Reviews

Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe by Ruth Ellen Gruber

emeraldberkowitz's review

5.0

OMG this is the best book ever. Ruth Ellen Gruber is super smart, insightful, critical with personal anecdotes and appropriate outrage about the ways that Jewish history/tragedy is packaged and sold by Eastern European cities. Interesting inquiry about the roles of non-Jews, non-Ashkenazi Jews in telling this story. I got this book in Krakow and it decoded the confusing and upsetting experience of visiting all these Jewish museums. Gave historical context, etc. I totally recommend this book, if nothing else then for the metaphor Gruber uses to open the book of the narrative from the 1922 book "The City Without Jews" which I now really want to read.