Bucovina - A multi-national region, on a geographical, ethnic and cultural crossroads. Bucovina – Das Buchenland – The Land of the Beech Trees (Romanian – “fag”, German – Buche) is a small area of 10,441 km², in Northern Moldova, between Galicia, Transylvania, Basarabia and Moldova. This name, of Slovenian origin, representing a defined geographical-administrative area, only came into existence after the Austro-Habsburg conquest at the end of the 18th Century.  The region, and especially its more southerly parts, was the historical-political cradle of the Romanian principality of Moldova in the 13th and 14th centuries. The first city of the region at this time, Suchava, was for two hundred years (1388-1564) the capital of the Moldovan principality. Bucovina is mostly mountainous, surrounded by colourful forests and rich in sources of water. The river Siret divides it ethnically - Ruthany-Ukrainian in the north and Romanian in the south, whereas the Suchava river divides it geographically - the northern part, between the rivers Dannister, Prout and Siret is fertile agricultural land whereas the south, covered in colourful forests is the most attractive to tourists.
The main produce of the area is corn and fruit and the secondary industries of sawmills, mills, distilleries etc. are its main economic assets. Iron, manganese and salt mines have also been developed. Together with rafting on the rivers and the opening of the Lebob-Chernovitz-Vienna railway, these things have turned Bucovina into a central artery of the world economy.
Until the 18th Century Bucovina was an integral part of the Romanian principality of Moldova. For 144 years from 1774 until 1918 this area was under Imperial Austro-Habsburg rule. Between the two world wars (1918-1940) Bucovina returned to being part of the Romanian Kingdom. In July 1940 the Soviet army captured the northern part of Bucovina, together with the capital Tchernovitz and annexed it to the republic of Ukraine. Only the central and southern parts remained in the possession of Romania. This is still the situation today.
Bucovina is situated on a geographical, ethnic and cultural crossroads and during the period of Habsburg rule it was presented as the foremost bastion of Western culture in the Slavic world. Bucovina provided the opportunity for a fruitful meeting of peoples and nationalities and during the time of their rule the Austro-Habsburgs thought of it as “The Model Region” (Musterland), a wonderful sort of  “Little Austria”, and this was in virtue of the good relations that existed between the main ethnic groups that lived there: Romanians, Ukrainians (called Ruthanians), Jews, Germans and Poles. In the German press a stereotype took root. The Bucovina man, homo bucovinensis, was seen as excelling in cultural enlightenment, in his tolerant way of life and in his urbanity. From the middle of the 19th Century onwards no single ethnic group constituted a majority of the population. Vying for the position of the most important ethnic group in the region were the Romanians and the Ruthanians, the Romanians on account of their historical right and the Ruthanians on account of their demographic advantage. It is interesting to compare the population figures according to ethnic group that were gathered in the census of 1910, near the end of Habsburg rule, and in the census of 1930 when the region was under Romanian rule.

Census of 1930 Census of 1910
% Population Ethnic Group % Population Ethnic Group
44.5% 379,691 Romanians 34.4% 273,254 Romanians
29.2% 236,130 Ruthanians 38.4% 305,101 Ruthanians
10.8% 92,492 Jews 12.9% 102,919 Jews
8.9% 75,533 Germans 8.2% 65,000 Germans
3.6% 30,580 Poles 4.5% 36,000 Poles
3.7% 38,583 Others(Lipovnians, Gypsies,Hungarians, Hozolians) 1.6% 12,655 Others(Lipovnians, Gypsies,Hungarians, Hozolians)
100% 853,009 Total 100% 794,929 Total

In “Greater Romania” between the wars Jews made up only 4% of the population whereas in Bucovina during the same period they constituted more than 12%.

Historical Signposts
1. The origin of the Jews of Bucovina
Archeological evidence shows that Jews were an integral part of Dako-Roman Bucovina, in the first few centuries of the Common Era. These Jews apparently arrived with the conquering Roman armies, and came from Israel. A second small wave of Jews came from Byzantium in the early middle ages. A third group were the “Cuzars” or “Cozars”, which was the name of a Turkmanistani tribe from the Volga and Caucuses area, which, according to certain traditions, converted to Judaism in the 8th Century. When the region was merged with the Romanian principality of Moldova, from the 13th to 18th Centuries, Jews from Poland also arrived.
