El Maleh Rachamim. Lamentation for 20th of Sivan for “the great Rabbi Yechiel Michel of the Nemirov congregation who was martyred in 1648” and for martyrs of the 1648 and 1649 Khmelnytsky Uprising. [Eastern Europe, early 18th century?].
Manuscript on parchment; last leaf contains calligraphic flower-patterned ornament. Lamentation in alphabetical order (printed in the Ya’abetz prayer book).
During the 1648 and 1649 Khmelnytsky Uprising over one hundred thousand Jews from towns of Southern Ukraine and Poland were brutally massacred by the Cossack military under the leadership of Bogdan Khmelnytsky. On the 20th of Sivan 1648, the entire congregation of Nemirov was massacred, approximately six thousand men, women and children together with their esteemed rabbi, Rabbi Yechiel Michel. This day was established for generations as a fast day on which lamentations composed especially for this day are recited. The fast day of the 20th of Sivan is kept throughout certain congregations until today and the Belz Rebbe recently reestablished this custom in memory of the Holocaust.
[4] pages. 17 cm. Good condition, stains.