Beyond the Myth of the Shtetl

March 19, 2014
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
Book Talk
Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, Northwestern University
The shtetl was home to two-thirds of East Europe's Jews in the 18th and 19th centuries, yet it has long been one of the most misunderstood chapters of the Jewish experience. 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-1840s, the shtetl was a thriving Jewish community as vibrant as any in Europe. Petrovsky-Shtern's book The Golden Age Shtetl: a New History of Jewish Life in East Europe (Princeton University Press) presents the shtetl as a Polish private town belonging to a Catholic magnate, administratively run by the tsarist empire, yet economically driven by Jews. Jews turned the shtetl marketplace into a supermarket. They smuggled and drank vodka, seeing in both actions a moment of freedom. They built houses that served as urban stores and village barns and purchased Hebrew books they could not understand. In addition, they surrounded themselves with the symbols of the Holy Land and Jerusalem, although they were not planning to leave for Palestine.
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