In 1774, when the Imperial Austro-Habsburg army took control, the number of Jews in Bucovina had reached 2,356, most of this number having settled there permanently. The Jewish population was organised and consolidated into Jewish communities of a strongly defined character and they prospered throughout the 144 years of Austro-Habsburg rule but especially in the second half of this period between 1848-1918. In 1850 the Jewish population was 14,581 whereas by 1914 this number had grown to 120,000. Bucovina was at this time a very attractive place for Jews from surrounding districts and countries such as Moldova, Basarabia and especially Galicia. This was due to the economic success of the Jewish community, their almost complete emancipation and their high cultural level. The Jews of Bucovina were almost all Ashkanazi.

2. The Jews of Bucovina under the rule of the Moldovan princes from the 14th to the 18th Century.
In the middle ages and at the beginning of the modern era, economic conveys from Poland, which was in the 14th Century the sponsoring power of the Romanian principality of Moldova, were set up along the rivers Dannister, Prout and Siret, to the west and to the south. Jews took part in these convoys and set up inns and warehouses along the trade routes. On Shabbatot the Jewish traders would sleep and relax in the towns of Sochava and Siret and some even settled there permanently.  This is how the earliest Jewish settlements in Bucovina, in Siret, Sochava and Tchernovitz, were founded and organized. The hard times that the Jews were experiencing in neighbouring Poland convinced groups of Jews to accept the offer of the Princes of Moldova to come and settle in Bucovina. Only from the second half of the 17th Century is it possible to follow the beginnings of the Jewish settlements in the southern part of Bucovina, in Kimpolong.
The earliest documented evidence of Jews in Bucovina during the rule of the Moldovan Princes comes from the year 1408. The Moldovan Prince Alexander the Good (Alexandru cel Bun) gave permission for the traders of Lebob to trade freely in the cities of Tchernovitz, Chutin, and Soroko, whether the trader be Ruthanian, Armenian, Tartar, Sarachnian or Jewish. The earliest evidence of Jews in Kimpolong in southern Bucovina, is from 1682 in a document describing a will that had been written by local Romanian inhabitants in the house of the Jew “Meir”. The oldest Jewish cemetery in Bucovina, indeed in the whole of Moldova, is in the town of Siret. In general, documents testifying to the lives of Jews in Bucovina under the rule of the Moldovan Princes are rare.
Of these princes Alexander the Good (Alexandru cel Bun) 1400-1432 and Stephan the Great (Stefan cel Mare) 1457-1504 were known for their generous attitude towards the Jews. The Jew Isaac Bey was a diplomatic envoy in the court of the latter. This prince’s personal doctor, Mengli Ghirai, was also Jewish. In spite of his personal audacity as a ruler, Stephan was unable to prevent the Moldovan principality, together with its capital Sochava, from passing into the patronage of “The Big Gate” of the Turkish Sultan in Istanbul. The Sultans were generally tolerant towards Jews and encouraged the Jewish traders to develop the commerce between the Romanian principalities and Istanbul.
The 13th and 14th Centuries brought the Tartar invasion and conquest of Northern Moldova and the destruction of the small Jewish enclaves in Bucovina. During the years 1648-1658 these enclaves were once again destroyed at the time of the rebellion of the Cossacks and Ukrainians, led by Bogdan Chamlanitzki, and especially as a result of the invasion led by his cruel son Timus. In comparison to these catastrophic times the 17th and 18th Centuries were a time of relative growth for the Jewish settlements in the area.
 The Jews in this area were mainly merchants. The trade in wines and spirits was a kind of Jewish monopoly and the Jews also traded in cattle, horses, sheep, grain crops, cotton, cloth and haberdashery. The Jews contributed greatly to the foreign trade of the area. As was also the case in the other two Romanian principalities the lending of money for interest was not characteristic of the Jews of this area at all. The Jews would lease village land with their savings, some would even work the land themselves. This is how the image of the Jewish farmer began, and it became very widespread in Bucovina. The economic situation of the Jews of the Moldavian principalities, including the northern areas, was vastly superior to that of the Jews in the surrounding countries and regions such as Galicia, Poland, Ukraine, and Russia.
Jews during the rule of the Moldovan princes spoke Moldovan-Romanian and not Yiddish, and their dress was also no different from the Moldova-Romanians. They were concentrated into several specific neighbourhoods but this was of their own free will. Nowhere in the Romanian principalities was there any officially designated “Ghetto”.
