Re: Warshawsky

[Ari Davidow <ari...>]

>>From: Lori Cahan-Simon <l_cahan (at) staff(dot)chuh(dot)org>
>>
>>I forgot to add this question:  Can anyone give me a definitive birthdate
>>for him?  Different sources have variously 1840, 1845 and 1848.
>>Lorele
>>
>    Tayere Lorele:
>Because amongst the Ultra Orthodox of the 19th century and earlier in 
>centain parts of E. Europe, birthdates and years are not kept track of 
>standardly. I understand that he was from Galicia, which kept changing 
>Empire Status. That's why there is no standard dates for him( I did a 
>project on him in College...I'll see if I can find my notes.) He was known 
>also as Mark S. Warshafsky.
>       Trudi

I am confused. To the best of my knowledge, the designation 
"ultra-orthodox" is very much a recent coinage, and of little
use in understanding why someone's birthdate 150 years ago 
would be vague. There has never been a Jewish proscription,
to the best of my knowledge, against recording a birthdate.

Are you referring to the fact that the Jewish community, in general,
tended to fudge birth dates because of the Russian draft? (Jews
were drafted for 25 (?--or some such large number--I'm at work and
memory is fuzzy) years, specifically to remove youth from the Jewish
community--see Marx & Margolis or other popular histories w/regard to
the time and anti-Jewish measures) years, and the community had a strong
incentive to make people, to the best of its ability, always appear too
old or too young to be drafted.

Names, in the sense of "first name, last name" were not used within the
Jewish community until enforced externally, so record-keeping in that
regard, esp. w/regard to tying a specific person to a specific birthdate,
would also have been funky.

It's just not a religious issue (not in the ritual sense, at any rate;
very much so in the sense that if all Jews get drafted and are forcibly
assimilated into Russian society, other Jewish religious questions become
moot) as different from an overall community issue--it applied as well 
to Hasidic Jews, as to Mitnagdim, as to proponents of the Enlightenment 
in all of their flavors.

ari

ari


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