THE EARTH IS THE LORD'S: THE INNER WORLD OF THE JEW IN EAST EUROPE; With Wood Engravings by Ilya Schor

New York: Henry Schuman, 1950. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good Plus / Good. Ilya Schor. Octavo, 9.5 in. x 6.5 in., pp. 109. Black cloth-covered boards with design of three ornate Jewish arks (where the Torah scrolls are housed) of three different colors. Gold and silver lettering to spine. Yellow topstain. Very light rubbing to extremities. Brick-red endpapers of thick, laid paper. Lovely and stirring woodcuts (headpieces, tailpieces, and dropped capital letters) throughout by Ilya Schor, including a powerful full-page frontis depicting a rabbi cradling a torah in his arms in front of the open ark. Rubbing and light soiling to dustjacket. Chips to top/bottom of spine, corners, and to top edge of dustjacket back. Protected in mylar.

The main part of this essay was contained in a paper read at the annual conference of the Yiddish Scientific Institute in January 1945.

Abraham Joshua Heschel possessed the gift of laying out the complex spiritual, philosophical, ethical, and practical religious aspects of the Jewish people with utter and disarming simplicity, yet without sacrificing any of the innate complexities and deep cultural texture which being Jewish signifies, both inwardly in the close-knit Jewish community from which strength and survival issue forth, and outwardly in the larger world with its near-omnipresent challenges to daily existence. Two years after publishing this book, Dr. Heschel wrote "The Sabbath: Its Meaning For Modern Man"; it remains the richest yet most simple introduction to observing the Sabbath, we've ever come across. In it Heschel discusses a people from whom, historically, everything - land, possessions, freedom, status has been repeatedly, and often violently taken away, and yet to continue on, with fierce commitment to God, to a life of devotion and generosity to the community, they have created a "Palace In Time", which, being private, inward, intangible, nobody can ever take away. This "Palace" is none other than regular, weekly observation of the Sabbath. "...The story about the life of the Jews in Eastern Europe which has come to an end in our days is what I have tried to tell in this essay. I have not talked about their books, their art or institutions, but about their daily life, about their habits and customs, about their attitudes toward the basic things in life, about the scale of values which directed their aspirations.¶ It is a story about an entire era in Jewish history, in which the attempt is made to portray the character of a people as reflected in its way of living throughout generations, in its loyalties and motivations, in its unique and enduring features ¶ The pattern of life of a people is more significant than the pattern of its art. What counts most is not expression, but existence itself. The key to the source of creativity lies in the will to cling to spirituality, to be close to the inexpressible, and not merely in the ability of expression. To appraise adquately the East European period in Jewish history, I had to inquire into the life-feeling and life-style of the people. This led to the conclusion that in this period, our people attained the highest degree of inwardness. I feel justified in saying that it was the golden period in Jewish history, in the history of the Jewish soul." (From A. J. Heschel's Introduction)

"In 1930 there were in Europe about nine and a half million Jews. About eight and a quarter fell under Nazi domination. Of these, six million were exterminated. Jews had lived in Europe for almost two thousand years. They helped to create its civilizatiohn, they contributed their share to its economy, its science, its art. But over and above their contributions to general culture, they preserved a great tradition: the heritage of Moses, the legacy of their prophets and saages. All this has vanished. Who were these people? What did they stand for? What made their role important in the history of mankind...? (from Publisher's Preface by Henry Schuman).