Stepchildren of the Shtetl: The Destitute, Disabled, and Mad of Jewish Eastern Europe With Natan M. Meir

Stepchildren of the Shtetl: The Destitute, Disabled, and Mad of Jewish Eastern Europe With Natan M. Meir Mondays June 28 – July 19 12 Noon PST Memoirs of Jewish life in the east European shtetl often recall the hekdesh (town poorhouse) and its residents: beggars, madmen and madwomen, disabled people, and poor orphans. In this course, we will come face to face with these long overlooked members of East European Jewish society. Our intellectual journey will take us to the darkest corners of Jewish society in eastern Europe – from the often squalid hekdesh (poorhouse) of the shtetl to the slums and insane asylums of Warsaw and Odessa, from the conscription of poor orphans during the reign of Nicholas I to the cholera wedding, a magical ritual in which an epidemic was halted by marrying outcasts to each other in the town cemetery. Natan M. Meir is the Lorry I. Lokey Professor of Judaic Studies in the Harold Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic Studies at Portland State University. A scholar of the social and cultural history of East European Jewry, he is the author of Kiev, Jewish Metropolis: A History, 1859-1914 (2010) and Stepchildren of the Shtetl: The Destitute, Disabled, and Mad of Jewish Eastern Europe, 1800-1939 (2020). He also serves as a museum consultant and leads study tours of Eastern Europe with Ayelet Tours.