Description
Book SynopsisDating from the sixteenth century, there were hundreds of shtetls - Jewish settlements - in Eastern Europe that were home to a large and compact population that differed from their gentile, mostly peasant neighbors in religion, occupation, language, and culture. This volume takes a look at this most important facet of East European Jewish life.
Trade ReviewThis important and comprehensive collection provides a fascinating re-evaluation of one of the main locations of Jewish life in Eastern Europe down to the Holocaust and beyond. -- Antony Polonsky,Albert Abramson Professor of Holocaust Studiesat the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Brandeis University
[A]nyone looking to really understand the Jewish past, not just the romanticized version of it, will find this book a perfect antidote. * The Reporter *
Talk about stereotype busting! Not only are we forced to readjust our sights . . . but in the best moments of Katz’s collection we learn how to distinguish what is factually true from what is mythically imagined. Even more importantly, we begin to see . . . the world of the shtetlach that the fog and night of the Holocaust forever destroyed. * New Jersey Jewish News *
The quality of the essays is uniformly good, and after reading them, readers will be fully acquainted with the elusive concept of the shtetl. The essays are well documented. * Choice *
The book is a must-buy for all libraries. * AJL Newsletter *
Table of ContentsEditor's NoteSteven T. KatzIntroduction Samuel Kassow1 The Importance of Demography and Patterns of Settlement for an Understanding of the Jewish Experience in East-Central EuropeGershon David Hundert2 A Shtetl with a Yeshiva: The Case of Volozhin Immanuel Etkes3 Rebbetzins, Wonder-Children, and the Emergence of the Dynastic Principle in HasidismNehemia Polen4 Two Jews, Three Opinions: Politics in the Shtetl at the Turn of the Twentieth CenturyHenry Abramson5 The Shtetl in Poland, 1914-1918 Konrad Zieli'nski6 The Shtetl in Interwar Poland Samuel Kassow7 Looking at the Yiddish Landscape: Representation in Nineteenth-Century Hasidic and Maskilic LiteratureJeremy Dauber8 Imagined Geography: The Shtetl, Myth, and Reality Israel Bartal9 Gender and the Disintegration of the Shtetl in Modern Hebrew and Yiddish LiteratureNaomi Seidman10 Rediscovering the Shtetl as a New Reality: David Bergelson and Itsik KipnisMikhail Krutikov11 Agnon's Synthetic ShtetlArnold J. Band12 The Image of the Shtetl in Contemporary Polish FictionKatarzyna Wi?ecl"awska13 Sarny and Rokitno in the Holocaust: A Case Study of Two Townships in Wolyn (Volhynia)Yehuda Bauer14 The World of the Shtetl Elie WieselAbout the Contributors Index
