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A visitor came to the shtetl,
A stranger, with unrest in his step . . .
No-one recognized his unrest. No-one asked him:
“Stranger, are you weary?”
Across the blue sky the evening drew its curtain…
The Jews held cattle dealers in contempt. They considered them illiterate louts in no way different from peasants. My grandfather never let a cattle dealer into his house. Into the barn yes, but never…
Rabbi Levi Yitskhok’s drayman—the one who wore
tales and tfiln as he smeared the wheels
of his wagon with tar—
turns up in the shape of a bunch of Jews
hanging around their houses,
washing the car
(w…
The Jewish theme in Ru.Shtetl is a metaphor. The closest mainstream parallel explaining the essence of what Patrick Lisidze conceived of is Siniavskii’s pseudonym, Abram Terts. Terts’s Jewishness was…
We were too late. The pogrom erupted that very night, suddenly, like an exploding mine, and in my own neighborhood.
The first screams came to me confused, in a hazy dream. Then it dawned on me what…
Aron Wolf often terrified us children, and yet he was one of the most harmless people one can imagine. He never hurt anyone, nor did he ever approach any of us with as much as a word.
But…
If a visitor to Berditchev wishes to hear a typical Jewish melody, let him listen to Reb Nisson Belzer’s protégé. If it is Berditchever Chassidic song he desires, he should go to the Karliner shtibel…
Joyous, free, the bird will sing,
Trembles on his throne the king,
Trembling is not good for me—
Like a bird I sing so free,
As winds prance,
In a trance,
Wild and blind, I roam and dance,
One street…
Rebbe Levi YitskhokTsine, his wifeKhayim, their sonGnendl, their daughterTaybele, their daughterHenekh Yoel, gabbaiOyzer, butcherZavl, butcherItsheMordkheMoysheKhveder, shabes-goyPave…
On the beginning of the new rebbetzin’s life in Zhuzhikovka, the locals say:
She, the rebbetzin, was brought here a few years ago from some distant city in Poland.
There, in that city, the Polish one…