GLUSSK

GLUSSK (Yid. Hlusk), town in Polesie district, Belarus. Jews settled in Glussk in the third quarter of the 17th century. jehiel b. solomon heilprin was rabbi there and compiled the regulations of its ḥevra kaddisha. In 1717 the Jews paid a 600 zloty poll tax. In 1819 they numbered 1,405, in 1847 – 3,148, in 1897 – 3,801 (71% of the total population), and in 1926 – 2,581 (58.3%). Glussk had no industry. Some of the Jews produced a special kind of tea (called Glussk tea) but most were gardeners, carpenters, horse merchants, and small traders. In the mid-1920s 40 families earned their livelihoods from farming, the others were artisans, and some still engaged in trade. A Yiddish school and Jewish council were in operation. In 1939 the Jews numbered 1,935 (38% of the total population). The Germans occupied Glussk on July 3, 1941. In December 1941 and January 1942 the Jews were murdered near Khvastovichi. Some who escaped to the forest fought in partisan units. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego 3 (1882), 78–79; Yevrei v SSSR (19294), 51; Sefer ha-Partizanim, 1 (1958), 648–9; Y. Slutzky (ed.), Sefer Bobruisk, 2 (1967), 764–8. (Shmuel Spector (2nd ed.) GNAT GNAT, tiny insect. Included among the plagues of Egypt is arov, identified by one tanna as "a swarm of gnats" and "hornets" and by others as "a mixture of animals" (Ex. R. 11:3). In the Septuagint arov is rendered by the Greek word for "flies." In Egypt there are many species of gnats or mosquitoes, in particular Culex and the Anopheles, a conveyor of malaria.   Their eggs are laid in bodies of water and the gnat develops by stages – larval, pupal, imaginal. Despite the inconvenience caused by the gnat, the rabbis stated that it, too, is important in the complex of ecological relations between creatures (Shab. 77b). They also declared that even "if all mortals were to gather together to create one gnat," they would fail to do so (Sif. Deut. 32). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Tristram, Nat Hist, 327; J. Feliks, Animal World of the Bible (1962), 125. (Jehuda Feliks)