The Bohush Court: Ruzhin Rebbes in a Moldavian Town

Buhuși, a small town on the Bistrița river west of Bacău, gave its name, Bohush, to one of the Hasidic dynasties of the House of Ruzhin. Here, in the mid-19th century, Rabbi Yitzchak Friedman, a grandson of Rabbi Yisrael of Ruzhin, set up a court that drew Hasidim from all over Moldavia and Bessarabia. No Jews live in the town today, but the Rebbe’s synagogue still stands, and Bohush Hasidim from Bnei Brak return to pray there and at the graves of their rebbes.

A new town on a boyar’s land

Buhuși is named after the boyar Toader Buhuș, who owned the land in the early 19th century and obtained the charter founding the town. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, Jews settled here around 1823, when the landowner turned the village into a market town. In 1831 there were only 82 Jews. Major growth came with the arrival of the Rebbe: 537 Jews in 1859 and 1,728 in 1899.

The Ruzhiner’s grandson

Rabbi Yisrael Friedman of Ruzhin, one of the great Hasidic leaders of the 19th century, set up his court at Sadagora in Bukovina, and his descendants founded courts of their own: Boyan, Chortkov, Husiatyn, Shtefanesht and Bohush. Rabbi Yitzchak Friedman, eldest son of Rabbi Shalom Yosef and grandson of the Ruzhiner, was born in 1835 according to the Encyclopaedia Judaica (1834 according to other sources). According to the local press in Buhuși, he founded the court in 1858, on the street now called Alexandru Ioan Cuza. According to the Encyclopaedia, many of his followers were Jews from Bessarabia and Moldavia, and Buhuși became an important Hasidic centre in Moldavia.

The court covered, according to a local newspaper, about 5,400 square metres and included the synagogue, a study house for students and a mikveh. A yeshiva operated beside it from 1908 to 1916. The court’s influence reached well beyond the town: according to the Encyclopaedia, religious circles backed by the Rebbe of Buhuși brought about the closure of the Jewish school in Târgu Neamț in 1893. Rabbi Yitzchak died in 1896, on 10 Elul 5656 according to yahrzeit calendars, and was buried in Buhuși.

The dynasty

Rabbi Yitzchak was succeeded by his son, Rabbi Yisrael Shalom Yosef (1855–1923). After him, according to Mishpacha magazine, two of his sons-in-law led the Hasidim: Rabbi Menachem Mendel Friedman and Rabbi David Twersky. Rabbi Menachem Mendel, known throughout Romania as a wonder-worker, died in 1943. Having no sons, he asked his nephew, Rabbi Yitzchak Friedman, son of the Shpikover Rebbe, to succeed him. A grandson of Rabbi Menachem Mendel, Rabbi Yisrael Friedman, later the Pashkaner Rebbe, was born in Buhuși in 1923.

The Rebbe’s synagogue

The surviving synagogue is the heart of the old court. Sources differ on its date: the local press dates it to 1858, the 2010 report of the US Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad to 1859, and the list of synagogues compiled by the engineer Aryeh Kara, quoted on the Jewish Romania website, says that the synagogue built when the court was founded burned in 1863 and was rebuilt with two hundred seats. The same list also mentions an old prayer house and a 1927 synagogue of the Rebbe Friedman.

According to Ruth Ellen Gruber’s 1992 guide, as quoted in the JewishGen cemetery survey, the synagogue was vandalised in the 1980s. In 2007, according to the local website Buhusi.NET, descendants of the House of Ruzhin restored it; another local site says the work was funded by an organisation of the Hasidim in Israel. The present compound covers about 1,516 square metres.

The town, the mill and the war

In 1930 Buhuși had 1,972 Jews, 22.6 per cent of the population, mostly craftsmen and merchants. Today’s 1 Mai Street was known as the “Jewish street”, lined with their shops. The town became known for its textile mill, founded in 1885 by Colonel Eugen Alcaz, taken over in 1891 by the Wolff firm and turned into a joint-stock company in 1895. According to the local website Buhusi.NET, Jews held important positions at the mill.

In 1940, 20 community leaders were taken hostage. In June 1941 a plan to send men aged 16 to 60 to the Târgu Jiu camp was drawn up but not carried out. Jews from surrounding villages and from Târgu Neamț were forcibly moved to Buhuși, and the local community supported them. After the war the number of Jews rose to about 8,000, but most emigrated. By 1969 some fifty families and one synagogue remained. In 2013 the death of the town’s last Jewish resident was reported.

From Buhuși to Bnei Brak

Rabbi Yitzchak Friedman, Rebbe of Bohush in the post-Holocaust generation (1903–1992), moved to the Land of Israel and re-established the court in Tel Aviv, from where the Hasidim moved to Bnei Brak. He died there in 1992. According to a 2014 local report, the Hasidim maintain a synagogue, a yeshiva and charitable institutions in Bnei Brak. The present Rebbe, Rabbi Yaakov Mendel Friedman, is his grandson. In late October 2014, on the Ruzhiner’s yahrzeit, about a hundred Hasidim from Israel, Belgium, Switzerland and England came to Buhuși with the Rebbe. They prayed in the synagogue and visited the graves of the five rebbes in the cemetery.

Visiting

The synagogue stands on Strada Alexandru Ioan Cuza, at no. 85 according to the 2010 US report. It is not used for regular prayer, and no opening hours have been published. There is no community in Buhuși today, so visits should be arranged in advance with the Jewish Community of Bacău (Strada Erou C.M. Hasan 2A, tel. +40 234 534 714, per the Federation’s website).

• The Rebbe’s synagogue, the heart of the old court
• The cemetery in the Mocani area, with the chambers where the rebbes and their wives are buried — by arrangement
• 1 Mai Street, the former “Jewish street”
• On the way: Bacău and its synagogues, Piatra Neamț and Târgu Neamț