Photograph: Lepel jew. Shlomo Friedman (?).

European Jews

Vitebsk Guberniya, Lepelsky Uyezd

1866

Museum of the Peoples of the USSR

Salt paper print

13,9 x 7,5; 17,7 x 13,8

РЭМ 8764-21536

The man with a kippah on his head is dressed in a long leather labserdak, and has leather boots on his feet. 1,590 Jews lived in Lepel in 1865 (774 men and 816 women), which made over 30 percent of the town’s population. The town had a few small enterprises предприятий (a brickyard and a brewery, which were founded and owned by Jews. In 1849, a tannery was opened where from 1866 all business and all employees (3 persons) were managed by citizen Shlomo Friedman. In the second half of the 19th century, Lepel District became the center of tanning production of Vitebsk Province; about 10 tanneries were active there. The photograph was displayed at the Russian Ethnographic Exhibition of 1867 in Moscow.