Synopses & Reviews
Stolen Words is an epic story about the largest collection of Jewish books in the worldandmdash;tens-of millions of books that the Nazis looted from European Jewish families and institutions. Nazi soldiers and civilians emptied Jewish communal libraries, confiscated volumes from government collections, and stole from Jewish individuals, schools, and synagogues. Early in their regime, the Nazis burned some books in spectacular bonfires, but most they saved, stashing the literary loot in castles, abandoned mine shafts, and warehouses throughout Europe. It was the largest and most extensive book-looting campaign in history.and#160;After the war, Allied forces discovered these troves of stolen books but quickly found themselves facing a barrage of questions. How could the books be identified? Where should they go? Who had the authority to make such decisions? Eventually, the army turned the books over to an organization of leading Jewish scholars called Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, Inc.andmdash;whose chairman was the acclaimed historian Salo Baron, and whose on-the-ground director was the philosopher Hannah Arendtandmdash;with the charge to establish restitution protocols.and#160;Stolen Words is the story of how a free civilization decides what to do with the material remains of a world torn asunder, and how those remains connect survivors with their past. It is the story of Jews struggling to understand the new realities of their post-Holocaust world and of Western societyandrsquo;s gradual realization of the magnitude of devastation wrought by World War II. Most of all, it is the story of people andmdash;of Nazi leaders, ideologues, and Judaica experts; of Allied soldiers, scholars, and scoundrels; and of Jewish communities, librarians, and readers around the world.
Review
and#8220;Pioneering. . . . [We Are Here] will reach out to . . . all those who care about not replaying in this new century the disasters of the century that has just ended.and#8221;and#8212;Michael Steinlauf, author of Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust
Review
and#8220;This eloquent book can help us to reach out, open our hearts, and rediscover one another in a spirit of mutual understanding.and#8221;and#8212;Hon. Valdas Adamkus, former president of Lithuania
Review
and#8220;A most captivating read. Cassedy offers an extraordinary perspective, human and moving, to concerns that often are hidden by tired clichand#233;s, sentimentality, or anger. A rare document.and#8221;and#8212;Samuel Bak, survivor of the Vilna ghetto and author of Painted in Words
Review
“Those spiritually and intellectually brave enough to accompany Ms. Cassedy will be rewarded by sharing in her revelations and insight. So take heart and read this book. The journey can be transformative.”—Ina Navazelskis, writer and journalist specializing in Central European and Baltic affairs Samuel Bak
Review
“Deeply moving. . . . [Cassedys] book offers a unique perspective . . . [and] complex human texture, rooted in an oft-forgotten Yiddish cultural context, a tapestry of events that elsewhere too often appear as one-dimensional. Readers will doubtless be immensely enriched by her experience.”—Saulius Suziedelis, author of Historical Dictionary of Lithuania Saulius Suziedelis
Review
"Uncovering this history with an intimate, personal and investigative appro Jewish Book World
Review
“Deeply moving. . . . [Cassedys] book offers a unique perspect Saulius Suziedelis
Review
"All answers are tentative. All questions are crucial. Cassedy's quest is brilliantly balanced, totally engaging, and constantly penetrating."—Philip K. Jason, Jewish Book World Philip K. Jason
Review
"Ellen Cassedy's We Are Here challenges us to think again about what it means to remember the Holocaust in the present. . . . The struggle Cassedy so eloquently engages in to resist the logic of competing memory may be only that much more urgent today than when she was there."—Laura Levitt, H Net Jerusalem Post
Review
"Mining the vast troves of Jewish legendry and midrashim, Salkin expands and deepens knowledge and understanding of the biblical Abram."—Ray Olson, Booklist
Review
"Smoothly weaving together contemporary scholarship, midrashic elaborations of scripture, and meditation on the key symbols that evoke his central issue, Rabbi Salkin provides a map of Judaic meaning. By comparing and contrasting Abraham’s breaking of his father’s idols with the breaking of the first set of tablets by Moses, he opens up a investigative mode that has far-reaching consequences for the world Jewish community, both present and future."—Phillip K. Jason, Jewish Book Council
Review
"Salkin's work—combining biblical texts, archaeology, rabbinic insights, Hasidic texts (some never before translated), philosophy, history, poetry, contemporary Jewish thought, sociology, and popular culture—is nothing less than a journey through two thousand years of Jewish life and intellectual endeavor."—Dov Peretz Elkins, Jewish Media Review
Review
"The text is filled with quotations from throughout Jewish history; Talmud and Midrash, medieval sages and modern scholars have all had important things to say about this small vignette. Salkin has skillfully woven them into a useful and comprehensible tapestry."—Fred Issac, Association of Jewish Libraries Review
