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Describe The Shtetl Life

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Describe The Shtetl Life
Over many years, Jews have developed into Eastern Europe even when times were rough. Most of these Jews settled in small Yiddish towns during Pre-World War Two called shtetls. Jobs in these towns could vary from contractors and entrepreneurs to shopkeepers, carpenters, shoemakers, tailors, truck drivers, otherwise known as teamsters, and water carriers. These settlement were mainly occupied by Jews, making up around 80% of the population (Kassow, Samuel). Even though shtetls are considerably small, they still had shuls, schools, a cemetery, a marketplace, ritual bathing house (mikvah), and inns. In shtetl life, everyone knew everything about everyone; no family event was private, life in the shtetl was life with people, meaning everyone knew everything and was like family, even if not related through blood. …show more content…

Since the Jews were people with little amount of power, they did not make the laws, and as a result there was no legally and politically such thing as a shtetl. Moreover, the Polish commonwealth were the ones who actually owned the land where the shtetls sat, yet they would lease it to the Jews, but just to show them that they really owned it, the Polish would put Catholic churches in the middle of the shtetl marketplace. As history has shown repeatedly, when the general community does well, so do the Jews, and vise versa, and this is true now, for when Polish commonwealth collapsed, that was the end of stability inside the

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