Shpikov also was the site of the Shpikov Hasidic dynasty, the first rebbe of which was Rabbi Menachem Nochum Twersky of Shpykiv.

Shpikov (the old name is Shpikovka, Ukrainian – Shpikiv, Polish –Shpikuv, Jewish – Shpikev), is a town in the Tul’chinsky district in the Vinnitsa Region of the Ukraine. Before 1923, it belonged to the Brazlav “uezd,” an administrative unit similar to a county.

The town is located around a small lake and the River Shpikovka, which is a tributary of the South Bug River, near the highway Vinnitsa – Nemirov – Mogilev. The distance to Tul’chin is 26 km, to Dzhurin – 26 km, and to the nearest railroad station – 8 km.

HISTORY The first time the hamlet Shpikov in the Brazlav vicinity is mentioned in some documents is 1507. At that time, it became the property of the gentry’s landowner Semen Koshka. In 1582 Shpikov, which at the time was called Oshpekov, along with other settlements was bought by the Prince Ostrozhsky. Subsequently the hamlet was owned by the Polish families Zamojsky, Konetspol’sky, Pototsky, and in the second half of the 18th century it became the property of the landowners Svejkovsky.

In the beginning of the 17th century Shpikov used to be a relatively big place; in 1629 there were 174 homes, but the Kazak wars in the second half of the century destroyed Shpikov.

The Jews, who settled in Shpikov in the first half of the 18th century, suffered terribly from the Kazaks. In 1765 there were 21 registered Jews who later were administratively assigned to the town of Krasne, which is presently called Krasnoye. After the Second Division of Poland, the town of Shpikov counted a population of 1850 persons, and was made a part of the Podolsk Gubernia (Region).

The description of Shpikov, at about the end of the 18th to the beginning of the 19th centuries, lists two wooden “traktirs,” a name for a drinking establishment, and five small stores that sold groceries. They bought their supplies in Nemirov and Tul’chin. The owner of the village, Mikhail Svejkovsky, also owned a brewery, a mill, and an apiary for 350 bee-hives. Honey was one of the main sources of income for the landowner, as well as for the town’s population in general. At that time there were 221 houses where 1427 Christians resided, and two places where 48 Jews resided. The Jews of Shpikov rented one wooden traktir (a drinking place) and two water-operated mills in a nearby village, down the River Shpikovka.

In 1844 the landowner Svejkovsky established a sugar-producing plant. There, as well as at the mills, the laborers were mostly people from other places, but many of them eventually would settle in Shpikovka. In 1852, according to the official documents, there were four Christian tradesmen and 24 Jewish tradesmen. Sixteen of them were legal residents of other places and came to Shpikov for work.

The Jewish community had very little, if any, rights vis-a-vis the local landowner. For many years there was ongoing conflict between them. Both sides complained to the administration of the Podolsk Governor in 1850. The landowner, Lev Svejkovsky, accused the Jews of thievery, usury, buying and selling stolen goods, and demanded that they will be expelled from Shpikov on the grounds that his land was never properly designated as open to settlement by Jews, who settled there without his permission, and, having established their own numerous households, were detrimental to the value of his property. He claimed at that time there were 190 Jews in Shpikov.

On the other hand, Mordehai Guberman, the representative of the Jewish community, which at that time had a status of a recognized administrative unit, after the “kahals” were disbanded in 1844, appealed to the governor, citing the numerous grievances against the landowner. He complained that for thirty years the landowner forbade the Jews to sell some products, and several years ago forbade them to buy food staples at the local bazaars. In 1848, during the cholera epidemic, he threw a Jewish family and their belongings out of one of the houses, and the father of the family died the next day. The landowner began to arbitrarily raise the payments for the use of his lands by cows owned by Jews. In 1849 and 1859, he confiscated from the Jews all the firewood which was properly bought from the locals. Six years prior, the landowner and his henchmen attacked the Jewish school during the Yom Kippur, threw out all the books, took all the tzedakah money, and let the Russian army use this house for its needs.

