Greetings from Sadagora. Chief Rabbi’s Palace

Hasidism, the religious revivalist movement that emerged in Eastern Europe in the second half of the eighteenth century, is fundamentally predicated on its supporters’ affiliation with a specific tsaddik or rebbe, a religious leader credited with a pronounced ability to commune with, and therefore sway, God to assist his supporters. One of them was Israel Friedman (1796–1850) who, in the 1830s, emerged as the principal Hasidic leader in the Russian Empire. In 1841, having been jailed on spurious charges and threatened with banishment, he fled from the small Ukrainian town of Ruzhin to Bukovina where he set up his court—and held sway over the established Jewish community— in the town of Sadagora (Sadhora), located just north of Czernowitz. Friedman was, at best, barely literate, and his worldly brand of Hasidism, infused with Messianic pretensions, was based not on traditional Jewish learning but on popular storytelling. Friedman was the original “regal” rebbe, maintaining a lavish court. The rebbe’s living in style, the assumption went, reflected Hasidism’s ability to sanctify and beautify an otherwise plain or even ugly environment. Moreover, by exposing himself to—and, owing to his closeness to God, withstanding—the corrupting potential of great wealth and prominence he would help diminish that potential threat for his followers. Only close relatives and the numerous servants had access to the rebbe’s residence. Nor did he pray with his followers—he had his own prayer room in the synagogue. The roof of the central hall could be retracted, for example, during sukkot. Among the court’s most noteworthy status symbols was an instrumental ensemble that played not only at various events and ceremonies but also for the entertainment of the rebbe and his inner circle. In 1914, when the region was engulfed by war, Avrohom Ya’akov Friedman (1884–1961) fled to Vienna and later, following the Anschluss, from there to the Yishuv. Beginning in 2013, the badly dilapidated synagogue was restored and it was inaugurated again by a group of Hasidic pilgrims in 2016.

Published by Verlag Moritz Gottlieb Buch- u. Papierhandlung, Czernowitz, Rathausstrasse 21.

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