Shtetl comes alive in a state museum in Ukraine

Posted On: April 10th, 2025

Posted In: Jews on Ukrainian Lands, Culture, History, Ethnography

The exhibition "Doll Memories of a Jewish Town" has been mounted in the State Toy Museum in Kyiv and will be open until the summer. It has aroused great interest among Kyiv residents and received many enthusiastic reviews.

"The shtetl is not just a place. It is a special world where Yiddish was spoken, Shabbat was celebrated, and fairs were held in the central square. This is where elders taught children and musicians created heart-moving melodies," said Yulia Kobas, director of the State Toy Museum, in her opening address.

The exhibition features unique miniatures from the very heart of the Jewish shtetl: wooden houses, a synagogue, a market, a bustling street, and unique characters. Dolls tell stories of joys and trials and represent customs and traditions.

The designer dolls from the collection of the Sholem Aleichem Charitable Foundation include a loving couple, Tevye the Dairyman and the Fiddler on the Roof from the film Fiddler on the Roof, yeshiva students with a rabbi, bakers, and artisans.

Like a real journey through time, the exhibition takes visitors to the colorful world of the shtetl — a Jewish town that once followed its own special rhythm, full of traditions, warmth, and stories.

This exhibition is the product of well-known artists and artisans: Viktoria Baliasna, Tetiana Ksenina, Olena Popova, Olena Prostun, Natalia Rudikova, Alla Filipova, Svitlana Chikaliova, Oleksandra Maria, and Maria Boyarenko. The youngest artist represented is Mykyta Boyarenko, aged 11.

The Facebook page of the State Toy Museum of Ukraine provides detailed descriptions of the exhibits, explaining the concepts of brit milah, tefillin, and bar mitzvah and telling about Jewish weddings and klezmer musicians. In fact, for many young Ukrainians and their parents, this exhibition is the first introduction to the world of their Jewish neighbors.

From a place of poverty, discrimination, and hopelessness, the Jewish shtetl turned into an image and almost a fairy-tale phenomenon romanticized by writers and artists. The real shtetls in Ukraine lost their character after the revolution and communist experiments, and their inhabitants were physically destroyed during the Holocaust.

Some former Jewish shtetls in the northern part of what is now the Kyiv region fell under temporary Russian occupation in 2022.

I see great symbolism in the fact that even now, as Russia's aggression against Ukraine has entered its fourth year, an excellent exhibition about the "lost paradise" of the Jewish shtetl has opened in Kyiv.

At the exhibition, a Golda Meir doll is perched under a large portrait of a smiling Golda Meir wearing an embroidered vyshyvanka. A quote from Meir, who was a native of Kyiv and served as the prime minister of Israel, is placed under her portrait: "We could only survive by being victorious."