Glorious, Accursed Europe

This volume offers a fascinating look at the complex relationship between Jews and Europe during the past two hundred years, and how the European Jewish and non-Jewish intelligentsia interpreted the modern Jewish experience, primarily in Germany, Russia, and Central and Eastern Europe. Beginning with premodern European attitudes toward Jews, Reinharz and Shavit move quickly to "e;the glorious nineteenth century,"e; a period in which Jewish dreams of true assimilation came up against modern antisemitism. Later chapters explore the fin-de-siecle "e;crisis of modernity"e;; the myth of the modern European Jew; expectations and fears in the interwar period; differences between European nations in their attitude toward Jews; the views of Zionists and early settlers of Palestine and Israel toward the Europe left behind; and views of contemporary Israeli intellectuals toward Europe, including its new Muslim population-the latest incarnation of the Jewish Question in Europe.