This long-simmering acrimony did not make it to the court, though, and the matter was unofficially settled. The Jews remained there, and shortly Shpikov had new owners, the Balashov family. The Jewish community at the time was in a pretty dire financial shape. In 1858 they could not pay the 98 rubles, silver, which was a part of the assessment by the Senate to pay for a building in Brazlav to house the local police. According to the official documents, in 1853 the shtetl Shpikov had two places of worship attended by about one hundred people. There were two rabbis, Moshe Brazlavsky and Lejb Shnaiderman.

In 1860 – 1870, the main economic activity in Shpikov was manufacturing sugar. The product was selling well on the internal markets, and was exported abroad, including to Finland and Persia. At the All-Russia expositions in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Nizhniy Novgorod, the local sugar plant was awarded silver and bronze medals. Slowly developing, the village evolved and grew into a town. This was reflected in its new administrative designation. In the early 1860’s Shpikov became the center of a volost (the smallest administrative unit), as a part of the Brazlav uezd (roughly a county), in the Podolsk Region. The Jews settled mostly in the commercial part of the town, while the peasants lived in a more quiet (?) part of the town. In 1888 Shpikov had 499 houses, and its population was 2,982. The Jews comprised about 18%, (530 people according to information in 1889).

A new chapter in the life of Shpikov began with the settlement there of some Chasid tzaddiks from the so-called Chernobyl dynasty. In 1885 rabbi Menahem-Nahum Twersky, who was known by Chassidim as Rabbi Nukhimtse, was invited to Shpikov to bless the new Jewish cemetery. Before that the Jews had their burial place in Pechersk. According to Chasidic stories, the rebbe was able to walk around the cemetery only three times, versus the obligatory four, because he fainted and had no energy to complete the ritual walk.

Since he happened to be in Shpikov anyway, Rabbi Menahem-Nahum decided he might as well settle there. Several months before, his father, rabbi Yitzchak from Skvir, passed away, and his older brother Avraam-Yiehoshua Heshel (d. 1887) became the Skvirsker rebbe. It is plausible that the invitation issued to the tzaddik to bless the new cemetery was the result of prior negotiations between the Shpikov community and the tzaddik himself who was looking for a place to establish his domicile.

As soon as he arrived in Shpikov, there inevitably began a dispute in the community about where the tzaddik should live. Some people insisted that he should use the place near the synagogue and the pharmacy; and, of course, other thought he should establish his compound at the end of the town, using land that belonged to the Balashov family. As a result, the community signed a 99-year lease for the land from the Balashovs, where the estate, the compound was eventually built. Alas, Menahem- Nohum did not live to see it finished. He got sick and died in April, 1886. And his son Mordehai (Motele) became the Shpikov rebbe.

The compound of the Shpikov tzaddiks and its life were described by the grandson of Rebbe Mordehai, a renowned writer named Johann Twersky ( b. 1900, Shpikov – d. 1967, Tel Aviv) in his memoir, The Inner Court: The Family History. In his book the writer, who lived the first 19 years of his life in Shpikov, relied also on the recollections of his mother and other relatives. Subsequently, Johann Twersky resided in Germany, in the United States, and in Israel.

This is how he described the estate, the compound of the tzaddik: The compound – the big wooden gate, and next to it is a small door. Behind the gate is a big masonry building. The front rooms, each with its own name and a different color of the walls, were intended for the visitors, and the rooms in the back were for the family. In the Blue Room stood many bookcases with antique books. In the right corner there was an entrance to the small bedroom of Grandpa (Reb Mordehai). In the locked cases -- the family treasures inherited through the time: the knife that belonged to BESHT, a caftan that belonged to Reb Nahum from Chernobyl; the gold-and-amethyst snuff-box that used to be the property of Shaul Val’, a Jewish merchant who, according to legend, was elected the King of Poland for one night. In front of the compound there is a big square where special blessings for the new month are recited and weddings are celebrated. Across the compound is the “klojz,” a special worship place for my grandfather, his household, and his Chassidim. This building has twelve windows symbolizing the twelve Israel tribes.

