Ovsei Lourie

https://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/pinsk1/pine11_088.html

from The “Rothschilds” of Pinsk and Karlin. A Historical Evaluation (cont'd) by Dr. Wolf Zeev Rabinowitsch

Round about the year 1890, Chaim Weizmann was living in Idel Lourié's house as private tutor to his son, Shaul. In the Weizmann Archives there are six letters from Weizmann to Ovsei (Yehoshua) Lourié, Shaul's brother, written after Ovsei had gone to the town of Mitau (in Courland) to continue his studies. These letters from the years 1890 - 1892, which were written by Weizmann while he was living in Idel Lourié's house, testify to the sincere friendship between Weizmann and Ovsei Lourié, and also to the atmosphere in which the younger generation grew up in such Pinsk Jewish homes as those of the Lourié and Weizmann families. In the letters, Weizmann adopts a tone of pedagogical exhortation to his friend (who was only one year younger than himself). He quotes (inaccurately) an example from the Talmud, but mostly he writes about Russian literature -- the letters are actually written in Russian -- and about the reading of its basic texts. The influence of Weizmann's education at the government "Realschule" in Pinsk can be felt throughout the letters, but without any dimming of his Jewish consciousness. Idel Lourié's views on Jewish education are described by Weizmann in a letter of Nov.11th 1890 to Ovsei Lourié, as follows: "Your parents… want you to be a virtuous and noble youth, and to grow up into a well-educated and mentally developed man and an exemplary Jew". This combination of a general and a Jewish education, of polished social manners and pride in being Jewish, was also, according to Weizmann, the ideal of the whole Lourié family. Ovsei Lourié subsequently studied in Riga. Till 1914, he assisted his father. During the First World War the latter transferred his banks to Yekaterinoslav, where they were finally closed, in 1920. Ovsei went to London and became a business partner of his brother, Shaul. He died in London in 1941.

Idel Lourié's son, Shaul (born 1879), was Chaim Weizmann's private pupil from about 1888 to 1892. From the above-mentioned letters of Weizmann to Ovsei Lourié it can be seen how much care Weizmann took with the education of Shaul, who was five years his younger.