Excerpts from the Minute Book of a Psalms Society in the Russian Army

In 1827, Tsar Nicholas I issued a statute that effectively made Russian Jews liable to military service, as part of a policy that sought to transform the Jewish population into integrated subjects who would be useful to the interests of the monarchy. While serving in the army, many Jewish soldiers maintained a sense of community by collectively participating in religious practices. A minute book, or pinkas, kept by a group of Jewish soldiers between 1864 and 1887, serving in Skudas, Lithuania, details the activities of a psalms society, or Ḥevra tehilim, organized among Jews serving in the Fourth Infantry Regiment of the Russian Army. The scribe is said to have been Judah (Yehudah) Scheindling of Shkudy. Psalms societies comprised voluntary groups of Jewish worshipers who would recite psalms in connection with specific occasions and rituals.