Shtetl by Marie Schumacher‐Brunhes

Shtetl by Marie Schumacher‐Brunhes Serving as a site of memory of eastern European Judaism since its systematic extermination by the Nazi regime, the shtetl existed for centuries as a socio‐economic phenomenon and a socio‐cultural construct, out of which a literary and cultural topos grew in the second half of the 19th century. The complexity of this term, which emerged in multi‐ethnic Poland in the second half of the 17th century, lies in the difficulty in differentiating between mental perception and reality. These cities and town with populations predominantly consisting of Yiddish‐speaking Jews were never Jewish municipalities. Autonomous self‐administration by means of the so‐called "kahal" and membership of a dense Jewish network which over time even extended overseas should not be confused with political autonomy. However, in their daily lives the shtetl Jews had this double experience of living in an essentially Jewish world on the one hand, and of the relative acceptance of this situation by the surrounding population on the other hand. In this way, these provisioning islands, which were characterized by a high degree of interethnic contact, were mythologized as a bastion of Judaism – of the so‐called "yidishkeyt" – in the context of their increasing disintegration. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Shtetl 2. The Urban Phenomenon 3. Emergence: The Shtetl as the Result of an Alliance between the Jews and the Polish Nobility 4. The Shtetl in the 19th Century: Survival of an Outdated Model 5. Typical Features and Characteristics of Shtetl Culture 6. The Great Transformation after the First World War 7. The Mythologized Shtetl 8. Appendix 1. Literature 2. Notes Indices Citation Shtetl "Shtetl" (shtetlekh in plural) is an ambiguous term, referring on the one hand to socio‐economic contexts which were an observable historical reality, while on the other hand having vague cultural meanings. Its complexity results from the difficulty in distinguishing between the socio‐economic phenomenon, which no longer exists, and the socio‐cultural construct, out of which a literary and cultural topos has emerged. The latter made the shtetl the symbol of original Jewishness. Thus, the shtetl became a mythological site of memory of eastern European Judaism after the latter's extermination by the National Socialist regime. ▲1 While today the idea of a specific space of eastern European Jewish communities in the midst of a non‐Jewish population suggests a marginal existence, nothing is more hotly debated among historians than this supposed Jewish isolation. In multi‐ethnic Poland, the place in which they emerged, shtetls were not Jewish municipalities, but Polish cities and towns which had a significant proportion – or even a majority – of Yiddish‐speaking Jews among their inhabitants. This definition presupposes that the concept of the shtetl is to be interpreted as the result of a particular perception. ▲2 The Urban Phenomenon The region in which shtetls existed encompasses the present‐day states of Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Slovakia, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania and southern Latvia. The territories of these countries constituted the cultural home of Ashkenazi Judaism (➔ Media Link #ab) up to 1945. ▲3 The term "shtetl" as it is used in this article did not exist in politics or law. In 1875, the Russian senate established the category of mestechko (literally "little town") to distinguish between ordinary villages and towns with local administration. At the time of the census of 1897, about one third of Jews lived in such mestechki. Interestingly, this term was not adopted into the Polish language, which had assimilated many Yiddish terms. In 1775, purely for tax purposes the Polish Sejm defined a miasteczko as a municipality consisting of less than 300 hearths and which held a weekly market. ▲4 The Jews themselves distinguished between a dorf (Yiddish) or a yishev (Yiddish, meaning tiny rural settlement) and a shtetl (shtetlekh in plural, sometimes also kleynshtetl), and contrasted the diminutive form shtetl with a fully‐fledged city (shtot). These terms not only referred to the size of the settlements in the countryside, but also primarily to a particular way of life and the corresponding social relationships, as demonstrated by the adjectives kleynshtetldik (meaning provincial) and groysshtotish (meaning cosmopolitan). Yeshuvnik, on the other hand, was a term of abuse which the shtetl inhabitants used to refer to people such as the leaseholders of mills and taverns. To be a shtetl, a settlement had to be big enough to support the essential Jewish institutions. In the 18th century, settlements with a total population of roughly 2,000 tended to be referred to as shtetls. Subsequently, large towns and cities with populations of up to 10,000 or even 20,000 were referred to as shtetls. The determining factor was that the Jewish population constituted at least 40 per cent of the total.1 The Jewish community of the town (kehile) was led by a council of