Michal Shaul, Pe'er Tachat Efer: Hachevra Hacharedit Beyisrael Bitzel Hashoah 1945 – 1961, (Beauty for Ashes: Holocaust Memory and the Rehabilitation of Haredi Ashkenazi Society in Israel 1945-1961)

This chapter reviews Michal Shaul’s Pe’er taḥat ‘efer: haḥevrah haḥaredit beyisrael betzel hashoah 1945–1961 (Beauty for Ashes: Holocaust Memory and the Rehabilitation of Ashkenazi Haredi Society in Israel 1945–1961), which attempts to portray haredi society in Israel and its attitude toward the Holocaust between the end of the last world war and 1961. Although Shaul’s book is well-researched and well-written, the reader at times misses the hand of a competent editor who might have encouraged her to add a few words of historical explanation at critical junctures. For example, there is no real discourse regarding the significance of the chronology in Shaul’s chosen title. At the same time, Shaul would have done well to provide some explanation of the significance of the Eichmann trial for the haredi public in Israel. And while she does include a short discussion in her opening chapter about prewar versus postwar haredi society, Shaul never actually notes that, during the period covered by her book, it was not common for haredi survivors to refer to themselves as “haredim” or even “ultra-Orthodox.” There is also a less than sufficient effort to locate this population within the broader framework of Israeli society