The main building had an entrance from a covered porch. In the so-called long corridor stood a big bucket with water for the traditional hand-washing, and at the end of the corridor, in the special wardrobe, was a samovar. Also there was the Red Room, where at Purim the Megilat Esther was recited; and Chava’s (the wife of Reb Mordehai) dining room. She was the daughter of Reb Johann Twersky from the Rakhmistrovka, and she died of typhus in 1918. Next to the dining room were the so-called dark bedroom, and the bedrooms of other members of the family. The big kitchen was located in a separate building; there was also a special small place for keeping ice in the summer, and also a rather huge place where, during the festivals, the “tish” -– a very special dining of the tzaddik and his Chassidim -- took place.

In addition to the Rebbe’s family, in the compound there resided the house helpers, and also the gabaim of different levels and purposes: secretaries and advisors, who conducted and organized meetings with visitors, wrote for the “kvitlekh” for them -– the notes that are submitted to the Rebbe -- collected payments for audiences with the Rebbe and donations from other communities. Here also resided the so-called “roomers” who lived at the compound and did some housekeeping duties in exchange for room and board, or the people who studied Torah in the “klojz;” there were about forty of them. Local and transient beggars also found food there, and during World War I – the Austrian Jews who became POWs. Chassidim who were coming to visit Grandpa would also stop by, and it was generally a gathering place for the Shpikov Jews. At the time of Reb Mordehai, the compound was the center of the whole community. Here were the old and young, the big and small, the wealthy, who in the synagogue sat at the Eastern Wall, and the simple mortals; rabbis who have deep knowledge of Torah, and people who could not read; Jews who were the pride and glory of the community, and tailors and all other kinds of tradesmen.

An especially large gathering for the Chassidim used to be during the family simchas, mostly the weddings. At the celebration of Simchat Torah one of the “roomers,” Itzy- Mejerl, would dance on the long table, raising his arms to heaven and singing with great emotion. A chazan, who used to imbibe quite a bit, would sit over the broom (?), and jump back and forth, up and down, singing all kinds of funny songs.

On Pesah in the White Room would be one table for the men, and adjacent to it was another for Grandma and other women of the compound. For Grandpa there was a special pillow so he could recline on it placing his weight on his left arm. He was dressed in white, his yarmulke was embroidered in gold and silver, and his belt was also embroidered in silver.

Rabbi Mordehai was a very nice, considerate, and approachable person. Unlike some other rabbis in his position, he forbade his Chassidim to visit him on Pesah, so they could enjoy the holidays with their own families, or, he would say, bring the whole family! He was not an aggressive opponent of the Haskalah movement. He tried very hard to help the Jews escape conscription in the army. Rabbi Mordehai died on April 14, 1914.

In accordance with the laws and traditions, it is forbidden to leave the deceased body unburied overnight. Hence, he was buried the same night. The old and the young followed the body to the grave. They were Chasidim and lay people, Jews and non- Jews. Many people felt close to the dead tzaddik. He felt a particular affinity for simple people. He used to say to his gabbai, Chaim, “A simple tradesmen in my eyes is more worthy than an idle rich person.”

Reb Mordehai had two sons and three daughters. The oldest, Rabbi Yitzhak-Nahum (1888 – 1942), was renowned from childhood for his ability in studying Torah. He learned Kabbalah from Rabbi Aaron of Tsfat. He was married to the daughter of rabbi Yissahar-Dov from Bells, and he resided at the estate of his father-in-law in Galicia, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1914 he came to visit his sick father, and upon his death agreed to remain in Shpikov and become the Shpikov rebbe. He also enjoyed a great respect in the community. People from all walks of life were drawn to him because his soulfulness and spirituality also made their lives more meaningful.

World War I and the subsequent Civil War kept him apart from his family for five long years. The family remained in Belles. During the Civil War he survived by a miracle. Only in 1919 did Rabbi Yitzhak-Nahum manage to come back to his family in Belles, but in 1927 he accepted an appointment as a rabbi in the Galician town of Rava- Russkaya. Rabbi Yitzhak-Nahum and all his family were murdered in the Belzhez Camp in 1942.

The second son of Reb Mordehai, Rabbi Moshe-David, who died in 1942, married the daughter of the Rashkovsky tzaddik Shlomo-Zalman, and moved to live in Rashkov, where he became a rebbe after the death of his father-in-law in 1916.

