Metadata: Judaism fonds
Collection
- Country:
- Russia
- Holding institution:
- State Museum of the History of Religion
- Holding institution (official language):
- Государственный музей истории религии
- Postal address:
- 190000, Russia, St. Petersburg, Pochtamskaia ul., d. 14/5
- Phone number:
- (812) 315-30-80
- Web address:
- www.gmir.ru
- Email:
- gmir@relig-museum.ru
- Reference number:
- Unnumbered fonds
- Title:
- Judaism fonds
- Title (official language):
- Фонд «Иудаизм»
- Creator/accumulator:
- various institutions and collectors
- Date(s):
- 1802/1980
- Language:
- Russian
- Hebrew
- Official Aramaic (700-300 BCE); Imperial Aramaic (700-300 BCE)
- Yiddish
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Photographic images
- Graphic material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
-
[New materials are periodically added to the fonds; information given is as of June 2017.] Materials housed in the fonds may be provisionally divided into five sets of documents:
1) Photographs, letters, and personal documents of family members and descendants of Sh.-L. Medal’e, chief rabbi of Moscow from 1933-38, including a photograph of his wife D. Medal’e in exile (Bayanaul; 1940); her letters in Yiddish to her son Hillel Medal’e (1946-48); the engagement contract (tnoim) of Israel Baron and Henrietta Medal’e, drafted by her father Avrom Medal’e, Sh.-L. Medal’e’s son (Leningrad, 1961); photographs of Avrom Medal’e at the “correctional labour” camp at Inta (Komi ASSR, 1955); and Jewish calendars (printed photographically) that had belonged to Avrom Medal’e (Leningrad, 1960-79).
2) Photographs from the archive of I. M. Rabinova, granddaughter of Kh.-Kh. Etkin, state rabbi of the city of Luga, and in particular, a photo of his family (Luga, 1922); a postcard with a photograph of his daughter, her husband Rabbi D. Cohen, and their son Shear Yashuv, who in 1975 became chief rabbi of Haifa (Israel, 1931); a portrait of Rabbi A. Vaisbord (Tula, c. 1910); etc.
3) Documents of E. G. Al’bov, including a typed marriage contract (ketubah) concluded between him and M. M. Skebel’skaia (Alushta, 1917), and their photographs (1916-78).
4) Materials of the Leningrad Jewish religious community, including its charter (1925); questionnaire and membership-card forms (1920s); and invitation forms to an annual meeting of the Leningrad Great Choral Synagogue (after 1923).
5) Printed calendars, and in particular, published in Poltava in 5685 (1924-25) and Berdichev in 5688 (1927-28).
Also housed in the fonds are particular documents, photographs, and postcards, including marriage contracts (ketubot), among them handwritten ones on parchment (Rome, 1802) and paper (Bukhara, 1692 and Samarkand, 1893); petitionary notes (kvitlakh) written for the grave of a tzadik (early 20th c.); a pinkas of the brotherhood of the Mishnah synagogue of the Glebov compound (podvor’e) (Moscow, 1909), with title pages decorated with images and ornamented with micrography (but without any notes); a letter from Jewish congregations of the city of Poltoratsk (Ashkhabad/Ashgabat, Turkmen SSR) to M. I. Kalinin with parallel text in Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, and Farsi (1925); a handwritten poster containing rules of conduct in the synagogue in Yiddish (1920s); lithographic posters: “Rules of Conduct in the Synagogue” (Zhitomir, 1904) from the synagogue of the town of Gritsev (Ukrainian SSR); “In memory of the victims of the Kishinev pogrom” (Kishinev, 1903); a painted phototype from a 1911 photograph titled “Presentation of a Torah to Nicholas II” (1932); lithographic portraits of Rabbis M. Rosenblatt (Slonim, 1906) and M. D. Tverskii (Gornostaipol’, undated); a placard announcing “Jewish Anti-Passover Days in Moscow” (1929); a flier titled “An appeal to Jews by the Mendele Moykher-Sforim First All-Ukrainian Museum of Jewish Culture” (1927); on-location documentary photographs titled “A Funeral” (1930s); “Simchat Torah in the Leningrad Synagogue” (1976); and Jewish postcards (early 20th c.).
Religious items include a handwritten paper poster for the podium of a cantor (called the Shiviti; in Hebrew, “I have placed”), with the text of Psalm 16:8 (“I have placed the Lord always before me”), written by Rabbi Menachem Mani (Moscow [?], 1924); handwritten amulets on parchment and paper; lithographic mizraḥs (ornamental pictures hung on a synagogue’s or home’s eastern wall) (19th c.); leaflets titled “Children’s pictures for Jewish children on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles [Sukkoth – ed.]” (Vil’na, 1899), to be used in making little flags; and marriage contract (ketubah) and engagement contract (tnoim) forms (early 20th c.).
