Talmud Torah on Malzgasse
At Vienna’s Talmud Torah on Malzgasse, a bar mitzvah boy puts on tefillin while Rabbi Yeshaya Furst looks on, then the boys sit for an examination and receive rewards.
From the 1923 film Opfer des Hasses (Victims of Hatred). This copy carries a “1938” label, but the film is from 1923. The Colorized toggle adds computer color; the archive film is black and white. Use the buttons to jump between scenes.
Packed benches on Malzgasse
The camera opens on a packed shul: boys filling the benches, some in yarmulkes and some in caps, men standing by the ark, candles burning, a man in a tallis davening up front.
Bar mitzvah
From those benches the title card cuts to “Bar Mizwah,” and someone helps the boy put on tefillin while other boys crowd in to watch. Off to the side stands an older rav with a long white beard. The boy has no name on the card. The older rav is Rabbi Yeshaya Furst, written Jesaja or Sigmund in German records.
He led Adas Yisroel at the Schiffshul on Große Schiffgasse, a different address from this Talmud Torah.
Beside him stand two other men, neither named on the film. One looks like a teacher: he helps with the tefillin, and he appears again at the history lesson. The other may be a school official. We are not sure.
Malzgasse 16
Later the camera follows boys out through a gate whose signs say Talmud Thora. The address on those signs is Malzgasse 16, in Vienna’s second district, Leopoldstadt.
Shul and school shared that lot, and the examination scenes are here. The classroom scenes were shot in the gym; folding doors opened that room into the shul.
School toward the street
In 2023 Tamara Koplmüller of TU Wien rebuilt that same Malzgasse lot as a 3D model for her diploma thesis. From the street you enter at the gate the film shows and meet the school first. The shul sits farther back, on the courtyard, its rounded face looking across the yard toward the school.
3D reconstructions by Tamara Koplmüller, TU Wien, 2023 (DOI; PDF).
The history lesson
Inside that school a boy stands beside his teacher with an open book. The blackboard names Avraham and Nimrod, Yaakov and Lavan, Pharaoh and Moshe. Under the names is a line from the Haggadah: בכל דור ודור עומדים עלינו לכלותנו והקב״ה מצילנו מידם. In every generation they rise against us to destroy us, and Hashem saves us from their hands.
The title card calls this the history lesson. After it come Talmud study, a hard question, and an examination before the older rav, with the boys gathered around him.
Rewarding the diligent
The next card is “Belohnung der Fleißigen” (“Rewarding the diligent”). Rabbi Yeshaya Furst stands by the bimah with the teacher and the other unnamed man, and the boys come up one by one. Each boy gets a candy, and each kisses the rav’s hand.
The institute photograph
The rav watching the tefillin sat, that same year, for a group photograph with pupils of Vienna’s Jewish institute for deaf children.
Eleven years later, in 1934, another class was photographed at that same Talmud Torah on Malzgasse 16. Leo Luster was in that class.
Große Schiffgasse 8
The rav on Malzgasse led a different kehillah. Around 1928 a photographer stood at the back of that shul, the Schiffshul on Große Schiffgasse 8, and looked toward the ark: rows of benches on the floor, galleries along both sides.
The film and what followed
The clip is from Opfer des Hasses, made in 1923 for Hilfswerk Agudas Jisroel, Vienna, a relief office of the Agudah (Agudath Israel). An acted story of a refugee grandfather and his two grandchildren sits beside real footage of Jewish schools and welfare homes in Vienna and Baden. The film was made to raise support for that work.
On 24 July 1923 the film had a press screening at the Rotenturmkino, at Fleischmarkt 1. Vienna’s Jewish weekly Die Wahrheit, 10 August 1923, named footage of the Talmud Torah school. Filmarchiv Austria holds the restored film.
Three days after that screening, Vienna’s Agudah weekly Jüdische Presse printed “Unser Film” and praised the picture for the orphan homes and for the Sammeltag (collection day) on 29 July.
In November a fight with Mizrachi (the religious Zionist movement) landed on that same school. On 2 November 1923 Vienna’s Mizrachi weekly Jüdische Wochenschrift printed an unsigned letter from “an aggrieved Jewish father.” He wrote that the Jewish elementary and middle school on Malzgasse had no right to call itself a Talmud Torah, that teachers who were not Jews and who were German nationalists worked there, that the children were not allowed to wear a Magen David, that those teachers wore the swastika, and that during Chol Hamoed Sukkos the boys had been taken into St. Stephen’s Cathedral.
