In east central Europe, the first decades of the twentieth century were filled with the efforts of various activists to promote the idea of national belonging and fight for the political and cultural rights of smaller, often dispersed nations. Alongside this external struggle, they also attempted to revive what they perceived as fledging national feelings among members of their respective ethnic communities. Tatjana Lichtenstein's meticulously researched monograph has made a new significant contribution to historiographical debates analyzing this process of nation-building in the context of multiethnic societies. Indiana University Press granted Lichtenstein generous space, allowing her to provide in-depth historical context to the political and ideological debates. Likewise, she brought back to public attention a large number of long-forgotten grassroots activists who had fought hard for their ideological and political vision of Jewish minority nationalism in the specific context of interwar Czechoslovakia.

Jewish nationalism and Zionism, the latter only a recent phenomenon at the end of the Great War, experienced a new set of challenges after the collapse of European multiethnic empires, also because of the British promise to support the creation of the Jewish homeland in Palestine. As Lichtenstein argues, the promise of Palestine had no practical effect on the number of Jews who decided to leave the relatively secure and economically-prosperous Czechoslovak republic. In contrast, or as a consequence, Zionists in the country saw “Jewish nationhood as a vehicle for Jews’ social, economic, political, and cultural prosperity and participation in Czechoslovak society” (33). Interwar Czechoslovakia was the home of a multifaceted Jewish community—ranging from various shades of Czech- or German-Jewish assimilationists and integrationists in the west to the large orthodox and Hassidic communities in the east. Zionist activists developed an extensive political and social program to transform this highly-diversified community into committed, proud, and assertive Jewish nationalists while at the same time model, loyal, and equal Czechoslovak citizens and patriots. In these efforts they encountered various opposing groups in the Jewish community and among Czechoslovak state bureaucrats. Nationally indifferent ordinary members of the Jewish community then often ignored the ideological appeals of the activists, prioritized the social progress of their children and, for example, sent them to Czech schools or sport clubs instead of Jewish minority institutions. Yet despite similar obstacles, Lichtenstein suggests that only the collapse of interwar Czechoslovakia stopped this complex program from coming into fruition. Nationally homogeneous post-1945 Czechoslovakia then did not offer any possibility for the handful of survivors to continue in minority nationalist policies.

Crucially, throughout the book Lichtenstein supports the current historiographical trend that challenges the Czechs’ self-portrayed image of democratic exceptionality. It is true that Jews especially in the Bohemian lands did not experience dramatic instances of antisemitism, but as Lichtenstein vividly depicts, their political loyalties to the Czechoslovak nation were constantly doubted and they had to keep exhibiting their patriotic feelings. Although this was the case in particular of the Jews who had associated themselves with German and Hungarian cultures, even Zionists were seen as potentially disloyal elements. Such sentiments among Czech (and Slovak) bureaucrats and in the press did not disappear at the time of the German and Hungarian onslaught on Czechoslovakia. When Jewish sportsmen decided to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics, they were immediately accused of lacking patriotism, because the chances of Czechoslovak athletes to bring home medals in certain sports dramatically decreased.

Furthermore, although Jews received the right to declare Jewish nationality in the official census regardless of the language they used, the Jewish nationalists never fully benefited from the minority treaties accepted by the Czechoslovaks at the Paris Peace Conference. Lichtenstein, for example, guides us through all the unsuccessful negotiations of the Jewish activists to receive state subsidies for Jewish national schools, one of the key demands of the nationalists. Despite the sympathies for Zionism in the leading political circles in the country, the Czechoslovak state rarely supported the Jews’ nationalist program in cases that were not of a direct benefit to the Czechs’ political agenda and that did not support Czech hegemony in the new state. These unsuccessful efforts of the Jewish nationalists to receive any tangible minority rights similar to those enjoyed by members of other national minorities, as well as the constant feeling of insecurity and the need to actively prove their loyalties to the Czechoslovak nation (and state), both shed new light on historical discussions of the Czechoslovak democratic tradition. This analysis would also benefit from insights into “ordinary” Czechs’ views of the Jewish nationalists’ minority program. How were the ideas put forward by the array of Jewish activists and the public exhibitions of belonging to the Jewish national (or ethnic) group perceived by Gentile neighbors? Were they able to comprehend the Jews’ minority nationalism, or did they focus on more easily identifiable attributes, such as the language Jews used in public? Are we even able to answer such questions?

Lichtenstein is to be commended for writing what promises to be a definitive account of Jewish minority nationalism in interwar Czechoslovakia, though more space could be devoted to the situation in Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus΄. The detailed geographic and ideological contextualization of the Czech case study will interest all scholars researching Jewish history in central and eastern Europe, as well as the history of nation-building in modern Europe.