The Hassidic-Mitnagdi Clash in Memories of My Childhood or a View of Dvinsk by Sarah Feiga Foner: Historic Testimony vs. Personal Bias

• In Event: History and Politics in Modern Hebrew Fiction

Abstract

Sarah Feiga Foner's collection of anecdotes, "Memories of My Childhood or a View of Dvinsk" (Warsaw, 1903), is based on her childhood memories growing up in the 1860's in the Latvian city of Dvinsk (then in the Russian Empire). Several of these anecdotes portray the squabbles between the Hassidic and Mitnagdi factions in Dvinsk which Foner experienced first-hand as the daughter of Mitnagdim descended from the Vilna Gaon. These anecdotes highlight the demeaning conduct of the Hassidim toward the Mitnagdim in Dvinsk, which according to Foner led to the creation of two separate communities – each with its own rabbi, slaughterer, butcher and undertaker.

In contrast with the author's declared purpose of providing an objective chronicle of Dvinsk's Jewish community for future generations, her memoirs present a slanted image where the Mitnagdim represent all that was good in the community and the Hassidim – all that was bad. Thus Foner contends that certain calamities that befell the Dvinsk Hassidim were in fact providential reprisals for their offenses. As noted by Yosef Glick in his review of Foner's memoirs (Pittsburgh, 1912), the author appears to recite the anti-Hassidic slurs she had heard during her childhood.

This presentation will attempt to answer the question of how to use Foner's slanted account of the Hassidic-Mitnagdi clash in Dvinsk as historic testimony. It will propose to interpret the author's bias as an evidence of the mutual hostility that was part of the Hassidic-Mitnagdi squabbles in Dvinsk in the 1860's and to analyze Foner's bias as a product of the anti-Hassidic atmosphere the author absorbed during her childhood, which she reconstructed in her memoirs.

The presentation will use Hebrew newspaper clips from the 1860's and early 1870's that reported about the Hassidic-Mitnagi relationship in Dvinsk and other Eastern-European Jewish communities – which confirmed or refuted Foner's negative portrayal of the Hassidim.

The presentation can contribute to the understanding of memoirs as historic testimony. It can facilitate the understanding of the Hassidic-Mitnagdi clash in Eastern Europe in the Nineteenth Century by distinguishing between the historical and personal levels in Foner's memoirs and analyzing the author's personal bias as evidence in itself.

author

• Michal Fram Cohen, Bar-Ilan University