The Forgotten Jewish Revival on the Eve of the Holocaust
On the eve of World War II, Poland was home to about 3.3 million Jews, the largest Jewish community in Europe. We usually picture its final years as a story of religious decline. Young Jews, the story goes, were leaving the synagogue in droves, trading prayer books for socialist pamphlets and Zionist dreams. By the time the Nazis arrived, the old religious world was already fading. Historian Glenn Dynner says that picture is wrong. Hasidic Jews in pre-war Poland Large secular movements did emerge in those years, Dynner acknowledges. But Hasidism and traditional Judaism were not shrinking. They were experiencing a revival. His book tells the story of that revival, from its beginning to its tragic end. It began just after World War I. Polish and Eastern European Jewry lay in ruins. The new Polish republic, born from the war, made school mandatory as a way to unite the country’s many…
