Holocaust Memory in Ultraorthodox Society in Israel by Michal Shaul (review)

Michal Shaul's book, Holocaust Memory in Ultraorthodox Society in Israel, was originally published in Hebrew in 2014. The English translation appeared some six years later. True to the title, Shaul organizes her book in four parts, each of which is dedicated to the theme of memory: Formative Memory; Memory as Torture, Memory as Obligation; Memory as a Mobilizing Force; and Counter-Memory and Shared Memory. This emphasis should attract readers concerned with memory studies generally and those connected with the aftermath of World War II in particular.

But the nuts and bolts of the study is directed toward a more specialized audience, tracing as it does the success of rebuilding Orthodox Jewish life in postwar Israel. The focus on Israel allows the author to highlight those religious Jews who did not fully endorse Zionism but who nevertheless chose to reside in the State of Israel. This is the group referred to as "Ultraorthodox." The book's focus is in time as well as place: 1945–1961. This adds to the book's significance, since the early post-Holocaust period remains an understudied area.

One of the book's great strengths is substantial quotation of those individuals dedicated to rebuilding the prewar European Torah world. From their stirring words we are able to glean the passion that was necessary to go forward in the wake of numbing losses. Rabbi Avraham Meir Israel, for example, spoke from postwar Austria: "I told myself that perhaps the Lord had sent me to preserve life and that this was why the Lord had left me alive, so as to give to my fellow citizens and members of my community, who had been left a few out of so many, a remnant on earth, and revive them as a great nation. I answered their call and with God's help did my duty both in restoring the community and its institutions and in marrying off the orphan girls who were left without parents and protectors" (98). Or Rabbi Moshe Munk, a Youth Aliyah inspector, writing about the care given in helping postwar orphans begin anew: "I was with [Rabbi Kahaneman] at the engagement party for one of the orphan girls of the Batei Avot home, who was paraded around the Yeshiva with much pomp and circumstance, as if they were leading a queen to her betrothal. … At the end, the rabbi [Kahaneman] rose to speak. He emphasized a completely different point. He wished the young couple, and especially the orphan girl, a life of happiness and tranquility. … He seemed to have a deep understanding of the bride's soul and spoke to her like a father to his daughter" (107–8).

Shaul fuses moving quotations such as these with her own chronicle to produce a detailed portrait of institutional nurturance for survivor orphans. Other strengths include the book's attention to the Israel-based courts of Hasidic rebbes and especially to their postwar efforts to collect (and thus rescue from oblivion) niggunim, Hasidic melodies that were in Europe (and are today) part and parcel of the fabric of religious Jewish life. And in a welcome innovation, the book concludes with thirty-five capsule biographies of postwar ultra-Orthodox activists, which are both a tribute to these major figures and a guide to their resourceful accomplishments.

Yet throughout the volume the author's analysis of these remarkable efforts is weakened by her uncritical reliance on academic study of ultra-Orthodoxy, while the claims of the ultra-Orthodox are often treated with skepticism. Moreover, ultra-Orthodoxy filtered through academia is a caricature, as in the following statement: "The relationship between husband and wife is only a means to an end" (94), that is, bearing children. Yet, nothing I have read, seen, or experienced supports this statement.

Similarly, the ultra-Orthodox claims of continuity with their European predecessors are believed to be naive, since "the Holocaust produced a total break in the physical and geographic situation of...