When the World Was Whole Three Centuries

In east central Europe, for centuries, Jews stood as a separate tribe whose members were at once immensely rich and pitifully poor, above all mysterious. Today, in the small villages of Hungary and Transylvania, of Poland and Yugoslavia, there are no more Jews and they remain only as folk memories, the source of superstition. In one of those small villages, located at the end of a road, the author's family first contracted, many centuries ago, to lease land - Jews were not allowed to own land until the mid 19th century - tilling the sandy soil, planting locust trees to prevent the topsoil from blowing away, becoming stewards of the land, and eventually buying titles to sizeable acreage. The first plot of land they acquired was for a cemetery of their own. The book tells the story of the family's enduring love affair with the land, and how the land and a world of custom and devotion, was lost.