Shtetl

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Shtetl (Yid., ‘small town’). Jewish communities in E. Europe, 16th-early 20th cents. The life of the Jewish community centred round home, synagogue (shul), and market. The values of Yiddishkeyt (‘Jewishness’) and menshlikhkeyt (‘humanness’) were all-important. Life in the shtetl is now well-known in the West through the paintings of Marc Chagall and the stories of Sholom Aleichem. The pattern of life was eroded in the 20th cent. through pogroms, economic depression, emigration, and ultimately the Holocaust.

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