Review
“Jeffrey Salkin takes us on a magical journey through Jewish history and texts, showing us how a simple, ancient postbiblical tale is essential for our understanding of the totality of the Jewish experience. It is full of insights that will challenge how we as readers view modern society and the idolatries that are inherent in it.”—Norman J. Cohen, rabbi and professor of Midrash at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, New York, and author of Masking and Unmasking Ourselves
Review
"[Miller]and#160;writes thoughtfully about her efforts to piece together a family's story of dislocation, success, and broken links, and of how, in the process, Miller reconnected with Jewish history and traditions."and#8212;Publishers Weekly
Review
"[What They Saved is] an unusual, intellectual perspective on an often-told story."and#8212;Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Miller's suspension of the expectation of closureand#8212;her acceptance of the condition of remembering and of writing as forever incompleteand#8212;also draws her memoir deeply into the emotional experience of change that shaped modernity for Jews all over the world. And it confirms the importance of personal narrative, perhaps modernity's most recognizable voice, in framing and accepting the losses and the uncertainties of that experience."and#8212;Joanne Jacobson, Jewish Daily Forward
Review
"What They Saved can be approached as an illuminating and instructive example of how to conduct a genealogical investigation. But it is also a rich and accomplished family chronicle, full of fascinating incidents and turbulent emotions. Above all, it is a searing work of self-exploration, artful and eloquent in the telling but heartbreaking in its candor."and#8212;Jonathan Kirsch, JewishJournal.com
Review
"This marvelous memoir pinpoints the elusive phenomenon whereby memories get through to our consciousness and how they ultimately influence our lives. Capturing moments of transformation is what happens over and over in an adept memoir like What They Saved."and#8212;Judy Bolton-Fasman, Jerusalem Post
Review
“A worthwhile collection.”—Jewish Book World
Review
andldquo;[This is] a compelling and emotionally powerful story.andrdquo;andmdash;Daniel M. Bronstein, historian and contributor to The Cambridge Dictionary of Jewish History, Religion, and Culture
Review
andldquo;A wonderfully written book about an extremely important event in history, neglected until now: the loss and retrieval of Jewish cultural treasures during the Holocaust.andrdquo;andmdash;David E. Fishman, professor of Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary and senior research scholar at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
Review
andldquo;In this riveting account, Mark Glickman tells how and why the Nazis stockpiled millions of Jewish volumes, and how those books were rediscovered and repatriated after the war. A little-known story powerfully told, Stolen Words kept me on the edge of my seat.andrdquo;andmdash;Aaron Lansky, president of the Yiddish Book Center and author of Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventues of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books
Review
andldquo;A genuine page turnerandmdash;written with engaging prose and heartfelt passion. . . . This book will appeal to a broad audience not only because it is interesting, informative, and enriching, but becauseandmdash;as Rabbi Glickman artfully reminds usandmdash;books are ultimately the couriers of human civilization. In their redemption we keep faith with our past and sustain hope in our future.andrdquo;andmdash;Gary P. Zola, executive director of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives at Hebrew Union Collegeandndash;Jewish Institute of Religionand#160;
Synopsis
Ellen Cassedy s longing to recover the Yiddish she d lost with her mother s death eventually led her to Lithuania, once the Jerusalem of the North. As she prepared for her journey, her uncle, sixty years after he d left Lithuania in a boxcar, made a shocking disclosure about his wartime experience, and an elderly man from her ancestral town made an unsettling request. Gradually, what had begun as a personal journey broadened into a larger exploration of how the people of this country, Jews and non-Jews alike, are confronting their past in order to move forward into the future. How does a nation how do successor generations, moral beings overcome a bloody past? How do we judge the bystanders, collaborators, perpetrators, rescuers, and ourselves? These are the questions Cassedy confronts in We Are Here, one woman s exploration of Lithuania s Jewish history combined with a personal exploration of her own family s place in it.
Digging through archives with the help of a local whose motives are puzzling to her; interviewing natives, including an old man who wants to speak to a Jew before he dies; discovering the complications encountered by a country that endured both Nazi and Soviet occupation Cassedy finds that it s not just the facts of history that matter, but what we choose to do with them."
