Marjorie Schonhaut Hirshan

Once Upon a Shtetl Marjorie Schonhaut Hirshan

This spirited novel paints the colorful characters in my Jewish generational family in the shtetl, Skalat, Austria, in Galicia from the 1890s and on. This is their story. It reveals their daily fight to handle poverty, fears, their private neuroses and anti-Semitism which pervades their days. Ever battling to eke out a living, they still fall romantically and lustily in love, marry, and have children. Their early innocence is touching and human. Some remain stalwart defending their religious beliefs, while others grow intellectually, attending secret meetings in the woods, joining a new Renaissance philosophy called the Haskalah movement. They turn away from God and the old customs, their secularism causing pain to the older generation. History is cruel to them. Its brutal pogroms, murderous deaths or attacks by hostile Polish soldiers, and confusing wars bring changes they learn to handle stoically. Survival is the grandiose aim. Rapes of their female family members are deeply tortuous but their women are endowed with shtetl metal strengths to recover, surrounded by familial love and boundless support. Shtetl bonds and customs carry them through their troubled days. Some flee and escape to America, the golden land with gold in the streets, seeking jobs or a new freedom for learning and education. A new survival. Their story permeates us, and envelops us in much pride. And we carry their deep-felt love of family and shtetl in our hearts, equipping us with the necessities to hand its values to new generations.