About this Item
In Russian and Hebrew. 31 pages. 249 x 163 mm. 27 printed photos of tombstones with Hebrew inscriptions and their Hebrew transcriptions and description in Russian. Shlomo Baruch Nissenbaum, an observant Jew, a maskil, early Hovevy Zion and Mizrachi member who had a Yiddish and Hebrew bookstore that served as a center for youth yearning for Jewish knowledge The old Jewish cemetery in Lublin is on a loess hill once called the Grodzisko (?the gorod site?, ?the settlement?) to the south-west of the Old Town and the Lublin Castle, in what is now the Kalinowszczyzna district. The cemetery is surrounded by a stone and brick wall, built probably in the 16th/17th century. There are 2 entrances to the cemetery: on Sienna Street and on Kalinowszczyzna street. Most of the tombstones were destroyed during World War II. The oldest written mention of the cemetery is in a 1555 document, in which king Sigismund II Augustus confirms that 3 parcels were given to the Jewish community in Lublin by starosta (county-level royal official) Stanis?aw T?czy?ski. The cemetery was established on one of them, the so-called Grodzisko, a hill between the castle and Czechówka river. The oldest tombstone is from 1541, over the grave of Yaakov Kopelman Halevi, a well-known Talmudist. Therefore, T?czy?ski sanctioned an already existing cemetery. Jews lived in Lublin as early at the 14th century. In the early 17th century, a substantial part of the cemetery hill had been covered with a 1 meter-thick layer of soil in which more people were buried. It was a common practice at other Jewish cemeteries in Poland, and in Prague, because the Christians limited Jewish cemetery size. Interestingly, ceramic shards which had been placed on the eyes and lips of the dead were found next to some of the people buried at the old Jewish cemetery in Lublin. This practice was widespread across Poland. The shards were often taken from the pot that was crushed next to the grave before the burial. This custom refers to the words of Talmud that read ?an eyeball of flesh and blood. . . is never satiated? (Tamid 32). The tradition of covering the eyes stems from the belief that nothing, even death, can still the eyes of man. Therefore, the eyes of a dead person should be covered. Padlocks were also found on the boards (as opposed to coffins) that framed some of the bodies. The meaning of this custom has not been explained clearly. One of the Talmudic terms for grave is ?something locked?, ?a lock? (Kethuboth 17a). Hence some archaeologists argue that padlock could be a symbol of locking the tomb forever. Covering eyes and mouth and placing padlocks next to the bodies were both expressions of the same endeavor to isolate the dead from the world of the living. The old Jewish cemetery was destroyed several times. It suffered substantial damage in the 19th century from the troops quartered in the nearby Franciscan church. The cemetery was almost completely devastated during World War II. In 1939, there were several thousand graves in the cemetery and only about two hundred have survived. Many of these gravestones are broken or riddled by bullets. 1980s and 1990s also saw acts of vandalism and damage to the cemetery. The old Jewish cemetery in Lublin is visited by Jews from all over the world, as it is here that important Jewish teachers and spiritual leaders were buried. Among people buried in the Old Jewish cemetery are: Yaakov Kopelman (Talmudist, died in 1541), Abraham ben Uszaja (cantor, died in 1543),Shalom Shakna (Talmudist, founder of the Lublin yeshiva, died in 1558), Solomon ben Jehiel Luria (died in 1573), Yaakov Yitzchak ha-Levi Horowitz-Sternfeld, The Seer of Lublin (died in 1815). The texts of the epitaphs from both extant and destroyed tombstones from the old Jewish cemetery in Lublin have survived thanks to the work of Shlomo Baruch Nissenbaum. Seller Inventory # 014078
Contact seller
Report this item
