Jewish writer Shulem Deen said he was born into a world of complete passivity, with major life decisions made for him, including whom to marry and what names to give his children. That was true until ...

Jews called their shtetl Ger in Yiddish and Gur in Hebrew. The community grew rapidly after 1859, when hasidic grand rebbe Yitzchak Meir Rothenburg, the founder of the Gerrer sect, settled here. After ...