1) Shteebl
Sent on: 12/11/1997 05:57:06
A question is raised in Mendele 07.116 as to whether "shteebl" refers to synagogues in general and is derived from the relative simplicity of synagogues as compared to cathedrals, lehavdil.
No one would ever dream of referring, for example, to New York's Temple Emanuel or to the Park Avenue Synagogue as a shteebl. Stained glass windows, magnificent organs, high domes, and gorgeous furnishings are not the marks of a shteebl.
The word, a diminutive form of the German "Stube," is generally applied quite literally to relatively small rooms which most often have been set aside in someone's dwelling as a place in which folks can daven. (You should excuse me for using that word which has been the subject of so many megawatts of electricity being zapped around the world. Khaval, we can no longer talk about gallons of ink being spilled). There are hundreds, perhaps even thousands of shteeblekh in the New York area. Each shteebl usually has a small ark with a sefer Torah or two, folding chairs or wooden benches, notices tacked or taped to the walls, a shtender (lectern) for the shliakh tzibbur (the one who leads the tfilos), shelves of books, and a table or two for study and refreshments.
A shteebl need not remain a shteebl forever. When the Bobover Rebbe, shlita, arrived in America after the war, he started a shteebl on West 85th Street in Manhattan. It perfectly fit the description I have given above. The Rebbe, his wife and children lived on the third floor of a brownstone building--a house. On the second floor were the kitchen and a dining room where the Rebbe had his tisch and where, following dinner on Shabbes and Yom Tov, the men danced and sang--often to the consternation of the neighbors, whose Philco TVs bounced up and down in time with the rhythmic dancing of the khsidim. On the first floor was the Rebbe's shteebl, the original living room of the house, converted into a small shul capable of holding 60 or 70 people or maybe a hundred if they all jammed together. Furnishings were spartan and simple.
Today, the Bobover Yeshiva has grown into an enormous institution. Its main building (there are several) has a shul in which thousands of people daven and study every day. It has a soaring ceiling, is illuminated by arc lights and (by day) by stained glass windows. The furnishings, though, are still rather simple--wooden tables and benches. All of the walls are lined with shelves that are filled with well-organized sforim, constituting a splendid library. By no stretch of the imagination can this be called a shteebl, even though it is a thoroughly khasidik shul.
Every American city that has any Jewish population has a shul or a temple. Most of these are monuments to the edifice complex which gave rise to so many complaints in the 50s and 60s among critics of American Jewish life. Few of them would qualify as shteeblekh.
There's a difference, too, between a shul and a temple, but that's a subject for another day.
Burton M. (Berel) Leiser
No one would ever dream of referring, for example, to New York's Temple Emanuel or to the Park Avenue Synagogue as a shteebl. Stained glass windows, magnificent organs, high domes, and gorgeous furnishings are not the marks of a shteebl.
The word, a diminutive form of the German "Stube," is generally applied quite literally to relatively small rooms which most often have been set aside in someone's dwelling as a place in which folks can daven. (You should excuse me for using that word which has been the subject of so many megawatts of electricity being zapped around the world. Khaval, we can no longer talk about gallons of ink being spilled). There are hundreds, perhaps even thousands of shteeblekh in the New York area. Each shteebl usually has a small ark with a sefer Torah or two, folding chairs or wooden benches, notices tacked or taped to the walls, a shtender (lectern) for the shliakh tzibbur (the one who leads the tfilos), shelves of books, and a table or two for study and refreshments.
A shteebl need not remain a shteebl forever. When the Bobover Rebbe, shlita, arrived in America after the war, he started a shteebl on West 85th Street in Manhattan. It perfectly fit the description I have given above. The Rebbe, his wife and children lived on the third floor of a brownstone building--a house. On the second floor were the kitchen and a dining room where the Rebbe had his tisch and where, following dinner on Shabbes and Yom Tov, the men danced and sang--often to the consternation of the neighbors, whose Philco TVs bounced up and down in time with the rhythmic dancing of the khsidim. On the first floor was the Rebbe's shteebl, the original living room of the house, converted into a small shul capable of holding 60 or 70 people or maybe a hundred if they all jammed together. Furnishings were spartan and simple.
Today, the Bobover Yeshiva has grown into an enormous institution. Its main building (there are several) has a shul in which thousands of people daven and study every day. It has a soaring ceiling, is illuminated by arc lights and (by day) by stained glass windows. The furnishings, though, are still rather simple--wooden tables and benches. All of the walls are lined with shelves that are filled with well-organized sforim, constituting a splendid library. By no stretch of the imagination can this be called a shteebl, even though it is a thoroughly khasidik shul.
Every American city that has any Jewish population has a shul or a temple. Most of these are monuments to the edifice complex which gave rise to so many complaints in the 50s and 60s among critics of American Jewish life. Few of them would qualify as shteeblekh.
There's a difference, too, between a shul and a temple, but that's a subject for another day.
Burton M. (Berel) Leiser