The communal organisation , “The Community”, of the North Moldovan Jews under the Moldovan Princes was based on the structure of the professional union in feudal society. “The Professional Guild” of the Jews was called “Breasla Jidovilor”. The main function of “The Community” was the centralized collection of taxes, especially the extra taxes that were imposed by the government specifically on Jews. “The Community” also supplied religious services, judicial decisions and Jewish education. There were two officially recognized Jewish communities in Northern Moldova, in Sochava and in Siret and a third was added in the Tchernovitz area in the 18th Century. At the head of every recognized Jewish community stood a “staroste” who was aided by 3-5 “Good Men of the Town” who were usually elected. In the 18th Century the Jews Cerbu (Tzvi) and Lazar (Eliezer) were heads of “The Community” in Tchernovitz, the later for more than 30 years.
The little documented evidence that exists about Jews in Bucovina before the Austrian conquest contains nothing about the size of the population. In 1774, the conquering Austro-Habsburg army recorded that there were 526 Jewish families in the area, 2,356 people, and this was out of a total of 17,047 families, 70,000 inhabitants in all.

Habsburg Rule (1774-1918)
During the Russo-Turkey War of 1769-1772 the Austro-Habsburg Empire gave assistance to the Turks and as a reward were allowed, in October 1774, to take control of the northern part of Romanian Moldova. This connected Transylvania with the territory of Galicia that Austria had received in the first partition of Poland in 1772 and the arrangement was confirmed in the peace deal of May 1775, signed in Kochuk-Kayinarji. No account was taken, however, of the makeup of the local populations, everything had been decided solely to fit in with the accepted 18th Century theory of the international “Balance of Power”. Austria gave the area the name of Bucovina and moved the capital from Sochava, the old Moldavian capital, to Tchernovitz, a town with an urban-village like character, on the bank of the river Prout. The 144 years of Austro-Habsburg rule are generally remembered in Jewish history as a good period for Jews but it is possible to divide this time into two halves. The first half can be seen to comprise the 12 years (1774-1786) of military government and the 63 years (1789-1846) when the administration of Bucovina was merged with the administration of Galicia. Some periods of hardship and depression were experienced akin to what Jews suffered in the west of the Austro-Habsburg Empire, before the emancipation. Only in the second half, beginning in 1848, did the Jews of Bucovina receive almost total civilian emancipation and prosper economically and culturally. Strictly speaking only this second half of Austro-Habsburg rule can be given the name of “The Golden Age” of Bucovina Jewry.

A) The first half of Austro-Habsburg rule
For the first twelve years of Austro-Habsburg control (1774-1784) Bucovina was under military government. First Gabriel Freiherr von Spleny (1774-1778) and then Karl Baron von Enzenberg (1778-1786) held the position of Administrator General. These men were responsible directly, administratively speaking, to the Imperial Court in Vienna. Enzenberg was strongly anti-Semitic and took oppressive and discriminatory steps against the Jews, especially those “foreign” Jews that had arrived after 1769, at the time of the outbreak of the Russo-Turkey war. These Jews represented about two-thirds of the Jewish families and the Austrian commander wished to prevent the expansion of the population. Emperor Josef II (1780-1790) had pretence to be an “enlightened” ruler and his “tolerant letter” of 13th May 1781 set forward his plan to make the Jews also into “useful citizens”. He intended to do this by employing Jews in “useful” work such as agriculture, craft, and a little “respectable” business based on personal capital. Also the Jewish children would be sent to the German state schools that were being set up in the area. However the local implementation of these principles became more draconian than the Jews could bear. Two visits by the Emperor in 1780 and 1783 and two delegations of Jews that were sent from Tchernovitz to Vienna to plead for the protection of the Emperor failed to effect the harshness of the measures. In March 1782, 382 Jewish families were expelled, most of them “foreign”. In 1785 the second deportation of Bucovina Jews took place: 255 families, from the total of 392 families that had been selected to be forcibly moved to work the land, preferred to abandon their homes and went, most of them, to live in Chutin in northern Moldova. In all, 627 Jewish families were expelled from Bucovina at this time, about 30% of the total Jewish population. In spite of this, when the situation in neighbouring Galicia worsened due to heavy taxes and forced conscription into the army beginning in 1788 (forced conscription of Jews in Bucovina began only in 1830), Jews from Galicia and Russia began to filter more steadily into Bucovina. In the short term the directives of Emperor Josef appeared oppressive but in the long term they promoted the situation of the Jews in the region.
