A SHORT JEWISH HISTORY LESSON
Stephen Sbooster - My father, Herman Shooster, was born the third child of Eastern European Jewish parents that immigrated to the United States around 1910. They set up thier home in Chester, Pennsylvania. How they arrived was a miracle. Eastern European Jews called Poland and neighboring countries
Illustration of the Arch of Titus showing the sack of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
home for almost 1,000 years. It might have gone on another 1,000 years if cataclysmic events did not conspire to shake things up. Those events shaped the world in which we live today. Going way back to 70 AD with the siege of Jerusalem, the Jews were forced to leave their homeland by the conquering Romans. It would not be until May 14, 1948, three years after WWII, that they would have a country again. With- out a homeland, they wandered around Europe, congregating in two main regions; Spain and the combined nations of Germany, Poland, Russia, and surrounding territories. This wandering was given a term, The Diaspora. The Jews that settled in Spain eventually became known as Sephardic, or Spanish Jews, while those that went east became known as Ashkenazi. The Spanish Jews enjoyed relative wealth, bordering on an aristocracy until they were forced to leave or convert during The Span- ish Inquisition (1478). Many ended up in Holland. Meanwhile, the Eastern Jews suffered every kind of degrading persecution. The region itself was difficult, with terrible winters and meager existence. Piled upon them were restrictions designed to keep from gaining wealth. Some of the Jews still prospered, lit the candles on Sabbath, and prayed fervently at temples they built. The Eastern Jews, saddled with extra taxation, and deadly, lawless pograms they had nowhere else to go. Forced to endure hardships. Anti-Sem- itism simmered, randomly boiling over until 1939 when being Jewish, in and of itself, meant a death sentence under the Nazi regime. Given the distance between the two prima- ry sects of Jews during the diaspora, a divergence in the culture occurred. It was exacerbated when the Visigoths of the north, a nomadic, Germanic
people, conquered Rome in 368 AD. In doing so they placed a wedge between the east and the west, making contact nearly impossible for Jews on either side of the divide. Hundreds of years passed before that wedge was broken by hordes from the east, in the form of Arabs and Berbers, who beat the Visigoths back in 711 AD. Our family stems from the Ashkenazi sect. On the way to settlements in the east, the Ashke- nazi befriended the local indigenous population. These people, known as Sythians, got there name from the handheld tool they used for cutting grasses, a scythe. Thousands of them converted to Judaism and the populations mixed. Mores and customs required Jews to marry Jews. Because the Scythians were now Jewish, the cultures merged. Understanding this reveals the reason why the Jews from this region are called Ashkenazi. It’s a Yiddish word that means Scyth- ian or ‘People of the Scythe.’ Most of these old-world people would rare- ly, if ever, travel beyond their village. In fact, the kings and nobles of the land considered the people to be part of their holdings. With meager means the people lived lives of quiet desperation, but, even so, there were glimmers of hope, remaining observant to their faith and rituals. The Ashkenazi created an extensive culture with its own expressive language, Yiddish. The Yiddish language is a combination of Hebrew, German, Slavic, Polish and Russian. Yiddish developed as a slang language. Written with Hebrew letters, it became so widely accepted that newspapers, short stories, novels, and plays were produced. Many of these written works have survived, and some have been translated into English. In
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