This is a photograph from 1893 of the Yiddish authors Yehoshua Hanna Ravnitzky and Sholem Aleichem. Sholem Aleichem is seated on the right-hand side and Yehoshua Hanna Ravnitzky on the left. Between the two men is a table with writing pages and open books; two books and some loose pages seem to have fallen on the floor. The men are working together on a narrow table. Both men are wearing glasses and are dressed in the long coats worn by enlightened Jews in the early twentieth century.
From the years 1892–1893, Sholem Aleichem and Ravnitzky wrote a very popular satirical column for the newspaper HaMelitz. They signed their writings with the pen names Eldad and Medad – the two biblical characters who prophesied separately from Moses. Sholem Aleichem was Eldad and Ravnitzky was Medad. Both the names of their stories and their pen names were ironic and intriguing to readers, suggesting that they were breaking free from the traditional canon and branching out into something new, just as their biblical namesakes had given parallel prophesies to the traditional prophesy of Moses.
Sholem Aleichem was the pen name of Sholem Rabinowitz, one of the greatest Yiddish writers. He is famous for Tevye the Milkman, a story that served as the basis for the well-known musical Fiddler on the Roof.
Yehoshua Hanna Ravnitzky was a writer, literary critic, journalist, editor, publisher, and publicist. He became famous mainly for his collaboration with Haim Nachman Bialik in the publishing of various projects, especially Sefer HaAggadah, a compilation of rabbinical legends that appeared in the Talmud and midrashim.
Would You Like to Know More?
Eldad and Medad – The biblical story of Eldad and Medad is found in Numbers 11:26–30. According to the story, God tells Moses to assemble seventy elders around the tabernacle. God took some of the “spirit” that was on Moses and shared it with the seventy elders so that they too could prophesy. Meanwhile, two men, Eldad and Medad, stayed in the camp instead of going to the tabernacle with the others. The spirit rested on them as well, and they also began to prophesy. Joshua was not happy with their actions and ran to tell Moses. When Moses heard what Eldad and Medad were doing, instead of being upset with them, he praised them and said that he wished that everyone, not just himself and the elders, could speak the words of God.
Jews in Russia – The Jewish community living in the territories of the Russian Empire was, at certain times, the largest population of Jews in the world. Despite suffering prolonged periods of anti-Semitic persecution, the community flourished and developed many of the important Jewish religious and cultural traditions known today. The Jewish community of Russia includes Jews of many different Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi groups including Mountain Jews, Crimean Karaites, and Bukharan and Georgian Jews. Until the beginning of the eighteenth century few Jews lived in the Russian Empire. Small numbers of Jewish merchants and travellers passed through, but Jews were not officially permitted to settle there. At the beginning of the 1700s, the Russian Empire began expanding westward into areas where Jews lived, such as Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine, but Jews living in those areas were still not allowed to move into Russia proper. Poland also came under Russian control, along with the large Jewish populations who lived there. The majority of Jews lived in the same places they had lived in before being conquered by the Russian Empire – an area called the Pale of Settlement that included modern-day Belarus, Lithuania, Eastern Poland, and Ukraine. The Jews of the Pale of Settlement lived mostly in small communities called shtetls in crowded and difficult living conditions with very limited civil rights. These shtetls were governed internally by Jewish councils of elders. During the reign of Nicholas I (1825–1855), the Jews suffered discriminatory laws including the Cantonist Decree, the forced military conscription of Jewish boys for twenty-five years of service. During this time many Jewish children were converted to Christianity and lost to their families and to Judaism. Towards the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, hundreds of pogroms (violent attacks on the Jewish community) took place. Each upheaval in the structure of Russian society led to an increase in pogroms due to both conventional religious anti-Semitism and the scapegoating of Jews for society’s problems. The Jews thus suffered pogroms during the period of the Tzars (e.g., the Kishinev pogrom of 1903), the Russian Civil War, World War I, and the Communist revolutions. However, the nineteenth century was also a time of gradual change for the Jews, who slowly left the Pale of Settlement and moved to other areas of Russia. Many of the Jews began to acquire a Russian education and gradually adopted Russian language and customs. By the late nineteenth century, the majority of the world’s Jews lived in the Russian Empire, but due to persecution, more than two million Jews left Russia between 1880 and 1920. Many left for the United States, while others went to pre-state Israel as part of the First Aliyah.
