The Shtetl of Lepel content

The Shtetl of Lepel in Contemporary Cultural Memory / Editor-in-chief Svetlana Amosova. Moscow, 2015. 496 p.

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The book is the new issue of the series “The Shtetl in Contemporary Cultural Memory”, dedicated to the history and culture of Jews in various regions of Belarus. The research presented in this book is based on material collected during and following the 2014 field school in Lepel (Vitebsk region, Republic of Belarus), organized by Sefer Center and Institute of Slavic studies, Russian Academy of Sciences). The objective of the field school was to reveal the Jewish history of the city of Lepel and its neighbouring towns Chashniki and Ushachi using oral testimonies and historical documents. The most important task of the field school was also the finding, investigation and documenting of Jewish cultural heritage objects of the region (primarily cataloguing of Jewish cemeteries).

The book includes articles about various periods in the history of the Jewish community of Lepel, its places of worship, monuments and sites that are significant to Jewish history of the city, and publications of local old residents’ stories about the everyday life in the polyethnic Lepel, as well as in the settlements Chashniki and Ushachi. A separate part of the book is the catalogue of the Jewish cemetery. The Appendix includes archival documents on the history of Lepel Jewish community and the fragments of memoires by natives of Lepel and the surrounding area.

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Editorial Board:

Svetlana Amosova (Ed.-in-chief, Sefer Center for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization, Institute of Slavic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow)

Olga Belova (Institute of Slavic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow)

Leonid Dreyer (Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow)

Victoria Mochalova (Sefer Center for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization, Institute of Slavic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow)

Anna Shaevich (Sefer Center for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization)

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Peer reviewed by Vladimir Petrukhin� (Institute of Slavic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow)

Maria Akhmetova (Center of Russian Folklore)

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ISBN 978-5-7576-0338-4

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Preface�

PART 1