A Review of Sovetskiy tsadik. Rasskazy o Rybnitskom rebe: ot Dnestra do Gudzona [The Soviet Tzadik. Tales of the Ribnitzer Rebbe from Dniester to Hudson], comp. by V. A. Dymshits, M. M. Kaspina, ed. by V. A. Dymshits, M. M. Kaspina, A. L. Polyan. Moscow: Kuchkovo pole; Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, 2024, 304 p.

Abstract

This collection of articles describes and analyses the story of the formation of a Jewish spiritual leader’s cult, unique for the Soviet Union. Adherents of Chaim Zanvil Abramowitz (1902–1995), better known as the Ribnitzer Rebbe, effectively established a separate group within Hasidism. Like the majority of Hasidic rebbes, Abramowitz received a “title” associated with the geographical place, where he had received recognition from his followers. In his case, it was the Moldavian town of Ribnitza (also Rîbnița and Rybnitsa). In 1941, Abramowitz, then a little-known rabbi from the Romanian town of Rezina (it became Soviet in 1940), was incarcerated in the Ribnitza ghetto. Following the Soviet liberation of Ribnitza, he settled in the town and took on himself the functions of a rabbi and kosher butcher. Although the local administration officially refused to recognize him as a legitimate clergyman, he did not become an object of persecution. Among traditional Jews, Abramowitz, who led an ascetic life, gained a reputation of a miracle worker rather than simply of a deeply pious person. This reputation also brought to him religious Jews from Transcarpathia. After his emigration from the Soviet Union in 1973, he lived in Israel and the United States. His grave in Monsey, near New York, has become a site of mass pilgrimage. One can only guess, what would have happened if Abramowitz lived in Ribnitza until the end of his life. Had Ribnitza a chance of becoming an analogue of Uman, where tens of thousands of Breslov Hasidim flock each Jewish New Year? The book leaves unanswered the question of what the secret of the Ribnitzer Rebbe’s continued appeal is. Like many monographs written by a group of authors, the chapters differ somewhat in terms of depth of research. In all, however, the book is a considerable addition to existing scholarship on the history of Soviet Jewry.