A Vanished World

Yesterday, I posted a video of a rare footage that captured Jewish life and culture in the Shtetl before WWII. I am a product of that culture. I am grateful that I am.

Now, I cannot expect everyone to share my sentiments on this. However, I am dumbfounded at some of the reactions that somehow projected a negative attitude and somewhat contempt towards that chapter in our Jewish history. Yes, there were pogroms, yes there was persecution and yes, there was poverty. But is that all that people see and remember of it?

How sad!

 Life in the Shtetl was very hard and often dangerous, no doubt about that. It was particularly true during the end of 19^th and early 20th centuries when persecution, economic restrictions and outbreaks of violence pressed increasingly on the socioeconomic foundations of the shtetl.

But it was the culture that helped overcome some of those difficulties, I believe, 
 create a wonderful resilient Jewish spirit. 

I personally was always captivated by the stories that I heard about the shtetl. I was enchanted particularly by the values of Yiddishkeit (Jewishness) and Menshlikhkeyt (humanness) around which the shtetl's life revolved. The traditional ideals of piety, learning and scholarship, communal justice, and charity were integrated in the warm and intimate life style of the shtetl.

As a child, I would always want to hear more about the life that had become a graveyard.

"Bobe, dartziel mir a maise fun amolike yorn (Grandma, tell me a story from the old days)," I would constantly beg of my grandmother in Yiddish. 

Those were some of the happiest moments in my childhood. The stories told by my grandmother mirrored a life of substance and meaning that could not and would never be duplicated. They had a hidden glow about them, always threaded with humour, wisdom and wit.

One person asked, after watching that video, “Where were the women in that video?” “They were at home,” answered another. I will tell you where the women were. They, the Yiddishe Momas, were at home raising some of the finest Jewish kids, giving them all the love and warmth that no nanny or living in maid could ever.  The home was the basic unit in the culture and life of the shtetl; it was founded on a patriarchal and closely- knit structure on traditional lines. The Jewish mother oversaw the Home. And thank G-d for that.

If you really wish to know what the women did, let me invite you to read the lyrics of "My Yiddishe Mommee." It will tell you where women were in that video. I know what it means, I had such one “woman” as mother. Mine was not only at home, she was also out working hard helping my father create a fine Jewish Home. She was one who is described in these few lines:
"How few were her pleasures, she never cared for fashion's style 

Her jewels and treasures she found them in her baby's smile 

Oh I know that I owe what I am today 

To that dear little lady to old and gray 

To that wonderful Yiddishe Momme of mine."

http://lyricsplayground.com/.../m/myyiddishemomme.shtml

The synagogue, Beit Hamidrash, was the house of prayer, the house of study and the house of assembly combined. It was the place that preserved the Great Spirit of the Jewish people in its purest form. It was the compassionate, old, loving and loyal mother who, in her graciousness gathered the tears of her lost sons and daughters constantly sheltering and consoling yet at the same time granting them the iron will for an eternal spiritual survival. 

Has anyone ever read Bialik?

Bialik, the greatest Jewish poet, in my humble view, was a product of that culture. His poetry mirrored the suffering, but it also reflected the Jewish Spirit that this culture produced and preserved. He was the bridge between that culture and our modern Jewish state. So were Sha”i Agnon, Natan Alterman and many others who were  reared in that culture. I cannot brush it off as insignificant, dear readers.

The hardest blow, however, came in the form of a private message from a person who shall remain nameless. That person could not understand how I felt the way I did about this chapter in our history. That nameless person went on to suggest that those Jews of the shtetle, my people were “whimps and went like a lamb to the slaughterhouse.”

To that nameless person and all those other nameless who feel “machoisticly” superior to the millions who died in the Shoah, let me say this.

What did you expect of 1.5 million children that were mercilessly murdered in the Shoah, resistance? How about the frail elderly, women, and disabled ones? Had you been in their place, would you have believed then that the human mind could have conceived of putting people in ovens??? Would you not have jumped into a shower after several days of being in a cattle train surrounded by the smell death, urine and facies? Would you, yes YOU, have thought that instead of water, you would be showered with Zyklon B?

Those who could resist, did resist.

My father was one of them. He had a choice. He escaped and joined the partisans. That is how he earned 71% disability from the Nazis.

That culture cradled, developed and shaped others like him. It also produced Jabotinsky, Ben Gurion, Begin and many other giants, lest you forget. Those ended up being the leaders of our Great Home, Medinat Yisrael.

That is how I prefer to remember that Vanished world. That is the way, I always will.