By the rivers of Belarus, we wept, when we remembered Zion

Alter Rebbe’s son Moshe, AKA Leon Ulyevich (from Ulla), or Piotr Alexandrovich

Prof. Nissim Leon speaks about Mizrachim in a podcast. He says the name is not geographic in origin, but a phantom pain you feel from an amputated organ that is no longer there…

The Great and Mighty Dvina River

The Dvina River starts as Western Dvina in Russia (a separate river in northern Russia called Northern Dvina). Three great and mighty rivers descend from the same hills in Russia — Dvina, Volga, and even the Ukrainian Dnepr further to the south.

The Dvina river defines major towns in Northern Belarus, Vitebsk, Polozk, Beshenkovichy (the birthplace of Solomon Yudovin) and then flows into Latvia (where it’s sometimes called Daugava) through the small Druya, and appropriately named Dvinsk, and ultimately on to Riga, where it flows out into the Baltic Sea.

To understand the economy of the river, follow the Berlin family. Shaya Berlin’s adoptive great-grandfather from Vitebsk built the largest timber businesses in the Baltics, in Riga. Timber would be shipped from the forests in Russia and Belarus down the Dvina river, where it would be cut and processed in Riga, and then sold as lumber to the hungry builders of the European continent.

Tributary Rivers

Many tributaries rivers flow into Dvina. Where the river Ulla flows into the carotid artery of Dvina, there is a town, Ulla.

Ulla River at its confluence with Dvina.

That town was a hometown of Moshe, Alter Rebbe’s youngest son. He married a daughter of the town Rabbi. Moshe was born in 1779 or 1784, so when Alter Rebbe died in 1812, Moshe was 33 or 28. The “incident” was about 8 years after Alter Rebbe died. Alter Rebbe knew about the schizophrenia and frantically tried to help his son.

I imagine Moshe (AKA Leon Ulyevich, or Piotr Alexandrovich) desperately pacing those banks in lonely, relentless rage.

River (“Western”) Dvina near Ulla.

The Battle of Chashniki or the Battle of Ulla

An episode of the Livonian War (Russian-Lithuanian War of 1561-1570):

“After the capture of Polotsk in 1563, Ivan the Terrible planned to expand his conquests in Lithuania. To do this, he strengthened the corps of Pyotr Shuisky, whom he now appointed chief governor, sending several detachments from different cities to help him. With this army, Shuisky set out from Polotsk to unite near Orsha with the Serebryany-Obolensky princes, who led to him another army and unarmed recruits from Smolensk. Shuisky carried with him a heavy convoy with guns, as well as weapons for Prince Serebryany’s recruits. On January 26, 1564, on the way to Orsha, near the town of Chashniki, Nikolai Radziwill, at the head of a Lithuanian detachment, blocked the path of Shuisky’s army. In total, there were 20-25 thousand Russian troops fallen in the battle.”

That’s a lot of killing without the automatic weapons.

How this post started

Several documents from the archives have been translated (transcribed). The originals are in Polish and Russian. When I was reluctantly reading and even preparing to translate some, I realized that Prof. David Assaf already did the incredible work of recognizing and decoding the characters. The archives were not yet available when the book came out in Hebrew (we spoke about it on the old mentalblog). Here is the text by David Assaf.

Schizophrenia

But I am no longer interested in cold history. There is a typical pattern of Schizophrenia with Moshe, it appears in teens and then there are better months when a person could seem almost normal and inevitable slide into psychosis.

I am speaking here on behalf of the families that been cursed with such a tragedy and, on top of that, the nightmare of hiding schizophrenia. Imprison the sufferers in concentration camps, torture with drugs, even lobotomy (Rosemary Kennedy).

Stop hiding real tragic life, making it a fairy tale. It deprives the families of compassion and understanding. The families feel more isolated when friendship is called for and desperately needed.

I also protest the purveyors of the fairy tale world, from the Alter Rebbe to the Rebbe himself. They made the problem 1,000 (add as many zeros here) times worse, although both knew Schizophrenia in the immediate family. One would expect that, knowing that a crazy genius is the flip side of madness. Or maybe it’s the same side. You don’t need to be a genius to notice that.

Some say the Rebbe went crazy at the end of his life. I would rather say he was despondent, lonely, isolated, especially after his wife died. This is before the stroke. I can relate to that. But how can you keep sanity in this world? Maybe schizophrenics are normal because they are unable to hide from the reality?