How did Drohiczyn’s Jews respond to a changing world?

Drohiczyn’s religious culture included a yeshiva founded in 1905 and traditions of commentary on works such as Mishnat Hasidim and Lehem Mishneh. The Workers’ Library, photographed in 1910, shows that communal learning also extended into organized secular culture.

A Bund labor party was established in Drohiczyn in 1903, while Zionist associations began forming there around 1896. The 1905 workers’ demonstration and arrests of alleged political affiliates show that Jewish residents engaged actively with the political conflicts of the period.

Some Drohiczyn Jews left for America, while others moved toward the Land of Israel; Litman Eisenstein, for example, went to America in 1890 and later returned. These movements connected the town to New York, Palestine, and other Jewish communities without ending local family and communal ties.

During the First World War, German forces entered Drohiczyn, and a Jewish committee is pictured presenting a gift to the German commandant in 1916. The book also records the 1921 Treaty of Riga as a political turning point after which the territory transferred to Poland.