Power & Powerlessness in Jewish History

“The most important point of David Biale’s valuable study is that Jewish political history extends across the centuries of the Diaspora; it is a continuous history, not one cut off at the fall of the Second Jewish Commonwealth. Biale is especially good at evoking the internal life of those autonomous or semi-autonomous communities within which the political sensibility of contemporary Jews first took shape.”
—Michael Walzer
 
“A relevant and studious book that should interest readers of Jewish history or anyone interested in Israel’s place in today’s world.
—Booklist
 
“His succinct, thoroughly researched, insightful arguments . . . are sure to spark controversy.”
—Publisher’s Weekly
 
Biale’s work demonstrates the best of contemporary Jewish scholarship. Historically informed and critically based, it is a brave work attacking a metahistory of the Jewish people and unmasking propagandists and those who would mystify rather than write truth.”
—Jewish Exponent