The Jews of Vaslui: A Jewish Town in Moldavia

Vaslui, about sixty kilometres south of Iași, was in the 19th century one of the most Jewish towns in Moldavia: in 1889 Jews made up 41% of its population. The town had eight synagogues and was the seat of the “Vasluier Rebbe”, of the Ruzhin–Buhuși dynasty. One synagogue building remains, listed by the Federation and no longer in use.

A community of traders and craftsmen

According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica and the Pinkas HaKehillot, the oldest gravestones in the cemetery point to Jewish settlement in the first half of the 18th century, and a certificate of 1769 already mentions Jewish merchants in the town. Most settlers came from Galicia and Bukovina, and from the 1850s they were joined by cantonists who had fled Russia. In 1851 two Jews were raised to the rank of boyar for their services to the town.

The community grew rapidly: 64 Jews in 1803, 892 at the end of the 1830s, 1,202 in 1859 (25.3% of the population) and 2,823 in 1889 — 41% of the town. Part of the growth came from expulsions of Jews from the surrounding villages in 1867, 1889, 1901 and 1908, who then settled in the town. According to the Pinkas, in 1910 the town’s Jews included 345 traders and 228 tailors, as well as shoemakers, tinsmiths and carpenters; the grain trade was central, and the community built a mill and a soap factory. During the epidemic of 1886 a plot was set aside for a new cemetery, and in the peasant revolt of 1907, according to the Pinkas, 87 Jewish families were robbed.

Rabbis and Hasidim

For many years Vaslui had no united community: traders and craftsmen had their own institutions, rabbis and ritual slaughterers, and the ultra-Orthodox “Osey Tov” society maintained a Talmud Torah, a poorhouse and a mikveh. An attempt at unification in 1904 lasted only two years, and unity was achieved, according to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, only in 1923. The community school was founded in 1877.

Among the town’s rabbis the Encyclopaedia Judaica and the Pinkas list Rabbi Alexander Taubes (1841–1913), a native of Iași, and Rabbi Benjamin Rabinovici, author of Imrei Binyamin, who served from 1885; his son, Rabbi Dov Ber Rabinovici, served from 1915 to 1936 and was later a rabbi in Tel Aviv. Vaslui was also home to Rabbi Michael Taubes, father of the famous rabbi of neighbouring Bârlad, Rabbi Isaac Taubes.

According to the Pinkas, in 1909 Rabbi Shalom Halpern, a grandson of the house of Ruzhin, arrived in the town and founded the court of the “Vasluier Rebbe”. His son, Rabbi Haim Halpern, led the Hasidim until 1950 and died in Haifa in 1957. From 1938 to 1949 Rabbi Dr Arie Dov Halpert, a leader of Agudat Israel in Romania, served in the town. On the eve of the Second World War Vaslui had eight synagogues and prayer houses, the Bikur Holim hospital, an old people’s home, a mikveh, a primary school and a kindergarten.

The Second World War

According to the Pinkas, after the Legionaries came to power in September 1940 the community’s leaders were arrested and tortured, and hundreds of Jews were taken at night for forced labour on confiscated estates. The Legionaries seized the Jewish school and forced Jews to move remains from the old cemetery to the new one. Wealthy traders were arrested and forced to hand over their property, and some were sent to the Târgu Jiu camp. Eight young men arrested on charges of communism were moved between towns and tortured until they were freed at the end of 1940 on payment by the Galați community.

On the night of 29 June 1941 — the days of the Iași pogrom, some sixty kilometres to the north — the community’s notables were taken hostage, under threat of execution if a Romanian soldier was harmed. On 1 July 1941 all Jewish men up to the age of 60 were locked in the synagogue; some were sent to forced labour, others were expelled to three estates in the county, and the community had to feed them. In September 1941 the mayor restricted Jews’ access to the market, and a distinguishing badge was imposed. According to the Pinkas, Jews of Bessarabian origin were sent to the camp at Caracal, and some were killed on the way; others were deported to Transnistria. Some six hundred Jews from the surrounding villages and estates were moved into the town, and in 1942 there were 3,824 Jews here. Across the county, 462 buildings, eight mills, land, forests and vineyards were confiscated from Jews.

In February 1944 some three hundred orphans brought back from Transnistria arrived in Vaslui and were housed in the synagogue. As the front approached, the children were moved to Buzău.

After the war and today

In 1947 there were about 3,200 Jews in Vaslui, but emigration to Israel quickly emptied the community: according to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, their number fell to 2,400 in 1950, and by 1960 about seventy families and one synagogue remained. Today Vaslui has no separate community in the Federation’s list of contacts. The Federation’s list of synagogues includes one synagogue in the town, at Strada Gheorghe Lazăr 14, dating from the 19th century and not in use. We found no current source describing the condition of the building.

According to a 2000 survey for JewishGen’s Cemetery Discovery Project, the town’s Jewish cemetery was established in the 19th century, the last burial took place in 1999, and most of its gravestones had fallen or were broken; access was closed.

Visiting

• The synagogue: Strada Gheorghe Lazăr 14, according to the Federation’s list; not in use, and no opening hours have been published.
• Arrangements: Vaslui has no community registered with the Federation; contact the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania or the nearby Bârlad community in advance.
• The cemetery: access only by prior arrangement.
• Nearby: Iași; Bârlad; Huși.