In his three-volume history, Antony Polonsky provides a comprehensive survey--socio-political, economic, and religious--of the Jewish communities of eastern Europe from 1350 to the present. Until the Second World War, this was the heartland of the Jewish world: nearly three and a half million lived in Poland alone, while nearly three million more lived in the Soviet Union

Although the majority of the Jews of Europe and the United States, and many of the Jews of Israel, originate from these lands, the history of the Jews there is not well known. Rather, it is the subject of mythologizing and stereotypes that fail both to bring out the specific features of the Jewish civilization which emerged there and to illustrate what was lost. Jewish life, though often poor materially, was marked by a high degree of spiritual and ideological intensity and creativity. Antony Polonsky recreates this lost world--brutally cut down by the Holocaust and less brutally but still seriously damaged by the Soviet attempt to destroy Jewish culture. Wherever possible, the unfolding of history is illustrated by contemporary Jewish writings to show how Jews felt and reacted to the complex and difficult situations in which they found themselves. Two volumes have so far been published, volume 1 which deals with the period form 1350 to 1881 and volume 2 which covers 1881 to 1914 as well as a number of topics for the period between 1750 and 1914, including Jewish literatures, religion, the position of women and Jewish popular culture.