The Shochet Volume 2
- "You have to read this book...
It's not like anything you read before."
- Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman, Tablet
- 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 slaugh-
terer) 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, migra-
tion, war, technology, modernity and secularization. In chronicling his own life,
Goldenshteyn inadvertently tells a bigger story - the story of how a small, op-
pressed 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 Otto-
man Turks and the advancing British forces.
- Informed by research in Ukrainian, Israeli and American archives and per-
sonal interviews with the few surviving individuals who knew Goldenshteyn
personally, The Shochet is a magnificent new contribution to Jewish and East-
ern European history.
- Michoel Rotenfeld is a historical researcher who has long
been fascinated by Jewish memory in its myriad forms, espe-
cially the genre of Jewish autobiography. He is the director
of Touro University Library's Project Zikaron, a permanent
collection of previously uncollated and undigitized histor-
ical material from Jewish communities across the world.
He also coordinated the digitization of David Tidhar's
nineteen-volume Encyclopedia of the Founders and Builders
of Israel (www.tidhar.tourolib.org), which has received over
three million page views.
| Book Attributes | |
| Format | Softcover |
| Language | English |
| Weight | 1.7 LBS |
| Year Published | 2025 |
| Dimensions | 6"X9" |
$39.95
$32.00
- Model: TSVT-1
- Weight: 1.70lb