This extensively-researched collection of essays lucidly explores how members of the ever-beleaguered Jewish people grappled with their identities during the past century in the United States and in Eretz Israel, the new centers of Jewry’s long historical experience. With the pivotal 1903 Kishinev pogrom setting the stage, the author proceeds to examine how the Land of Promise across the Atlantic exerted different influences on Abraham Selmanovitz, Felix Frankfurter, the founders of the American Council for Judaism, and Arthur Hays Sulzberger. Professor Penkower then shows how the prospect of nationalism in the biblical Promised Land engendered other tensions and transformations, ranging from the plight of Hayim Nahman Bialik, to rivalry within the Orthodox Jewish camp, to on-going strife between the political Left and Right over the nature of the emerging Jewish state.

Monty Noam Penkower is Professor Emeritus of Jewish History at the Machon Lander Graduate Center of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem. He was Victor J. Selmanowitz Professor of Modern Jewish History at Touro College in New York City, and also taught at Bard College, Rutgers University, and Stern College, and in the graduate history departments of New York University and Yeshiva University. His numerous publications include The Federal Writers’ Project (1977); The Jews Were Expendable: Free World Diplomacy and the Holocaust (1983); The Emergence of Zionist Thought (1986); The Holocaust and Israel Reborn: From Catastrophe to Sovereignty (1994); and Decision on Palestine Deferred: America, Britain and Wartime Diplomacy, 1939-1945 (2002). The Jews Were Expendable received the B’nai B’rith A.D.L. Merit for Educational Distinction and, together with The Emergence of Zionist Thought, garnered the second Samuel Belkin Memorial Literary Award from Yeshiva University.

Catherine Hezser, University of London, UK:
“The articles of this volume are meticulously researched and are a fascinating read. The topics should interest scholars and students of American, Israeli, Near Eastern, and European history. Lay people eager to explore the undercurrents of the Middle East conflict and of American Jewish identity will also profit from this book."

"Penkower (emer., Machon Lander Graduate School of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem), the author of a number of scholarly books on contemporary Jewish history (e.g., Decision on Palestine Deferred, CH, Jan'03, 40-2962), has written an important collection of essays profiling the response of prominent 20th-century US and Palestinian Jews to their Jewish identity. Five of the chapters among these well-crafted essays have been published elsewhere but revised and expanded for this volume. Beginning with his chapter on the 1903 Kishinev pogrom, a turning point in modern Jewish history, Penkower describes how the violent riot triggered the immigration of one million Jews to the US and some 40,000 to Palestine, including among them the future leaders of the state of Israel. Among the US personalities discussed are Felix Frankfurter and Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the lesser-known Orthodox rabbi Abraham Isaac Selmanovitz, and the anti-Jewish-statehood organization, the American Council for Judaism. The chapters on Palestine include consideration of the poet Chaim Nachman Bialik, assassinated Labor Zionist leader Chaim Arlosoroff, and Shlomo Ben-Yosef, the first Jew to be hanged by British authorities following his attack on an Arab bus in 1938 in retaliation for incessant terrorism against Jews in Palestine. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All academic levels/libraries."

Jerome Chanes:
"'Twentieth Century Jews' takes the long way around the identity journey—and it's well worth the trip."

Steven T. Katz, Director, Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies, Alvin J. and Shirley Slater Chair in Jewish and Holocaust Studies, Boston University:
"This is a wide-ranging, deeply researched, carefully constructed series of studies dealing with significant subjects and personalities that adds considerably to our understanding of the major issues that confronted the Jewish people in the twentieth century. Its twin foci are American Jewry and developments in the Land of Israel. With regard to both, Penkower is a wise and erudite analyst, and a suggestive scholarly interpreter."

Jonathan D. Sarna, Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History, Brandeis University:
"Twentieth Century Jews portrays critical movements and leading personages in the era's two fastest growing centers of Jewish life. It illuminates both the issues that shaped Jews in America and Israel, and the great questions that continue to divide them."

Judy Baumel-Schwartz, Chair of the Graduate Program in Contemporary Jewry, Department of Jewish History, Bar-Ilan University:
"Prof. Monty Noam Penkower has once again presented readers with a fascinating volume that focuses on a pivotal period in the modern Jewish experience. With chapters ranging from the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903, through an exploration of figures of secular and religious Jewish stature in the United States such as Justice Felix Frankfurter and Rabbi Abraham Selmanowitz, and up to a discussion of controversial political activists in Palestine such as Haim Arlosoroff and Shlomo Ben-Yosef, Penkower keeps readers spellbound with the depth and breadth of his knowledge. Drawing on archival material found on three continents, he has created a multidimensional picture of Jewish life in Europe, the United States and Israel during the first decades of the twentieth century, and captured the essence of the social, political, religious and economic dilemmas which world Jewry faced during those fateful years. He introduces us to the protagonists of his story in an extremely readable fashion, and skillfully guides us through their deliberations and decisions, giving us a sense of being privy to the behind-the-scenes activities in all cases. Reading this book is a must for anyone interested in understanding some of the complexities of the Jewish twentieth century experience."