Yehupetz (, , ) is a semifictional

city A city is a human settlement of a substantial size. The term "city" has different meanings around the world and in some places the settlement can be very small. Even where the term is limited to larger settlements, there is no universally agree ...

in the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

, a portrayal of

Kyiv Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both sides of the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2022, its population was 2, ...

(

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

) in

Sholem Aleichem Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich (; May 13, 1916), better known under his pen name Sholem Aleichem (Yiddish language, Yiddish and , also spelled in Yiddish orthography#Reform and standardization, Soviet Yiddish, ; Russian language, Russian and ), ...

stories. It can be viewed as a transitional place between the classical

shtetl or ( ; , ; Grammatical number#Overview, pl. ''shtetelekh'') is a Yiddish term for small towns with predominantly Ashkenazi Jews, Ashkenazi Jewish populations which Eastern European Jewry, existed in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. The t ...

and a modern city.

Name

The name derives from for "

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

". It is suggested the reason for the selection of the name lies in the experiences of the writer, in reference to the Jewish slavery in Egypt.Introduction
(also ), In: Victoria Khiterer, ''Jewish City or Inferno of Russian Israel? A History of the Jews in Kiev before February 1917'', 2016, Victoria Khiterer draws another parallel: "Just as the Hebrews had suffered in Egypt under the pharaohs, so Kyiv Jews suffered under their local "pharaohs", as policemen were called in Russian slang". While Kyiv was geographically within the

Pale of settlement The Pale of Settlement was a western region of the Russian Empire with varying borders that existed from 1791 to 1917 (''de facto'' until 1915) in which permanent settlement by Jews was allowed and beyond which the creation of new Jewish settlem ...

, tsar Nicholas I expelled the Jews from Kyiv end excluded the city from the Pale in 1835. Therefore, living in Kyiv was illegal for Jews, but they were drawn to the city due to the poverty in the Pale, and "pharaohs" worked hard to catch and expel the illegals. Jewish immigration to the city of Orthodox faith contributed to the growing antisemitism, up to pogroms in the city. The nickname "Yehupetz" was widely used by the Jewish population of Kyiv. There is a literary

almanac An almanac (also spelled almanack and almanach) is a regularly published listing of a set of current information about one or multiple subjects. It includes information like weather forecasting, weather forecasts, farmers' sowing, planting dates ...

called ) that has been published in Kyiv since 1995. The actual name "Kiev" was used only in one of Sholem Aleichem's works: his 1916 autobiographical novel פונעם יאריד (''Funem yarid'', translated as ''From the Fair'').Bortnowski, Antoni. (2018). "Еврейское измерение Киева в „Кровавой шутке” Шолом-Алейхема", ''Kultury Wschodniosłowiańskie - Oblicza i Dialog''. 23-34.

Portrayal

Yehupetz is featured in many of Sholem Aleichem's works, including those about Tevye the Dairyman and Menahem-Mendl and about the shtetl of

Kasrilevka Kasrilevka or Kasrilevke () is a fictional ''shtetl'' introduced by Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem. Located "exactly in the middle of that blessed Pale", it is an idealized town of "little Jews" (''kleyne mentshelekh''), who met their misfortunes ...

. Tevye lived outside of a fictional Anatovka, a village near a settlement named called Boiberik (based on real-life

Boiarka Boiarka or Boyarka (, ) is a city in Fastiv Raion of Kyiv Oblast (region) of Ukraine, about 20 km SW from Kyiv. It hosts the administration of Boiarka urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. Population: The population in 2001 was 35 ...

, a suburb of Yehupetz). Most of his customers lived in Yehupetz.An introduction by

Dan Miron Dan Miron (; born 1934) is an Israeli-born American literary critic and author. An expert on modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature, Miron is a Professor emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is currently the Leonard Kaye Professor of ...

to the book ''Tevye the Dairyman and Motl the Cantor's Son'', 2009, In Tevye's encounters with them, he describes them as rich, saying "rich folks from Yehupetz", "rich man from Yehupetz", etc.

Every summer all the rich folks from Yehupetz go to their dachas in Boiberik. And these Yehupetz folks are all very refined people who are used to having everything served up to them—wood for the fire, meat and eggs, chickens and onions, peppers and radishes. Why shouldn’t someone make it his business to bring to their doorstep every morning milk, cheese, butter, and sour cream? And as the Yehupetzers like to eat well and don’t give a fig about money, you can charge high prices. (From ''The Great Windfall'')

From the story "The Roof Falls In" (also translated as "Tevye Blows A Small Fortune" or "The Bubble Bursts") we learn that Tevye and Menahem-Mendl first meet in Yehupetz, where Menahem-Mendl had already been lived illegally of a year and a half, and they chatted about Menahem-Mendl's financial dealings, "how one day he's rich and the next a pauper" (which are detailed in Chapter II: "Papers: The Yehupetz stock exchange" of '' The Adventures of Mehahem-Mendl''). Menahem-Mendl tries to convince Tevye to join his speculations, arguing that Yehupetz is a city of opportunities: "There are in Yehupetz those who were not too long ago going around without shoes, were nobodies, servants, porters. Today they have their own houses made of stone surrounded by high walls. Their wives complain about their indigestion and go abroad for a cure, while they ride around Yehupetz on rubber wheels and pretend not to know anyone!" In the 1907 story "Sprintze" we learn that a great misfortune had befallen the Jews of Yehupetz and that all the wealthy ones had rushed out: "God wanted to do something for His Jews, and so a misfortune befell us, a disaster, a ''constitutzia''! Ay, a ''constitutzia'' ! Suddenly our rich people panicked and stampeded out of Yehupetz, heading abroad, supposedly to the spas to take the waters, to the mineral baths to calm their nerves—pure nonsense." Here "constitutzia" refers to tsar's

October Manifesto The October Manifesto (), officially "The Manifesto on the Improvement of the State Order" (), is a document that served as a precursor to the Russian Empire's first Constitution, which was adopted the following year in 1906. The Manifesto was is ...

in which the first Russian Constitution was promised, and which was followed by the 1905 Kyiv pogrom (and other pogroms all over the Russian Empire). Antoni Bortnowski remarks that Yehupetz was not the only portrayal of Kyiv by Sholem Aleichem. A very unpleasant image of an unnamed town was given in the novel ''The Bloody Hoax'', but numerous hints, such as "a large glorious city where a Jew needs a residence permit", point at Kyiv.

References

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Name

Portrayal

See also

References

Further reading