I didn’t grow up in one of those families that felt the constant need to remind me about how frum it was in the Alter Heim (the old country), but in yeshiva and thereafter, I was reminded constantly. Today, there is this indoctrination about how things were so much better in the shtetl than they are nowadays. They didn’t have the internet and everyone learned all day, was extremely pious, and always adhered to a strict code of tznius. I think the idea that the shtetl was this amazing place where everyone knew all of shas by the 6th grade and lived a pious life of poverty and Torah is somewhat mythological. Regardless of whether or not the shtetl paradise we frum folks imagine actually exists, the fantasy can be very funny.
In the Alter Heim….
We only ate leafy greens when absolutely necessary, like on Pesach.
We wore our tefillin when fixing our wagons.
Everyone knew all of shas by age 8 and the commentaries by age 11.
If one didn’t write down their novel chiddushim as an early teenager, their chances of joining the haskallah were high.
The town fool had ruach hakodesh.
We did BaHaB every week.
We actually knew the chofetz chaim in person
There was only one esrog for the entire town
Our first nights chanukah candles lasted all 8 days.
We didn’t have a choice when it came to our shidduch and the system worked.
The cat was always jumping into the cholent.
When someone went off the derech, they always died a horrible death in a pogrom.
The golem slept in the cemetery, ready to rise up against the goyim.
We ate potato skins all week long and on shabbos our father ate meat and had us in mind.
Those who didn’t have gemara’s learned to read upside down.
Find out more about shtetl mythology on 4torah.com
“We ate potato skins all week long and on shabbos our father ate meat and had us in mind.”
Hilarious
well of course we had it tough. We used to get up half an hour before we went to bed paid our boss for the privilege of letting us work and lived in a septic tank.
But we were happy
And try to tell the youth of today and they won’t believe you!
(apologies to Monty python)
Ha the chofetz haim part is totally true, every time i hear something about a person from the alter heim they always always met or knew the chofetz haim
oh and we were getting killed in holocausts (which our neighbors joined in when they had a chance to kill us) but it was so much better
If you’re ready for a real education on the alter heim, one that was published without being censored by ArtScroll, check out The Rise of David Levinsky and Solomon Mainmon’s Autobiography. But beware, those books contain dreadful kefirah!
Would you like to do a guest post about the required reading of kofrim.
No thank you, that’ll get my kids kicked out of school in Lakewood.
And there were no agunot in the alter heim.
Of course not. Divorce never happened. Every marriage was totally happy and there were never abusive relationships towards spouses or children, ever.
R’ Eli Clark did this joke for Purim 1991.
From his “Mammeleh Goose” nursery rhymes for Torah-True Jews:
Sing a song of past tense
Of Jewish days gone by
When we lived in Europe
Nobody was frei
When the ghettoes opened
Off maskilim ran
But the shtetl always stayed
A Torah wonderland
Everyone knew Torah
Loved it more than money
No one had to work in that
Land of Milk and Honey
And though we’re now in Golus
In an Age that’s Dark
We’ll try to rebuild Poland
Here in Borough Park
No mental illnesses in de heim, boruch hashem, although, sheidim, dybbuks and all sorts of other spooky stuff made people act as if they had a mental illness.
The poretz! What about the poretz? And rubles. There were no rubles but the poretz demanded them. So instead of a chicken for shabbos, you had to sell your child to the poretz where he danced and eventually became like a goy. But he remembered he was a Jew and did teshuva and when he became poretz the Jews live happily ever after. For about a second. Because there are no actual good stories from this time recorded or passed down.
The poretz! What about the poretz? And rubles. There were no rubles but the poretz demanded them. So instead of a chicken for shabbos, you had to sell your child to the poretz where he danced and eventually became like a goy. But he remembered he was a Jew and did teshuva and when he became poretz the Jews live happily ever after. For about a second. Because there are no actual good stories from this time recorded or passed down.