Pinkhes-Dov Goldenshteyn
The Shochet (Vol. 2)
“A fitting conclusion to a well-researched and meticulously edited memoir translation.” — Kirkus Reviews
“You have to read this book… It’s not like anything you read before.” — Tablet Magazine
Set in Ukraine,
Crimea, and Israel, this unique two-volume autobiography offers a fascinating,
detailed picture of life in Tsarist Russia and Israel during the late 19th and
early 20th centuries. Goldenshteyn (1848-1930), a traditional Jew who was
orphaned as a young boy and became a shochet (kosher slaughterer) as a
young man, is a master storyteller. Folksy, funny, streetwise, and
self-confident, he
is a keen observer of his surroundings. His accounts are vivid and readable, sometimes stunning in their
intensity.
The memoir is brimming
with information. Goldenshteyn’s adventures shed light on communal life,
persecution, family relationships, religious practices and beliefs, social
classes, local politics, interactions between Jews and other religious
communities, epidemics, poverty, competition for resources, migration, war,
technology, modernity and secularization. In chronicling his own life,
Goldenshteyn inadvertently tells a bigger story—the story of how a small,
oppressed people, among other minority groups, struggled for survival in the
massive Russian Empire and in the Land of Israel.
Volume two begins in
1873, when Goldenshteyn obtains his first position as a shochet in Slobodze, and it follows him to the Crimea, where he
endures 34 years of vicissitudes. In
1913, he fulfills a dream of immigrating to the Land of Israel, hoping to find
tranquility in his old age. Instead, he is met with the turbulence of the First
World War, as battles rage between the retreating Ottoman Turks and the
advancing British forces.
Informed by research in
Ukrainian, Israeli and American archives and personal interviews with the few
surviving individuals who knew Goldenshteyn personally, The Shochet is a magnificent new contribution to Jewish and Eastern
European history.