Life is with People

By Zborowski, Mark (Ed.) and Elizabeth Herzog and Margaret Mead
International Universities Press, 2006, Paperback, 456 pp., ISBN: 0823681319, $29.95

This first anthropological study of Eastern European Jewish life was initiated by Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead shortly after World War II as part of the Columbia University Research in Contemporary Cultures Project.

First published in 1962, this classic cultural portrait provides a view of the world from which most Jews are descended. It offers a detailed depiction of a way of life that is no more. It defines the Jewish ethos that informs the daily lives of people of the small towns and villages in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust.

Its strength is in its detailed descriptions that recreate the flavors of the Sabbath, the nature of education, the rituals and family life.