Novogrudok

NOVOGRUDOK (Pol. Nowogródek; also referred to by Jews as Novaredok), city in Grodno district, Belarus. Novogrudok was within Poland-Lithuania until the third partition of Poland (1795), when it passed to Russia, from 1842, and a county capital in the province of Minsk. It reverted to Poland in 1921, but passed to the Soviet Union in 1939. The Jewish community of Novogrudok, one of the oldest in Lithuania, is first mentioned in documents in 1529. In 1563, at the request of the townspeople, King Sigismund II Augustus ordered that the Jews were to move to one of two streets at a distance from the center, where space had been allocated to them for building houses. In 1576 King Stephan Báthory confirmed all the former rights of the Jews of Novogrudok and of the other Jews in Lithuania. According to a decision of the Council of the Province of Lithuania (see *Councils of the Lands) of 1623, Novogrudok Jews were subject to the jurisdiction of the *Brest community. There were 893 poll tax payers in the community and surrounding villages attached to it in 1765. There were 2,756 persons in 1847 and 5,105 in 1897 (63.5% of the total population). In the 19^th century two of Russia's leading rabbis, Jehiel Michael *Epstein and Isaac Elhanan *Spektor, officiated in Novogrudok. At the end of the 19^th century the city became one of the centers of the *Musar movement after a *yeshivah and *kolel had been founded there in 1896 by Joseph Hurwitz, one of the most prominent disciples of Israel *Salanter and a leader of the Musar movement. During World War I the yeshivah was transferred to *Gomel. The Zionist movement and the Bund were active before World War I and after. The community decreased considerably after that war, numbering 3,405 (53.4% of the total) in 1921 and increasing to 6,309 in 1931. There were a Hebrew Tarbut school, a Yiddish CYSHO school that operated for 4 years, and a religious Tushia school (of the Mizrachi). In the 1930s the Yiddish weeklies Novaredok Life and Novaredok Week appeared in the town.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

S.A. Bershadski (ed.), Russko-Yevreyskiy arkhiv, 2 (1882), 183, 202; Nedelnaya Khronika Voskhoda, no. 47 (1887); Ha-Ẓefirah, 280 (1887); Regesty i Nadpisi, 1–2 (1899–1910), indexes; M.Z.H. Walbrinski and S.Z. Markovitz, Le-Korot Ir Novohredak ve-Rabbaneha (1913); A. Harkavy, Novoredak (1921); idem, Perakim me-Ḥayyai (1938), 4–18; J. Źmigródski, Nowogródek i okolice (1927); M. Schalit (ed.), Oyf di Khurbons fun Milkhomes un Mehumes (1913), 393–411, 1093–101; A. Gumener (ed.), 15 Yor Kinder-Heym in Novogrudek (1933); Yahadut Lita, 1 (1959), index; Sefer Novorodek (1963). HOLOCAUST PERIOD: T. and Z. Belski, Yehudei Ya'ar (1946); B. Ajzensztajn, Ruch podziemny w gettach i obozach (1946), 182–3; Y. Jaffe, Partizanim (1951); M. Zuckerman and M. Bassok (eds.), Milḥamot ha-Getta'ot (1954), 63, 492–3; M. Kahanowitz, Milḥemet ha-Partizanim ha-Yehudim be-Mizraḥ Eiropah (1954), index; Sefer ha-Partizanim ha-Yehudim, 1 (1958), 415–6.