TrentonJewishHS: October 2025

ANCIENT JEWISH CEMETERIES IN UKRAINE:

HISTORY, MONUMENTS, EPITAPHS

Mikhail Nosonovky

(USA)

1. Introduction

A traveler arriving to Ukraine today is scarcely reminded of the Jews.

However, the Jewish civilization with its distinctive culture, language,

literature, and spiritual quests, so different from the surrounding population,

has thrived here for over five centuries. The Chassidic movement, which went

on to influence Judaism worldwide, originated and got strong on the territory

of Ukraine. It appeared in the 18th century in the town of Medzhibozh in

Podolia ; major Chassidic courts existed in Mezherich, Ruzhin, Sadigor,

Polonny, Berdichev, Uman, Chernobyl, and dozens of other places. The

religious sect of the Frankists appeared in Podolia in the 18th century, building

upon the pseudo-messianic movement of Shabtay Tsvi. Brody, Lemberg

(Lvov), Kremenets, and Ternopol were major centers of the Haskala: the

Jewish Enlightenment of the 18th-19th centuries. Ukraine was a borderline

territory where the cultures of the East and the West met: those of Poland,

Austria, Hungary, Romania, Russia, and Turkey. By the beginning of the 20th

century, a peculiar cultural atmosphere had formed in the Jewish communities

of Odessa, Lvov, Berdichev, Chernovtsy, and Carpathian and Transcarpathian

cities. There were variations of Ashkenazi culture and dialects of Yiddish in

Podolia and Volyn, Galicia, Bukovina, Transcarpathia, Chernigov and Poltava

regions, Kherson and Taurida provinces .

The events of the 20th century – the revolution and the Holocaust with

the Nazis carrying out a mass destruction of the majority of the Jewish

population, modernization, mass migration to large cities, and emigration –

led to the collapse of the traditional Jewish shtetl with its social structure,

which used to be the foundation of Ashkenazi culture, to mass assimilation

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and loss of the Jewish language and culture, to departure from religion and the

traditional way of life. The strength of the Jewish population on the territory

of Ukraine shrank almost 10 times over the 20th century, with the percentage

of people who consider Yiddish their mother tongue falling from 90 percent

in the beginning of the century to 10 percent at its end. An elderly person with

a good memory of the pre-war shtetl, its lifestyle and customs, is now easier

to find in Tel Aviv or in Brooklyn than in the shtetls themselves. The material

monuments of Jewish culture and art: books, manuscripts, scrolls, synagogue

utensils – are also frequently far removed from their places of origin.

There is, however, a class of monuments which remains numerous in the

places where the Ashkenazi civilization once thrived. These are the carved

gravestones of the Jewish cemeteries, bearing epitaphs, usually in Hebrew,

and often decorated with carved images. Besides the relative preservation

of those gravestones and their multitude, allowing for generalizations, their

significance is also great for other reasons. The epitaphs contain important

genealogical and historical information. Some of them are real literary

monuments, belonging to a still little-researched genre. The carved décor of

th th

17 -19 century monuments showcases Jewish decorative and applied art

with its own distinct style. These monuments are in an intermediate position

between the official, bookish rabbinic cultural tradition and folk Judaism;

between lofty authors’ culture and mass culture. By examining gravestones

which have been affected by non-Jewish influences, but are still a self-

sufficient phenomenon in Ashkenazi culture, one can research the general

and the particular in Jewish civilization. The generality of the material makes

it convenient for all kinds of sociological research on the gender and social

stratification of the Jewish community.

This article will discuss the history of the research on the Jewish

cemeteries in Ukraine, the role of the cemeteries in the lives of Jewish

communities, traditional Jewish epitaphs, their structure and contents, and

the carved gravestone décor. Included also is a survey of the most interesting

ancient Jewish cemeteries.

2. History of Jewish gravestone research in Ukraine

Several stages can be outlined in the research of cemeteries and

gravestones. National historians, affiliated to the Haskala movement, took

notice of Jewish epitaphs in the 19th and early 20th century. They were

interested in learning (and to a significant extent, writing and describing) the

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history of the Jewish people as an independent nation, and therefore – various

Jewish sources, including epitaphs. Many authors at that time published their

works in Hebrew, considering it the national language of the Jewish people,

the required medium for developing cultural and scholarly activity. Examples

of such work are publications in the Measef collection (St. Petersburg, 1902) of

articles on epitaphs in Berdichev and other communities . S. Baber published

a collection of Lvov epitaphs in 1895 , M. Biber published inscriptions from

Ostrog (Volyn) in 1907 . These early publications did not always uphold

the standards of scholarly epitaph analysis, sometimes allowing in simply

unreliable information, drawn from legends . In the 1890s a circle of Jewish

intelligentsia forms in St. Petersburg, interested in developing and publishing

studies in Jewish history in Russian. These were lawyers, doctors, writers,

who had obtained higher education despite the percentage limitations, and

were now feeling discriminated by the government. They formed a committee

on Jewish history studies, which grew into the Jewish Historic-Ethnographic

Society of St. Petersburg (JHES), established in 1907 . Separated from the

traditional Jewish environment, these people saw historical research as the

basis of national identification. The JHES and scholars close to it published

the magazine Evreyskaya Starina (the Old Jewish Times) , and carried out

quite a few editions like Regesty i Nadpisi (Regests and Inscriptions) and the

Jewish Encyclopedia in Russian. S. A. An-sky (Rapoport) led ethnographic

expeditions to Ukraine. The idea was that learning Jewish folklore, folk life,

and folk art would inspire artists, writers, and musicians, and help create a

national Jewish style. In 1920, the artists S. Yudovin and M. Malkin published

an album called Jewish National Ornament, based on the material of carved

ornamented gravestones . Later, the Jewish gravestones of Ukraine and

Moldova were researched and photographed for many years since pre-war

times by D. N. Goberman10. Gravestone motives have found their way into the

work of such artists as E. Lisitsky, N. Altman, Anatoly (Tankhum) Caplan, who

had turned to these monuments in search of a national style.

