Where Is Poland? | The Shtetl שטעטל‎

Chapter 7

The Shtetl שטעטל‎

Jews had been present in the Polish lands since the tenth century. The traditional Jewish communities mainly lived in small settlements called shtetls . In the nineteenth century, even as much as 80% of the world’s Jewish population lived in the Polish lands.

"Reception of Jews in Poland" by Jan Matejko, 1889. Source: Wikicommons

Polin, or how Jews came to Poland

And those who delve into the Scriptures say: This is why it is called Polin. For thus spoke Israel when they came to the land, “Po-lin! Here rest for the night.” And this means that we shall rest here until we shall merit going to the land of Israel. (S.Y. Agnon, 1919)

The first Jews that reached Poland were nomadic merchants from Western Europe. One of them, a Sephardic merchant from Tortosa named Ibrahim ibn Yaqub, gave us the first historical description of the state of the Polans, ruled by Mieszko I. The ancient presence of Jews in the Polish lands is also attested by the oldest coins bearing Mieszko I’s likeness, with his name inscribed in Hebrew letters.

The Jews began to settle in the Polish lands more intensively starting in the twelfth century. In 1187, after a series of pogroms in the West related to the Crusades, a small number of Jewish settlers reached Silesia, setting up the first permanent Jewish settlements.

The influx of Jews to the Polish lands during this time was due on the one hand to the pogrom-conducive atmosphere in Western Europe (discriminatory legislation and incidents of persecution), on the other due to the friendly reception and protection from the Polish rulers. This was confirmed by the statute of Kalisz, issued in 1264 by the duke of Wielkopolska, Bolesław the Pious. In the fourteenth century the provisions of that statute were extended by Kazimierz the Great to the whole of the Kingdom of Poland.

Most of the Jews settling in Poland came from German-speaking lands, bringing with them the Yiddish culture and language of Ashkenazi Jews. Over the subsequent centuries, thanks to relative tolerance and protection from the rulers, the Jews enjoyed the freedom of religion and were able to develop a rich culture. The Jewish population in the lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth gradually grew, reaching around 800,000 on the eve of the partitions, which represented some 6 percent of the Commonwealth’s population. Scholars estimate that one-third of the population of Jews in the whole world lived in Poland at that time.

'Jewish Wedding', painting by Wincenty Smokowski

In the homeland of Yiddishkayt

A shtetl is a small town or settlement, typical of Eastern Europe, with a significant percentage of Jewish inhabitants – generally exceeding half of the population, sometimes reaching 80 percent or more. Shtetls were mainly located in the eastern lands of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (later in the Russian and Austrian partitions), but were also spread through Romania, Slovakia, Bukovina, and Hungary.

The economic subsistence of the shtetl was based on trade and craftsmanship, providing services to the non-Jewish population as well. Shtetls were oases of orthodoxy and tradition, and the language spoken there was Yiddish. The rhythm of life in the shtetl was marked out by tradition and religious holidays. All individual and community affairs were regulated by the provisions of the Torah and Talmud, interpreted by Rabbis.

For the Jewish residents of the shtetls, the march of historical time long remained something abstract. Despite the influence of modern emancipatory movements, for most of the Jewish residents of the shtetls, the winds of modernity did not arrive until the beginning of World War I.

The traditional shtetl life and its crisis would become literary material for many Jewish writers who depicted their hometowns in their work. Their imaginative representations - and at times whole mythical worlds built around them - can be found in Sholem Aleichem’s fictitious Kasrilevke (and Antenevke), Karl Emil Franzos’ Chortkiv, Samuel Yosef Agnon’s Buchach, or Bruno Schulz’s Drohobych.