In the midst of the violent, revolutionary turmoil that accompanied the
last decade of tsarist rule in the Russian Empire, many Jews came to reject what
they regarded as the apocalyptic and utopian ...prophecies of political dreamers and
religious fanatics, preferring instead to focus on the promotion of cultural
development in the present. Jewish Public Culture in the Late Russian Empire
examines the cultural identities that Jews were creating and disseminating through
voluntary associations such as libraries, drama circles, literary clubs, historical
societies, and even fire brigades. Jeffrey Veidlinger explores the venues in which
prominent cultural figures -- including Sholem Aleichem, Mendele Moykher Sforim, and
Simon Dubnov -- interacted with the general Jewish public, encouraging Jewish
expression within Russia's multicultural society. By highlighting the cultural
experiences shared by Jews of diverse social backgrounds -- from seamstresses to
parliamentarians -- and in disparate geographic locales -- from Ukrainian shtetls to
Polish metropolises -- the book revises traditional views of Jewish society in the
late Russian Empire.
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 400 returnees in Ukraine provide the basis for Jeffrey Veidlinger's reappraisal of the traditional narrative of 20th-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.
Taking S. An-sky's expeditions to the Pale of Jewish Settlement as its point of departure, the volume explores the dynamic and many-sided nature of ethnographic knowledge and the long and complex ...history of the production and consumption of Jewish folk traditions. These essays by historians, anthropologists, musicologists, and folklorists showcase some of the finest research in the field. They reveal how the collection, analysis, and preservation of ethnography intersect with questions about the construction and delineation of community, the preservation of Jewishness, the meaning of belief, the significance of retrieving cultural heritage, the politics of accessing and memorializing "lost" cultures, and the problem of narration, among other topics.