On the 16th September 1786 the administrative merger of Bucovina to Galicia was proposed and this merger lasted for 63 years. It was not good for Bucovina as a whole, and did not bring any improvement in the life of Jews. In 1789, the decree concerning the organisation of the Jewish communities of Bucovina and Galicia, the Judenordnungspatent, came into effect. It relieved restrictions, such as the limit on marriages, and provided for the free choice of profession and the leasing of agricultural farmland. The limit on “new” Jewish settlers remained however, as did the special taxes only levied on the Jewish community. These included taxes on Kosher meat an on the opening of new synagogues. The 1782 edict concerning the opening of public schools in all recognized Jewish communities was not put into practice due to the opposition of the ultra-Orthodox Charedim, only in 1843 was a Jewish public school, using German, opened in Tchernovitz. From 1792 Jews were made to carry German family names. The Jews of Galicia were more deeply steeped in Jewish religious tradition than the Bucovina Jews and whereas a movement for Hebrew “education” was begun in Galicia no such movement appeared in Bucovina, where the study of Midrash and Talmud was not deeply rooted.
The Jews of Tchernovitz became communally organised in 1789. The first head Rabbi, Rabbi Chaim Tirar, who was known as “Tchernovitzer”, held the position for 18 years until 1807. A very learned man, Tirar was a compelling preacher and charismatic leader. He had a vast knowledge of Chasidic teachings and was fanatically against the registration of Jewish children in German public schools. He emigrated to Israel in 1813 and died in Tsfat, the mystical city of Kabala and no suitable replacement was found for him until 1833. In 1846 the Jews of Tchernovitz numbered only 4,678 at which time there were 11,586 Jews in Bucovina as a whole, less than there had been in 1786 before the administrative merger with Galicia.

The “Golden Age” of Bucovina Jewry: 1849-1914
1848 was a year of national revolution in Western and Central Europe, but it passed quietly in Bucovina, even though there was an objective basis for national fermentation.
 On the basis of the new Imperial Constitution of the 4th of March 1849, Bucovina was separated from Galicia, and this reflected the wish of the local ethnic groups, including the Jews. The new state was given the title of independent crown providence or “Duchy” (selbstandiges Kronalnd, Herzogtum). In October of 1849 the special taxes levied against the Jews were cancelled and they were granted almost complete political and civilian rights. The “Golden Age” of Bucovina Jewry was congruent to the long reign of the Emperor Franz-Josef I (1848-1916), who became almost a mythical figure to his subject peoples. In December 1867, at the same time that Austria and Hungary finalized the Ausgleich agreement that established the joint Austria-Hungary monarchy, the “Government Lands Law” (Staatsgrund Gesetz) was enacted which removed all restrictions on Jews buying land. This completed the almost-legal and almost-total emancipation of the Jews of Bucovina even if in day-to-day practice some restrictions did still exist like a limit on the number of Jewish government officials and top army officers. The Jews began an energetic program of land buying and leasing of agricultural farms. In the same year of 1867, in a law dated the 21st of December 1867, the autonomy of the Jewish communities was recognized and when this law had its final revision in 1890 the number of Jewish communities had reached 15. It remained in effect until 1928, when the Romanians exchanged it for their own “Law of Religions” (Legea Cultelor).
 The Jews of Bucovina also participated in general political life including the elections to the Imperial parliament (Reichsrat) in Vienna and the regional parliament (Landtag) in Tchernovitz. In 1861 the first two Jewish delegates entered the regional parliament and in 1897 Dr. Beno Straucher (1854-1940) became delegate and first representative of the Bucovina Jews to the Imperial parliament. In 1907 he was elected to be the first Chairman of the Jewish parliamentary society that at that time numbered four delegates; three from Galicia and one from Bucovina. He served in the Vienna parliament until its dissolution in October 1918. In 1897, Dr. Meir Avner (1872-1954) was the elected to be the Bucovina representative to the first Zionist Congress and he continued, as head of the Bucovina Zionists, to attend every Congress until his death in Israel in 1954. These two men parted ways in 1911 and their stubborn “Thirty Years War”, as it was called by the less serious minded people of their generation, continued through the Romanian rule of the 1920’s. This struggle, and the two schools of Bucovina political thought which the men represented, will be discussed in the next section.
