War within, War without: Russian Refugee Rabbis during World War I

Abstract

After the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Rabbi Ya‘akov Landa was one of some 250,000 Russian Jews who had fled, or been forcibly expelled, from their homes in Russia's western provinces to settle in the country's interior. After Landa's exile, he spent several months traveling amid refugee communities in Voronezh, Tambov, Penza, Saratov, and Samara provinces. At the conclusion of his journey, he composed a detailed report about the state of religious observance among the refugees, which he sent to Rabbi Shalom Dov-Ber Schneerson of Lubavitch. Landa's observations during these months shocked his core sensibilities as a rabbi and an observant Jew. He noted that refugees were disregarding such fundamental aspects of Jewish practice as Sabbath observance and were living without the basic institutions that had traditionally defined religious and communal life.