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Jews Created A Rich Culture
P A G E 2
Economic life
Government restrictions severely limited economic opportunities. Jews could not own land and were excluded from many kinds of jobs. By the late 1800s, most Jewish men were finding it impossible to eke out a living as tailors, carpenters, butchers, and milkmen.
Most families were very poor, and women were forced to earn money to make ends meet. Girls generally left school early in order to help support their families. In the shtetls (the smallest towns) women owned shops, sold goods in the marketplace, and took in sewing. In cities such as Odessa, Kiev, Warsaw, and Minsk, many women worked alongside men in factories under wretched conditions.
Cultural Life
By the late nineteenth century a secular culture flourished as well. Yiddish literature and theater, Zionism and the Bund (the Jewish socialist movement) conveyed new ideas to Eastern European Jews.
top photo: Ukrainian peddler, about 1900. Courtesy of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York.
middle photo: Women selling goods in the marketplace, about 1900. Courtesy of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York.
bottom photo: Women Bund members. The Bund appealed to working girls because it offered them educational opportunities and chances to perform the same political tasks as men. Courtesy of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York.
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