were accepted in public schools of the Romanian state, but with some disadvantages: the boys were sitting bareheaded, they were attending school on Saturday as well but they did not write that day, and so arousing predictable animosities. Yet, the elementary school of Podu Iloaiei had in 1884, in first grade, 33 schoolboys, out of whom 17 Jews, in second grade – 8 Jews and 5 Christians, in third grade – 9 Jews and 5 Christians. Out of the 58 schoolgirls of the elementary school, only 15 were Christians.
As a result of the attempts to restrict the Jews’ access to education (through the laws of 1883 and 1896, stipulating that foreigners unprotected by a foreign authority were received to school only “in the limits of the available places” and obligatorily on a fee), in 1898 was founded the mixed Jewish-Romanian elementary school, mainly supported from donations. It first worked on “ Strada Garii” (the street of the railway station). When it became too narrow a new building began to be built, on 11 May 1914 and was inaugurated on January 25, 1915. During World War I the school was confiscated, in order to serve as a military hospital. After the war, activity restarted, but only until 1942, when most of the Jews of Podu Iloaiei were evacuated to Iasi.
The synagogues disappeared. Only the Jewish cemetery remained, still preserving tombstones from 1829 and 1830. One of them is Haim sân Meer’s, deceased on 1 Adar 5589, that is on Wednesday, 18 February 1829; another one, belonging to Avram sân Moise, is from June 1829, a third one tells us that Iehuda ben Iaakov died on 28 July 1829. From 1830 date the tombstones of Efraim, son of Iehuda Leib from Timenita, and that Haim Moise sân Hers.
The oldest Jewish public organization in Podu Iloaiei was “Hevra Kedosa”, the burial guild, which took care of funerals, of the cemetery, of the impecunious sick. It was created soon after the borough was founded, but its register was lost during the World War I. There were other associations as well, as “Hevra tehilim”, for public psalm reading, others for the study of the Mishnah or of the entire Talmud, but their registers were not preserved. In any case, the religious element was the main community coagulation factor and this is quite obvious in the short history of the synagogues in Podu Iloaiei. The foundation charter of the borough grants land exempted from bezman for the building of two synagogues in Podu Iloaiei. They must be made of wood, like in most of the new boroughs, where usually the landowner provided for free the necessary wood. At the beginning of the XXth century, the Jewish funeral convoys in Podu Iloaiei were stopping in a place in the street leading to the cemetery and making an “El mulei rahamin”, as it was believed that there had been once a synagogue, probably the first since the foundation of the village. Not far away but closer to the Iasi-Târgu Frumos road, there was “Aziels Besmedres”, Aziel’s prayer house, the second oldest one. It is known that the floor of the synagogues was under the street level, in order to obey Psalm 130: “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord! But this place was even deeper in the ground, as one had to go several steps down. According to an oral tradition, that synagogue was the oldest in town. Unfortunately, it disappeared during the World War II. Another worship place, called, by 1917, “Scobâlteniner sil” and then “Iavne” had also been built in wood, and afterwards rebuilt in stone. We should also mention the synagogue of “Hahnusas Orhim”, initially belonging to a brotherhood wearing the same name, and the tailors’ synagogue, in the same street, and having as parishioners most of the craftsmen of the borough. During World War I, the synagogues of Podu Iloaiei were transformed into hospitals.
But the most imposing one was the Great Synagogue, built in 1876. An 1892 report of the Prefecture of the county of Iasi was confirming its existence and that of other five prayer houses. The Great Synagogue stood out by the quality of its traditional decorative motifs: the zodiac, the twelve tribes, the Western Wall, Rachel’s Tomb, the illustration of the psalm “By the rivers of Babylon”, as well as sceneries of Israel, painted by a folk artist. The wooden sculpture around the Ark of the Covenant and the tabernacle was rich in floral, but also zoomorphic, symbolic, allegoric elements: griffins, bicephalous eagles and deer-lions. The images created legends, some people telling that the Great Synagogue had been dug out already built, under the hill it lay on. Historical realities were less generous: the building was bombed in the years of World War II, and completely demolished in 1973.
, engineer; he was involved in the public life of Iasi.
, journalist, editor at “Di idise tukunft”(1899).
, author of several volumes of essays and literary criticism: Naie idise dichtung, Problema evreiasca(1946), Dus idise vort(1947).
, published in the volumes Alia(1913), Marile erori(1923), Minunea minunilor(1924).
, journalist, historian; he published in the volumes Istoria presei evreiesti din România(1938), 60 de scriitori români de origine evreiasca(1935).
, actor, scholar; he published in the volumes Der farkisefter sraiber(1947), 10 idise folksliden(1947), Literarise dermonungen(1975), Portret in eseien(1979).
, involved in the theater field, writer, sculptor; he worked in the “Hakl Bakl” theatre in Paris (1945-1956)
, writer, translator of the poet Tudor Arghezi in Yiddish (1965).
, man of theatre, reciter.
Kara (Svart), Itic
, historian, literary and theater critic, prose writer, published the volumes Marturii de veacuri(1947), Idise gramatik(1948). Born on 13 October 1906, in Podu Iloaie. He attended elementary school here, then the National College of Iasi and the Faculty of Philology and Philosophy in Cernauti. His debut as a publicist occurs in 1932. He wrote several history and literary history books, in Romanian and in Yiddish. He wrote the monographs of the Jewish communities in Podu Iloaie, Bacau and Iasi, published by the Hasefer Publishing House. He was two times awarded in Israel and he also received the “Hurmuzachi” history Award of the Romanian Academy for 1991.
av. Ghersen Fisler 1925
Fany Mendelovici 1924
Haim Feller 14 months
S. Rosenthal, wife and a friend
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-Costachie, Silviu, Evreii din România. Aspecte etnodemografice
, Bucuresti, Editura Top Form, 2003.
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, Bucuresti, Editura Hasefer, 1990.
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, in SAHIR, 5, 2000, p.116-127.
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, Bacau, Editura Vasile Pârvan, 2004.
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, Iasi, Fundatia Academica “A.D.Xenopol”, 1997.
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, in SAHIR, 5, 2000, p.56-83.
-Schwartzfeld, Elias, Din istoria evreilor. Împopularea, reîmpopularea si întemeierea târgurilor si a târgusoarelor în Moldova
, Bucuresti, Editura Uniunii Evreilor Pamânteni, 1914.
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, vol.II, part I, Bucuresti,1988, documents no. 26, 109, 151.
# also, to help understanding the life of a Jewish community in an East European small town, in the last two centuries, see www.sthetlfoundation.org