In Skala:
The door opened, and a clean-shaven man walked in and extended his hand to me. He looked familiar, and before I could recall who he was, he introduced himself. Back in my time—before I emigrated to America—he had been a student in Chernivtsi, studying to become a builder at the Chernivtsi College.
Now, he told me, he is the head of the Jewish community in the shtetl—the kultus president.
As he spoke, I studied his clothes. He was dressed in a modern style, but his garments were clearly worn. His short jacket was patched in several places.
I asked him how he earned a living. He explained that he had three sources of income: he served as the head of the community, he was officially the builder of the shtetl—though no one builds anything here anymore—and he also worked as a clerk, recording births. But in terms of actual income, he admitted, he had none. Still, he added, there are even poorer people here than he, so he couldn’t complain.
He told me he wanted to show me the institutions in the shtetl that had been founded with charitable funds from America. It was clear he meant to signal that those institutions now needed further support—and that a substantial donation from me was expected. However, he emphasized that he personally could not accept any donation on their behalf. That, he said, was the responsibility of a special committee. His duty was simply to remind me.
I explained that my deputy in charge of distributing charitable funds was now a former banker.
“You’ve chosen a wonderful person,” he replied. “He’s non-partisan and honest. Whatever he tells you will be right. You can absolutely rely on him.”
Then the head of the community gave me an overview of the shtetl. He said that there are now 400 families living here—down from 1,200.
“Where did the other 800 go?” I asked.
“Many left the shtetl,” he answered. “But most are in the cemetery.”
He went on: “The difference between births and deaths is vast. When you see the conditions people live in, you’ll understand why. The population has shrunk, and even fewer houses remain. Nothing new is being built, and the old ones are collapsing. And just think of the food the children get today. The swamp has spread epidemics. The shtetl is dying out. And this is not the only shtetl in Galicia—other towns are dying, too. They’re dying of hunger, of disease. The ones who survive are incredibly strong, or somehow resistant to illness.”
After telling me about these grim realities, he took me to see the town’s bathhouse. In my view, it didn’t look big enough for ten people to bathe at once. There were a couple of benches and a small mikvah. If there are no other baths in the entire shtetl, and everyone bathes here, it’s hard to imagine how it’s even possible. Still, I recalled that the bathhouse wasn’t large in my day either—though now, at least, it was more modern in construction.
Next, he brought me to the people’s house—Beit Am, as it’s called here. This building, too, was built with American funds. It serves as a venue for town meetings and weddings. When I visited, the hall was in poor condition, and I was told it needed repairs—repairs for which there were no funds.
Then I saw a few rooms where the Jewish school was located. I arrived during class time. I was told that there were no more hederim in the city.
The Jewish school was a real surprise to me. I saw children, bareheaded, learning Hebrew in a modern fashion. The teacher asked questions in Hebrew about Jewish history, and the students all responded in Hebrew, demonstrating both their command of the language and their knowledge of history.
In my time, no one knew Hebrew—or Jewish history—despite studying day and night. The melamed who taught us was the town’s most ignorant and malicious figure. The crueler the melamed, the better a teacher he was considered. If someone wanted to praise a melamed, they’d say:
“Boy, can he beat!”
We children studied with disgust, with hatred toward the melamed and the heder. What could we possibly learn in that kind of environment? But here, I saw children studying with enthusiasm, and they truly understood what they were being taught. It was just heartbreaking to see the children’s clothes—many were dressed in rags. Pale faces, bloodless. It was obvious they weren’t getting enough to eat.
And what a contrast between the modern teachers and the old melameds! These teachers are secular, educated people—some had even studied at universities. But they, too, looked pale and poor.
“They don’t get paid for teaching,” the head of the community told me in confidence.
I reminded him of the students in my youth who studied 18 hours a day and still learned nothing.
“They were always studying—that’s exactly why they didn’t have time to know anything,” the head of the community replied.
He went on to explain that children today are learning Hebrew not because it’s a sacred language, nor out of religious obligation, but simply as a useful, living language. All of them are waiting to go to Palestine.
At that moment, one of the teachers joined the conversation and said:
“These children will definitely be in Palestine. Even though there are problems now because of the Arabs, those won’t last. Palestine needs these Jews—without them, it would be a desert. And they need Palestine. They have no other home!”
The Hebrew teacher is not alone in believing that Galician Jewish children will one day live in Palestine.
The parents who send their children to these Jewish schools believe the same. They want their children to learn the language of the land they are sure will one day become their true home.
This excerpt continues journalist Chone Gottesfeld’s reflections on his hometown of Skala, which he left thirty years earlier when he emigrated to America. After visiting Galicia in 1936, he wrote a travelogue whose impressions were first published in the newspaper Forverts (Forward, official Yiddish title: פֿאָרווערטס) and later released as a separate book. It is clear that one of his implicit aims was to encourage financial support for Galician Jews, which is why he focuses primarily on describing their hardships in detail.
In this passage, the author highlights the main factors behind the town’s decline, particularly demographic changes driven by economic hardship and recurring epidemics. The head of the Jewish community explains that the key reasons the town is “dying” are high infant mortality rates and widespread disease.
Despite the general atmosphere of decay, the author also draws attention to the community’s vibrant cultural and educational efforts. These include a community center that serves as a hub of Jewish life and a modern Jewish private school. By comparing his own traditional education in a kheder with the more progressive approach of the secular school, Gottesfeld underscores a potential path forward for the Jewish community—one that involves nurturing a modern identity among young people. A key component of this emerging identity is a belief in a future migration to Palestine.
This passage places particular emphasis on the role of Palestine in the mental world of Galician Jews. It illustrates how the early Zionist vision of a distant, biblical homeland gradually gives way to a more concrete, secular image of a real state—a vision shared across different segments of the population. Moreover, this evolution reinforces a well-established thesis in historiography: that in the 1930s, the only truly effective form of Jewish mass politics was pro-Palestinian activism, expressed through social, cultural, and educational initiatives.