Daniel J. Walkowitz, The Remembered and Forgotten Jewish World: Jewish Heritage in Europe and the United States. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2018. xv + 281 pp.

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores Daniel J. Walkowitz's The Remembered and Forgotten Jewish World: Jewish Heritage in Europe and the United States (2018). This book is in part a family history with a pronounced political twist, and in part a travel narrative intended to reflect upon the author's family's journey from Russia–Poland through Western Europe and then to the United States. It is, in addition, a reflection on heritage installations in major sites of Jewish settlement where the Jewish presence has often disappeared either through emigration, genocide, or social mobility and dispersion. To some degree, Walkowitz's project simply reviews intellectual terrain well combed by others. But throughout the book, Walkowitz brings a persistent and unique critical gaze eschewing the nostalgic sentiments of so much Jewish heritage tourism, along with the false lachrymosity that laments abandoned synagogues or the absence of observant Jews, or the persistent focus on famous men and the well-to-do at the expense of ordinary Jews.