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Jews Created A Rich Culture
Jews in Eastern Europe had a religious culture that had survived hundreds of years of persecution. The Jewish religion has endured the scattering of Jews to the four corners of the earth. During the 2,000 years they have lived in the Diaspora — among Gentiles outside their ancient homeland — they have persistently maintained Judaism as a dynamic way of life with a sacred language, Hebrew. This common background and the sense of responsibility they feel for one another have united Jews around the world.
Jewish culture gave specific roles to men and women. Religious learning was highly esteemed and reserved for males. The synagogue was the
province of men, and families scrimped and saved to train promising boys as rabbis and scholars. Though Jewish women were allowed to pray in the synagogue, they were confined to a balcony where men could not see or hear them. Girls attended school only long enough to learn their prayers and devotional literature in Hebrew and Yiddish.
Jewish women played important religious roles in the home. There they were responsible for upholding all religious laws that involved keeping kosher. They helped their Jewish neighbors through tzedakah (righteous acts), such as providing a Sabbath dinner for a poor family and working in benevolent societies called khevres.
top photo: Shtetl Wedding, 1955, painting by Saul Raskin. Courtesy of the Art Institute of Ein Charod, Israel, Photo by Avraham Hay.
inset photo: Celebrating the completion of writing a Torah scroll, Dubrovna, Belorussia, about 1900. Courtesy of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York.
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