 The Habsburg law may have granted to Jews equal rights but it did not recognise the Jewish nation or the Yiddish language that was the language of daily communication of the Ultra-Orthodox Chassids, tradesmen and the common man. In the national censuses carried out meticulously every 10 years in the Austro-Habsburg Empire, the Jews had no option but to enter “German” in the sections entitled “Mother tongue” (Muttersprache) or “Daily language of communication” (Umgangssprache) and this increased the apparent “Germanness” of the province. It was only possible to locate the Jews in these censuses when it came to religion. There was little need for Bucovina Jewish representatives in the local, regional or Imperial parliaments, to fight against persecution or anti-Semitic disturbances. In Vienna Dr. Straucher focused his efforts on activities that might help persecuted Jews in surrounding countries such as Galicia, Basarabia, Romania and Russia. In Bucovina itself the National Zionist movement, organised and under the leadership of Dr. Leon Klanar and Dr. Meir Avner, called for the recognition of Jewish nationhood by the government, and for the fostering of the national identity at home. They wanted Jewish organisation in the Peoples Assembly (Volksrat) and to change the communities from Religious cult communities (Kultusgemeinden) into National communities (Nationale Gemeinden). The fact that the Jews could not assimilate into any other ethnic group in the multi-ethnic mosaic of Bucovina meant that the National Zionist movement quickly took on a clearly political agenda.
Only in 1911 did the Bucovina regional parliament give the status of “nationality” to the Jewish community that at this time made up 10 of the 60 parliamentary representatives. In 1905 Dr. Edward Race became the first Jewish mayor of Tchernovitz, a feat duplicated by the Jewish Dr. Salo Von Vaiselberger in 1913. This mayor was exiled to Siberia during the First World War and on his return gave the keys of the city to the Romanian army, which entered the city in November 1918, at the end of the war.
Throughout the “Golden Age” the Jews of Bucovina were spared the riots and violent anti-Semitic disturbances that plagued the Jews of neighbouring regions and countries. It is therefore not surprising that they did not join in the mass emigration of Jews from Eastern Europe at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Century.

The Courts of the Chassidic Rabbis and Their Communities
 The social morphology of the Jews of Bucovina sharply polarised the community. On one side was a rich educated elite that had acquired general German culture, had shown great economic initiative, and had been a central contributor to the regions economic development and its transformation into the foremost bastion of German culture in the Slavic East. On the other side was an ultra-Orthodox religious community of very limited economic means. At the end of the 18th Century the Jewish sect of “Chassidim” had been formed in Bucovina. Founded by Rabbi Yisrael Baal Shem Tov (1698-1760) the sect was begun in Fodolia, as he wandered on the Galicia-Bucovina border. Focusing its attempts at recruiting on the lower classes of the Jewish community the Chassidim stressed the joy of creation, in contrast to “The Opposition” that believed in rational scholarship and ascetic seclusion. Prayer from the heart was more important than academic learning and a new style of religious leader was developed that lived amongst the community and guided all aspects of life from within. This is the image of “The Rabbi”, “The Amdor”, the doer of marvels (Wunder Rabbi), that speaks in the peoples dialect and in folk tales at the head of a “Tisch”, a long and large table, as his admiring followers crowd around. The Chassidim wore the Polish Jewish dress of Kapota (long black coat), and “streimel” (fur hat), spoke Yiddish and practiced amongst themselves the commandments of mutual aid and the giving of charity. Their doctrine was mainly oral and no archive or document keeper was present in the court of the Amdor, which makes the historical-demographic study of these communities very difficult.
 The Jewish community of Bucovina became a large effervescent center of Chassidism and was based around the “Courts” of two “Amdorim” (Rabbis), the like of which were unique to Bucovina. There was the dynasty of the house of Friedman that was based in Sedgora next to Tchernovitz and the dynasty of the house Hagar based in Vichnitz on the border between Galicia and Bucovina. These two towns became unmistakably Chassidic.
