Stepchildren of the Shtetl
Stepchildren of the Shtetl

Author: Natan Meir

Publisher: Stanford Studies in Jewish His

Published: 2020-06-02

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 9781503613058

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Memoirs of Jewish life in the east European shtetl often recall the hekdesh (town poorhouse) and its residents: beggars, madmen and madwomen, disabled people, and poor orphans. Stepchildren of the Shtetl tells the story of these marginalized figures from the dawn of modernity to the eve of the Holocaust. Combining archival research with analysis of literary, cultural, and religious texts, Natan M. Meir recovers the lived experience of Jewish society's outcasts and reveals the central role that they came to play in the drama of modernization. Those on the margins were often made to bear the burden of the nation as a whole, whether as scapegoats in moments of crisis or as symbols of degeneration, ripe for transformation by reformers, philanthropists, and nationalists. Shining a light into the darkest corners of Jewish society in eastern Europe--from the often squalid poorhouse of the shtetl to the slums and insane asylums of Warsaw and Odessa, from the conscription of poor orphans during the reign of Nicholas I to the cholera wedding, a magical ritual in which an epidemic was halted by marrying outcasts to each other in the town cemetery--Stepchildren of the Shtetl reconsiders the place of the lowliest members of an already stigmatized minority.

Stepchildren of the Shtetl
Stepchildren of the Shtetl

Author: Natan M. Meir

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2020-07-14

Total Pages: 411

ISBN-13: 1503613062

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Memoirs of Jewish life in the east European shtetl often recall the hekdesh (town poorhouse) and its residents: beggars, madmen and madwomen, disabled people, and poor orphans. Stepchildren of the Shtetl tells the story of these marginalized figures from the dawn of modernity to the eve of the Holocaust. Combining archival research with analysis of literary, cultural, and religious texts, Natan M. Meir recovers the lived experience of Jewish society's outcasts and reveals the central role that they came to play in the drama of modernization. Those on the margins were often made to bear the burden of the nation as a whole, whether as scapegoats in moments of crisis or as symbols of degeneration, ripe for transformation by reformers, philanthropists, and nationalists. Shining a light into the darkest corners of Jewish society in eastern Europe—from the often squalid poorhouse of the shtetl to the slums and insane asylums of Warsaw and Odessa, from the conscription of poor orphans during the reign of Nicholas I to the cholera wedding, a magical ritual in which an epidemic was halted by marrying outcasts to each other in the town cemetery—Stepchildren of the Shtetl reconsiders the place of the lowliest members of an already stigmatized minority.

Confessions of the Shtetl
Confessions of the Shtetl

Author: Ellie R. Schainker

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2016-11-16

Total Pages: 357

ISBN-13: 1503600246

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Over the course of the nineteenth century, some 84,500 Jews in imperial Russia converted to Christianity. Confessions of the Shtetl explores the day-to-day world of these people, including the social, geographic, religious, and economic links among converts, Christians, and Jews. The book narrates converts' tales of love, desperation, and fear, tracing the uneasy contest between religious choice and collective Jewish identity in tsarist Russia. Rather than viewing the shtetl as the foundation myth for modern Jewish nationhood, this work reveals the shtetl's history of conversions and communal engagement with converts, which ultimately yielded a cultural hybridity that both challenged and fueled visions of Jewish separatism. Drawing on extensive research with conversion files in imperial Russian archives, in addition to the mass press, novels, and memoirs, Ellie R. Schainker offers a sociocultural history of religious toleration and Jewish life that sees baptism not as the fundamental departure from Jewishness or the Jewish community, but as a conversion that marked the start of a complicated experiment with new forms of identity and belonging. Ultimately, she argues that the Jewish encounter with imperial Russia did not revolve around coercion and ghettoization but was a genuinely religious drama with a diverse, attractive, and aggressive Christianity.

Kiev, Jewish Metropolis
Kiev, Jewish Metropolis

Author: Natan M. Meir

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2010-06-30

Total Pages: 423

ISBN-13: 0253222079

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The readmission of some categories of Jews into Kiev in 1859 brought about a rapid rise of the Jewish community in the city. Kiev had a symbolical significance as "the mother of the Russian cities" and was an important religious center, so the massive migration of Jews in it provoked anxiety among the Christians. The authorities and to some extent voluntary associations of Kiev tried to maintain a segregation between the Jews and non-Jews; while attacking Jews for their "isolation", they opposed also Jewish cultural assimilation. Describes the pogrom of 1881 and the bloody pogrom of October 1905. Argues that the pogroms of 1881 in Kiev and elsewhere took place mainly in the areas of new Jewish settlement. The pogromists in Kiev called not so much to "beat the Jews" as to expel them from the city. Dismisses the view that the perpetrators of the pogrom were vagabond workers from central Russia: the role of the locals in the riot was significant. The 1905 pogrom was a by-product of the revolution, in which many Jews took part. The authorities not only were reluctant to stop it (as it was also in 1881), but even encouraged the rioters for violence. Christian neighbors nearly always refused to hide or to protect Jews. Dozens were killed in what the nationalists regarded as a symbolic reconquest of Kiev from "seditionist Jews". Describes also the Beilis case in Kiev, which can be regarded that an anti-Jewish campaign launched by the all-Russian right rather than by Kiev antisemites. The pogroms shattered the hopes of most Jews for peaceful coexistence with non-Jews, but did not stop the Jewish migration to Kiev and their acculturation.

