Upon the doorposts of thy house

by Ruth Ellen Gruber

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, Slovaki