Upon the Doorposts of Thy House : Jewish Life in East-Central Europe, Yesterday and Today
by
Ruth Ellen Gruber
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Paperback, 310 pages
Published by John Wiley & Sons
Publication date: August 1994
Dimensions (in inches): 10.29 x 7.32 x 1.06
ISBN: 0471595683
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Reviews and Commentary for Upon the Doorposts of Thy House : Jewish Life in East-Central Europe, Yesterday and Today
From Booklist, 09/01/94:
Before the Holocaust, east-central Europe was home to nearly 5 million Jews; about 120,000 live there today. In Gruber's travels, she found answers to such questions as, Who now lives in the places where Jews once lived? What memories are retained about what it was like when there was a Jewish population? What do people born after the Holocaust know about the Jewish past? What use is made of synagogues and Jewish cemeteries? In seeking the answers, Gruber probed the matrix--and the memories and perceptions of the matrix--in which the Holocaust happened and then places this in the context of present-day circumstances. The author talked with an ever-dwindling number of survivors and with non-Jews, and searched through abandoned synagogues, graveyards, study houses, and ghetto streets in countless towns, cities, and villages in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. It is a sad and moving book, diligently researched, offering an objective look at the destruction of a centuries-old Jewish civilization.
Copyright 1994, American Library Association. All rights reserved
From Kirkus Reviews , 07/15/94:
A compendium of elegy, emotive description, and thorough research capturing past and present Jewish life in East-Central Europe. Freelance journalist Gruber (Rescue: The Exodus of Ethiopian Jews, 1987, etc.) walks us through what used to be the core of Jewish civilization in Europe. Today, fewer than 120,000 Jews live in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, a region once home to nearly 5,000,000 Jews. Between the fall of 1989 and the summer of 1993, Gruber visited the area in an attempt both to recreate the shattered past and to present a contemporary picture of the survivors' world. Her personal reflections often distract us from the subject, but her archival finds and the testimonies she has elicited from survivors and gentile neighbors offer a fascinating glimpse into largely unexplored areas of Jewish history. Gruber's cameralike eye is especially effective in surveying medieval bastions of Jewry like Prague, where she shows ornate synagogues--complete with domes, choir lofts, organs, and other objects that reflected the affluence and worldliness of Czech Jews. Unlike the poorer Jews of rural Poland and Hungary, many of these Prague Jews are shown to have abandoned basic Jewish customs and cultural knowledge. By the 20th century, their eagerness to assimilate with their non-Jewish neighbors had driven the intermarriage rate to unprecedented levels. Perhaps even more surprising is the evidence of a slow resurgence of Jewish identity in select Polish cities like Warsaw, Wroclaw, and Lodz. Since the collapse of communism in 1989, active Jewish study groups have formed, even though ``being a Jew or coming from a Jewish background can still be very uncomfortable for a Pole.'' A rich assemblage of Jewish history, but with the disconcerting organization of a patchwork quilt. (50 black and white photos, not seen) -- Copyright 1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Synopsis:
The author of Jewish Heritage Travel describes the living history of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, noting their Jewish heritage and exploring the areas that have become desolated since the Holocaust.
The publisher, John Wiley & Sons :
A detailed description of the homes, synagogues and workplaces along with the practices and beliefs that comprised the Jewish world of Eastern Europe for hundreds of years until the Holocaust, including an intimate look at who and what remains today. Layers excerpts from oral histories, literary reflections and poems with the author's own interviews, research and photographs to form a rich, multi-dimensional tapestry of a vanished world.
Table of Contents
A Circle Game: The Golden City, Fame-Crowned Prague
Wine Merchants and Wonder Rabbis: Northeastern Hungary to Southern Poland
Synagogues Seeking Heaven: Looking for Lipot Baumhorn
What's to Be Done? Cracow
Snowbound in Auschwitz
Notes
Glossary
Selected Bibliography
Index.