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An idyllic Jewish village, full of life and hope, just hours before its utter annihilation

JL;DR SUMMARY "Shttl," a film by Ady Walter set in a Jewish Ukrainian village on the eve of Operation Barbarossa in 1941, captures a community's vibrant life just before its annihilation by the Nazis. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

HolocaustUkraineJewish IdentityYiddish CultureJewish UnityOperation BarbarossaFilm CriticismSaul RubinekShttlAdy Walter

Places mentioned

Kyivshchyna, Ukraine
"the film Shttl takes place in a Jewish Ukrainian village outside of Kiev on June 21, 1941"
Kyiv, Ukraine
"Mendele (Moshe Lobel in a nicely understated performance) is an aspiring filmmaker, who has long since left the shtetl to join the Red Army in Kyiv."
Ukraine
"The film was shot in Ukraine in 2021 at the height of COVID-19 restrictions."
New York City, New York, United States
"The Rebbe, played by the always excellent Saul Rubinek is the voice of reason; he is a thoughtful, complex, contradictory and conflicted character."

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This item was indexed and curated by Cairo, JL;DR's web crawler.
Cairo Item ID 72208
Cairo Source ID 35
Retrieved 2026-01-08 05:31:01 UTC
Curated 2026-01-08 08:31:23 UTC