 Rabbi Yisrael Friedman, the founder of the Sedgora version of Chassidism, lived like a prince in his home town of Rozin in Russia. He wore fine clothes, had fine manners and lived in a magnificent house and had the respect and admiration not only of his own followers but also of non-Jewish nobles. He believed that one should serve The Almighty by living in splendour and rejected the devotion to ascetic poverty. In the wake of the murder of two Jewish informers he was forced to flee the land of his birth and in 1842, after some time of wandering, he received Austrian citizenship and permission to settle and make his home in Sedgora, 40 kilometres from Tchernovitz, in a glorious castle surrounded by gardens. The Admorim of Sedgora had aristocratic manners and, for example, would pray alone. They wished to influence the learned Jews of the west and kept in touch with the leaders of the generation. In 1863 the Rabbi’s third son, known as Rabbi Bernio, became an atheist and this scandalized the Chassidic community of the entire area. During the First World War the castle and the Chassidic centre in Sedgora were destroyed by the Cossacks when the army of the Russian Tsar invaded Bucovina. The Sedgora Rabbi fled to Vienna where he stayed until the Nazis took control in 1938 at which time he went to Israel. In 1886 a split occurred amongst the Sedgora Chassidim when the Rabbi of the time’s third son, Rabbi Yitzhak, moved to the nearby town of Boian and opened his own “Court”, an additional branch of the Sedgora dynasty. Between the two world wars the Sedgora Chassidim of Bucovina lacked leadership and they turned to the Rabbi from Boian and massed near Tchernovitz. After the Second World War the Sedgora Chassidim experienced a revival in Israel and in the large new gatherings of Jews in the United States. In Romania and in Israel the premiere position in the Chassidic community passed to the Chassidim of Vichnitz.
 Rabbi Mendel Hagar from Kosov on the Bucovina-Galicia border began a term as Father of the Court in Vichnitz, on the river Ceremus, in 1854. He laid the foundation for a Chassidic dynasty more simplistic and “of the people” than the Sedgoran version. The Vichnitz Chassidim talked about three “loves”: the love of the Torah, love of the Almighty and the love of Israel. The Rabbis prayed together with their Chassidim, prayers that were accompanied by loud singing. In the lead up to the Day of Atonement and the major festivals a special train would be rented that would bring thousands of Chassidim to Vichnitz to stay for 10 to 12 days near the house of the Rabbi. The Vichnitz Chassidim appeared content with their lot in life and beggars and alms collectors could not be seen in their community. They did not excel in learning and did not produce many great scholars but did set up many “Yeshivot” were hundreds of followers were taught about Vichnitz Chassidism. In contrast to the Sedgora Chassidim this form of Chassidism spread widely into the neighbouring Maromesh, the Slovakian and the Romanian sides of the river Tisa, and large Jewish centers in Transylvania. The dwelling places of the Vichnitz Rabbis were also destroyed during the First world war by the Cossacks. Rabbi Yisrael (“Srolnio”) Hagar managed to escape and set up a new “Court” and Yeshiva in Oradia-Mara which rivaled, in terms of its size and its activities, that which had been left behind in Vichnitz. The homes and “Yeshiva” of Vichnitz were renovated between the wars. After the holocaust the Vichnitz Rabbis settled and set up their “Courts” in Israel and their thousands of Chassidim in Israel today make up one of the largest Chassidic camps. The Vichnitz Rabbi serves as Chairman of the “Assembly of Great Torah Scholars” which leads the “Pagoda-Yisrael” (Israel Society) movement.
 The Sedgora and Vichnitz Chassidim had several differences but also several similarities, the main one being their moderation and social and even religious open-mindedness. This was in contrast to the neighboring Chassidim of Satu-Mare and Monkach and is probably another result of the calm social and political atmosphere of the Austro-Habsburg period.

The Zionist Movement in Bucovina
 The first Zionist Congress in Bazel in 1897 had included three representatives from Bucovina, with Meir Avner, the founder of the Union of Zionist Students “Chashmoniah”, at its head. The Zionist movement had put down roots early in Bucovina and constituted there the most important Jewish public organisation in the area. The movement did not have its origins in the hardship and oppression of the population or anti-Semitic disturbances as was the case in Galicia, Basarabia, or Moldova. In Austrian Bucovina the Jewish organisation was a product of the general national awakening that the Habsburg Emperor had presided over at the end of the 19th Century and the Jewish intelligentsias’ aspiration to develop the Jewish national identity in this respect. In Bucovina the Zionist movement did not include organisations devoted to settlement and emigration to Israel like in Eastern Europe, rather the Student Union was devoted to the Jewish honour and to keeping the Jewish nationalistic head held high, for example in Vienna. The following is a list of the six main Student Unions that were still in existence in the period between the two world wars, under Romanian rule: “Chushmoniah”, “The Siren”, Faith”, “Massada”, “Chevronia”, “Yiddisha Koltor”. In the wake of the Student Unions, Zionist Unions were organised in Tchernovitz and in all the provincial towns.
