The Shtetl – History, Memory, Image

 Jewish Life in the East European small town (Shtetl) produced an enormous literary output in Yiddish and Hebrew, both documentary and fictional. This literature has created diverse representations and images of the shtetl, and presented its permanent features as well as processes of transition and change. The shtetl became an object of sharp criticism against traditional ways of life, but also a nostalgic symbol of the old Jewish world. The seminar will examine various kinds of sources, memoiristic and belletristic, written since the middle of the 19^th century. These works portray actual and fictional shtetls located in the different regions of Eastern Europe, from Poland-Lithuania to Ukraine and from Galicia to Besssarabia. The seminar discussions will focus on the comparison and the mutual illumination between the Shtetl as a historical reality and the Shtetl as an imaginary construct in the fictional literary domain.