During the inter-war period Western Ukraine was divided between

the Soviet Union (whose borders covered Podolia, most of Volyn, and

Eastern Galicia – after 1939), Poland (Western Galicia and Western Volyn),

Czechoslovakia (Transcarpathia), and Romania (Bukovina). In that time, a

series of works were published in Poland on the gravestone inscriptions in

Lvov, Galich, and other places11.

During WWII most of the Jewish communities on the territories under

German occupation were destroyed, and refugees from these communities

have found themselves in Israel or America, where expat communities from

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Ukraine’s shtetls and cities are beginning to form. One of the work elements of

such communities is publishing Yizkor books (usually in Hebrew, sometimes –

in Yiddish and other languages), telling the stories of the communities and the

victims of the Nazis. Such memorial books contain descriptions of cemeteries,

sometimes even epitaphs12.

In post-war years certain Western and Israeli historians turned to

Ukrainian Jewish epitaphs for their publications13. However, because of low

material accessibility (it was quite challenging for a Western scholar to get to

the USSR, and even more challenging – to organize field research), there are

not many such publications, and they are not systematic. At the same time,

Jewish cemeteries in the countries if Western (and later Central) Europe –

Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary – were researched much more intensively14.

With the perestroika, Jewish public activities became possible in the

USSR, as well as work on Jewish history, including field research of Jewish

cemeteries. This work was carried out since the late 1980s by the St. Petersburg

Jewish University (known since 1998 as the St. Petersburg Institute for Jewish

Studies), led by Ilya Dvorkin, Boris Khaimovitch, Valery Dymshits15. All of

the most interesting and oldest Jewish cemeteries of Ukraine were described

over the course of the 1990s: those in Medzhibozh, Satanov, Podgaitsy, Brody,

Busk, Yablonov, Pechenezhin, Kremenets, Vizhnitsa, Murafa, and others. In a

series of works published in the following years, B. Khaimovitch researched

the carved décor of the gravestone (matseva) as a distinctive phenomenon of

folk decorative-applied art. He showed that this art has a specific style and

graphic language16. My own work regarded epitaphs as historic sources and at

the same time, a literary phenomenon on the borderline between traditional

and folk literature and culture17. While collections of gravestone epigraphy as

a historic source have been published since a very long time ago, the genre of

the Jewish epitaph of the medieval and early modern centuries has remained

poorly researched; this is concerning not just the Ukrainian region, but Jewish

epitaphs in general as well.

Western (most importantly, American) researchers are interested in

the Jewish cemeteries of Eastern Europe for two main reasons. First, Jewish

cemeteries can be sources of genealogical information and serve descendants

looking for their ancestors’ graves. The most extensive project of this sort is

being carried out by the Jewish Genealogical Society, whose website provides

material on many shtetls within the Pale of Settlement, including their

cemeteries18. Also interested in Jewish cemeteries is the International Survey

of Jewish Monuments in the USA19. Moreover, genealogical projects are being

undertaken by individual enthusiasts.

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Secondly, the graves of Chassidic rabbis and righteous people are places

of pilgrimage for today’s Chassidim. Guidebooks and albums are made for the

pilgrims, containing descriptions of the burial sites of the righteous20 . Such

publications usually pay little heed to Jewish cemeteries as such, concentrating

only on the graves of the righteous.

Interest towards studying Jewish cemeteries has been growing over the

past years in independent Ukraine. A little book called Jewish Necropolises of

Ukraine21, by Khodorkovsky, was published in 1998. 2001 saw the publication

in Vinnitsa of a description of the Jewish cemeteries in two Chassidic shtetls,

Chernobyl and Gornostayevka. This was supposed to be the first issue in the

Jewish Necropolises of Ukraine series22 .

Research of Jewish epigraphy in the Crimea is a separate case.

Jewish epigraphy has been known here since the Hellenistic period, and

there are medieval inscriptions in Hebrew in the Necropolises of Chufut-

Kale and Mangup, as well as later inscriptions elsewhere, belonging to the

ethno-confessional groups of Crimean Karaites or Krymchak Jews23 . These

monuments have been intensively researched in recent years; they have to do

with a very confusing set of historic problems, and are therefore not the object

of the present study.

3. The cemetery in the Jewish community

Jews have inhabited the Northern Black Sea Region since at least the

first century AD. The first Jewish communities were formed in the Greek

colonies in the Crimea and on the coast of the Sea of Azov24 . Mentions of

Jews and Jewish communities in the following centuries are related one way

or another to the Khazarian Empire whose rule extended to a significant part

of Ukraine over the first millennium AD. However, mass Jewish settlement

on this territory is linked to the arrival of Ashkenazi Jews from Poland and

Central Europe. The first Ashkenazi communities were established in the 13th-

th th

15 centuries in Volyn. By the 16 century Jewish communities had formed

in many towns in Galicia, Podolia, and Volyn, and that is also when the oldest

Jewish cemeteries with monuments still standing today appeared.

The cemetery is the second most important object of a community’s

interest, after the synagogue. Wherever a community would form, it would

try to find a lot for a cemetery, referred to in literature as Beys-Oylom25 (Home

of Eternity), or Beys-Khayim (Home of Life: apparently, a euphemism for

“home of the dead” with a hint to the eternal life of the soul). Usually the lot

would be outside the shtetl, sometimes several kilometers away. The cemetery

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would often be situated on a riverbank, on top of a hill or at its slope. The

mortuary fraternity, Khevra Kadisha, was responsible for performing funerals

and keeping the cemetery. There was often an ablution house next to the

cemetery.

The Jewish religion demands for the funeral to be performed, if possible,

on the day of death. When the day of death falls on a Saturday, the funeral

will be postponed until the next day. The cemetery must not be visited on a

Saturday, or after dark. Close relatives must mourn for seven days (shiva). A

milder level of mourning continues for thirty days (shloshim), then a year.

According to the Talmud (Shabbat 152b), the soul drifts between the earth

and heaven for a year after the death, constantly returning to the grave26 .

After the year has elapsed, and the body has fully decomposed, the soul finds

repose in heaven. It is customary to remember the dead on the anniversary of

their demise by the Jewish calendar.

