Dreamland: Europeans and Jews in the Aftermath of the Great War by Howard M. Sachar. Knopf. 386 pages. $30If there were a sympathy in choice War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it, Making it momentary as a sound Swift as a shadow, short as any dream. A quote from A Midsummer Night’s Dream … Read more
On Yom Kippur in Mishnaic times, our ancestors would push a goat — a symbolic sin – off a nearby cliff. In England, we tend to do this to our chief rabbis. During recent times, the reason has been an injudicious remark to the press about Israel government policy. This in turn provokes a demand … Read more
Anja Klabunde: Magda Goebbels (Little Brown, 378pp) $20 Magda Goebbels was one of the many people swept up by the strong ideological currents prevalent during the years between the two world wars. These days she is known mostly for the manner of her death — poisoned with her young children — in Hitler’s … Read more
Conservative Party Attitudes To Jews 1900 -1950 by Harry Defries. Frank Cass, 268 pages. pounds 18.50 One hundred years ago, British Jews were regarded as “un-English,” an alien entity in British society, “a sinister force bent on the destruction of the Empire.” Harry Defries argues that, while there was always prejudice in the British Conservative … Read more
Hizbu’llah Politics and Religion by Amal Saad- Ghorayeb. Pluto Press 254 pages. £14.99Hizbullah calls itself “the party of God,” which exudes a whiff of undiluted certainty that it – and it alone – knows the pathway to heaven. It’s not surprising, therefore, that anti-Judaism is a tenet of Hizbullah truth. Indeed, as Sheikh Na’im Qasim, … Read more
The Body and the Blood – The Holy Land’s Christians at the Turn of a New Millenium A Reporter’s Journey by Charles M. Sennott. Public Affairs. 479 pages. $30 There are two billion Christians worldwide – and some of them are Palestinian Arabs. About 32,000 Christian Arabs live in the West Bank and Gaza, which … Read more
Jabotinsky and Ukrainian Nationalism: A Reinterpretation Israel Kleiner, From Nationalism to Universalism: Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky and the Ukrainian Question (Edmonton and Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2000). 199pp. Foreword by Wolf Moskovich. Bibliography. Index. ISBN 1-895571-33-2 (paper) A unique figure in the Zionist firmament Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of the Revisionist Zionist … Read more
Zionism and the Fin de Siècle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau to Jabotinsky by Michael Stanislawski, University of California Press, pp282, price £12.95 History is in the mind of the beholder – until someone discovers new material which undermines passionately held truths. Michael Stanislawski, a Professor at Columbia University, has had access to the … Read more
Divided Against Zion by Rory Miller. London, Frank Cass. 275 pages. £20.00 Anyone here in London who reads the liberal/Left press these days despairs about their fundamental ignorance – not only about Israeli history and Zionism – but also about Palestinian-Arab politics. That’s why it is refreshing to read Dr. Rory Miller’s book about the … Read more
Divided Jerusalem: The Struggle for the Holy City by Bernard Wasserstein. London, Profile Books. 412 pages. Pound Sterling 20 Jerusalem is the center of the cosmos, advises the Midrash, and many Diaspora Jews concur. Even for the most secular of Jews, “kotel-ology” has a hold. There is a feeling that this is the core, the … Read more