Manuscript, Unpublished Homiletics and Talmudic Novellae – Documentation of the Lviv Pogrom of 1918

Manuscript, homiletics and Aggadic novellae on various topics, with Talmudic novellae, by an unidentified author. [Warsaw, ca. 1904-1919]; bound at the end of Halachah LeMoshe, Warsaw 1899.
The main part of the manuscript comprises novellae on Talmudic topics, and one homily, dated Bamidbar 1904. Various homiletics, in a different handwriting, dated 1917-1919, were added in the blank spaces in the manuscript. The manuscript may have been written by two writers, or by a single writer whose handwriting changed over the years. To the best of our knowledge, the manuscript was not published.
The writer mentions various synagogues in Warsaw, as well as his colleague R. Yehoshua Yaakov HaKohen a Warsaw Torah scholar; which seems to indicate that he served there as preacher or rabbi. The homilies include a eulogy on the Lviv pogrom of 1918, which serves as an interesting historical documentation of the pogrom (see below).
Beside some of the homilies appears a note in a different hand: "Recorded in section… in Chemdat Yehoshua". There is a book titled Chemdat Yehoshua by R. Yehoshua HaLevi Zambrowsky (1874-1939), who served as posek in Warsaw in 1900, and later as rabbi in Buffalo and Syracuse, NY. He may be the author of the present manuscript, though none of the present homilies are printed there.
120 pages (Halachah LeMoshe) + 26 handwritten leaves. 30.5 cm. Very dry and brittle paper. Stains. Marginal closed and open tears, affecting text. Remnants of many torn out and lacking leaves at end of manuscript. New binding.

The Lviv Pogrom of 1918 – Historical Documentation
The present manuscript includes a eulogy delivered following the pogrom which took place in Lviv in 1918, during which thousands of Jews were killed and injured. In the eulogy, given on Monday, 6th Tevet 1918, some two weeks after the pogrom, the author laments the loss of over 1000 lives, the tens of thousands left homeless, and the desecration of the synagogues.
The Lviv pogrom was perpetrated on 21-23 November 1918 by the Polish forces, with the assistance of local thugs, after the retreat of the Ukrainians during the course of the Polish-Ukrainian war. According to modern research, some 70 Jews were killed, however contemporary sources give much higher numbers. Newspaper articles of that time record some 600 dead, and later 960. This is corroborated by the eulogy in the present manuscript, which mourns the loss of over a thousand Jews.
6th Tevet, the day this eulogy was delivered, was set as a day of mourning and protest in the wake of the pogrom.

PLEASE NOTE: Item description was shortened in translation. For further information, please refer to Hebrew text.