Anatevka

Two months ago I wrote a short post about the history we imagine that we understand.  Two generations of moviegoers thought they knew about plantation life because they saw "Gone With the Wind."  Who knows how much longer people will think they understand Eastern European Jewish life because they saw "Fiddler on the Roof"?

Brody, Ukraine was -- at the turn of the twentieth century -- a small city (roughly 20,000) on the border between Austria-Hungary and Russia.  It was easily over 80% Jewish, which is a very large proportion.  We picture muddy streets and leaning, wood-framed structures in the "shtetl" but Brody's streets were paved with stone blocks and many of the downtown buildings were stone or brick and quite substantial.  The main synagogue, in particular, was an imposing stone building.

And what about the community of Jews in Brody?  The whole range of schools and conflicts was present.  There were Hasidim and Misnagdim.  There were Maskilim.  The well-known Yiddish writer Joseph Roth, author of "Radetsky March" was from Brody.  The Baal Shem Tov lived there for a time, too.

But Brody was a commercial town, important for its position on the frontier.  Most of those Jews weren't rabbinical scholars or mystics or advocates of the Enlightenment.  They were business people, doing the business of border towns.  I think if we imagine ourselves having devolved dramatically from the piety of our grandfathers, or having evolved dramatically from their ignorance, we fail to understand both them and ourselves.

And a sidenote for readers of Stones from the Creek.  "Brody" in Ukrainian means "fords".  "Vado" in the name San Miguel del Vado also refers to the ford, in that case of the Pecos River.