Odessa Jewish Colonies (1794-1814)

Jews formed a special group within the category of "internal" migrants. Jews had lived in the region of Odessa even before the founding of the city. Their settlements were scattered among the small villages near the fort of Khadzhibei. Jews were also numerous in the large cities of the Ottoman Empire, where they earned their living primarily as artisans and retail merchants. Odessa possessed a Jewish cemetery soon after 1794. The first synagogue was built in 1798. Skal'kovskii gives the Jewish population as 240 out of a total population of 2,349 in 1795, although Smorianinov gives a lower figure of 135 Jews for 1797. When Richelieu assumed the governorship, he made special efforts to attract Jewish immigrants, not only to the cities, but also to the countryside of Novorossiia.

 By far the largest single source of early Jewish immigration was the region of Belorussia (White Russia). The Russian Empire obtained sovereignty over the area through the successive partitions of Poland in 1772, 1793, and 1795. The Jewish inhabitants numbered more than sixty thousand, and they worked chiefly as artisans, petty merchants, or tavern keepers (Polish law had forbidden them to engage in agriculture). Russian policy imposed further restrictions upon them. According to a Polozhenie or Ordinance of December 9, 1804, Jews could not live in villages outside a prescribed area or "pale." They also were no longer allowed to own or operate taverns. These were severe blows to their economic fortunes and came at a time when their own numbers were increasing. 

Recognizing their plight, a Latvian administrator, I. G. Frizel, devised a plan to move a certain number of Jews out of their over-crowded villages to the empty steppes of Novorossiia. Like other colonists, these Jews would receive land, enjoy various exemptions, and in turn would establish farms and villages. Richelieu endorsed the idea, and from 1806 warmly received Jewish emigrants into Novorossiia. The state contributed the sum of 310,000 assignat rubles to meet the costs of relocation. Each family was to receive 125 rubles for the construction of a farmhouse and a daily food allowance of 5 kopecks, until the land became productive. By 1809, eight Jewish colonies were established, most of them distributed along the Inhulets River in the Kherson guberniia. 

By 1810, according to a survey made that year, 1,691 Jewish colonial families, containing 9,757 individuals, were working the soil. 

In spite of these auspicious beginnings, this experiment in Jewish agrarian settlement ended in failure. Ten years later, the number of colonial families had declined to only 417. The Jews abandoned the land, not because they were unaccustomed to agricultural pursuits, but because so little of the promised subsidies ever reached their hands. As S. Ia. Borovoi has shown, chicanery and peculation marked this project more than most. Many Jews faced starvation, and many more decided to seek employment in villages and cities where their special skills were readily marketable. In particular, Odessa and other port cities easily absorbed Jewish artisans and traders. 

Odessa Jews in 1815-1861

This stream of immigration carried Jews in large numbers into the city. Eventually this would give Odessa one of the largest concentrations of urban Jews to be found anywhere in the world. During the period from 1815 to 1861, the Jewish population rose from under four thousand to well over seventeen thousand individuals. In 1854, seven thousand Jews were citizens of Odessa, while six thousand other Jewish residents were officially considered to belong to other Russian towns. An English traveler observed: "The Jews form the largest portion of the foreign population. ... A few are very rich and engage in the banking business; many make large purchases of imported goods from the foreign merchants and sell them retail in their own shops." 

Many Jews came from other areas of Novorossiia (where they had been permitted to settle since 1791) and from Volhynia, Lithuania, and Belorussia. At the end of the eighteenth century, some three hundred Jewish families, mostly from Galicia, settled in Odessa. This was the start of a steady flow of emigrants from Galicia—Brody in particular. A leading Jewish scholar in Odessa in 1855, Joachim Tarnopol, wrote that the Jews from Brody combined the virtues of industriousness with commercial skill. Many of them became bankers, merchants, and brokers.

In 1843, during one of its sporadic anti-Semitic campaigns, the Russian government sought to restrict the activities of foreign Jews in the empire. Vorontsov petitioned the authorities in St. Petersburg to exempt Novorossiia from the regulation. He argued that many of the bankers in Odessa were Austrian Jews, whose departure would disrupt the business of the city.

As the Jewish community grew, so did its institutions. In 1826, a secular Jewish school, one of the first in the empire, was founded in Odessa. The curriculum included Hebrew, Talmudic studies, Rus- sian, German, French, mathematics, physics, rhetoric, history, geography, calligraphy, and civil law. In 1835, a similar school for Jewish girls was established. In addition to the subjects taught to the boys, they learned needlework. Soon there was a fashionable boarding school for the daughters of wealthy Jews. The founders were men like S. Pinsker, M. Finkel, and I. Hurowitz, members of the Haskalah, or "Enlightenment," who had to overcome the objections of more conservative Jews of the Hassidic community. In 1837, Tsar Nicholas I visited the Jewish schools and expressed his satisfaction with them. At times Count Vorontsov himself went to examine the youngsters. 

In 1841, a large synagogue was founded, mostly by Jews from Brody. Like the progressive school, the synagogue became renowned for its liturgical and organizational innovations. About a decade later, Morandi the city architect, constructed a new building in the Florentine style for another synagogue (the Glavnaia); it soon came to be regarded as one of the most magnificent edifices in the city.

 In addition to founding synagogues and prayer houses, Jews organized medical services. A Jewish hospital of 75 beds cared for 450 patients each year. Indigent Jews could come into town from the villages to obtain free advice and medicine from one of the city's dozen Jewish doctors. Various philanthropies served the community as well: a friendly society and institutions for educating orphans and indigent children, feeding transients, and clothing the poor. Each year the community collected thirty-seven thousand silver rubles to support these charities. 

Not only did Odessa offer Jews unprecedented economic opportunities and freedom to pursue their own cultural interests, but its liberal atmosphere allowed them some participation in political affairs—a rare prerogative in tsarist Russia. In the 1850s, eleven Jews served in city offices. Both Vorontsov and his successor Stroganov insisted that Jews participate fully in all aspects of the city's life. This steady influx linked the urban population through familial and other networks with the Jewish settlements in the hinterland. This laid the basis for still more massive immigration after 1861. 

Patricia Herlihy, "Odessa: A History 1794-1914". Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts 

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