re: #495 alexknyc

If you ever get to Paris, there is a spectacular Museum of Jewish Heritage with photos like that one.

Unfortunately, the impression you’d get (if you didn’t know better) was that this was a dead culture from ancient history.

Pretty much all of Europe, especially Eastern Europe, was once vital with Jewish life.

As much as the Holocaust eradicated jewish life in Europe, it also eradicated Europe within the jewish tradition and experience. I think Europe’s future got a lot worse for that. In a very real sense, Europe lost much of its history (and history is never just the past).