Upon the doorposts of thy house

Throughout East-Central Europe today, ghostly outlines linger where mezuzahs once hung in the doorways of Jewish homes. Buried under layers of fresh paint, those pale scars bear eloquent testimony to a once rich and vibrant culture and its near-total extinction. In Upon the Doorposts of Thy House, journalist and photographer Ruth Gruber returns to the heartland of East-Central European Jewry to rediscover the homes and synagogues, workplaces and cemeteries, heroes and common folk, practices and beliefs that flourished in that world for more than fifteen hundred years before the Holocaust. Steeped in painstaking research into her East-Central European Jewish heritage, Gruber writes in a style that is both meditative and crisply informative. She brings together a wealth of insight and information from myth and folklore, rare documents, contemporary interviews, literary sources, family histories, and personal letters to re-create a lost era. Gruber journeyed to the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary to seek out and explore places where Jews once lived - from shtetl to metropolis, townhouse to death camp, from the castle of Prague to the Cracow ghetto, and from the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains to the opulent faubourgs of modern Budapest. She talked with scores of people from every walk of life and recorded their candid observations on Jewish life before and since the Holocaust. Illustrated with 52 evocative black-and-white photos, the result is a gift to be handed down through the generations, a book for those who have lost so much, a poignant reconstruction of a people. Upon the Doorposts of Thy House will enrich every reader who believes in the power of memory.