The same day the Jüdische Presse printed “Die Feinde der Talmud Thora an der Arbeit” (“The enemies of the Talmud Torah at work”). It said Rabbi Dr. Harry Levi, speaking for Mizrachi at a lecture in Mainz, had said the school had been photographed for publicity, that a boy had been made to take off a Magen David badge, and that three Christian teachers had been photographed wearing swastikas. The paper also said a Vienna Mizrachi leader was spreading the story about the church visit.
A week later the school board answered in the Jüdische Presse, signed by its president, Markus Bondi, and its secretary, Rabbi Dr. Joel Pollak.
On 16 November the Mizrachi weekly printed that letter. The board said a large part of the hours is Torah. They denied that the children had ever been taken into St. Stephen’s. They wrote that the boys were allowed to wear a Magen David, and that during school hours the school rules did not allow club badges. They said the Christian teacher does not wear the swastika. One Christian teacher had been hired for a year, they added, because no suitable Jewish applicant had come forward.
The editor then answered. He conceded the elementary-school teacher wore no swastika, but said five of the seven teachers in the attached middle school were not Jews, and that the church visit had been a school outing to look at the cathedral.
The Jüdische Presse had already answered the staff charge, in the same issue as the board’s letter. The teaching body numbered about fifteen, it wrote, and five of them taught only Jewish subjects, for about 150 hours a week.
In November 1938 the Nazis destroyed the Schiffshul and burned and desecrated the Malzgasse school and shul. Parts of the Malzgasse building survived. Rubble was sealed into a cellar. In 2018, work there uncovered objects from the school, the shul, and the Jewish museum that had shared the address. Some of those finds are on view here.
Rabbi Yeshaya Furst got out of Vienna in 1938, after decades at the Schiffshul. He was niftar in London in 1943.
Timeline
- By 1905
- Rabbi Yeshaya Furst is already serving Adas Yisroel at the Schiffshul.
- 1906–07
- The Talmud Torah school and shul on Malzgasse 16 are rebuilt to Theodor Schreier’s plans.
- 24 July 1923
- Press screening at the Rotenturmkino, Fleischmarkt 1. Vienna’s Jewish weekly Die Wahrheit later names footage of the Talmud Torah school.
- 27 July 1923
- Vienna’s Agudah weekly Jüdische Presse prints “Unser Film.”
- 2 November 1923
- Vienna’s Mizrachi weekly Jüdische Wochenschrift prints an unsigned letter charging the Malzgasse school with non-Jewish teachers, a ban on the Magen David, the swastika, and a walk into St. Stephen’s Cathedral. The same day the Jüdische Presse reports a Mizrachi lecture in Mainz that the school had been photographed for publicity.
- 9 November 1923
- The school board, over Markus Bondi and Rabbi Dr. Joel Pollak, prints a signed correction in the Jüdische Presse. They say a large part of the hours is Torah, that the boys were never taken into St. Stephen’s, that a Magen David may be worn, and that the Christian teacher does not wear the swastika. The same issue says five teachers teach only Jewish subjects, about 150 hours a week, in a teaching body of about fifteen.
- 16 November 1923
- The Mizrachi weekly reprints that letter. Its editor concedes the elementary-school teacher wore no swastika, but says five of seven middle-school teachers were not Jews, and that the church visit had been a school outing to look at the cathedral.
- 1923
- Opfer des Hasses is made. At the Talmud Torah on Malzgasse: a bar mitzvah, lessons, an examination, and rewards. Rabbi Yeshaya Furst is clear on camera. A teacher and a possible school official appear beside him; neither is named.
- 1934
- Leo Luster’s class is photographed at the Talmud Torah on Malzgasse 16.
- 1938
- Rabbi Yeshaya Furst flees Vienna. In November, the Schiffshul is destroyed and the Malzgasse school and shul are burned and desecrated.
- 1943
- Rabbi Yeshaya Furst is niftar in London.
- 2018
- Objects from the school, shul, and museum are found in a sealed cellar at Malzgasse 16.