Portraits of Our Past: Jews of the German Countryside

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Summary: Jews of the German Countryside
Review: I was attracted to Portraits of Our Past in order to expand my knowledge on the true history of the founder of my company, Berlitz. However, half way through the first chapter I had forgotten all about my first motives as I found myself totally absorbed into a world where oppression and second rate citizenship were unable to dampen down the spirituality and ingenuity of German Jews. Portraits of Our Past contains a detailed look at the everyday lives of the writer's own family and friends dating back over the last 3 centuries. A must read for anyone with an interest in history, community, ingenuity, business and spirituality.

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Summary: Librarian Recommends
Review: My father was born in 1904 in a house next to the synagogue in a small village in southern Germany. As the only child and a male, he was born "with a silver spoon in his mouth" and enjoyed his status by constantly getting into trouble with his friends and cousins. But not only did he describe his childhood pranks in an idyllic way, he also told tales of a small place where all the inhabitants knew each other and where Jews and Gentiles lived in harmony. Since my father's stories were in such contrast to those memoirs written later I often wondered if his wonderful boyhood was only the product of his immediate world or if life in these remote villages was so much better than the anti-Semitism of the cities. As a librarian and a tenacious researcher I began to look for an answer in the literature but could not find anything written in English about the history and society of rural Jews from non-rabbinical families.Just recently I have found a meticulously researched and detailed look at the lost culture of the Jews in rural southern Germany. Portraits of Our Past: Jews of the German Countryside by Emily Rose (Jewish Publication Society, 2001) describes the socioeconomic, political and historical lives of my grandparents and great grandparents and opens a window to a distinctive way of life not previously documented. This discovery is even more ironic since the author is a descendant of a family that settled in Chicago in 1857.From 1994-1999, the author spent two months each summer in Germany discovering her heritage and the lost world of rural German Jews. She eventually located 2,600 documents in Wurttemberg archives, some with only a line or two of relevant information, some with hundreds of pages. She examined 1,600 books in English and German. Materials had to be laboriously translated from Judeo-German, Hebrew and German, and about 30 people helped to translate the materials.The historical material is complemented by an excellent chapter on traditional Jewish life in the villages and small towns providing interesting information and local details of social and religious life. The final chapter, a "Blueprint for Researchers," is important for all researchers of German families. The author's work took years to accomplish, and knowledge of precise research techniques would have saved her "many hours of frustration."A notes chapter and a bibliography complete the book, which offers more than 75 photographs, maps, drawings, and documents. Many additional families are mentioned, a boon for researchers of the area, particularly when one realizes that 54 Jewish communities and 32 religious elementary schools functioned in 1871 in Wurttemberg. Portraits of Our Past is a unique example of how a simple genealogical research project developed into the social history of a lost community and culture.(Jerusalem Post 10-19-01)As a librarian I recommend Portraits of Our Past as an excellent scholarly resource that is accessible to all readers...

Rating:
Summary: Breathtaking!
Review: This is a moving book! After I turned the first page, I could not put it down until late at night. Beginning with two oil portraits, I journeyed into the past, walked through small Germall villages of centuries ago, and I lived within a rich tapestry of lives and events.

Regardless of personal religion, Christian (this reader), Jew, Muslim or any other faith, this book carries the reader into the common cultural past and heritage of family we all share. The attention to detail is meticulous, but this book is more than a historical dramatization. Reading it is to experience German village life with its wedddings, joys, fears, hopes and excitement. We look forward to a sequel by Ms. Rose which will bring us forward and closer to our own time.

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Summary: Librarian Recommends
Review: This is a wonderful, warm, caring book about life and family and problems in the old country and about coming to America to start life anew. The author was inspired to write the book by the two old portraits of ancestors that hung in her childhood home. For five years she researched in the U.S. and Europe about her own ancestors and about the social, political, economic and religious forces that affected them. What she produced is a marvelous book that uses her own ancestors as a sort of everyman to take the reader through the experiences of daily life, social and political struggles, economic disruptions, religious strife, etc. in rural Germany in the 1800s. Anyone with German or German-Jewish ancestry will find this book enlighting, heartwarming, and sobering. The author truly succeeds in the difficult task of making history come alive. Other features of the book include lots of interesting and unusual illustrations, appendices on traditional Jewish life in the villages, guidelines for famly history researchers, and a lengthy bibliography.

Rating:
Summary: Enlighting, heartwarming, and sobering
Review: This is a wonderful, warm, caring book about life and family and problems in the old country and about coming to America to start life anew. The author was inspired to write the book by the two old portraits of ancestors that hung in her childhood home. For five years she researched in the U.S. and Europe about her own ancestors and about the social, political, economic and religious forces that affected them. What she produced is a marvelous book that uses her own ancestors as a sort of everyman to take the reader through the experiences of daily life, social and political struggles, economic disruptions, religious strife, etc. in rural Germany in the 1800s. Anyone with German or German-Jewish ancestry will find this book enlighting, heartwarming, and sobering. The author truly succeeds in the difficult task of making history come alive. Other features of the book include lots of interesting and unusual illustrations, appendices on traditional Jewish life in the villages, guidelines for famly history researchers, and a lengthy bibliography.

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Summary: Biographies embedded in the progress of a people
Review: Through first-hand research in the archives of 18th and 19th century Wurttemberg, Germany, Emily Rose has produced an engaging journal of lives of some real Jewish families in the environs of the Black Forest. The lives she traces from the early 1700's in southern Germany to Davenport, Iowa and the near-north-side of Chicago are those of some of her ancestors, a fact that she uses to great advantage by correlating detailed familial knowledge with objective data from government records and publications of the times. The stories are embellished with over 75 unusual illustrations. The 200 year transition of the Jews in the book from despised beggars and peddlers to established merchants and professionals is told in an authoritative voice, supported with statistical data. There are several instances of Jewish leaders gaining a good measure of esteem in the Christian community, despite a generally hostile public. The author describes the formation of Jewish community organizations, sanctioned by the Wurttemberg government, to cope with medieval anti-Semitic feelings extant in the countryside. In this connection, there emerge several accounts of strong disputes between a central Wurttemberg government that seeks to reduce the restrictions on Jews, against various local governments that oppose such relaxation, acting out of anti-Semitism and commercial competitiveness. As the Jews are permitted to progress from peddlers to more acceptable occupations, and as they begin to assimilate into the larger community, one can see the beginnings of Reform Judaism take form in the Wurttemberg countryside. Good biographies and fascinating history.