|
Recording Content:
This recording begins with footage of the researchers at dinner at the Jewish community center with an ethnic Russian woman practicing her English; her late husband was Jewish and her in-laws were both teachers in Rivne. The camera then cuts to Moisei Zelmanovich Fish showing the researchers around the community center/ synagogue stopping at photo exhibits on war veterans, war victims, and the Jewish mass graves found in villages in the 1990s.
Cities and towns mentioned on this tape: Zhytomyr, Rivne, and Slavuta.
|
00:00:00
|
This tape begins with footage of the researchers at dinner at the Jewish community center with an ethnic Russian woman practicing her English; her late husband was Jewish and her in-laws were both teachers in Rivne. |
|
00:02:35
|
The camera cuts to Moisei Zelmanovich Fish showing the researchers around the community center/ synagogue stopping at photo exhibits on war veterans, war victims, and the Jewish mass graves found in villages in the 1990s. |
|
00:08:47
|
Fish brief retells the history of this synagogue, the former tailors’ synagogue, and other synagogues in town. The Great Synagogue closed in 1955. |
|
00:10:14
|
Fish gives a small English-Hebrew booklet with memorial prayers to Professor Kerler so he can say the proper blessing at the mass graves where some of his relatives lie. |
|
00:11:12
|
Fish then describes contemporary religious services in the synagogue: he reads the service aloud in Hebrew as tradition dictates, while the congregants follow along in Russian. The community does not have a Torah Scroll. |
|
00:13:37
|
Fish talks about Jewish life in Rivne after World War II. Few local Jews survived, he says. Post-war Rivne Jews were either locals who had served in the army or migrants from nearby small towns. During perestroika, in 1989 a Jewish communal organization known as the Osher Shvartsman Rivne Jewish Cultural Organization, was founded. They rented a room from the Ukrainian owner of the former tailors’ synagogue. In 1990, they established a religious Jewish communal organization, to the synagogue was restituted by the Ukrainian government. Fish was the accountant for the cultural organization from 1989 to 1997, and has been involved with the religious community since 1995. He also briefly speaks about relations with younger Jews and other Jewish organizations in the city. |
|
00:25:42
|
Fish describes the Jewish cemetery in contemporary Rivne, the religious leadership of the community in the late 1940s and mixed marriages in recent years. |
|
00:31:53
|
Fish takes the interviewers to the former Great Synagogue (a sports hall) and he describes the paintings and inscriptions that used to be on the wall, as well as his memories of the town’s cantors. |
|
00:37:22
|
Fish and the research team then talk to the sports hall’s administrators about the possibility of putting up some kind of signage to indicate the past of the building for tourists. |
|
00:39:35
|
Fish shows the interviewers old Jewish buildings while walking through the streets of Rivne. He remembers old Yiddish theater performances, reports on old communal institutions, and points out the old Polish and Jewish sport stadiums, where the Jewish sport teams played. |
|
00:43:37
|
Fish and the team talk to a random stranger on street about location of the city baths before war . |
|
00:45:30
|
Fish shares his personal recollections of the town’s pre-war baths and mivkes. He also speaks about growth of Rivne after the war, and how Christians move into former Jewish homes. |
|