Commemoration and Jewish National Identity: Lviv in the Last Decades of the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

Commemoration and Jewish National Identity:Lviv in the Last Decades of the Nineteenth Century Ela Bauer (bio) In January 1886, the Jewish world commemorated one hundred years since the death of Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786). In Dessau, Mendelssohn's birth place, Berlin, New York, and other places, Jews and non-Jews gathered together to honor him.1 Not everyone in the Jewish world at that time believed that Mendelssohn and his legacy deserved commemoration.2 In the Jewish community of Lviv (Lemberg, Lwów), the administrative capital of the province of Galicia, Jews and non-Jews came together to honor Mendelssohn in the local progressive synagogue (temple).3 Those who attended this ceremony listened to a lecture delivered by Rabbi Bernard Levehstien (1821–1889), the temple's preacher, and to the singing of temple's choir. At the club of Shomer Yisra'el (Guardian of Israel), a lecture dedicated to Mendelssohn was delivered by the president, Dr. Emil Bik (1845–1906).4 While Agudat Akhim (Association of Brothers) did not organize a ceremony,5 its bilingual (Polish and Hebrew) periodical, Ojczyzna-HaMazkir, reported on several commemoration events in different parts of Galicia.6 At the club of Mikra Kodesh (Holy Assembly), this date got no attention. The official explanation for ignoring the event was the illness of the head of the association, Rabbi Josef Kobak (1835–1913). During the weeks that Kobak was ill, many of the association's planned activities were cancelled. After his recovery, there was no point in retroactively commemorating events, including the hundred-year anniversary of the death of Mendelssohn.7 Several members of the association did not accept this official explanation, including Mordecai Ehrenpreis (1869–1951), who argued that Mikra Kodesh did not commemorate the anniversary of Mendelssohn's passing because the founders of the association did not agree with his agenda and ideology.8 We know that the founders and members of Mikra Kodesh appreciated and admired the Hebrew writer Peretz Smolenskin (1842–1885), who, among other things, was known for his criticism of Mendelssohn.9 It might be that the admiration and appreciation that the founders and members of Mikra Kodesh felt for Smolenskin led to the decision not to commemorate Mendelssohn.10 After all, the events chosen to be commemorated by Mikra Kodesh were [End Page 1] related to specific dates and people that supported the ideological agenda of the association. These types of events mirrored the multifaceted components of their identity.11 This article examines the different events that the associations Mikra Kodesh and Zion choose to commemorate in Lviv in the last decades of the nineteenth century, the ways that various components of the personal and collective identities of the association's members were articulated in these events, and how these commemorations were affiliated with the formation of Jewish national collective memory. ________ The province of Galicia (officially, Galizien and Lodomerien) appeared on the map for the first time when it became crown land of the Habsburg Empire, after the first partition of Poland in 1772. Although the name of the province is linked to the medieval Ukrainian principality of Halych, from 1772 until 1918, i.e., the time in which the region was under Austrian authority, the territory of Galicia included additional lands that were not part of the medieval Ukrainian principality of Halych. The population of Austrian Galician was multiethnic, including Poles, Ruthenians (Ukrainians), and Jews. There were also small German and Armenian minorities that during the nineteenth century integrated into the Polish nationality. Poles and Ukrainians each accounted for over 40 percent of the population and Jews for over 10 percent. In Western Galicia, Poles were the majority. In Eastern Galicia, the Ruthenians comprised the largest part of the population. In 1867, the Jewish residents of Galicia became citizens of the empire.12 In the same year, as part of the Austrian Ausgleich (dual monarchy, with Hungary), the Polish minority in Galicia received the right of self-governance. Until World War I, Polish was the language of government and local bureaucracy, as well as the language of instruction, first in elementary- and middle-school systems and later at the universities in Kraków and Lviv. From 1867...