Jacob lost his parents at a young age; his mother Sophie died of typhoid fever in 1875 when he was only nine, and his father Avraham Chaim of cholera in 1882. I had visited the old cemetery, stopping by the burial places of the famous sixteenth-century scholar and legalist Rabbi Moses Isserles, before wandering off the trodden pathways into the grass to try to decipher the Hebrew inscriptions on the worn-down sandstone of the graves of the less illustrious dead. But in fact my great-grandfather’s parents, Rabbi Avraham Chaim Freimann and his wife Sophie were not here. They were buried in the so-called ‘new’ cemetery, which was destroyed by the Nazis who used the gravestones to pave the nearby concentration camp of Plashov. After the war, when an attempt was made to restore them to their proper location, the family tried to find the headstones, but to no avail.
Jacob’s brothers and sisters went to live with their uncle in America, a decision which would later help save the lives of part of the family trapped in Europe. A different existence beckoned to them in the new world. But Jacob preferred to remain within the trusted ambience of an intensely Jewish culture rooted in love and boundless dedication to Torah. He therefore chose to travel to his uncle Rabbi Israel Meir in Ostrowo, under whose direction he would be able to continue his studies.
Before leaving Kraków, Jacob, who was only sixteen when he was orphaned, noted down the inscriptions on his parents’ graves in his beautiful cursive Hebrew script:
My mother:
in the midst of her days died a most honoured lady,
young children seven she left behind;
all who knew and cared for her wept and mourned …
My father:
here lies a most precious man
who walked in the path of the perfect-hearted.
In this manner he carried his parents’ characters and culture with him for the rest of his life.
Jacob had already earned a reputation as a matmid, a scholar devoted day and night to Torah. He took to Ostrowo a letter from some of the most famous teachers of the generation, testifying that he had ‘an understanding heart to attend to and comprehend his studies’.
In his uncle’s house Jacob completed his schooling and pursued his Talmudic education. Here, too, he met his future wife, his first cousin Regina. He would have been drawn to her not only on account of her personality, but because of the rich ambience of Jewish living and learning in which they had both been raised. Reflecting on God’s promise to Adam that he would make him a fitting helpmeet, Jacob noted that ‘whoever considers the upbringing of the woman he wants to marry, the education she received from her parents and the merits of the previous generations of her family, chooses well.’2
By the time he enrolled in the University of Berlin at the age of twenty, he was already in possession of a Hatarat Hora’ah, a diploma recognising him as an authoritative teacher of rabbinic Judaism. Since the middle of the nineteenth century traditional Jewry in the German lands had been influenced decisively by the philosophy of Samson Raphael Hirsch with its slogan of ‘Torah together with the way of the world’, combining unwavering adherence to Jewish law and ritual with full participation in the life and concerns of the culture and society in which one lived. For almost the first time in the long Jewish experience of exile it was possible to be a Yisroelmensch, a faithful Jew and a full citizen of one’s country, equal among others. This outlook became a cornerstone of German-Jewish Orthodoxy. It was partly also a response to the attrition suffered by the traditional community when, with the attainment of increasing civil rights through the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, German cultured society and its professions became accessible to Jews, many of whom aspired to its ways and were assimilated within its ranks. Hirsch’s philosophy was embodied in the educational principles of Ezriel Hildesheimer, in whose name a seminary was established in Berlin for the training of orthodox rabbis. It was here that Jacob Freimann came to study. He also took courses at the university; the German authorities required religious leaders in official positions and thus salaried by the state to possess a university education to doctoral level. Freimann followed courses in literature, oriental studies and philosophy before writing his thesis at the University of Tübingen on a Syriac translation of the Book of Daniel.
On 5 February 1891, equipped with his doctorate and his Semichah, his rabbinic ordination, he married his cousin Regina Freimann in her home town of Ostrowo. Her father had meanwhile died, but her mother, Helene, would live to be a much-loved grandparent. The marriage was close, respectful and happy. In a comment on the verse from Genesis, ‘It is not good for a man to be alone’, Rabbi Jacob noted the Talmud’s observation: ‘If your wife is low and gentle, bend down and seek her counsel in domestic matters.’ Photographs show that Regina was indeed considerably shorter than her husband, and she was certainly gentle in spirit. By ‘domestic matters’ a patronising confinement of the woman’s role to the kitchen was not meant, but rather the spirit and values of the home and what it represented, the heart and kernel of the Freimann couple’s life. One sensed that they were rarely, if ever, geographically, intellectually or spiritually apart.
After a brief period in Kanitz they settled in Holleschau with their two small daughters, Sophie, their eldest child, and Ella, who would become my grandmother. Soon after their arrival, on 3 September 1893 a new synagogue was dedicated. I was proudly shown the list of dignitaries in attendance; Rabbi Freimann’s signature appeared in the middle and it was he who conducted the opening ceremony. Sadly, the building was not destined to reach its half-century; it was burnt down by the Germans in 1941.
Not long after the dedication, a new house was constructed for the rabbi and his family. A graceful building, it stood opposite the synagogue, separated only by a vegetable garden. Ernst remembered it warmly:
It had eight rooms. In one of them the roof could be lifted up by springs and was used as our Sukka [the booth roofed with branches in which the harvest festival is celebrated]. Between this house and the synagogue was a garden with flowers and a part with vegetables. In the back was a shed for wood and coal, and for chickens, turkeys and ducks, a coop for the geese, and a laundry room. There were also trees: one plum tree, one pear tree, and one ‘Reine Claude’, a kind of plum. There were two toilets, a cellar and an attic.3
Water was drawn daily by the maid from a well near the entrance to the house and stored in a large covered barrel. The surrounding lands were fertile; local farmers came to the market to sell poultry, vegetables and fruit. In a letter to her mother in the summer of 1938 Sophie referred to the cherries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and damsons that she had bottled or turned into jam.
But life in Moravia was by no means always easy for Jews, as Jacob Freimann recorded in his history of the town. The community was probably first formed after it was driven out of nearby Olmütz in 1454. By the seventeenth century it was thriving, but the congregation had constantly to renew its privileges, as the local rulers kept changing. A document from 1631 listed the conditions under which it was tolerated: Jews were permitted to maintain a school, synagogue, hospital, ritual baths, cemetery and houses. They were allowed to practise their ceremonies and pursue their trade in cloth, wool, leather and linens. In return they had to provide the duke and a large number of lesser dignitaries with numerous gifts, anything from geese for Christmas to sugar, pepper, saffron and spices. In 1899 a blood libel led to pogroms across the Czech lands; in Holleschau hundreds of people went on the rampage, invading the Jewish quarter and robbing the houses, creating a challenging crisis for the still young and relatively