I am wondering if people can point me to good reading or documentaries about pre-holocaust jewish /yiddish culture in eastern Europe.
Really interested in the cultural social history, from Tzarist pogroms onwards!
Something more historical than fiddler on the roof, but not quite as long as Shoah (which I will watch if ever I have a spare six hours...)
In return, klezmer!! - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImpT8zO5p1Y&sns=em
Apologies if this isn't the right sort of question to askhistorians...it's my first day...
Here are some good places to start:
Book: The Worlds of S. An-sky: A Russian Jewish Intellectual at the Turn of the Century --> S. An-sky led an ethnographic expedition around the Russian empire around 100 years ago, I think reading about him would be a great place to start.
Encyclopedia (available online at www.yivoencyclopedia.org): The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe --> Unlike other Jewish encyclopedias, YIVO is extremely focused on Yiddish culture and Eastern European Jewish life. This encyclopedia is an excellent resource. Lots of the articles are translated from Russian or Hebrew which would give you "Access" to sources not otherwise available in English.
Aside from that, walk into any large library and you can probably find a huge number of books about the topic. Here are a few I read and enjoyed last year, I'm sure there are hundreds of others.
Vital, David. A people apart: the Jews in Europe, 1789-1939. Oxford University Press, 1999.
Dawidowicz, Lucy S. The Golden Tradition: Jewish Life and Thought in Eastern Europe. Syracuse University Press, 1996.
Gitelman, Zvi Y. A century of ambivalence: the Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the present. Indiana University Press, 2001.