The time in the grave is considered temporary. The arrival of the

Messiah will signal resurrection, bodies will grow flesh and rise from

the graves. It is important to meet the Messiah in the Holy Land (i.e.,

Palestine, the Land of Israel), and it is therefore preferable to be buried

there. This was rarely possible in practice, but the area of the cemetery

was symbolically equated to that of Israel. The notion of “holy space” has

a certain hierarchy in Judaism, Israel being holier than other countries,

Jerusalem – more sacred than other places in Israel, the Temple Mount –

the holiest site in Jerusalem, and the place where the Holy of Holies used

to be – the holiest part of the Temple Mount. Graves themselves are not

holy, in fact, they are ritually impure. There were special requirements to

the ritual purity of the Cohanim, the priests, ad they were therefore banned

from cemeteries. However, the cabbalistic worldview postulates that the

soul of the deceased is easier to contact next to their grave, and thus the

burial places of righteous people became perceived as holy. It became very

popular in Chassidism to visit the graves of tzaddikim – righteous people

and Chassidic leaders. Burial vaults (oyhels) were built on those graves,

with people going on pilgrimages to them, praying next to them, and

leaving notes (kvitlakh) with wishes on them.

Cemeteries were organized in different ways. Usually, the rows of graves

were oriented southwards; the graves themselves were placed “head” west,

in order for the resurrected dead to be facing east (where the Holy Land was

traditionally held to be) as they rose from the graves and could directly be on

their way to Jerusalem. However, deviations from this principle can be found,

including differently oriented rows inside one cemetery. Some cemeteries had

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special female quarters27 or sections for Cohanim. There were, it seems, also

sections for illegitimate children, suicides, etc.

There are many legends and superstitions pertaining to the Jewish

cemetery, both on the part of Jews and Ukrainians. For example, the legends

of the Medzhibozh cemetery are collected in the Jewish Fairytales28 . There

were local cemetery legends in Shargorod, Murafa, and other shtetls29 .

The gravestones are most commonly shaped like vertical columns

(matzeva) of sandstone or limestone (less commonly – granite and marble).

There are also sarcophagi and obelisks; “boot”-type gravestones can be found

in South-Eastern Volyn – a sarcophagus combined with a column in a single

peculiarly shaped stone.

4. Ukraine’s ancient cemeteries today

There are hundreds of Jewish cemeteries in Ukraine. Each, obviously,

deserves to be protected regardless of its historical and cultural value. The

functioning cemeteries by today’s Jewish communities are protected by

law. However, most Jewish communities ceased to exist in the 20th century,

and many cemeteries were fully or partially destroyed: some under Nazi

occupation30, more in the years of Soviet rule, when Jewish cemeteries were

not considered culturally valuable and were often replaced by parks, stadiums,

enterprises, and residential neighborhoods. The old Jewish cemeteries of

Lvov, Ostrog, Dubno (Rovno oblast), and Kolomiya (Ivano-Frankovsk oblast)

have been completely destroyed, their priceless epigraphic data irretrievably

lost31. Stones from the cemetery are often used by the locals as construction

material32 .

This review will be focused on cemeteries of the biggest historical and

cultural value. The earliest gravestone preserved on the territory of Ukraine

is dated to 1520 and is found in Busk (Lvov oblast)33 . There are 16th century

monuments in Busk (Lvov oblast), Medzhibozh, Satanov (Khmelnitsky oblast),

Buchach, Skala-Podolskaya, and Vishnevets (Ternopol oblast); 17th century

ones are found in Podgaitsy, Kremenets (Ternopol oblast), Bolekhov (Ivano-

Frankovskoblast), Nemirov (Lvov oblast), Murafa, Tarnorud, Trostyanets

(Vinnitsa oblast), and Korets (Rovno oblast) ; several dozens of cemeteries

contain 18th century monuments. Below are brief descriptions of six most

fascinating necropolises:

Medzhibozh (Khmelnitsky oblast). The old Jewish cemetery (as

opposed to the new one, functional in the 19th-20th centuries) is located on

a hill by the river, a kilometer away from the centre of the settlement. At the

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time of documentation in 1990, there were approximately 200 gravestones on

an area of 120x75 meters. The oldest (apparently, reused) gravestone is dated

1555, the next – 1708, and the final – 1853. The time gap between the first

and the second burial testifies to the damage wrecked upon the community

by Khmelnitchina. The founder of Chassidism Yisroel Baal Shem Tov – Besht

(1760) – and his fellows are buried in Medzhibozh, so the cemetery has become

a place of pilgrimage for Chassidim arriving from various countries. A burial

vault with an awning has been erected over the graves of the righteous. Many

people claim that Hershele Ostropoler, the famous Jewish joke character, was

put to rest in Medzhibozh35 . The inscriptions and carvings on the gravestones

are varied, detailed, and quite tasteful.

Satanov (Khmelnitsky oblast). The cemetery is situated on the bank of

the river Zbruch close to the centre of the town, and contains approximately

2000 gravestones, 720 of which belong to the 16th-19th centuries; the

oldest monument is dated 1576. The carved décor is especially varied and

meticulously elaborate; the epitaphs are varied as well, containing numerous

biblical quotations, which makes Satanov one of the most curious old Jewish

cemeteries in Ukraine.

Bolekhov (Ivano-Frankovsk oblast). The cemetery area of ~100x200

m is located on a hill south from the centre of the town. Four 17th century

gravestones remain, the oldest being from 1648. Standing out from the other

gravestones are several monuments from the rabbinic dynasty of Horovits

and the gravestones of Dov-Ber Birkental, his wife Leah, and his daughter

Yehoshua.

Brody (Lvov oblast)36. The cemetery is on the northern edge of the

town, two kilometers away from the centre, and occupies a territory of about

150 by 350 meters, with 2-3 thousand gravestones. It was founded in 1831,

when a cholera epidemic took away many lives. There used to be an older

cemetery in the city as well, destroyed in the Soviet years. In the eastern

part of the cemetery stands the mausoleum (oyhel) of tzaddik Khaim Dovid

ben Yosef (1931) and his wife Gitl. The gravestones are very closely spaced.

The first rows belong to the local rich dynasties: Rokeakh, Margolis, Kallir,

Horovits. Many of the epitaphs are written in verse and the texts are peculiar.

