You Tube - Rabbi Groysman "My Shtetl"

A shtetl (Yiddish: שטעטל, diminutive form of Yiddish shtot שטאָט, "town", pronounced very similarly to the South German diminutive "Städtle", "little town") was typically a small town with a large Jewish population in pre-Holocaust Central and Eastern Europe. Shtetls (Yiddish plural: שטעטלעך, shtetlekh) were mainly found in the areas which constituted the 19th century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, the Congress Kingdom of Poland, Galicia, and Romania. A larger city, like Lemberg or Czernowitz, was called a shtot (Yiddish: שטאָט); a smaller village was called a dorf (Yiddish: דאָרף).

The concept of shtetl culture is used as a metaphor for the traditional way of life of 19th-century Eastern European Jews. Shtetls are portrayed as pious communities following Orthodox Judaism, socially stable and unchanging despite outside influence or attacks. The Holocaust resulted in the disappearance of the vast majority of shtetls, through both extermination and mass exodus to the United States and what became Israel.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• world
• music

[edfeldman1]

I am 72 now, and I haven't heard about his shtetl in Shpikov since my dad died in 1971. He thought it was heaven until he was sent to New York by his mother of necessity. He was fourteen, and he shepherded his three younger brothers.

I am always looking for my shtetl here in America.

[anabaptistSue]

Thank G-d for Eretz Israel and for the singing and dancing of upbeat music and the praise music we will hear from the Jews when their Messiah returns!

[julia1943]

A whole world, culture, people and tradition, swept away in torture and suffering by the Evil Ones. May those that caused this and all their generations be accursed.

[rnv09]

A nice song of times gone by thank God it only a memory, sad enough ?

[Beckyroo3]

I love this song