 The Jewish leadership in Bucovina had a large amount of political experience and it is no surprise that the Zionist organisations also gave political activities the most prominent position in their agendas. The Bucovina leadership achieved prestige and recognition in the International Zionist arena. The Zionist Organisations of Bucovina constituted a separate voting constituency for the Zionist Congress and was not subject to the Zionist leadership in Bucharest. Only in 1937 when anti-Semitic pressure was growing in all parts of Romania was a “Supreme Committee of Zionists” set up for every region. In the Zionist movement the senior position was taken by general Zionists, but in Bucovina all the main streams of the movement were active: Zionist-Workers and Mapai, Mizrachi, and Revisionists. The results of the elections to the 20th Zionist Congress in Zurich in 1937, before the outbreak of the Second World War, were as follows: General Zionists – 2 delegates, The Working land of Israel – 1 delegate, Mizrachi – 1 delegate, the Jewish State Party – no delegates. In the second half of the 1930’s Bucovina became the bastion of the Zionist Revisionists. Jewish Youth groups were first organised after the First World War and the main ones in the area were: Beitar, the general-Jewish-youth, the Young Guard, Bnei Akiva, Gordonia and these groups attracted mainly the middle class. The Jewish youth groups in Bucovina excelled in scouting, sport, nature walks, and the studying of the Hebrew language and held many ideological debates. There was no association in Israel set up specifically for immigrants from this region but the emigration to Israel of Bucovina Jews, both pioneers and the middle class, was continuous. The Kibbutz movement in Israel benefited greatly from this immigration of people of good social standing and high intellectual level and Bucovina Jews helped lay the foundations of the national industry.

Other Socio-Ideological Groups
 All the Socio-Ideological groups of the Jewish communities of Europe of the 19th Century could be found in Bucovina.
 The “Bond”, the Jewish Socialist Workers Party founded in Vienna in 1897, was not independently organised in Bucovina but participated in the Austrian Socialist Party and Jews were in fact among its most prominent leaders. Under the Romanians between the wars however, the Jewish Socialists parted ways with the general Socialist Party and formed their own Party that was weakly linked to the international “Bond” and very different from it. During the 1930s this Party steadily lost its place in the Jewish community. The rise of the Nazis and the spread of their influence in Europe on one hand and the reduction in the number of permits being issued to settle in Israel on the other seems to have encouraged the unlikely spread of communist doctrine amongst elite students and especially high school youth groups. From 1931 to 1935 tens of young activists were arrested, brutally tortured and sentenced to long prison terms.
 Between the wars some of the Ultra-Orthodox groups were organized into an “Israel Union” but they never had any fanatical or extreme tendencies in the religious or even socio-political spheres. The Vichnitz and Sedgora-Boian Chassidim even encouraged emigration to Israel and they cooperated with the national Jewish leadership in many social areas.

The Tchernovitz Metropolis as a Jewish Town
 At the end of the Austro-Habsburg period a third of Bucovina Jews lived in Tchernovitz and between the wars this grew to almost a half. During this period, which was under Hungarian rule, the proportion of Jews in the city rose from 32% to 38%.
 Tchernovitz, on the southern bank of Proot, was just a large village when the Austro-Habsburg Army entered it in1774. There wasn’t even a stone building in which the officers or equipment could be housed. The Austrians turned it into the regions capital and modeled it on the squares, avenues, gardens and public buildings of Vienna, (they called it “Little Vienna”). The University of Tchernovitz, opened in 1875 to mark 100 years of Habsburg rule, was intended to emphasise the cultural character of the region and its position as the bastion of German culture in the Slavic sphere. In this way Tchernovitz became an effervescent metropolis of German cultural activities with its rich, mainly German, newspapers, literary and artistic creativity and at its focus, the University. The residents lived an easy Habsburg life of coffee shops, evening dances, walking tours and sport, but at the same time Tchernovitz was also home to extensive cultural activities and creativity. The poet Pavel Chilen wrote of the town of his birth, “It was the meeting place of people with books”. Tchernovitz became the symbol of “The Perfect Region” in Bucovina. In the Jewish community also, even though the provincial Jews had a different way of life from the Tchernovitz Jews, this latter group was the leading and representative community of Jewish Bucovina, especially in the political and cultural fields.
