Culture as Both a Lens and a Veil

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Notes

¹A shtetl (Yiddish: diminutive form of Yiddish shtot “town”) was typically a small town with a large Jewish population forced to live there by Germans in pre-Holocaust Central and Eastern Europe. Shtetls (Yiddish plural: shtetlekh) were mainly found in the areas that constituted the 19th century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, the Congress Kingdom of Poland, Galicia, and Romania. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

² Pogrom is a Russian word meaning “to wreak havoc, to demolish violently.” Historically, the term refers to violent attacks by local non-Jewish populations on Jews in the Russian Empire and in other countries. The first such incident to be labeled a pogrom is believed to be anti-Jewish rioting in Odessa in 1821. Copyright©United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. Encyclopedia Last Updated: May 4, 2009.

³sha·mas noun pl. shamosim sha·mo'·sim a synagogue official who provides various services, often one who manages day-to-day affairs.

⁴to daven (third-person singular simple present davens, present participle davening, simple past and past participle davened) (intransitive) to recite the Jewish liturgy; to pray.