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After the Shoah—and after modern secularism's fall from privilege—it is time for Jews to return to reading the Torah as God's guiding word to them. It is time for Christians, too, to reconnect to the roots and thus the Jewishness of their own scriptural heritage.

For the remainder of the month in this column, we will consider a variety of books—some newly published, others not—that provide an opportunity for meaningful reflection on the Shoah. Among them are a collection of Holocaust diaries by young people, Salvaged Pages, edited by Alexandra Zapruder and just published by Yale; Gershom Scholem: A Life in Letters, 1914-1982, from Harvard; Howard Sachar's Dreamland: Europeans and Jews in the Aftermath of the Great War, from Knopf, and The Chosen People in an Almost Chosen Nation: Jews and Judaism in America, a collection of essays edited by Richard John Neuhaus, from Eerdmans; two books about the strange case of Binjiman Wilkomirski, author of a prize-winning Holocaust memoir that turned out to be fictitious; Yaffa Eliach's 1982 book, Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust, and Yehuda Bauer's Rethinking the Holocaust, published last year by Yale; and Jews in the Japanese Mind: The History and Uses of a Cultural Stereotype, by David Goodman and Masanori Miyazawa, recently issued in a second edition by Lexington Books.

As an epigraph to her book, Yaffa Eliach gives a brief story about the Rabbi of Bluzhov, Rabbi Israel Spira, concluding with these words attributed to him: "There are events of such overbearing magnitude that one ought not to remember them all the time, but one must not forget them either. Such an event is the Holocaust." Amen. May the Spirit guide our "not forgetting."

John Wilson is editor of Books & Culture and editor-at-large for Christianity Today.

Copyright © 2002 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Visit Books & Culture online at BooksandCulture.com or subscribe here.

Books and Culture articles appearing online today include:

"Rescue Those Being Led Away to Death" | The Church, the Nazis, and the Holocaust

How to Read the Torah

The observance and date of Holocaust Remembrance Day is explained in an essay on About.com.

Books & Culture Corner appears Mondays at ChristianityToday.com. Earlier Books & Culture Corners include:

The Gospel According to Biff | A conversation with novelist Christopher Moore. (April 1, 2002)

Baseball 2002 Preview | Part 2: Saving the game? (March 25, 2002)

The State of the Game | After one of the best World Series ever, baseball faces a crisis. (March 18, 2002)

America's Homegrown Islam—and Its Prophet | The strange story of Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam and onetime mentor of Malcolm X. (Mar. 11, 2002)

'Must Be Superstition' | Rediscovering spiritual reality. (Mar. 4, 2002)

Science Holds a Meeting | A report from the annual convention of the AAAS. (Feb. 25, 2002)

Saint Frodo and the Potter Demon | The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter series spring from the same source. (Feb. 18, 2002)

Dictionary of the Future | Trendspotter Faith Popcorn on the words that will define our tomorrow. (Feb. 11, 2002)

Does Creationism Equal Holocaust Denial? | Yes, says Michael Shermer in Scientific American. (Feb. 4, 2002)

Theodore Rex | Is "popular history" getting a bad rap? (Jan. 28, 2002)

Letter to Martin Luther King, Jr. | A progress report. (Jan. 21, 2002)

Keeping the Dust on Your Boots | Remembering the Afghan refugees—and the church in Iran. (Jan. 14, 2002)

Coming Attractions | Books to watch for this year. (Jan. 7, 2002)

Books of the Year, Part 2 | After the top ten, here's the best of the rest. (Jan. 4, 2002)

Books of the Year | Part 1: The Top Ten (Dec. 17, 2001)

"Daddy, What Is the Soul?" | Does the church have an answer? (Dec. 10, 2001)

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April (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46