 The Jewish quarter in the north and its population constituted the oldest part of the city and this community, that numbered only 104 families at the beginning of Habsburg rule, first became organised in 1789. The first head Rabbi, Rabbi Chaim Tirar, better known as the “Tchernovitzer”, held the position for 18 years from 1789-1809. Based in the Chassidic Ultra-Orthodox community he fought a stubborn battle against the permeation of general education into the Jewish community and of the integration of Jewish children into German state schools, as the Austrian government demanded according to the instructions of Emperor Josef II. A new head Rabbi had not been chosen by 1833. From 1849-1872 the community was lead by Orthodox but educated businessmen and Rabbis. In 1872 500 families, led by Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Benyamin Weiss, broke away from the wider Jewish community of Tchernovitz and asked to be recognised as a separate community, as had been done in Hungary. After three years, with the intervention of the Austrian government, this separation was revoked and the new community became once again part of the whole. As a compromise it was decided that the Head Rabbi would be an Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi that also had a general education, and the Father of the Rabbinical Court would be Ultra-Orthodox and responsible for the slaughter of animals, the dietary laws of kashrut and Talmud doctrine. The Head Rabbi thereafter preached from the magnificent  “Temple” built in 1877 and the Father of the Rabbinic Court preached from the large synagogue in the Jewish quarter built in 1796. Tchernovitz was fortunate in having a succession of prominently learned Head Rabbis: Dr. Eliahu Eliezer Igel (1853-1893), Dr. Yosef Rozenfeld (1893- 1923), and lastly the Rabbi Dr. Avraham Yaacov Mark (1926-1941), that died a holy death at the hands of the Romanian Nazis. The Fathers of the Rabbinic Court were also highly learned men who did not lean towards religious isolationism: Rabbis Benyamin Weis (died in 1912), Ben Zion Katz and Mashoolam Rut.
 The Austrian government respected this autonomy of the Jewish communities as had been promised in the regulations of 1890, regulations which had defined Jewish communities as institutions whose main purpose was to provide for the carrying out of religious rituals. This can be seen further in the official name of Kulus-Germainde which means “Religious Ritual Community”. Until the end of the 19th Century the Tchernovitz leadership was in the hands of a few plutocratic-oligarchic families. The election of Dr. Beno Straucher in 1895 to the community council with the support of the lower social layers of society was a kind of revolution in the public life of the Tchernovitz community and this was crowned in 1905 when Straucher was elected chairman. For thirty years he was a central figure in the Jewish community of Tchernovitz and in Jewish Bucovina as a whole. Beginning in 1907, he was opposed by Zionist movements under the leadership of Prof. Leon Kelner and the young Zionist leader Dr. Meir Avner. Although Beno Straucher was a member of a Zionist organisation he shied away from a principally ideological approach and preferred to work on Jewish problems in a pragmatic-lobbyist way. He became a kind of “King” of the street, a member of the family in the coffee houses and wine cellars. Straucher founded a Jewish party that demanded almost blind obedience and faith for its leaders. Up until the outbreak of World War I he held the main representative positions of the Jews in Bucovina: Member of the Imperial Parliament, Chairman of the Community Committee and was a part of the town leadership. Between the wars, under Romanian rule, his position began to be undermined. He joined the Romanian National-Liberal Party in spite of its anti-Semitic character, and with its help was elected in 1922 to the Romanian Parliament and in 1926 was returned for another term as head of the Jewish community. However he was fiercely attacked in Taona (Die Osstjudische Zeitung), the Eastern Jewish Newspaper edited by Meir Avner and his position weakened. He died in 1940 at an advanced age but by this time he had become embittered and lacked public prestige.
 The Tchernovitz Jewish community organised and developed a rich network of charity, medical and welfare establishments. These included a Jewish hospital with 120 beds (opened at the beginning of the 19th Century), a Jewish orphanage (opened in 1904) and an old age home (opened in 1908). No less than 200 societies for mutual aid and charity served the Jewish community.