The Fusgeyers and the Jewish Pedestrian Movement After 1899, those who organized themselves into groups to walk across Romania called themselves fusgeyers (pronounced “foosgayer” — the Yiddish word for foot-goers, pedestrians or wayfarers). Fusgeyers...
Read moreThe Haskalah
Former shtetl street, Ukraine Like the earlier eighteenth century European Enlightenment, [1] the late eighteenth century Jewish Enlightenment — the Haskalah [2] — fought religious orthodoxy and abuse. Its advocates, known as Maskilim, [3] pointed to...
Read moreThe arrival of Eastern European Jews in Nineteenth Century France
Established French Jewish businessman Fernand Aaron The Paris train stations — Gare du Nord, Gare de l’Est, and Gare de Lyon — were where, in the nineteenth century, Jewish refugees, fleeing Eastern European’s pogroms and charges of blood libel, first...
Read moreJourney To Dubno
In Dubno, in the old centre of the town, I pass under a sagging arcade and through a courtyard. Suddenly, here I am: in the old Jewish shtetl. Here, alleyways and leaning houses are just the way I’d pictured them. It’s how things must have looked back...
Read moreBudapest and Rural Exodus
Hungarian Jewish Farmers (Photos Courtesy of the Memorial Museum of Hungarian Speaking Jewry, Safed, Israel) After 1900, Jewish society glittered in Budapest. Although comprising only a tiny six percent of the population, f orty-two percent of journalists,...
Read moreThe Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
Photo: Former Polish castle in today's Ukraine Ask around: how many people know about the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth? Few. Yet, after Poland and Lithuania united in 1569, their powerful bi-confederation stretched over Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, most...
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