Introduction
When these streets heard Yiddish is an extensive resource containing information and images about Jewish life in Eastern Europe before World War II. There is a great deal of material here, and there are many ways you can access it. The site is broken down into three sections:
Culture - which explores music, food, language, politics, religious life, youth culture, and Jewish life during the Shoah (Holocaust);
Lives - which looks at the everyday aspects of Jewish life in Eastern Europe; and
Places - which describes the different kinds of places Jews lived, from cities to shtetlekh (small towns) and derfer (tiny settlements).
Of course, there is overlap among these sections, and to really understand Eastern European Jewish life you will need to explore topics that span all three. To help you out, we have identified a few key issues in the study of Eastern European Jewry; use them as examples of what can be done to best utilize the site. Click on one of the links below to examine these key themes and see how they relate to the lives, places, and culture of Eastern European Jewish life.