There Once Was a World is a comprehensive, exhaustive recording of life in an archetypal Lithuanian shtetl and its vital community over time. Through discriminating scholarship, painful reflection and searing vision, Eliach masterfully interweaves halakhot, history, mores, legends and personal experience.

Dating from the eleventh century, the Jewish community of Eishyshok (Eisiskes) withstood centuries of external conflict and strife: anti-Semitism resulting from Poland and Lithuania's union, devastation during the Chmielnicki massacres and the Great Northern War, and the vagaries of Russian rule following the third partition of Poland. Despite continued hardship as part of the Pale of Settlement (Vilna-Grodno region) and during later occupations, Eishyshok's heritage is one of renowned yeshivot, Talmudic scholarship, charitable institutions, enlightened Haskalah beliefs, and Zionist ideals.

The text is at once universal and intimate, momentous and everyday, profound and ordinary. Through its topical, rather than chronological, arrangement, Eliach describes in minute detail the town's religious and academic institutions, effective leaders and brisk commerce, and endeavours to commemorate each of its 3,500 pre-war residents. A feminist tour de force, the portrayals provide unique insight into a long history of significant contributions by women - revered Rebbetzin Hutner, astute businesswomen and nimble artisans - and they also transcend time through warm hospitality. When is market day? Thursday. How long is the bus ride to Vilna? Two hours. Where can one fill a prescription? At the Polish-owned pharmacy.

The customs described are intriguing and relevant to the family historian. Residence patterns, for example, were influenced by marriages between yeshivah students (often from out of town) and Eishyshok women, matrilocal family units and the kest system of supporting sons-in-law. Also of note to the genealogist are mentions of shtetl documents - such as pinkasim (community record books: Eishyshok's kahal pinkas was kept in a large box on casters), megilat yuhasin (family tree or scroll of origin), the shadkhan' s notebook, and a conditional get (a divorce decree given in the case of death, for example during military service).

The steady stream of Holocaust-related dialogue emphasises not only individual loss, but also the destruction of the ommunity, its institutions and cultural artifacts. Even so, Eliach's literalist prose (in photograph captions and concluding essay statements) in the former chapters does not prepare one for the brutality on the killing fields and during the post-liberation period, recounted in the final pages. Including those from surrounding areas, almost 5,000 Jews were murdered in Eishyshok on 25 and 26
September 1941. (Eliach disputes facets of a German document citing Strike Commando 3's murder of 3,446 on 27 September 1941.) After liberation on 13 July 1944, thirty-six survivors ventured back to Eishyshok.

Aided by righteous gentiles, Yaffa Eliach (then a child) and her family were in hiding during the war. After liberation, Eliach (nee Sheinele Sonenson), her parents, Moshe and Zipporah, and her two brothers, Yitzhak and Hayyim, returned to Eishyshok. In Eliach's grandmother's home, members of the Armia Krajowa (the Polish AK) killed her mother and infant brother Hayyim. Under her fallen mother's body, Eliach was hidden and so survived. In 1946, she emigrated to Eretz Yisrael. Now a resident of New York, she is a member of President Carter's Holocaust Commission, a founder of the Center for Holocaust Documentation and Research in Brooklyn, and a professor of history and literature at Brooklyn College.

The breadth and depth of sources, as well as the contextual detail, are an inspiration to the genealogist. Eliach collected and scrutinised vast amounts of material from sources throughout the world, and interviewed pre-war emigrants, survivors and their descendants. Hundreds of photographs (with full identifying captions) add a vivid poignancy. Boundary maps, architectural
drawings and a town plan are included. The back matter contains tables of population-related statistics (1891-1939) summarised from vital records, as well as a glossary of foreign words.

In addition to its obvious import to those with roots in Eishyshok and the vicinity, the book serves well as a reference text, supported by its topical structure. A chronology of historical events and a more complete subject index would have been useful. The notable absence of a necrology perhaps attests to Eliach's commitment to a living memorial as she calls upon us also to mourn.

"Yidden, geit zu di levaieh" ("Jews, go to the funeral"), the shammashim would say "in the marketplace, the synagogue courtyard, and on all major streets" upon the death of each shtetl resident. Having created the Tower of Life (a permanent exhibit of 1,600 photographs from Eishyshok at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum), Professor Eliach now opens the shutters to her world, the world of a Lithuanian shtetl, and our shared Jewish heritage.

Copyright © 1998, SHEMOT
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