Stepchildren of the Shtetl : The Destitute, Disabled, and Mad of Jewish Eastern Europe, 1800–1939 by Natan M. Meir.- 2020

 

Stepchildren of the Shtetl : The Destitute, Disabled, and Mad of Jewish Eastern Europe, 1800–1939 by Natan M. Meir. - in The Stanford University Jewish Studies Series

"This outstanding book offers us a glimpse at the underbelly of a Jewish community rarely studied from this vantage point. Meir tackles an elusive topic with analytic skill, keen sensitivity, and clear, accessible prose."―Steven J. Zipperstein, author of Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History

Winner of the 2021 Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Title, sponsored by the American Library Association.

Finalist in the 2020 National Jewish Book Awards (History category), sponsored by the Jewish Book Council.

Honorable Mention in the 2021 DHA Outstanding Book Award, sponsored by the Disability History Association

Stepchildren of the Shtetl : The Destitute, Disabled, and Mad of Jewish Eastern Europe, 1800–1939 by Natan M. Meir. - in The Stanford University Jewish Studies Series- is very through study of a not much written about aspect of Eastern European Jewish, especially Jewish Russian history.

Meir details the numerous reasons an Eastern European Jew were to live in poverty.  If you were disabled or seriously mentally ill or cognitively challenged and had no family you had few options.  Public Begging or charity were your primary options,

Meir covers the operations of "poor houses" and the traditional obligations of Charity, the cholera weddings of the poor as well as the fears of many in Jewish society that the marginalised Jews played into the hands of Anti-Semitism.

"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." From Stanford University Press

About the author

Natan M. Meir is the Lorry I. Lokey Professor of Judaic Studies at Portland State University.

I borrowed this book from The New York City Public library