Western Jewry and the Zionist Project: 1914-1933.

Michael Berkowitzs previous book, Zionist Culture and West European Jewry Before the First World War (1993) was widely praised as a strikingly original examination of the emergence of a distinct Zionist culture in Western Europe, emphasizing the development of a classical `invented tradition' of Zionist symbols, images and historical myths in the eighteen years after Herzl's Der Judenstaat of 1896. The author has now produced a successor volume, Western Jewry and the Zionist Project, 1914-1933 (Cambridge: U.P., 1997; pp. xvi + 305. 35 [pounds sterling]), to which one naturally comes with high expectations. Unfortunately, and despite its very considerable original research, …