A Journey to a Nineteenth-Century Shtetl: The Memoirs of Yekhezkel Kotik Hardcover - 2002

From the publisher

A masterpiece of modern Yiddish literature, the first volume of memoirs by Yekhezkel Kotik, is now available in English. Originally published in Warsaw in 1913, this beautifully written memoir offers a panoramic description of the author's experiences growing up in Kamieniec Litewski, a Polish shetl connected with many important events in the history of nineteenth-century Eastern European Jewry. Although the way of life portrayed in this memoir has disappeared, the historical, cultural, and folkoric material it contains will be of major interest to historians and general readers alike. Kotik's story is the saga of a wealthy and influential family, through four generations. Masterfully interwoven into this story are colorful vignettes featuring Kotik's family and neighbors, including rabbis and zaddikim, merchants and the poor, hasidim and mitnaggedim, scholars and illiterates, believers and heretics, matchmakers and informers, teachers and musicians. Stories of personal warmth and despair intermingle with descriptions of the rise and decline of Jewish communal institutions and the relationships between Jews and the Russian authorities and Polish lords. Such events as the brutal dec