Renaissance or Remembrance? Jewish Life in My Two Ancestral Hometowns

Imagine looking into a rear-view mirror and seeing an object on your trunk. Imagine it's something like an apple. It's not an illusion, you can see it, but you can't grab it. If you stop the car, that change in the dynamic will certainly cause the apple to roll off of the trunk. The apple is there, visible, but not attainable for any use other than seeing it, making observations and taking note of its undeniable presence. Judaism in my ancestral homeland is much like this apple. Judaism was there, that is a fact. You can still see it and experience it….sort of. But you can't ever really have it. You can research it, find where the old buildings are/used to be, read about the people/places, but you can't have it. And would you really want it? What was Jewish life like in these two towns? What is it like now? Lastly, what could and what should the future of Judaism be in the two mid-size Slovak towns of Nitra and Trnava?

My image of life in "The Old Country" has always been that of a slow-paced, calm, peaceful and timeless existence. But the real history of Slovakia Jewry is filled with upheaval. The history of Jewish people in this region and in these two towns is even more tumultuous. This book looks at what existed before the Holocaust, what happened during the Shoah (Holocaust) and what effect communism had on these cities after WWII. We will then look at the critical question of where Jewish life should go from here.

Should there be robust, rebuilt Jewish life in the heart of Hitler's former empire just to make a symbolic statement? Thank you for joining me on this journey as we open a window to the past and discuss what future, if any, can and should exist in these cities.

Writing this book has been a labor of love and the result of two decades of research on these topics. It has also been the result of many hours of thinking about these issues from both a philosophical and a practical lens.

I would like to thank the following people for their insight on the topics in this book. They were very kind to reply to me and share their knowledge and observations with me; Josef Novak (Trnava), Jan Medved (Trnava), Maria Rybar (Nitra), Anna Banik (Nitra), Katarina Jahoda (Bratislava), Ron Levenson (Israel via Kosice). As teachers with a passion for history and for their country, it was a pleasure to learn from them. All of the pictures come from my grandparents collection and from tripadvisor.com unless otherwise noted.

The picture on the cover was one of the items that my Grandma Weiss hid in the garden of her cousin's garden before the Holocaust. She dug a large hole and kept several pictures and other family heirlooms in the ground. This picture was rolled up and kept underground for four years.