Row of Jewish-owned stores near Great Synagogue, Lumobl, Poland (now Ukraine), 1925. (Collection of Photographs and Measurement Drawings, neg. 23441. Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw. All rights reserved. Image courtesy the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress).
The prevailing image of the shtetl is the one in Fiddler on the Roof: a small, dirt-poor, strictly Jewish village. But shtetls…
