Booklists: Ashes to Renewal — The Story of a Nation’s Immortality

Ashes to Renewal: The Story of a Nation’s Immortality.

This heavy tome sat on our coffee-table. As a teenager, I found myself going back and referencing it again and again — the splendor of prewar European Jewry, the yeshivos and great chassidic courts, and the eventual destruction of it all.

Then the book goes on to describe the heroic rebuilding, the men and women who gave Klal Yisrael back its heart. But the protagonists in this book aren’t only the roshei yeshivah and rebbes, but the laymen who wouldn’t work on Shabbos, the women who insisted on proper chinuch… there was little glory for these parents building their little families, but those little families became the reborn Klal Yisrael. Through them, we got our nation back.

—RABBI AVI SCHNALL, Director, New Jersey Office, Agudath Israel of America