Shtetl, a Jewish town (Yiddish שטעטל) – a small town with a predominantly Jewish population. They existed from the 16th century to the first half of the 20th century in Central and Eastern Europe. Shtetls were a unique form of settlement and life organization of Eastern European Jews (Ashkenazi), which preserved their special way of life with its religious and cultural separation.
The first towns arose in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Poland) in the 15th–16th centuries, when representatives of the local nobility began to invite Jews to settle on lands that belonged to them. Polish magnates granted Jews the right to engage in trade and alcohol production, and this conditioned the latter to permanent residence in magnate towns. Therefore, the evolution of small rural settlements around magnate estates into important trading cities in Volhynia (Berdychiv, Dubno, Korets, Ostrog), Podillia (Medzhibyzh, Tulchyn) and Kyiv region (Bila Tserkva, Skvira, Uman) depended to a large extent on the economic activity of Jews.
Jewish families built housing near the markets, which usually served not only as a private room, but also as a shop, workshop or inn. Everyday life in the shtetl revolved around the synagogue, the house, and the market; the latter was also a site of interactive relations with non-Jewish neighbors. Despite the overcrowding and low standard of living, two main values prevailed in the shtetls. First, humanity, which made the town a special environment in which economic and psychological support could be found under any circumstances. Secondly, Jewishness (Yiddishkeit) – a religious environment that served as the basis of the Jewish tradition among a foreign Christian environment. Charity has always been one of the most important foundations of the existence of any Jewish community. Numerous brotherhoods were created at synagogues and communities (hevrot). Funds collected by the fraternities were spent on the maintenance of public hospitals, orphanages, cemeteries, and teacher salaries (melamed). All towns had Jewish higher religious educational institutions (yeshiva), among them are well-known ones (Volozhyn, Myr, Telshiai), where people came to study even from the most distant places.
Actually, it was the psychological comfort in which ordinary Jews were in the shtetl that restrained many of them and served as the most important obstacle (even in times of economic hardship and physical danger) to permanently leave their old homes in Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe. Numerous writers and artists immortalized the life charms of the Jewish town of the 19th – early 20th centuries. One of the most famous among these writers was Sholom Aleichem, a native of Ukraine.
After the Holocaust, the revival of the shtetls as traditional Jewish towns never took place.