Shtetl

Shtetl PDF

Author: Eva Hoffman

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 2007-10-09

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0786732857

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In Shtetl (Yiddish for "small town"), critically-acclaimed author Eva Hoffman brings the lost world of Eastern European Jews back to vivid life, depicting its complex institutions and vibrant culture, its beliefs, social distinctions, and customs. Through the small town of Brafsk, she looks at the fascinating experiments in multicultural coexistence -- still relevant to us today -- attempted in the eight centuries of Polish-Jewish history, and describes the forces which influenced Christian villagers' decisions to conceal or betray their Jewish neighbors in the dark period of the Holocaust.

The Lost Shtetl

The Lost Shtetl PDF

Author: Max Gross

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2020-10-13

Total Pages: 549

ISBN-13: 0062991140

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WINNER OF THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD AND THE JEWISH FICTION AWARD FROM THE ASSOCIATION OF JEWISH LIBRARIES GOOD MORNING AMERICA MUST READ NEW BOOKS * NEW YORK POST BUZZ BOOKS * THE MILLIONS MOST ANTICIPATED A remarkable debut novel—written with the fearless imagination of Michael Chabon and the piercing humor of Gary Shteyngart—about a small Jewish village in the Polish forest that is so secluded no one knows it exists . . . until now. What if there was a town that history missed? For decades, the tiny Jewish shtetl of Kreskol existed in happy isolation, virtually untouched and unchanged. Spared by the Holocaust and the Cold War, its residents enjoyed remarkable peace. It missed out on cars, and electricity, and the internet, and indoor plumbing. But when a marriage dispute spins out of control, the whole town comes crashing into the twenty-first century. Pesha Lindauer, who has just suffered an ugly, acrimonious divorce, suddenly disappears. A day later, her husband goes after her, setting off a panic among the town elders. They send a woefully unprepared outcast named Yankel Lewinkopf out into the wider world to alert the Polish authorities. Venturing beyond the remote safety of Kreskol, Yankel is confronted by the beauty and the ravages of the modern-day outside world – and his reception is met with a confusing mix of disbelief, condescension, and unexpected kindness. When the truth eventually surfaces, his story and the existence of Kreskol make headlines nationwide. Returning Yankel to Kreskol, the Polish government plans to reintegrate the town that time forgot. Yet in doing so, the devious origins of its disappearance come to the light. And what has become of the mystery of Pesha and her former husband? Divided between those embracing change and those clinging to its old world ways, the people of Kreskol will have to find a way to come together . . . or risk their village disappearing for good.

In the Shadow of the Shtetl

In the Shadow of the Shtetl PDF

Author: Jeffrey Veidlinger

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2013-11-01

Total Pages: 441

ISBN-13: 0253011523

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A history based on interviews with hundreds of Ukrainian Jews who survived both Hitler and Stalin, recounting experiences ordinary and extraordinary. The story of how the Holocaust decimated Jewish life in the shtetls of Eastern Europe is well known. Still, thousands of Jews in these small towns survived the war and returned afterward to rebuild their communities. The recollections of some four hundred returnees in Ukraine provide the basis for Jeffrey Veidlinger’s reappraisal of the traditional narrative of twentieth-century Jewish history. These elderly Yiddish speakers relate their memories of Jewish life in the prewar shtetl, their stories of survival during the Holocaust, and their experiences living as Jews under Communism. Despite Stalinist repressions, the Holocaust, and official antisemitism, their individual remembrances of family life, religious observance, education, and work testify to the survival of Jewish life in the shadow of the shtetl to this day.

The Death of the Shtetl

The Death of the Shtetl PDF

Author: Yehuda Bauer

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2009-01-01

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 0300152094

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The author recounts the destruction of small Jewish towns in Poland and Russia at the hands of the Nazis in 1941-1942.

Daughters of the Shtetl

Daughters of the Shtetl PDF

Author: Susan Anita Glenn

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 9780801497599

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Examines the role of Jewish women immigrants in the garment industry in early twentieth-century America.

The Golden Age Shtetl

The Golden Age Shtetl PDF

Author: Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2015-08-25

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13: 0691168512

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Neither a comprehensive history of Eastern European Jewish life or the shtetl, Petrovsky-Shtern, professor of Jewish Studies at Northwestern University, focuses on three provinces Volhynia, Podolia, and Kiev of the then Russian Empire during what he deems the golden age period, 1790 - 1840, when the shtetl was "the unique habitat of some 80 percent of East European Jews."

There Once Was a World

There Once Was a World PDF

Author: Yaffa Eliach

Publisher: Back Bay Books

Published: 1999-10-06

Total Pages: 864

ISBN-13: 9780316232395

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For 900 years the Polish shtetl was a home to generations of Jewish families. In 1944 almost every Jew was murdered and with them died a way of life that had survived for centuries. Yaffa Eliach has written a landmark history of the shtetl.

A Shtetl and Other Yiddish Novellas

A Shtetl and Other Yiddish Novellas PDF

Author: Ruth R. Wisse

Publisher: Wayne State University Press

Published: 1986

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 9780814318492

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The five short novellas which comprise this anthology were written between 1890 and World War I. All share a common setting--the Eastern European Jewish town or shtetl, and all deal in different ways with a single topic--the Jewish confrontation with modernity. The authors of these novellas are among the greatest masters of Yiddish prose. In their work, today's reader will discover a literary tradition of considerable scope, energy, and variety and will come face to face with an exceptionally memorable cast of characters and with a human community now irrevocably lost. In her general introduction, Professor Wisse traces the development of modern Yiddish literature in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and describes the many shifts that took place between the Yiddish writers and the world about which they wrote. She also furnishes a brief introduction for each novella, giving the historical and biographical background and offering a critical interpretation of the work.

The Image of the Shtetl and Other Studies of Modern Jewish Literary Imagination

The Image of the Shtetl and Other Studies of Modern Jewish Literary Imagination PDF

Author: Dan Miron

Publisher: Syracuse University Press

Published: 2000-12-01

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 9780815628583

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While A Traveler Disguised focused on the rhetoric of the speaking voice or the persona in these classics, the nine essays gathered here concentrate on the artistic reconstruction of the "world" conveyed by that persona. As much as the earlier volume put to rest the conventional understanding of "Mendele the Book-Peddler" as a mere representative of the author, Sh. Y. Abramovitsh, this book invalidates the common views of the literary shtetl as a mere mimetic reflection of the historical Jewish shtetl of Eastern Europe and examines its structure as an autonomous aesthetic construct. These essays dwell particularly on the fictional modalities displayed in some of Sholem Aleichem's major works. They also offer innovative insights into the works of both earlier and later masters such as A. M. Dik, Y. Aksenfeld, Y .Y. Linetski and Sh. Y. Abramovitsh, Y. L. Peretz, I. M. Vaysenberg, Sh. Asch, D. Bergelson, and I. B. Singer.