Revolutionary Yiddishland: A History of Jewish Radicalism

Despite the implied scope of the book’s subtitle, Brossat and Klingberg are only interested in considering early 20th-century European Jewish leftists. Those individuals, and the movements that spawned them (such as the Bund), certainly merit study, but this analysis is a jargon-laden polemic. Neither author is trained as a historian, and they both rely on oral histories while providing little context by which to assess their reliability. Terminology will also be an obstacle for some, as when the authors broadly define communism as “the word used for politics with the ambition to establish social justice and apply egalitarian principles.” Brossat and Klingberg are not bashful about stating their own perspectives, noting in their introduction that “we did not conduct our interviews as journalists, as curious bystanders, but above all as militants of the same utopia as that which took them so high and so low.” This pervasive bias is a major negative; statements such as, “The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, as the Zionists never tire of repeating, leaned ever more to the side of Hitler’s Germany,” are gratuitous editorializing that only detracts from the authors’ points. [em](Nov.) [/em]