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Oshry, Ephraim
(1914–2003), rabbi and halakhic authority, known primarily for his book She’elot u-teshuvot mi-ma‘amakim, a collection of halakhic rulings issued in the Kovno (Kaunas) ghetto during the Holocaust period. Ephraim (Efroim)…
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Ostrava
Coal-mining and industrial town in northern Moravia (near the Polish border) in today’s Czech Republic. Ostrava (Ger., Mährisch-Ostrau; known as Moravská Ostrava until 1918) was one of the youngest Jewish communities in …
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Ostrog
(Pol., Ostróg; Yid., Ostre), town on the Goryn’ River (a tributary of the Pripyat’), a district center of Ukraine’s Rovno region. From the 1320s, Ostróg was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and from 1569 it belonged…
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Ostropolyer, Hershele
(1770?–1810), folk figure. Although what we know about Hershele Ostropolyer is based mostly on oral tradition and folklore, he was also a real person. Hershele is thought to have come from Balta, Ukraine, and his name is…
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Other Occupations
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Otsar ha-Sifrut
Hebrew publication, issued between 1887 and 1896 and again in 1902. Otsar ha-sifrut (Treasury of Literature), known also as Bet otsar ha-sifrut, appeared in five volumes between 1887 and 1896 and then was intended as a m…
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Oyerbakh, Rokhl
(also commonly Rachel Auerbach; 1903–1976), writer and essayist in Yiddish and Polish. Rokhl Oyerbakh was born in Lanowitz (mod Ukr., Lanovitsy), a small village in Podolia. Although the family later moved to Lwów, her r…
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Oyslender, Nokhem
(1893–1962), Soviet Yiddish author, critic, and literary scholar. Born into a timber merchant’s family in Khodorkov, Volhynia, Nokhem Oyslender received his secondary education in Kiev and studied medicine at universitie…
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OZE
Organization devoted to the promotion of health, hygiene, and childcare among Jews. Founded on 7 August 1912 in Saint Petersburg as the Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jewish Population, OZE (Obshchestvo …
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Painting and Sculpture
[This entry focuses on artists in Russian lands. For discussion of visual artists of other regions, see the biographical entries on those listed in the "Visual and Performing Arts" section of the Synoptic Outline.]
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Pale of Settlement
The territories of the Russian Empire in which Jews were permitted permanent settlement. Although large in size (approximately 472,590 square miles or 1,224,008 sq km), and containing areas of dynamic economic growth, th…
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Pals, Sesto
(1913–2002), poet. Sesto Pals (Simion Şestopali) was born in Odessa. His family fled to Galați, Romania, after the Russian Revolution. Having obtained the status of Italian subject, his father changed the family name fro…
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Paneth, Yeḥezkel
(1783–1845), chief rabbi of Transylvania. In the eighteenth century, the Paneth family formed the core of the small Jewish settlement in Bielitz (Bielsko-Biała) in Austrian Silesia; the town was located between Moravia t…
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Panevėžys
Town in northeastern Lithuania, on the Nevėžys River; the town served as a district capital. From 1843, Panevėžys (in Jewish usage, variously Ponevezh, Ponivezh, or Ponevich) was included in Kovno guberniia. Jews began t…
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Pap, Károly
(1897–1945), Hungarian writer. The third child of Miksa Pollák (1868–1944), rabbi of Sopron, Károly Pap was 17 and attending high school when World War I broke out. He volunteered and served as an officer on the Italian …
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Paper Cuts
The making of paper cuts by Jews in Eastern Europe, which differed in style from those made by Jews elsewhere, flourished particularly in the nineteenth century and began to fade as an art in the 1920s. These development…
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Paperna, Avraham Ya‘akov
(1840–1919), Hebrew poet and critic. Avraham Ya‘akov Paperna was born in Kapolia (Kapyl), in the Minsk district of Russia, and was drawn to the Haskalah from an early age. In 1859, Paperna’s family moved to Bobruisk, and…
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Parody
With the onset of the modern period, parody became a quantitatively significant component within the genre of Jewish satire. The genre of parody was used to comment on a wide variety of themes connected to Jewish life, i…
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Parties and Ideologies
The history of Jewish political parties in Eastern Europe was short, stretching as it did only from the 1880s until 1949, when what little remained of them after World War II was liquidated by the then recently establish…
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Pascheles, Wolf
(1814–1857), Hebrew printer, publisher, and bookseller. The son of impoverished parents, Wolf Pascheles earned his livelihood from childhood by tutoring in Prague and its immediate vicinity. In 1828, he edited and publis…
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