Quotes About Shtetl

A powerful wind swept through the shtetl, making it whistle. Those studying obscure texts in dimly lit rooms looked up. Lovers making amends and promises, amendments and excuses, fell silent.

By now, almost all of the shtetl's three hundred–odd citizens had gathered to debate that about which they knew nothing. The less a citizen knew, the more adamantly he or she argued. There was nothing new in this.

the current division of the shtetl into its two sections, the Jewish Quarter and the Human Three-Quarters. All so-called sacred activities—religious studies, kosher butchering, bargaining, etc.—were contained within the Jewish Quarter. Those activities concerned with the humdrum of daily existence—secular studies, communal justice, buying and selling, etc.—took place in the Human Three-Quarters. Straddling the two was the Upright Synagogue.

And so was the synagogue lifted and moved. It was in 1783 that wheels were attached, making the shtetl's ever-changing negotiation of Jewishness and Humanness less of a schlep.

almost all of the shtetl's three hundred–odd citizens had gathered to debate that about which they knew nothing. The less a citizen knew, the more adamantly he or she argued. There was nothing new in this. A month before there had been the question of whether it might send a better message to the children to plug, finally, the bagel's hole.

A questo punto, quasi tutti i trecento e passa cittadini dello Shtetl si radunarono per dibattere quella faccenda di cui non sapevano nulla. E meno un cittadino ne sapeva, più era granitico nelle sue argomentazioni. Niente di nuovo in questo.

It's self-effacing, it's hard-luck, the shtetl stories. All those Coasters things are an amalgam of Yiddish and black humor.

His waiting for Teddy left Schlesinger rather in the position of the poor village idiot paid by his shtetl to sit at the outskirts of town awaiting the arrival of the messiah.

To tell you the truth, in the old Jewish shtetls, if your husband died, sometimes they'd have you marry the brother, and my grandparents were actually stepbrother and stepsister.

It's self-effacing, it's hard-luck, the shtetl stories. All those Coasters things are an amalgam of Yiddish and black humor.