The purpose of this book is to explore the relationship between British Jewry and Zionism from 1936 to 1956, during a, if not the, crucial period in modern Jewish history, encompassing both the shoah and the establishment of the State of Israel. The book attempts to provide an answer to what, at first sight, appears as a contradiction, the undoubted prominence Zionism had reached among British Jews by the end of the period under investigation on the one hand and its diverse expressions, ranging from aliyah to making a donation to a Zionist fund, on the other. The main argument put forward in t ... More

The purpose of this book is to explore the relationship between British Jewry and Zionism from 1936 to 1956, during a, if not the, crucial period in modern Jewish history, encompassing both the shoah and the establishment of the State of Israel. The book attempts to provide an answer to what, at first sight, appears as a contradiction, the undoubted prominence Zionism had reached among British Jews by the end of the period under investigation on the one hand and its diverse expressions, ranging from aliyah to making a donation to a Zionist fund, on the other. The main argument put forward in this book is that the ascendancy of Zionism in British Jewry is best understood as a particularly complex, but not untypical variant of the nineteenth- and twentieth‐century trend to reimagine communities in a national key. The book explores the relationship between British Jewry and Zionism on three levels, the transnational Jewish sphere of interaction, the British‐Jewish community, and the place of the Jewish community in British state and society. The introduction adapts theories of nationalism so as to provide a framework of analysis for diaspora Zionism. Part I addresses the question of why British Jews became Zionists, Part II how the various quarters of British Jewry related to the Zionist project in the Middle East, Part III Zionist nation-building in Britain, and Part IV the impact of Zionism on Jewish relations with the larger society. The Conclusion modifies the original argument by emphasizing the impact that the specific fabric of British state and society, in particular the Empire, had on British Zionism.