JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

In the 18th century the Jewish population increased; there
were 218 Jews out of a total population of around 6,000. Ragusan
archives mention Jewish schools, teachers, weddings,
and a Jewish bookseller; Jews participated in maritime ventures
as co-owners of ships that went as far as Scandinavia and
America, or supplying loans for equipment of such ships; they
also played a part in establishing the first maritime insurance
companies. With the economic decline of Dubrovnik, however,
restrictions were imposed on all foreigners. Jews could
not engage in commerce and could only be teachers, physicians,
or help in commerce, and some were tax farmers. In
1755 they were again forbidden to live outside the ghetto or to
leave it at night. Although it had supported the French against
the Russians, Dubrovnik was annexed in 1808 to the French
vice kingdom of Illyria, which abolished all Jewish disabilities.
When Dubrovnik passed to Austria in 1815, laws applied to
Jews in Austria became valid in Dubrovnik too; e.g., Jews had
to obtain permission from Vienna to get married. Full emancipation
was granted only in 1873. When after World War I Dubrovnik
became part of Yugoslavia, the Jewish population had
decreased. There were 308 Jews in 1815, and 250 in 1939.
Holocaust and Contemporary Periods
Dubrovnik was occupied by the Italian army in April 1941; administratively
however it belonged to the Independent Croatian
State of the Croat quisling Pavelić, whose ustashi were
allowed to persecute Jews. Jewish property was confiscated or
put under “caretakers,” and a few Jews were sent to concentration
camps in Croatia. The Italians, however, did not allow
mass deportations, so that many refugees from other parts
of Yugoslavia went to Dubrovnik. At the bidding of the Germans,
in November 1942, the Italians interned all Jews (750) in
Gruž and on the island of Lopud, near Dubrovnik. There they
remained until June 1943, when they were transferred to the
big Italian internment camp on Rab in northern Dalmatia, together
with most Jews from the Italian-occupied territories in
Yugoslavia. During the brief interregnum in 1943 between the
capitulation of Italy and the German occupation, most of them
were transported by the partisans to the liberated territory on
the mainland. Some joined the Jewish battalion formed on
Rab, and others served as physicians or nurses. The 180–200
Jews who could not leave Rab were taken by the Germans
to extermination camps. After World War II, 28 Jews immigrated
to Israel. The Jewish community in Dubrovnik had 31
members in 1969. The rabbi of Dubrovnik served as the chief
rabbi for the regions of southern Dalmatia, Herzegovina, and
Montenegro. Services in the old synagogue were held irregularly.
During the Yugoslav War of Secession of 1991/2 the synagogue
suffered slight damage from artillery shells and its roof
had to be repaired. Ceremonial objects from this synagogue,
built c. 1510, were loaned to New York’s Yeshiva University
in 1964 and returned only in 1988 following a court order. A
small community is now affiliated to the Coordination Committee
of Croatian Jewish Communities, headed by Zagreb.
It maintains a museum showing the synagogue artifacts and
dubrovno
other items belonging to the past. The well-preserved cemetery
contains 200 old gravestones, including that of Rabbi
Jacob Pardo, who died there in 1819.
Bibliography: J. Tadić, Jevreji u Dubrovniku do polovine
XVII. stoljeća (1937); C. Roth, The House of Nasi: Dona Gracia (1948),
85–86; M. Levi, in: Recueil jubilaire en l’honneur de S.A. Rosanes
(1933), 47–53 (Sp.); Hananel-Eškenazil, 1 (1958), 39, 110, 199, 335; 2
(1960), 264; J. Subak, Judenspanisches aus Salonikki… Ragusa (1906);
Aaron b. David ha-Kohen, Il Processo di Isach Jeshurun, ed. by I.A.
Kaznačić (1882). Add. Bibliography: Zbornik, 1 (1971), Dubrovnik
issue; B. Stulli, Zidovi u Dubrovniku (1989).
[Daniel Furman / Zvi Loker (2nd ed.)]
DUBROVNO, city in the Vitebsk district, Belarus. Jews are
first mentioned there in 1685. There were 801 Jewish taxpayers
in Dubrovno and its environs in 1766. During the 18th century
Dubrovno became a center for weaving prayer shawls
in Eastern Europe. Conditions were difficult for the weavers,
who worked on handlooms, and were harshly exploited by the
merchants who supplied them with the yarn and afterward
bought their products and marketed them through agents in
Jewish settlements throughout Russia and Galicia, and even
exported them to Western Europe and America. From the
mid-19th century the industry, which had about 660 workers
in 1847, encountered competition from the factories in
the big cities where prayer shawls were woven by machine,
and Jews began to leave the town. The plight of the weavers
in Dubrovno aroused the attention of the Jewish community
in Russia. In 1902, the Aktsionernoye Obshchestvo Dneprovskoy
Manufaktury (Dnieper Textile Industry Ltd.) was founded
with the help of the *Jewish Colonization Association (ICA),
which held two-thirds of the shares, the rest being subscribed
by wealthy Jews in St. Petersburg and Moscow. A large weaving
factory, whose directors, staff, and workers were Jews and
where Saturday was kept as the day of rest, was established.
Near the factory, a public school and a cooperative store were
opened. Dubrovno was also a center for scribes of Torah
scrolls, phylacteries and mezuzot, who received permission to
form a professional union in the early period of Soviet rule.
A trainload of 30,000 phylacteries which had accumulated
in Dubrovno after the war was permitted to be dispatched to
Berlin. The manufacture of prayer shawls ceased in the 1920s.
Around 1930, the weaving factory employed about 1,000 workers,
of whom a considerable number were Jews. The community
numbered 4,481 in 1847, 4,364 in 1897 (57.5% of the total
population), 3,105 in 1926 (about 39%), and 2,119 (21%) in 1939.
Dubrovno was the birthplace of the Zionist leader M. *Ussishkin
and the brothers *Polyakoff. The Germans occupied the
town on July 16, 1941. Soon the Jews were collected in a ghetto.
In December 1941 the Germans murdered 1,500 Jews. The remaining
300 skilled workers and their families were executed
with the help of Belorussian police in February 1942.
Bibliography: Lurie, in: Voskhod, 9 (1889), 1–8; 10 (1890),
1–16; Zeitlin, in: He-Avar, 6 (1958), 70–72.
[Yehuda Slutsky / Shmuel Spector (2nd ed.)]
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6 39