The older daughter of Reb Mordehai, Feige, was given in marriage to Rabbi Shalom- Joseph (1877 – 1920), the great-grandson of Rabbi Israel from Ruzhin, and the grandson of rabbi Yitzhak from Bogush, Romania. He did not count on taking over the place of his grandfather in Bogush; Shalom-Joseph remained in Shpikov, and founded his own estate, his own compound. He was the only descendant of the rabbi Israel from Ruzhin, who resided in Russia. The Chassidim from Ruzhin were different from the Chernobyl Chassidim, and also the Sadogorsky Chassidim, who could not regularly visit their own tzaddiks, who resided on the territories of Rumania and Austria. So they began to visit him instead. His older son, David (1898 – 1941), became the rebbe of the city of Ploiesti in Rumania and perished in the Shoah. The other son, Yitzhak (1903 – 1992), married the daughter of his own uncle, Rabbi Menahem-Mendel from Bogush and, with the name of the Bogush rebbe, relocated to Israel.

The Haskalah movement came to Shpikov with some delay, only in the 1880’s. The medium of this intellectual news was the itinerant bookseller. Every two weeks Pinkhas, a bookseller from Krasnoye, would come to Shpikov to sell religious books, taliises, trinkets (?), mezuzahs, etc. He also was had short stories by Shomer, Bluvshtein, Linetsky, and the novels of A.M. Dik. Pinkhas lent these books for reading on the condition that they be returned by his next visit to Shpikov. It was a sort of moving library. The books were primarily intended for the women, but even men, who presumably were supposed to read only religious books in Hebrew, read this literature in Yiddish, which opened for them a new and larger world. The Torah scribe rabbi Asher kept a public library in his home. Since the authorities did not give permission to have such library, it functioned clandestinely. The community paid off the local “pristav” (the police officer) to turn a blind eye on the library.

The influence of Haskalah was felt at the estate of Reb Mordehai as well. He not only invited melamed Pinkhas-Elli to teach his daughters traditional psalms, but he also invited one Lejb-der-Shreiber to teach them the Russian language. In 1910, for the benefit of his grandson Johann, Rebbe Menahem invited rabbi Yaakov, the son of the shochet Moshe, to teach him Talmud. The leader of the local Zionists, Nahum Vinnitsky, taught the young Johann the Tanach, Jewish history, and some secular subjects.

The influence of secular literature was very noticeable in the lives of the two younger daughters of Reb Mordehai. Mirra, who died in Shpikov in 1918 of typhus, divorced her husband, the son of the Stolin tzaddik, returned to live in Shpikov, wrote poetry, and published under the literary name Bat-Tovim. Khaya was married to the son of the Trijske Rebbe Nahum (1879 – 1942), whose estate was in Warsaw. Overcoming huge difficulties, Khaya also divorced her husband and returned to Shpikov, raising two sons alone:, Joachim (Johann?) and Avraam. Khaya supported Johann’s literary interests and took him to meet with X-H. Bialik and I. L. Peretz.

In addition to the “klojzls” at the estates of rabbis Mordehai and Shalom-Joseph, Shpikov had, at the beginning of the 20th century, a synagogue and the “ klojz” for the tailors. The rabbi of the shtetl was one Moshe-Lejb, who was exceptionally Orthodox. The community supported the public bath-house with the mikvah, and a place where the poor, the beggars could stay. Occasionally, some itinerant theatrical troupes would come to Shpikov. They held their performances at the stables, and the horses had to be temporary relocated.

Shpikov remained not a wealthy place. Only in 1897 the Jews were able to cover in stone several streets in the commercial district using the money from a special assessment. Shpikov had two fire brigades, one at the sugar plant, and another at the volost administration building. About twenty Jews owned several small stores, mostly groceries, and the majority, sold their wares from pushcarts at local bazaars. Jews owned the pharmacy and the mill. They sold raw materials to the owners of the sugar plant, the cement and masonry plants, to the soap and candles plants. To support the entrepreneurs, Shpikov Jews organized a mutual credit association. The chairman was S. Bromberg. In 1913, the association counted among its members 113 people, 93 of them Jews.

