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.The struc-ture of philanthropy could not but reflect this deficit.The Pogrom Aid CommitteesThere was one kind of charity that could never be proactive in its ap-proach, and this was the aid organized by the Jewish community after eachof Kiev s pogroms in 1881 and 1905.What these committees needed morethan anything was resourcefulness and efficiency, and for the most partthey were very successful in providing both immediate relief in the days andweeks after the pogroms as well as longer-term assistance to those whosehomes and businesses had suffered damage.In the half-year after the 1881pogrom, the Kiev Jewish Society for Assistance to the Victims of the 1881Disorders in the South of Russia had raised almost 220,000 rubles, of which38 percent was a donation from Baron Gintsburg of St.Petersburg, 33 percentcame from abroad, and 29 percent from throughout the Russian Empire.ByOctober 1, 1881, the committee had already distributed more than 150,000rubles worth of assistance about two-thirds of it to Kiev Jews and the bal-ance to other cities and towns throughout the southwest.This heroic sumwas nonetheless a drop in the bucket compared with the 2.5 million rublesin losses that the society estimated Jews had suffered in the pogroms.145 Theestimate given by Count P.I.Kutaisov in his official investigation came upwith a lower figure: 1,474,168 rubles in damages, of which the largest twocategories were individuals with losses of under 100 rubles and between 100and 500 rubles (561 individuals out of a total of 889).(That there were alsoa substantial number of wealthy Jews in Kiev was confirmed by the seventyindividuals who claimed losses of between 5,000 and 40,000 rubles.)146In the days immediately following the pogrom, the society organizedemergency tents and hot food for thousands of Jewish refugees.After twoweeks, as the refugees began to return to their homes or find interim hous-ing, the tents were taken down and distribution points for food and money(5 kopecks per person) set up at several points around the city.The societythen divided the city up into districts for the purposes of applications for aid,which were reviewed by commissions of trustworthy local residents and as-signed an amount to be awarded based on losses.This plan was clearly basedon the district guardianship model, based on new theories of welfare andphilanthropy, which would be adopted in many cities throughout the em-pire in the 1880s and 1890s.In addition to small one-time grants to families, 246 JEWISH METROPOLISthe committee also made substantial loans (of 500 1,500 rubles) available tomerchants to enable them to rebuild their businesses.147The Kiev Society had originally been intended to provide aid exclusivelyto Kiev Jews, but soon found itself assisting Jews from throughout the south-west region.This was testament not only to the extent of the destructionwreaked by the pogromshchiki and the shock it left in its wake many Jew-ish communities were simply unable to organize themselves to provide ef-fective aid but also to the effectiveness of the existing organizational struc-tures within Kiev Jewry and the competence of its leadership.Certainly thelocal authorities could not be relied upon to assist the pogrom victims, just asthey had failed in protecting them from the pogromshchiki; the city coun-cil refused to release 15,000 rubles from the korobka funds for pogrom aid,and then only after being asked by the Jewish community did council-ors vote to make a 3,000-ruble grant from the municipal coffers, not a par-ticularly large sum.Several years later, Mordecai ben Hillel Ha-Cohen published a review ofthe Kiev Society s activities in Ha-melits, praising it for its efficiency, honesty,impartiality, and lack of bureaucracy.Whereas the notables in St.Petersburghad not lived up to expectations in raising funds for aid to pogrom victims orcoordinating an effective policy vis-à-vis the government, wrote Ha-Cohen,the Kiev Society had triumphed on both counts, sending its own represen-tatives to the capital to meet with Minister of Interior Ignat ev and work-ing with the press to put a stop to harmful rumors.148 The Society s successcan be attributed at least in part to its chair, Max Mandel shtam, who, asJonathan Frankel notes, emerged in the crisis of 1881 82 as a highly articu-late spokesman and effective organizer. 149By contrast, the activities of the Kiev Committee for Provision of Aidto the Victims of the Pogroms of 18 21 October 1905 were received some-what less favorably, at least by some.Of course, the scale of destruction herewas much greater than that of the 1881 pogrom two months after the po-grom, total losses were estimated at 7,000,000 rubles and thus the taskmuch more difficult.150 But there was another important difference: as thecommittee s report testifies, Kiev Jewry was now divided up into many moregroupings and constituencies, each of which had its own demands.This wasa factor of the community s size, of course, but also of the many associationsand societies that had sprung up in the previous decade or so, as well as ofthe politicization and factionalization of Russian Jewry overall.Thus, forexample, representatives from the Subsidized Kosher Cafeterias, the Jew- VARIETIES OF JEWISH PHILANTHROPY 247ish Day Shelter for Children, the Sanitorium in Boiarki, the Artisans Asso-ciation, and the Committee for Aid to the Working Class all requested fundsfrom the committee, and a newly organized but as yet officially unregis-tered association of brokers (maklery).151 At one meeting, a man by the nameof I.L.Raikhlin appealed for aid to the spiritual rabbis of Kiev (the commit-tee rejected the request, but then granted it when it was brought again at thenext meeting); at another meeting, I.B.Esman asked for assistance to fouranonymous tsaddikim [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]