Life Is With People: The Culture of the Shtetl
by Mark Zborowski, Elizabeth Herzog
Category: Religion

Life Is with People takes us inside a world that exists today only in memory. It allows us to enter the lives of Jewish communities in the small towns and villages of Eastern Europe as they had existed before the Holocaust. It attempts to define the Jewish ethos that informs the day-to-day lives of the men, women, and children of the shtetl. And it re-creates the flavor of the Sabbath, the nature of education, the rituals of marriage, and ethics of parenting in a community that prides itself on its unique and cohesive culture. As a cultural portrait, it has never been surpassed for its richly detailed and evocative depiction of the world from which most American Jews are descended. This first anthropological study of Eastern European Jewish life was initiated by Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead shortly after World War II as part of the Columbia University Research in Contemporary Cultures Project. Since its initial publication in 1952 it has become a classic in its own right, introducing the word "shtetl" into the American vocabulary, and inspiring further research into the culture of Eastern European Jews.