Inhalt: | Jewish marginal people in premodern Europe -- Blind beggars and orphan recruits : the Russian state, the kahal, and marginal Jews in the early nineteenth century -- "A pile of dust and rubble" : poorhouses, real and imaginary -- The cholera wedding -- A "republic of beggars"? : charity, Jewish backwardness, and the specter of the Jewish idler -- Madness and the mad : from family burden to national affliction -- "We singing Jews, we Jews possessed" : the Jewish outcast as national icon. "Stepchildren of the Shtetl considers marginal peoples in East European Jewish society and culture--the disabled, mentally ill, and indigent--and how stereotypes and self-perceptions of Jewish marginality have in turn shaped modern Jewish culture, society, and politics"-- |
