A Chosen Few - Mark Kurlansky [228]
5. Explain the difference in motivation between those Jews who returned to East Germany and those who returned to West Germany after the war.
6. Should the Zionists who returned to postwar Europe have gone to Israel instead?
7. Would it have been easier to rebuild a religious community or an assimilated community in postwar Europe?
8. Has European Jewry since 1945 undergone a resurrection, as implied in the subtitle of this book, or is it something less than that?
9. What impact has the state of Israel had on European Jews?
10. What does it mean for American Jews that these communities in Europe still exist?
11. Throughout European history, France was always thought of as a haven for Jews, until the twentieth century. As the country with the largest Jewish population in Europe, will it be a haven or a dangerous place for Jews going forward into the twenty-first century?
12. Why is the survival of European Jewry so crucial to the Jewish people throughout the rest of the world?
13. In countries with some of the worst records of treatment of Jews, it has become fashionable to embrace everything Jewish. Is this philo-Semitism another form of anti-Semitism, and is it dangerous?
14. Three million Polish Jews were killed in the Holocaust, and most of those who returned were subsequently driven out. In the current political climate of Poland, is there a future for Jews, and are there enough to build a real community?
15. Why do survivors in Holland appear to be in more pain than in most other countries? Is it because Holland never came to terms with its war history? Is it that as a society, Holland is more open to discussing psychological problems than other countries in Europe?
16. What has the impact of terrorism been on Jewish communities in Europe?
17. Russian Jews have been immigrating to Western Europe, especially Germany, most of them with very little knowledge of Judaism. What will be their impact?
18. What has been the role of the Hasidic movement in modern European Judaism?
19. Following the Six-Day War, the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and even deGaulle's France shifted their policies toward Israel. What was the impact on European Jewry?
20. Are the communities described in this book merely vestigial or is there a future for Jewry in Europe?
Mark Kurlansky is the author of Salt; The Basque History of the World; the New York Times bestseller Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World; A Continent of Islands: Searching for the Carribean Destiny; and a collection of stories, The White Man in the Tree. He is a regular contributor to the Partisan Review. He has also written for the International Herald Tribune, the Chicago Tribune, Harper's, and The New York Times Magazine, among other publications. He lives in New York City.
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
Copyright © 1995 by Mark Kurlansky
Introduction 2002 copyright © 2002 by Mark Kurlansky
Reader's Guide copyright © 2002 by Mark Kurlansky and the Ballantine
Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc. Originally published by
Addison-Wesley Publishing Company in 1995.
Portions of this book have appeared, in somewhat different form, in Partisan
Review and Harper's.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Ballantine Reader's Circle and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.ballantinebooks.com
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number is
2001012345
eISBN: 978-0-307-48289-1
v3.0