Buchach (Ternopol oblast). The Jewish cemetery is to the north of the

town centre, next to Torgovaya Street, on a hill by the river Strypa. The old

part (16th-19th cent.) is covered with trees and has about 300 monuments on

an area of 80 by 130 meters, including four gravestones from the 16th century

(the oldest of these dated 1587) and 26 from the 17 , including some from

the Cossack uprising of 1648. Next is the 20th century section.

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Vishnevets (Ternopol oblast). The old Jewish cemetery is 60x40

meters large and sits on a slope by the edge of old town – today’s downtown.

Documentation in 1992 found the cemetery partly destroyed, but about 400

gravestones and fragments had survived. One of the monuments is dated

1583; seven belong to the 17 century.

Historically and artistically interesting gravestones have also been

preserved in Kosov, Kuty, Pechenezhin, Yablonov (Ivano-Frankovsk oblast),

Gorodok, Derazhnya, Kupin, Smotrich (Khmelnitsky oblast), Podgaitsy,

Skala-Podolskaya (Ternopol oblast), Veliky Berezny, Vinogradov, Golubiny,

Uzhgorod, Khust (Trancarpathia oblast), Busk, Nemirov (Lvov oblast),

Murafa, Trostyanets (Vinnitsa oblast), Banilov, Vizhnitsa (Chernovtsy oblast),

Korets (Rovno oblast), and elsewhere.

5. Traditional Jewish epitaphs

Contents of epitaphs are not stipulated by the Jewish religion. Moreover,

the sages of the Talmud questioned the necessity of a gravestone altogether,

as this custom reminded them of idol worship37. Still, a tradition of Jewish

epitaphs had formed both in Europe and the Orient by the end of the first

millennium. While not stipulated by the religion, the contents of the epitaphs,

naturally, reflected on traditional Jewish values and ideas38 .

The main purpose of the traditional Jewish epitaphs is, in our view,

mystical. It is to help the soul of the deceased find repose in heaven and

join the other souls of the Jewish people. It is no coincidence that one of the

euphemisms for “died” is “joined [his/her people]”, and the phrase “let his/

her soul be bound in the Bundle of Life [with the souls of our forefathers

and the righteous]” has become an indispensable attribute of an epitaph. The

Jewish epitaph puts the deceased in the context of Jewish history, compares

and matches him/her with the biblical heroes and patriarchs. At the same

time it enumerates his/her virtues for the heavenly court to reckon. To a

certain extent, a eulogistic epitaph (melitza) is in itself the guardian angel

(ha-melitz), testifying before God the merits of the deceased.

This is the radical difference of the Jewish epitaph from the antique

and Christian ones, which are usually addressed to passers-by or accidental

readers, reminding them of life’s futility and encouraging them to repent39 .

Even if the Jewish epitaph is addressed to a living reader, it hardly ever

contains a didactic motif: the assumption is that by reading it the passer-

by will have said a prayer in memory of the deceased. These features of the

Jewish epitaph define its contents and structure.

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5.1. Language

Traditional epitaphs are written in Hebrew. Foreign inclusions are scarce,

with the exception of set Aramaic expressions. There are scarcely any Yiddish

epitaphs, as Yiddish was the household language and epitaphs were not meant

for idle reading40 . However, the language of the epitaphs is quite peculiar.

It is not living Biblical Hebrew; rather, it is a set of given formulae. In the

“inherent” (Hebrew/Yiddish) Jewish bilingualism, Hebrew (loshn-koydesh)

was the language of Scriptures and their realities, while Yiddish (mameloshn)

served as the household language, suitable for describing everyday life. The

Hebrew text of the epitaphs helped place the deceased into the context of

the Scriptures. Having said that, the Yiddish, in which the creators of the

inscriptions thought, is discernible through this Hebrew. Whenever they

needed to refer to a phenomenon with no equivalent in the holy writ, e.g., a

toponym or a surname, they would switch to the typical Yiddish orthography,

using ayyin for the [e] sound, alef for [a] and [o], etc.41

Later epitaphs (late 19th-early 20th cent.) can be bilingual or composed

completely in a language other than Hebrew: Russian, Polish, or German in

Galicia and Bukovina; Hungarian in Transcarpathia; Romanian in Bukovina;

or Yiddish. The cemetery in Kuty features the Yiddish introductory phrase

דדדד ll (do ligt, here lies); the meaning of this usage is not entirely clear, but

is obviously linked to the function of marker epitaph.

In the Soviet period knowledge of Hebrew gradually dwindled, and the

1920s saw the appearance of epitaphs in Russian, sometimes even Ukrainian.

As a rule, the initial Hebrew abbreviation ’’ (here lies) was preserved in

these; the final blessing formula sometimes stayed as well.

5.2. Structure and functions

Each epitaph has four obligatory elements:

1) Introductory formula ()))) הה – here lies; שש ממממממ –– – this is the

gravestone of [so-and-so]). Often contains allusions to such biblical verses as

Gen. 35:20, Gen. 31:52, I Kings 23:17, etc.42

2) Name of the deceased in its “official form” – “so-and-so, son/daughter

of such-and-such”. The “official name” was the name used to call one to the

Torah; it was used in the ketubbah (wedding contract) or the get (divorce

document). The “title” or polite form of address, such as “reb/rabbi” or

“our teacher rabbi” comes before the name. These labels would eventually

depreciate, leading to increasingly pompous, often tautological sets of titles.

aaa (rabbi) could refer to virtually any adult man. In order to distinguish a

learned person, the tautological aaa ררר (ha-rav, rabbi) appears, soon to be

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devaluated and replaced with the abbreviation i’’‘‘‘‘ (moharar – moreynu

ha-rav, rabbi; our teacher, the rav, rabbi)43 . Later (19th cent.) monuments

feature even ו’’הההה ’’a (hah moharar – ha-rav, rabbi, moreynu ha-rav, rabbi).

If the buried was an unmarried young man, he is referred to as ; a young

woman as ; a boy as . The name of the deceased is followed by the

name of their father and frequently the name of the husband in the case of

women. The name of the father is followed by e’’m (blessed be his memory), if

he is already gone, or m’’rr (let him be protected by the Stronghold and Savior),

if he is still alive. All of the above are standard Talmudic formulae.

