Recovering a Voice

Reviews / Votes

'This meticulously researched book explains why Jews stayed in Europe after the Holocaust and the challenges they faced . . . indispensable reading for the understanding of the situation of Jews in today's Europe.'
Michael Brenner, Chair of Jewish History and Culture, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, and director, Center for Israel Studies, American University, Washington DC 'This deeply researched, nuanced, and illuminating analysis of the reconstruction of Jewish life in western and central Europe (chiefly France, Belgium, and the Netherlands) in the several decades after 1945 fills a real scholarly need. Among other things it demonstrates that despite the views of many contemporaries, Jewish and non-Jewish, the Holocaust did not put an end to meaningful Jewish life on the continent. Nor did the triumphant establishment of the State of Israel, despite its claims on the allegiance of all Jews. In fact, well-organized and culturally significant Jewish communities albeit highly diverse and contentious) eventually re-emerged and played a significant role within world Jewry in the second half of the twentieth century. Weinberg shows how the foundations were laid for this remarkable development. This is also a most timely study. Although it deals mainly with the 1940s and 1950s, it appears at a moment when once again, although under very different circumstances, the question of the future of European Jewry is the subject of a great debate. For all these reasons Weinberg's landmark study deserves a wide readership.'
Ezra Mendelsohn, Professor Emeritus, Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem 'In 1945 the Jewish communities of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands seemed to have been left with little more than a catastrophic past; the future seemed almost too bleak to contemplate. Within two decades, however, new foundations had been laid and new organizational structures set up, and each community was evolving in its own way and with its own new dynamic. Some would call this a miracle, but David Weinberg shows that it was actually the result of a historical process achieved through far-reaching vision and purposeful human action. Combining detailed information with overview and analysis, he reconstructs the interplay between individuals and institutions that determined this historical process. Carefully researched and clearly written, it is an important contribution to our understanding of this period.'
J.C.H. Blom, Professor Emeritus of Dutch History, former director of the Netherlands Institute of War Documentation, University of Amsterdam 'David Weinberg's Recovering A Voice provides a clear and comprehensive overview of the institutional rebirth of the French, Belgian, and Dutch Jewish communities in post-Holocaust Europe. His well researched study offers an indispensable and impartial account, warts and all, of the complex political, cultural and ideological interactions and tensions among American, British, and continental Jewish actors as they charted postwar Jewish life both before and after the birth of the State of Israel in a setting dominated by the Cold War. The significance of Weinberg's book transcends the postwar time period he set out to study. For the tensions he analyzes reappear, virtually unchanged, in the post-1989 European Jewish setting, leading one to wonder about the actual weight of these recovered Jewish voices in an ever more torn Jewish world.'
Diana Pinto, author of 'A New Jewish Identity for Post-1989 Europe' 'Weinberg is to be commended for his thorough and comprehensive treatment of how Jewish institutions, leaders, and organizations contributed to the rebuilding of these fragile communities and took different paths in navigating the challenges of the 1950s and 1960s... An important contribution to understanding why Jews stayed in Western Europe after the Holocaust.'

Lynn Rapaport, Holocaust and Genocide Studies