A Jewish wedding with a klezmer band in a shtetl, by Isaak Asknaziy
Shtetl or shtetel (English: /ˈʃtɛtəl/; Yiddish: שטעטל, romanized: shtetl (sg.); שטעטלעך, romanized: shtetlekh (pl.); Polish: sztetl (sg.), sztetle (pl.); diminutive of Yiddish: שטאָט, romanized: shtot, derived from German Stadt) is a Yiddish term for the small towns with predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish populations which existed in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. The term is used in the contexts of peculiarities of former East European Jewish societies as islands within the surrounding non-Jewish populace, and bears certain socio-economic and cultural connotations.[1]Shtetls (or shtetels, shtetlach, shtetelach or shtetlekh)[2][3][4] were mainly found in the areas that constituted the 19th-century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, as well as in Congress Poland, Austrian Galicia, the Kingdom of Romania and the Kingdom of Hungary.[1]
In Yiddish, a larger city, like Lviv or Chernivtsi, is called a shtot (Yiddish: שטאָט), and a village is called a dorf (Yiddish: דאָרף).[5]Shtetl is a diminutive of shtot with the meaning 'little town'. Despite the existence of Jewish self-administration (kehilla/kahal), officially there were no separate Jewish municipalities, and the shtetl was referred to as a miasteczko (or mestechko, in Russian bureaucracy), a type of settlement which originated in the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and was formally recognized in the Russian Empire as well. For clarification, the expression "Jewish miasteczko" was often used.[6][7]
The shtetl as a phenomenon of Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe was destroyed by the Nazis during the Holocaust.[8]
^ abMarie Schumacher-Brunhes, "Shtetl", European History Online, published July 3, 2015
^Speake, Jennifer; LaFlaur, Mark, eds. (1999). "shtetl". The Oxford Essential Dictionary of Foreign Terms in English. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acref/9780199891573.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-989157-3. Retrieved 28 March 2021.
^"Definition of SHTETL". Merriam-Webster.com. Retrieved 28 March 2021.
^Sacharow, Fredda (22 August 2014). "Shtetl: A Word that Holds a Special Place in Hearts and Minds". Rutgers Today.
^"History of Shtetl", Jewish guide and genealogy in Poland.
^"Shtetl". JewishVirtualLibrary.org. Retrieved 5 April 2019.
^Petrovsky-Shtern, Yohanan (2014). The Golden Age Shtetl. Princeton University Press.
^Cite error: The named reference tabletmag.com was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
This list of shtetls and shtots (eastern European towns and cities with significant pre-Holocaust Jewish populations) is organized by country. Some villages...
author of the much-read blog "Shtetl-Optimized". In the interview to Scientific American he answers why his blog is called shtetl-optimized, and about his...
The Virtual Shtetl (Polish: Wirtualny Sztetl) is a bilingual Polish-English portal of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, devoted to the...
brent (עס ברענט "It's burning", also known as אונדזער שטעטל ברענט undzer shtetl brent "our town is burning", in Hebrew translation העיירה בוערת) is a Yiddish...
A Khasene in Shtetl (Yiddish for A Wedding in the Village / A Village Wedding, also called A Shtetl Wedding / A Wedding in the Shtetl; Yiddish: אַ חתונה...
memorial to the life of the Shtetl while experiencing a strange pull to create other themes that did not adhere to the Shtetl brand. He experimented with...
evoke nostalgic or romantic attitudes. The term is also used to describe a Shtetl, a pre-Holocaust Eastern European Jewish town. Within Israel, established...
Protocol, Nuremberg)." Browning (1998), p. 12. "Białystok – History". Virtual Shtetl Museum of the History of Polish Jews. p. 6, paragraph #3. According to records...
Atlantic, where he covers politics, culture, and religion, and writes the Deep Shtetl newsletter. Formerly a senior writer at Tablet magazine, he is a regular...
Академике. Retrieved 15 September 2014. Cnaan Liphshiz. (2013). "Jewish shtetl in Azerbaijan survives amid Muslim majority." Accessed at November 12, 2013...
starring Moshe Lobel and Saul Rubinek. The film depicts the lives of a Jewish shtetl on the eve of Operation Barbarossa. It was filmed in Ukraine six months...
eradicated town of Trochenbrod (Trachimbrod), a real exclusively Jewish shtetl in Poland before the Holocaust where the author's grandfather was born....
"middlebrow" and superficial; Philip Roth, writing in The New Yorker, called it shtetl kitsch. For example, it portrays the local Russian officer as sympathetic...
May 11, 1888, in the Russian Empire. Although his family came from the shtetl of Tolochin (Yiddish: טאָלאָטשין; today Talachyn, Талачын, in Belarus),...
Fools of Chelm and Their History Mendele Mocher Sforim invented three shtetls inhabited by naive, luckless Jews, reminiscent of the wise men of Chelm:...
For Visitors Travel Guide. Retrieved 18 April 2013. "History | Virtual Shtetl". sztetl.org.pl. Retrieved 20 March 2020. "The Wieliczka Salt Mine: An astonishing...
Трохимбрід (Trokhymbrid), Hebrew: טרוכנברוד, was an exclusively Jewish shtetl – a small town, with an area of 1,728 acres (6.99 km2) – located in the...
of predominant Jewish population the latter is sometimes translated as shtetl).[citation needed] In South Africa under apartheid, the term "township"...
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