Surnames are scarcely used in traditional epitaphs. Most Ukrainian

Jews received surnames in the 19th century, but only used them for outside

purposes, in relations with the government, and they are therefore not

featured in community documents and epitaphs. Family nicknames and

noble rabbinic family names such as Babat, Byk, Margolis, Khayes, etc. form

an exception. In Galicia, e.g., in Brody, surnames were brought into use earlier

and are featured more prominently.

The name is also preceded by a brief (or in some cases quite verbose)

description of the virtues of the deceased. The most typical version, eeee

אא (a pure and honest man) is derived from the book of Job. Female

gravestones have ווווו ששש (sometimes ) (an important and

modest/respected woman). Authors of epitaphs excel in variations of

laudatory formulae, often including in the epitaph a biblical verse about a

character of the same name.

1) Date of death by the Jewish calendar. The date is preceded by the

words “passed away”; often a euphemism is used, such as “was called to

the heavenly assembly”. The year is usually given “by the short count”, i.e.

omitting the millennium. The date is often duplicated in a chronogram – a

biblical verse with certain letters (acting also as numbers) highlighted to

denote the date.

2) Final formula – eulogy. Virtually every epitaph is concluded with the

abbreviation ’’צצצצ (let his/her soul be bound in the Bundle of Life). This

blessing formula is borrowed from the memorial prayer Yizkor, the full phrase

being: “Let his soul be bound in the Bundle of Life together with the souls of

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah, and other righteous

ones.” The Talmud says these are the words the angels say as they welcome the

souls of righteous people ascending to heaven. This expression is based on a

biblical verse, unrelated to death or the afterlife. This illustrates an important

principle of the epitaph: biblical material is not adopted directly; instead, it

is derived from its interpretation in rabbinic literature. As for the expression

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“Bundle of Life”, M. Foygelman conclusively showed that it is understood in

rabbinic literature as the “Throne of Glory” where human souls come from

and where righteous souls return once their stay on earth is over44 .

A similar rather rigid structure is associated with the functional purpose

of the epitaph and the gravestone in general. Firstly, the gravestone serves to

mark the burial spot, which must be marked to avoid accidental entry into

the zone of impurity (which is forbidden, for example, to the Cohanim). Also,

according to some notions, the soul keeps returning to the grave for a year

(until the body fully decomposes), and it is easier to contact it there. This

utilitarian function of the gravestone is reflected in the first element of the

epitaph – the introductory formula. The second function is related to the notion

of the epitaph as a prayer, which is the reason for the numerous blessings

in epitaphs. A prayer epitaph must testify to the merits of the deceased and

promote an acquittal by the Highest Court. Moreover, the epitaph links the

soul of the deceased to the other souls of the Jewish people, placing him in

the context of Jewish history. This is why the name and date are played upon

and a biblical analogy is used, highlighting the similarities between the death

of a particular Jacob or Rachel and the Jacob and Rachel of the Bible. The

unity of place, date, and name provides for the unification of three coordinate

systems: space, time, and individuality45 . Jewish epitaphs are almost always

impersonal, written in the third person, and not addressed to the reader.

Deviations from this rule are perceived as unusual and are, perhaps, caused

by external influences.

5.3. The epitaph as a literary phenomenon in the context of rabbinic

literature

The question of the correlation between Jewish epitaphs and other

literary genres is quite interesting. There is in rabbinic literature a genre

called esped – a lamentation or mourning over the dead. Examples of esped

can be found in the Talmud (Mo’ed Katan 25-28). Epitaphs echo the typical

images and expressions of esped: description of the deceased person’s virtues

and the family’s grief.

Poetic epitaphs of several verses were popular in many communities.

These poems are usually quite primitive and monotonous: their contents

emphasize the virtues of the deceased and the grief of the relatives; their

form employs the same set of elementary, frequently grammatical, rhymes.

The name of the deceased is often shaped into an acrostic. Poetic epitaphs

were especially common in Galician communities like Brody, which had

contacts with Jewish centers in Central and Western Europe. These poetic

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epitaphs, while a separate genre, compare to some extent to the genre of kina

(lamentation, elegy ) in the traditional genre system of medieval Jewish

poetry. This genre is parallel to the elegy (risa) in the Arabic qasidah, known

since pre-Islamic times, but it is related in Jewish tradition to the book of the

Lamentations of Jeremiah and to early liturgical poetry. Unlike Arabic poetry,

the Jewish kina (as well as texts in other genres) was formed by combination

of biblical quotes and expressions in the so-called “mosaic style”.

The problem of uncertain authorship arises with poetic epitaphs. They

were often custom-created by semi-professional authors relying on pre-

existing material, combining fragments of previous epitaphs to adjust them

to the situation at hand. There are also known cases of a particular person

compiling an epitaph47.

Another significant genre is called melitza (praise or rhetoric). Colorful

laudations consisting of biblical and Talmudic expressions are typically found,

e.g., in prefaces to books published at that time. Sometimes the epitaph itself

would be referred to as melitza in relation to a guardian angel, i.e., the epitaph

playing the part of an angel giving evidence in the heavenly court in favor of

the deceased.

Biblical quotes are numerous in epitaphs and are usually meant to

emphasize the similarity of a particular death to an archetypal situation

described in the Bible. Verses are often quoted about a character of the same

name as the late person. Upon locating and identifying a biblical quote, a

researcher might be tempted to stop at pointing out that the epitaph is quoting a

certain verse from the Bible. However, the case may be more complicated than

that; the quotes and allusions – indirect. The blessing formula “let his heart

be bound in the Bundle of Life” is based on the biblical verse “but the soul of

my lord shall be bound in the bundle of life with the Lord thy God” (1 Samuel

25:29), where the matter is not death, but quite the opposite – protection

of a living person. This quote appears in epitaphs because it is featured in

the common prayer Yizkor, which in turn is based on an interpretation of the

“Bundle of Life” in rabbinic literature.

