The shtetl was home to two-thirds of East Europe's Jews in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, yet it has long been one of
the most neglected and misunderstood chapters of the Jewish
experience. This book provides the first grassroots social,
economic, and cultural history of the shtetl. Challenging popular
misconceptions of the shtetl as an isolated, ramshackle Jewish
village stricken by poverty and pogroms, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern
argues that, in its heyday from the 1790s to the 1840s, the shtetl
was a thriving Jewish community as vibrant as any in Europe.
Petrovsky-Shtern brings this golden age to life, looking at
dozens of shtetls and drawing on a wealth of never-before-used
archival material. The shtetl, in essence, was a Polish private
town belonging to a Catholic magnate, administratively run by the
tsarist empire, yet economically driven by Jews. Petrovsky-Shtern
shows how its success hinged on its unique position in this
triangle of power--as did its ultimate suppression. He reconstructs
the rich social tapestry of these market towns, showing how Russian
clerks put the shtetl on the empire's map, and chronicling how
shtetl Jews traded widely, importing commodities from France,
Austria, Prussia, and even the Ottoman Empire. Petrovsky-Shtern
describes family life; dwellings, trading stalls, and taverns;
books and religious life; and the bustling marketplace with its
Polish gentry, Ukrainian peasants, and Russian policemen.
Illustrated throughout with rare archival photographs and
artwork, this nuanced history casts the shtetl in an altogether new
light, revealing how its golden age continues to shape the
collective memory of the Jewish people today.
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