Greetings From My Litvish Shtetl. Jewish Social Life in Lite in the Light of Reports Sent to the Warsaw Yiddish Press Before 1914
Greetings From My Litvish Shtetl. Jewish Social Life in Lite in the Light of Reports Sent to the Warsaw Yiddish Press Before 1914

Summary/Abstract: The article is dedicated to the reports from the North-Western Land of the Russian Empire sent to the Warsaw Yiddish daily Haynt by its provincial amateur correspondents (Yiddish: korespondentn). The daily had a network of local collaborators who regularly provided the Warsaw-based editors with news regarding the Jewish life in the so-called Lite, both in gubernial cities (e.g., Vilnius, Minsk) and in the province. Taking the year 1913 as an example, the article analyses reports published throughout the year which described events important both for the general local population as well as only for the Jewish one. The scope of Jewish interests included institutions which were important for the local Jewish life, such as schools, libraries, theaters, and professional cooperatives. The correspondents also informed about important political and social phenomena such as the Polish boycott of the Jewish merchants in Congress Poland and its repercussions in the Pale of Settlement, expulsions of Jews from the countryside, Jewish emigration from Russia or, last but not least, the Beilis trial. The reports might not always be objective and reliable, since the correspondents surely were critical observers of the local Jewish life and the relations inside their communities, but they also visibly supported the Warsaw-based editors in their strive for popularization of the political line of Haynt.

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