In other cases a quote in an epitaph can be stimulated by some literary

text. For example, the epitaph of Miryam from Buchach (1792) uses a slightly

modified quote: יייי הההה יי קקקק AAAA, “And Miryam took welfare (tov) in her

hand” (Ex. 15:20). The original says tof, a tambourine. The same play on

words is found in the epitaph of a different Miryam in Warsaw, which makes

it less likely to have been invented by the compiler of the epitaph and more

likely to have been borrowed from a common source. In the same way the

Aramaic expression nnnnnnn ממממממ, (parvuta de-Mashmakhig ; the harbor of

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cemeteries . their condition and studying

Mashmakhig) is found in epitaphs from Medzhibozh (1751) and Satanov

(1759). In Talmud (Yoma 77a) the harbor of Mashmakhig is mentioned

as a certain site in the Persian Gulf where pearls were obtained, hence the

translation – “source of pearls”. Authors of epitaphs in two different shtetls

would hardly both have used the same non-standard expression accidentally.

Rather, they must have been following some text which is unknown to us.

Thus, biblical and even Talmudic quotes turn out to be indirect.

Three stages can be singled out in the development of epitaphs:

Early epitaphs, usually consisting of just the indispensable elements.

In Central and Western Europe this is the period preceding the 15th century.

Most of the epitaphs at Jewish cemeteries in Ukraine belong to the following

stages.

Advanced epitaphs, characterized by the use of numerous biblical

and post-biblical quotes and allusions, “baroque” panegyric and mournful

formulae, and poetic devices, such as tropes and rhymes; emphasis on the

personality of the deceased (sometimes also of the author); and finally,

formation of regional and local styles.

Decline of the epitaph genre in the 19th and early 20th century. Individual

elements of epitaphs are already gone in this period. Standard elements,

such as the initial abbreviation ’’ and the final ננננ’’ , become symbols

and morph into the décor of the gravestone. The epitaph, meanwhile, can be

written in a non-Jewish language.

At the same time, finer regional and temporal features can be noted.

For example, inscriptions from South-Eastern Galicia and Western Bukovina

(Pechenezhin, Kosov, Kuty, Snyatin, Banilov, Vizhnitsa) have quite a few

features distinguishing them from those in Podolia or Brody.

5.4. Informational value of epitaphs

The particular historical information found in epitaphs is quite varied.

Found early monuments can help specify the time a community formed.

For example, when a 1583 gravestone was found in Vishnevets, the earlier

statement that Jews had only lived there since the 17th century was refuted48 .

When inscriptions from 1648 and later years were discovered in Buchach and

Bolekhov, reports of the full annihilation of these communities during the

Cossack uprising were disproved49 .

Data on particular personalities is another field of research. For

example, the grave of the very sparsely known 18th century memoirist Dov-

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Ber Birkentaler (Brezhover) was found in Bolekhov50. Epitaphs can reflect on

events. Say, three inscriptions from Satanov mention a war against the Turks

and the Tatars at the end of the 18th century, thus confirming contemporary

reports of Satanov being ravaged51. A curious gravestone belongs to Malka

Babad from Brody who travelled to Palestine with a group of Galician pilgrims

in 1811, and then returned to Brody and was buried there in 1834. Brody

was a centre of the Haskala, and its cemetery contains the gravestones of

such cultural figures as Jacob Verber (1890), publisher of the newspaper Ivri

Anokhi, and Yona Byk (1816-1893) whose epitaph was written by his son-in-

law, famous writer Shlomo Malkendern.

Another field of research benefiting from the generality of epitaph

material: various sociological and demographical surveys. For example, a

statistic based on a selection of 724 names from Satanov, Busk, and Vishnevets

from the 16th to the early 19th century showed the most popular Jewish male

names to be Moshe (8%), Yitzkhak (7%), Avraham, Joseph, and Eliezer (4.5%

each); the most common female names were Hanna (8%), Rachel, Leah,

Sara, and Bella (5% each). Curiously enough, the most deaths happened in

the spring month of Adar (13.7%); the least deaths took place in the summer

months of Tammuz (4.7%) and Av (6.1%)52. Potentially, epitaphs can be used

for various sociological polls, gender surveys, and other research.

Hebrew epitaphs are a separate genre. Like other traditional types of

Jewish literature, this genre existed in a close relation with rabbinic literature,

whose texts were its source of quotes, images, tropes, and rhetoric devices.

The apparition of this genre about a thousand years ago was caused also

by European cultural influence. Material from Ukraine shows the peak and

decline of this sort of literature. The main task of these texts is to comprehend

and overcome death. This is implemented by immortalizing the memory

of the deceased, by linking him/her to the eternal categories of the Bundle

of Life and the realities of Jewish texts, and by giving his soul repose and a

favorable sentence from the heavenly court.

6. Carved decor

The decorated gravestones of the 17th-19th century are some of the most

striking examples of the Eastern-European Jewish folk art. The first decorated

columns appeared at the end of the 16th century in the major cultural centers

of Eastern Europe (Prague, Krakow) and were influenced by Renaissance

art53. The gravestones of that period are shaped like arches or portals; the

most common type of decoration is a floral or architectural pattern.

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cemeteries . their condition and studying

Early 17th century monuments feature figurative motifs: lions, gryphons,

images of wreaths or crowns. The following development of stone-cutting

art is reflected in manifold examples from Podolia, Galicia, and Volyn. The

most meticulous in the artistic sense are the 18th-19th century monuments

in Medzhibozh, Satanov (Podolia), and Vishnevets (Volyn). A unique self-

sufficient style of stone-cutting art with many local variations and unified

composition and figurative language formed in Podolia in Volyn in the

beginning of the 18th century. The art met its degeneracy and decline in the

mid – and late 19th century.

The gravestones are variations on a portal or gate, sometimes joined

with columns and evoking associations with the Jerusalem Temple. Also

popular are depictions of plants and animals. The portal motif is correlated

with decorated aron-kodesh’s and illuminated cover pages of printed and

manuscript books. The art of stone-cutting is closely related to such types of

folk art as carved wooden décor, synagogue plafond murals, metal synagogue

chandeliers, golden embroidered ornaments on curtains (parokhet and

kaporet), ornaments on Torah scrolls, ritual items, and utensils related to the

calendar and life cycle54.

Gravestone reliefs display a wide array of graphic symbols which are to

a certain extent complementary to the text. There are no human figures in

the reliefs because of the prohibition in the Second Commandment (“thou

shalt not make thee any graven image”). Instead, animals are portrayed (so,

on a monument in Medzhibozh, bears have replaced the spies, meraglim, and

are carrying fruit from the Holy Land); a part instead of the whole: a hand

raised in priestly blessing (on a Cohen gravestone) or holding a jug (on a Levy

gravestone). Extremely popular are the candlestick motif (menorah) and the

floral motif, tracing back to the Tree of Life.

