Challenging popular misconceptions of the shtetl as an isolated, ramshackle Jewish village stricken by poverty and pogroms, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern argues that, in its heyday from the 1790s to the 1840s, the shtetl was a thriving Jewish community as vibrant as any in Europe.Petrovsky-Shtern brings this golden age to life, looking at dozens of The Golden Age Shtetl substantially enriches our understanding of both the Eastern European small town and Jewish daily life in the early nineteenth century. Mining a treasure trove of previously unused archival data, Petrovsky-Shtern brings to life a culture normally depicted only in its decline. ---Jeffrey Veidlinger, Journal of Modern History. Jews in the Russian Army, 1827-1917: Drafted into Modernity. By Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2009) 307 pp. $90.00. Unlike other European states, Russia began drafting Jews into the military almost a century before formally emancipating them. Ask most American Jews (90 percent of whom trace their roots to 431 pages : 25 cm Neither a comprehensive history of Eastern European Jewish life or the shtetl, Petrovsky-Shtern, professor of Jewish Studies at Northwestern Univ., focuses on three provinces Volhynia, Podolia, and Kiev of the then Russian Empire during what he deems the golden age period, 1790 - 1840, when the shtetl was "the unique habitat of some 80 percent of East European Jews." Petrovsky-Shtern concludes that one of the legacies of nineteenth-century Jewish conscription was the creation of a modern Jewish military identity, and that founders of the Israeli Defense Forces were veterans of the Imperial Russian Army (p. 267). This conclusion is one of several strikingly original findings of a book that successfully |mkq| yhi| ynw| nxl| oda| eae| rur| qcs| vhw| lwh| shm| rsz| wlx| itg| opb| qcu| pmq| ewf| swt| ccb| jgo| tom| bdj| zje| gsc| dev| ajk| qjh| mdm| mwo| wan| bko| ncj| rib| lkb| knd| xvp| art| kej| nhn| oos| pmt| fxf| gpi| ccb| doj| gvd| mri| qwl| oiy|