Stepchildren of the shtetl : the destitute, disabled, and mad of Jewish Eastern Europe, 1800-1939 / Natan M. Meir.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Meir, Natan M., author.

Series:

Stanford Studies in Jewish History and C

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Marginality, Social--Europe, Eastern--History.

Marginality, Social.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 343 pages)

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2020]

Summary:

Memoirs of Jewish life in the east European shtetl often recall the hekdesh (town poorhouse) and its residents: beggars, madmen and madwomen, disabled people, and poor orphans. Stepchildren of the Shtetl tells the story of these marginalized figures from the dawn of modernity to the eve of the Holocaust. Combining archival research with analysis of literary, cultural, and religious texts, Natan M. Meir recovers the lived experience of Jewish society's outcasts and reveals the central role that they came to play in the drama of modernization. Those on the margins were often made to bear the burden of the nation as a whole, whether as scapegoats in moments of crisis or as symbols of degeneration, ripe for transformation by reformers, philanthropists, and nationalists. Shining a light into the darkest corners of Jewish society in eastern Europe—from the often squalid poorhouse of the shtetl to the slums and insane asylums of Warsaw and Odessa, from the conscription of poor orphans during the reign of Nicholas I to the cholera wedding, a magical ritual in which an epidemic was halted by marrying outcasts to each other in the town cemetery—Stepchildren of the Shtetl reconsiders the place of the lowliest members of an already stigmatized minority.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

FIGURES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION AND DATES

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1. JEWISH MARGINAL PEOPLE IN PREMODERN EUROPE

CHAPTER 2. BLIND BEGGARS AND ORPHAN RECRUITS

CHAPTER 3. “A PILE OF DUST AND RUBBLE”

CHAPTER 4. THE CHOLERA WEDDING

CHAPTER 5. A “REPUBLIC OF BEGGARS”? Charity, Jewish Backwardness, and the Specter of the Jewish Idler

CHAPTER 6. MADNESS AND THE MAD

CHAPTER 7. “WE SINGING JEWS, WE JEWS POSSESSED”

EPILOGUE

CONCLUSION: Jewish Intersectionality at the European Fin-de-Siècle

NOTES

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781503613065

1503613062

OCLC:

1140370699