Odessa

Beginnings of the Community.

City on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea, forming with the adjoining region a separate district. It has been an important factor in the cultural life of the Jews of Russia. It is believed that when the Russians took possession in 1789 of the Turkish fortress of Khadzhi-Bei—named Odessa in 1794—Jews were already living in the place. From a certain gravestone, there is reason to suppose that Jews lived there in the middle of the eighteenth century; but no authentic information on this point occurs earlier than 1793, the date of the founding of the old Jewish cemetery according to the inscription on its oldest tombstone. According to official data, five Jews established themselves in Odessa soon after the Russians took possession of it; and in 1795 the Jewish population had increased to 240 persons of both sexes. Most of them came from Volhynia, Podolia, and Lithuania. Later on Jews arrived from Galicia and Germany. These Jews, who in their native countries had adopted the European culture of the Mendelssohnian era, soon organized charitable and other useful institutions. The PINḲES, which is still preserved and which dates back to 1795, contains the by-laws of the Society of True Philanthropy, whose object was the care of the sick and the burial of the dead. The Talmud Torah was probably founded in the same year. A ḲAHAL was formed in 1798; and two years later a Jewish hospital with six beds was established.

The Galician and German Jews were styled "Broder" Jews, after the city of Brody. They established important commercial houses and took a prominent part in the trade in breadstuffs. As early as 1826 the Brody Jews built in Odessa the first Russo-Jewish school—a departure so radical at that time as to arouse almost the entire Orthodox Russian Jewry. The broad curriculum of the school was of a character hitherto unknown in the Jewish schools; and this new feature produced favorable results for Jewish education throughout Russia. The name Odessa became synonymous with religious freedom, which term the Orthodox Jews regarded as having the same import as "dissipation." The school, which brought culture to the pioneers in southern Russia, was especially prosperous under the directorship of B. Stern. It always received the support of the local authorities, and even gained the favorable notice of Emperor Nicholas I.

In 1835 the first Jewish school for girls was established. In 1852 there existed 59 Jewish schools, 11 private boarding - schools, and 4 day - schools. Furthermore, the Jews of Odessa showed a strong tendency to enter the general educational institutions, contributing a greater proportion of students than did the communities of other creeds. Thus in 1835 there were 8 Jews in the Richelieu Lyceum, and in 1853 there were 52 Jews in the second gymnasium. In the gymnasia of other towns there were about the same time considerably smaller numbers of Jews; even in the gymnasium of the cultured city of Mitau there were only 24. In 1863 the number of Jews in the Odessa gymnasium was 128. Odessa acquired a particular educational importance for all the Jews of Russia with the publication there of the earliest Jewish journals in Russian, "Razsvyet" (1860-61), "Zion" (1861-62), and "Den" (1869-71), and the first Hebrew paper, "Ha-Meliẓ" (1860).