Life in a Hasidic Court in Russian Poland toward the End of the 19th and the Early 20th Centuries

Because she was the daughter of a Hasidic rabbi in Poland, Ita Kalish’s secular education was undertaken in secret, conducted against her father’s wishes. After his death when she was sixteen, Kalish left her husband and daughter behind to live in Warsaw with her sisters. There, they became active in secular and Zionist circles. In 1923, she moved to Berlin; when the Nazi Party assumed power in 1933, Kalish immigrated to Palestine, where she worked for the Jewish Agency and, eventually, for the Israeli civil service. Despite her withdrawal from Hasidic life, Kalish’s memoirs vividly depict the atmosphere of her father’s court.