The Ștefănești Court: “the Angel” of the House of Ruzhin and the Ohel in the Cemetery

Ștefănești, a small town in the Prut valley in eastern Botoșani county, was in the 19th century a town about three quarters Jewish and, for more than sixty years, the seat of one of the best-known Hasidic courts in Romania: the Ștefănești (Shtefanesht) court of the House of Ruzhin. The last Rebbe, Rabbi Avraham Mattityahu Friedman, died childless in 1933, and his remains were later reburied in Israel; yet the empty ohel in the town’s cemetery still draws worshippers and their prayer notes.

A border town on the trade road

According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, the first Jews settled in Ștefănești at the beginning of the 17th century. The Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania (INSHR) describes a medieval market town on a branch of the trade route between the Ottoman Empire and Poland, and notes that as early as 1640 Jews left it for Botoșani for fear of invading Ukrainian armies. In the 18th century the boyars attracted Jewish settlers with tax concessions, and the community was organised as a guild. The guild census of 1801 recorded 71 families with shops, 49 without and 11 leaseholders, and the whole community, including the poor, is estimated at about 1,300 people.

In 1812 Bessarabia was annexed by Russia, and Ștefănești, near the Prut, became a border town. According to the Judaica it grew as a result, and in 1814 the ruler of Moldavia allowed more Jews to settle there; in 1838 there were 628 Jews. The peak came in 1886: 3,886 Jews, 76.5 per cent of the population. According to the Judaica, when the municipality bought land in 1883 to sell to residents, the Romanian parliament barred Jews from acquiring property. The first synagogue, per the Judaica, was built at the beginning of the 18th century and rebuilt in 1854, the year the mikveh was also built; according to the Institute, a first synagogue already stood at the time of the 17th-century settlement. The town had eight organised congregations, two of them of tailors, and a primary school.

The son of the Ruzhiner

Rabbi Israel Friedman of Ruzhin, one of the great Hasidic leaders of the 19th century, who had set up his court at Sadagora in Bukovina, died in 1850, and his sons founded courts of their own: Sadagora, Chortkov, Husiatyn, Boyan — and Ștefănești. According to the Judaica, his third son, Rabbi Menahem Nahum (1827–1869), headed the dynasty based in Ștefănești. His only son, Rabbi Avraham Mattityahu, was born in Sadagora — in 1848 according to the Judaica, in 1847 according to other sources — and, according to the Romanian press, took over the leadership at 21, after his father’s death, holding it for 64 years.

In his time Ștefănești became a byword. The Judaica describes a court known throughout Romanian Jewry, and in neighbouring Darabani many Jews, according to the same source, were Hasidim of the Rebbe of Ștefănești. According to the local press, three synagogues stood in the courtyard of his house, and he was known in Yiddish as “der Malekh” — the Angel. Christians too, write Romanian journalists, came to seek his blessing. Rabbi Avraham Mattityahu died on 21 Tammuz 5693 (1933) without children, and with his death, writes the Judaica, the Ștefănești dynasty came to an end.

The ohel in the cemetery

Rabbi Avraham Mattityahu was buried in a small ohel in the Jewish cemetery on the hillside at the edge of town. According to Adevărul (2015), some thirty-six years after his death his remains were exhumed and taken for burial in Israel — in 1968, according to other sources, in the Ruzhin plot of the Nahalat Yitzhak cemetery. His hillula is held there every year on 21 Tammuz, and according to a 2022 report on the JDN website it draws tens of thousands.

The ohel in Ștefănești has not been forgotten. According to Adevărul and Botoșăneanul, hundreds of Hasidim, mostly from Ukraine, Israel and the United States, come to the cemetery every year — at the end of November, according to the press — and leave notes with names and requests; the interior of the ohel can be seen through glass. The Romanian press calls it “the most important Hasidic pilgrimage site in Europe” — a journalistic description, not a scholarly one. According to the cemetery survey published on JewishGen, the cemetery holds between 500 and 5,000 gravestones of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Torah ark in the Bucharest museum

On the second floor of the Museum of the History of the Jews in Romania in Bucharest stands a restored Torah ark whose origin is disputed on the museum’s own website. The English text attributes it to the synagogue in Hârlău, the Romanian text to the synagogue of the Ștefănești Rebbe’s Hasidim in Iași (“Shtefaneshter Reb”). In other words, even according to the Romanian text the ark did not come from the town of Ștefănești itself, but from its Hasidim’s house of prayer in the Moldavian capital. We know of no synagogue still standing in Ștefănești.

Rabbis, Zionists and craftsmen

Alongside the Hasidic court the town had a communal rabbinate. According to the Institute, the community was led until 1905 by Rabbi Bezalel Ze’ev Safran, who then moved to Bacău and served there until his death in 1930; his son, Alexandru Safran, later became Chief Rabbi of Romania. According to the Institute, Ștefănești was also a Zionist centre: the Maccabi youth movement was founded there in 1923, and Hashomer Hatzair and Gordonia were active. In the 1930s there were ten synagogues, a heder, a yeshiva and a Jewish-Romanian school. Jewish merchants exported cattle, grain and hides.

After the First World War, when Bessarabia returned to Romania, Ștefănești lost its status as a border town and its commercial importance declined. In 1910 there were 2,883 Jews according to the Institute, and in 1930, 2,361. Their share of the population that year is disputed: 26.5 per cent according to the Judaica, 16 per cent according to the Institute.

The Second World War

Ștefănești belonged to Botoșani county — not to neighbouring Dorohoi county, which had been attached to Bukovina in 1938 and whose Jews were deported to Transnistria. According to the Institute, in 1938 Jews were required to prove their citizenship, and in 1940, after the cession of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, retreating soldiers harassed the town’s Jews. In June 1941, with the outbreak of war against the Soviet Union, the roughly 750 Jewish families were removed to Sulița and from there moved on to Botoșani. According to the Judaica, the Jews of Ștefănești were deported to Botoșani and from there sent to forced labour. A report quoted in the Pinkas HaKehillot counts 1,547 expellees from Ștefănești in Botoșani in November 1941, out of some 11,000 Jews from the surrounding towns and villages crowded into the city.

According to the Institute, about 300 survivors returned to the town in 1945. In 1947 there were 870 Jews in Ștefănești, including refugee families, and in 1950, 600. With emigration, mainly to Israel, about 12 families remained in 1969.

Visiting

• The cemetery and the ohel — on the edge of town. No visiting hours are published, and we found no address confirmed by a current official source.
• Arranging a visit — there is no community in Ștefănești. The nearest is the Jewish Community of Botoșani, per the Federation’s website: Strada 1 Decembrie 54, tel. +40 742 267 384.
• The Torah ark — at the Museum of the History of the Jews in Romania in Bucharest (Strada Mămulari 3).

The visit combines well with the Great Synagogue of Botoșani, and with Dorohoi and Darabani in the north of the county.