When the World Was Whole: Three Centuries of Memories

The stories recalled and retold by Fenyvesi conjure up what must not have been a common occurence: a Jewish family in the same place for at least three centuries who owned their land and controlled the surrounding estates of the Gentiles. Uncommon too: the ability to revive on the page the stories of one's family members going back hundreds of years. In clear prose, largely uncluttered by cliche or digression, Fenyvesi offers a well-told series of vignettes and anecdotes, mixed with his own encounters with the people descended from the peasants his ancestors once employed. Most of the book takes place not in Budapest (home to 98% of the surviving Jews in the country; 6/7 of the Jewish population was killed in the Holocaust) but in the villages near and far from the provincial city of Debrecen. This gives added interest to what has largely been documented as an urban saga for Hungarian Jewry, and the love of the author's family for their land goes far to explain why nothing short of extermination moved the Fenyvesis and Kaufmanns from their beloved roots in such a seemingly ordinary terrain.The author, as a gardener himself, shares this understanding of bonds between land and lore, and writes well of the connections established in his family between Judaism, farming, loyalty, and continuity. His stories range from humorous to harrowing, and his family runs the usual gamut of believers, skeptics, rebels, and good-natured souls. I only held back a star in my rating because the last chapters in the book noticeably lacked the interest for me that the majority of the book had sustained.Nonetheless, this is a fine example of a book that adults as well as teenagers eager to find out more about Central Europe and Jewry should seek out. It's uncommon to get a viewpoint that's neither shetl nor city, and for so long a period that focuses on the family within the nation and takes the microcosmic view to show the greater detail needed to appreciate the connections joining a people's love for the local with their grappling with their place in the wider culture and their faith.