In front of the volost administration building stood a blue-grayish bust of Emperor Alexander II. The younger population of Shpikov wondered, How come the all-powerful Emperor of All-Russia has no legs! Shpikov had a public school with two grades. The square in front of the Rebbe’s estate was the border. Beyond it was what the administration considered the rural area where Jews were forbidden to live, in accordance with the decision of May 3, 1882. Shpikov was a birthplace of Akiva Gorin (1892—1980). The son of the local melamed Mordehai Globman, he became one of the founders and leaders of the “hezaluz” (hechalutz?) movement in the Ukraine, and later one of the leaders of the trade-unions and the Labor Party (MAPAI) in Israel, and was elected to the Knesset.

During the Civil War, Shpikov Jews organized a local militia for self-defense. Alas, after the bandits killed E.I. Yanko, the owner of the mill and the the head of the militia, it ceased to exist.

While Shpikov was left unprotected, the rabbis continued their studies of Talmud and Torah. The various bands of reds, whites, greens, and other assorted murderers and marauders came to Shpikov in waves. The families would hide in the cellars, and any other places where they could find refuge waiting for the band to leave. Shpikov was lucky, having avoided the formal, typical pogroms with murders and rapes, but all the passing bands and partisans (and who could tell the difference) would burgle and steal anything and everything. Once a band entered the Rebbe’s estate and demanded that, within three hours, the Jews would deliver forty pairs of boots, fifty overcoats, sixty saddles, and 200 hundred thousand rubles. Rabbi Yitzhak-Nahum said that the shtetl just didn’t have the capacity to provide all these goodies. He was scheduled to be executed, but at the last minute the band had to leave abruptly because a competing band was on the horizon.

By the end of the Civil War both the Chassidic estates in Shpikov ceased to exist. Rabbi Shalom-Joseph and his wife and son died from typhus; Chava, the widow of rabbi Mordehai, also died, and her daughter Mirra as well.. The remaining members of the family left Shpikov. Rabbi Yitzhak-Nahum went to his wife in Bells; Khaya and her sons moved to Pashkov, and from there to Berlin. Many Jews left Shpikov for the big cities or Rumania.

At the beginning of 1920 the Soviet administration was established in Shpikov. As in many places, a Jewish orphanage and a small clinic were established in Shpikov. In 1923, Shpikov volost was reorganized into a district, and Shpikov became a district center.

In the 1920’s, the social and professional makeup of the Jewish population changed dramatically. In 1928 there were 114 Jewish proletarians or laborers, and 37 people who worked for what we call the public sector as low grade bureaucrats; there were, of course, small business owners of various types. According to the census, in 1928 Shpikov had 25 unemployed Jews. Many Jews were leaving for the big cities to find work and a new life. Shpikov was losing its Jewish population. In 1923 there were 1126 Jews in Shpikov; in 1939 – 895; and in 1998 – only 13.

On the 22nd of July, 1941, Shpikov was occupied by the Rumanian army, and became a part of the zone of Rumanian occupation. A ghetto was established for the Jews. On December 8, 1941, the 848 Jews of Shpikov were expelled to the village of Rogozino, on the banks of the River Bug, somewhat around Pechery. In Shpikov only 27 Jews remained. In August, 1942, the Jews from Rogozino were relocated to the concentration camp in Pechery. According to official numbers, 539 Jews from the Shpikov district died there. The Red Army liberated Shpikov on March 18, 1944.

After the war, the Jewish population in Shpikov continued to decrease, especially after Shpikov lost its status as the district center in 1962. In 1998 the total population of Shpikov was 4200, and only 13 were Jewish. About ten buildings remain from the end of the 19th century, representing the typical Jewish houses of the era. The old Jewish quarter with the synagogue building did not survive.

The Jewish cemetery is located on the south end of Shpikov, on the hill. The cemetery remains practically intact. According to Johann Twersky, the first person buried there in 1858 was a Jew from Dzhurin. At the border of the cemetery a memorial was erected to commemorate the tzaddiks buried there: Rabbis Mordehai, Shalom-Joseph, and his son Israel. There are also burial places of the two Shpikov rabbis from the beginning of the 20th century: Moshe-Arye Zilberfarm, the son of Rabbi Shaul-Note (died in 1902); and Rabbi Nahum-Aaron, the son of Rabbi Yaakov-Yehuda, who died in 1923.