respected men known as the kahal (➔ Media Link #ac). This council, the institutional manifestation of Jewish autonomy, appointed the rabbi, supervised the running of the mikvah (ritual bath), collected the taxes and represented the community in its dealings with the outside world. The kahal typically had extensive legal authority within the Jewish community, not only in judicial matters but also in cultural matters and in the charitable sphere. A shtetl had at least one synagogue (shul) with an accompanying school (bes‐medresh), a ritual bath (mikvah), a graveyard, an elementary religious school (kheder) and other educational institutions (talmud‐toyre) (➔ Media Link #ad), as well as associations (khevres) which performed fundamental religious and communal functions. The latter included the respected funeral brotherhood (chevra kadisha). From the 18th century, the so called shtiblekh, or prayer houses, increased in number as a result of the rise of Hasidism (➔ Media Link #ae). The adherents of a tzaddik (originally meaning a genuinely pious man, but in the context of Hasidism referring to a spiritual leader, teacher and master) gathered in these prayer houses. There were often multiple Hasidic dynasties in one town. ▲5 Emergence: The Shtetl as the Result of an Alliance between the Jews and the Polish Nobility Already in the 13th and 14th centuries, Jews were living throughout the entire territory of the Polish state, which from 1386 was in a union of crowns with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In the subsequent centuries, large numbers of Jews migrated to Poland as a result of increasing persecution (➔ Media Link #af) in western Europe. This inward migration (➔ Media Link #ag) was also welcomed by Jews from Polish cities which had received the right of De non tolerandis Judaeis (the right to expel Jews), who wished to further develop the backward agriculture in the sparsely populated countryside. The Union of Lublin of 1569 established the Polish‐Lithuanian Republic of the Nobility (also known as the Rzeczpospolita or Poland‐Lithuania), which on the one hand had brought an eastward expansion and on the other hand finally established the szlachta (Polish for petty nobility ) as the politically, economically and socially dominant class in Polish society. This was also accompanied by the establishment of private towns by the Polish nobility (two thirds of the urban settlements in Poland‐Lithuania were private towns). Trade networks were required in order to exploit and market products such as cereals, timber, honey, alcohol and other agricultural produce. The Cossack rebellion, during which 200,000 Jews are said to have fallen victim to the Chmielnicki Massacres of 1648, and the subsequent Swedish invasion and war with Moscow plunged the country into chaos. The nobility turned to the Jews once more in the rebuilding process, which was mainly based on the foundation of more private towns in order to strengthen trade networks. The Jews were not in competition with the nobility for political power, and the nobility instrumentalized the Jews in a manner that at times resembled a colonization.2 At this time, numerous privileges were granted to the Jewish communities, which were guaranteed self‐administration. ▲6 A contributing factor in the emergence of the urban phenomenon of the shtetl was the fact that Jews constituted almost half of the urban population of the Rzeczpospolita. Furthermore, 70 per cent of the Jewish population lived in the eastern territories, where in some places Jews constituted well over 50 per cent of the population. This was due in part to the rapid demographic growth of the Jewish population. However, this was more a result of low mortality than of a high birth rate. The other ethnic groups predominantly lived in the countryside. While in 1500 the Jews numbered about 30,000, constituting less than 0.5 per cent of the total population, by 1672 they had risen to about 3 per cent, and by 1765 the Jewish population had reached around 750,000 and constituted about 5.35 per cent of the total population. ▲7 Between the 16th and the 18th centuries, the power of the Polish magnates, the aristocratic elite, grew at the expense of the Polish crown and the lower and rural nobility. As between 50 and 75 per cent of the Jews living in Poland‐Lithuania were living in cities and towns belonging to the magnates and the interests of both groups often overlapped, very close relationships developed between them. This relationship benefitted both sides. The protection provided by the magnates gave the Jews a certain degree of security, while the Jews provided experience and expertise in the areas of finance and trade, as well as in the crafts. In the towns and cities of the magnates, they faced hardly any competition, while in the royal cities they were confronted with the hostility of the Christian guilds. The system of the leasing of monopolies referred to by the term arenda – hence the term arendar referring to the primary leaseholder – was established in this context.

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