Memoirs of East European Jewish Life before World War II

translated by Eva Zeitlin Dobkin

edited by Dina Abramowicz and Jeffrey Shandler

with introductions by David E. Fishman and Dina Abramowicz

Published in cooperation with TVO Institite for Jewish Research

WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS DETROIT

First published in a Yiddish edition in 1955, Profiles of A Lost World is an incomparable source of information about Eastern Europe before World War II as well as an invaluable touchstone for under standing a rich and complex cultural environment. 

Hirsz Abramowicz (1881-1960), a prominent Jewish educator, writer, and cultural activist, knew that world and wrote about it, and his writings provide a rare eye witness account of Jewish life during the first half of the twentieth century.

Abramowicz was a witness to war. revolution, and major cultural transformations in the Jewish world. 

His essays, written and originally published in Yiddish berween 1920 and 1955, document the local history of Lithuanian Jewry in rural and small-town settings and in the city of Vilna -the "Jerusalem of Lithuania which was a major center of East European Jewish intellectual and cultural life. 

They shed important light on the daily life of Jews and the flourishing of modern Yiddish culture in Eastern Europe during the early twentieth century and offer a personal perspective on the rise of jewish radical politics

The collection incorporates local history of Lithuanian Jewry, shtetl folklore, observations on rural occupations, Jewish education, and life under German occupation during World War I. 

It also includes a series of profiles of leading social and intellectual Jewish personalities of the author's day, from traditional scholars to revolutionaries Together the selections provide a unique blend of social and personal history and a window on a lost world

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

David E. Fishman

MY FATHER'S LIFE AND WORK

Dina Abramowicz

NOTE FROM THE EDITORS

1. Rural Jewish Occupations in Lithuania

2. A Lithuanian Shtetl

3. The Diet of Lithuanian Jews 

4. Healing the Mentally III

1. Joshua Steinberg 

2. Sammuel Gozhanski 

3. Chaim Fialkov

4. Hirsh Lekert and His Times 

5. Anna Lifshits 

6. In Tsarist Jatis 

7. Jewish Gymnasia without Quotas

8. LL. Peretz Visits the Jewish Writers in Odessa 

9. Chaim Weizmann and Kolia Tepper Debate 

IN AND AROUND VILNA

1.1km the Militia 

2 The German in World War I 

3. April 1919