Publication of the week:

PROFESSOR GEOFFREY ALDERMAN

Monday 1 February 2010

Geoffrey Alderman, "British Zionism: An interpretative survey", in A. Gal (ed.), World Regional Zionism: Geo-Cultural Dimensions (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 2010), vol.III, 13-34 [Hebrew].

This essay re-examines the history of the Zionist movement in Great Britain between circa 1895 and circa 2002. It argues that whilst the Anglo-Jewish establishment was deeply suspicious of Zionism - certainly until the Holocaust - it received that establishment's imprimatur because it served other ends: firstly, as a solution to the perceived 'problem' of an immigrant Jewish proletariat, then (after the Great War) as a device by which various Anglo-Jewish notables could promote their own communal agendas, and later, in the 1930s, as an alternative to communism as a conduit through which opposition to fascism could be articulated. Only after the Holocaust can it be said that Zionism, in its own right, became popular with the Anglo-Jewish masses.

The full text of the article in Hebrew is available from Professor Alderman.

Geoffrey Alderman is Professor of Politics and Contemporary History at the University of Buckingham. His many books include Modern British Jewry (2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), Controversy and Crisis: Studies in the History of the Jews in Modern Britain (Brighton MA: Academic Studies Press, 2008) and The Communal Gadfly (Brighton MA: Academic Studies Press, 2009) .