To , the synagogue was the center of religion and religion
was the most important thing in their lives. The rabbi was their leader, they
came to him with every problem they had. Jews were poor, but they all gave
tzedakah. It was said that even the poorest Jews could find someone poorer to
help and give money to. According to the Jewish religion, tzedakah is one of
the most important mitzvahs you can do. The same could be said about the Jewish
holidays. They were observed very strictly, but Shabbat was the most welcomed.
In order to teach the importance of Jewish law, they started their own schools,
their own courts of law, and their own burial societies. even though there were
pogroms, religious persecution forced the Jews to create stronger communities
and made them more united.
In the beginning of the 1800s, Alexander I ruled Russia. He promised
the Jews that they could become farmers, could live in two districts, and could
buy unoccupied land. Although Alexander was kind and helped the Jews, the tax
they were forced to pay, stayed. before he died in 1825, the Jewish situation
became hard for them to bare. They lived in poverty in small and crowded places
and were oppressed. For hundreds of years, Jews lived these ways in two
communities - the ghetto and the shtetl. To keep out thieves and rioters from
coming in, they built walls around their section of town. When they did this,
the government and churches got an idea, they would use the walls that the Jews
built, to lock them in.
These walls were located near a foundry that made cannons, so they named
it 'ghetto' which means "foundry". They would close the gates every night and
the Jews would be locked in until daybreak. The word of the ghettos quickly
spread, soon there were ghettos all over Europe. The Jews were all treated the
same in every ghetto that was in Europe, according the government and churches,
the Jews had no rights. They were no allowed to own land, join crafts guilds,
or do any kind of work that Christians got to do. In some ghettos, they were
even forced to wear badges so anyone who saw them would know they were Jewish.
The badge was usually a Star of David. For many years, the government took
copies of the Talmud, and burnt them. Also the government forced the Jews to
listen to long Christian sermons. Even though all these terrible things took
place and the government was not good to the Jews, the ghettos seemed to be a
better place for most Jews than the outside. The rich helped the poor and even
the poorest Jew was treated with respect because of what the Jewish law said.
Though their living conditions were not the best, the Jews all worked, studied,
celebrated, and prayed together. They also tried to make life as worthwhile as
possible.
During the period that ghettos were spreading and becoming more well-
known, shtetls, which mean "little towns", were beginning to take shape. Many
of the Jews settled outside the main cities, this is where they formed their
shtetls. Unlike ghettos, the shtetls were protected by the government because
the Jews served the nobles as bankers, tax collectors, and farm managers. Also,
there were no walls surrounding it to keep out thieves and rioters. In the
center of the shtetl stood the synagogue, and at the center of life of the
synagogue, was the rabbi. Jews thought being rich was nice but being a good
student was better. Each shtetl contained a population of between 1,000 to
20,000 Jews. The Jewish community in Russia extends back about ten centuries in
history. Until the middle of ...