Images of animals often correspond with the name of the deceased: a lion

on the gravestone of Aryeh-Leyb, a stag for Tzvi-Hirsch, a wolf for Zev-Wolf, a

bear for Dov-Ber, birds for Feyga-Tzippora, etc. Some symbols are semantically

more complicated and sometimes ambiguous. Dr. B. Khaimovitch showed in

a series of publications in recent years that some symbols are semantically

universal, whereas the semantics of others are local and even individual,

depending on the particular artist55. For example, a heraldic eagle is virtually

always associated with the idea of royal power as a metaphor for God’s rule.

At the same time, the image of three hares running in a circle can be linked

to the month of Adar, or to the holiday of Peysakh, or to the notion of time

running, or to the three patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), especially in

relation to the eulogy mentioned above. Note that the figurative motifs are in

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any case subordinate to the idea of temporary being in the grave and future

resurrection of the dead in messianic times; they emphasize the virtues of

the deceased and their connection to Jewish tradition. In this way, the image

complements the text. B. Khaimovitch notices that the work of Podolian

Jewish artists is related to European art, and much less dependent on Oriental

art and that of the surrounding nations than it usually thought56.

7. Conclusion

In the recent 20 years the old Jewish cemeteries of Ukraine have

become the object of intensive study. The data assembled during these years

with regard to the epitaphs and carved design of the gravestones, allows for

certain conclusions and generalizations to be made. Besides the concrete

informative meaning of the inscriptions, we have found the epitaphs to

contain expressions of a multitude of ideas related to the concept of death in

Jewish cultural tradition. The burial customs of any culture show its view on

death and ways of comprehending it. Ukrainian material displays the specific

category of Jewish epitaphs, a product of traditional rabbinic literature,

expressing notions of the immortal soul, resurrection of the dead, repose of

the soul, and its interaction with the living.

The Jews of Podolia, Volyn, and Galicia have also created a stone-

cutting art with its own stylistic and symbolism, by researching which one

may understand the semantics and relations between textual and non-textual

sources of meaning in the Jewish culture in general. The symbols and images

of applied art complement the texts of the epitaphs and are interpreted

through these texts, which are intended to overcome death by linking the

individual to the world of Jewish texts, the absolute.

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Endnotes

1 We use the historical names of the regions of Western Ukraine: Podolia (today’s

Khmelnitsky, Vinnitsa, and parts of other oblasts), Volyn (Zhitomir, Rovno, and Volyn

oblasts), Eastern Galicia (Lvov, Ternopol, and Ivano-Frankovsk oblasts), Bukovina (most

of Chernovtsy oblast).

2 On regional dialects of Yiddish and on local features of the Ashkenazi culture, see

Herzog, 1995.

3 Gorodetsky (1902), see also Finn (1860).

4 Baber (1895).

5 Biber (1907).

6 E.g., in the book Korot Podolia (History of Podolia).

7 Lukin (1993).

8 See, e.g., Nissenbaum (1913), Vishnitser (1914).

9 Malkin and Yudovin (1920). See also Levy (1924).

10 Goberman (1989, 1993, 2000).

11 Fahn (1929), Balaban (1929).

12 Gelber (1955), Cohen (1956), Eschel (1957).

13 E.g., Haberman (1982), Morgenshtern (1993).

14 These are works by M. and S. Krajewski (1986, 1989), Muneles (1955, 1988), Broke

(2001), Kafka (1991), Kara (1994), Wodzinski (1998), Ehl (1991), Hondo (1999) and oth-

ers; see bibliography for Tagger (1997) and Wiesemann (2005).

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15 Khaimovitch (1994a), Dvorkin (1994), Dymshits (1994), Lukin (2000).

16 Khaimovitch (1994b, 2000, 2004).

17 Nosonovsky (1994, 1998, 1998a, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009).

18 See: www.jewishgen.org.

19 See the website of the International Survey of Jewish Monuments, www.isjm.org.

20 E.g., Alfassi (1977).

21 Khodorkovsky (1998).

22 Divny (2001).

23 Note the work on the Karaite cemetery in Galitch (Ivano-Frankovsk oblast), Yurtch-

enko (2000).

24 On Jews in the Hellenistic colonies of the Northern Black Sea Region, see Levinskaya

(1992), Danshin (1993). On Jews in medieval Crimea ฀ Chwolson (1884), Harkavy (1879),

Dubnow (1909), Kizilov (2003). Note that Chwolson’s work (1884) was one of the first at-

tempts to create a system of Jewish paleography to help date epigraphic monuments, but is

today considered unreliable in many regards.

25 In this article we transliterate Hebrew words based on the standard Ashkenazi

pronunciation (except non-Ashkenazi monuments and Israeli names and facts). In vari-

ous regions of Ukraine at different periods, the accepted pronunciation could have been

based both on the South-Eastern (Ukrainian), Central (Polish), and North-Eastern (Litvak)

dialects of Yiddish, and on sub-dialects. See Herzog (1995); discussion on epitaphs in

Nosonovsky (2008).

26 Heilman (2001).

27 E.g., Dvorkin (1994) reports a separate women’s quarter at the cemetery in Med-

zhibozh.

28 E.g., the legend of a curse upon whoever builds an oyhel over the grave of the found-

er of Chassidism, Besht, in Medzhibozh, and other legends (Dymshits, 2000:85). The image

of the Jewish gravestone has been referred to by venerable men of letters, e.g., I. Manger’s

sonnet “Epitaph”, or C. N. Byalik’s poem “Beys-Oylom” (1901).

29 Ethnographer-Slavicist O. V. Belova in her several recent works examined the atti-

tude of the Slavic population of Polesye and Podolia towards Jews, including legends to do

with Jewish cemeteries. E.g., says Belova (1996), stone grit scraped off an inscription on a

Jewish gravestone can be used to hex a blacksmith neighbor. There are superstitions that

Jews were buried in a sitting position (perhaps because of the closely spaced gravestones);

that meeting a Jewish funeral procession is a bad omen. Some informants reported that

the image of hands on a matseva (the Cohen blessing sign) symbolizes Jews “voting” for

Christ’s crucifixion etc.

