What Life in the Jewish Shtetl Was Like | The Jewish Story | Unpacked

If you’ve ever watched Fiddler on the Roof or Yentl, you may already have an idea of what the shtetls—small Jewish market towns in pre-WWII central and Eastern Europe—were like.

From 1791 to 1917, Russian Jews were confined to shtetls in an area called the Pale of Settlement. Their communities suffered from antisemitic attacks, pogroms, and rampant poverty. Despite this, spirituality flourished in the shtetls and they became the birthplaces of both the Hasidic and Mussar movements as well as the Volozhin yeshiva, the model for the modern yeshiva."

After the failed first Russian Revolution of 1905, over 50,000 Jews were murdered in pogroms in only four years. Fearing their safety and looking for new opportunities away from the shtetls, around two and a half million Jews emigrated from Russia signaling the end of an era for Russian Jewry.

Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:32 The Pale of Settlement
01:14 Shtetl life and communal welfare
02:04 Hasidic Dynasties
02:28 Nicholas I and military conscription
03:34 Alexander I, Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, and the modern yeshiva
04:13 The Mussar Movement and Talmud
04:36 Alexander III and waves of pogroms
05:22 The First Russian Revolution
05:49 Emigration from Russia to the US, Western Europe, and Palestine
06:17 Abolishment of the Pale of Settlement
06:59 Outro

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Co-Executive Producers:
- Melinda Goldrich
- Shmuel Katz

Gold Level:
- Goldrich Family Foundation
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Image and footage credits:
-Yad VaShem
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About The Jewish Story: Understand three thousand years of Jewish history in these short videos based on the book Letters to Auntie Fori: The 5,000-Year History of the Jewish People and Their Faith by the renowned historian Sir Martin Gilbert. Learn the Jewish story from the ancient Israelites of the Bible to Hellenization, the Jews of the Middle Ages to modern day, and more.

About Unpacked: We provide nuanced insights by unpacking all things Jewish. People are complex and complicated — yet we’re constantly being pushed to oversimplify our world. At Unpacked we know that being complex makes us more interesting. Because of this, we break the world down with nuance and insight to drive your curiosity and challenge your thinking.

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