The fonds also includes original graphic artworks, including a poster drawn by S. B. Iudovin titled “Morning prayer” that includes a chest-length photographic portrait of a Jew in prayer shawl (tallis) and tefillin (a photograph taken during the historical-ethnographic expeditions of S. An-skii in 1912, 1914); this is related to a series of ink and watercolour posters and drawings made by S. B. Iudovin that depict Jewish religious rituals, including: “Wedding,” “Circumcision,” “Funeral,” “Sabbath Dinner,” “Passover Meal” (Leningrad, 1930); graphic sheets by A. I. Konstantinovskii and E. I. Shekhtman commissioned by the Central Antireligious Museum (TsAM) (1933, 1938); pencil drawings by I. I. Mal’ts (1934, 1937); caricatures by M. Gorshman published in the magazine Bezbozhnik na stanke [The Godless at the Lathe] (1924-28), and by A. N. Gefter published in the journal Der Epikoyres (1933, 1934); as well as by Iu. A. Ganf, N. N. Efgan, P. M. Kuzan’ian, and others; gouaches by S. M. Hershov, including “Jazz in the Synagogue” and “A Portrait of Cantor David Mikhailovich Stiskin” (Leningrad, 1968, and late 1970s); works of printed graphics, and in particular, lithographs on biblical subjects (Warsaw, late 1880s); lithographic works that employ micrography, and in particular, M.-E. Goldshtein’s “The Story of Joseph” (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1900); a lithographic antireligious poster titled “On the Day of Judgment” by B. P. Blank and M. Z. Fradkin (Khar’kov [?], 1933); printed antireligious posters in Russian and Yiddish; and works by A. l. Kaplan: etchings (Leningrad, 1976) and lithographs from the series “Sholem Aleichem. Stories for children” (Leningrad, 1968).
- Administrative/biographical history:
- The basis of this fonds consists of items received by the Museum of the History of Religion from the State Museum Fund and museum collections of Leningrad, as well as those acquired from private individuals, in 1931-32. Many of these items had previously been exhibited at the Antireligious Exhibition of the USSR Academy of Sciences, prepared under the auspices of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences in 1930. Added to the fonds in 1938 were items from the State Antireligious Museum of the former St. Isaac’s Cathedral (GAMBIS); and in 1947, items from Moscow’s Central Antireligious Museum (TsAM), which was institutionally merged with the Museum of the History of Religion in 1946. The last major group of additions to the fonds occurred in 1954, when items from the State Historical Museum (GIM) were transferred to the Museum of the History of Religion, including, for example, 295 Torah scrolls and two illuminated Books of Esther (Megillat Esther). The fonds’ subsequent development came via the acquisition of particular items and documents from individuals. The fonds includes items of Jewish religious use and ritual objects; works of decorative and applied art, paintings, and original and print graphics, as well as documents and photographs reflecting Jewish religious life in the Russian Empire and the USSR (Moscow, Leningrad). Materials of the Judaism fonds are part of the material museum fonds “Religions of the East,” items of which are systematised by religious confession, and are stored separately to make them easier to process and exhibit. (It is for this reason that this collection is described here separately.) Items of Judaica are inventoried and described in accordance with the “Instructions for recording and storing items of value in state museums” as the items are received.
- Access points: persons/families:
- Al’bov, E. G.
- An-ski, S.
- Baron, Israel
- Blank, B. P.
- Cohen, D.
- Cohen, Shear Yashuv
- Efgan, N. N.
- Etkin, Kh.-Kh.
- Fradkin, M. Z.
- Ganf, Iu. A.
- Gefter, A. N.
- Goldshtein, M.-E.
- Gorshman, M.
- Hershov, S. M.
- Iudovin, S.
- Kalinin, M. I.
- Konstantinovskii, A. I.
- Kuzan’ian, P. M.
- Mal’ts, I. I.
- Mani, Menachem
- Medal’e, Avrom
- Medal’e, D.
- Medal’e, Henrietta
- Medal’e, Hillel
- Medal’e, Sh.-L.
- Nicholas II
- Rabinova, I. M.
- Rosenblatt
- Shekhtman, E. I.
- Sholem Aleichem
- Skebel’skaia, M. M.
- Stiskin, David Mikhailovich
- Tverskii, M. D.
- Vaisbord, A.
- Subject terms:
- Anti-religious activity (Soviet Union)
- Art
- Bible
- Burial
- Ceremonial objects
- Circumcision
- Correspondence
- Drawings
- Etchings
- Ethnography
- Genealogy
- Hazanim
- Jewish community records
- Jewish community records--Pinkasim
- Jewish holidays
- Jewish languages
- Jewish languages--Yiddish
- Marriage and divorce
- Marriage and divorce--Ketubot
- Personal records
- Photographs
- Pogroms
- Pogroms--Kishinev pogrom
- Posters
- Rabbis
- Synagogues
- System of arrangement:
- The material museum fonds “Religions of the East” has inventory logs, in which materials of the “Judaism” fonds, as well as of other collections of the State Museum of the History of Religion that include items of Judaica, are indicated by the letter “E.”
- Finding aids:
- Inventory logs are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary