- Home
- Perspectives on Israel Studies
- Holocaust Memory in Ultraorthodox Society in Israel
Preparing your PDF for download...
There was a problem with your download, please contact the server administrator.
Holocaust Memory in Ultraorthodox Society in Israel
by Michal Shaul
Translated by Lenn J. Schramm and Gail Wald
Published by: Indiana University Press
396 Pages, 20 b&w illus.
- eBook
- 9780253050823
- Published: December 2020
$35.99
- eBook
- 9780253050847
- Published: December 2020
$35.99
Other Retailers:
How did the Ultraorthodox (Haredi) community chart a new path for its future after it lost the core of its future leaders, teachers, and rabbis in the Holocaust? How did the revival of this group come into being in the new Zionist state of Israel?
In Holocaust Memory in Ultraorthodox Society in Israel, Michal Shaul highlights the special role that Holocaust survivors played as they rebuilt and consolidated Ultraorthodox society. Although many Haredi were initially theologically opposed to the creation of Israel, they have become a significant force in the contemporary life and politics of the country. Looking at personal and public experiences of Ultraorthodox survivors in the first years of emigration from liberated Europe and breaking down how their memories entered the public domain, Shaul documents how they were incorporated into the collective memories of the Ultraorthodox in Israel.
Holocaust Memory in Ultraorthodox Society in Israel offers a rare mix of empathy and scholarly rigor to understandings of the role that the community's collective memories and survivor mentality have played in creating Israel's national identity.
Introduction
Part 1. Formative Memory
1. The Ultraorthodox and the Holocaust: Catastrophe, Rupture, and Challenges
2. The Paths and Circles of Reconstruction
Part 2. Memory as Torture, Memory as Obligation
3. Why Did We Survive?
4. Starting New Families
Part 3. Memory as a Mobilizing Force
5. The Restoration of the Torah World
6. Du lebst mama [You live, Mother!]: Female Survivors and the Rebirth of an Educational Network
7. Myths and the Rehabilitation of Ultraorthodox Society after the Holocaust
8. "For us the past has not yet passed": Holocaust Commemoration in Ultraorthodox Society
Part 4. Counter-Memory and Shared Memory
9. Israeli Ultraorthodox Holocaust Memory a "Counter-Memory"?
Conclusion: Holocaust Memory in Israeli Ultraorthodox Society: The Unique and the Shared
Appendix A. The Expansion of the Yeshivot in Eretz Israel, 1944–1964
Appendix B. The Growth of the Beit Ya'akov Educational Network in Eretz Israel, 1947/8–1952/3
Appendix C. "The Melodious Train (on the History of the Melody of Ani Ma'amin)," from M. S. Geshuri, Neginah e-asidut be-vet uzmir
Appendix D. Capsule Biographies
Bibliography
Index
Michal Shaul is Senior Lecturer in the History and Israel Studies Departments at Herzog Academic College. She is author of Holocaust Survivors and Holocaust Memory in the Haredi Community in Israel, 1945-1961 (in Hebrew).
""Michal Shaul makes a good case for her claim that Ultraorthodox survivors of the Holocaust who came to Israel were able to create a viable new life, and one that was not altogether outside the mainstream of Israel.""
~Steven T. Katz, author of The Holocaust in Historical Context
""Michal Shaul deals with materials from the Haredi world with a remarkable combination of empathy and academic objectivity. She brings to awareness an entire field of religious development, that of Haredi survivors in the Land of Israel.""
~Gershon Greenberg, author of Jewish Religious Philosophical Thinkers
"Michal Shaul's innovative and thoughtful book teaches us how members of Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) society in Israel related to the Holocaust during the first decade and a half after the war. In describing and analyzing how they taught about, learned from and commemorated the war, she delves into the long term lessons that they tried to present to their adherents regarding Jewish life and death in Europe under the Nazis. A must read for anyone interested in the Holocaust, Haredi Society, and the State of Israel."
~Judy Tydor (Baumel) Schwartz, Director of The Arnold and Leona Finkler Institute of Holocaust Research
"Holocaust Memory in Ultraorthodox Society in Israel is a gem. With meticulous scholarship and deep sensitivity, she explores the return to life of Haredi survivors on a personal, communal and institutional level. She depicts the robust interplay between the Ultraorthodox narrative and the dominant Zionist narrative in Israel, showing how deeply intertwined they were in the era between liberation and the Eichmann trial. She examines the narratives that have reinforced the belief of the devout and allowed them to reconstruct their shattered world piece by piece. Her work shows the enormous courage and determination it took for these individuals and this community to rebuild in the aftermath of destruction. The journey back after the Shoah/Churban/Holocaust is one of the most miraculous events in all of Jewish history, one we have seen and continue to see with our own eyes."
~Michael Berenbaum, Director of Sigi Ziering Institute, American Jewish University
"Shaul's comprehensive analysis of the unprecedented growth of post-World War II Orthodox Jewish society is masterful and groundbreaking. Her meticulous research and honest assessment make this work truly unique."
~Ruth Lichtenstein, Publisher, Hamodia Newspaper/Director, Project Witness/Editor in Chief, Witness to History
"One of the book's great strengths is substantial quotation of those individuals dedic ted to rebuilding the prewar European Torah world. From their stirring words we are able to gl an the passion that was necessary to go forward in the wake of numbing losses."
~Alan Rosen - Jerusalem, Israel