Anti-Jewish Violence
Anti-Jewish Violence

Author: Jonathan Dekel-Chen

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2010-11-26

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0253004780

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Although overshadowed in historical memory by the Holocaust, the anti-Jewish pogroms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were at the time unrivaled episodes of ethnic violence. Incorporating newly available primary sources, this collection of groundbreaking essays by researchers from Europe, the United States, and Israel investigates the phenomenon of anti-Jewish violence, the local and transnational responses to pogroms, and instances where violence was averted. Focusing on the period from World War I through Russia's early revolutionary years, the studies include Poland, Ukraine, Belorussia, Lithuania, Crimea, and Siberia.

The Jewish Decadence
The Jewish Decadence

Author: Jonathan Freedman

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2021-04-26

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 022658108X

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"Freedman's final book is a tour de force that examines the history of Jewish involvement in the decadent art movement. While decadent art's most notorious practitioner was Oscar Wilde, as a movement it spread through western Europe and even included a few adherents in Russia. Jewish writers and artists such as Catulle Mèndes, Gustav Kahn, and Simeon Solomon would portray non-stereotyped characters and produce highly influential works. After decadent art's peak, Walter Benjamin, Marcel Proust, and Sigmund Freud would take up the idiom of decadence and carry it with them during the cultural transition to modernism. Freedman expertly and elegantly takes readers through this transition and beyond, showing the lineage of Jewish decadence all the way through to the end of the twentieth century"--

The Rebellion of the Daughters
The Rebellion of the Daughters

Author: Rachel Manekin

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-09

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 0691194939

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The Origins of the "Daughters' Question" -- Religious Ardor: Michalina Araten and Her Embrace of Catholicism -- Romantic Love: Debora Lewkowicz and Her Flight from the Village -- Intellectual Passion: Anna Kluger and Her Struggle for Higher Education -- Rebellious Daughters and the Literary Imagination: From Jacob Wassermann to S. Y. Agnon -- Bringing the Daughters Back: A New Model of Female Orthodox Jewish Education.

Battling Bella
Battling Bella

Author: Leandra Ruth Zarnow

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2019-11-26

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 0674737482

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Bella Abzug’s promotion of women’s and gay rights, universal childcare, green energy, and more provoked not only fierce opposition from Republicans but a split within her own party. The story of this notorious, galvanizing force in the Democrats’ “New Politics” insurgency is a biography for our times. Before Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren, or Hillary Clinton, there was New York’s Bella Abzug. With a fiery rhetorical style forged in the 1960s antiwar movement, Abzug vigorously promoted gender parity, economic justice, and the need to “bring Congress back to the people.” The 1970 congressional election season saw Abzug, in her trademark broad-brimmed hats, campaigning on the slogan “This Woman’s Place Is in the House—the House of Representatives.” Having won her seat, she advanced the feminist agenda in ways big and small, from gaining full access for congresswomen to the House swimming pool to cofounding the National Women’s Political Caucus to putting the title “Ms.” into the political lexicon. Beyond women’s rights, “Sister Bella” promoted gay rights, privacy rights, and human rights, and pushed legislation relating to urban, environmental, and foreign affairs. Her stint in Congress lasted just six years—it ended when she decided to seek the Democrats’ 1976 New York Senate nomination, a race she lost to Daniel Patrick Moynihan by less than 1 percent. Their primary contest, while gendered, was also an ideological struggle for the heart of the Democratic Party. Abzug’s protest politics had helped for a time to shift the center of politics to the left, but her progressive positions also fueled a backlash from conservatives who thought change was going too far. This deeply researched political biography highlights how, as 1960s radicalism moved protest into electoral politics, Abzug drew fire from establishment politicians across the political spectrum—but also inspired a generation of women.

When Sonia Met Boris
When Sonia Met Boris

Author: Anna Shternshis

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0190223103

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Based on nearly 500 oral history interviews, When Sonia Met Boris is an innovative study of Jewish daily life in the Soviet Union, giving a long-suppressed voice to the Jewish men and women who survived the sustained violence and everyday hardship of Stalin's Russia. It reveals how postwar Soviet Jews came to view their Jewish identity as an obstacle-a shift in attitude with ramifications for contemporary Russian Jewish culture and the broader Jewish diaspora.