30 On the destruction of Jewish cemeteries by the Nazis, see Prager, 1973.

31 According to pre-revolutionary publications (Biber, 1907), there were 15th century

gravestones in Ostrog – the oldest Ashkenazi monuments in Eastern Europe. In the 1960s

the Soviet authorities had the old cemetery in Kolomiya, where famous rabbis were buried,

including Rabbi Hillel of Kolomiya, demolished and laid with asphalt. When our field group

was in Kolomiya in August 1990, there was a meeting taking place in the central square

because of a monument to Lenin being taken down whose concreted foundation consisted

of gravestones from the old Jewish cemetery.

32 Such incidents have been documented in Kamenets-Podolsky, Zhvanets (Khmel-

nitsky oblast), Berezhany (Ternopol oblast), Yaryshev (Vinnitsa oblast), and many other

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places. According to some testimonies, gravestones from the old cemetery in Lvov were

used as construction materials for a silo pit.

33 Monument to Yehuda, son of Jacob, deceased on Kislev 3rd 5281 (November 23rd

1520), see Nosonovsky, 1998. This is the oldest remaining Ashkenazi gravestone on the

territory of Eastern Europe. Some sources quote 15th century monuments (Biber, 1907),

but even if those existed, they have not remained. In Poland an older monument (from

1203) has only been located in Wroclaw (Silesia) – a territory which has had a cultural

propensity towards Germany (Krajewskaja, 1989, Wodzinski, 1998). On Jewish monu-

ments in Krakow, see Hondo, 1999; in Hungary, see Scheiber, 1983. Note that the cemetery

in Chufut-Kale (Crimea) contains non-Ashkenazi gravestones since the 14th century, and

Mangup-Kale – since the 15th.; there are also monuments in the Crimea from the Hellenis-

tic period, not belonging to the matter at issue (Harkavy, 1879, Dubnow, 1914, Danshin,

1992, Levinskaya, 1992).

34 For a full list of 16th and 17th century monuments, see: Nosonovsky (1998).

35 See Dvorkin (1994), Lukin (1990).

36 Gelber (1955).

37 The Talmud (Shekalim, 1:1, Mo’ed Katan, 1:2) says that the soul of the deceased

lives for a year on the grave and can see and hear whatever is happening there. A sign

called nefesh (soul) should be placed on the grave to mark a place of ritual impurity and

remembrance of the dead. The cemetery can also be visited in order for the deceased to ask

for mercy for us in heaven (Ta’anit 16a). Rabban Gamliel insisted for every Jew, regardless

of their social position, to be buried equally modestly. Rabbinical literature mentions more

than once that “monuments ought not to be built for the righteous, because their words are

their memory” (Bereishit Rabba 82:10, Yerushalmi Shekalim 2:47a, Mekhilta 11:7). The

tractate Orayot 13b lists reading epitaphs among activities leading to weakening of memory

and distraction from one’s studies.

38 Early Jewish epitaphs of the first millennium in Europe are composed in Greek or Lat-

in with inclusions (one or several words) in Hebrew (Horst, 1991, 1994). On the verge of

the second millennium, Hebrew gradually becomes the language of epitaphs. This process

is parallel to the dispersion of Talmudic learning and creation of new centres of Judaism in

Germany, France, Spain, and Italy. Thus, the medieval Hebrew epitaph with its character-

istic features appears in Europe about a thousand years ago and is inseparably linked with

rabbinic literature.

39 Kovalnitsky (1898), Khomentovskaya (1995).

40 Certain 20th century inscriptions form an exception, e.g., the epitaphs of famous

writer of fables Eliezer Schteinbarg (1932) in Chernovtsy, Yiddish writer and teacher Azriel

Yanover (1938) from Khotin (Chernovtsy oblast), and several others.

41 Hebrew and Yiddish were not always juxtaposed in the traditional Jewish society; rather,

they existed in close symbiosis, and it is sometimes very difficult to draw a distinction between

them (Weinreich, 1980). The same text can be viewed as a Yiddish text saturated with Hebrew-

Aramaic vocabulary, or a Hebrew text in its Ashkenazi version with Yiddish loanwords. The

author holds that in the period before modernisation, a juxtaposition of literary and everyday

realities is more relevant, expressed in particular in written texts through switching between

phonetic and consonant orthography. Hebrew, learned from Scriptures, served to denote “liter-

ary” realities and referents, whereas Yiddish, used commonly, designated everyday realities.

This explains quite a few features of orthography switches in epitaphs (Nosonovsky, 2008).

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42 The identical spelling of the words Tziyon (Zion) and tziyun (sign – one of the words

for gravestone) could be played up by authors of inscriptions, e.g., when using the verse

from Psalms 48:12 “Walk about Zion and go around her; Count her towers.”

43 The medieval historian David Hans from Prague noted that the Jews of 16th century

Prague had a procedure of awarding one with the title of aaaaa, an equivalent of the Chris-

tian doctorate (Nosonovsky, 2006).

44 Foygelman (1961).

45 The idea that time, space, and individuality form a system of three “coordinates”

is found in Jewish texts and is probably derived from the cabbalistic Sefer Yetzira, where

these three categories are presented as olam (world), shana (year), and nefesh (soul).

46 The meaning of the term “elegy” is narrower in oriental literature (mourning poem),

than in Russian literature (sorrowful, lyrical poem).

47 Handwritten collections of standard rhymes and expressions used by epitaph compil-

ers are reported by I. ‘Immanuel (1963), concerning the Sephardic cemetery in Salonika.

Such figures of the Haskala as I. Levinson (1860) from Kremenets and I. Shor (1894) from

Brody wrote their own epitaphs. S. Mandelkern wrote the epitaph for his father-in-law Yona

Byk’s (1893) grave in Brody.

48 Kirshenboim (1978).

49 Cohen (1956), Eschel (1957), Brauer (1978), Gelber (1978).

50 Vishnitzer (1922), Brauer (1978b).

51 Hanover (1878).

52 Nosonovsky (2006).

53 Khaimovitch (1994).

54 Goberman (2000).

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