BEFORE

Remember – before the Catastrophe, the

Ruin, the Shoah – that there were millions

in the shtetls in what is now Belarus,

Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania,

Moldova, Poland, Romania,

Russia and Ukraine; small market towns, part

of the lost continent of Yiddishland;

with its piety, and its superstition;

its wit, graft, poverty, and frequent terrors;

its klezmer bands, and its dancing circles;

winter’s whirling snowdrifts, summer’s gnats,

across the goyim’s steppes and in their forests,

before the Ruin, the Catastrophe;

juddering images, still, flickering.

There is an old Yiddisher aphorism:

‘Di ganste velt iz eyn shtetl’ – ‘The

whole world is a small town’.