The Jewish Dark Continent: Life and Death in the Russian Pale of Settlement Book PDF, ePub eBook

Join our eBook service for unlimited books & audiobooks. Get a free 7 day subscription! ↓↓↓↓↓


Book Descriptions:

At the turn of the twentieth century, over forty percent of the world’s Jews lived within the Russian Empire, almost all in the Pale of Settlement. From the Baltic to the Black Sea, the Jews of the Pale created a distinctive way of life little known beyond its borders. This led the historian Simon Dubnow to label the territory a Jewish “Dark Continent.”

Just before World War I, a socialist revolutionary and aspiring ethnographer named An-sky pledged to explore the Pale. He dreamed of leading an ethnographic expedition that would produce an archive―what he called an Oral Torah of the common people rather than the rabbinic elite―which would preserve Jewish traditions and transform them into the seeds of a modern Jewish culture. Between 1912 and 1914, An-sky and his team collected jokes, recorded songs, took thousands of photographs, and created a massive ethnographic questionnaire. Consisting of 2,087 questions in Yiddish―exploring the gamut of Jewish folk beliefs and traditions, from everyday activities to spiritual exercises to marital intimacies―the Jewish Ethnographic Program constitutes an invaluable portrait of Eastern European Jewish life on the brink of destruction.

Nathaniel Deutsch offers the first complete translation of the questionnaire, as well as the riveting story of An-sky’s almost messianic efforts to create a Jewish ethnography in an era of revolutionary change. An-sky’s project was halted by World War I, and within a few years the Pale of Settlement would no longer exist. These survey questions revive and reveal shtetl life in all its wonder and complexity.

The Jewish Dark Continent: Life and Death in the Russian Pale of Settlement by Nathaniel Deutsch

From reader reviews:

Donald McLaughlin:

Have you spare time for the day? What do you do when you have more or little spare time? Sure, you can choose the suitable activity with regard to spend your time. Any person spent all their spare time to take a walk, shopping, or went to typically the Mall. How about open or maybe read a book eligible The Jewish Dark Continent: Life and Death in the Russian Pale of Settlement? Maybe it is to get best activity for you. You know beside you can spend your time together with your favorite's book, you can more intelligent than before. Do you agree with the opinion or you have various other opinion?

Sandy Holiday:

This The Jewish Dark Continent: Life and Death in the Russian Pale of Settlement tend to be reliable for you who want to be a successful person, why. The reason of this The Jewish Dark Continent: Life and Death in the Russian Pale of Settlement can be on the list of great books you must have is actually giving you more than just simple examining food but feed a person with information that probably will shock your prior knowledge. This book will be handy, you can bring it just about everywhere and whenever your conditions in e-book and printed ones. Beside that this The Jewish Dark Continent: Life and Death in the Russian Pale of Settlement forcing you to have an enormous of experience like rich vocabulary, giving you trial of critical thinking that we understand it useful in your day action. So , let's have it and luxuriate in reading.

David Smith:

Do you have something that you enjoy such as book? The e-book lovers usually prefer to choose book like comic, brief story and the biggest you are novel. Now, why not trying The Jewish Dark Continent: Life and Death in the Russian Pale of Settlement that give your satisfaction preference will be satisfied by means of reading this book. Reading habit all over the world can be said as the opportinity for people to know world much better then how they react when it comes to the world. It can't be claimed constantly that reading routine only for the geeky particular person but for all of you who wants to be success person. So , for all of you who want to start studying as your good habit, you can pick The Jewish Dark Continent: Life and Death in the Russian Pale of Settlement become your current starter.

Edda Allen:

Beside this kind of The Jewish Dark Continent: Life and Death in the Russian Pale of Settlement in your phone, it could possibly give you a way to get closer to the new knowledge or details. The information and the knowledge you can got here is fresh from oven so don't always be worry if you feel like an outdated people live in narrow small town. It is good thing to have The Jewish Dark Continent: Life and Death in the Russian Pale of Settlement because this book offers for you readable information. Do you at times have book but you would not get what it's facts concerning. Oh come on, that wil happen if you have this in the hand. The Enjoyable option here cannot be questionable, just like treasuring beautiful island. So do you still want to miss it? Find this book in addition to read it from at this point!