Synopsis
Ellen Cassedyand#8217;s longing to recover the Yiddish sheand#8217;d lost with her motherand#8217;s death eventually led her to Lithuania, once the and#8220;Jerusalem of the North.and#8221; As she prepared for her journey, her uncle, sixty years after heand#8217;d left Lithuania in a boxcar, made a shocking disclosure about his wartime experience, and an elderly man from her ancestral town made an unsettling request. Gradually, what had begun as a personal journey broadened into a larger exploration of how the people of this country, Jews and non-Jews alike, are confronting their past in order to move forward into the future. How does a nationand#8212;how do successor generations, moral beingsand#8212;overcome a bloody past? How do we judge the bystanders, collaborators, perpetrators, rescuers, and ourselves? These are the questions Cassedy confronts in
We Are Here, one womanand#8217;s exploration of Lithuaniaand#8217;s Jewish history combined with a personal exploration of her own familyand#8217;s place in it.
Digging through archives with the help of a local whose motives are puzzling to her; interviewing natives, including an old man who wants to and#8220;speak to a Jewand#8221; before he dies; discovering the complications encountered by a country that endured both Nazi and Soviet occupationand#8212;Cassedy finds that itand#8217;s not just the facts of history that matter, but what we choose to do with them.
Synopsis
The story of Abraham smashing his fathers idols might be the most important Jewish story ever told and the key to how Jews define themselves. In a work at once deeply erudite and wonderfully accessible, Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin conducts readers through the life and legacy of this powerful story and explains how it has shaped Jewish consciousness.
Offering a radical view of Jewish existence, The Gods Are Broken! views the story of the young Abraham as the “primal trauma” of Jewish history, one critical to the development of a certain Jewish comfort with rebelliousness and one that, happening in every generation, has helped Jews develop a unique identity. Salkin shows how the story continues to reverberate through the ages, even in its connection to the phenomenon of anti-Semitism.
Salkins work—combining biblical texts, archaeology, rabbinic insights, Hasidic texts (some never before translated), philosophy, history, poetry, contemporary Jewish thought, sociology, and popular culture—is nothing less than a journey through two thousand years of Jewish life and intellectual endeavor.
Synopsis
Winner of the 2012 Jewish Journal Book Prize
After her fatherand#8217;s death, Nancy K. Miller discovered a minuscule family archive: a handful of photographs, an unexplained land deed, a postcard from Argentina, unidentified locks of hair. These items had been passed down again and again, but what did they mean? Miller follows their traces from one distant relative to another, across the country, and across an ocean. Her story, unlike the many family memoirs focused on the Holocaust, takes us back earlier in history to the world of pogroms and mass emigrations at the turn of the twentieth century.
Searching for roots as a middle-aged orphan and an assimilated Jewish New Yorker, Miller finds herself asking unexpected questions: Why do I know so little about my family? How can I understand myself when I donand#8217;t know my past? The answers lead her to a carpenter in the Ukraine, a stationery peddler on the Lower East Side, and a gangster hanger-on in the Bronx. As a third-generation descendant of Eastern European Jews, Miller learns that the hidden lives of her ancestors reveal as much about the present as they do about the past. In the end, an odyssey to uncover the origins of her lost family becomes a memoir of renewal.
Synopsis
Memory is about choice. We can choose to remember the past in ways that provoke pain and stir our anger, or we can remember in ways that help us create the kind of world in which we most want to live.
Nowhere is this choice more important than in connection to the Holocaust. And never has it been more important than now, because we are the first generation that will live without the presence of those who can tell us in their own words what they saw with their own eyes.
These seventy-one firsthand stories from survivors of the Holocaust teach us to choose to remember for life, for their words are not about hatred and death but about ethics, decency, and love.
Although the stories are arranged to accompany the weekly Torah readings and many of the Jewish holidays, they are just as meaningful when read on their own, in any sequence. The themes—journey, identity, resistance, community, refuge, and righteousness, to name but a few—are universal. And the lessons—about how to live more fully the life we are given—shine through.
About the Author
Brad Hirschfield is the cofounder and editor in chief of TheWisdomDaily.com and the author of You Dont Have to Be Wrong for Me to Be Right: Finding Faith without Fanaticism. He is the president of CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership and regularly listed as one of Americas “Fifty Most Influential Rabbis” by Newsweek.